The Vanquishing of the Block

Finally! Figured out my new blog: Gumshod.

Partially, this is because of my long love for film noir, but I always have a good plot in mind involving the Wooden Girl.

Oh yes, this shall be good.

Trope Story Generator

Trying out the TV Tropes Story Generator now.

Setting: Dangerous Workplace
Plot: Subverted Suspicion Aesop
Narrative Device: Needle In A Stack Of Needles
Hero: Noble Savage
Villain: Bigger Bad
Character As Device: The Pawn
Characterization Device: What Is This Feeling

Dangerous Workplace could definitely work, as well as Bigger Bad and The Pawn. Subverted Suspicion Aesop could work - say the main character suspects a coworker, but it turns out that the coworker was just trying to warn him or something? Noble Savage definitely won't work however. Don't know how I would use the Stack of Needles one or What Is This Feeling.

I'm afraid you have failed by TV Tropes. You have outlived your usefulness.

Nah, you'll always be useful. But damn writer's block is still blocking away.

Story Prompts

Trying to beat my writer's block with story prompts from Seventh Sanctum.

"The theme of this story: surreal caper. The main characters: stupid lawman and ugly inventor. The start of the story: temptation. The end of the story: death."

That could work. A surreal caper is kind of perfect for the Fear Mythos. Although why would a thief post on a blog? Stupid lawman could work, too, and ugly inventor. Temptation? Temptation for what? Hmm, have to think about that. But of course it would end in death.

If you keep going, every story ends in death. Cheery!

Writer's Block

Still stricken with writer's block. Thankfully, the others are having a better job. Sometimes, I wish I hadn't ended my first blog so soon, but I had the perfect ending, so I used it.

Sometimes I have the beginning and the ending and then I just have to connect them.

Damn you, writer's block!

Fear Combos

To kill my writer's block, I'm trying out different combinations of Fears and if any of them work.

Cold Boy and Wooden Girl = Coldwood?
Wooden Girl and Plague Doctor = Plague of Puppets?
Nightlanders and Slender Man = Forest of Shadows?

Damn, these are starting to sound like Doctor Who episodes.

Plot Happens

So, I'm trying to think up a new Fearblog to do. I have plenty of ideas, but I need the right one, the one that I know I can successfully plot out and make work. So many of my old stories I abandoned right in the middle, not knowing how they would end, but I don't want to do that with a blog. I don't know why, I just don't want to leave it hanging.

I guess I should probably explain how I plot out my stories. Generally, I just start with an idea about the beginning or the main character. After that, I tend to write by the seat of my pants, not really knowing where things will lead. Once enough has happened in the story, though, I tend to go backwards, look through what I've already written, and try to find things I can work with and use in the future (thus making them foreshadowing - although this is more fake foreshadowing, since I didn't know they would foreshadow anything when I wrote them). Yes, this is kind of cheating. But it works.

Still, I'm having trouble figuring out the right blog to do. Oh well. Back to the writing board.

Series Bible

Okay, so here's our series bible so far:

"It started with the Slender Man. The tall, faceless businessman was terrifying in his own right, but then others appeared. They weren't members of the Slender Man's own race (if he had a race), but were similar in what they inspired: fear.

The members of this new wave of abominations were based on fear. They were the embodiments of particular fears and sometimes targeted those who had those fears."

Abominations that we've thought of so far (in alphabetical order, aside from Slendy) with their associated fears:

• The Slender Man
(fear of fire, the woods, the unknown - basic childhood fears)

• The Archangel (fear of the afterlife, of being watched, religious fear)
• The Black Dog (fear of being "found," omens)
• The Blind Man (fear of getting old, of forgetting)
• The Choir (fear of what others say or think)
• The Cold Boy (fear of the cold, of being cold)
• The Convocation (fear of birds, of heights, of being taken)
• The Dying Man (fear of dying, of death)
• EAT (fear of drowning, of being "infected")
• The Empty City (fear of being lost, of being alone)
• The Nightlanders (fear of shadows, of the things in the dark)
• The Plague Doctor (fear of disease, contagiousness)
• The Rake (fear of feral animals, brutality)
• The Wooden Girl (fear of puppets, of being a puppet, of not controlling one's own actions)

Introductions and Explanations

Hello. I'm alliterator. A short time ago, some of us over at the TV Tropes forum decided to create a sort of spin-off ARG of the Slender Man Mythos. (If you don't know what the Slender Man Mythos is, go here - but then again, you're probably in the wrong place.) This spin-off mythos would not only have the Slender Man, but a host of other abominations to take up the slack.

We decided to call it the Fear Mythos, because these abominations would be representations of different fears. The Slender Man, of course, represents our fear of strangers and the unknown. (He represents more than that, of course, but we're sort of simplifying things. We don't want it too get to complicated.)

Anyway, this blog will be around to track our progress in working on the Fear Mythos. We want to keep everything straight and not have any continuity snarls or anything. Wish us luck.

Thanks.