So woohoo, I can now go out whenever I want (Albeit, only for 2 hours, no idea why, G's instructions), although looking at how shitty the world is right now, I will refrain.
Another thing I've been doing during our great silence, was reading up on blogs, I must have gone through half of the blogs on G's list, all morbidly depressing as the previous one. Originally I would try to read up on as many blogs as I possibly could, so I could maybe, somehow, help G out in his research. However, there's just too many blogs out there that have no useful information, or at the very least, I don't recognise it as useful and thus, desire to help, morphed into this morbid form of entertainment.
Now to clarify, I don't find the idea of people dying at the hands of H.P. Lovecraft's rejected ideas entertaining, most of these blogs are borderline depressing, almost all of them ending in nearly similar ways, death, torture and disappointment. However, some of these fuckers manage to make their journey far more interesting than the regular run-of-the-mill march to their inevitable death documentation. The way they seem to achieve that effect is usually a combination of their strong personality shining through, the situations they find themselves in and how they react to them, and I for one, think such individuals need to be documented. Are they all going to be awesome, upstanding heroes? From the amount of blogs I've read, survival comes with a lot of grey areas, thus, a lot of the people that will be documented here, will sometimes be the most vile pieces of shit you will read about, but we're documenting here first, openienating later (Not a word, but it's funny).
So I asked G if he could make another sub-category on his blog, specifically for my writings documenting and analysing the activities of such individuals. At first he was confused as to my choice of subject matter to discuss on this blog, but then he agreed, stating that it gives me an opportunity to help him out, in re-reading some of these blogs, I might stumble upon something interesting and remind him of something that is worth noting, that he might have missed at the time.
And so welcome to the Sub-Category of Hannahs Posts: People of Interest! *insert cricket sounds here*
Now, the reason for my first choice of subject to cover, is due to what I used to enjoy studying in school, before my subsequent brainwashing, which was literature. So of course, when I saw that someone named themselves after the scumbag - Arkady Svidrigailov from "Crime and Punishment" (An interesting, if not very tedious novel), my curiosity was peaked, so let's get down to it.
Enjoy this fitting music accompaniment
as you read on.
On November 21st, 2010 a new blog appeared, titled "Smiting the Gods", with the first post quoting "Crime and Punishment", with a picture of a path in a forest above the quote. Get used to literary quoting, there's going to be plenty of it down the line and not just from "Crime and Punishment", there's going to be full blown snob duels going on as we go along, but everything in order.
Three days after the initial post is made, our author who's username is "Arkady Svidrigailov" introduces himself, right off the bat the first thing you, as a reader notice is the elegance with which Arkady is writing, whoever Arkady is, he must be a huge fan of Crime and Punishment, not just because he can quote it off the top of his head, but mainly because he seems to have gotten the mannerisms of the Arkady Svidrigailov from the novel down to a tee, you can sense the pompous snobbishness protruding through the letters of his posts. Second striking thing about Arkady is his insatiable desire to duke it out with Slendy by any means necessary whether it be with a tire iron in hand, or nothing at all, however, as Arkady would come to find out, boasting online is easy, reality tends to be far more harsh then anybody's imagined outcome. When finally faced with Slendy, Arkady froze up, paralysed by fear to his own astonishment, he himself couldn't believe his cowardice, after all, he rehearsed this encounter many times in his head, remember this bit, I will come back to it.
Over the course of the next few posts, this is how everything would play out, Arkady tries to antagonise Slendy, Slendy scares the shit out of him, Arkady proceeds to do the same, all of it sprinkled up with various levels of mind fuckery and dream travelling that is usually the case with Slendy. However, the posts did give us new information about Arkady, revealing that he was a philosophy student at a university and that he was not living alone, but with his roommate named Jason. Now according to Arkady, him and Jason weren't super close, they seemed to just kind of co-exist only due to the fact that they didn't bother each other too much, so it should come as no surprise that when Jason started seeing Slendy as well, Arkady pretended like he couldn't see what Jason saw for the purposes of research, the purpose of said research was never stated up until the culmination of the "research" later on, up until then Arkady simply stated: It is now the second day since Jason’s infection. I am keeping a much closer eye on him than I have before; I do not want to miss one moment of this drama playing out here. I think I will enjoy watching him squirm in fear. -Arkady Svidrigailov (Power Outage) (Yes, I'm using G's quotation method, it's super handy).
Leading to the culmination of this "research" not much happened, standard mind fuckery continued, Arkady's cat was murdered (That fucking sucks), a fact Arkady let us know during his sleep deprived break down, Jason was also losing it along with Arkady. And eventually we get to the conclusion of Arkady's "research", where Slendy decides to scare the shit out of Jason in the middle of the night, causing him to lose his shit which in turn wakes Arkady up, who is super nonchalant about the screams that were erupting from Jason's room, he takes his time getting dressed and finally goes to check on Jason, who at this point is scrambling out of his own room in a panicked state proclaiming "HE'S HERE!" and other ominous, cliched, horror movie tropes like that. Arkady begins to investigate their place and as time goes on, Arkady can also sense a level of unease in the air. After not being able to find anything unusual in their apartment, a sudden compulsion comes over Arkady, to venture out into their apartment's balcony and take a peak outside (Where it was apparently freezing cold at the time). Underneath their balcony, three stories down, among the fog was Slendy, just standing there and facing them, an all too familiar fear gripped Arkady and Jason, they would have ran, but according to Arkady, the white glow of Slendy's face was almost putting them in a trance, this is when Arkady noticed Jason leaning on the rusty railing of the balcony, starring Slendy down and that is when Arkady seized the opportunity and pushed Jason over, the rusty railing of the balcony easily breaking under Jason's weight, sending him plummeting down straight into Slendy's branch like, tentacles. Why did he do it? Well as he explains: Why did I push him off that balcony, knowing he would be taken by Slender Man? Because I had to know. So many people have written about Slender Man killing people, or making them disappear, but I had to see it with my own eyes. I had to understand how he does it. It was an unanswered question, and that is something which I cannot stand. -Arkady Svidrigailov (Sacrifice)
This is where I go on a bit of a tangent, mainly because this marks a very important moment in Arkady's journey, he just committed murder, a murder that made me question why on earth this person named themselves after Svidrigailov, since at this point in time, they were more similar to Raskolnikov. Ok, so a quick summation for those of you who have never touched the work of Dostoevsky, the reason I said that "Crime and Punishment" is a tedious book is because it's a novel concentrating on the turmoil of the human soul and what type of excuses man can come up with to do horrid shit, and then how he deals with the aftermath of said horrid shit. Raskolnikov, the main character of the novel, is an ex-student who was this lost theorist who loved to fantasise about his theory of people falling into two categories: The Greats and The Shits, and that The Greats thanks to the heights that their thoughts can reach, and their iron will of character, are allowed to sacrifice The Shits in order achieve their goals, which in his mind, of course would serve to the greater good of society. That is of course the rationalisation Raskolnikov tried to use in order to cope with the fact that he just murdered a defenceless pawnbroker and her handicapped sister, in order to rob them of their money which he thought he would then use to liberate himself from poverty and go on to do great deeds, of course the rationalisation didn't quite work as guilt was a more powerful factor. Our Arkady had a very similar way of thinking: I do not merely accept the title of an elitist; I wave it high above my head as a battle standard. It is a fact of the world that some people are simply better than others; they are more intelligent, more athletic, or have greater strength of will. There is no reason to be ashamed of such superiority, and allow oneself to wallow with the peasantry in the name of ridiculous “equality”. Am I arrogant in this claim? Certainly I am. Is my feeling of superiority over the majority of mankind unmerited? Most likely. Do I care? Of course not. -Arkady Svidrigailov (The Totality of Fear)
And this didn't just apply to his taste in music or literature, he applied this logic to the people that surrounded him, specifically Jason, noting during Jason's time of trying to deal with a super natural creature following him, how pathetic and weak Jason was, clearly viewing himself as Jason's better, despite the fact that at that point he wasn't, he was as much of a coward as Jason was (Which, I don't blame them, I've never encountered Slendy thanks to G and I want to keep it that way). Yet, much like Raskolnikov, he used that clouded justification to sacrifice Jason in order, as he says it, to "learn", implying that he will then use that knowledge to battle Slendy. I think our Arkady, viewed the novel Arkady as an ideal to stride towards, considering that in the novel - Svidrigailov was a nihilistic sociopath who viewed the world as an evil place, therefore in order to be in tune with it, one must be evil as well. In a world like that one must always assert their dominance and impose their will on others and one's only concern should be the gratification of their appetite, whatever it may be. Core difference between the two at this time was the fact that our Arkady could not step over the fear, oh sure, he could re-create these goals perfectly in words, but every time when push comes to shove, he shuts down from fear, he was a hypocrite, much like Raskolnikov.
Tangent over, back on track: After the sacrifice of his roommate, Arkady woke up in his room as if nothing happened, the balcony railing was fixed up, Jason's room looked like as if nobody ever lived there and 14 hours of his life were now a blank. With that, Arkady's semester was coming to an end and he would be travelling down to his family's home for the holidays, a home that is located around an endless amount of forests, nothing of note happens, despite Arkady's best efforts to make something noteworthy happen as he would venture out into said forests, actively seeking out danger, but all he finds is general Slender Fuckery and more dead animals (For fuck's sake!), until we get another post from Arkady which seems to only strengthen my thesis about him being more like Raskolnikov than Svidrigailov. In this post, Arkady seems to have suffered a mental break down of sorts and his writing seems to feature himself arguing with himself, one side of him is the one we as readers were not familiar with, it was remorseful and cowardly riddled with guilt for what was done to Jason, the other side we're familiar with, shouting at the other side for being weak and unable to fight, ranting and raving about how he will destroy Slendy no matter what. Funnily enough Raskolnikov also suffered from a dual personality disorder, one side of him was the side he wanted to be, the detached intellectual that would allow him to impose his will onto others, the other side (That eventually won over) was this warm and compassionate side revealed in his charitable acts and reluctance in accepting credit for his deeds.
Eventually, our Arkady's strong willed personality won over and after he ventured into the forest to confront Slendy for the nth time, this time he finally stepped over his fear of Slendy and finally committed his first act of defiance that he had sought for so long: When I threw the Molotov into the trees, for a moment it looked like it had been consumed by the fog. Then, there was a flash of light, and soon after, flames roared out, burning away the mist. It was a magical sight, and I couldn’t help but stand transfixed at the rising flames. -Arkady Svidrigailov (Life)
According to Arkady, the way he was able to beat his fear is thanks to a realisation that had finally clicked in his head, this entire time, he has been living on borrowed time, nobody was ever able to destroy Slendy and those who had tried ended up dead, he was no different, he was essentially a dead man walking, so he asked himself, what was the point of fear to a dead man? Turns out, no point and from this point on, Arkady would finally begin to appease his appetite, much like the character he named himself after. And what exactly was his "appetite" you might ask? Well I'm no psychologist, but from doing some digging on the internet and a little bit of light reading, I would say the writings of Zuckerman would be very beneficial, specifically: "Sensation Seeking and Risky Behavior". Which is exactly what Arkady seems to have suffered from, Sensation Seeking of the highest severity, Zuckerman doesn't come to one conclusion as to what might trigger the desire in the person to have severe cases of Sensation Seeking: "Zuckerman and his colleagues have shown that sensation seeking is significantly related to a number of psychodiagnostic indicators and more characteristic of some psychological disorders than others." (Emotions in Personality and Psychopathology) a.k.a. there's a number of factors involved in the persons life which cause their Sensation Seeking levels to either be high, or low. Whatever happened in Arkady's life prior to Slendy showing himself to him, we don't know, or can't know for sure, what we do know is that from the moment that Arkady encountered Slendy his Sensation Seeking behaviour seems to have went into overdrive, actively seeking out conflict with the thing, disregarding his own safety and getting quite the dopamine rush every time he got the opportunity to duke it out with the Slendster: What better opponent than one who is powerful enough that some consider it to be a god; an opponent who cannot die, who could snuff out your life in an instant? It’s the best fucking thrill in the world; the ants biting the feet of the elephant. Eventually it’s going to stomp on us, but before it can do that I’m going to bite it hard. -Arkady Svidrigailov (Fuck)
So what did Arkady plan to do with his new resolve? Why, continue committing arson of course, specifically against forests. In his child-like logic, he figured: If he’s so powerful in forests, just remove the forests. -Arkady Svidrigailov (New Year) It's kind of endearing really, but before he could pull off his "encore" by throwing the molotov cocktail at a forest near his uni, his hand was caught by a police officer, who immediately took the bottle away from him and emptied it's contents on the ground, meet Javert, no doubt a "Les Misérables" reference, since that wasn't the guy's actual name, it's a nickname that Arkady gave him. So Javert will be the main antagonist for the foreseeable future, he was a police officer, who apparently owned some really fancy variations of the police uniform that he would wear whenever he confronted Arkady, he was also a Proxy a.k.a. Slendy's servant and he was of the snobbish kind. Viewing Slendy as his God and serving him in an almost religious-like manner, thinking that he was doing good by leading people to Slendy, he also viewed Arkady as a dangerous criminal who needed to be put down because of his crimes (Which, I mean, he's not wrong, but at the same time, pot meet kettle), but he couldn't be put down because Slendy wanted to recruit him: “Because, mad as it may sound, our God is merciful, and he has chosen to put you on the path to redemption.” -Javert (Javert's Return) Basically, the classic case of delusions of grandeur.
Now, Arkady didn't seem to appreciate the power play that Javert pulled on him, so he managed to track down where the man lives and find out that he had a son and a wife, which he would then proceed to hang over Javert's head plenty of times in order to push his buttons, but before he could get away with that information he was attacked, by some homeless looking guy, who's movement were not of the human variety: It would be inaccurate to say he was running towards me. Instead, it looked like he was being pulled, his feet moving across the ground not to propel himself forward, but to keep himself from falling as his body accelerated. -Arkady Svidrigailov (Javert) The fight was long and gruelling, mainly because the assailant wasn't only able to dish out a decent amount of punishment, he could also take it, forcing Arkady to stab the guy beyond recognition before he would finally stop moving, for good measure Arkady also ran him over as he was driving away. However, turns out, this wasn't some random proxy, he was a student council member from Arkady's campus, so of course suspicion was immediately put on Arkady. Down the line him and Javert meet up to have a conversation where Javert is promising to Arkady that his God (Slendy) will bring him to justice, while Arkady is trying to constantly push Javert's buttons, the line about his family seemed to do the trick and Javert was now pummelling Arkady's face in, but not for long, because a representative of the law beating the shit out of a random citizen is never a good look out in public. The pummelling inspired Arkady to start learning self-defence.
So for a bit it was surveillance mode between the two, neither really making any kind of moves, not until Slendy forced Arkady to make a move. In the middle of the day, Arkady saw Slendy walking down the street, so being the Sensation Seeker that he is, he grabbed his kitchen knife and immediately ran to tackle Slendy and try to stab him, only problem was, once he tackled Slendy, it wasn't Slendy anymore, it was just a regular guy going about his business. Arkady was about to commit murder in broad daylight, right in front of a crowd of people, as you can guess, that puts Arkady in a position where Javert can now put him under arrest with absolute ease. To make matters worse, Slendy kills another student on the campus, meaning that police are now all over the campus, meaning that Arkady can't leave anywhere without him being stopped and questioned. Tired of being outplayed, Arkady decides to pull out his ace in the hole, Javert's family, because Javert was patrolling the campus 24/7 his family was left alone at their home, so Arkady parkoured his way around the balconies managing to avoid being seen by the police, got on a bicycle and peddled his way towards Javerts house. There was only one police officer that was guarding their house, who was nearly falling asleep, so Arkady was able to easily get rid of him with his knife, taking his gun he proceeded to wake up Javert's family and take them as hostages, he then contacted Javert through the dead cop's radio which in turn made Javert come running through the door, behind which was Arkady with his gun. To Arkady's surprise, Javert was able to quickly spin around and grab his arm, causing Arkady to fire off a wild shot, brawl ensued with both of their guns ending up on the floor, it ended with both of them rolling towards the guns that were nearest to them, ending up in a standoff where Javert was aiming at Arkady and Arkady was aiming at Javert's son. But nobody was able to make a move, because Slendy appeared between the two of them, causing Javert to drop his gun and kneel and Arkady to take his aim at Slendy and try to shoot, but to no avail because the gun just refused to fire for some reason. After that Arkady is forcefully blacked out and the next thing you know he wakes up in his apartment, inside of which he was now trapped, because doors wouldn't open, windows wouldn't break and nothing could be seen out of the windows because there was a very dense fog outside.
What do you do when you're locked up in your own apartment and can't get out? Simple, blow shit up, see, eventually a random proxy ended up barging into Arkady's apartment with the intent of killing him, however, Arkady's desire for the proxy's blood was far more intense, so he came out the winner out of that. Slendy, hoping to enjoy the show was peeking through the now open door that the Proxy left behind, Arkady seized the opportunity and after applying a few fireworks that he had laying around directly to Slendy's face, he bolted for the now open door. Arkady would later find out that his little stunt caused a fire, which engulfed the entire complex, killing several people. Throughout these posts Arkady would note that his parents were surprisingly silent, he would try calling them several times, but no answer, now that he was actively on the run, he decided to check on his parent's home, as he suspected, they were gone, no trace of them and much like the people that died in the complex fire, he felt no remorse for the disappearance of his family, or at the very least, he didn't share it on his blog.
Now Arkady was on the run, but he wouldn't be alone for too long, after an easy battle with one of Javert's underlings (Arkady labelled him "Porfiry" reason I haven't mentioned him up until this point is because there was nothing remarkable to mention, that will change), Porfiry was moving similarly to the assailant from the "Javert" post, but he was far less resilient than the first assailant, Arkady made quick work of him (Self defence classes bearing fruit), getting his dopamine rush in the process, but the fun was interrupted by Slendy, who sent Arkady flying into the river off the highway. Managing to get back to his car, Arkady was running low on money, low on laptop battery, low on food and low on weapons (He was going though knives like candy). Luckily for Arkady, he stumbled upon another blog, being written by a person by the username of Setoth and after reading a little bit of that blog, he realised that this person who was also being hunted by Slendy was in his area, so they contacted each other, met up and Arkady was able to eat, sleep and most importantly, take a shower.
Now a little bit about Setoth since he is going to be figuring in Arkady's blog quite a lot. Setoth is also a student, he is also into the occult, writings of Crowley and goth culture. One day Setoth was being bugged by his friend about Slendy, Setoth, as the know it all occultist that he was, decided to prove that Slendy is just a work of fiction, by using some occult rituals to try and summon him, sadly for him, the ritual worked and now he was being hunted by the Tall Menace as well. Honestly, Setoth's blog is more up G's alley, because there's actually some kind of machinations taking place over there, that Slendy tends to react to in some way.
So it's a team up, with no obligatory misunderstanding fight too! Seeing as Setoth was new to the whole "being haunted" thing, he wanted to learn more about his adversary, so him and Arkayd concocted a plan to capture one of Slendy's servants, specifically Porfiry (I hate that Arkady named him after the best character in the book). The plan was for them to mingle around an old ranch, waiting for Porfiry to attack them, Arkady ran off into the forest because he thought he saw movement, ordering Setoth to stay put. However, that was distraction and Arkady would find that out very quickly because as soon as he returned he was Porfiry on top of Setoth, choking him, while Setoth was being choked, he was using his free hand to press a piece of paper against Porfiry's face, which he drew "those symbols" (Very detailed Arkady, thanks) on, according to Arkady: There was a bright light coming from the paper, illuminating the area, and I could smell the flesh underneath it being burned away. -Arkady Svidrigailob (Proxynapping) But Porfiry didn't seem to care that much and proceeded to choke Setoth anyway, which is when Arkayd tackled him off of Setoth and a brawl ensued, Arkady ended up needing assistance, which is when Setoth would knock Porfiry unconscious with a paddle (A souvenir Arkady picked up after he stole car from several posts before). After that, they dragged him into a shack that was constructed by a bunch of homeless folk, which was near said ranch, Setoth made sure to prepare the shack for their occupier before hand, so it already had a bunch of paper surrounding it, with weird symbols drawn on them, presumably to keep Porfiry from leaving. But captivity didn't last for long with the appearance of Slendy, who apparently couldn't give much of a shit about said symbols: Slender Man was standing in front of the shack. One of the symbols Setoth had drawn was right under its feet; it flashed for a second, and then vanished, as though it had never been drawn. -Arkady Svidrigailov (Proxynapping) Shortly after that, Shack go caught on fire with Porfiry still inside and you'd think that would be the end of Porfiry, but much to Arkady's dismay, it wasn't.
Next time he saw Porfiry, is also the time him and Javert would have another one of their snobby meetings. In the middle of the night, Arkady started to hear Beethoven’s "Moonlight Sonata", he tried waking up Setoth to clarify if it was, but Setoth having had a series of insomnia filled nights, was not in the mood and just told Arkady to fuck off. So Arkady being the man of action that he was ran to investigate as to the source of the music. His investigation led to a bat on the 6th street, that unlike other bars he walked by, had no customers, just a boring grey building, the doors of which he kicked in, to reveal a far more fancier interior compared to the exterior and in the middle of the bar was Javert, playing away on the piano. Their conversation featured a lot of moral grand standing and literary references, nothing terribly interesting, which was exactly the point, it was a distraction, to get Arkady away from Setoth, a distraction the intent of which Javert revealed to Arkady at the end of their conversation. Arkady tried attacking Javert, but the place pulled an instant M.C. Escher as soon as Arkady got within swinging distance of Javert, forcing him to black out and wake up back at Setoth's place and so a rescue mission ensued. He figured that following the fog (Considering that at this point, the fog has become a staple of Slendy's whilst haunting Arkady, the decision made sense), the geography of the streets changed the deeper Arkady ventured into the fog, familiar buildings standing where they shouldn't have been standing, until eventually Arkady was greeted with a Church inside of which, lights were on. Inside there was Slendy, Setoth and Porfiry, although Porfiry wasn't looking too good: As for Porfiry…. At least, I think it was Porfiry. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human anymore. His eyes were gone, as though they had been gouged out, and scars covered his face, making it nearly unrecognizable. His arm was twisted gruesomely, and his ribs had been pulled apart, tearing the flesh and revealing the pulsating organs underneath. He looked more like some kind of undead creature than a man given a miraculous second life. -Arkady Svidrigailov (Javert's Return)
Setoth seemed to be in some kind of trance, slowly shuffling along down the corridor of the church towards Slendy's embrace. Figuring that nothing good could come from Slender Hugs, Arkady smashed through the window and used his most devastating attack, arson. He made a Molotov Cocktail out of Setoth's absinthe which he kept in his fridge and upon landing inside the church, chucked the flaming bottle at Slendy, it didn't seem to hurt him as the flames burst around him, rather than onto him, but the throw did force Porfiry to shout and disappear, and it also broke Setoth out of his trance. After which, they got the hell out of there, because the fire was spreading unnaturally fast and the church began to quickly burn down.
Around this time, another blogger was also keeping constantly in contact with Setoth, remember the friend that kept bugging Setoth about Slendy which eventually led Setoth to do his little summoning ritual in order to prove that Slendy wasn't real? That friend's name was Kal, him and his roommate Henry, had their own blog going for a while, both of the guys were also students, Kal in fact was also a student teacher, working in elementary school and everything was fine, until one of Kal's students went missing. Kal felt extremely guilty about the disappearance of one of his students and would try looking for them, which of course, led to him actually encountering Slendy. By this point, Kal was nearing his "breaking point" as stated by Arkady and his roommate Henry is blissfully unaware.
However, much to Arkady's pleasure, instead of becoming a dribbling victim that was just evading Slendy, Kal contacted Setoth, pissed off because he had just witnessed Slendy kidnap another child right in front of him, riddled with guilt he asked Setoth how could they possibly take the fight to Slendy. In order for them to do that, they would have to travel into the Astral Plane, that is not THE Astral Plane, if you're wondering what that entails, best way I can explain it, they basically sent their own spirits into a different dimension where Slendy was, leaving their bodies behind in our world, which is where Arkady played the biggest role in this plan, he had to protect Setoth's body while his spirit was out gallivanting in ghost land. Since this ritual was taking place on top of a five story construction site, Arkady had plenty of time to set up a bunch of traps around the area to greet his coming assailants, who consisted of Javert and three other proxies. Arkady made quick work of the three proxies which meant that it was time for the epic showdown between him and Javert, who was currently climbing his way to Setoth's body. Only, in his pursuit of Javert, Arkady was interrupted by the sudden appearance of the mutated Porfiry, a fight between the two commenced, one that Arkady managed to win, splattering Porfiry's brain all over the floor, however, Arkady suffered several injuries during that fight, injuries that gave Javert an advantage.
Finally, managing to get to Javert who was now near Setoth's body, Javert explains how his mission there was to prevent Setoth from rescuing the missing student and the missing kid that him and Kal were trying to find, he expressed far greater desire in kicking Arkady's ass, hence why he offered to make the fight fair and dropped his gun. Arkady didn't want a fair fight and would swing at Javert with his replica sword, which he was using this entire time as his main weapon of choice. The brawl was filled with quotations and references to various pieces of literature, works of: J. Conrad, J. Gardner, G. Orwell, J. Milton, O. Wilde and Shakespeare, all get cited or quoted at some point, it was full blown snob off. While in some points of the fight Arkady would be able to get an advantage, it would quickly be countered by Javert, mainly due to Arkady's injuries that were slowing him down, however, Javert's philosophical ramblings took to long to finish the job, by this point Setoth woke up and managed to sneak up on Javert to deliver a blow to his head with Arkady's sword (The sword was a replica sword, meaning it didn't actually have a blade). Javert would disarm Setoth with ease, but that gave Arkady an opening to deliver a blow of his own, Javert couldn't defend himself against the both of them without sustaining damage, so he decided to opt out of the confrontation. Does that mean that the mission was a success? Not really, Setoth woke up not due to his own decision, apparently something had kicked him out of the Astral Plane, leaving Kal on his own.
However, they did hear back, but not from Kal, from Henry (Who is now referred to as Michenab), Kal's roommate who he was sharing their blog with. Turns out Kal did make it out of the Astral Plane, along with the missing student that Kal was guilt tripping himself over about, the girl's name was Sara. Henry found the both of them in Kal's room, no remember, Sara was reported as missing, Henry up until this point is unaware of the existence of Slendy, so naturally he jumped to the conclusion that his friend was the kidnapper, he grabbed Sara and got the hell out of there (Kal was unconscious). Upon waking up, Kal saw the post from Henry and immediately tried to get in contact with him in order to explain everything, somehow, he managed to convince Henry to meet up, unfortunately for Henry, on his way to the meeting he encountered Slendy for the first time, adding another member to Arkady's team, two if you count Sara.
But they weren't out of the woods yet, Setoth and Arkady wanted to get Kal's group over to them, but there was no guarantee of safe travel due to Slendy's presence in Kal's area. So Setoth came up with a plan, remember how Setoth accidentally summoned Slendy to himself? Banking on the idea that it indeed was the doing of his summoning and not just Slendy fucking with them, him and Arkady set up these summoning rituals all over Austin, the idea was that once activated, they would forcibly pull Slendy around from place to place, giving Kal's group an opportunity to safely get out and miraculously, the plan seemed to work, allowing Kal's group the opportunity to get to safety, the downside was that Slendy was now pissed off and decided to pay a visit to Setoth's place where him and Arkady were. Arkady's first instinct was of course to leap into attack, but he was forcefully blacked out long before he could go through with his attack, waking up in the middle of some weird, grey city, despite the surroundings looking otherworldly, he still seemed to have access to WiFi (How very thoughtful of Slendy) which led to another mindfucky trip: Seriously, what is all of this? Childhood memories? Annoyingly symbolic hallucinations? Are you trying to break me? Slendy, Slendy…. Don’t you realize who the hell you’re dealing with? -Arkady Svidrigailov (Thursday, April 7, 2011)
Eventually Arkady was able to get out, along with Setoth and everything seemed to be smooth sailing from there. That is until Zero (Or Zerosage as he was referred to during this time) decided to drop by Arkady's. Going to keep this relatively short, Zero was one of the earliest runners, super inspirational dude who called people to fight against Slendy, but presumably died. Then he popped up again, this time with skewered view of things, he now viewed Runners as tainted and in order to beat Slendy was going around killing both Proxy and Runner-alike, hence why his visit to Arkady, he viewed Arkasy as sick scum that needed to be put down. So a fight between the two commenced, a fight that Arkady was losing quickly and was about to get killed off, until Porfiry interfered and took the fight to Zero instead. Turns out Porfiry's interference was Javert's doing, as he would reveal to Arkady during Porfiry's and Zero's fight: “I still have yet to see you receive the justice which you deserve. I cannot have you die until I have made you suffer at my hands, in punishment for your sins.” -Javert (Zerosage) This is where Porfiry was finally killed off, giving Arkady a chance to get away.
Shortly after Zero's visit, Arkady's and Setoth's place would end being engulfed in fire, how it happened it unknown, since Arkady was just coming back to Setoth's place and it was already on fire with Setoth was sitting outside, staring at it, I'm sure the details of how it happened were written down on Setoth's blog. With their last place of refuge now on fire, they had to move and fast, much to Arkady's dismay, he suggested they move to his parents house, Arkady didn't like this idea and throughout his time running, would actively avoid ever coming back to his parent's home, here is his reasoning: But even so, this place has too many connections to the old me. Back when I was weak, and tried to hide my fear with empty boasts. But if I have to put up with those memories, then I will. -Arkady Svidrigailov (What is it with Buildings and Fire?) Luckily for him, they wouldn't stay there for long, as one day he looked out the window and saw that the house was surrounded by dense fog, with Javert standing outside with his men, Arkady and Setoth went outside to greet them, pleasantry literary quotes were exchanged, after which Javert would sic his men on Arkady in groups of two, Arkady made short work of all of them, eventually Javert stepped up and we were finally going to read up on a straight up fight between the two. You can feel free to read it for yourself over here, any description I give it, won't do it justice. To keep it short, if none of you gathered, over the course of his survival, through numerous fights and confrontations, Arkady was becoming stronger, so it is no surprise that he was able to beat Javert in this confrontation, especially since he was able to press Javert's buttons during the entire fight, in fact, he pushed them so much it drove the man to a breaking point, because when Slendy appeared in the middle of their fight, snatching up Arkady, finally ready to kill him off, Javert unloaded several bullets at Slendy, proclaiming: “No! He’s mine! I will kill him! Only me!” -Javert (Battle) Of course Slendy didn't take kindly to this and instead snatched Javert up, giving Arkady and Setoth and opportunity to escape.
This is where "Smiting The Gods" blog concludes and carries over to a blog titled "Operation Wintergreen", this blog was created to allow all the members of Arkady's gang to blog in one place and not force their followers to hop from one blog to the other, in order to keep up with their developments, which was very thoughtful of them.
In this new blog Arkady and Arkadyettes (Which is a far more superior name than "Operation Wintergreen"), all of the guys finally managed to meet up. We also find out a very interesting titbit from the very first post on their blog (Which I'm sure you'd know anyway if you were following Kal's blog) about Sara, the girl that Kal, Setoth and Arkady tried their damnedest to rescue, apparently she had Slender-detecting abilities, which as you can imagine, can be very useful when dealing with an eldritch abomination that can just appear out of nowhere. Apparently, the next step in their survival was to head to Seattle, but that wasn't going to happen because as they were driving, they noticed that they were passing similar looking buildings for the nth time now, they were stuck in a loop and it's not hard to understand who stuck them there. So the next course of action was to get out of the car and check in, inside of the hotel, which they did and over the course of them staying there, they noticed that staff began to disappear with every passing day, streets started to become more empty, until eventually they were stuck inside of an empty hotel building, surrounded by fog. Eventually Slendy paid them a visit and managed to kidnap Sara back into his dimension, leaving everyone else in that hotel to be dealt with by his Proxies, which beginning to appear from the fog, among them was Javert, who was no longer his boasting self: I don’t know what that thing I was talking to was, but it wasn’t Javert. Just looking at it filled me with disgust; and its silence was almost as nauseating as the empty voice which it spoke with. -Arkady Svidrigailov (Fog and Proxies)
After a few paranormal investigations with Setoth's help, they were able to find a hunch as to Sara's whereabouts and so a rescue mission began to form. Setoth put out a plea for help to their readers, asking them if they could come to the hotel that they stopped at, after which he would pull them into the loop to help them out, few volunteered, which was awesome, here's the people they were able to get: Dante (Another person on the run who was blogging, according to her sister, she is now dead) who brought a fucking shotgun with her, Zabulon (who was a frequent reader of these blogs and from what I can gather also had a blog of his own, but I can't find it anymore), AmalgamationSage another occultist type, who couldn't travel to them physically, but could do so astrally? (Not a word, but it's supernatural shit, I doubt proper grammar concerns it). And two more guys showed up, who were reading up on the blogs, but never commented nor blogged themselves. Once the party was gathered, the shit-fest commenced: So many opponents outside. It started as a small group, just enough proxies to keep us penned in. But every day, more have been coming. Now it’s a crowd; no, an army. No, a HORDE. A huge mass of bodies, prepared to crush us in the most bloody and casualty heavy way possible. -Arkady Svidrigailov ("One More Day Before The Storm...")
Now, just like with Arkady's showdown with Javert, I can't possibly do this battle justice with my short descriptions, so you can read up on the events yourself here and here. But to keep it short, basically they had to split into two teams, one team goes inside Slendy-land to rescue Sara, the other group stayed behind at the hotel to draw the fire of the proxies. Naturally Arkady was in the group that involved the most fighting, the hotel group, consisting of: Arkady, Setoth, Dante and Alan (One of the guys that joined who was neither a commenter, or a blogger). Epic battle ensued, through which Arkady suffered a gunshot from Javert, but that didn't stop him from finally killing the guy off. The guys were able to hold their ground for a while until finally, the odds became too much, even with Dante's Shotgun, Arkady's resolve and Setoth's magic, they weren't able to hold the horde of proxies off, which is when Setoth signalled to Arkady to get over to him, which is where, weird shit happened. With Setoth's magic they were able to summon some sort of glowing knife, which they then plunged into Arkady's chest, which Arkady didn't seem to mind as he was smiling like crazy throughout the whole thing, eventually his blod dripped on some sort of ritualistic circle that was beneath them and everything erupted into a flash of light, leaving behind a dying Alan (The one who recounted this story to Henry with his dying breath) and Dante who was unconscious, and a bunch of dead proxies. Seemingly, the only surviving members of the "Operation Wintergreen" team to come out of this entire mess were Sara and Henry, everyone else were believed to be dead, including Arkady.
That is until a year later. A blog appeared called "Picking at Ruins" hosted by Diana, who very quickly got through her introduction, outright stating that she was a proxy and that her job was the paper work side of things, you know, stuff like making sure that finances went through and for what purpose, filling out reports and etc. She lived in a house along with a few more members: The Jackson Brothers (The track down, stalk and kill type of proxies), Ahriman (Boss and a cunt), Lepidus (Medic and most experienced, pretty chill) and Sky (A little girl that they were keeping an eye on, because she came with the house). Now, out of all of them, the most peculiar one would have to be Sky, her past was unknown, she came with the house and as we would find out a few posts later, she had a special relationship with Slendy. A few posts later about corporate in-fighting, failed romances (Getting friend-zoned sucks) and occasional Mental Fucking, things seemed to calm down for a while. It was actually kind of refreshing to read about these people spending their time outside living like normal people, but that didn't last, because one day Sky would come back home, covered in blood: She wasn’t a proxy who was out there killing people, she was a really weird, occasionally violent young girl who we babysat because she came with the apartment. So I didn’t know what to do when she walked in and I saw that the floral patterned dress she left in had been stained completely red. -Diana (And We're Back) Later Diana would learn where the blood came from, because on their local news there were reports of police finding a dead boy in the river, who's guts were strewn out. And according to Ahriman's contacts, the boy was sighted several times with a girl matching Sky's description. This is the event that would kick off the shit-storm that would mark the return of our literature-savvy hero.
See, Ahriman would bring two other proxies into the apartment, in order to keep a careful eye on Sky, one's name was Dumas, the other one's not important cause he died rather quickly after his introduction. Due to the limit amount of rooms in the apartment (Yes, it was actually an apartment, not a house), Diana would end up sharing the room with Sky, this is where you could spot the first connection to Arkady: Several hours later, I suddenly woke up. The clock said 3:33 AM on it. Sky’s flashlight was still on, but she had fallen asleep. -Diana (Wednesday, December 26, 2012) Hmmm, where did I see that weird time frame pop up before? It was Monday night when…. Things…. Happened. Or more accurately, Tuesday morning. 3:33 AM, to be precise. -Arkady Svidrigailov (Sacrifice) Oh right! It was the same time featured when Arkady committed his first ever murder, when he sacrificed his roommate to Slendy, hell, the dates almost line up too, but maybe I'm reading too much into it, maybe Slendy just loves the set of numbers 333, probably pissed off that 666 was already taken. So what happened on Diana's end? Well, at exactly 3:33 AM she woke up and was greeted to the sight of Slendy creeping on Sky, torturing her: Sky woke up and started to scream, but he wrapped a tentacle around her mouth before she could. More tentacles pinned her to the bed. -Diana (Wednesday, December 26, 2012) And apparently, this shit was happening every night to this poor kid. So this would go on for a bit, until one night got out of hand, Diana couldn't hold in her sneeze and that distracted the almighty Tall Shit from his very busy job of terrorising a defenceless girl and he started paying his attention to Diana, this, understandably, freaked her the fuck out and caused her to start screaming. Dumas came running in to check on them, saw Slendy, freaked out at the sight of Slendy and started shooting at him, Diana and Sky rushed the fuck out of the room, with Dumas following suit. Slendy followed them, super angry, the other proxy that came with Dumas tried to appease the lord by getting in front of him and kneeling down, Slendy rewarded him with a free vivisection. Seeing as Slendy wasn't going to stop, Sky walked towards him, he embraced her and they disappeared into the shadows. Next morning Diana found Sky in her room, with a few bruises on her.
After this Diana and Lepidus would start to try and interview Sky and try to get as much answers out of her as she could, since she was a mystery even to them. During her preparation for the last interview with Sky, The Jackson brothers came back to the apartment with one of them (The super strong one) was battered to shit, which surprised the hell out of Diana: I never thought I’d see one of them beat up so badly. Especially not Andrew. He’s like a mountain of solid muscle. Who the hell could take someone like him down? -Diana (Last Interview with Sky) Who indeed? What was more surprising is that after the Jackson Brothers came back, all battered up, during the interview Sky would ask Dumas (Who was sitting in on this interview, due to the fact that him and Sky started to get along) about why The Jackson Brother's mission was to scare Jenny and Ryan, which surprised Dumas completely, mainly because as far as he knew, only him and the Jackson Brothers were aware of the nature of their mission.
Over at a different blog, run by a person named Kenny: "Wandering from Death" the day before Diana's post with the interview appeared, there was a post published "Jenny, Ryan and Silent Bob". Kenny was a runner, who was on the run from Slendy, during his running he bumped into two kids and a giant, hobo looking dude, the kids were wearing hoodies with operator symbols on them. Trying his luck, he approached them and confirmed that they were also runners, he offered them to travel with him, because he was on his way to rest at a motel. Along the way the kids told Kenny their story of running, typical at the time stuff, watched some shit online, got the monster on their ass. During their running experience they bumped into Silent Bob: According to Ryan, they met him when the two were spray-painting operator symbols somewhere (another terrible idea; I chided them for that too) and he came up behind them and just started watching them. He followed them fairly closely for a bit after that and they were understandably freaked out, but after they were jumped by some proxies, he suddenly went from a zombie to a beast, driving them off single-handedly. "He's never tried attacking us," Ryan said. "I think it's pretty safe to say that he's on our side." -Kenny (Jenny, Ryan, and Silent Bob) Now according to Ryan as well, Silent Bob was like a vegetable, starring off blankly into space, just mindlessly following the kids around and orders if one was in his group. That is until he catches a whiff of any Proxies around, see, the next day, the group was out of the motel, walking around looking for a place to set up camp, when Bob's mindless demeanour changed and he started waltzing off in the direction that he was going. Due to Kenny staying back and debating on the merits of following Bob and the gets arguing against that, in the end, him and Ryan ended up following Bob anyway, when they finally caught up with him they saw a Bob was already making short work of the two proxies that were apparently following them, specifically of the big guy, who Bob had pinned against the wall and was beating the shit out of, as you might have gathered, those were the Jackson Brothers. The only reason they got away is because Kenny asked Bob to kindly stop beating their brains in and he obliged.
And apparently Kenny's group didn't stop raising hell for proxies there, as their group quickly landed on the target list of Ahriman. So Diana had another increase of people in her apartment, an entire kill squad dedicated specifically to taking Silent Bob down. However, before they were to be sent off, the needed intel on the Silent Bob Guy, so they decided to send Dumas undercover into their group, pretending to be a runner. The infiltration plan was kind of shit to be honest, I mean, between Diana clearly announcing on her blog that Dumas was going to try and get undercover into their group and Dumas not even bothering to change his Name when introducing himself to Kenny, well, let's just say that he was lucky that Kenny was willing to let him stick around and gather intel on Silent Bob, mainly because he sympathised with the guy, probably because he understood that if he was not allowed to do his job, he'd get killed off. If I was Silent Bob in that scenario, I'd be pissed off.
Over at Diana's blog Sky had another freak out episode after another Slendy visit, however this time she ran downstairs to shake Lepidus awake in order to ask him for Duma's phone number, that they were using to contact him only in case of emergencies, after which she ran downstairs and called Dumas to give him a message, to get away from "him". When pulled away from the phone Diana asked her what was that all about: “He remembered him! The Slender Man remembered that man in the picture! He can barely tell humans apart, but he still recognised him!” -Sky (Wednesday, April 3, 2013) Apart from learning that Slendy is apparently a racist, we are left on that pretty ominous note. But not for long, as the ticking time bomb that was Bob would begin to slowly detonate, the time had come for the kill team to move in and dispose of Silent Bob. Dumas growing fond of the company he has been keeping for the past several weeks decided to go AWOL and warned the group ahead of the hit to run for it. Dumas and Bob went to meet the hit squad to stall them, while Kenny and the kids ran in a completely different direction, Dumas gets shot in the shoulder for his troubles and Bob starts kicking ass, he kicks ass good enough allowing the opportunity for him and Dumas to run away, the hit squad pursued. Over on Kennys end, him and the kids were running in the opposite direction of the conflict, but Slendy appeared right in front of them, forcing them to start backing up with fear. Fear had to be put on pause because the hit squad that was pursuing Dumas and Bob ended up running into Kenny, the kids and Slendy, few minutes later, from a completely different direction, Dumas and Bob ran into the scene as well. Confused on the mechanics of how the fuck that can even happen, when you're running away from someone and then run into them, I'll chalk it up to Slendy-Fucking.
What happens next is pretty dark and disgusting, upon seeing Slendy, Silent Bob started laughing and walking towards him, only to be interrupted by a concerned Dumas, putting his hand on Bob's shoulder. Bob looked at him and then snapped his hand, the hit squad opened fire on Bob but missed, Bob seized the opportunity to decimate the entire group, at this time Slendy disappeared. Bob not satisfied with that, started going towards the building where they were staying before, Jenny ran up to him and was pleading for him to stop, saying that he was scaring her, which is when he snapped her neck (Dickhead), the other kid, Ryan, didn't take kindly to that and charged at Bob, Bob side-stepped him and smashed his head against the wall (Cunt), Ryan died shortly after that. Dumas decided to sacrifice himself in order to give Kenny and Ryan a chance to get away, so he distracted Bob long enough for Kenny to pick up Ryan and get out of there, as I already said, Ryan didn't make it. I guess this is the part where I drop the "Silent Bob" name and reveal that it was Arkady this entire time as per his announcement here. And apparently, he was mighty mad, mad at the fact that the people who he was supposed to inspire with his and Wintergreen's sacrifice to fight, never really carried on the fuel of battle. Of course, he decided to completely ignore that the new generation of runners at this point were dealing with monstrosities other than Slendy, kind of hard to fight against one eldritch abomination, practically impossible against several.
But no time to consider that, because it's rampage time. Almost single-handedly Arkady began to tip over this corporate proxy organisation in that area of the world, it got so bad for them that the list of people that were bailing from servitude was almost as big as the casualty list. And if you look at the comments, all of this was happening around the time, various other users who were wrecking things up in other parts of the world as well. Speaking of comments, on one of Diana's posts, Arkady decided to leave a comment, expressing interest in coming after Sky since she was the one that Slendy seemed to be obsessing over at the time, this caused a reaction chain where people were throwing Diana's crew under the bus in hopes that Arkady would go there and leave everyone else alone. Which of course meant that Arkady found them with ease, going through their guard posts with absolutely no issue, after breaking through their window, he killed The Jackson Brothers, knocked Diana to the side and proceeded to choke Sky, luckily for Sky, the commotion was heard downstairs and a proxy came bursting into their room, shooting wildly. Diana seized the opportunity, grabbed Sky and made a break for it, specifically Her, Sky and Lepidus were trying to reach a car that was waiting for them outside, with Arkady hot on their trail and due to Diana's poor physical condition, he was gaining on them, however, Ahriman swerved to the rescue in his own car, forcing Arkady to jump to the side in order to avoid being run over, giving the opportunity for Diana, Sky and Lepidus to jump into his car instead. With Arkady commandeering the previous vehicle, a car chase ensued, things seemed bleak until Slendy helped Diana's crew out by engulfing their car in fog and transporting them somewhere completely different, away from Arkady.
The "Rescue" was short-lived, Ahriman decided it was a good idea to drive towards a tower where the Proxy Kingpin (Referred to as an Oracle) was staying. Incidentally, he wasn't the only who had that idea and upon their arrival, they were greeted with the sight of security guards herding various proxies inside the tower. After getting in, Diana's group had maybe 2 minutes of peace and quiet until Arkady ran his vehicle through the front door and began his murder spree, during the spree Sky started having a seizure attack, which was most likely caused by Slendy's arrival. A lot of murder later, all of the people that were inside the tower were transported to some weird ass dimension where, through the windows there was always shining through the rays of a red sun: When I looked out a window, I didn’t see the city of Phoenix outside. Instead, stretching on to the horizon was a foggy swamp dotted with black trees. And in the sky, partially obscured by a ceiling of grey clouds, was a huge red sun. -Diana (Into The Tower) After meeting up with Ahriman, Lepidus and Sky (Diana got lost in the confusion when the murder spree was happening), they began making their way towards the cafeteria located within the tower, due to their growing hunger (At this point, they've been stuck in that weird place for days). On their way Ahriman pulled over Lepidus, no doubt to talk about how to properly ration the food, to last a while, Diana tried to come closer to them to listen in, by Sky pulled on her arm, pulling her away from them, understandable why, because as soon as Diana looked away from Sky to look at them again, there he was, standing right in front of Lepidus and Ahriman, Slendy. Ahriman bowed and forced Lepidus to do the same, asking Slendy for his orders, but no orders ever came, Slendy was too transfixed by Sky, who was hiding behind Diana at this time and then, in an instant, Slendy wrapped his tendrils around both Ahriman and Lepidus, killing them. Diana and the remainder of proxies made a run for it.
Lepidu's death put a lot of emotional strain on Diana, after all, they were pretty close, not to mention that Lepidus was arguably the chillest dude out of all of the ones that were in Diana's group, so it sucks that he was killed off so unceremoniously. Sky, Diana and a few Proxies eventually managed to make their way towards the cafeteria where they formed a line and were queuing up to get some food, Diana and Sky ended up near the end of the line. Until Sky started to pull on Diana's arm again away from the Cafeteria, seeing as Diana remembered what happened not long ago the last time Sky pulled on her arm, she decided it would be a good idea to bail, few proxies from the hit squad that were hired to take out Silent Bob followed them, because they also noticed that somehow, Sky seemed to have an attuned sense of danger, turns out, it was the right choice to make, because the proxies that made it inside the cafeteria wandered right into Arkady's trap and were most likely murdered. Diana and her group with onto the floor above the cafeteria and were waiting there, thinking on what to do next, when a backpack was tossed up there from the stairs, filled with food and a note inside: “Don’t starve to death. That would be boring. Sincerely, Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov.” -Arkady Svidrigailov (Thursday, June 27, 2013) After that, this current proxy team wouldn't last due to a mixture of friendly fire and having lunatic in the group, a lunatic who would finally snap under pressure and take Sky hostage at gun point and threaten to kill her if Diana, or anyone followed him. He didn't get far, because as he was backing away out of the room, Arkady appeared behind him and stabbed him in the throat. Diana grabbed Skyand tried to retreat into a Janitors Closet where the other two proxies that were with them, locked themselves in, refusing to let Diana and Sky in as Arkady was approaching them. To Diana's surprise, Arkady merely shoved them aside and proceeded to threaten the two proxies in the closet, stating that he was going to lock pick the door and if he finds both of them in there, he will kill both of them and if he finds only one of them, he will let that person go, so they started killing each as he picked the door's lock, predictably, he killed the survivor. Then he turned his attention back to Diana and Sky, giving a speech about how Sky will die at his hands, speaking of himself in third person. Sky managed to stop Arkady, by correcting his pronunciation of the alias he decided to take up, apparently, this entire time, Arkady was pronouncing his own alias incorrectly, this seemed to strike a huge blow to his ego: Without warning, Arkady turned around, and walked back into the fog. I watched him, expecting him to suddenly turn around and stab us, but instead he just sat down at the edge of the fog and started to sulk. Occasionally I’d hear him mutter, “But…”, “That can’t…”, “Not my fault, I only read it in a book…” or other similar things. -Diana (Tuesday, July 16, 2013) Now, I'm not going to say that Arkady was all that stable in the head before his re-emergence, but this moment clearly showed, that whatever that exploding, knife, magic trick Setoth pulled off on him, clearly did more damage to his brain. After that, Arkady settled to EVENTUALLY kill Sky, rather than instantly, claiming that stabbing was too good for her, he also decided to keep Diana around as his personal Scribe, who would record his eventual win over Slendy and so our heroes were now hostages, a slight upgrade from "eventual murder victims".
Through their short travel together Arkady, Diana, Sky and us, the readers would learn something interesting. You see, throughout Diana's journey through this warped building, the offices they dredged through were regular offices, perfect counter parts as to how they would appear in our world. However, for Arkady, his entire time spent in that tower, every floor and every office was filled with swampy floors, random branches growing through walls and overall a far more hellish experience, it is only after Arkady took Diana and Sky as his hostages that Diana and Sky start seeing Arkady's version of the tower. According to Arkady, Slendy was somehow manipulating how people perceived that place in order to either make it easier for them to travel through it, or harder. That's when Arkady decided to have a quick chat with Diana and Sky about the "do's and don'ts" of survival, while he was giving his lecture, Sky tried to interrupt him to warn them that something bad was about to happen, but it was too late (Mainly because Arkady was too busy listening to the sound of his own voice) and a bunch of black branches burst through the window, snatching Sky up and pulling her out of sight, without any hesitation Arkady jumped after her, hacking away at the tree branches until both of them were gone out of Diana's sight. Then Arkady emerged again, covered in blood, cutting through the branches with one hand and pulling Sky behind him with the other, they were almost out when a branch snatched Sky by the hair and started pulling her back, Arkady quickly cut her hair and managed to get himself and her out entirely out of the branches grasp, stating: “Too bad, Slendy! She’s mine now! You want her back? Well then, come and take her yourself!” -Arkady Svidrigailov (Saturday, July 27, 2013) At which the branches retracted back through the window and left them alone. After that they took a break on the stairs between the floors, little bit of bonding time occurred when Diana decided to even out Sky's hair, Arkady was even nice enough to offer his hostages scissors to do so, of course, no after he threatened to kill them if they tried anything funny.
After their camp out on the stairs they started moving again, only for the entire building to start M.C. Escher'ing out again. Arkady tried to get off the stairs quickly, so quickly in fact that he almost left Diana and Sky dragging behind, which led to a slight conflict, which led to a conversation and that led to a speech from Arkady, which shows us how his brain might have deteriorated further after the Knife Explosion Trick and the following 2 years of his spending his time on earth as a catatonic runner only known as Silent Bob. According to his speech, he has sunk into complete nihilism, finally coming close to the scumbagginess levels of the fictional character who's name he took as an alias, to Arkady nothing mattered in this world, because all of it would inevitably end in some form of death, so the only thing that should matter to a person, is how they decide to spend their time on this earth, due to Arkady's extreme levels of Sensation Seeking, conflict was the natural food that would sate his appetite and what better conflict to have, than an endless one? After all, Slendy's death is a pretty impossible feat to accomplish, one that has yet to be accomplished, it is an ideal car for Arkady to chase, constantly sating his appetite along the way, until one of them dies. It's funny really, because the blog-Arkady has grown so similar to the novel-Arkady, that if blog-Arkady's only source of appetite sating was cut off from him, much like novel-Arkady's was when he realised that there is no way he could have Dunya, it is completely plausible for me to imagine him committing suicide much like novel-Arkady did, all Slendy had to do was ignore blog-Arkady and never show itself to him ever again. Ok, analysis over, back to hell. Next room they wandered into was hellish, the next set of stairs that would lead upstairs were engulfed by darkness that was moving towards them, figuring nothing good could come of that, all three of them jumped out of a window, grabbing onto a huge tree branch growing from the upper floor down to theirs. They started climbing it, but along the way, Sky fell, Arkady immediately jumping after her, only Diana was able to make it to the upper floor. After thinking that they were both dead, suddenly Arkady's arm reached the branches that were near Diana's window, with Sky grabbing onto his back, Diana seized the opportunity and dragged Sky in through the window, leaving Arkady out there who was about to fall off and Diana was all to happy to let it happen, but Sky wasn't and so she grabbed onto Arkady and tried to pull him in, forcing Diana to help her out as well and so, big bad Arkady was recued. Eventually, they made their way into another room, where the Mind-fuckery continued, but thanks to Arkady love for violence and Sky's desire to protect Diana, they almost managed to get out of the room, but not before Slendy himself appeared behind them and tried to snatch Sky away. Arkady tried to lunge at him, but was sent crashing against the wall, with one of Slendy's tendrils piercing his shoulder. Then the moment of defiance came, urged on by Sky's terrified face and her silent please for Help as Slendy was slowly pulling her towards himself, Diana snapped out of her fear struck daze and rushed over to Sky, trying to pull her away from Slendy, which caught Slendy's attention immediately, giving Arkady an opportunity to lob a chair at Slendy's head. Just before it hit him thought all of them seemed to black out and when they woke up, with blood running down their noses, Slendy was gone. Further examining his injury, it seems like Arkady was now unable to move his left arm.
After another rest and a bit of heart-to-heart, where Arkady revealed to show some signs of pride at Sky for murdering one Slendy's creatures with an office chair in order to save Diana, he also started to reveal his interest in her, he was also puzzled as to why Slendy care so much about her and why threatening her seemed to make Slendy back off. Diana realised that they were nearing the top of the tower, remember that Arkady promised to toss Sky off the tower once they reached the roof, she attempted an escape after Arkady fell asleep, but Arkady only pretended to sleep and thus was able to catch both of them trying to sneak away, thus deciding to reschedule his murderous intents to that specific moment. Immediately, he slammed Diana against the wall, ready to kill her when Sky yelled at him to get away from her, holding a big branch in her arms that she ripped off of one of the walls, intending to use it as a club, amused by this Arkady dropped Diana and walked towards Sky, taunting her (Pompous asshole), to his surprise Sky swung at his injured arm, which hurt more than he expected, giving Diana an opportunity to snatch up Sky and make a run for it. Their escape would eventually lead them to the office of the owner of the tower they were stuck in, expecting the office they found a huge metal door embedded into one of the walls, once they opened it Diana was met with guns being pointed at her head from two guards in suits, behind them was the Oracle, or as he referred to himself - "Truth", examining the room they were in once the guard closed the metal door behind them, it looked like a bunker, designed to wait out disasters (Don't think a bunker built on top of a tower would be effective against an earthquake, kind of a design flaw). This is where we found out how exactly Truth was able to establish such an intricate Proxy-run organisation that managed to get it's roots even into the government, Sky was his grand-daughter and before he was an Oracle, he was just an aspiring businessman. Once he learned of Sky's weird connection to Slendy and did some research on the monstrosity years ago, he decided to utilise her connection with Slendy , to make it seem as if he was able to communicate with Slendy and he was one of his "few chosen" essentially conning his way into a position of power, while not giving a single fuck about his grand-daughter in the process, then he ordered his guards to kill Diana, but that order was cut short, literally, because Arkady managed to find them and lodged two of his knives in the backs of the guards before they could carry out the order. Then Slendy decided to join the party and presumably killed "Truth" ("Bullshit" would be a far more appropriate handle), while he was busy killing "Truth", Arkady seized the opportunity and all three of them escaped.
After their escape, they were planning on taking a break, but a sudden darkness began to surround them and engulf them one by one, Sky was the first one to get engulfed, the second one was Arkady due to him jumping after Sky, leaving Diana on her own, fending off against the consuming darkness with just the light of her laptop. The next few posts published on Diana's blog was during her delusional state brought on by the darkness, making her think that she was back home, enjoying her normal life, before her encounter with Slender. Having experience with this kind of mind-fucking, Arkady was the first one to break out of it, he then was able to track down Diana and help her snap out of it herself, then it was the two of them venturing through a maze of their memories, until they stumbled upon memories that didn't belong to them and instead, belonged to Sky. Images of her playing with Slendy out in the field, of him presumably murdering her parents while she cowered in fear, of him pinning her down against the bed and staring down at her, much like the times Diana witnessed when she would share a room with Sky. In that instance both Arkady and Diana could feel what Sky went through every time Slendy did that: It was like having the top of your skull torn off, and then having every thought, memory, and emotion ripped out of your brain to be carefully examined before being haphazardly jammed back in. It was like being made completely vulnerable, and having every bit of that vulnerability put underneath a microscope for him to examine. -Diana (Monday, January 13, 2014) Interestingly enough, in that instance they were also able to peek inside Slendy's head: I don’t know if I have the vocabulary to describe it. There was nothing in there that resembled any human thought or experience. Every sensation was completely alien, all completely beyond my understanding. There were a few feelings that were like faint reflections of the human world, but even they couldn’t be understood amongst the chaos of incomprehensibility. -Diana (Monday, January 13, 2014) This caused Diana and Arkady to black out, once Diana woke up, she was able to see Arkady in a very vulnerable state he had not been seen in before: Arkady wasn’t far away, leaning against a wall for support. His face was completely white, and he was violently shaking. I’ve never seen him so affected by something before. -Diana (Monday, January 13, 2014) Then they found Sky, sitting on a chair, the real her, not a memory. Diana tried to get her to come with them, but she refused, claiming that she will never be able to escape, that Slendy will always come after her, which prompted Arkady to give his long-winded motivational speech, that combined with Diana's legit desire to help the kid out, Sky was able to find the resolve to go with them. Even Arkady found her new resolve to be endearing, clasping his hand on her shoulder and both of them smiling at each other and in that moment, the whole tower began to shake and explode.
And explode it did, it became more vicious towards its current occupiers, no matter what floor they fled to, they were met with more branches lashing out at them, the swampy water turning freezing cold, the floor sometimes crumbling into the abyss right in front of them, it was relentless. They did find a moment for another heart-to-heart, asking Arkady why the sudden change in plans of keeping them alive, which was, in his mind, it was more effective to fuck with Slendy by keeping Sky alive and away from him, but surprisingly enough, for a guy who has been as obsessed with Slendy as him, that part of the explanation was only a footnote, the bigger reason he gave was this: “Nah, you just gotta learn to trust more. I wasn’t lying when I said the two of you have become significantly more interesting as of late. You actually appear to have grown something of a spine. And Sky’s begun a wonderful phase of teenage rebellion." -Arkady Svidrigailov (Friday, January 17, 2014) He was curious as to what kind of warrior Sky would grow up to be, hell, he even paid a compliment to Diana, saying that she is no longer struck with fear of him and is even engaging in banter with him, comparing her to the times Setoth would berate him and his "brilliant" plans, clearly missing the days of "Smiting the Gods". That was the last relatively positive post we'd get, the next was the last one and it's the one that sealed the deal pretty much for everyone involved.
Eventually they were able to make their way down to the lobby of the tower where this whole mind-fuckery began, looking through the smashed in doors they could see more of the dark swamps stretching out. Arkady looted the bodies for knives and even gave the girls guns, after which he was the first one to venture out, telling Diana and Sky to stay close. As soon as Diana and Sky stepped outside, the scenery instantly changed, they were now on some sort of beach, the tower was no longer in sight, the beach itself was plenty creepy: White as snow sand that wasn't actually sand, it was powdered bones, the sea that was black as tar, mist covering it and thick rain dropping black as ink rain drops on them. In the distance they could see a pier with a boat attached to it, only way forward, so they started making their way towards it, but were cut off by sudden flames erupting from the ground, surrounding them, locking them in a circle of fire with Slendy inside. This is where Arkady decided to make his final stand, trying to buy the girls enough time to get away, now, I dislike Arkady greatly and I will elaborate on that in my conclusive thoughts later, but that is the reason I will not post his final words on here, however, I will mention what work he cited as the basis for his last speech against Slendy: "Hamlet" by W. Shakespeare, very fitting. After which he lunged at Slendy with his knives, tendrils erupted from Slendy in Arkady's direction, he didn't even bother dodging them, fully taking on the damage head on, until, at some point, one of the tendrils pierced his leg so hard, it ended up ripping it off, now incapacitated, Arkady was lifted by his throat and was slowly being pulled towards Slendy, seizing an opportunity for his final attack, once he was close, he plunged one of his knives right into Slendy's chest, which had an effect, because the fires that were surrounding them instantly went out. As Slendy ripped Arkady's head off, he threw his body onto the ground and started to stab away at it and rip it apart, like a child throwing a tantrum. Because the flames were out Diana decided to run, trying to pull Sky behind her, but Sky refused and before breaking free of Diana's grip, also managed to snatch Diana's gun with her. This little kid's resolve was to fight against the Tall Fuck to the bitter end, she knew of a way to hurt him, hence why she stood in place and pointed a gun at her own head, pleading Diana to leave her here, after which she turned to face the Tall Fuck and gave him her last words of defiance: “H-h-hey, Slendy….” *Her voice was weak at first, but grew stronger.* “Fuck… Fuck you!” -Sky (Monday, January 20, 2014) Rest in peace little trooper, you didn't deserve any of this. The Tall Fuck tried to nudge her lifeless body back to life, clearly confused as to why she was not responding, followed by him throwing another temper tantrum: The rain began to pour down even harder, and thunder roared as lightning flashed all around. The black sea became vicious, and the waves slammed into the shore hard enough to send bones flying. Slender Man lifted a tentacle into the air, and then slammed it into the ground. He did that over and over, as his whole body twisted and writhed. Other tentacles lashed all around at random, until one hit me, knocking me into the water. I tried swimming up, but the sea had grown too chaotic, and I was pulled further down. -Diana (Monday, January 20, 2014) After this Diana woke up in a hospital, in our world, she could have run and continue to survive, but I guess after an experience like that, with her losing everybody she ever cared about, I guess she decided that she had enough and decided to let, a clearly pissed off Tall Fuck take her away as well, since she could see him stalking around the hospital where she was. So as a tribute to conclude this long post, here's Diana's last words: This is going to be my last post. I don’t want to end this with me crying for help. I’ll leave with at least some composure left. Well, goodbye everyone. I just wish things could have turned out differently. -Diana (Monday, January 20, 2014) And leave with composure you did, for I can not imagine anyone being able to possible the amount of shit you went through with as much composure as you did.
Concluding thoughts:
Despite Arkady's heroic last stand, the bottom line is that the man was terrible human being, if Slendy didn't introduce himself into his life, we would be seeing news reports about a serial killer either being caught, or found dead. Arkady's story is a story of deterioration, despite what Arkady might have stated about himself in his original blog, at the very least he refrained from killing random people, I mean sure, there was his roommate Jason that he sacrificed to Slendy, but it seemed like that action was more done out of fear, rather than any kind of malice (Which doesn't make it ok, but compared to his later atrocities, there's a clear difference in levels of indifference to those around him). Hell, he even began to grow fondly of the people that surrounded him and would actively try to protect them (Regardless of how much he claimed to not care, that clearly wasn't the case as we could see when he was comparing Diana to Setoth, clearly missing the guy) and would even be awe struck by their willingness to join him in battle. But then something happened, the magic trick that Setoth put him through, making him end up in the catatonic state that he was in, one could only imagine what kind of damage his brain went through. Which is when Arkady started to kill people regardless of their allegiance, age, gender, whatever... Remember, he killed those two kids that were with Kenny, he didn't have to, they were kids, they weren't even an obstacle for him and yet, he just murdered them, instead of just pushing them away and he would continue to mindlessly murder up until the moment that Sky stood up to him, pointing out that he was pronouncing his own alias wrongly this entire time. My hunch is, that correction triggered a muscle memory in his brain that reminded him of times before Operation Wintergreen, probably one of the many times Setoth engaged in banter with him, slowly pulling him back to the Arkady that was before. But regardless of that, to some Arkady will be remembered as some sort of brave warrior that was one of the greatest adversaries for Slendy, to me? He will always be remembered as a murderer of defenceless children.
Not a bad read, although to offer some criticism: If you were going for a more documentary-type format then I highly suggest trying to be as impartial as you can possibly be , that way not only will you not seem biased, but also avoid attention from the individuals you're covering, or are planning to cover.
ReplyDeleteApart from that, thank you for recommending Zuckerman's work, seems like a very valuable collection of studies that Zuckerman covers in his book.
I have to say, I did not expect such an intricate write-up, was pleasantly surprised, mainly because you reminded me of some blogs that I need to check my personal footnotes for at some point.
Thanks, originally I wanted to be more impartial, but I figured this blog already has a detached narrator - you. So I figured, why don't I make my posts more informal, as opposed to your very formal reports and analysis. As for avoiding attention, come on G, what's gonna happen? Arkady will come back from the dead to haunt me, because I might have gotten something wrong? Relax.
DeleteYeah, his book on Sensation Seek is quite the maze from what I understand, apparently Zuckerman spends more time intricately researching the researchers, before getting to their research, which makes for very complex reading, so if you're going to dive in, keep that in mind.
Cool, that was kind of the desired effect, figured even you couldn't keep notes on all of the blogs in your head.
Side-note, you're near the fridge right now, we got any milk left?
Afraid not, if you're going to step out to buy more, keep in mind the 2 hour limit.
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