We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies — all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.
Most island universes are sufficiently like one another to permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or ‘feeling into’. Thus, remembering our own bereavements and humiliations, we can condole with others in analogous circumstances, can put ourselves (always, of course, in a slightly Pickwickian sense) in their places. But in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or even non-existent. The mind is its own place, and the places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience.
— The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley, 1954
Anonymous asked: What does Origin of Simulation mean to you, Dr. Rivers? I don't recall you ever explaining that name choice.
I don’t really know why, to be honest. When I started this blog, I felt like I was…just going through the motions, kind of, simulating the thousands who’d come before me with their problems, venting online as I was.
And I guess it just seemed catchy.
cougardraven asked: Welcome back, Mr. Mysterious. Any new puzzles for us to solve?
Doesn’t look like he left us anything other than that little post there. I only skimmed it.
Urgh…this guy’s getting to me. I saw his…latest post just before I left from work today, and as I walked to my car, I felt a prickling sensation in my neck. Every rustle of the bushes, every car going past in the distance, it all registered tenfold. The echo of my own footsteps reverberated down my spine. Run, run you idiot. The paranoia is getting…troublesome, but I’m controlling my little insecurities.
I’m minding my own business. Not going looking for him, not trying to be a hero. I think it’s fair to say that this, online terrorism is just a ploy to make me do something stupid. He might be making me paranoid, but I am in control. I will not slip up.
It took you a while to set up the pieces.
Time to bring your little constructed reality crashing down around your ears, Doctor.
Game on.
Got around to looking over the letter again, and noticed some errors I had made in the transcribing. They’re fixed now.
Nothing much has happened since I found that letter in my mailbox. Life goes on, almost too smoothly.
I sat down looking at the letter today; getting a prickling feeling in the back of my neck when it dawned on me. They’re targetting me.
What scared me was that it hadn’t registered in my mind sooner that this was the case. I took the letter in my stride, it’s only a few days later that it hit me. Things which should be affecting me just, don’t seem to matter anymore.
This doesn’t mean anything. The fact that I can, ah, ‘consider myself marked’ so to speak. I will continue as I always have. As will the good folks down at the precinct.
I’m not going to let you get to me, my reticent follower. I’m going to find you, and then we’ll continue our game.
I received this in the mail today. Roman numerals incoming.
IX III III III V VII VII III. [VI VII III X III III] I II. VIII III V IX. IV IV IV. [VI VII III X III III]. X VII VIII III IX VII. IV IV IV. III V III III. VII V. IV IV IV. {IV III III VII VIII VII I III II IX IX}. III IV III III III. IV V IX IV V. IV IV IV. {IV III III VII VIII VII I III II IX IX}.
4i2iii4i4v3ii4iii2ii5iii1ii4iii4ii1vii2iii5ii2iv1i2i4i3ii4i1i1ii1iii1ii4iii4ii1vii2iii5ii
1i2ii4vi2iii4iii4i1i1ii1iii4i3ii3i5iii1i3ii1i1ii1iii2i1iii4vi1i1viii4v2iv3ii3i2i4iii2iv2ii4i
4iv1ii1ii3ii1vi2i2iv1i1ii1iii2i1iii4vi1i1viii4v2iv3ii3i2i4iii
There was no return address. Naturally. On the envelope itself was…
“RIVERS”
Really, if you’ve hacked my account and potentially knocked me out cold, I’d say we’re on first name terms by now. Poor form, Mr. Mysterious.
A lot of time in this blog has gone towards the features of the genre, but I haven’t spent any time delving into The Slender Man’s origins. In the Mythos, I mean; outside of the Mythos, The Slender Man was a the creation of one Victor Surge, courtesy of Something Awful Forums, in 2009.
But the question I am looking at is, what is the commonly accepted origin of this figure who has so terrified the 16-24 year old tech-savvy white male demographic for these countless (two) years? People have suggested several backstories for him; alien investigator of humanity, dissecting our people for science; personification of destruction, guilt and suffering…
Others seem to suggest that he’s just /there/. On the edges of our reality, something we can just plain not comprehend. Something that humanity has attempted to rationalize, has attempted to put rules upon, only to have them swept away in the flood.
The incredibly accessible nature of his origin story, however (search Create Paranormal Images Something Awful in Google. Go on, do it) has led to the emergence of another theory, based around the Tibetan Buddhist concept of a Thoughtform, or what has become dubbed affectionately by the fanbase as the Tulpa Effect.
He only exists because you think about him.
Now, try not to think about him.
This
