credits and trivia

Hi! This is Bryn, author and protagonist of the silence and the storyteller. Given that a key part of this... story? project? thing? is the idea of cutting up existing material and pasting it together, I figure it's only right to cite where I got those bits and pieces from. This page can also give a picture of what I was thinking when I was writing each post.

For the sake of convenience, this page is organized chronologically.

 

the silence and the storyteller

• that thing i do where i type in all-lowercase sometimes: this isn't really a credit, since it's not like alliterator was the first to do this, but this was inspired by some of alliterator's blogs, especially brighter than a spoon.
  

 

Post 1: "we made it all up"

• "We made it all up and it all came true anyway": Arc words for certain Fear Mythos stories, particularly alliterator's blog The Fear Mythos, taken from the graphic novel From Hell.

 

Post 2: "we were only ever part of you"

• "the storyteller who, in ages past, wrote the Märchen, performed the Tarantella, and designed the Ichor": The Marchen, Tarentella, and Ichor (more commonly called EAT) are three Fears; the Marchen and Tarantella are associated with memes, media, and storytelling, while EAT is sometimes depicted as having been created by the Blind Man, and is often included in meta-heavy stories by its creator, DJay32.
• "This is the best of all possible worlds": The slogan of the Panopticon in alliterator's blog Don't Let Them Tell Us Stories, taken from Candide by Voltaire, which in turn is a satire of Théodicée by Gottfried Leibniz. If this sounds like a weird chain of references, that's because it is, which is kind of the point.
  
• "The Invincible Summer": The protagonist's motto in Don't Let Them Tell Us Stories, taken from a letter written by Albert Camus.
• "Dimensional bleeding": Dimensional Bleeding is a concept used in certain Fear Mythos stories, but in those stories, it usually refers to the concept of different seemingly-mundane universes bleeding into one another, rather than referring to the universe of the Fears bleeding into that of humanity.
  

 

Post 4: "we know why you wrote us"

• "The Graab": A reference to Viceking's Graab by DJay32, a "blog maze" that I've never explored that thoroughly- mostly for lack of personal interest, to be completely blunt. The Blind Man specifically stating that I "never got far in the Graab" is a reference to this, as well as an jab at the fact that my own disinterest in postmodern, self-referential, and metatextual storytelling can prevent me from understanding what people are trying to actually say by using that format. 

 

 Post 5: "we are the fantastic"

• "black white [DATA EXPUNGED]": A reference to the SCP Foundation's use of the terms "[REDACTED]" and "[DATA EXPUNGED]." You can read into the reference to another community (the SCP Foundation shares a lot of DNA with the Fear Mythos, being an often navel-gazey and format-screwy community that, when all is said and done, started off as a bunch of creepypasta fans trying to scare each other), but at the time I wrote it I was just thinking "what's a good way of communicating the fact that it's impossible to describe the Quiet?" and the phrase "[DATA EXPUNGED]" popped into my head. I considered using "*CENSORED*" in reference to The Archive by Lizard Bite, but "[DATA EXPUNGED]" just looks and sounds better, and fits better with the idea that the true nature of the Quiet is impossible to communicate than something that implies that it was deliberately censored.
  ...That was a long rant about a very minor detail, but what the hell, if you felt like reading all of it, you have only yourself to blame. (I jest, of course. Mostly.)
  

 

Post 7: "through the dragon's stomach"

• "Fossil Type-CREMATOR": The name used for the Blind Man in Topography Genera Center East.
  
• "The Blind King": The name used for the Blind Man in Once There Was by alliterator. (If you've noticed most of my references are to DJay32 and alliterator blogs, that's because they are. Those two are among the most reference- and meta-heavy of the Mythos authors I've personally read, and this is a story about references and meta stuff.)
  
• "The Jack of Shadows": The name used for the Blind Man in Convention of the 24 by Staccato. This is a reference to the way that said blog has the protagonist refuse to use the names of the Fears, crossing them out in the same way that different names for the Blind Man are crossed out here.
• "You think your Joseph Campbell horseshit is going to work on me?": According to Joseph Campbell's well-known "Hero's Journey" narrative model, which many folklorists consider overly reductive, the hero can only succeed in their journey by experiencing oblivion and, in turn, "ego death"- that is to say, they can only succeed when they realize they are not a person living in the universe, but are the universe itself. I have to assume Campbell was influenced by Buddhism, especially since Wikipedia tells me he was a mentor to Alan Watts; achieving oneness with the universe by undergoing ego death is a very Buddhist kind of concept, at least as my relatively narrow understanding of Buddhism goes.
  Regardless, despite myself and the Blind Man both agreeing that this situation bears at least superficial similarities to the Hero's Journey, it isn't through ego death that being eaten by the Quiet allows me to complete my journey. Instead, it does so in the next post, when it states its intention to exit my story and I realize that as the storyteller, I have the power to stop it from doing so.
  (But there is something to be said for the fact that the writing shifts from past to present tense after I leave the Quiet's stomach, isn't there?
  Even if it's only because I realized too late that I'd been writing in present tense when the rest had been in past tense and I thought keeping it that way would make it seem deeper than it really is.
  Oops.) 

 

Post 8: "sun moon stars"

• "sun moon stars": A reference to the Boogieman, AKA Sun Moon Stars, from Gorillaz. Not really any significance here, it's just a neat phrase.
• "the quiet has consumed the countless suns and moons and stars that had entered into this world of the erased and undone": A reference to alliterator's blogs often feature the Quiet erasing the stars, such as in And When The Sky Was Opened, Empty Set, and brighter than a spoon. This part of the story is intended seriously, but this particular detail can be taken as something of a joke- if everything erased by the Quiet ends up in the same place, and the Quiet keeps erasing the celestial bodies of different universes, then presumably its dumping grounds have tons of them hanging in the sky.
• "you, storyteller, are a fool who has written a repetitive story about something that nobody else cares about": This is the part where I, as a real-life author, realized I kept writing the same dynamic over and over- the Quiet and the Blind Man try to tell me that I'm being dumb by writing this story, and I make up excuses for continuing to ignore them. Fittingly, this realization came about at the same time as I decided to finish this story.