For reference, Continuity Glue is both the name of an epic and of the first blog in the epic. It was written by The Nameless One, and its order is as follows: Continuity Glue, I Am Not Insane, N.A.P.T., The All-Seeing Eye, The Sound of Silence, The 12 Days of Christmas, Reality Falls Apart. There are more blogs involved, but I can only link to what has been deemed ready to link. There are also a lot of creepypasta which will come up in my reviews. I will go back and organize this disclaimer when things are more clear. This review is for the first blog, Continuity Glue.
Continuity Glue is a 68-post blog about Christopher Niven, "the Nameless One." The blog starts off with the Nameless One reviewing several books and films, using metaphorical glue to make their continuities make sense. This is all cut short as his OCD tendencies increase and he starts to see shadows in the light of day. The shadows speak to him, try to coerce him to obey, only to prove themselves to be hostile as they kill his sister. Thinking he's insane, Nameless goes to a doctor for help. Doctor Beakman gives him ample medication and convinces him he's insane and that any comments on his blog are just himself under different personas.
Eventually, Nameless realizes Doctor Beakman is lying and tries to escape, being caught and put through electroshock therapy. The shadows from earlier attempt to save him, only for a door to appear for Nameless to escape through. He wanders through an eldritch city and finds himself back in his bedroom, and here he decides to look into the strange things in his life. He finds out about the Fear Mythos and sees that his own blog is labelled as fiction, putting him through an existential crisis. A little girl who is indescribably "wrong," going by the moniker The Unnamed Child, enters his life and entices him to adopt and pamper her, slowly driving him even more insane. In a final bout of desperation, Nameless attacks her and is then cornered by a variety of Fears, only to be saved by a Door one last time. He enters, dying.
As a plot, Continuity Glue holds together admirably well (pun not intended). Minor mentions in earlier posts become relevant later on, and the Fears that attack Nameless are all appropriate whether thematically or simply through foreshadowing. The blog also maintains a firm sense of realism, with Nameless referencing comments on posts and the comments even driving the story at times. This comment-driven idea is established fairly early on, so I have no complaints with it.
But really, there's not that much I can find to say about this. Continuity Glue takes various conventions of blogging that I have long since grown tired of (realism, comment-driven posts, having a protagonist be fully aware of the Fears, Door Ex Machinas, hidden text) and makes them work, but aside from that, it's not particularly notable. The characters are all fairly standard Fear Mythos fare; anyone who's already aware of Doctor Beakman and the Fears can predict how things will happen once their names are mentioned. The blog works, but the overall plot is predictable. Of course, it's only the beginning of a multi-blog saga, so I don't know where things will go from here.
That brings me to another point. Continuity Glue is, of course, the start of the eponymous 25-entry saga. But it doesn't feel like this whatsoever. It just feels like a standalone blog. Which, I suppose, is actually a very good thing! I love that the story stands very well on its own. But I don't know if this is what the Nameless One was going for, so he can take this how he wants. There just aren't any loose ends or anything lending themselves to further elaboration, other than perhaps a surreal nightmare that doesn't get any follow-up, but that's assumed to have just been a nightmare.
Finally, the blog's appearance and layout. I must say that the layout is customized and creative; it definitely gives off a sense of being its own entity, something Nameless has made into his own creation. It's very pretty. But at the same time, it's very cluttered. There are links everywhere, and most of them aren't even all that relevant; the only links I used were the blog archive halfway down the page. In order to continue to the next post, I had to go out of my way to look for the link; it's hardly convenient. Of course, this isn't a determining factor in anything. I'm just stating it here.
So the Continuity Glue saga begins with a standalone realistic story about a man who may or may not be insane and may or may not be fictional. We still have a lot of blogs to go, so only time will tell what my final opinion on this blog will be. For now, I liked it.
Read the review of the next blog in the saga, I Am Not Insane, here!
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