Read the first Continuity Glue review here.
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 second blog, I Am Not Insane.
Before I begin the blog review, I must review some creepypasta that are a part of the greater Continuity Glue narrative. They go between the Continuity Glue blog and I Am Not Insane.
"The Land of Make-Believe"
A memory of going to an amusement park with a brother and going on a Candle Cove ride. It's a short creepypasta, and I recommend reading it. It made my skin crawl, and I loved even more that this was expanding upon the very subtle Candle Cove reference in Continuity Glue. I am definitely looking forward to seeing where this narrative goes.
"Hunger"
A very short soliloquy of a dying man in a cell. Again, I recommend reading it. It wasn't as blatantly alarming as "The Land of Make-Believe;" "Hunger" establishes a much more subtle and unnerving atmosphere. I am very excited to see where this narrative goes; the Nameless One is clearly talented at subtle moods.
I Am Not Insane
Time for the feature presentation. I Am Not Insane is the 25-post blogella of Evan Marsden, the boy who lost his brother during "The Land of Make-Believe." He is thirteen at the point of this blog, and he is a cold and selfish boy who is approached by a wooden Queen to become her new "general" for an ambiguous goal. She makes him kill his parents and shows him the many grotesque ways she's preparing an army for her goals. He slowly realizes that this is all a mistake and that he's been acting selfishly, so he betrays her and does all he can to resist her wills, but she tortures him and keeps him in check while recruiting his own classmates and corrupting his life. In a bout of desperation, Evan is able to acquire the "Eye of Fate," an object allowing him to see time simultaneously. With this new power, he escapes and goes on the run, opting out of blogging.
The story is fairly short and disturbing, with the descriptions of the Queen's torturous methods often making me wince. But Evan's own selfish and sociopathic personality works just as well with the antagonist's corruption; he doesn't care about anyone but himself and feels no remorse at killing people, and he slowly realizes this over the course of the story in an arc I must commend the Nameless One for writing. He actually made a protagonist I wanted to see die. It would have been fitting, but it didn't happen, instead lending itself to possible continuation further down in the greater Continuity Glue narrative. This choice is certainly also promising. Plus, Evan did have some redeemable qualities; he knew he was a horrible person because he still maintained a firm knowledge of morals, and even he found the Queen and Candle Cove's methods unquestionably disturbing. Evan was a complex character, one of the more memorable protagonists I've read in a blog.
The arc with the Eye of Fate seemed a little odd to me, though. It seemed to exist purely to avoid Evan's death, suggesting a subversion of the themes of tragedy established throughout the blog in light of possible greater themes to be shown throughout the overall epic. Because of this, I cannot pass any judgement on it until the whole story has been told. I have to see where I Am Not Insane stands in the overall piece.
The tying-in of the previous two creepypastas was fantastic, helping the sense of Continuity Glue being a larger and complex tale. Evan's sociopathic portrayal in I Am Not Insane is definitely a clever subversion of the sympathy a reader would naturally feel for him after "The Land of Make-Believe," and the ambiguous hinting nature of the Choir's place in the narrative is more than appropriate considering "Hunger's" just-as-ambiguous subtle feel.
The blog layout is almost a let-down after Continuity Glue's complicated and customized appearance, instead giving us a very simple default blog look. I suppose this works well, considering Evan's age. It certainly emphasized the feeling of a stark tragedy, a bleak and pictureless background for the downfall of a child fate never liked. This only strengthened my lack of catharsis over the ending.
I Am Not Insane was well-written and a classic horror blogella, showing much promise for the Nameless One's progression of writing talent and for, naturally, the future of Continuity Glue. The ending is a bit of a major oddity, but knowing there's much left to be told is enough to subdue the bad taste in my mouth. Only time will tell.
Read the next Continuity Glue review, New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce, here.
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