Read the previous 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 third blog, New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce.
Before I begin the blog review, I must review some creepypasta that are a part of the greater Continuity Glue narrative. They go between I Am Not Insane and N.A.P.T.
"A Great Man, Dying"
A good-sized creepypasta about a dying man and the peculiar events that led up to his death. In the context of the Fear Mythos, this is a nicely written though predictable Dying Man story, but taken out of that context and read with just the knowledge of Continuity Glue, this is a mysterious and frightening piece that will no doubt only become creepier as its relevance is made clear in the following blog.
"The Man in Gray"
A creepypasta about a mysterious omen of disasters. ..honestly, this story didn't scare me or really do anything at all. It wasn't about any Fear, so at least I didn't know what to expect, I'll give it that. But one guy seeing a man in gray before horrible disasters doesn't, a horror story, make. This is more the kind of plot for an analytical psychological tale; there's nothing particularly scary about it. And since this is a creepypasta, there wasn't enough time to ponder on the psychological significance of the events, so we were just left with a bit of a boring story.
New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce
Here's a 52-post blog about the unpleasant and ever-paranoid mind of Omar Friedman. He starts the eponymous New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce and posts a lot about various supernatural casefiles he's heard about, but then his sister is kidnapped and he coerces his taskforce to help him find and rescue her. Over the course of the story, Omar gets involved with Candle Cove characters, a being calling himself "Judgement," an organization called STAB, and a few run-ins with the SCP Foundation. We see a lot of paranormal things and the people researching them, and Omar descends into madness and winds up killing almost every protagonist in the story to suit his conspiracy theories. That's pretty much the whole plot, with him showing a little remorse towards the end but then it ends on a cliffhanger.
I.. really don't like the cliffhanger. I want Omar to either redeem himself for all his atrocities or to just die. But like with I Am Not Insane, there is no catharsis; the sociopaths get away with it and the blogs end before their emotional tensions culminate. I can only hope that their storylines will receive some sort of closure by Continuity Glue's end, but at this point the will to keep reading is fading. The Nameless One is writing a peculiar story, and to be able to pull it off will take talent. I suspect he might be able to, but every critic must have his doubts.
If there's anything more tangible I must criticize N.A.P.T. for, it's the flow. The blog starts off with a simple "Blogger posts records" plot, then halfway through switches to a "This is the blogger's daily life" plot, and then switches to an espionage rescue plot, and then it becomes a psychological character study on the descension of Omar Friedman into madness before ending with no closure to any of the four plots. Admittedly, the character study arc was well-written for what it was worth, but I must discuss the espionage plot. There were frequent action scenes during these posts, with Fears and other paranormal entities coming up, and none of it felt engaging. I felt like I was reading a "This happened and then that happened and then this happened" but with actions so supernatural that they were unrelatable, so it felt more like gibberish. The supernatural entities needed more build-up and explanation so that we would be more familiar with their actions when they happened, rather than just feeling like a long stream of confusion.
Another bit I didn't quite like about the blog (though I fully admit this one was minor) was the blog's design. It used a default layout with a background that had very little to do with the story. The default meant N.A.P.T. looked monotonously identical to a good number of other blogs, and the dissonance in background meant I felt even more detached to the actual story. If a writer is going to have a background that is a picture, I feel it best that the picture be relevant to the story.
Now, on the good side of things, there were some great parts to this blog! As I said, the character study was well-written. The early posts with casefiles were fun to read simply for their creepypasta nature. The location during the espionage arc where everything that happened soon reverted was disturbing, with some subtleties in it that gave me goosebumps. The character Ralph was pleasant and likable, as well, and Lina's death affected me in all the right ways. I'm sure The Nameless One knew what he was doing with this blog, and so I definitely don't think this was a bad blog. It will make sense in the greater narrative; of this, I am sure. It just definitely left a lot of bad tastes in my mouth.
Wherever the Continuity Glue plot goes next, I'm curious to find out.
I'm working to improve NAPT now, but to address the main thing about the 4 story threads not having closure: well for the posting records thing, that was supposed to be the set up with the events at the Radio Tower being the payoff within this particular blog; the craziness leading to Lina's death was supposed to be the culmination of the espionage plot; Omar's character arc is intended to be brought some closure in "The Arms of God", though it will continue into Reality Falls Apart. And the daily life thing was just to get to know the characters more and lead into the espionage/psychological plots, rather than be its own story thread to be followed up on. But like I said, I'm working on it now to make the action scenes more interesting and to try to bring more of a feeling of partial closure to things. Yes, I'm responding to this months later. I didn't feel like going back through it all until now. :P
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