Saturday, December 17, 2011

Michael Blightwell: When, Why, and How?

For new readers unfamiliar with the story behind Michael Blightwell, alias "Snore-de-Bliss", please digest the following excerpts. A thorough understanding is not required, but will assist in comprehending the cataclysmic magnitude of danger apparent in allowing the "Obelisk" to incubate unabated.

To summarize, for those needing time spent elsewhere: a single, white, affluent (from implicitly illicit business) young adult gentleman begins a hip-hop review blog and soon after starts seeing the Slender Man. After taking to the asphalt, traveling cross-country from New Jersey to Los Angeles, he is harangued by an enormous obelisk, both physically and mentally, and is assaulted by one of its mind-altering servants in Los Angeles. After gaining assistance from a peculiar wizard in permanently subduing a former mentor, "Old Man Donato", Michael begins decoding documents pertaining to an organization known as "Dimlight", which gives him some trouble, being that he does not make another entry until nearly a month after his endeavor begins. Informing his audience on his activities, which include invading a Dimlight facility, our man is confident the resolution to his issues lies in a Mexican area called the "Dead Zone", given its unique tendency to extinguish telephone and radio signals. After coming back from Mexico, more posts are made, implying subliminal manipulation in Michael's actions, and eventually he is compelled to travel into his forest outside his house, where he is murdered by a "snarling, deceitful, haughtily conceited" wolf-goat-man hybrid inside a tree house in another dimension, circa 2013. All these final entries are dated to 2011.

Aesthetically, the site undergoes three shifts in design, moving from a red and black border-background with white text color scheme, to an entirely white color scheme, back to the former scheme, which terminates in a white background with gray borders and black text. Mr. Blightwell's blog contains content posted by at least two other entities: one being his close associate and childhood friend, "Marley", who experiences the previously mentioned profound encounter with a cosmic-distortion entity in Los Angeles alongside Mr. Blightwell, the other being a "Lucy", bemoaned as a past lover in Blightwell's penultimate entries, who makes the last posts regarding the stability of Mr. Blightwell's spirit.

For this community's constituents, I am sure all these are walk-in-the-park occurrences, as commonplace as, say,  heading down to the super-market and finding the vegetable supply slightly wilted. One sighs, laments their fortune, but picks up two bundles of carrots and a head of lettuce because what other option exists? What other avenue to a healthy, sustainable batch of produce is available? Ageless entities, with mighty powers universally entrenched long before one's own existence, have the final say in what food goes where and in what state it arrives. After all, if there are only two major food suppliers across the entire globe, and both their products are damaged in transit to your grocer's inventory, how can a single person, by him/herself, ensure the quality of their product? A crushed box may have its kinks ironed out, with a steady hand's assistance, but a broken carrot cannot be fixed.

Michael Blightwell fixed his carrot. He fixed his carrot, returned it to its maker, and instead impounded the entirety of their supply chain. He wrenched farming contracts to his own business by the score, swelled in the bureaucratic explosion necessitated by this aggressive expansion, and compensated for his offense at the principle of being granted a broken carrot by doling out broken carrots to others before smashing them to organic dust. Because, you see, for Michael, a broken carrot simply wasn't acceptable. For a man who adored wholeness, continuity, artistic image petrified in time, having a windowed view into his existence - providing the only light available, where, at some undetermined point, the curtains would close, leaving him alone in darkness - was preposterous. So Michael went and gave his mind to the food businesses, and when that didn't work, he extorted their ungodly, corporate masters and murdered them, and walked into their offices, lauded as one of their own.

He ascended, you see. To a higher plane, a new strata. He was the first man to do so. And if that's all he wanted to accomplish, this blog would not exist. In fact, I would have probably poured all this time typing into lauding the first modern mortal to acquire immortality, without the help of a patron, without resorting to fabled artifacts of those who gained power from patrons. But Michael Blightwell is vengeful. It stems from his exaggerated nature, this lust for comeuppance. He enjoyed the idea of the tragic hero, consumed in the froth of his fury, boiling himself out of the pot of his existence until there was no liquid left, just a shell of iron art waiting for appreciation. Now, he exists as the vapor outside the pot, and has found he can accomplish quite a lot in his new form. Now, he has set his sights on his new-found peers.

This is the problem.

I do not enjoy levying criticism against an entire community. When vehement, broad statements are proclaimed as universal truth, they usually conceal factual snippets cheapening their claims, like watches a few cogs short of Swiss mastery. Much of the time, what -is- missing is cogs, mental ones, that keep rationality intact, conversation coherent, concern assuaged. But there is a dangerous leaning in this community towards taking all the binary pixels plastered upon a post for granted if they are plastered by someone sympathetic. Michael took advantage of this trust in the few people he encountered. This attitude -needs- to shift if the individuals in flight from the Slender Man are to survive for how long they must.

That is why I appeal to you. Because the first being our Obelisk will focus its attention on after its awakening from apotheosis is "Slim Jim", and nothing of value will come to you, held firm under the Slender Man's palm, from this focus. When extra-planars clash, none are annihilated; all are subsumed. Joining together, neither are altered, but all are enhanced.

When Michael Blightwell, unprecedented in attaining godhood, awakens, he heralds the apocalypse.
If we, unprecedented in deicide, fail to end him now, when possibility exists, all is lost.

Tonight, I begin my journey to gather the requirements. I regret having less time to elaborate, but more is accomplished in deed than diction. Preserve, that is all I ask, and take nothing for granted. I did not, and I am now forced to reverse this product of my folly.


I doubt another lent as much a hand in his success.

-Alwin Thanes