User blog:Magical Toddler/DIS ISN'T CREEPYPASTA

So every time I read through a public domain story on the site, I inevitably come across a comment like this:

"THIS ISN'T CREEPYPASTA, IT SHOULDN'T BE HERE!"

Some are old, some are fairly recent, but all of them generally get summed up as this. Yeah, we get it, they aren't technically 'creepypasta'. But they're here for a reason; these are the stories that preceded creepypasta and by definition inspired it.

A lot of them are under the mistaken idea that creepypasta is its own distinct genre. It's not. It's a sub-genre, specifically to horror. It's evolving, yes, but that doesn't make it a genre all on its own. Everything here is either a horror story with dramatic elements or a drama with horror elements. By definition, we are a horror site.

That brings me to the fact that most of the stories people comment this on are in the Public Domain. Public Domain works need to be preserved as much as possible. Yeah, there's Project Gutenberg. And if that site ever goes down, what next? Some of the public domain stories copied are only otherwise available on that site or in projects you'd have to dig for extensively. By posting public domain horror stories here, we make them easily accessible and by extension, show newer writers older works that could help improve their writing.

Which brings me to the other benefit of having them here. You shouldn't just be reading creepypasta. You should be reading books. You should be reading works by known published authors. Having these stories accessible on site provides this benefit. So, instead of reading it and screaming 'This isn't creepypasta!', you should actually be appreciative of the fact that the site recognizes historical works and offers one more place to archive and preserve them. You should appreciate that it offers a valuable resource to its readers and potential writers.

If there weren't a reason for Public Domain stories to be here, they would not be here.