User blog:EtherBot/Random Writer's Showcase: Raidra

Good evening! Bad evening! Ever evening inbetwevening! Welcome to the Random Writer's Showcase, a blog series where I (technically it's not random I actually make decisions about who to pick for each one, I don't have like a spinny wheel with every creepypasta-er's name but that'd be kinda cool actually, although impractical because that's a lot of names and the wheel'd have to be HUGE in order for the print to be legible, and eventually it'd get out of date as new writers swarm onto the scene. Of course that's assuming it's a physical wheel made of like wood or something, I guess somebody could always make a program that actually does randomly select a writer for me to showcase but, hey! Not all writers are worth a showcase I think and some are popular enough that they don't need one. Than again I reviewed Jay Ten and he's pretty popular so maybe there are no rules?) randomly select a creepypasta writer I think is pretty cool and talk about some of their stories as well as their general style.

Last time I showcased Jay Ten and you can read that showcase here

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Raidra joined the site in 2013, and has since written 25-ish stories (I really didn't focus that much on the counting) so instead of reading the majority of them I'm gonna just skip the pasta's that are in "Series's" and just read her standalone work. But I'd like to point out that she has a myriad of series and also apparently writes comics that she plucked her characters from to write pasta's about. Is that a fanfic pasta or an extended universe? Food for thought.

We will break the standard mold for this one because she kinda writes in a way that makes it a bit difficult to just review pasta's and comment on them. Some of them are still stories in the traditional sense but they're pretty bland in all honesty. The actual "tales" give off the vibe that even though they aren't very unique Raidra was having a good time writing them and that sort of vibe is contagious. I still recommend reading her "tales" but talking about individual stories isn't really practical in this case.

And it's weird, too, if you pinned me to a wall with a knife to my throat and said "Tell me her BEST STORIES, Kelvin!!! " I'd probably not be able to answer your question. Probably because the knife by that point might have sliced my throat and I'd be choking on my own blood, but it's also probably because her stories are more interesting in conglomerate than they are by themselves. So I'd by colvulsing on the floor dying but also feeling pretty ineffectual because there really is no answer to that question.

The answer to that question is The Beast of Genov by the way.

And, I think a pretty fair way to describe her style is "personal" and "unrestrained," she doesn't really care if half of her work feels more like a portfolio of thoughts and ideas than actual pasta's because that's what she wanted to put out into the world. It's an interesting trip to read little miniessays likePeriodic Nytophobia and finding yourself sort of unnerved even if it's not a horror story in the traditional sense. The way she describes things like fear, or darkness, or emotion is weighty enough and relatable enough to still feel a connection to what's basically somebody talking to you from across the table in text form.

So when she is writing tale's and not accounts they have a kind of flair that just feels real, like her venting out stories she's had in her head forever even if they almost don't make any narrative sense. Binding Symbol really is a cluttered mess in terms of it's own chain of events and what the purpose of it's story is meant to be, but I don't really feel like it wasted my time because I was more interested in it's existance than the actual plot of the story. It sort of has an earthly, more domesticated "Alien" film vibe but with in universe references to bible verses written into the text with their own short analyses!

I mean it has the line of " He was much stronger than he looked and could easily take down any professional fighter in seconds. He also had fantastic energy powers that enabled him to fire energy blasts " which sounds like a little kid describing a character from their own original trading card game, but it's directly following the line " the eyes which always seemed to blaze with intelligence and mad hilarity. " which, idk! It just genuinely gave me chills and I can't tell why!

If Jay Ten was the most enjoyable user to read than Raidra was the most fascinating. It's like an elaborate character study for a person who isn't fictional, but is real and was actually the one who wrote the stories. They all feel kind of like loosely exerimenting with philosophy and personal prose thinly veiled onto the thoughts of in-universe characters and even if it's an unprofessional vibe it's a nice, janky, rough around the edges vibe that blends together genuinely great imagery with coarse and human narration at high power into a nice tangy smoothie that tastes unlike any other. Mmm!