User blog:EtherBot/Random Writer's Showcase: Jake888

BOO!

Welcome to the Random Writer's Showcase EXTREME. A series were I look at some people with too much free time on the internet, and engage in a duel to prove I have way more free time then them by reading all their stories and then writing about the ones I liked. Today we're gonna be talking about Jake888, who I have been led to believe lives in my attic, kills for a living as well as for fun most likely, and is not bound by human classifications. Therefore, he is my grandfather. Peculiar. We'll be taking a look at 2 of Gramp's creative works designed to spook us silly, and it'll be great I swear.

Last time we looked at Doom Vroom and you can read that showcase here.

As always, '''SPOILER WARNING. I will be covering the plots of all these pastas and you should really take a couple minutes of your time to check out this spooky horror short fiction before enjoying my showcase. Even if you only have a little bit of time and made the horrible decision to read my blog post on a scary story wiki, I recommend you use that little bit of time to instead read one of these well crafted stories instead. Everything I say after this is a big spoiler and liable to ruin the stories involved.'''

(In The Orphanage, the girl's son is dead and was that other kid in the mask, from earlier*)

I can only assume Jake has written eight-hundered and eighty-eight pastas but of the ones he's submitted there are two micro-pastas and a number of full lengthed real deal creepypastas. We'll discuss the one of the micropastas as well as one of the better real deal creepypastas so I'll leave you to read the others.

What Ambitions Cost
The thing I love about micro-pastas is the very quick treadmill like pace they employ to set up a conflict and then resolve in some interesting twisty way. Underdeveloped is the name of the game but if played right it can lead to some really interesting ideas that are allowed to "get out there" without being burdened by the restrictions of a longer story.

Regardless of length, be congnizent of your twist and adjust your pacing around it. What Ambitions Cost has perfect pacing for the twist. Any longer or shorter and the twist wouldn't have been as satisfying; Or as humorous, for that matter, in many ways setting up a good twist is a lot like setting up a good punchline and the effect is largely the same. Often a visceral response, usually a brief moment of confusion, and always some form of trying to share the effect with a friend -- if such an opportunity arises.

Such an opportunity has arisen so I won't spoil the twist here. I do like the things wrapped around the twist though, like blood red syrup dripping around the solid core of a story. I enjoy the sense of twisted exaggeration of how the creative process works, truly writing a story feels very similar to how it feels in this story. Perhaps less embittered and with a touch less terrifying twists.

Of Things That Lurk Caverns Deep
OTTLCD is about some guys who get lost in an underground cavern and encounter some very strange characters while trapped down there. I particularly like this story, very well written with it's descriptions and terms for action. Punchy. I thought the characters were also believable in their little spats near the beginning which is something I appreciate.

It kinda puts me in mind of the scenes in Alien where the crew is exploring the ancient ship thing and there's this feeling in both the audience and the characters that something is going to go wrong but they've gotta check out this spooky ancient place for whatever reason. It also feels really Lovecraft-y but more his short stories than anything. This is more Nameless City than it is Call of Cthulu but it still has those unmistakable unknowable horror vibes throughout.

There's also a real sense of character in these characters and a good progression or growth. They do share a certain bond and it's engaging to see them in mystery and danger because you think they collectively might have enough to just barely make it out when working together. Of course you know that's probably not how these stories go but it resonates either way and there are some good moments or planning and discussion to offset the occasional weird thing that happens. See, it's not much, but what is there is enough to really make me care about these characters.

Great creature design as well, by the way, truly unique.

Ultimately I just really LIKE this story, I think I truly get it. This is really a lot of what "My kind of horror" is like and it's truly creepy if you have the same tastes. I love the foreboding-ness of the increasingly weirder sights, the slight "questioning of my own sanity-ness" of the narration, the grossness of the descriptions...particularly of Bill's flu. You caught me writing this and reading this story in the middle of a nasty cold and I can easily sympathise haha.

There are some moments I dislike. The particular line of "I heard a rustling behind us, and when I turned around, the monster from before sprang at me from the darkness. I woke up with a sore head and throbbing stomach" is a truly poor scene transition. Not at all conclusive and leaves the reader slightly caught off guard, but not in a good way. It took me out of the moment, I had to step back like "Oh ok I guess we're doing this now" and it took me a couple paragraphs to really get into it again. And that's really unfortunate because the previous whole genuinely got me in it's hooks and that really threw me back into the water. The paragraphs around this are similarly well writen but because I lost some investment for a moment there it really dampened the effect of the scenery description and the like that followed which as a result dampened the rest of the story after that point.

In Conclusion
Jake is a pretty decent pasta writer. I like his work enough to recommend it, and that's what this series is for, and some of it I think it legitimately great. Like I said, I really enjoyed Caverns Deep. I'm surprised that there aren't any narrations of it too, at least not that I could find, which is really unfortunate because I think it'd be really perfect for narration under the right narrator. If anyone who reads these is a creepypasta reader person guy/girl/unknowable than I ask politely that you consider this one I think it's very well done.

If it's worth anything, I imagined Bill as having the voice of Frank Welker. I don't that that matters for much, I just thought I'd point that out because it amused me.


 * That was actually the central twist to the story so maybe I should have refrained from spoilling it here. But The Orphanage is a beautiful movie none the less, interesting and spooky and incredibly haunting I really recommend it to people who like more spooky stories or "ghost stories" moreso than perhaps actual capital H "Horror Movies" movies. If you like The Others or movies like it I suggest you give The Orphanage a watch. Although it is in Spanish so be prepared to read a lot of subtitles if you don't know any spanish.