Creepypasta Cliches

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Gatx

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I'm in the middle of a Creepypasta kick recently and have been reading a lot of them, though it's really hard to find good ones on the wiki. A lot of them will be overwritten and try to hard, or it'll lack any kind of subtlety whatsoever.

A small thing that I've been seeing a lot and has been really getting on my nerves is the use of the word "guttural," usually used to describe screams or monster noises.

It's a weird word that I guess people like because it sounds biological/organic and they like the imagery it brings, but it never comes into play in normal speech so it seems out of place when the rest of the story goes for that journal entry/official document style.

It's supposed to refer to throaty sounds like the "ch" in Bach, so I guess it works for monster noises, but what the heck does a "guttural scream" sound like?

Anyway what are some of the things you guys get annoyed by in Creepypastas or Internet urban legends in general?
 

squeekenator

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The creeeeepy maaaaaagical curse that will afflict YOU, THE READER, now that you have read this story! Can be done well, but most of the time it's just used as a cheap way to get the reader involved because your story wasn't interesting enough to do so on its own.
 

Thaluikhain

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The best urban legends end with whatever it is collapsing into dust before anyone can get a photo or any more witnesses.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Somebody finds something that should be very expensive but it's being sold at an incredibly cheap price, and when they get home it somehow malfunctions. Creepypasta ensues.
 

Thaluikhain

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Oh, time to get my nostalgic on:


"This is a true story...it happened to a friend of a friend of mine"
 

Ten Foot Bunny

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Mar 19, 2014
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Not sure if you'd consider this a real cliche, but the constant name-dropping of Pokemon even in stories unrelated to it. Those piss me off more than just about anything because they kill any chance the story has of being spooky.
 

renegade7

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DANGER- MUST SILENCE said:
G̭̹͖̼̫̝̦̕a̧̺̣͎̺r̥̤̖̠͙̰̞f̬i̹̗éͅld̦̰̠̲̤̳ ̪̫̯͙̻̥͕͢c̱̳̬̺͎̫̘o̶̩͍m͙̯ì̻͎̪͍͉c͎͍̹̗̕ ̲̤͙̕ẁ͓͉̬̟̝͍it̯̯͎h̸ ̻͈͔͘h͇̣͇͙̬͟is͓̹̙̫̦ ͖̘͕ȩ̞̝͎̟y͔̱̞e̢s̮̳̙̟ ̜̟b͓̘̖͔̬̳ͅl̜̝̤͔a͙̜̼̤̱̟͎͘c͚k̡͕̱̯͙̙ḙ̝͙̙̳̯́n̩̮̜͡e̬̺̮̺ḏ̺̯͍͖̲͚͟.̴̹͉̘̝̟̦̟
May I ask how you generate that font? I've seen it before.

OT: everything to do with Lavender Town. Okay, I get it. The music is kind of haunting and its role in the story was a bit darker than most of us were used to in our games at the tender age of 7. We are no longer 7. Lavender Town is no longer scary. It has become such a substantial portion of all video game stories that it is no longer interesting.

"I bought a cartridge of my old favorite video game at a yard sale/secondhand shop/eBay and the guy who was selling it doesn't remember where it came from/gave me a vague but foreboding warning about it and it played fine at first but then IT WAS HAUNTED by increasingly spooky variations on the original game/a ROM hack and my Pokemon died when they ran out of HP/a major character appeared with blacked-out eyes."

Oh, and blacked-out, blood-dripping eyes. Stop it. It's gotten to the point where, if I actually were to see someone with blood coming from their eyes, I would assume "Creepypasta fanboy" rather than "In need of immediate medical assistance".

SCPwiki > Creepypasta
 

Ten Foot Bunny

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renegade7 said:
"I bought a cartridge of my old favorite video game at a yard sale/secondhand shop/eBay and the guy who was selling it doesn't remember where it came from/gave me a vague but foreboding warning about it and it played fine at first but then IT WAS HAUNTED by increasingly spooky variations on the original game/a ROM hack and my Pokemon died when they ran out of HP/a major character appeared with blacked-out eyes."

Oh, and blacked-out, blood-dripping eyes. Stop it. It's gotten to the point where, if I actually were to see someone with blood coming from their eyes, I would assume "Creepypasta fanboy" rather than "In need of immediate medical assistance".
I have to disagree with you here. You sound like someone who's just bitter and jaded because you met with a terrible fate.

Haven't you?

XD

(Sorry, my friend, I just couldn't resist! Hope you know I'm only joking. I really DO agree with every word of your post. Those types of creepypastas seriously get on my nerves too, overdone as they are. Ben Drowned is about as boring now as Slenderman and Jeff the Killer.)

OT - the only video game creepypasta I like is The Theater. That one captivates me for some reason.
 

Cid Silverwing

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Jul 27, 2008
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Hyper realism.

Last time I checked, anything trying to include this when posting on the Creepypasta Wiki gets deleted on sight, because the mods are sick of it.
 

Someone Depressing

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Jan 16, 2011
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HAIPA REALISTIK BLUD

No, but, seriously, there are good creepypasta. At the slightest mention of hyper realism, horrendous grammar, or cliches in general, I just leave.
 

lacktheknack

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Jan 19, 2009
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Gatx said:
It's supposed to refer to throaty sounds like the "ch" in Bach, so I guess it works for monster noises, but what the heck does a "guttural scream" sound like?
Literally a scream from the gut. Really low, really resonant, and really powerful. Think "hulk smash" put through a time-extending program.

OT: Freaking "hyper-realistic eyes/blood/viscera". What does that even mean? More real than real?
 

ToastiestZombie

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Mar 21, 2011
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If Creepypastas were true I'm sure the amount of creepy old guys selling unmarked games/tapes would have reached epidemic levels. That and media-related suicides would be astronomical with the amount of hyper-realistic lost episodes with dead kids going around.
 

SonOfVoorhees

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Gatx said:
I'm in the middle of a Creepypasta kick recently and have been reading a lot of them.
If you go on youtube, look up videos by Creepypasta or Creepypastajr. Then you can listen instead of reading. :)
 

Loonyyy

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thaluikhain said:
Oh, time to get my nostalgic on:


"This is a true story...it happened to a friend of a friend of mine"
Oh god those were weird. There was one about diet pills which were expanding sponges, and a kid who strapped a scramjet to his car. And a bunch of them weren't scary- Yep, sounds like creepypasta.

All of the childhood.
 

Gatx

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lacktheknack said:
Gatx said:
It's supposed to refer to throaty sounds like the "ch" in Bach, so I guess it works for monster noises, but what the heck does a "guttural scream" sound like?
Literally a scream from the gut. Really low, really resonant, and really powerful. Think "hulk smash" put through a time-extending program.
That's what it sounds like it should mean, and what I assume most people intend, but the meaning of "guttural" doesn't change just because it's combined with "scream." A guttural sound is still a sound made from the back of the throat.
 

Something Amyss

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Dec 3, 2008
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Writing it like borderline porn. Everyone is so excitable all the time.

"When I got hope, I ran upstairs. Trembling, I traced my hands along the shrink wrap before I tore into it, leaving my prized possession bare. And then I turned it on, and gasped in horror as I found that there was a single misplaced pixel in the upper left corner of the Nintendo logo. The horror! I fought back tears as I pressed start...."

Emotional responses have their place in storytelling, of course, but I think the world of Creepypastas is populated entirely by drama queens.

I've been tempted to spoof the worst clichés, but I have barely enough time these days to work on my own stuff.
 

MintSM

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Aug 16, 2014
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Any creepypasta that's based off an existing source material tends to just suck. Unless the work is obscure and doesn't have a large following or is fictional and definitely has no general consensus, the story will always be linked to it, and it usually highlights a) the writer's incompetency at writing something original and b) if the writing sucks, just how absolutely FAIL it is in comparison.

And sometimes it doesn't even make sense; like why would you try and write horror stories about a lost episode of Spongebob Squarepants or ROM Hacked version of Sonic the Hedgehog?
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Well, I have mixed opinions on the subject. One of the more interesting conspiracy theories out there is that one of the reasons why Creepypasta, found footage movies, and the like have proliferated is because the government is well aware of "weird stuff" (to use a general header) and keeps a lid on it for various reasons. In a day and age where nearly everyone has access to the internet and many people carry personal recording devices of one type or another (it's not like the old days when only reporters and tourists were likely to have cameras, almost every cell phone has one) keeping anything quiet is almost impossible. The best way to conceal stuff thus becomes to put so much garbage out there that the truth becomes impossible for people to accept. Basically if you reported a paranormal experience on the internet "because people have to know" people would immediately assume it's a phrank or Creepypasta, even if (or perhaps especially if) it's very detailed. Likewise even if you recorded the whole thing on video, it can be dismissed as another group of kids trying to do the whole "found footage" thing or fake footage to seem like one of those "Ghost Hunter" shows. I'm not a big believer in conspiracy theories, but when people talk about Creepypastas and the quality and such it reminds me of it... along with how in the past people have identified real things, like pictures of animals or whatever, as being fakes, because simply put the fakes have just gotten so good.

That said I have no real issue with most creepypasta about video games and such, after all we live in the modern world, and pretty much any kind of haunting that could have been attributed to a book, music box, or whatever else could logically also apply to something more modern. Especially when you consider that a lot of technology, even computers, have been around for decades. Things like haunted pokemon cartridges are no different than say haunted or cursed dolls or other toys, and really if something WAS going to happen of that sort, I'd expect it to take that form nowadays. After all when it comes to something like "Ben Drowned" it would make more sense for him or an affiliated entity to be attached to a video game, than say a toy car or wagon. You might also find this unusually common, especially if certain theories about the supernatural's affinity for cameras, video, and electronics are to be believed.

My big problem with a lot of Creepypasta is when it starts to get too evasive, basically having to struggle to explain why the writer wouldn't have included more specific details. Some of the best incorporate a degree of truth, or rely on other, well known, urban legends.

On another note creators have been known to occasionally do weird things for their own amusement, or to goof off internally. In some cases I think the idea of a "lost episode" of a show or something is simply meant to be unsettling because it seems like something which could conceivably be found. That said some famous incidents like the "Alien Autopsy" showing up on TV and the like have inspired ideas for what various hackers might do in order to be weird, or even stranger things that might have shown up. On top of this you also have old horror stories like "The King In Yellow" which involve a play about "Carcosa" that is really boring to begin with, but the third act of which will drive an audience insane, a lot of creepy pastas about lost episodes and such seem to be a variation on that.

On a final note I will also point out that with the sheer weight of material that gets published some truely weird stuff appears and disappears never to be seen or heard from again. For example when I was growing up there was a big boom on "choose your own adventure" books and they tried them with all kinds of different themes, RPG elements, puzzles built into in-book pictures, and stuff, I had, borrowed, and read tons of these which I've lost or never saw again and some of them were pretty weird, and done by fly by night companies. One of them was a quasi-horror thing where you get dropped off at a friend's costume themed birthday party he's having at a castle, except nobody else showed up, and oh the castle is full of monsters (thanks mom and dad) I remember it being very easy to die in, and images of bad endings involving descriptions of failing to defend myself with a toy sword made of tin foil, and stuff like that. Nothing especially terrible or haunted, but the point is it existed, and I've never seen it again and can't even remember the title... as everyone probably has a few things like this that they can remember but not identify, especially from their childhood, it probably inspires a lot of the creepypasta. I could probably say spin an interesting story about rediscovering a book like that and how much worse it was than I remembered as a child... and then weird things started to happen.