Creepypasta

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Synonyms:
See also: SCP Foundation, The Backrooms, Analog Horror
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Creepypasta is a type of online horror fiction that crosses over into many fandoms. The term originates from the internet term "copypasta", which means any block of text that is copied and pasted over and over again on different websites. Creepypastas are sometimes supported by images or audio.

Common types of Creepypasta stories include "lost episodes" (myths about episodes of TV series that were supposedly created but never aired, often due to containing disturbing content), video games that are in some way abnormal (such as infecting your computer, causing adverse mental effects, harboring spirits or demons, or simply being a creepy ROM hack), serial killers, and supernatural beings or monsters.

Some have described Creepypasta as a form of modern folklore.

The Creepypasta fandom is notable in that, because it is based around copy/pasted stories written by other internet users and not published works, many popular Creepypastas originated as fan characters before growing to such prominence within the fanbase that they were then accepted as Canon characters. This low barrier to entry, however, also leads to many stories being described as "edgy," "cringe," or simply "bad."

Terminology

The plural form of "Creepypasta" can be either "Creepypasta" or "Creepypastas."

The term "Creepypasta" can be used as a label for the genre, individual stories, or the primary characters from the stories. "Pasta" or "Pastas" is used to refer to the stories or the characters, but never the genre. Characters are also sometimes referred to as "Creeps".

The term "Creepypasta" was sometimes abbreviated to "CP" in the past, but this abbreviation has fallen harshly out of favor due to the fact it has become commonly recognized as an abbreviation for "child porn."

Transformative Fandom surrounding Creepypasta is similar to Bandom in the sense that "Creepypasta" is technically an umbrella term encompassing an entire genre of source material, but reference to the "Creepypasta fandom" typically involves fanworks surrounding a specific group of popular characters from Creepypasta stories, with extreme amounts of Crossover between them, to the point it is almost unheard of to see fanworks about only one Creepypasta story.

Fandom-specific Slang

  • Crappypasta: A badly-written Creepypasta story.
  • Happypasta: A sort of Mirror Universe AU, where everything is cute and happy and upbeat.
  • Slenderverse: A catch-all term for stories exploring the mythos of Slender Man.
  • Trollpasta: A parody that is badly-written on purpose to make fun of Crappypasta.

Popular Creepypasta

Core Creepypastas

These are Creepypasta characters who will appear in a majority of fanworks, and are often main characters.

Other Creepypastas Often Featured In Fanworks

While these characters are not omnipresent like the others, they are usually featured in fanworks which call for a large cast of characters. They are often side characters, and many of them are notable for being in some way associated with one of the core Creepypastas.

Associated Creepypastas

These are Creepypasta stories and characters which are well-known in the fandom, but appear in fanworks either rarely or never.

Fandom History

Creepypasta likely dates back to the 1990s - when the text of chain emails would be pasted on internet forums and in Usenet groups - or early 2000s, when Ted the Caver, a well-known early example of Creepypasta, was posted on Angelfire. Creepypasta gained prominence online in the late 2000s, spawning online communities such as creepypasta.com, the Creepypasta wiki, and Reddit's r/nosleep. This led to the development of a more permanent archive and fandom surrounding Creepypasta, with Creepypasta characters appearing repeatedly in different stories.

Darcie Nadel's 'Brief History of Creepypasta' recalls,[1]

Eventually, dedicated creepypasta websites did come about, with creepypasta.com launching in 2008, which brought about a massive change in the creepypasta community. Now there was an archive for these stories, and continuity became part of them. Fanworks and spinoffs came about, with different authors borrowing characters from other creepypastas in order to use them in their own stories. This was prominent with characters like Jeff the Killer, the Rake, and most especially Slenderman.

The years 2008-2014 are often cited as the "golden age" of Creepypasta, with many prominent characters, stories, and fanworks originating in this timeframe. Most notable are Marble Hornets, a video series and early ARG surrounding a group of characters being stalked by the Slender Man, and Slender: The Eight Pages, a Fan Game about Slender Man which became popular on Youtube and brought the character and Creepypasta into the mainstream.

Most fan activity occurred on the websites DeviantArt, Wattpad, Amino, and Quotev, as the fandom consisted largely of young teenagers. As of March 1st, 2024, there are 84.8k stories on Wattpad tagged #creepypasta.

In 2016, SyFy began airing Channel Zero, a horror anthology series which adapted several popular Creepypasta stories for television. It was generally well-received and ran for four seasons.[2]

In 2018, an official Slender Man movie was released. It was widely hated by Fans and Mundanes alike, and as such, is pointedly ignored.

Criticism and Controversy

Slender Man Stabbing

The fandom saw a sharp decline in activity in 2014 following a real-world incident in which two 12-year-old girls attempted to murder their friend in a bid to appease the fictional Slender Man, who the perpetrators believed to be real. The incident was reported on heavily by American news outlets, who portrayed Creepypasta characters and stories as a corrupting influence on the youth.

It has since become an example and subtopic in the Fiction vs. Reality Discussion and debates around Minors in Fandom. Many Anti-shippers argue that the incident shows how fiction can encourage real-world violence, while Proshippers tend to emphasize the importance of individual responsibility. One anonymous fan on Damnfandomproblems wrote, [3]

When the Slenderman stabbing is used as an example of fiction effecting reality. I suppose we should outlaw telling spooky ghost stories entirely just in case some idiot kids try to murder someone about it? At some point you can't blame the fiction for the actions of each and every isolated moron for not having a basic sense of right and wrong and real and fake.

Anonymous Tumblr user, Damnfandomproblems

It is also sometimes pointed out that one of the perpetrators had early-onset Schizophrenia, which was not diagnosed or treated yet at the time of the incident. This disorder can make it harder for those living with it to distinguish fiction from reality. Additionally, many Creepypasta stories are told through mediums which mimic reliable sources of information, such as doctored photographs, fake news articles, or found-footage style videos.

In 2022, a novel about the incident, Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls, was published by Kathleen Hale. The book is generally regarded as well-researched, and portrays the Creepypasta fandom in a more neutral and accurate light than most news coverage initially did.

Ableism

See also: Ableism in Fandom

The Creepypasta fandom has been criticized for demonizing mental illness. This is because many fans, particularly younger ones, would often use terms such as "insane," "crazy," "psycho," or "schizo" to refer to Creepypasta characters. It was not uncommon for characters to be portrayed with stigmatized mental illnesses (such as Antisocial Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and Schizophrenia), often inaccurately written and poorly researched, to make them more "scary." Sometimes, they would be given no particular diagnosis, but experience symptoms such as auditory hallucinations, tics, and insomnia for the same purpose.

The character Ticci Toby is an often-cited example of ableism in the Creepypasta fandom. This is because the name "Ticci" Toby comes from his canonical Tourettes Syndrome and was given to him mockingly by his bullies in the original story, but is generally regarded as the character's official title and used commonly to refer to him. Fanworks featuring Toby also frequently use his tics either as a source of comic relief or to make him appear mentally unstable.

The fandom has also, conversely, been criticized for romanticizing mental illness, as well as glorifying violence. This is because, of course, the characters being portrayed as "insane" were always the protagonists, love interests, or some other variant of a "good guy". Antagonists were almost always bullies or abusive family members, and usually the protagonist "snapping" one day and murdering them was portrayed as good, with very little consequence. Young fans would sometimes act mysterious and "edgy" on purpose, often using typing quirks or Zalgo text online, to appear "crazy." Some would brag about how "insane" they were.

Self-harm and suicide were common themes throughout both fanworks and canon, and often used for little more than shock value.

Popular Fanon And Fan Culture

The original Creepypasta Day image.

Operator Symbol and Creepypasta Day

The Operator Symbol, also sometimes called the Proxy Symbol, is a circle with an X through it, sometimes represented with the unicode character ⦻.

It was originally used in Marble Hornets as a symbol of The Operator, which is the name given to the series' version of Slender Man. Over time, it was adopted by the wider Creepypasta fandom as a symbol of Slender Man, and has come to represent the fandom as a whole.

Sometime in 2015, an image of unknown origin began circulating which declared October 13th as Creepypasta Day, instructing fans to draw the symbol on their hands that day to show pride in their fandom.

Slender Mansion

See also: Roommates AU

It was an extremely common trope in fanworks, and widely accepted as canon by many fans, that all the Creepypasta characters lived together in a mansion in the forest, which was owned by Slender Man; thus given the colloquial name Slender Mansion. The concept of Slender Man owning a mansion in the woods was likely inspired by the character's close association with forests as well as the Mansion level in Slenderman's Shadow, a spin-off fangame of Slender: The Eight Pages.

This trope was often a convenient excuse to feature the entirety of an Ensemble cast, and to have the characters interact in ways that didn't involve murder.

Proxies

Proxies were a concept initially introduced by Marble Hornets, which then became a universally-accepted part of fanon. Proxies are characters who do Slender Man's bidding, often killing or stalking people in his stead. Whether they are Brainwashed, Possessed, blackmailed, or simply zealous devotees is up to individual interpretation.

Slender's canonical proxies are usually considered to be Masky and Hoodie, and Ticci Toby. There are characters from popular Slenderverse stories or other fanworks who will often be listed as his proxies as well, but those three are most common. It is also common that Fan Characters will become Proxies as part of their backstory- in these fanworks, becoming a Proxy also entails moving into the Slender Mansion.

Other Tropes and Memes

  • EJ and LJ: Because two core characters, Eyeless Jack and Laughing Jack, are both named Jack, many fans opt to simply abbreviate their names to EJ and LJ respectively.
  • Hyper-Realistic [Noun]: a phrase famous for its use in Squidward's Suicide and Sonic.EXE, which then became widely used to mock poorly-written Creepypastas for being over-the-top with gore, especially when the topic of the Creepypasta is something that poses no real threat to the protagonist, such as a video game or lost episode. The noun is most often "blood", but can be used jokingly to describe anything.
  • Jeff's Fangirls: Jeff The Killer was known as a notorious Fangirl Magnet, being the subject of plenty of Reader-Insert fics. Thus, it was not uncommon for fans to joke about mobs of Jeff fangirls chasing him around, or hunting down fans who disliked Jeff, or anything along those lines.
  • Masky and Cheesecake: It was a common characterization that Masky would be comically obsessed with cheesecake. This characterization has fallen out of favor in recent years, with many fans alleging that the meme started as a way to Fat-Shame Masky's actor.
  • Paternal Slender Man: Slender Man was often portrayed as a father-like figure, either to child Creepypastas like Ben and Sally or to Self-insert characters. Even if he is not any particular character's father figure, he is still often shown as a Mother Hen toward the inhabitants of his mansion, who tend to be shown as rambunctious and chaotic.
  • Toby and Waffles: Ticci Toby is often associated with waffles. Not as egregiously as Masky's cheesecake, but it was and is definitely a meme.

The culture of the Creepypasta fandom can be compared to Emo Culture and Fandom, with its focus on dark topics and the tendency of Original Characters to follow the trends of Emo fashion.

Fanworks

A popular genre of Creepypasta fanwork involved slice-of-life plotlines showcasing the everyday life of Creepypasta characters living in the Slender Mansion. Most Creepypasta fanworks that did not fall into this category, however, tended to have a dark and edgy tone, commonly featuring themes of abuse, bullying, self-harm, suicide, substance abuse, and mental illness.

Many fanworks centered around Original Characters; usually a teenage girl who was bullied at school or had a bad home life, and through some means of murder became a Proxy or otherwise moved into the Slender Mansion.

The Creepypasta fandom was also home to a large portion of Quiz Fic due to fan presence on Quotev.

Example Fanworks:

Fan films

Fan songs & Filk

Fan art

Fan fiction

Fan games

Fan videos

Meta

Shipping

Most shipping in the Creepypasta fandom tended to be Het.

While the majority of shipping in the Creepypasta fandom came in the form of Self-Shipping and Reader-Insert fic, the most popular pairings were of Ticci Toby and Clockwork (a Canon couple) and of Jeff the Killer and Jane the Killer (often portrayed as Enemies to Lovers.)

The fandom is also no stranger to Slash. Masky and Hoodie are frequently shipped together. As of March 1st, 2024, they are the most popular non-Reader pairing in the Creepypasta tag on Archive of Our Own, with 259 works pairing them.

At the height of the fandom, the most popular slash pairs were Jeff The Killer with either Slender Man or Laughing Jack, though Jeff and Slender were the bigger pairing.

Many detractors of Transformational Fandom criticized the practice of shipping the Creepypasta characters as glorifying murder (since most Creepypasta characters were killers) and as "ruining" the scariness of the original stories. This criticism was almost always aimed at M/M pairings. Self-Shipping was met with the mockery that sadistic murderers like Jeff the Killer would rather kill Fangirls than date them.

Creepypasta (Genre) Fanworks In Other Fandoms

Because Creepypasta is a blanket term for an entire genre, there are fanworks in other fandoms that may be considered Creepypastas, but are not necessarily part of the Creepypasta fandom. These fanwork Creepypastas can be creepy stories set in the universes of other established media, stories about abnormal video games and lost episodes, or urban legends about existing media.

Examples

Creepypastas Set in Established Universes:

Lost Episodes and Video Game Creepypastas:

Urban Legends:

Links & Resources

References

  1. ^ A Brief History of Creepypasta by Darcie Nadel, TurboFuture. Published November 1, 2016 (Accessed September 2, 2017).
  2. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Zero_(TV_series)
  3. ^ https://damnfandomproblems.tumblr.com/post/721570473431973888/fandom-problem-4103-when-the-slenderman-stabbing
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