paces in a circle. following the story bit by bit is actually great for contemplating it. i know the splitting chapters into parts is a TL thing but pacing in circles after 120.1 and now reading 120.2. hooh.
like okay fucking call me the metanarrative guy but i've been contemplating the beginning of the story. kim soleum loves horror stories. he does. but he never says this. never outwardly expresses it. but he must.
because he keeps reading them.
he says he's terrified, and he is, but he keeps coming back for more. He even wrote some himself. He loves these stories, and he loves the Dark Records universe.
The nightmare high school is an amazing case study of this, actually, mirroring the story he wrote. And his story was about understanding the scenario through the eyes of the monster. That the monster is hunted, too, that it's scared, too. He mentions that people left lore hints in the previous records of this Darkness, but he was the one to tie them all together into a narrative.
all the Darknesses are like escape rooms because what he loves about these stories is trying to figure out what makes them tick. he wants to know their rules. how to survive them. it's a very specific sort of interest in horror that can only really apply to something like SCP because there need to be rules like this for a collaborative universe.
And he extends a lot of empathy to the monsters as well, re: the story he wrote, seeing through their eyes. But there's other things, like pressing the button for his double in the elevator. Like endulging the blue dragon mascots that want to play with him. A lot of it is politeness born of terror but it is politeness nonetheless. He's trying to see their point and purpose.
Assimilation. A dangerous tactic.
There's this running thread of them trying to draw him in. Keep him in this world. And yes the most obvious example of that is Braun right now of course questioning whether Kim Soleum wants to go home in the first place. But there's also the blue dragon mascots and the cabin's contract and those tattoos. There is a Repeating Pattern of him delving into the stories just a little bit too far and strungling not to survive them but to untangle himself from them. Most evident in his friendship with Braun. And also everything else.
And I think about how the entire story starts. With Kim Soleum getting a funny little fake ID badge for Daydream Inc. and he is so deeply embarrassed about it. He is so deeply embarrassed to be at the pop-up store to begin with, to be seen indulging when he is a grown man with a job. This is teen stuff. He's not supposed to be here. Not supposed to be in this story.
But he's still here. Why? Because he loves this world. Loves the community behind it. Loves these stories.
Something abt sincerity I dunno man. It's a pattern. The entire world of Dark Exploration Records has drawn him in and refuses to let go because he loves it beyond the horror and sees so much more in every facet of it. There's something to be said about looking beyond the surface of a story and trying to gauge its intent and its message and its rules, and I'm thinking about the train to Tamra, and how it's a cesspit of misery and endless torture yet he still draws a purpose out of it from the bits and bobs whatever original author of it laid out.
He just meets every story where it's standing. A man after my own heart, really. Of course the stories don't want to let him go. Of course they love him back.
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