The Tutorial

M kicks off his blog by explaining that he has already had and survived encounters with Slender Man, and his intention is to compile a survival guide for anyone else who is running. He doesn't want others to make the same mistakes — mistakes that got his brother killed.

At the beginning of the story, M is living in New York, homeless and getting by as best he can. He outlines three primary rules for anyone trying to survive Slender Man:

1. Get up high (Literally. He can't get you if you're up over two stories.)
2. Keep moving (If you stay in one place for too long he will get you.)
3. Keep your eyes open (He can't get you if you're looking directly at him.)

M imparts additional wisdom about Slender Man by telling various anecdotes from his previous experiences, and stories of other survivors and victims he's met in his travels. He also gives his thoughts on several tropes within the mythos, offering in-game explanations for typical patterns like using codes or creating proxies. Sometimes he will respond directly to pleas for advice with extensive blog posts, becoming something of an agony aunt for Slender Man victims. Sometimes he reports close but brief encounters with Slender Man himself, and every night, M finds the tallest roof he can to sleep on.

Eventually he makes his way down to Florida after he receives a cryptic letter from someone named Daphne Shawlts. The coded message in the letter says "I know Tim," the name of M's brother. Daphne doesn't show up for their meeting, but that night, M dreams of walking through an ancient forest. A large tree blocks his path, and ghostly children tell him to "Find safety in the trees."

He returns to New York, and as other bloggers die or go missing, M begins to wonder if working together might be a good idea. Depression and exhaustion creep up on him. He begins to dream vividly every night, sometimes about the ancient forest, sometimes about his deceased brother. His sightings accelerate. He attributes these changes to the increased popularity of Slender Man and his growing power.

It's getting colder in New York, and M's homeless condition becomes increasingly lamentable and distressing. His posts grow more infrequent, and he's falling out of touch with what's happening to other bloggers. After a close call with Slender Man in Central Park, he decides to leave New York and head to Chicago to meet up with Shaun, another blogger and the author of Testing.

The Solstice comes and goes while M settles into Chicago. He posts one more time at the end of December, and then the blog goes quiet until May, when someone named Bondie makes a post after finding M unconscious in a public library. Bondie takes M back to his house once he's been discharged from the hospital.

M stays with Bondie through July, mostly sulking up on the roof, when he finally makes a post trying to explain what happened to him. When he came to Chicago, he lost contact with Shaun. While he searched for him, he was abducted off the street and taken to some kind of facility where others like him were kept in cells. The details are hazy, but he explains that he was held there for months, physically abused, and given regular injections of some type of drug. He never saw Slender Man during this time.

He attempts to escape the facility, fighting off nurses and security as he goes. When one of them points a gun at him, Slender Man appears and drives his whole arm through her chest. M flees before he can see the rest. Bondie finds him collapsed in the public library not long after.

M knows that he's been at Bondie's place too long and needs to move on. He's still having vivid dreams about the forest. In August they receive a package from one of M's old friends, containing a cryptic note and a picture book called The Children Of The Woods. M reads through the book and finds it strikingly similar to his recurring dreams. He promises to upload pictures of the book in his next post, but he never does. The blog ends there.

In this work, as in many Slenderverse works, the Something Awful forums are acknowledged as the origin of Slender Man's existence. M calls it the Philip Phenomenon, but others may know it as the Tulpa Effect, the idea that Slender Man was willed into existence by his own excited audience. The more people become aware of him, the more powerful he becomes.

M describes several methods for protecting yourself from Slender Man. One method is to get up high, because he can't find you if you're up over two stories. M's brother would successfully hide from Slender Man by climbing up into a water tower, and M himself avoids detection by always sleeping on the roof. Slender also cannot attack you if you are looking directly at him, although looking at him can be difficult and painful. Looking at him through a camera will not work. Hiding indoors also will not protect you, and you are typically safer out in public with lots of people around. You can use the Operator Symbol to ward Slender Man away, at least temporarily. M's friend James has apparently survived for years out at sea.

M's version of Slender Man is stupid (his words), more of a dumb animal than other incarnations, easily tricked by ruses and disguises. He can be tricked into thinking your eyes are open if you wear a mask, and if you climb up to a high enough location, you will escape his notice. According to M, the Operator Symbol keeps Slender Man away because it looks like a giant eye, and will make him think he's being looked at, similar to the patterns on moth wings.

According to M, "if you don't run you will die." Most people will last no longer than two weeks if they choose to stay in one place while being stalked. M also says that Slender Man likes to play with his food, implying that he takes some of this time to simply draw out the pleasure of the hunt. Sometimes he lets certain individuals live much longer for unknown reasons. He kept one girl that M met confined to her house for months after killing the rest of her family, and even prevented her from committing suicide.

M explains that Slender Man "takes everybody who comes between Him and who He wants." Slender is very violent in this story and responsible for many gruesome murders, although they are rarely described in detail. Certain victims simply disappear. It's notable that Slender Man seems to save the protagonist's life at one point in the story.

He is able to take control of humans, although there are some with enough mental fortitude to fight him off. Someone who has fallen to Slender's influence is described as "hollowed out." This term is changed to "hallowed out" in later posts, leading to the term "Hallowed" as a common alternative to "proxy."

The first step in the process of hollowing is for the human to be physically touched by Slender Man. After that, there are two main symptoms that indicate a person is being hallowed out:

1. Blacking out or losing time, and waking up in strange locations
2. Persistent cough and sickness, a side effect of exposure

Because Slender Man has several limitations in this work (such as being unable to move while being watched), M explains that Slender Man recruits humans so that they can perform tasks he's unable to; so that they can think through problems for him as a human would; and as bait to lure their loved ones to him.

Slender Man is connected to trees in this story and is at top form when surrounded by them. M claims the trees "keep Him alive" and that he hunts in the woods, and he advises the reader to avoid them. Slender also "uses the trees to get around."

M tends to use capitalized pronouns for Slender Man, as in He/Him, and usually refers to him as "Slenderman." Slender is approximately 8 feet tall in this work. He can incapacitate someone by touch alone. He commits arson in this work, and he cannot talk. According to M, he cannot be harmed by any weapon.

He can teleport from location to location at will, with distance being no limitation, and he can teleport or "move" people along with him. They are always unconscious during this process, and it can take long periods of time, so that they might disappear for several hours or days. Slender's purpose in doing this is not known. Sometimes when he moves, there is a creaking/ripping sound. He will move extremely fast when your back is turned.