The Backrooms

i like chewing on straw :>

Wow, it's very similar to Level 10 that I was creating especially for this canon. I love it, it's beautiful and better than my version.

Oh my god, this level is beautiful. The writing is very good, but the truly striking thing is the atmosphere and vibe you create through the visuals and writing. It makes the level so immersive, so liminal and so appealing. If you had added some kind of rain or field ambiance I would probably pass out and dream about this level for no shorter than 14 hours. Fantastic job!

The issue I have with most desolation level rewrite is how lacking they are, even compared to its core canon counterparts.

I will start by saying that here it wasn't the case, so it's good. The Misinformation and abnormalities, while they could also work on other pages, were quite interesting and refreshing paragraphs that replicated this feeling of weirdness (random unusable phone booths) or of the unknown (Night mirages). It was fun to read! I liked how subtlely eerie it was. That's definitely something I liked in some older 2020 pages and that I also equally like when they are pulled off well here.

However, the less good thing is the narration. I just don't get what it brings here. It's basically a standalone story. It's not using the elements of its own page (like the parts I mentionned earlier), and it just cuts the descriptive parts while not adding anything to them. They really just feel like a random level 10 journal that has no business being here and would rather work as a tale (and a longer one so that I can feel attached to the characters as well). It's a shame because your descriptive parts would have been fun to see expanded in narration (like the fog thing, which feels quite random since there is a narration not showcasing it, which make the info sounds like it's not important or was just added to lengthen the page), like seeing the more personal effects of the beliefs or anomalies of the level, who is the first to appear both outdoors and safe.

Other less important weird choices are the sometimes more personal tone of descriptive tones, such as with the overgrown road, or sentences such as "Almost every single investigator I've talked to", that clash with an otherwise quite academic tone. I would also have liked to read more about the fields in themselves, as they are a core part of the level, yet you never seem to truly focus on them.

So it is a novote for me, because there are things I like and things that are out of place. But gotta say it was definitely an interesting desolation view of the level at least.

Now, I will say that I liked the overall setting of the page. The basic idea¹ does not fail, for the most part, to fulfill my expectations. However, I find the choice of format a little inappropriate. Maybe it is due to this page belonging to a canon, but I definitely struggled through this read, considering how often the immersion broke. This may stem from the fact that, while the narrative is not inherently disruptive, I find the wording and overall tone to be a little strange. There are several SPaG errors which seem unwarranted, especially towards the beginning — this last point is perhaps what slowed me down the most.

Other things (unrelated to the concept):

• The way the base is described is also waaay too informal for this article.
• Entrances and Exits are introduced with "Access", which is definitely not the full sub-header.
• The first and second person writings seemingly sneak into the clinical paragraphs with no clear intent.

I would also like to add that the concept, while not inherently boring, is actually quite confusing? Don't get me wrong, heh; I like the idea of the story occurring behind the main setting, but it does not feel particularly connected to the page as a whole. It's just, like, there, and does not play a crucial role. It almost seems to be the last attempt at making this page feel complete without actually having a clear direction. It is written in a way that, if it wasn't for the fact that narrative replaces certain paragraphs altogether, it could just be thrown away. Now, I am absolutely not advocating that it be removed completely or reduced by a significant margin, but it certainly feels inherently detached from the main part of the article for the most part, and that is exactly what I believe should be fixed.

Edit: Did some spag corrections with greenlighter.

Because you catch more bees with honey…

curse you for making me FEEL while reading again /lh /j

Genuinely so much better than the level 10 on the main levels list