#bezočny džek

[mishkakagehishka]

May i ask you about your Slavic Eyeless Jack headcanons

Of course! That's why I put it in my bio, after all. I talked about this in detail on my old blog, but didn't transfer those posts, so I'll talk in general terms, as an intro, here. Feel free to ask for more details on certain aspects, if it interests you.

And while we're on the topic of Slavic stuff, please spread these posts that give information on the current situation in Ukraine and ways to help, and consider donating to some of the organisations mentioned. If nothing else, at least talk about this, spread awareness, uplift Ukrainian voices.

And on EJ, under the cut: the reason why I slavified him (hint: it was spite), changes to the most widely-used backstory of his among the creepypasta/slendermansion fandom, changes to his name, major differences between the EJ we are familiar with and my version of him in terms of appearance, behaviour and "hunting methods". Also a little about Slavic mythology, but from a south Slavic perspective, so some names and terms may differ, and also most of it is from memory.

A while ago, I was reliving my creepypasta phase from. Way back in the day, which means I also ended up rereading a couple of the "big ones" or, at least, the ones that were big in the, what I lovingly call, slendermansion fandom. Jeff the Killer, Laughing Jack, BEN Drowned, Ticci Toby (+ rewatched Marble Hornets, a few times), and, ultimately, Eyeless Jack. The original story is still chilling to me, and I left it unchanged since it doesn't touch upon much about him specifically (and the kidney-eating is, after all, so iconic). But, then I read the most widely-used backstory of his, and, well. I'm Slavic myself. The fact that names like "Jack" and "Jenny", living in the USA, end up coming across a malicious, almost satanic-like, cult to... Chernobog? Again, I touched upon this on my old blog, whether Chernobog was an actual deity revered in Slavic cultures remains a mystery, but if he was, he wasn't an "evil" god, not by my judgement and from what I read anyway. Chernobog, if he was truly a deity in the mythos, was the opposite of Belobog, who was thought to be Perun (the head deity, I forget the exact term, but think like Zeus, Odin, Jupiter), and Slavic culture hadn't really "evil" gods (which is why Chernobog being the "devil" is thought to have been fabricated by the Church). So, to get back to EJ, the backstory that uses the name of a Slavic (maybe not even real) deity for cheap horror, for an American girl to be part of its cult, to see Slavic names and words (Chernobog meaning Black-God) pushed as villainous, as evil, as scary in their foreignness, it didn't sit right with me. Western media pushes the evil Slav stereotype too much as is, I didn't want to deal with "poor little American boy sacrificed to 'Slavic demon' and forced to become a cannibal :(" in one of my fave and oldest fandoms. So, I changed it. Not by erasing the Slavic, but by enhancing it.

In that backstory, I'm sure we're familiar with it, Jack is a med student, a bit of a loner, who meets this girl, Jenny. He takes a liking to Jenny and it seems like she likes him back, they start hanging out. She then brings him to a "get-together" in the forest, shit goes down, Jack gets sacrificed to Chernobog and comes out of it a demonic entity with tar dripping from his eyes and a hunger for humans. Pretty typical creepypasta stuff. My version? I'll write it in prose, maybe, one day, but the gist of it is here. Instead of Chernobog, it's Morana, the goddess of winter, death and rebirth of nature. It'd fit well, if I do say so myself, that she kill Jack and have him be reborn as her own minion. Jenny is still here, but she's not in a cult (furthermore, there is no cult), she is a catalyst, however. I haven't shaken out the details myself, but I'd assume she'd do something of disrespect in Morana's forest (a pretty common trope in the fairy tales I grew up with, being punished for disrespecting nature, especially huge forests), and convince Jack, who is blinded by love, to do the same. Morana's rage is enacted, and they're both cursed, with Jack becoming Morana's own bijes (an evil spirit known for possessing people - bijes in many modern Slavic languages now means "rage", "fury").

I also changed his name, but it's not a big change, just a way for me to tag stuff about Slavic EJ specifically: Bezočny Džek, lit. just Eyeless Jack but in Interslavic's latin alphabet. For that reason, I also want Jack/Džek to have some Slavic ancestry. In my mind, he'd speak either old church slavonic or proto-slavic (as a bijes, as his "first" language), and he'd have a thick accent when speaking English (let's just not make jokes ab it !)

Džek and Jack are both still knowledgeable in terms of medicine and anatomy, both are cannibalistic and both act as the resident "doctor" of the slendermansion, I've kept all that because they're big parts of his character and they don't have to be changed. His appearance is still grey, ashen skin, black tar where the eyes should be, sharp inhuman teeth, and so on. The difference in appearance is more in style of dress. Instead of the blue mask, he wears a wooden-carved mask with goat horns, painted and fur details, similar to the masks you'd see in Slavic carnival festivities, but "lighter". His dress, as well, I changed from the iconic hoodie (sorry </3) into clothes you'd probably associate with being "Slavic peasant-like"; a white tunic with an embroidered placket (though there are no buttons, I don't know how else to call that part - it extends from the front of the neckline down to about the stomach or the bottom of the ribcage), the embroidery is "framed" in a rectangle. I haven't found any embroidery patterns that would be associated with Morana (which makes sense), but it's fiction, we can imagine she taught him her own patterns. I'd just assume he'd carry her symbols on him, as her spirit. The tunic is fastened with an embroidered sash, and the edges of the sleeves are decorated, too. Asides from that, brown trousers, and black knee-high boots.

Džek is a lot more involved with Morana than Jack was with Chernbog, as he still became a bijes because of her. He convenes with her often, and she will often be the one giving him "targets", most often those who disrespect her area and anything or any being that lives in it. Although, when he doesn't work on her orders, he still works in her name, for the pleasure of it. When he's not staking out in the trees of Morana's forest and looking for any visitor's most minor mistake that would give him an excuse to kill them, he does hang around the slendermansion and helps out with the medical business. He kept his textbooks from college and actually reads them for fun - it reminds him of his old life. In the margins, you'll find notes scribbled in glagolitic on which incision methods are better for struggling, awake "patients" and which for the sleeping, but not anaesthetised, ones. He still uses a scalpel in his hunting, but I've given him a weakness, just for the aesthetic of it all - bells. It's carnival season, so this is also well-timed, but so-called bellmen tend to go through villages ringing bells to chase away the evil spirits, as well as Morana and her winter, welcoming spring. So, bells are capable of chasing Džek away, too, he hates the sound of them and they give him splitting headaches. Due to Morana's association with the winter, Džek is also more "active" during those months, and in summers he becomes fairly lethargic. He doesn't even leave the mansion on the summer solstice, as that's when the evil spirits are at their weakest, but he becomes quite the energetic menace on the winter solstice.

#idk how much this makes sense but ! basically #creepypasta #slender mansion #eyeless jack #bezočny džek