FEATURED ARTICLE:
jeff the killer (2011) is objectively dogshit. and i love it
so, in class me and my friend got on the topic of bad creepypastas. i don't exactly remember how, but we got talking about it, then we got to talking about primarily pokemon creepypastas for the first while. important context: i despise 90% of pokemon creepypastas. i feel they focus too much on violence and oooh scary haunted game than actually capitalising on the horror within the pokemon world and trying to spin a good story from that. i always find myself thinking that i'd love to see a story that expands on things like the lumiose ghost girl in-universe (relevant as ever, considering her being mentioned by the z-a taxi drivers), rather than the "oooh scary the protagonist looked at the camera and is covered in blood" slop that most pokepastas i see are.
and my distaste for pokepastas for this reason makes the creepypasta we talked about after the pokemon ones being my personal favourite hilarious: jeff the killer. jeff the killer, specifically the 2011 version, is so fascinating to me. the fact this story took off, in a way i honestly don't fully believe was hard-carried by the image. don't get me wrong, the image is iconic, likely one of the most iconic creepypasta related images. while it doesn't scare me now, when i was a kid when i would see it, it would be burned into my mind for a few hours afterwards, same way i was with the whole "momo challenge" image. i was never particularly into creepypastas in general. i only knew of the pokemon ones because i used to watch videos on them solely because i was a pokemon fan, but i knew of all of the main ones. yet, while i knew of jeff the killer as this scary serial killer who had a haunting image attached to him, i never knew of the story. not the original 2008 video, not the iconic 2011 story, not the 2015 rewrite.
so i'm sure you could imagine my surprised when i first read the 2011 story as an adult. i wasn't expecting anything spectacular, considering the only other "iconic" creepypasta i'd read at the time was sonic.exe, which in and of itself is certainly...a story! to put it politely. yet, somehow just how bad jeff the killer 2011 was surpassed my expectations. though, it was easy to tell why this caught on as the iconic interpretation of the character. the image was scary enough, albeit, now i look at it and it feels rather goofy, with this story now attached that acted as a power fantasy for pre-teens to latch on to, probably written by an also edgy pre-teen or now teenager. jeff the killer 2011 feels like a parody of itself in a way. the lack of language variation, the overall tone it's written it, the bullies who are comically evil, carrying around knives and guns while their leader, randy, is stated to appear to be a year younger than jeff, making him twelve years old.
yet, this is the one that caught on at first. sure, it would be replaced later with the 2015 rewrite competition being held, but i'm sure to most, jeff the killer 2011 is what jeff the killer simply is. jeff is misunderstood, bullied into becoming a serial killer by randy and his goons.
but for as one-dimensional as a lot of it is, people latched onto the story, the characters. randy, keith and troy are as flat as a character could be. all we know about them is that they're bullies, they skateboard, randy wears an aeropostale shirt, keith is skinny and has a "dopey" face that "you would expect a sidekick to have" and troy is fat. the story REALLY likes making sure we know troy is fat. i think the bodyshaming of troy is probably one of the things about the tone of the 2011 story that's so interesting to me. it's narrated in third person, but the narrator insults keith and troy, then later talks to the audience as if they are their own character, when they're not. quite a few people have said the story would at least work mildly better if it were from jeff's pov, and i'm inclined to agree because of this aspect. but still, even these cardboard cutout bullies, people got attached to. in fact, i'm rather attached to them right now.
but i feel most are like me. i'm less attached to these nothing characters, and more attached to my own versions of them. that's how a lot of people are with jeff's story in general. they're more attached to a rewrite or specifically their own version of events, and i'm no different, i'd be lying if i said otherwise. i've been working on my own version, i don't believe i'll ever publish or write it out because my version is heavily HEAVILY influenced by the fact i ship jeff x randy. but for a summary, in my version i'm aging them up to be college students. liu is studying criminal psychology, troy is studying photography, and keith is studying journalism. as for jeff, he's undeclared, and randy is studying business by his parent's wishes, and winds up taking a lot of his anger out on jeff regarding this, since jeff is free to do whatever he wants, to remain undecided as he is now. the vibe i wanted to go for with bully trio was very much that to some extent, they never grew out of being highschool bullies, acting like they were the top of the school's food chain. randy is the one plagued with this most. he has his first fight with jeff, loses, then proceeds to convince troy and keith that it was in actuality, jeff's fault. a lot of keith and troy's issue with jeff is just being protective towards their childhood friend.
if you know jeff the killer, you know how this goes. eventually they push him to a breaking point. jeff attempts to kill randy via strangulation, keith and troy chase after him, he tries to kill them too, keith sets him on fire. everyone in my version survives what i refer to as "the incident", though a lot of this was just because i had plans for their occupations but wanted to keep the initial college setting.
they later go on to become for liu, keith, and troy, what they were majoring in. keith is a journalist and troy is a forensic photographer, though randy wound up becoming a detective following jeff becoming...well, the killer. he and liu have had quite a few scuffles when randy tried to visit jeff, with liu believing this to be entirely randy's fault, and no one elses. to which randy decided that if it was his fault jeff was doing this, he had to be the one to stop jeff. at this point is kinda where my randy x jeff fanservice that exists solely for myself comes into play. randy is the only one who has come even slightly close to catching jeff, which has led to jeff being almost obsessive about him. he leaves notes at the crime scenes for randy to find.
and i'm sure you can see just from that so far how far removed from the original 2011 version my version is, for as much as it was very much inspired, me writing my version prior to even reading any rewrites or looking at the 2008 video.
the 2008 video was something. i had almost thought people were joking when they said the reason jeff looks the way he is is because he was carrying a tub of acid and slipped on a bar of soap. but no, that is legitimately what happened. people dog on the 2011 version for it's writing, but for that fact alone the original 2008 video is near just as comical.
regardless, the 2011 jeff the killer story is dear to my heart in an odd way. it's bad, there's no way around it. it is objectively bad writing wise. but as i keep telling people: it's dogshit, but it's MY dogshit.