#and Masky goes out of his way to attack Alex when Alex has Jay and Jessica and gunpoint

[purplecatghostposts]

Sometimes (not often and not referring to the proxy versions bc that’s its own thing), I’ll see someone call Masky and/or Hoody a killer and I sit there like. But they aren’t though. They tried to kill one (1) guy and technically Tim did later but that was purely self defense.

Their actual crimes ARE attempted murder, breaking and entering, theft(?), assault, and stalking, with maybe a few more, but 80% of the murders were caused by Alex. You can lump Tim’s kill count with Masky if you want (which brings him dubiously up to 2 if you count Hoody falling) but Hoody has a kill count of exactly zero.

They ARE very intimidating figures and highly important to the story but I definitely wouldn’t label them as killers!

[rgbstatic]

Rewatching Marble Hornets really has me questioning why Alex wasn't really included in Creepypasta media, at least alongside his peers with Masky and Hoodie.

This may be spoilers if you've never watched Marble Hornets before (its 15+ years old, but I digress).

First I do want to establish that in Marble Hornets.

Alex is the acting antagonist, Jay is our unreliable protagonist and narrator, Tim eventually becomes a side protagonist. Hoodie is a side character who often seems to help our protagonists. Every other character are side characters that help move things forward and intensify plot- when I go into detail on some characters, some of what I say can be applied to them too.

Next, the Operator's way of controlling it's "proxies".

The Operator has some sort of aura that, when exposed, causes some sort of illness. Coughing fits, seizures, and presumably more. It's presence also in turn causes paranoia, insomnia, memory loss, and a general loss of senses. This is what it seems to use to control others.

You see this with all characters in the series, how ill they get, how paranoid they get, how the worse these all are the more they do things for the Operator. You see this happen to nearly everyone.

For Tim, he is able to eventually curb this via medications, presumably seizure medications. It doesn't fully stop Tim from being controlled by the Operator and acting as Masky, but it does over time seem to make it happen less and less. You also see Masky act in later acts of the series against the Operator, or at least for Jay.

Hoodie is interesting, because you really don't see much from him, but most of his appearances is helping Jay, and you find his house full of medication bottles, presumably stolen from Tim or from some other means. The totheark videos have many purposes. They can threaten Jay, or they can warn him, they can help him. In some you see messages which echo and parrot the drawings Alex makes, in others you see him give Jay clues. He both works for the Operator, but against him and Alex at the same time.

Jay starts off as seemingly one of the only people on the cast/crew of Marble Hornets to not get involved when Alex first started his shenanigans. He remembers Marble Hornets and starts looking, immediately he gets sick and paranoid and starts encountering the Operator. He is tired and irritable, and towards the end you see him make more and more rash decisions, violent decisions. His path seems to mirror Alex, the only difference is that Jay wants to stop all of this.

Alex is the most interesting, because you almost never if at all see him ill. You can presume that maybe he saw the Operator as a kid, as one of the totheark videos show childhood home videos of him and mark him with the Operator's symbols and show's the being there, but you never see it. Alex acts under the operator seemingly at all times. He starts off paranoid, maybe even afraid, but very quickly he becomes numb to it. Seth and Sarah die very early on. He attacks Brian, Tim- all so early on, and he seems to feel no remorse for it. Eventually, it does seem like he falls away from the influence. He moves away, stops recording. This goes on for years, until his girlfriend finds his old camera. Almost instantly the Operator is there. She is missing, but he survives. Once again, the moment the Operator is involved he works under him without skipping a beat. He knows she's gone, he drags Jay into it to stop him from searching further, or perhaps to be a magnet to finish the job of those who escaped before. Alex doesn't have any sort of alter ego. He remembers, he remembers everything. Perhaps he acts out of self preservation, but something else is going on. Alex starts to corrupt the footage just like the Operator, he seems to be able to call it to him and he approaches it, stands in it's wake unaffected. He's too far gone, maybe he always was.

All of this is to say, he is the villain of this story. He may eventually be defeated, but you could argue Tim gets better and moves on and never is a proxy again.

Alex should have, and should be viewed as a more scary person, with the likes of other creepypastas, because for all intents and purposes he was the Operator's favorite, and the one to carry out it's wants and to carry out it's actions. Hoodie and Masky disobeyed time and time again, Alex continued without question or remorse. Killing people not even involved with the story.

Just in terms of story, for the longest time Masky and Hoodie were side characters that popped up once every several entries. It wasn't until over half way through that Tim becomes a central character. Alex is always there. It's his story, it's his tapes, it is him who brought the Operator to them all over and over and over again, he is the main character with Jay as a narrator of things he has done. It all leads back to him.

Something something, i think 15 years is long enough to give this evil guy a bit of spotlight in his own story.

[brittlebutch]

I’ve finally finished MH—and I loved it—but I didn’t understand the finale at all.

Was everyone who was supposedly dead actually fine? Was The Operator just fucking with things? Was entry 87 possibly from an earlier point on the timeline? (Was it the sort of thing where they left it that way as the hook for another season, and then the plans fell through?)

Or is it just one of those mindfuck endings where there isn’t really any explanation because it’s not supposed to make sense? 😂

!!! congrats on finishing the series; i'm glad you enjoyed it!!! i am so excited to answer this question; i'm putting it under a cut for both Length and Spoilers!

OK. So i'm going to go ahead and cover the whole final arc of the series, starting with entry 73 because that's when the first threads start to come together! Since you've already finished the series, I'm going to go ahead and refer to the Hooded Man as Brian throughout just bc it's less letters to type lol.

Couple things to keep in mind though: 1) a lot of this series is ambiguous, and there aren't Exactly Clear Cut Intentions in what you're meant to interpret from what's shown. I have clear interpretations and biases, but they aren't necessarily The Singular Correct Way to interpret the events/motivations, yk? 2) Extremely important to remember that the linear numbering of entries means NOTHING wrt the actual timeline of the show <- What gets posted to the MH channel is decided and done by the Characters, but the entry number titles do not necessarily correspond with linear events (ie; the footage shown in e76 was filmed before e33 was posted which happened Way after e52 was filmed.) When something was FILMED and when it was POSTED do not correspond; but hopefully I'm able to successfully provide context to help delineate these things. anyway!!

In e73, Brian goes and breaks in to Tim's house again - he's done this before on a variety of occasions, usually to steal medication as he's doing in this entry. While he's there, he showcases a tape that Tim has tucked away in a box, and discovers that Alex has been squatting in Tim's attic for an unknown amount of time. Alex has been watching the MH channel since its inception, and knew that Tim and Jay were out of town but didn't know when they'd be back - he's been hiding inside the house in the hopes of getting the edge of surprise against them when they come back. Important: Brian is the one who posted this entry (denoted by the inconsistencies in the title/description/text cards.) He's broken into the MH account several times, usually to highlight information he Needs Jay to pay attention to - this is his way of warning Tim and jay that Alex is in the house and still a threat.

in e75, Jay and Tim return to Tim's house, ready to face Alex because they caught Brian's warning. By the time they get there though, Brian has already made his move against Alex - attacking him and spiriting him away to the address he'd left on the back of Alex's photo of Amy. Jay's attention is snagged irrevocably on the tape that Brian had highlighted in the previous entry, and tries to look for it, only to realize that Tim had already grabbed it and hidden it in his pocket. Jay fails to be rational about this, steals the tape, and runs off on his own.

e76 is the footage that was on the tape Jay stole, which picks up from the events showcased all the way back in e32/33 - when Jess and Jay finally realized that they Were in a connected room for a reason bc they were both experiencing the same (Operator induced) symptoms, they briefly split up to pack their things so they could leave the hotel for a safer second location. They were interrupted before they could leave though - Jay goes into her room and finds nothing but the note with the code to the safe and then gets chased off from the hotel by Masky. e32/33 is Jay's footage of this event, e76 was Brian's footage of that same day.

Jessica wasn't in the room when Jay looked for her because Tim and Brian conspired to get her out of there before Jay could talk to her. Jessica was not embroiled in the thick of things like Jay and the others were - in essence, there was still time to save her before she got a chance to truly devolve; Jay really does mean well, but his intent was to explain what was going on and interrogate her version of events, which would have made things worse for her, so totheark intervened to prevent this by kidnapping her. They were interrupted by Alex, who attempted to kill Jessica again in his attempt to spare her (Alex is also ultimately well-meaning, but we'll get to this later), and Brian and Jessica wind up split up bc Brian stayed to beat Alex back and Jessica ran off on her own, where she encountered the Operator and collapsed.

[Part of the Operator's influence is its tendency to cause seizures/collapse in people, and another aspect is its spiriting away of their bodies. All of the College Era footage of Alex attacking the other cast members - it's more or less clear that they did not die. There is some ambiguity in this, but I don't believe Alex successfully killed anyone in that first brush with things though I do think it's likely he was Trying to. A very significant aspect of what the Operator Does is the Ark - this is the pitch black place we've seen Tim wind up in in e65. It's unclear exactly what that is or what it does, but it is intrinsically linked to the Operator. In the comics it's implied to be alive and hungry, a place both the living and dead are able to enter, Brian (and Tim) are especially implied to have been able to navigate the ark with some success, although it's also shown that going there At All means leaving some part of yourself behind. In essence, the Ark is always taking bites of the people inside it, but there are ways to avoid being Swallowed Whole. When the Operator takes people - and it's taken corpses, unconscious people, and conscious people - it takes them to the Ark. When Jessica disappears at the end of e76, that was the Operator taking her, but this does not mean she is DEAD.

In fact, Tim entering the frame at the end of the entry is significant. The timeline of season 2 is extremely difficult to navigate, because as you watch videos it seems to fold back on itself. Jay wakes up in e27 with no memory of how he got there, he leaves the hotel in e33 with the tapes from the safe, and then basically every entry from 35 to 52 is Jay uploading OLD footage that took place BEFORE e27 was ever uploaded. This is important with regards to Tim - although we see Tim and Brian working together/separate in entries like 35 and 45, we don't really get any indication that they're doing anything over the months that Jay spends reviewing that old footage and posting it to the channel. This is because they'd been separated.

Tim isn't lying when he says he has no memory or awareness of working with totheark. Regardless of whether you interpret him under the mask as a System Alter (as in DID) or believe he was working under his own volition, but experienced memory loss just like Jay did, Tim does not know what's going on. The expression he wears at the end of e76 is because he doesn't know how he got in the forest - either because he Switched OR bc he had his own encounter with the Operator that night and wound up with memory loss from its influence. BUT it's important bc he was in the same vicinity as Jessica - when she escaped the Ark, it's likely they would still be in the same vicinity. A core aspect to Tim's character is his drive to help people; regardless of whether or not Tim understood anything that was happening, if he'd run into Jessica (panicked and lost in the woods with no memory of how she got there - sounds familiar, right?) he would have reached out to help her get help.]

Briefly cutting ahead to e82 bc it contains footage from this point in the chronological timeline. Jay has just watched the tape that Tim was hiding and discovered that Tim knew that Jessica was alive and arguably knew where she was <- again, if Tim had encountered Jessica in Rosswood after the events from the e76 footage he would have helped her, and later, he would have known that despite Jay's best intentions Jay would not be good for her and would try his best to keep them separate, playing dumb and making sure that Jay didn't know anything about that possible connection. In this e82 footage, Jay calls Tim and agrees that Tim made the best choice by doing this, admits he's confused and extremely disoriented, and apologizes and says they should try to meet back up and work together again. The Operator interrupts him, and he collapses. Tim specifies he never received that call/voicemail.

e77 is the direct follow up event to Jay's collapse from the e82 footage. Despite his phone call where he apologized and said he understood, Jay is now acting paranoid and aggressive again - this is because of the Operator's influence. He attempts to attack Tim with the knife, and Tim restrains him and says he's going to check out the college alone because Jay is behaving erratically and can't be trusted. He plans to return to let Jay out afterwards.

in e78/79, Brian breaks into Tim's house and lets Jay out himself. He wants Tim and Jay both to confront Alex in Benedict Hall (the address left on Amy's photo). Jay follows Tim to the college, but Jay can't get into that particular building and settles for watching across the street.

QUADRANT is a significant upload. There's ambiguity in it like there is in all totheark uploads, but I believe that this is Brian's attempt to warn Tim and Jay that he's officially lost control of the situation (of Alex in particular) - they all need to bunker down and stay in place bc he doesn't know what's going to happen anymore and that means they're all at risk

[What, exactly, Brian wants to happen between Jay, Tim, and Alex is extremely unclear, personally I'm not even sure he knows. It's a running thread throughout the entirety of the series that Brian wants Alex dead - the two of them were Best Friends in college, but when Alex attacked him in college as shown in e51 (56-42 tape) the betrayal left him broken in a myriad of ways and he's never forgiven Alex this. Brian hates Alex, he says it constantly, BUT despite his constant threats and promises to kill Alex, when they're in the same space together he never seems to be able to follow through. Instead, most of his tangible plans seem to be putting Alex in Tim's path <- Tim is not easy to predict; sometimes he'll react by throwing punches first and asking questions later, and sometimes he'll refuse to lift a hand to do anything other than offer it as Help. I don't think Brian can actually bring himself to kill Alex on his own, which is why he didn't do so during the months he had him successfully restrained, and I don't think it's insignificant that he chose Tim as an alternative tool when Tim is statistically more likely to try to help someone than kill them. That's interpretation though.]

But, the problem with Quadrant is the problem with most of the totheark uploads - it's extremely difficult to parse (even I might not be interpreting it correctly). Whether this is intentional due to apathy or a side effect Brian can't help (as i've speculated before), the messages are difficult to understand. If this is a warning, it's not one that succeeds in its goal - neither Tim nor Jay are adequately prepared.

in entry 80 Jay enters Benedict Hall on his own and encounters Alex. Alex shoots Jay. Jay dies. The Operator takes his corpse into the Ark.

in entry 83, Brian attempts to team up with Tim again. They'd worked together before - although Tim can't remember it - but seemed to have had a permanent split somewhere around Season 2.*** Since Tim doesn't have any genuine context for Why Brian would be pursuing this, and because Tim blames Brian for not warning them properly that Alex was loose, and because of the potential that Brian had something to do with the 'YOUR FAULT' / papers surrounding Jay's displayed body in Tim's house (Personally, I think Brian seems too stumbled/taken aback in the hallway for it to have been him), Tim rejects this and the two of them get into some Operator Induced Looney Tunes bullshit, and when it seems like Tim might genuine move to strike Brian, Brian seemingly chooses to fall to his death instead. Brian dies. The Operator takes his corpse into the Ark.

[***At first this was likely solely bc of Tim's memory issues. However, around that time is also when Brian discovered Tim's medical history - the fact that he'd been potentially encountering the Operator since he was a child. It is canonical that the Operator is like a disease - it's spread from person to person - and whether it was intentional or not, Tim seems to have been ground zero - the way Alex reacts to the glitch in the camera in the e84 footage from Marble Hornet's initial auditions can confirm this. He seems irritated and surprised by it, like it's the first time he's seen something like that happen, immediately after meeting Tim for the first time. Everyone thought Alex was the one who brought the Operator into the ring - even Alex thought this - but it was following Tim. After discovering this, Brian can't forgive Tim of this either, any trust he had towards Tim has been shattered, but there are uploads he makes where he seems almost sad about this. Almost bereft now that he's working alone and watching Tim and Jay work together, but despite that he can't get over the perceived betrayal enough to genuinely attempt to reconnect.]

E84 is mostly the footage from the tape Brian was carrying in his pocket when he died - of the initial Marble Hornets film project auditions. I find it particularly devastating to dwell on which tapes characters chose to keep close to them throughout everything. The 56-42 tape of Alex attacking Brian in college, Alex kept in a hidden compartment in the desk by his bed in his apartment (despite the fact that he'd burnt or gotten rid of seemingly every other tape he'd filmed from that era). This e84 audition tape that Brian kept in his pocket. If I think about it too long I go insane. BUT Also just funny to note that Tim is the one who posted this entry, and even though he seemingly left everything else untouched, he went through and cut out the whole of the footage from his audition. Fun little character detail lol.

E85 is footage of Tim idling around, seeming a little lost now that Jay and Brian are both dead, and he doesn't know where Alex is. He seems to realize after a while that Alex will probably eventually come looking for him at his house, and resolves to watch it from across the street instead. Proven right when Alex does indeed show up and intends to burn Tim's house down [side note: confirming in a way that Alex was the one who burned Jay's old apartment down as showcased in e25. bc of the ###### upload, a lot of people assume that totheark burned it down, but that upload is actually a kind of twisted way of getting Jay to leave the place and be too paranoid to return, which is why he's safely in a hotel when his apartment burns]. Alex admits he'd also thought he'd been the source for the Operator, but now knows it was Tim the whole time. Attempts to goad Tim into staying in the house to burn to death, but also says Tim should go find him if he won't so that they can end things.

e86. OOF. Tim has indeed gone out to find Alex to end things, but despite the fact that Alex is still trying to kill him, Tim attempts to reason with him. This is where Alex explains that he's been doing everything he'd done in an attempt to cull the infection - he doesn't truly understand what's going on, but has been able to tell that the Operator is an influence that spreads from person to person and causes massive life-interrupting symptoms, and so Alex finally fell to attempting to kill everyone Half to stop the spread of the Operator before it could infect new people and Half to stop the progression of the illness in everyone before they could wind up hurt worse (mercy kill, in a way). Alex is not working for/with the Operator, he is actively attempting to work against it BUT, whether due to his own ignorance or possibly the Operator itself distorting his ability to think clearly, he has also been making things worse in his own way.

[Think it's important to denote here that basically EVERYONE involved was making things worse in their own ways. Jay's insatiable need to find answers was wreaking havoc and making things worse - his stalking of Tim and Alex caused more conflicts than it ever would have solved, he would have dragged Jessica back into the middle of everything without sparing a thought to the consequences, and even he acknowledges that continuing to look for answers is having a negative effect on him, but he still can't make himself stop. Brian I think was attempting to help, but his unclear motivations and his inability to communicate clearly tended to make the others more paranoid, which fed into the conflict and prolonged things. Alex was trying to stop the Operator, trying to keep the infection contained and prevent the suffering of those already infected, but the conflict he caused made the situation worse instead. TIM, though, is more or less proof that there is a way to continue living life while infected while also minimizing the symptoms - all honesty currently I do not believe this is due to the medication he takes. Brian is also taking these meds throughout the course of the series but they do not seem to make a big impact for him. Tim says he was 'doing fine and getting better' during the GAP he caught between the events of e76/33 and Jay finding (and stalking) him again in e53 <- I think that's because Tim was not actively embroiling himself in the midst of the Operator's influence by seeking to understand, or find answers, or seek revenge; he was going to work, and minding his own business, and keeping himself busy. ANYWAY]

Despite the fact that Tim is doing his best to reason with Alex in e86, Alex's dogged attempts to kill him means that he's having to try to fight Alex off physically. This leads to Alex being stabbed once. After that, Tim backs off for a moment, wavering, but when the Operator shows up in the room, Tim drops the camera and begins stabbing Alex repeatedly. This is due to the Operator's influence (hence why I'm not convinced Tim's medication does anything significant in fending it off, the meds are more or less placebo to me - the Removal of yourself from the midst of conflict and Rejection of the impulse to tangle yourself back into it is what I think makes a difference. Like how with quicksand, fighting it tends to wear you out And drag you deeper down inside of it, whereas keeping calm and stable gives you the opportunity to get out and free yourself. Or maybe like Radiation - the further you get yourself from the Source of it the less Damage you're dealt by it). When Tim finally stops, Alex still pleads with him to get rid of whoever Tim implied Alex to have missed earlier and then kill himself, because he still believes that's the safest course of action. Then, Alex dies. The Operator takes his corpse into the ark.

Tim collapses on the steps at the end of the footage. This is due to the Operator's influence still. Tim is not dead. Marble Hornets isn't a movie, and the channel exists inside the canon of the series - essentially, the way the story Works, the Creators Behind Marble Hornets aren't uploading the entries, the Characters Inside Marble Hornets are (hence what makes it unfiction). We know that Tim isn't dead at the end of this entry because Tim is the one who goes home and uploads the entry to youtube so that the audience is aware of what's going on. Tim is still alive. He is the only one left alive.

BUT. Entry 87. This is where it's Confirmed that Tim did seemingly encounter Jessica after the events showcased in the e76 footage. When Tim woke up lost in the woods, he likely ran into Jessica also lost in the woods, and helped her find her way out and got her an appointment with a doctor just like we saw him try with Jay in e75. Jessica did not die - she's the one Tim was referring to in e86 when he tells Alex 'you missed someone', because Alex also thought that Jess had died and listed her as dead in his monologue. Jessica is alive, and has been getting better because Tim was able to successfully keep her separated from all the bullshit - that's why he tells her that Jay moved. He knows that telling her Jay died would only bring her right back into the midst of things, send her searching on her own quest for answers, and send her spiraling again, so he lies.

We don't know what happens to Tim though. Entry 86 and 87 were uploaded in very close proximity to each other, so it's possible that his seeming set back in symptoms (coughing fit, collapsing, possible seizure) is because he's too close to the center of things. It's also possible that he's struggling to even try pulling himself out of the center of things - that maybe he can't bring himself to cope with the Operator's influence and reach 'remission' at all anymore. It's ambiguous, that's kind of my interpretation of the crossroads at the end of the entry - the one that cuts Right before we know what road Tim took. He could be planning on going back to a 'regular life' - keeping himself out of the conflict and keeping his head down and hopefully succeeding in 'doing fine, and getting better'. OR it's possible that he'll wind up in his own cycle - just like Jay, and Brian, and Alex - making things worse and spiraling and being unable to move on or escape the Operator's influence before it's too late.

Personally though, I do think Tim succeeds at getting better. I think he's done it too many times successfully (after he left adolescent inpatient care, and again after college, and again around the Chronological timeline of season 2) to fall into the glue trap at this point. I think he left Jessica on her own bc the proximity would be too much of a risk in creating a kind of feedback loop, and went back to work, and got a new house, and lives a quiet life as healthily as he can (albeit grieved by what he's lost).

(On the other coin though, in the sequel comics, Jessica is certainly wiggling her way right into the lure all over again ;3c)

!!! And that's the end of Marble Hornets!! I hope this long winded explanation helped to clear things up, and if there's anything that I forgot or something you're still confused about never in a million years do you need to hesitate to ask!! I would be more than happy to explain some more if you'd like ;3c

[koffein-art-archive]

Marble Hornets: Creativity through the static.

What was it that inspired you when you were younger? Was it a tv show? Perhaps a video game or even a series of books? Boundless creativity at your finger tips that led to portals that could whisk you away to different lands. To escape real life.

At the end of the 2000’s, and onto the 2010’s, there laid a piece of media that many would flock to in their time to indulge, engage, and escape through.

A simple web series called ‘Marble Hornets’.

Marble Hornets is, considered to be by the internet as an ARG, (an ARG standing for ‘Alternate Reality Game’), a web series that started on the video sharing platform Youtube. The first upload of the channel was uploaded onto the site on the twentieth of June, 2009. ‘Introduction’, a simple title for something that would grow into much more as time would go on. You never could expect the story to go down the road it did.

The contents of the story is summed up quite nicely in the first video. Jay, the main protagonist and cameraman of the series, explains that one of his old buddies from college, Alex Kralie, was trying to create a student film called ‘Marble Hornets’. His crew complained about his stress and irritability throughout the project, and Alex finally stopped production on the film due to ‘unworkable conditions’. When asked about what would happen to the tapes from production, Alex replied with two simple words; ‘Burn them’.

Throughout the series, several strange, or what could even be described as paranormal, events unfold for Jay and the rest of the cast as he goes about his journey to try and document odd things around him, wanting to know what exactly was going on with Alex after viewing the tapes. Little did he know that by doing so he would seal his fate, as well as the lives of those around him.

Marble Hornets ended on the twentieth of June, 2014, totaling in eighty-seven entries. Or one hundred and thirty-three entries if you include totheark, a separate youtube account that would respond and even sometimes hack the main Marble Hornets channel, contributing videos for the series as a whole. Though the series it self might get a little confusing at times, and it’s elements of storytelling might drag on at points, it’s still a great series to watch when times are a little tough and you need something to focus on. To dip into something out of this world and become immersed in the lore and characters.

Marble Hornets is immersive in the world it brings to the viewer, whether it be a quaint town, a lovely forest with luscious and vibrant trees, and or a strange entity that stalks those that encounter it.

Now to get into the meat and potatoes of this essay, the following topics will now be run down; the creativity of Marble Hornets, the mental illness subplot, and the macabre essence carefully sewn throughout the series as a whole.

To many fans, Marble Hornets is a wonderful piece of storytelling. It can be attributed with inspiring many people within the fan-base. Examples of this being the creation of what is known as the ‘Slenderverse’. The Slenderverse is typically described as ‘a series on the web, usually in the form of online video storytelling, that surrounds the mythos of the infamous Slenderman.’. A wildly popular set of series that took inspiration from Marble Hornets are the two video based web series ‘tribetwelve’ and ‘everymanhybrid’. And as the years pass by, more web series inspired by Marble Hornets continue to pop up.

Another creative aspect of the Marble Hornets series would be the countless fan works; from fans that dress up as the characters, to countless fanart and fanfictions. Some fanart and fanfiction tend to use the source material to create their own headcanons, or rather ideas that they have about characters in the series. While others are deconstructing the entire plot and rearranging Marble Hornets into an entirely new story.

The final point that needs to be talked about would be the visual and audio effects that the series is well known for. It’s no secret that the series didn’t have the best budget, but the crew made do with what they had and created something both wonderful and rather unsettling. From visual effects, such as static or cuts in the video feed itself, on the cameras used in production, to various distortions in audio that could make one's ears bleed.

A fun fact to note would be the use of tapes in the series. The tapes didn’t actually work on the cameras used to film. Instead, they were added in to give that ‘found footage’ staple that is unique for Marble Hornets.

Now let's get into a more ‘sensitive’ subject.

Marble Hornets has a few elements of mental illness. It deals with people who have gone through intense mental health, with their lives constantly being on the edge of danger from tapping into things that they were never meant to see with their own eyes. it’s discussed by the characters or physically shown through one's actions.

One of the major characters, Tim Wright, can be seen as one such character. He’s a clear advocate of mental illness as well as the importance of keeping your mental health in check.

Tim has suffered from intense mental health issues since his early childhood, even being sent to a hospital by his mother when things got bad. He’s constantly seen taking medication, in the form of pills, whenever his symptoms flare up. His symptoms ranging from blackouts, this is most known to be when Masky comes out, a sort of alter ego that seems to have appeared even when he was younger, especially with his bouts of anger issues and violent tendencies that was noted by doctors.

Another character that also deals with some of these symptoms is Jay, caused by prolonged exposure to the Operator. He gets gradually worse as the videos progress, and is even told by Tim to go to the doctor. When he doesn’t and continues digging deeper, Jay loses himself near the end of the series. This is something that can happen to a lot of un-medicated/untreated individuals of mental illness.

For a while now, fans have been able to see themselves through these characters. Either by actions or personality. Marble Hornets has often been used by fans as a means of comfort or even coping when dealing with their own issues.

Seeing a character deal with similar issues that the viewer has been dealing with can be something incredible, and not often seen in other forms for media nowadays, it was especially less prevalent back when Marble Hornets was still updating.

Marble Hornets is most known for it being a horror themed web series. But what kind of horror? The macabre? Something terrifying that makes one's skin crawl? Is it the endless fear of the unknown and wondering if or when you will be caught and killed?

In a way, it’s all of these things, all carefully sewn together to make the viewer want to watch more until the very end.

Various members of the series are plagued with stalkers, threats made towards them through cryptic videos as well as in-person encounters, and are always struck by the unknown. They live each day in paranoia, wondering if or when they will die. Be it from the operator, or by their own undoing.

They are paranoid about when they will be attacked next, or if they'll even survive the next attack. They are paranoid about being constantly surveyed, and fear the vulnerability that their stalkers can clearly see from them, whether it be through a camera feed or by being viewed from windows.

The static and noises that plague their dreams, the thing that stands in the corner of their eye, just there long enough to give them a fright and make them think they are going mad.

No one knows who the operator is, nor do they know its intentions. All that is known is that it wants something from the main cast of characters. Something that will cost the lives of them and others. Destruction, possibly.

The operator is perceived to be a type of entity, or even an eldritch being that stalks people. It controls people, infecting them with the urge to kill and cause mass destruction. It uses the main cast as puppets to do it’s dirty work.

Now doesn’t that sound scary? Something that can never really be proven to be real, or seen as fake by outsiders looking in, and having nowhere to turn to for help? It is scary. And that’s something that Marble Hornets does right.

To wrap this whole thing up as neatly as possible, there are many aspects of Marble Hornets that can still be discussed. The atmosphere, the story-line, even the various scenes that involved trees and forests. Marble Hornets is something so unique to the early 2010’s, something stuck in a perfect loop from 2009 to 2014 that would be very hard to replicate.

Marble Hornets is in no ways a masterpiece, it still has its faults. And that’s where the series shines the most. If it were perfect, it wouldn’t be, now would it? Countless questions still left unanswered, hearts aching at the ending of the series.

The series as a whole is a loop of unhappiness.

That’s what Marble Hornets is.

[ask-marble-pasta-boys]

Hi! I'm new to the blog, do you mind doing a brief summary of what's happened so far? (You don't have to if you don't want to) and how are you all? Also *Hugs you all*

It’s going to be a long posts!

WARNING: Talks about killing of children, depression, mental issues and the likes. You don’t like that shit? Don’t fuckin read. 

MH: NOTE: Hoodie/Brian Masky/Tim are one in the same. It’s just a persona they put on when killing. It’s not a different personality- they are one in the same.

Hoodie/Brian: Hoodie suffers from Scopophobia. He can’t stand people looking at his skin. It will bring panic attacks among other things. He’s doing exposure therapy. He will wear his mask and hood, but will take his gloves off. Or he will keep his gloves on but will have half his face shown. His eyes must always be covered, in his mind, they are dead. (Look up the Fic tag to read some of these stories I’ve done for this) 

He has a “Sin” book. It has the name and information of every child he has ever had to kill. He believes he is the only one who should kill a child out of the Proxies since he is already damned. Masky/Tim: Has dated Toby, but I think I might drop that idea. It just don’t ship it anymore, but if you guys want I guess I’ll keep it?Tim has dated Jay in the past. Afraid I haven’t done much with him really… Jay/Skully: (TAG: To The Ark) Oh boy- here we go. SPOILERS TO MY To the Ark stuff:Skully was sending Tim/Brian nightmares with codes, many codes (that ya’ll had to decode because I’m a dick) about where he was, what the ark was, and how they must find him. He is alive in the ark. He’s done many fucked up things to trick the others into finding him (This story line is put on hold for a bit, but I will do it! I might just…redo a bit) Alex: …He’s kinda here for my crack-ish ship? And a tool Skully was using at one point. So he’s a blank slate that I can do anything with!—CreepyPastas.Toby: Dated(is dating Tim?) the goof ball. He and BEN have a prank war going on every so often. Has told many stories about how he and the Proxy team got together and shit. Knew about MH in the past, but doesn’t remember that now. No one does. Eyeless Jack: He has a book that belongs to Slender. He has a lot of power (as in social, he’s not that strong) over the others because of this book. This book has the answers on everything from How Jack came to be Eyeless Jack, to how to open the ARK, to how to maybe kill Slender. He protects this book.At one point Jack was a toddler, that was a thing. (Tag: Toddler AU) 

BEN: BEN had a crush on both Toby and Jeff. When Toby and Tim got together, he backed off Toby- sticking to just pranks with him. Jeff at on point tricked BEN into coming out into the middle of the woods, which lead to a freak out and a strain on their friendship. Jeff is also Ace. BEN has the important job to tell the others where Slender is, incase they want to hitch a ride with him to go to some other country without sneaking there.He has also deleted all information of Marble Hornets. The Pasta’s can not look up or find any info on MH, though the public still can. BEN is the only one who knows where everyone is, at every given moment. That’s the most important stuff from the past. And the rest of them?... don’t really have much yet! I’ve been kinda dicking around for the past year. This blog is a blank slate in most ways. I just go the way my followers go. If they make an ask about if X and Y I might do something with that, or maybe not. I have no set plans really. I’m down for almost everything, so I keep going, waiting to see where this story goes. BONUS: Habit has been here more then once. He has taken over Toby’s body at one point.

[hiccup446]

The Pastas at the Beach

- Okay, so this shit starts before they all get there. - Toby doesn't wanna wear sun screen - Sally can't find a bathing suit - Ben us fighting with Jeff about going in the water - Clockwork and Ej can't find their goggles. - Masky can tell it's gonna be a f u n day - Eventually they all get out of the house and are on their way to the beach in this c r a m p e d f u c k i n g c a r - Sally and Jeff are playing the," HE'S TOUCHING ME!!" game - Slender threatens to turn the car around 7 times. - They get there. - Toby grabs his shit with Sally and they run to the beach. - Jay grabs as much shit as he can and follows. - Hoodie does the same. - Now they're all on the beach. - 12 beach towels are laid down. - Slendy sleeps on 3 of them. - Ben sort of just sits on one and watches the water. - He has small panic attacks when the waves are really big. - Toby and Masky are way far in. - Like, so far, that it's hard to get back to shore. - Ej is making sand castles with Sally and Lazari - Nina, Jane, Clock and Lui are playing volleyball - Hoodie is diving head first into the waves because, fuck it. - Alex kind of huffs and puffs on the sand for a while because he's a whiny b i t c h - But then his boyfriend, Jay comes over. - Jay wants him to go into the water. - Alex still fucking w h i n e s - Until Jay whispers," You can do whatever you want with me when we get home~" - Alex BOOKS IT to the water. - Alex is now giving Jay piggy back rides in the water - Jeff is in the water, just swimming but he's s o l o n e l y - He's not hanging out with Toby and Masky because fuck that shit - He doesn't wanna make sand castles - You cant have an odd number in volleyball - And he doesn't wanna bother Alex because then he'll be a dead mother fucker. - Then he sees Ben. - He walks to Ben - "Come in the water." - "No" -"Why?" - "I'll drown." - "You're a. Ghost, Ben." - "Whatever" - "Pussy." - Jeff walks off - Now Ben is mad. - He's /not/ a pussy. - So he gets up. - And he goes to the water. - He gets in. - He swims to Jeff. - He's just tall enough to touch the ground - Jeff smiles at Ben. - Jeff's proud of his boyfriend. - But Ben is freaking out. - " Jeff, I gotta go back." - Jeff's only response is putting Ben on his shoulders and walking further into the water. - Ben freaks out for 10 seconds before calming down - All the pastas watch the sunset. - They pack up. - In the car, they're all cramped, sandy and uncomfortable. - Sally and Lazari each fall asleep on one of Ej's shoulders - Toby falls asleep on Masky's shoulder. - Jay and Alex are cuddling. - They both silently agree to continue Jay's deal tomorrow cause they're to damn t i r e d - They all take a shower when the get home. - They get in fluffy pj's and go to bed.

[brittlebutch]

if its alright, I'd love to know why you picked them! tbh partner choices for pokemon AUs always have me curious and these look like good choices! (like for example, having mimikyu for Tim makes sense! and i'd love to know why you chose the rest of his team) (and tbh i would've asked sooner but i've been 'head full, thoughts of spiderman' for the past couple days lol)

no problem!! i’d absolutely Love to talk about it lmao, i hope you don’t mind this getting Long

So, for Tim I think that he found the Cubone first, on one of his last escapes into the woods before he was released from the hospital. I like it because of its mask, but mostly because it’s lonely and prone to tears. Tim doesn’t think very much of himself, but he IS a very natural and empathetic caretaker - he would be really good at taking care of a small and orphaned pokemon - especially one that reminds him a little bit of himself. I picked Duoduo because it has two heads that never sleep at the same time - one is always awake to defend itself and the other. The two brains also can communicate telepathically with one another!! Tim is absolutely not jealous of this ability, trust him. 

Yamask isn’t technically tim’s pokemon. He found it in his apartment after a black out, and doesn’t remember picking it up, but it refuses to leave. Tim doesn’t care enough to force it to leave, but they’re both very aware of the fact that He is not technically the one who owns it, even if it still follows him around. “Each of them carries a mask that used to be its face when it was human. Sometimes they look at it and cry” - Tim knows that some part of him relates, even if he’s pretty sure he wishes he didn’t. When Tim throws away the Mask at the end of the series, Yamask digs it back out and refuses to let go of it - it carries two masks these days. 

I already talked a bit about the mimikyu because it hides its face to try and fit in and appear less scary, but also because, in its busted form “It stands in front of a mirror, trying to fix its broken neck as if its life depended on it. It has a hard time getting it right, so it’s crying inside” and in its disguised form “it’s a quiet and lonely pokemon, but if you try to look at what’s under its rag, it will become agitated and resist violently” - Tim tries Very Hard to just fit in and get on with his life in broader society, but his chronic lack of friendships means that he’s not very good at it, and the way he has to continually search for whatever work will hire him means that he’s Extremely dependent on trying to appear Neurotypical and acceptable to customers and employers (but also isn’t very good at it), and we do see him protest very strongly when he’s literally unmasked by Alex, but also when he’s more figuratively unmasked by Jay’s publication of his medical records. 

Jay’s team includes Klefki (admittedly, mostly because of “KEY”, but also because it’s a collector who is willing ‘to sneak into people’s homes’ to get what it wants, which is Jay through and through). He has an Oddish because it’s very nocturnal and spends the nights “roaming actively” however it pleases (just like Jay’s bizarre choices to do a bulk of his investigating in the middle of the night). Sentret is a nervous pokemon who can raise itself up on its tail to get a better view of its surroundings - Jay and Brian both spend a lot of time Watching, but Jay’s is a lot more nervous than Brian’s is (I talk more about that when I get into Brian’s team lol), so a sentry pokemon both resembles him AND would be good for him to have since it’ll cry out to warn others if it sees something concerning. Zigzazoon is a Super curious pokemon - literally described as “relentlessly wandering everywhere at all times. The pokemon does so because it is very curious. It becomes interested in anything that it happens to see” - I like to think that Jay and Zigzazoon were both aimlessly searching the woods one night and stumbled upon each other, and then got almost instantly invested and never split up. 

I do kind of like the dramatic irony of Brian having one or more flying type pokemon on his team considering the circumstances of his death, but Pidgey specifically I chose because it’s a pretty conflict-avoidant pokemon - more known for kicking up sand to hide and escape in instead of going straight for a fight. Brian’s first instinct in almost every fight we see him in is to run first, but (like Pidgey) he can ‘ferociously strike back’ if the need arises. Arbok I chose because it’s described as having a “vengeful nature - it won’t give up the chase, no matter how far”, which is a Very Hoody sentiment. 

(I did figure out a timeline for Brian’s Arbok - it was an Ekans that he just had because he likes snakes, and they were both pretty content with its bite being ‘harmless’, but was accompanying brian to the hospital filming, and after Alex left Brian for the Operator, Ekans evolved because it needed to be able to defend Brian in a way that hadn’t been necessary before. the two of them are both traumatized by what happened)

Haunter is similarly dedicated to stalking its victims - “it lurks inside walls to keep an eye on its foes”; also “If you get the feeling of being watched in darkness when nobody is around, Haunter is there” and also so is Brian. Natu is another flying type, although it can’t actually fly yet, instead it hops around, and “The look in its eyes given the impression that it’s carefully observing you. If you approach it, Natu will hop away”, very much like Brian startling and bolting like a deer in the majority of his appearances lmao. Pokemon that stalk and watch their prey would be important to Brian, who seems to take the role of an observer/herder for the majority of the series, but having them be Offensive would also be a priority - to protect others or himself, while still seeming distant and eerie (there’s no way that Brian doesn’t Actively choose to make himself seem scary) 

For Alex, Umbreon is a pokemon that hunts at night and strikes fear into the hearts of anyone around it - it also hides silently in the darkness and waits for its foes to make a move. Alex isn’t really an active hunter? He goes after people for sure, but also seems very reliant on making them come to him (He calls Jay and Jay and Jessica come to him when he tries to shoot them in the woods, he’s in the woods when Hoody and Masky try to get Jessica out of the situation and he almost seems to just stumble upon them, he waits for Jay to wander into the basement, waits for Tim for weeks before lighting his house on fire, and then waits longer for Tim to go back to the college, etc). Houndoom’s pokedex entries talk a lot about the sound of it - which reminded me of Alex’s insistence on his monologues, and the way he’ll scream at people while trying to track them down (mostly Tim). It also says that ‘if you are burned from the flames it shoots from its mouth, the pain will never go away’, which makes me think of the way that Everyone got reinvolved in this stuff years after the fact because they just couldn’t seem to let it go - like a wound that never healed. 

I chose Lycanroc because it’s described in two different ways: it’s Midday form is “a trustworthy partner who will absolutely never betray its trainer” and its Midnight form claims that it “will attack with no regard for its own safety” and “doesn’t seem to mind getting hurt at all - as long as it can finish off its opponent”. Alex gets stabbed multiple times before Tim finally gets him on the floor to attack him relentlessly, and is attacked by hoody/masky multiple times earlier in the series, but he never backs down or out. and Trust and loyalty are qualities that I thought were important for Alex’s team to have because 1) he’s paranoid and Extremely distrustful of everyone who used to be his friend, so having a team that would solidly have his back would be important to him, but 2) a team that is Willing to follow Alex’s instruction even against people and pokemon that they know and are familiar with would also be key to this sort of set up. They’re not happy about what they’re doing, but they’ll do it anyway because it’s what Alex wants, and he’s the one that they actually trust and listen to. Growlithe was chosen for its trustworthy and loyal nature as well, although I do think that Alex has had Growlithe the longest - it’s probably the most upset by the change in circumstances, so Alex probably uses it the least these days (not out of spite? He definitely doesn’t hurt or abuse his pokemon, he only uses them offensively as an absolute last resort and I don’t think he tries to actively hurt the other’s teams either - though he will defend himself thoroughly if the need arises)

Some honorable mentions are Absol - a pokemon that warns of impending danger but often gets mistaken as a harbinger of doom instead, which reminded me a lot of totheark (particularly with Entry ######), but I couldn’t decide if it’d fit better with Tim or Brian. Lucario is a good hunter that strikes without mercy and ‘finds out things it would rather not know, so it gets stressed out easily’ a lot like Alex. Munna might have been a good fit for Tim since it’s a ‘dream eater’, but the pokedex entries didn’t put a lot of emphasis on nightmares, so I wasn’t sure how much I liked it. Was also tempted to put pokemon like “Salazzle” or “Tsareena” on Alex’s team just as a cheeky little wink to the ‘alex is Definitely a weeb’ talk that went on during tim’s last livestream lmao. Tim also would have been good with a Phantump i think, since they’re literally the spirits of children who got lost in the woods, which tim would empathize heavily with, and because he’d be a good caretaker for it the same way he would be with Cubone. Comfey would have been good for any of them as like an aromatherapy pokemon - all of these guys need some mental health days to just Relax and be calm and safe for once.