#and then season 3 happens and the entire facade Shatters like glass

[ceramicbeetle]

i know tim being patient zero for the operator is kind of super obvious but then sometimes i remember the entry where the operator shows up during alex's 5th birthday party or whatever and i bang on the walls like WHAT DOES IT MEANNNN WHY DID THEY ADD THAT

I LOVE that entry because I have my own little interpretation of that one :3 I think I’ve probably posted about it before but I like to talk SO

To me, that was definitely a video that TTA edited, not a video he found. Brian has been the one hammering in the “It’s all Alex’s fault” from the very beginning, but because he very rarely just outright Says things, the point of this video was to present that thesis statement, and not necessarily to provide proof/evidence of it.

Like, in every video the Operator actually appears in, it is a tangible, physical presence in the scene. Other characters can see and react to it, and it takes up space and is beholden to whatever lighting happens to be in the scene. Except for this video, when it appears as a presence only after the lights have gone out, in a space of the frame that is already occupied by people:

It’s not at the right height or distance in the frame to be actually present in the room, and the quality of the image doesn’t match the absence of light in the shot. Also none of the characters in the scene react to it, even though most people can see in the dark better than a camera can. So, to me, the Operator isn’t actually present with Alex at the party, it was edited in by Brian, specifically, to communicate his idea that Alex is the one to blame for everything that went wrong.

Brian doesn’t find out that Tim was the one with a tangible history with the Operator before the college years until around Entry #59/60. So at this point, it makes the most sense to him that Alex was the one who brought the Operator into the group to begin with. This video is the first time he actually presents that idea instead of just alluding to the idea that Alex was keeping secrets and hiding things. It’s basically just the nonverbal version of “DECAY” where Brian says “You caused this”, lol

(Your mileage on this interpretation may vary, of course, given that this birthday footage was donated to Marble Hornets, not shot by Troy and the gang, so if they wanted the Operator to be in the scene they would have had to edit it in no matter what. But I think they’re good enough editors that I think they could have framed it more consistently in the shot if they wanted it to seem like it was actually in the scene. So, to me, the fact that it does look so blatantly edited — especially since the staticky and stark black/white style is a very core totheark aesthetic — is a way to imply that it was a character editing the footage, and not anyone behind the scenes)