#anyway. the 'infection' this time around was more of a glitchy physical corruption thing? rather than a mind corruption.

[maddieandangel]

Had a weird Hollow Knight-related dream a couple days ago, so I decided to draw a major scene I remembered from it dgsgshf

More context will be in the tags, for those interested!

[wishthefish916]

What Is Anti?

Holy fucking shit, I’ve literally had this saved as a draft on this site for MONTHS and just haven’t posted it out of spite, but if ever there was a call to action this is is. I published this theory a while ago, but I wasn’t completely happy with how I’d written it at the time so I took it down a few minutes later. I’d originally planned on never revisiting this again, but while developing a different theory which will probably be coming out soon, I was forced to revisit this work, so here we are. The science of Antisepticeye. What he is, where he came from and how to stop him. It’s a long one lads, so buckle the fuckle up.

If we’re ever gonna stop Anti, which is kinda the point of all this theorizing anyways, we have to know what exactly he is. To figure that out, we need to look into what effect he has on the world around him. Looking back at the ever expanding collection of Anti moments ((thank the heavens for his wiki and a whole lotta spare time)), the only thing that tied them all together is that the person in the webcam felt a sense of danger, be it from a jump scare or high suspense or even from hearing Anti’s name, the brain of the person who was recording sensed danger, which triggered a hormonal fight-or-flight response in their body in the moment Anti presents himself to us, and it’s usually preceded with a long gap in symptoms surfacing. What else do we know of that lies dormant for a long period of time before something triggers it to wake up which usually leads to chaos for whatever system it’s in? Jack A virus!

So what kind of virus is he? Well, in bigger videos like Say Goodbye and Kill JSE the person on the screen communicated that they felt physical effects of his presence, like nausea, aches, delirium and twitching and in some cases bleeding from the eyes. This tells me that if Anti is a virus he’s a biological one.

However I cannot ignore the biggest telltale sign of Anti showing up which is the game or webcam ((and sometimes the person)) glitching, audio disturbances, and corrupted html text((Zalgo)), which would tell me that he is a computer virus.

So lads, correct me if I’m wrong in saying that if Anti is indeed a virus, he wouldn’t be exclusively biological or the technological, but rather a biomechanical virus((I totally didn’t make up the term shush)).

Being made up of both biological and technological components mean infection could have happened just about anywhere. For the sake of clarity I’ll be breaking it up into biological and technological components as I’m fairly certain the two are symbiotically dependent on each other, considering the physical effects coincide almost completely with the technological ones.

If infection was controlled by the biological aspects, that would mean he was infected by contact with the virus. Either he touched it, breathed it in, ate or drank it, kissed it, or bled on it. For all the other egos who’ve been infected, this makes perfect sense. JJ cutting his finger right before the glitching shows up, Henrik almost never wearing his surgical mask when handling his infected patients, Chase heavily drinking in the moments leading up to Dark Silence, but Jack is a different story. The first time we saw Anti was in FNAF Sister Location, and that video had none of the above in it. That tells me he was infected well before he first showed himself, which makes sense logically. People don’t show flu symptoms as soon as they come into contact with the flu virus. It has to fester for a little bit before showing any symptoms, so why should Anti be any different?

So where did Jack get infected? If he did physically come into contact with the virus, it would have been in a live action video. From a storytelling perspective, it wouldn’t make sense to not showcase an important plot point clearly, and live action is the best medium to do such. That brought me to the 2015 pumpkin carving video, but nothing too suspicious happened. There was no bleeding, he didn’t eat anything, while he did kiss the pumpkin no bodily fluids were exchanged, and breathing it in or touching it seems implausible, because it would mean the virus already existed in his house, which means he would have been infected long before that video.

The only other live action videos he’s done, and correct me if I’m wrong, were the 700,000 subscriber ghost pepper challenge, the ALS Ice bucket challenge, and his regular vlogs. Sean is incredible at blurring the line between normal video and ego video, but these videos all had an underlying sincerity to them, where he was trying to communicate to us his appreciation or with the ALS video trying to get us to donate to charity, and I find it highly improbable for him to try and undermine the meaning behind them with an ego clue.

That leads me to believe that it were the technological aspects of the virus that infected him, and that’s where things get kinda tricky. Now, computer viruses are actually relatively easy to come into contact with, the problem definitely isn’t there. Maybe Jack was sent it in an email, maybe he went to a sketchy website, maybe he downloaded a game that had a little something extra up it’s sleeve. No biggie, it happens. The logic leap is when the computer virus starts affecting his real life person, even when he’s not using the computer, a la Say Goodbye.

I believe immersion is the answer. Immersion in game play is something a large portion of game developers strive for, making the player feel like they were actually inside their game. This is one of the hardest and most important things a story driven game developer can do, and also one of Jack’s key defining features in games he tends to really enjoy.

I think, in the story that Sean has created for us with the egos, when Jack is doing a lets play and he gets really immersed in the game, he actually does exist inside that game. That feeling of total immersion, those moments when his brain is unable to separate the game from reality, they happen because of him actually being inside the game on his computer. If Jack were to download a game that had Anti’s virus on it, and then became immersed in the game play experience long enough to come into contact with said virus, it’s entirely possible that the virus stayed with him when he left the game/no longer was immersed.

Well, if we’re going to find out how to cure the thing, we’ve first got to find the location of patient zero, i.e. the video that started it all. If we know where it came from, we’ll know how it works and that’ll make it immensely easier to stop it. Are there any games out there that Jack played that 1) truly immersed him as a player into it’s world, 2) share a strong resemblance to what we already see in Anti, and 3) was uploaded some time before the release of Sister Location. There are two bigguns that spring to mind.

Undertale is probably the most well known and well liked series on Jack’s entire channel. While he was playing he became heavily invested in each of the characters, even the baddies, and so did we. We grew to care for them all as if they were our closest friends. When they were hurt, we screamed in protest. When they were comforted, we felt all warm and fuzzy. When we reached the true ending, we all cried. I would most certainly consider that immersion, wouldn’t you?

Not only did Undertale immerse the player and viewer, it messed with your actual computer files. If you do a genocide route even once, uninstalling and reinstalling the game won’t wipe it’s memory of the route. You have to dig through your computer to find and delete the file that tells steam what route you chose if you want to play the game brand new again. Not to mention the game frequently closing itself unprompted, which has a well known history for corrupting recording footage. Potential for corruption? Check.

New paragraph for new point because oh my god, there’s a lot. Several people have already pointed out the similarities between Flowey and Anti, but just in case you haven’t seen it yet or wanted a nice recap, here we go.The voice acting Jack chose for Flowey sounds just like a higher pitched Anti voice. This was the first time he ever layered audio files to achieve a more sinister voice effect. The thumbnails following his fight with Flowey all hold trademark characteristics of Anti video thumbnails. Our first ever interaction with him ends with him attempting to murder Jack. Their laughs are one in the same. At certain points in the game, you can find Flowey following you, keeping an eye on things, if you will. His boss fight, oh my g o d. He kills the dude in charge, everything cuts to black, and next thing we know there’s a glitchy face laughing at us through a screen, telling us about how he’s the one in charge and how this is his world and how everything he’s done was all our faults, after which his eyes turn red and green and he starts puppeteering controlling six different souls, using their different skills to his own personal advantage so he can fulfill some unspoken objective. Gee, sound familiar? 

However, despite all of this, Undertale was not patient zero. Why I still listed all the game’s similarities despite this, I promise was not to waste your time, I’m getting to that. There was a game that came just before this one, the first of it’s kind, the actual patient zero. That game, is The Visitor.

Many of you may not remember this game, but The Visitor (and The Visitor Returns) was a little flash game that was posted way back on March 1st, 2015, and you played as an alien creature that came to Earth on a meteorite who’s only objective was to kill any creature it came into contact with to gain it’s powers. It was a video that kind of took the channel by storm, landing it’s place as the fifth most watched video on Jack’s channel even though nobody really knew how. This was patient zero. 

As for the checklist? It was posted March 1st, 2015, a full year and seven months before Sister Location. Jack is certainly immersed in the gameplay, so much so he forgets about the menu screen and accidentally restarts the game in an attempt to do more stuff. Does it show a similarity to what we already see in Anti? More than you’d see at first glance. Yes, his mouse is kind of glitching through the entire video. Yes, his webcam goes dark for a single frame towards the five minute mark. Yes, there’s multiple severe neck wounds throughout the game. But that’s not what sold me on this. It’s the premise of the game itself. 

I was struggling for months trying to figure out which game was patient zero. I jumped between Undertale, Fran Bow, Vee is Calling, and even the other Five Nights At Freddy’s videos more times than I could count, because all of them seemed like plausible answers. Fran Bow was the first series ever to adopt Anti’s traditional thumbnails, with lens flares and glowing eyes and blood everywhere(seriously, I took a good ten minutes and scrolled through every single video on his channel and Fran Bow was where it all started), not to mention a dark shadow creature who feeds on suffering being the main antagonist. Vee is Calling had an actual virus as a main character who actually glitches out and actually takes control of the main character’s in game computer. One of the glitches in SIster Location #1 showed a frame from the first ever FNAF game, and many of the sounds were pulled from the series at different points. I’ve already written paragraphs about Undertale. All of these things show a direct tie to Anti. 

Then remember what The Visitor is all about. It’s an alien who kills things around him to gain it’s powers. It takes aspects from each creature it comes into contact with and uses them for his own personal gain. That seems to be exactly what Anti has done ever since we’ve known him as a physical entity on the channel rather than an idea with a name. 

I mean, look back at May 2k18. Every single skit, either ego themed or not, was pulled directly from whatever the game he played was about. Hell, just look at the egos! I’ve talked about this before, but in every single ego video, there is always a theme of character decay, where the person they were at the start of the video erodes away leaving nothing but a shell of who they were by the end, and this is especially apparent in their debut. JBM, the courageous hero giving into cowardice. Marvin the Magician, throwing away his career. Henrik the wise doctor, killing his patients and forgetting a comedic amount about human nature. Chase the bubbly dad, pulling a gun on himself. JJ the mute actor, cutting his finger and immediately getting possessed. I’d tied them back to Anti before, but I never really knew why. In hindsight, this was clearly Anti’s attempt at stealing their strengths. Each and every one of them had some advantage that Anti wanted, and their slow decay was evidence of Anti trying to take control so he could have it. That’s why each new video showed him getting stronger, going from making them kind of afraid to full on suicide and possession. He was stronger because he’d taken more attributes and was able to use them more effectively with each passing video. For each game that Sean got immersed in that fit his agenda, Anti adopted different aspects for himself. There is no one video where Anti came from because he came from every video.

Okay. Alien biomechanical virus. How do we treat it? Well, that is heavily reliant on it’s sources. Anti adopted both some benefits and some defects from every game he pulled from. He gained both strengths and weaknesses, so if you want to “beat” him, the answer would lie in those games. The Visitor had no happy ending. Fran Bow won by giving up on reality and living with tree people, a demon, and an oversized axolotl. Undertale got a good ending by befriending everyone including the bad guys and hopefully not dying too much in the process. FNAF was finished by getting fired or burning everything to the ground and praying you’re not sent to purgatory. Vee is Calling was saved by focusing on your love life more than your computer files. Maybe it’s one of those answers. Maybe it’s all of them. Maybe it’s none of them. It seems not even Sean knows the answer to that question, but now we have a great place to start looking.

I wasn’t able to attend PAX, which means I didn’t know about the Anti “hint” until just now. When I heard it I wanted to scream, I think I actually might have, because I’ve been sitting on this work for literal months and just not gotten around to posting it. “We still haven’t figured out what Anti is yet.”

So, @therealjacksepticeye, are my answers to your satisfaction?