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chek/toby ⦻ 22 ⦻ he/him can an unreliable narrator be doomed by the narrative

[alabasterwasps]

call me checkers, or maybe just chek.

22 - he/him

i make art sometimes.

i’ve been into marble hornets for a decade now, decided to make a blog just for it.

cheers i’ll make this intro post better someday

COMMISSIONS OPEN: CLICK ME

art: #cheks marks the spot

text posts/asks: #and that’s checkmate

speedpaints/video: #chek the tape

[alabasterwasps]

finally got to s4 of supernatural

i knew i would love castiel man

[bluerupee]

panel redraw of my favorite guys

original comic panel below

[alabasterwasps]

probably the only time y’all will see me not put like mh/horror/creepypasta stuff on this blog but i did want to say i recently made a loz blog soooo if y’all like that too, there

[alabasterwasps]

i went back to my roots with creepypasta i shall also go back to my roots with four swords i WILL be making a blog hang in there

[troywagner]

Saw MH by Alex Kralie with my brother and this was his main takeaway

GOOD

[unholyslasher]

Hi I made Marble Hornets keychains :]

[alabasterwasps]

the underneath, no big surprise

[alabasterwasps]

your eyes vacant and stained

[alabasterwasps]

[alabasterwasps]

the underneath, no big surprise

[alabasterwasps]

Late dawns and early sunsets just like my favorite scenes. Then holding hands and life was perfect just like up on the screen.

[alabasterwasps]

need to make ocs again

[alabasterwasps]

i like to think that the butterfly effect that diverges the marble hornets versus rosswood timeline is whether or not alex says yes to dinner with brian & tim or not

[alabasterwasps]

i need like.... creepypasta roleplay partners :(

[alabasterwasps]

if there's any crp 18+ rp servers people know of that are active i am interested

[alabasterwasps]

i need like.... creepypasta roleplay partners :(

[moss4brainss]

Canonical hoodie be like: fuuuuck I got rain and trees covered with binary code and static due tomorrow

[alabasterwasps]

started s3 of supernatural

[alabasterwasps]

i think there is serious weight to the idea that Brian (and all the characters we see in mh) were marked by the operator in the same way we know Tim and Alex were.

For now though, I’m going to focus on Brian because I think he has the most evidence.

This post is going to be a mix of analysis, facts, observations, and theories.

anyway

The Operator seems like a semi intelligent species.

We see it use complex concepts of fear and paranoia and seemingly knows how to induce it in individuals by using their own personal fears against them.

we also see it panic, or some approximation of it

it’s an apex predator and it’s an ambush hunter

it doesn’t work very well when there’s multiple people but it does when there’s a singular person and it knows how to drive them apart.

i think back to alex’s scary story in the woods, when he talks about old townsfolk having “strung up criminals” in the woods and leaving the bodies there- (this story will come up again)

it mirrors folklore in a ton of cultures and belief systems

if people believed that their townsfolk was going missing due to a creature in the woods, feed it so it leaves you alone

jodi also implies there’s a long history of disappearances in rosswood as well

but obviously over time those belief systems fall away, and people are more safe, more cautious and i think it would need to evolve

the operator isn’t all powerful, it can only seem to appear in a certain proximity of rosswood, it’s weaker the further it goes (but it also seems to be able to absorb certain areas into its domain such as alex’s house)

and that has me thinking of how it would need to evolve to continue to feed

and i have been thinking of the source images of slenderman and the tidbits of information we got with them at their release and how it’s whole thing was targeting *children*, most the og images take place in parks where it would lure them away

opposed to say, how in marble hornets it is primarily attacking adults. except, it isn’t.

for tim and alex we know for a fact that it visits them as young children. tim it’s implied to be when he’s between 6 and 10, and alex at about the same time.

and this part is a theory but, the idea i’ve been having is what if it marked a handful of children to find what way would be the best to hunt since it’s previous methods aren’t working anymore.

and since we know it particularly feeds off of fear and paranoia and gets stronger with isolation, if it was finding the means and best types of people to target

(notably, the operator gets stronger the more it consumes from the ark. we see this progressively in marble hornets. skully mentions this in the comics. and even in rosswood we see it stronger than it’s ever been after jodi implies there’s been disappearances over the years in the woods, seemingly more than in marble hornets as in marble hornets none of the characters who grow up in this town are wary or cautious of these woods)

There are themes that Marble Hornets calls back to the original images I mean, the first MH entry dropped only 9 days after the first Slenderman images dropped, I feel like it is safe to assume there was more influence from these images that is.. obvious.

the reason i am currently focused on brian is well

someone recently pointed out that Brian Thomas has the same last name as one of the characters made up for the original photos, a Mary Thomas who took a picture of Slenderman and went missing in the 80s, particularly within the timeframe of when Brian would’ve been a baby. Of course the last name could be a coincidence but, for theory sake let’s say that this is on purpose. (here’s that post)

Then you have the playground that keeps coming up with Alex and Brian in particular.

We know for a fact Brian and Alex were friends pre-mh, they’re not only on a name basis for Brian’s audition tape. Brian invites him to dinner, AND Alex has a spare key to Brian’s house AND is allowed there when Brian is not home. How far back their friendship goes we do not know but it predates mh.

Though with this I should note that we see Alex drag Brian around to multiple film locations, in the parks and wood trails, the train tracks, the park, and Brian does not have to be led around by Alex. He walks around with just as much confidence and knowledge of these places as if he also has frequented these spots (I mean I think it’s safe to assume he grew up here as well).

But the park- you see him and Brian hang out there, something that I think is important because in Rosswood this gets shot for shot mirrored with Jay and Alex. Alex also seems extremely wary of the park, and goes to explore it at night shortly after his first Operator run in, which was not in the park. It was on a side walk on a road.

The park is also important because it is one of two places that Tim mentions he had woken up in as a child after escaping the hospital and “seeing that thing”.

All that to say is, with this theory, with the og images, and how much it comes up, perhaps they were all marked at the park itself when they were younger. I digress, for now. Onto Brian.

Brian, Brian.

I think unfortunately the fandom forgets him. I think he is so often headcanoned and made as your “normal guy” “golden retriever big smile” “jock” archetype by most that people forget that’s not… canon, none of it is. Him being good with people or lived by everyone on campus, none of that is canon.

The only things we know for certain is he is friends with Tim, he is friends with Alex, they are not friends with each other, and we do not know how Seth, Jay, and Sarah got invited to MH but it likely was not Tim and less than likely Alex. But truthfully we do not know this dynamic.

But, Brian was a weirdo just like everyone else. He was charming, sure.

But we know more about Brian from ‘totheark’, Brian as ‘Hoody’, and I do not believe they are that much unlike. I do not believe that Brian up and changed into a new person upon whatever it was he went through.

I think it stands that he was always capable of things, just as they all were, he had just never been pushed there.

Brian is similar to Alex in his drive- he is stubborn and he is blinded by doing what he believes is right.

I think a lot of people forget that he is likely responsible for Amy’s death. Like, fully responsible. The theory that he planted the camera in Alex’s closet for him to find on his birthday, a date that Brian loves to emphasize in TTA and fuck with Alex for, has been around for years. If he did this to drag Alex back to the mess- Simply because he did not want Alex to get away with what he had done, then he killed Amy. She was collateral, but he knew Alex was not only living with Amy, but also Jessica, and he brought it to that house with two innocent bystanders just to get at Alex, and Amy died. That is on him.

And, well, he may not have pulled the trigger on Jay, but he is responsible from letting him run into a nest where, once again at this time Alex was not actually searching for Jay or Tim. He was searching for Brian. That is why he kept going back to that school when Jay and Tim had never been there before despite his motivation being to kill “everyone and then himself”, he was looking for Brian. Brian knew where Alex was (we see in totheark Alex tied up in rooms painted similar colors as the school).

Brian may have still believed Alex was tied up, sure, but he threw Jay into the fray, knowing Alex was there and that Alex was hardly Alex anymore. He didn’t pull the trigger but Alex wouldn’t have had anyone to shoot if Jay wasn’t there. Alex had been at that school looking for Brian, not Jay, not Tim.

Brian’s motivations are just, he believes he is doing the right things, the necessary things, but he’s blinded by this obsession with revenge against Alex (rightfully so) to the point where it does get other people hurt, and he regrets it after it is too late. Brian too is a victim of the Operator amplifying his anger and malice and fear just like it does in Alex.

Rewind here though-

Brian is a weirdo, he always has been.

I want to also bring up his house. We see it multiple times, it is a hang out spot for the gang.

The first time we see it in its prime, there is something… odd.

That is this painting.

This painting notably makes Alex so uncomfortable that he took it off the wall and turned it around away from where he and Jay sat. And- well, it’s a forest burning.

He notes about it specifically that “Brian has interesting taste”, implying that well, he is the one who bought the painting and decided to put it up in his living room.

Later on, when Jay explores Brian’s house, after we see that it is an absolute mess. We know Brian himself was hiding in his own closet. Masky also tries to scare Jay off (with Jay being tipped off here about Alex, there is the possibility that after he killed/had the Operator kill Brian he returned here). It is likely that either Brian or Alex trashed this house. Whom we do not know- But for a single frame Jay peeks behind the couch.

The painting is there, turned away and facing the wall (the reason you can tell it is the painting is because of the back hanging mechanism and brown paper back and relative size of the piece).

Nothing else that was hanging up was torn down- no curtains or other photos or paintings. But that one was.

And again, the significance to the painting is later on Alex decides to tell a fun little story.

“When I first moved here, I remember hearing a story that back in the 1800's they thought this place was blessed because everything would grow so fast. They would take their worst criminals, murderers and child molesters, and they would put them on trial before God out here. They would tie them up to the trees and the idea was that they would get stretched out, kind of like a rack. They never fed or gave them water though, so they would just die of dehydration.”

“They never cut down the bodies. They would just burn the whole tree with them still on it."

"They stopped doing it though after the kid went missing… and he finally turned up in the area where they would do the trials."

“He had been dismembered and strung up."

Like I stated before, the townsfolk had been feeding it, and seemingly despite that it attacked someone, they stopped feeding it and entering the woods, and now it has to do something new to eat.

But there’s the burning woods, tied to the Operator, in Brian’s house BEFORE it’s even supposedly gotten to Alex.

(Also I want to state that I think this story can be used to disprove the claim people make for Rosswood that Tim was the kid Jodi was talking about without a doubt, as they are very vague with it being a kid, and it is obvious that many would go missing. Many doubts and plausible deniability. Tim was not the only kid in this hospital or who would have gone missing at this time.

Also that Alex notably did not always live in Rosswood, but that is theory stuff for another day)

I also, ALSO, want to just point out that that isn’t the only time the 1800s/something 100+ years ago is even brought up around Alex.

In his birthday entry, the one posted by Brian mind you, the operator shows up at Alex’s birthday as a child.

The camera glitches but, doesn’t obscure the Operator. The backgdound behind him changes, and for a single frame rather than being April 4th at 6 something pm.

Suddenly we are in the year 1900. June 3rd. 8pm.

And we have been shown in both MH and in Rosswood that the Operator is able to manipulate time, especially where it has its domain. It is also able to rapidly teleport itself and other people around, something we see it do to Tim twice.

Not quite the 1800s sure, but it’s the same time era overall and shows that it absolutely has been around this long (this is also referencing some of the OG images of Slenderman, as many of the photos were pulled from the late victorian era or early 1900s).

On the note of totheark, Brian didn’t learn how to suddenly edit creepy collage videos together, or speak in code, dozens of codes.

Again, he was a weirdo like everyone else.

Anywho, I think Brian was also marked as a kid, along with Tim and Alex, and although there is not much evidence for Jay I think it would make sense too.

Because the thing is they all exemplify different forms of isolation, something the Operator feeds on, and it’s looking for the best thing to satisfy it.

Brian is the isolation from his environment. He’s too normal for the weirdos but too weird for the normals. He’s good with people but not enough to stick out. If this theory is true regarding his mom, the Operator’s involvement was to remove the family aspect from Brian.

Tim is the isolation from the get go, the direct involvement from the Operator, it got its hands on everything, removing Tim from his family, friends, and having direct involvement with him growing up.

Alex is the growing self isolation at any potential negative problem that increases to even mild nuisances. I believe the reason that the playground is so important to him specifically, and his birthday, is something catastrophic happened to him as a kid to lead to this behavior.

Jay is the isolation overall from the world around him. No one seems to notice him he is always fading into the background even when he is the narrator of the show. (I also have a different theory which touches on Jays memory loss and how that might just extend back further than Marble Hornets if he was indeed also marked)

Notably Brian still is liked by people around him, his issues are grounded in his self placement and worth. To fix him his outer environment would have to make steps to make him a spot, he can’t make them do this.

Tim is not liked by many around him and issues are with his environment. Notably he was able to change himself and his environment. It was something he had to fix himself to change and pull him out of he couldn’t rely on anyone but himself.

Jay is seemingly not liked by many although he doesn’t have an issue with this, there is simply no place for him anywhere. He waits for one to open up. He doesn’t need fixed he just needs someone to let him in.

Alex is self induced environmental and self worth. This is why his isolation is so successful, because not only does his environment have to change to include him but he has to also change to include himself. Both have to happen, just like with Tim. The problem is he can’t pull himself out (he tries in rw) because there’s no space to land in, and the world around him can’t fix him if he doesn’t believe he can be fixed (amy, brian, his friends try and fail).

Brian needed his environment to change and he couldn’t do anything himself to do it

Tim had to change both his environment and himself on his own to fic it

Alex needs both himself and his environment to be changed but he can’t do either himself

Jay needs to change his environment himself and can change it but doesn’t and opts to let it “do its thing”

I think ultimately it found that whatever it did to Alex was the most successful.

I believe this is why even in Rosswood, the same thing happens.

They were all marked, it just comes for them later, and Alex is still self isolating.

But even in the comics you see it try to copy what it did with Alex with the newest guy similar to him. It found a method, and that’s why it tries it again, and again, and so on.

tldr: brian is and has always been a weirdo. they were all marked by the operator. no one is at fault over the other. i know this is rambly i quite literally copied it from conversations i had with people, enjoy anyway