#ng.operatorture

[ngage2003]

Alright. So, here is a fun question.

What the fuck is up with Brian's/"Hoody's" continuous use of religious-coded phrasing?

⟦Note: I am Jewish and not that familiar with a ton of Catholicism, and am mostly just going crazy here. Don't take my theory too seriously unless you agree with me in which case do.⟧

⟦Also, content warning: graphic verbiage towards the end, also heavy religious discussion, duh. (Also maybe sacrilege?)⟧

What I mean specifically is his use of the term "Deluge" in one of his videos, the association between himself and the word "Advocate," and most importantly, him calling the face connected to the Operator "The Ark."

Footnote: Face as in the center of the Ark is the "mouth" of the Operator, (in other words, how it eats) and the Ark as a whole is the closest thing we see to a representation of what it is, an unfathomable monster, like a face can be seen as a representation of a person/personhood.

These names are on first read are just seemingly randomly chosen, but I think there is some small sense here, if a bit abstractly. Based on comic 3.5 of Marble Hornets, ToTheArk, we know Brian is stuck talking in codes, so lets try to unravel this one.

Lets start with the simplest.

】 Advocate

Brian calls himself "Advocate" in relation to an old video of himself where he is talking to Alex, but due to the glitchiness on the video I believe you could kind of take this as a general statement about himself. Regardless, what the hell does that mean?

When we use the term "advocate" in plain speech, it means a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy, but there are specific ties with it under Catholicism. There is variation depending on what translation you use of course, but one example of religious use is in one title of Christ as "our Advocate with the Father" (I John 2:1). Another is how the word advocate is used in relation to the Holy Spirit, (John 14:16,) as another advocate to more or less "help [humanity] and be with [them] forever".

"Ok, cool I guess," you say, "but uh what does that have to do with Marble Hornets?"

Well! While Jesus is off having a Phoenix Wright case with God/being god's messenger pigeon for humanity, Brian is helping someone himself! Specifically, he is helping Jay, the person all the ToTheArk videos are for, for the most part. He is quite literally guiding him around, what for we could debate, but he clearly has his own abstract chess game going on and leading Jay by a metaphorical carrot on a stick is part of it.

I believe this is why Brian calls himself the Advocate. He is with not only Jay but also Jessica, while also being on the former's side, (he doesn't want him dead like the Operator does at least,) and also helping and/or guiding him. I mean, he gets him out of his house before Alex burns it down, as example, and he gives Jay the name of the Operator, along with hints that Alex is dangerous/doesn't exactly have his best intentions. Hell! In Entry 78, if you're comfortable jumping that far ahead, he even gives Jay a knife to free himself with, and his camera back. This of course accidentally leads to Jay's death, but I don't think Brian wanted that to be honest, not with how he hates Alex and the Operator. Brian is just unfortunately human rather than actual divinity, and probably couldn't plan for that.

Let's move on.

2.】 The Deluge

This one is in my opinion the least clear, which is why I stuck it in the middle, but I am still going to give it a shot.

The "Deluge" video is a ToTheArk video where we see a flashing light, weird audio, and then the words, "watching you," along with the description being "///". Purportedly, if you speed up and reverse the audio, it is saying "Alex" over and over again. Combining it with the ending words, we get "Alex [is] Watching You."

What is the Deluge in Catholicism though? Well, simply put its the Great Flood, specifically that really swag one (/sarcastic tone) that God summons for 40 days and nights to drown everyone for being too sinful or whatever, except for his favorite boy, Noah, and his family, who are inside a big boat. Awesome. Cool. Makes sense.

We could get up in the semantics about the "ark" of Noah and "ToTheArk" but A) I have a whole chapter on ToTheArk and The Ark, and B) I personally believe the Ark is named for the Ark of the Covenant so lets just scrap that idea.

Instead, I believe that in this part, Brian is making a comparison between Alex and the Deluge. After all, Alex did kill the cast of Marble Hornets in kind of rapid fire succession like a quickly rising Deluge would, all except for Jay who he had emotional ties to. (And Tim but Tim's survival is complicated and isn't purposeful.)

"Wait!" You cry, "how do you know that Alex killed everyone in rapid fire succession??"

Well, technically I don't, but I do know he tried to kill like 3 of his friends in literally the same 24 hours, which would make sense as if the extremely close cast of Marble Hornets noticed other people were missing and they were last seen with Alex, that would get suspicious, but I digress. All of these killings take place in the hospital in my opinion, where the Operator seemingly has some power, or at least is able to appear more regularly like other places in Rosswood and Alex's house.

First of these was the least successful, Tim, who Alex led to the hospital in Entry 56 and then beat into unconsciousness with a stick that is canonically a pipe based on cast commentary. We see him (or in my opinion, Masky,) scrambling around at night then, using the camera to find his way in the dark, before hiding against a wall. It is very likely to me that he stayed here over night. There are some strange parts of the tape though, like Alex being randomly in the hospital at night, as if he was looking for Tim for some reason.

Regardless, there is then Brian in Entry 51, who is led to the hospital before the Operator snatches Alex away for a moment. (In my opinion probably to Operatorture him a bit because he was hesitant to kill Brian because he actually knows him as a friend (Entry 84) but whatever, coughs.) Brian then wanders around the hospital with Alex's camera before finding Tim huddled up against a wall, much to his confusion, before the Operator shows up and some weirdness happens and Brian dies while Tim/Masky disappears.

Now, we have seen Masky go to the Hospital after Operator encounters seemingly to cope, so maybe this was coincidence, but there is some dialogue in Entry 51 that makes me believe this isn't, especially based on Entry 22, where we see Alex seemingly leading Seth either to his death by the Operator in a strange dilapidated building at night. (Hey, that sounds a bit familiar?) That dialogue is :

Brian: Where’s Seth at? Alex: Uh, we came out here yesterday and he wasn’t feeling too good so he just stayed home today.

Hey that is convenient. You brought him here yesterday and now he just magically isn't feeling good.

In my opinion it is kind of obvious here that Alex probably killed Seth and Brian along with trying to kill Tim after merely finding a convenient place to do so. This was all in the span of 24 hours or less, kind of much like a certain flood might.

This moment is definitely a subversion though, (as use of christian imagery often is in Marble Hornets) as rather than the Flood being a tool of God to destroy the wickedness of men or whatever, Alex is becoming a tool of the Operator to feed it.

And finally, 3.】 The Ark

Wooo Boy. The Ark. Ok. okOkOKOK.

Now, we all know what Brian named the face/mouth of the Operator "The Ark," but what IS the Ark in Catholicism? Maybe you're raising your hand right now and saying "ah that thing Noah went on" and you are technically correct but also wrong. There is a far more important Ark in Catholicism than that one.

Lets talk about the Ark of the Covenant real quick, specifically what it represents rather than solely that fun little golden box, as much as I would love to talk about it and the arks of synagogues.

Ok so I am probably going to mangle some theology but stick with me. There are two Arks of the Covenant in Catholicism, the one of the Old Testament, (the first book of Christian canon which more or less covers backstory,) and the New Testament, which is more or less Jesus's teachings.

Sidenote: The Old Testament is NOT the same as the Tanakh/Hebrew Bible. The former is one scripture while the latter is technically three, and even if it shares some similarities with the Torah, (the first part of the Tanakh,) the two are pretty different and both have their own wildly differently translations and cultures around them.

The Old Testament's covenant is of similar design to that of Judaism's, being a symbol of the covenant between God and his followers, built by the holiest of man's hands but carrying divinity in the form of the commandments within it.

The Ark of the Covenant of the New Testament though is a bit different, as it is Mary.

She literally carries the covenant between God and man, the connection between him and his followers. She builds it inside her, acting as both carrier and partial creator to this firm bridge.

I believe, Brian gave the Ark its name, because in a sense, it is its own sort of womb.

The Ark is a close off yet impossibly living environment, one that bridges between our reality and the true center of whatever it and the Operator are. It feeds by leeching off of the world outside it, reaching through Rosswood and growing and gorging. Much like the natural parasitic nature of an embryo or fetus to its mother, it is tied to our world, dependent on it, dependent on us even as it warps and robs people of themselves.

Whatever is beyond the Ark, it is something as unfathomably monstrous as divinity, a holy tapeworm that siphons off nutrients from our world, warps it to fit its needs, literally shifting around the land to get closer to satiating its hunger, apathetic to the rules and limits of our world.

-

Even as we get to this answer though, we still technically haven't answered our original question.

Why is Brian of all people using this continuous religious-coded phrasing?

Well, this I believe in part has to do with how the Ark feeds. It is as much stomach as it is womb, digesting you slowly, acidity peeling back your layers until it eventually gets to your core, your most fundamental beliefs and self.

Alex's core was Jay in a sense, which is why he refused to kill him, at least until the Ark and Operator fully broke him down at the end of season 2, at which point he fell apart completely as a person in season 3. (I.E. he stopped shaving, he didn't get new glasses when Brian knocked off and presumably broke his in Entry 67, he started constantly corrupting film.)

Brian's core is still in tact though, even with how ruined he is by the Ark and Operator, left only able to speak in codes.

I think Brian was raised with a strong sense of wrong and right. It is also why he becomes so obsessed with Alex dying, with Jay surviving, with taking on this great burden of playing this complicated chess game against this paranatural entity and stopping all this. Right and wrong were simply taught to him at a very young age, ingrained into him, and his compassion and empathy, (the things that led to him goading Tim into helping because Alex needed actors and inviting Alex to dinner because he was lonely,) were torn away by the Ark.

I think his moral compass could in part be so strong be due to, or at least in conjunction with, the fact he was raised religiously. I think he probably strayed a bit from his religion in College as most people do, but it is still something integral to him, something at his core that he knows even when nothing else is making sense.

This is not to say I think Brian is still religious now, (I doubt you could look into the center of the Ark and still be religious honestly,) but it is why he clings to religious metaphor in the middle of all his strange codes.

That is my headcanon.

Thank you for reading.

[ngage2003]

Hey! So, I want to bring up a fascinating detail to me in Marble Hornets that I feel people often ignore, that being just how long the Operator has been around for.

This is something initially shed light on by Alex's creepy story he tells Jay while he puts off killing him for the fifteenth time in Entry 38, because he is super straight or whatever.

I want to point to how the ideas posited here ties together with supplementary material from Troy Wagner's project, ECKVA though, all to tell us a bit about the Operator as an entity.

⟦content warning: mention of eye trauma, mention of assault⟧

For those who need a refresher, here is a quick summary of what happens in Entry 38.

It starts with Alex is leading Jay deep into the woods, saying he is taking him to something specific, a "there." Jay takes the camera from him after awhile, and asks what "there" even is, at which point Alex begins to talk.

"How much do you know about this area."

When Jay replies nothing, Alex continues, barreling on.

"When I first moved here, I remember hearing a story that, back in the 1800s, 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."

Wow, ok, cool story, Alex. Jay thankfully asks what we are all thinking next.

"Why are you telling me this?" "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."

After this point, Alex stops his ghost story, but I want to focus on what actually is being said here, as I think it provides interesting insight into how long the Operator has been around.

Before we get into that though, I need to tell you all about something from ECKVA, Troy Wagner's project.

See, an important part of ECKVA, is this pixelated game called "LOUSE, a trip through rot," which was primarily played through a twitter account where people voted on options, but the start of it can be found here for your reading pleasure, and the rest on the @SHawkins1926 twitter account.

While I highly recommend ECKVA purely for its cinematic aspects though, I won't make you go watch it for this post, as I won't get too much into it here as a lot of it is confusing and kind of heavily symbolic, which leaves so up to interpretation. All that being said though, there is some dialogue that I want to make note of.

See, in this game you play as a "Pilgrim" at "the beginning of the Rot," where you are pulled between this living, segmented force named the Rot, and another force named the Blot which lives in your left eye. The former is overwhelmingly widespread, and accented with this false affection and almost divinity, as it speaks with a sort of degrading tone and often references themes of infection. The Blot is meanwhile harsh and sort of cold/stoic meanwhile, an antithesis to the Rot's affection and hunger which acts like a disappointed adult.

As the game progresses, our character meets several aspects of the Rot and watches many things become infected by it. They want to stop it, but many times the creature claims in response to this that it is endless.

Now, stick with me here, ECKVA is in the Marble Hornets universe confirmed, and LOUSE is very abstract and strange, but I believe that "the Rot" represents the Operator, for many reasons, including but not limited to: ⠀⠀⠀• The fact Brian routinely used the word "rot" in his anagrams for the Operator ⠀⠀⠀• The use of the term "infected" for people afflicted by the Rot, a term/idea also used to talk about people afflicted by the Operator's sickness in Marble Hornets ⠀⠀⠀• The segmented nature of the Rot being somewhat similar to the segmented nature of the Operator, which exists as at least two parts (the aforementioned, but also the Ark) due to the scale of its self and general paranatural nature.

The game routinely tells us though that the Rot has been here a long time, and sure the title of "pilgrim" doesn't line up with the idea of what Alex said as his ghost story coming from the 1800s, true, but his story isn't about when they started hanging people from the trees, just when they stopped.

I believe the Operator has been around for a lot longer than we as the audience might originally think, its infection somehow reaching through Rosswood for centuries now, causing paranoia in the locals like it does in our protagonists and gorging itself off sacrifices until a freak accident and subsequent panic caused people to move away from it, something that could have coincided just with the changing culture and the gradual increased ease of transportation and the spread of information.

This led to the Operator having to change tactics, and focus its efforts to get foods on specific victims, which probably isn't honestly too different as I wouldn't be surprised if in the past it led to some of those crimes, those murders and the like, as we have seen it wear away at and ruin people!

I think this lens makes the Operator a lot more ominous in a lot of ways, as while LOUSE characterizes it as a conscious thing, it still feels very animalistic, especially with its ties in the game to hunger and consumption.

I don't know, tell me your thoughts :-)

[ngage2003]

To me, Marble Hornets partially works so well as a story due to its incidental use of parallels and when it contrasts them. Alex and Jay are both people corrupted by Operator influence who ultimately follow the same path and up in the same place, both of their differing selfish qualities (Jay's Curiosity, Alex's need for control) ultimately dooming them. Tim saw the Operator as a kid and implicatively so did Alex, yet those two end up being both our devil and martyr of the story, two totally opposites.

Marble Hornets does this though not only with characters but relationships, the most infamous example being Brian and Tim being friends before the former's death, and Masky and Brian being partners in crime after it.

A lot of this is probably to some degree incidental honestly, especially when we get down in the weeds, but I believe that there is another parallel to Brian and Tim's friendship in the narrative too, one that is more about contrasting it than paralleling it as with Masky and Brian.

Let's talk about the relationship of Jay and Alex.

⟦content warning: some vague talks of codependency⟧

Alright, so far warning, this is going to get a little "headcanon-y" but I really just want to talk about/analyze the fascinating relationship of these two and my personal thoughts on how they know each other.

Most of the time between Jay and Alex on screen is spent in season 2, but really their whole friendship is to blame for this series happening. After all, Jay was a close enough friend to visit Alex before he moved out, and to ask in the first place for his tapes.

I think its important to talk about what we specifically see of them though, as Alex's reluctance to kill Jay is by and large a defining feature of the series. If he hadn't been so hesitant after all, Jay would have never uploaded the tapes and the series wouldn't exist. But while Alex leads Seth to his death and as to be practically forced to kill Brian by the Operator—

Clarification: in Entry 51, the one where Brian is presumably killed the first time, Alex has to be tortured by the Operator before he is seemingly willing to hurt him. If you're wondering what I mean by that, please check my #ng.operatorture tag for elaboration. - Basically though, I think when the Operator teleports fully living people away, it tortures them, like how we see with Tim in Entry 65. This process is done as a way to sort of break people down mentally by the Operator, as a way of feeding and also to compel them or try to get them to accomplish a goal it wants. Tim only avoids this fate because he is a system and Masky protects him.

—he doesn't kill Jay, despite having ample opportunity too, and the Operator more than seeming to want him too. Sure, yeah, Alex attacks Jay when giving him the tapes Entry 71, but even then, even with Jay defenseless and unconscious and Alex thinking everyone else his dead, he can't kill him.

Why? What makes Jay special? Or rather, what makes him special to Alex Kralie?

Well, I believe that Alex and Jay are long time friends, a relationship purposefully contrasting the fast friendship of Tim and Brian in college that similarly runs deep for the both of them. I think they could have known each other in highschool, and maybe even a little before, both being neglected outcasts who ended up clinging together as they finally found community in the other. I think that foundational connection is why, despite all Alex's hard edges and his antsiness which harshly contrast Jay's passivity, he keeps Jay close, holding him at arms length as a script supervisor rather than a camera man but always near.

I don't think this deep of a connection could just be a college crush or something similar, because for Jay's part, we see a similar level of emotional connection from him, with how doggedly he is willing to follow Alex for many months before he finally snaps to get information, being led around in circle after circle and doggedly following at Alex's heels. Sure, Alex is a lead, but Jay's willingness to keep his head done and follow him is frankly ridiculous, especially after he witnesses certain things like Alex being willing to break their associate's leg and leave him got dead in a dirty, abandoned building.

The two enable each other in a way. Jay does little to press back against Alex's harsh will and rude remarks, not even helping Tim out of the building and often flailing with responding to his vitriol, and Alex uses Jay's curiosity against him, manipulating him onto the path he wants because he has the answers and he knows Jay wants them. I don't think they were always like this of course, but this is a pattern of behavior that is too easy for them to fall into, and honestly could come from them being isolated and only having the other as a friend for so long in the somewhat rural south. When you are two hurt people in a bad situation, you tend to accidentally do stuff like this, as you grow around the other much like a tree and a strangling vine. There isn't anything wrong with that, the problem comes in with the fact that Alex never changed and neither did Jay, and under the corrupting influence of the Operator they're getting worse.

Despite that, I think if there are things Alex Kralie holds near and dear to the core of his self, Jay Merrick is one them, and I think because of that it is very likely that early on in season 2, Alex was still subconsciously fighting the Operator's compulsion. Now, I don't think he was consciously aware of it—lets not get ahead of ourselves—but we know Alex is a stubborn person, and if Jay was important to him I think he could've been resisting to some extent. We know the Operator's mental manipulation isn't absolute, as even if it leaves people believing they're right, Jay pushes back against it in Entry 82, fighting subconsciously before the Operator straightens him out. Why couldn't Alex have done that too? Why couldn't that be why Jay lives so long? Despite the fact Alex tried to knock Seth, Brian and Tim all out within 24 hours.

Advertisement: Curious why I believe that? Read the Deluge section of my analysis/theory, "why the hell is Brian using Catholic Imagery?"

I think the moment Alex finally crumbles, and the moment he is beyond saving, is Entry 52. There is a lot going on at this point between him and Jay, but to some degree I believe this is because he finds out about the Marble Hornets channel, and his trust in Jay, his guilt at the idea of killing him, his resistance to the Operator's manipulations- it crumbles. After all, if he can't trust Jay, who can he?

Alex: I didn’t want Jessica involved! That’s why I told her I found Amy! That’s your fault! When I gave you those tapes, I told you to never mention them again! I thought that implied not sharing them with the world!

◉ Entry 52, at four minutes, 18 seconds.

In Alex's eyes, Jay is practically spreading this sickness like candy on halloween. He is taking a delicate matter and manhandling it and undoing all Alex's hard work to contain it. Bringing in Jessica was bad but this- this is a new low. I think its possible Alex could have even been considering bringing Jay in to help him "stop" the sickness, whatever strange way Alex believes he can/is doing that, but this straw, finding the Marble Hornets channel, on top of everything else, it broke the camel's back.

That is when he finally, properly threatens the life of one of the most important things in his.

Alex only continues to decline after this point in the series, his death as a husk of who he once was being inevitable.

Footnote: For the record, I do not think Jay is some hapless victim of Alex, don't be silly. Jay is just as bad as him in a lot of regards, but is just actively less influenced by the Operator and more subtle with it. Honestly, he is a low empathy autist to me, and that doesn't inherently make him bad, but he also just doesn't act to try to be kind to people when he does inevitably pick up on things, instead prioritizing his own wants most the time or ignoring them unless he has a reason otherwise. He is selfish, and he acts selfishly throughout the series, and that is important to acknowledge about him. I think both he and Alex came from broken homes and I think their behavior and codependent relationship reflects that. Cougjs. If folks are interested in my highschool Jaylex headcanons feel free to send me an ask.

[ngage2003]

Hi hello! Welcome to our blog. You can call us whatever and we'll probably respond but we prefer Gage or QD.

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