#rewatching this show is always so interesting....

[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.

[island-in-the-shadows]

I always find it so wonderfully interesting when people prefer IWTV S1 to S2 but, tbh, they're both great seasons of television.

When I saw S1 as it premiered, I consistently struggled with it. There were (and to this day are) parts of it that severely pissed me off. "A Vile Hunger..." (1x5) is still the episode I like to rewatch the least, for example. It took me watching S1 twice to totally love the show. And it's because, when I saw S1, I was holding onto the source material while I watched.

This was fucking stupid on my part, especially given I took a class on adaptation while at Uni and got the academic tools to discern what makes for a good adaptation in film terms (I've talked about other adaptations with people who are book readers first and they tend to view it way differently). Hell, I wrote a thesis on why Clueless is a great adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma regardless of the change of setting in both time and place.

But IWTV was way too personal to me, it went back to my childhood, so it was hard to let go. I did instantly love a lot of the changes. I love the time change and the change to Louis' race and background. I love that we saw more of Louis pre-vampirism and that show Louis has more complex reasons for his long term struggles whereas book Louis just seemed so whiny to me for no reason. On the other hand, I struggled with: why is it a second interview, why was Claudia SA-ed, why the DV, why is fucking Antoinette a canker sore that never leaves, why the fuck is Armand in Dubai, what the fuck is happening with this timeline? I couldn't let go and my viewing experience suffered for it.

When I sat down to watch a second time, I said, "Ok, do what you were taught and let the source go. Adaptations cannot be 1:1 due to the change in medium". And that's when things started clicking. I stopped viewing S1, and the show as a whole, as needing to use the books as a plot bible and viewed it as using them as a guidebook to function on TV terms and tell its own version of the story. It allowed me to appreciate the things I loved much more and to understand the ones I hadn't been so sure about and, even, love some of those things.

For S2, I went into it with that mentality already so I solely judged it on film/TV terms even though, having read books 1-4 and 6 and reading about the rest, I saw subtle things people with no knowledge of the source canon did not. Like when YT reactors consistently worried about Daniel being killed and I'm just filing my nails because, to those in the know, Daniel has massive plot armour. Or people being confused about Raglan James and I'm sat there like wtf does this trifling ass want? Nevertheless, I enjoyed the tale as it was told and what it was on solely TV terms.

Both season are great television but, to me, S2 just took it up a notch. Daniel Hart popped off extra hard. Carol Cutshall popped off extra hard in costuming (stg she played faves because why did Armand get more fashion slays than anyone else? ^_^). The sets went extra hard. The acting, which was already superb in S1 because this is a fucking excellent cast (Jacob, Sam, Eric, Bailey, and Delainey 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼), went harder as well because we have more players such as Ben Daniels doing the absolute MOST with Santiago, Roxane Duran being absolutely OUTSTANDING as the formidable Madeleine, and Assad Zaman stepping out from the background and giving a STUNNING performance as, to me, what's clearly the definitive Armand. To my taste, S2 is a lot less slow and I felt the pot boiling tension to the explosive ending build more keenly than in S1. And, again to my taste, the ending of S2 felt more satisfying because we have a sense of completion in Louis' journey rather than a, admittedly dope, cliffhanger. S2 has, arguably, the 3 best episodes of the show so far in "Don't Be Afraid..." (2x5) "I Could Not Prevent It" (2x7), and "And That's The End of It..." (2x8). For me, there's just no contest.

And yeah S2 isn't perfect either. The abrupt episode endings, for example, are a bit annoying---especially the end of 2x4. Yes, there's bits I would've changed a bit. (Though I will say, some book readers apparently wanted the show to include book Armand's Franken-experiments and I could very much do without it ever being included because it serves no narrative purpose other than to prolong Claudia's suffering. The show already goes hard to show Armand is a fucking asshole in other ways and it's gonna add to that in S3. We don't need that detail.) But, as a season of television, it just went the extra mile.

Still, I love that some people prefer S1. I love that they prefer S1 because it's more intimate or because it's more of a family season or because of the good Louis and Lestat moments or the good vampire family moments. Or maybe they love it for other reasons, it's all very personal.

I still think "In Throes of Increasing Wonder" is an outstanding pilot and it's one of my favourite episodes. Louis' confessional scene/the church scene is definitely one of the top moments of the show. Claudia's monologue at the end of "The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood..." still gives me goosebumps. Claudia stomping on Antoinette's fucking face and Daniel reading Louis to absolute FILTH at the end of "The Thing Lay Still" both make me clap and stomp like I'm at a concert or a sporting event.

Either way, S1 or S2, it's great TV and it deserves more love and recognition. I hope it gets it because it's truly deserving. Maybe we just need to hear our Brat Prince have his say for the uninitiated to awaken to it. S3 I have been seated since they made the call to release that teaser.

[tsnbrainrot]

i feel so stupid, i've watched s4 so many times and i never noticed the colours change in 'it's a terrible life' when zacharia brings dean out of the little angels made dream life..........

[bitchthefuck1]

Tom's line about Shiv being selfish and "find[ing] it very hard to think about me" is actually so telling because while it's absolutely true that she rarely takes his position into consideration, Tom never once thinks about what he can do to help Shiv unless it also benefits him.

Every single time he makes a move or sacrifice that might help her, it's always something that he thinks will give him a leg up. He volunteers to take the fall for cruises, not for Shiv, who is in no way implicated, or even for Waystar, but because he thinks it'll ingratiate him to Logan, and the second it seems like he might have to actually follow through on that, he immediately tries to get out of it and even throws Shiv under the bus. Meanwhile, for all that Shiv disregards his interests, there are a number of things she does that only help him, and she's the one who actually sacrifices something and undermines her position with Logan to beg him not to let Tom go to jail.

It just makes it so clear that no matter how much he might love her (and I think he does, in his own compromised way), for him their relationship was always built on the underlying assumption that it's her job to prop him up, but it's not his job to help her.

[alternautxyz]

yeah ok lmk s5 is pretty great

[greyedian]

uh oh besties, it might be time for my (almost) annual Dishonored replay again

[anurarana]

Many such cases of adding a third fucked up guy into the mix to make me actually interested in a ship

[adhdheather]

following a bunch of spn blogs and sometimes seeing arguments get resurfaced, esp involving dean, does always make me remember the time i was like "so we all know dean is a terrible father" when talking abt how he treated jack, and i found out that we do not all know that

[cosmicpines]

I'm not done listening to the Alex Hirsch interviews but god it just reminds me both of how much I miss this show and how much I appreciate the love and care that went into it. I love listening to him talk about the characters with a frankness and care that shows how much he values them being three dimensional beings.

[todayisafridaynight]

what are your interests that aren’t yakuza

uhm. a lot !!! I think !!!

[magentagalaxies]

get someone who looks at you the way scott thompson looks over at me while i'm filming behind the scenes for the buddy cole documentary

[skydigiblogs]

oh my god i just got to the pinnochimon's dangerous game episode (43)

oh my god you all were not kidding about that puppet packing heat

[mellotronmkll]

This is not a new thought cos the whole autism allegory thing is all anyone talks about when it comes to data of star trek fame but it's so crazyyy how his whole thing is that he says he doesn't have emotions just because everyone has always told him he doesn't have emotions and because he doesn't have the ability to outwardly express emotions other than trying to mimick the way other people express their emotions and so that's just led him to convince himself he doesn't have emotions whole time he's feeling things deeply 😂 ummm it is just Crazy

[iridescentis]

For fun I decided to look over all of my internet history that is still available to me to try and create the most accurate timeline of my fandoms over the years and I think this is it! I also included the platforms I was primarily using for each since that's relevant to the fandom activity I was participating in :)

There are more fandoms I have dabbled in and I might be forgetting some but these are the main eras of my fandom experiences I think.

[bandtrees]

“My only hope is for one word. A simple, trivial word from a certain person…”

bungou stray dogs is an anime that iv had a fondness for since like..2018. but only now am i doing fanart for it, as iv gotten back into it via a rewatch with my friend ^_^ akutagawa was my favorite character as a mentally ill 15 year old and continues to be my favorite character as a mentally ill 20 year old

[3rdbogwitch2theleft]

Jason's villain arc is even sillier on the rewatch.