unforum

[TheOperator]

Now that time has passed, Jessica's death doesn't look as definite as before. First time watching, it really does look hopeless, with shots of both TO and Alex. However, the first shot of Alex is him mixed with TO - I doubt this means he was beating on her with TO or anything, it was just thrown in there to further show Alex's gradual loss of humanity. The second is him picking up the gun and walking away. However, the shot of Jessica lying there unmoving (except for her breathing) shows that the camera was no longer in her hands by the time TO was done with her. And we've seen from #65 TO likes to warp people all over the place while he's messing with them. When Alex picked up the gun, Jessica could have been a mile deeper into the woods for all we know. And I'd say she definitely wasn't holding the camera when he picked up the gun. If she was, then Alex literally just took the gun from her and then walked away. And I do agree TTA probably wasn't lying about Jessica being alive. If he was, then it doesn't reflect well on the writing to make such a complicated cipher end up being a blatant lie.

Anyway yeah, my hope is restored. I'm still a little worried that Jessica's damsel streak is going to continue but I'll be as hopeful as I can. At the least, Jessica is alive still. If it turns out she's not, then as agreed, I will sincerely praise the name of all things naturey and Digsby-y.

[pipete21]

Wait which one? Because I put like 5 ideas in there

Also, I'd like to say that I don't think Alex shot Jessica after he picked up the gun, this is because we've never seen Alex ill anyone else besides Bruce and when he killed him, he was REALLY out of it and thought he was Jay(who is the guy that he blames all this on in the first place btw) When he did whatever he did with Brian, Tim, and Seth, he basically just knocked them out and left them behind. So I'm not sure why he was trying to permanently kill Jessica right now, but I think that he probably just took the gun and left her to TO since she was already unconscious, and there was no need for anything else.

I'm also not sure how the camera was looking right at him when he took the gun, but later was besides Jessica looking at her body

[Sha Noran]

I just got done reading through the thread so far, and I have to admit I am extremely annoyed with most of you guys, if not almost a little pissed. Nearly all of the discussion so far has been off base, ridiculous, or simply erroneous. 26 pages from people I thought were some of the most hardcore followers of this series and this is what y'all come up with? I am disappoint. Not gonna name any names or go around starting quote wars, but there's a collection of topics I feel the need to comment on, so let me just go ahead and wall'o'text it.

I have to say that I really doubt Jessica is dead. She appeared to be merely KO'd and breathing when she was taken at the end by TO. Even though this was 2+ years ago, don't any of you remember Entry 65? Bruce was quite dead and slendernapped before the events of 76, but his body had not yet decayed. It seems fairly obvious to me, considering that fairly concrete evidence, that time moves very slowly or not at all in TO's little pocket universe. If Bruce hasn't even decayed at all in the span of years, what's to say Jessica has even woke up yet? She could just be lying there in slendyland; in the real world, years have passed, but for her, mere hours.

Also, the evidence in the series makes it clear that TO porting you somewhere is not a death sentence in and of itself. Tim and Jay were "gone" according to Alex but clearly escaped. We see TO port Alex out of his room at one point. We journey with Tim to this nightmare realm in 65 and he manages to escape the same day. I don't buy Jessica being dead just because he took her, and none of us should. We don't see Alex shoot her, and actually we haven't seen him shoot anyone - his villainous monologues seem to be a stall tactic because he has trouble pulling the trigger... But now you guys think he just shot and killed Jessica, who was barely involved, while she was unconscious? No way.

Moving on, the reason for Tim not sharing this tape with Jay is basically painfully obvious. He lied himself into a corner to coerce Jay's help, then couldn't reveal this particular tape because he thought Jay would leave him. He made bad decisions in this regard, but Tim's character is far more tragic than treacherous... Being alone in this situation for SO long, of course he lied to try and keep this ally by his side.

Those of you claiming this tape somehow indicates, let alone "proves", that Tim can remember his Masky state times are totally off your collective rockers! Tim finds and picks up the camera at the end of the entry presumably, and even if he doesn't, then Hoody recovered it. This was all filmed on Hoody's cam, remember? So even if Tim didn't watch the footage right then and there himself, surely he and Hoody watched it together, or Hoody showed it to him later. Why would he have to remember the events of the tape himself to hide it from Jay? A more simple explanation would be the one where it simply shows Jessica's fate, and thus could cause Jay to abandon him. Forget if Jay WOULD abandon him, it is clearly plausible that Tim might FEAR this would happen from everything we've learned of his past and personality.

Now, that said, I will posit another theory: what if this tape is Hoody and Tim's gambit to finally have Jay lead them to the ark? Since Entry 65 I have been convinced the alternate dimension where Bruce is kept is referred to by TTA (Hoody) as the ark. If they convince Jay that Jessica is trapped there, they may finally be able to actually get him to intentionally go there to try and save her. That may even be why they kidnapped her and filmed the whole ordeal; their plan was to kill Alex and have Jay lead them to the ark. That said, I would think only the tape itself is the gambit and originally they were taking her to a Hoody hideout (he always hides in the woods, it seems) and then tell her to move far away and forget about the whole mess. This could easily have worked; she was barely involved anyway.

While I'm on that subject, clearly they were trying to get her away from Jay to save her from being more fully drawn into the mess. Jay had been playing detective on his YouTube for long enough at that point that they knew he was bad for her. So they kidnap her to let her escape and live an Op free life, and scare Jay out of the hotel to fully sever the connection. Even though everything went quite wrong in the woods, their plan worked - Jay runs and never looks back. He is driven to know what happened to her, but he would never have just stumbled upon her if she had properly fled and TTA was able to steer him away.

Another thing. This entry was OBVIOUSLY between 32 and 33. I can't believe any true fan of the series would think otherwise. If you think this entry happened right after 52 then I don't think you have a clue how the timeline for season 2 works at all. Not to be overly rude, but someones gotta say it... That's some noob shit. Either Tim went BACK to the hotel after carrying her to the woods to scare Jay off, or (more likely), Hoody stayed in the car with the freshly kidnapped Jessica while Tim went back up to immediately scare him out of the hotel. Either way, right in the 32-33 timeline. This is painfully, ridiculously obvious.

Someone pointed out the text appearing again at the beginning and end of this entry. I too enjoy these little blurbs, but I can easily give the IG explanation for this. While Tim was with him, Jay had someone to discuss the Entry footage at length with before posting it, so he had a foil to bounce ideas off of and explain his thinking to. Now that Tim is gone away for the time being, poor Jay is alone again and thus his thoughts merely fester in his own mind... So he once again explains himself to us, and shares his thoughts with us, because he no longer has a companion physically with him. It probably makes him feel more sane to feel like he is communicating with someone.

While I'm on the topic of the comments Jay put at the bookends of the vid, I will point out he specifically only accused Tim of "having something to do with" Jessica's disappearance. This is entirely accurate. He hasn't gone off the deep end and blamed it all on Tim or something, but at this point without Hoody or Tim explaining why they were taking her and where they were taking her to, I would be pretty confused and lacking trust if I were Jay too. And if Tim really doesn't remember because he was Masky, then Tim was right; showing Jay this tape would've been a bad idea because he couldn't explain his own actions on it.

All that said, a couple OOG things:

[gennerx]

[The Condor]

If I was an innocent little girl alone in the woods at night, and a Hooded guy with a mask and gloves holding a camera covered my mouth,

I'd be frightened.

[Master of Octopi]

[Master of Octopi]

[elford]

After watching the entry several more times, and reading through the comments here, I definitely don't think Jessica is dead either, which makes me happy. Alex just picks up the gun from beside her, after seeing she was completely unconscious and he just got the Operator to transport her to his domain.

I think they would have made it obvious she was dead with blood, they did that to Bruce, so it's not like they don't have the skills to fake injuries.

Sha Noran said:
OOG:

[FalloutGhoul]

@Sha Noran
That has to be the greatest post I have read on this topic.
I seriously hope that people read this.

[TheJoker]

Okay, I've read through most of the thread but not all of it, but since I haven't had time to post anything other than "HOLY SHIT" yet, I will try to work my way through everything I have to cover. Grab some coffee, folks, this'll take a while.

First of all, let me reiterate, HOLY SHIT. This entry was seriously the best entry in ages. Not necessarily scarier than 72 or 65 per se, but plotwise superior to most of S3.

I've always kind of wanted it to turn out that Alex wasn't all bad, so I started to get hopeful when he showed up putting up the heroic rescuer act. Part of me knew it was probably just an act, but I wasn't absolutely certain until he told her to go on ahead without him. Jesus... First of all, he's never been this competent a liar before. I mean, he was so hostile throughout S2 even when he was trying to pretend to be on Jay's side, so the idea that he was capable of being so manipulative was kinda surprising.

On the one hand, he lost a lot of sympathy points, exploiting her amnesia and planning to shoot her while her back was turned like that. On the other hand, he clearly did not want to kill her, considering how long he hesitated and how he wasted so much time trying to explain himself. I mean, he didn't hesitate at all to kill Bruce in 49 (whom he thought was Jay, one of his old friends), so it's not like he's shown this behavior consistently when he murders people.

Something about Hoody's behavior at the beginning made me uncomfortable. Even though the obvious explanation seems to be that he was just trying to rescue her (though why? Was she so unsafe just leaving with Jay? Or was the point to take both of them after all?) I got a strangely hostile sort of vibe from him. I'm not entirely convinced he had good intentions for her.

While Alex lost a lot of likability points, Jessica took a serious level in awesome here. Jessica, because she fricking tackled Alex and stole his gun. Yes, it was probably because he clearly didn't want to shoot her that she succeeded, but that still took guts. And she had the sense to take the camera with her. I've always gotten the impression that she would probably have been the best ally for Jay, which is the main reason I don't really want her to be dead.

Also loved TO in this entry. His posture just seemed so menacing, and the fact that he stepped in himself rather than leaving Alex alone to do all the work was also cool. And I liked the whole "Eight Pages" feel of the final scenes.

Regarding the "other side of the tunnel": Yes, they made enough of a point of it in 64 that I doubt it's completely insignificant, but I don't think it directly leads into TO's lair or the Ark or the Dark World or anything, seeing as we saw both sides in this entry and they're both just more Rosswood. Rather, I think that it's not the exit of the tunnel itself, but what lies beyond it in that area of Rosswood that is so important. What could that be? I don't know.

(Side note: What side did Alex lead her in from? I wasn't sure.)

Now, onto the big topic of the day: Is Jessica dead?
I don't think the evidence is nearly as straightforward as either side seems to be presenting it. I initially thought it seemed pretty clear she was dead (but I still clung to the hope that she wasn't because they didn't show her get shot onscreen.) However, now I'm not so sure. But the evidence most commonly pointed to in favor of her being alive is kinda flimsy.

1. "She's still breathing at the end." Not every actress is perfect at hiding the fact that they're alive, and I don't think Troy was interested in actually shooting her, so likely just a production error. Yes, if they wanted to show she was dead, they could've shown blood or the gunshot or something, but if they waned us to know for certain that she was alive, they would have made her breathing more obvious. I had to look closely to notice it. Since Trosephim didn't really make it obvious, I'm guessing that this is irrelevant. It could be intentional if she turns out to be alive, but in that case we weren't necessarily supposed to notice it.

2. Surveillance's message- Why shouldn't TTA lie? I mean, yes, having him throw out a red herring would be bad writing... unless there's a clear plot reason for why. It's entirely possible that TTA lied because he needed Jay to believe she's still alive at the time. The difficulty of the code could have just been because Trosephim didn't realize how hard it actually was.

Also, in that same Surveillance, Jay noted on Twitter that TTA never uses footage of Jessica that isn't from one of Jay's videos, and questioned whether TTA actually even knew where she is. Foreshadowing much?

Point is, neither the breathing or Surveillance is definitive proof that she's alive. The only reason she's not guaranteed to be dead is that they didn't show it happen onscreen, and the matter of Alex picking up the gun at the end. I've watched it and I can't tell if he was actually picking it up off the ground or not, but if he was that makes it a lot more likely that she wasn't shot.

I would like it if she's still alive, but there's no way of being sure either way.

Brian is Hoody unless they spend several entries giving Seth more prominence at some point before the reveal of his identity, which could be interesting but seems unlikely at this late stage. Amy's not 100% out of the question, but I doubt it. No one else is even remotely possible at this point. Except Rocky, of course.

[pipete21]

[Marble Hornets]

[Marble Hornets]

[TheJoker]

[Marble Hornets]

It's still pointless to have that be a lie though. If he said nothing, Jay would still have the same motivation. Saying "she's still out there" and insinuating that he means her dead body is still out there is another thing that wouldn't make sense for him to say whatsoever. If there was any possible motive to have it be a lie, I'd agree. To say he said it to get jay to do something isn't right, because jay's motivation was already there to find jessica. Reinforcing that doesn't make him work harder.

Hoody is clearly the "good guy" in the series if it has to have one. We've seen him save Jessica, Tim, and Jay multiple times. We've seen him try to expose Tim when he was lying to Jay, and we've seen him give Jay his camera back in entry 40 so that Jay could know what happened, even though he didn't have to. To have the good guy also turn out to be a liar just doesn't make sense. Jay lied because he couldn't trust Tim after seeing him as masky. Tim lied to Jay because of his past (which involves things beyond his control). Hoody is in the know on pretty much everything, and has no reason to lie to get what he wants. It would be easier to just tell jay what he wants him to do. He more than likely saw the tape with Jessica and saw her get transported away. He more than likely knows what happens to people when that happens.

Ok, so I guess what I'm saying is there's a 99.9% chance in my mind that hoody has not lied. There's still an extremely small chance he did, but from a storyline perspective it just doesn't make sense to have him lie. Especially when you know fans are going to bust ass to decode a message given by him, it's kind of like troy himself would be lying to the fans by doing that.