unforum

[ReverendJ]

For someone who didn't want to killa nyone he sure did throw himself into at times...

[Vesryn]

Did Tim get shot in the leg? When he falls and clutches it that's what I thought, but I don't really see any blood

[censura_umbra]

[ReverendJ]

Gazing shot?

[Malckeor]

[Vesryn]

I think most of Alex's actions and character are open to the interpretation of individual viewers.

Is he a villain, a victim, an anti-hero? Aren't those lines blurred? To what extent is he a victim, to what extent is he a villain, to what extent a hero of his own story? Is a form of mental illness, caused externally or not, responsible for his actions? How much of his thought process was warped by stress/paranoia/denial or even the Operator? Is he in control or as Tim asserts, being controlled?

One thing I will say, there are a lot of different ways to react to extreme stress and you can't always tell beforehand how you or anyone is going to react until they've undergone it. Same with TO's influence; sometimes memory loss, sometimes aggression, sometimes a split personality, sometimes hallucinations. And some of these could be explained by stress and paranoia by itself. So, I don't think we need to all agree on one interpretation because there are a lot of different ways to read into it.

[aidansean]

[Beidah]

[elford]

I thought at first Tim was turning Masky too when he was clutching his leg, but he took his pills beforehand, so I think he hurt his previously bad leg when he fell.

[awakeasaurusrex]

[awakeasaurusrex]

PS: moral of the last however goddamn many pages? Get your ears syringed, unfiction. You'll notice a world of difference.

[Ascalondion]

Good to see that my poll from 20 pages ago is still relevant. ;p
http://www.strawpoll.me/1926996/

What I am trying to wrap my head around is about what both Alex and Tim said about Brian, what, in my opinion, doesn't seem to fit quite well.

Correct my if I'm wrong, but the chronological last time we see Brian as Brian is when he is getting dragged away by Alex (shoelace confirm) in #51. After that, we only see him running around as Hoody. And Hoodys last appearance probably is #83, when he is lying still on the floor, and probably about to be slender-napped.

I'll put the "They only do smack talk and make up stuff." argument aside for a moment, since that would apply to the whole entry and made any speculation about it vacuous.* But even then, the best way to get under someones skin is to accuse them with something that bears some resemblance to the actual facts.

Consider Alex' statement: Tim allegedly left Brian, and he left him there to die slowly. If this was made up by Alex out of the blue, then Tim could probably just shrug it off. But Alex seems to believe that he can upset Tim by telling him this. So I think it is reasonable to assume that Alex believes that his accusation comes close to the facts. This most likely refers to #83. But how would Alex knew that Brian was dying there slowly? Does that mean Alex has any intel or experience with people dying slowly when they are about to be slender-napped? And if so, how would he get that information? Since he could not have made that experience by himself, this would suggest that TO and Alex communicate in a more direct manner than at least I have assumed so far. Of course, he could also have just concluded this on his own, but on what grounds? Certainly not from Bruce, since he made it very certain that Bruce was already dead before TO took him. So maybe Alex was somehow able to observe what happens to the people after they get taken away. That would imply that he has spend some of his time in theplaceofnolight and also can remember it. Since I find this assumption somewhat bogus, I'll try to find another explanation of why Alex knows that Brian died slowly, aside from the idea that TO told him.
It stands out (for me at least) that in this scene, it looks like Alex can control the teleportation, and intentionally warped them to this room (that, bear in mind, neither looks like the hospital where we last saw Brian, nor like the college where we last saw Hoody). This could suggest that Alex has mastered teleportation at this point. Since I find very little precedent for that, it could also mean that the "operatorfication" is at this point almost complete. The Alex we see in this scene could quite litteraly be TO speaking with Tim, taking Alex' body as a vessel or some thing. While this would go in line with the symbolic shadow behind Alex in #80, others have pointed out that #86 actually hints more towards a description under which Alex acts on hiw own agency all the time, though TO funks up his reason and rational capacities by making him crazy and paranoid.
This point is sure up to debate, and I deem this to be one of the more important debates to engage in: Has Alex been acting on his own agency all the time, although TO made him crazy and maybe even indoctrinated Alex? Or took TO more direct control of Alex' actions, using him like a vessel or puppet. I feel there are enough scenes in the series to support both points of view, and I'd like to hear some arguments of each of them.

Although this post is quite long already, I'd still like to point out a line from Tim that caught my suspicion. When Tim walks through the Hospital corridor and tells Alex that his way of doing things is futile, because he would end up like a shell of a person, just like Brian. What I deem noteworthy about that is the fact that Tim parallels Brians way of dealing with this to Alex' way of dealing with this. In the context that Tim just offered Alex to show how to block TO out, and claimed that if Alex refused the offer, he then would end up like Brian. In my opinion this would imply either that Brian refused a similar offer made by Tim, or confirm that Tim only recently learned how to block TO out, and did not know how at the time Brian was dragged into this.
I'm aware that this is even more speculative than the point about Alex, but I think we have been given some nice peace of information here. Right now we don't now at all what happened to Brian after #51, and how he ended up living in a shack in Rosswood. When now Tim equates Alex attempt to "contain" TO with Brians course of action, this implies that Brian also tried to "contain" TO in a similar manner. He might not have chosen to kill everyone involved (though I'm open to a suggestion that the TTAs were a try to get all people involved killed, without making his own hands dirty because he was still reluctant to kill someone – unlike Alex), but at least he tried to prevent TO from "spreading". And he did so by – wait for it – Isolation. There are some clues in Isolation that would support that. First of all, the whole TTA consists of shots of the Hoody hut, the place where Brian choose to isolate himself (hence the title). Because when assumedly Brian became aware that TO haunts in Rooswood, he choose to isolate himself in an area that is already "infected", to not allow his influence spread to any other, not infected area. In his isolation he is "alonealone", hence the description of the video. The messages "Who is he" and "Who are you" could then be understood as question he is asking himself in his exile, asking himself who TO is. TO is not always around physically, but always can be. That's why the eye is looking out of the hut franticly, paranoid, asking himself "where, where, where?", because he could appear any moment. But he somehow that he has to stay there to prevent TO from "spreading", because he "Follows all".

While I feel that up until this part this explanation seems somewhat adequate, it still leaves open the question when and why Brian began to leave his hut and start to edit TTA videos. Did he do so in 2006 already, and that is why he have Exit? I don't have figured this out, but I guess you could link the first appearance of Hoody to the time when Jay and Alex started to mess around in Rosswood for the first time. Maybe this is how Brian became aware that there are still people dealing with this, which prompted him to leave his exile to do something about that. (No clue though why he would only start to take over the TTA formerly managed by Tim after the events of #52)

While this is certainly somewhat speculative, I hope that I based my propositions close enough to the material we have at hand to be open to critique and discussion – mainly to get this thread a bit away from the somewhat pointless debate about what Alex said at the end of #86.
That is, of course, only if you can agree with me on the point that both statements from Tim and Alex are not "just" smack-talk and nothing but. But I guess there is little reason for this assumption.

_________________________
*I do believe that, when Tim says that Alex missed someone, he is just smack talking and means himself. But that shall not be of importance here.

[thatslenderdude]

according to the poll, most people think that alex said just gibberish. Interesting.....

[hachiman]

They might've been kidding just because of how it said.

[judgemental_rice]

"If they're still alive, you have to kill them, and then yourself."