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[Mattwan]

[qaqa]

The wording may actually be taken to mean "he fights, [only] to lose all he loves." That's how I take it anyway.

Or, on a slightly sub-metatextual level, you might say the Guardian fights every time for the same result in each iteration of the cycle, therefore he is always fighting to lose, in a way.

Assuming for a moment that the Rake and/or SM have been roving around killing all these kids' parents across the country - including Jeff's, and Jeff is among the four in the cycle - then yes, I think it is to bring about the cycle again, by isolating him and setting events in motion. He loses his heart (Jessa) then his blood (Alex). What concerns us is how to derail that.

And yes, I think the "can't be too human" line may have deeper meaning, but I also think it has to do with Jeff copes. He just keeps taping. He has put off taking Alex to get real help. etc. If you get too close to something it becomes too real, hurts you too much to be avoided. But I don't know if Jeff himself is thinking of the prophecy as he says this. IIRC none of them have directly commented on the prophecies as we laid them out to them. They may not even want to consider those, or acknowledge their viability - so it's been simpler for us since then to simply stress they stick together.

[lunaticfish]

I almost feel like the wording is supposed to imply a very literal tragedy, in which the more he may do to stop or derail his fate, the more surely he will drive himself into it. The letter itself does almost suggest a symbolic trump of his actions. He stayed home to edit a video. He was working on EverymanHYBRID, which is now the lifeline for everything, and I think a coping mechanism on top of it.
Probably just reading too far into that, still. The wording could be meant to imply questionable amounts of "free will", i.e. if he fights, he loses.

EDIT: _{I sounded like a twat! Hahaha}

[TheArmadaBledd]

If Jeff loses his heart and then his blood... I offer the interpretation that the aforementioned blood is Alex. If we go with the cycle theory, Alex is in the way. Fairmount Jeff's sibling was killed at the same time as his parents. Alex is a problem for any such cycle.

[Ouroborus]

To offer a more disturbing thought...would it be way out of line to suggest that Alex might have had something to do with his parents' death?

[qaqa]

I don't see it, myself.

[Ouroborus]

It's a huge stretch, I know. I'm having trouble even imagining it out. It'd be a lot easier for us to figure stuff out if we knew how Habit/Slendy/Rake fit together.

This is wild speculation. Wild, untamed, and probably unfounded. I don't really believe half of it, but I'm still compelled to toss it out.

The Case against Alex-

-He's not well. Some of his more "cute" absentminded moments seem a lot darker and scary now that we know how bad he really is. Considering we have good reason to believe that his parent's deaths weren't an accident..it also gives us good reason to assume that his mental issues might not just be grief and coping related.

-The music stuff. This sort of applies to all the guys, but we'll single out Alex. We know he has an interest in Animal Collectivesque music. Hidden videos?

-Access. Jeff,Vince, and Evan have consistently said they are the only ones who have access to the EMH drive. It's not a hard leap to guess that maybe Alex does too.

-Jeff's trip. In light of everything we now know about Jeff and Alex, it seems really out of character for Jeff to up and leave without even saying anything to Alex. I know this was the start of Jeff's Sad Panda phase...but it's one thing to ignore your brother in apathy. It's another to up and leave while you're basically his caregiver. I know this seems like more of an indictment of Jeff...but I wonder if Jeff told Alex where he was going and Alex just "forgot". I could email Jeff about it...but it seems awfully trivial

-Unverified alibis. to be continued(or not)

[UberTaco]

This has probably been beaten to speculative death, but...Jeff was working on a video, right? an EverymanHYBRID video?

And he comments on people complaining about the fakeness of the fake slenderman.

Which in my brain re-raises the point: why would these particular three boys put together a fitness series, then hide Slenderman in it? I mean, you'd think the last thing they would want is involvement with Mr. tall, dark, and faceless.

Unless it's maybe some sort of strange mental impression left by previous iterations in The Cycle?

while (true) {
slenderman();
slenderman();
doeswhateveraslendercan();
}

[dinorobo]

This.^^^ I have always that thought that putting Slendy in a fitness video as a "joke"was a little strange.

[ChildOfAtom]

[The Kempest]

That's what I always figured. They explained they were just messing around, and now that there's a (likely) cycle theory, it fits in pretty well.

/notsayinganythingnewsinceCOAjustexplainedit

[Mattwan]

If we want to get super meta, there's another possibility. You know how House of Leaves is one of the key texts for the boys? Well, this leaves open the possibility that...

...hmm, OK, I don't think this is really a spoiler for the book, so no boxing.

This leaves open the possibility that Slender Man, the cycle, Corenthal, all of that didn't exist yet when the IG boys started production last year. The boys could be experiencing the same sort of anomaly that infested the architecture on Ash Tree Lane. Reality has grown soft around them, and their history is being rewritten on a large scale.

Maybe Jeff's parents weren't even dead until around the time of the livestream where Jeff announced their death, at which point they became retroactively dead for several months.

Come to think of it, we've seen exactly that happen with the Damsel escape, on a more localized scale.

Now I wonder if the creators are fans of Buffy.

[ChildOfAtom]

[JustAQ]

[qaqa]

Admittedly, the same thought about the parents occurred to me last night. I dismissed it as too ridiculous, but who knows.

I had an equally ridiculous thought about Corenthal's history when the guys made the library trip and came back with the various articles on him. Not so much soft reality, but parallel realities. But I don't think it pans out, so I didn't share it.