unforum

[TheMusicalVito]

What. The Operator is Slenderman.

[OffsetServbot]

[redherring]

Okay, so let's try to turn down the heat here.
(Edit: This first line sounded a lot ruder before, so I decided to change it.)

1) The Slender Man was a creature created by Victor Surge on Something Awful. It had a number of different traits, and at some points had facial features and a mouth. Sometimes it had extra limbs/tentacles, other times it did not. It did something to young children, and also caused fires (allegedly). It had a number of iterations. It was organic.

2) During this period of organic creation of The Slender Man, Troy thought 'hey this would be a cool type of thing to make a web series around' and did so. Him and Joseph picked the traits of The Slender Man that made most sense in the scope of their series. At first, this was: no face, the suit, creepin' on peeps.

3) As the series went on, Troy and Joseph evolved the character. It moved fast, appeared and disappeared. It caused audio-visual distortion. It had some sort of proxy in TTA. It had a name given by TTA - the Operator. They decided this would be the name of their iteration of The Slender Man in the universe they created.

4) Troy and Joseph have pointed out that they keep their series isolated. They don't intend to do crossovers or side stories. Then a number of other blogs and video series start coming up, with iterations of The Slender Man that have different traits, some that MH used, some that they took from the Victor Surge / SA origins, and some they made up themselves.

5) Now, two seasons and almost 50 entries into the series, the Operator is an icon of the Slender Man mythos. If you want to be literal within the universe, the Operator is the Operator and nothing more. The Operator existed before the SA forums made mention of The Slender Man. We can assume most of the articles and mythos of SA are moot, since by the time most of that came out, Troy and Joseph were already coming up with their own ideas for The Operator.

5b) That said, in the real world, where we all exist, The Slender Man was a mythos/meme created before MH existed. When we look at the total scope of all the vlogs and blogs created based on this mythos, all of the creatures (no matter what you call them - Der Grossman, Slenderman, The Slender Man, the Operator, Slim, whatever) are iterations of the Slender Man creature. They are their own creatures in their universes, and inside them are only The Slender Man if the creators decided a) to give them that name or b) assume that the mythos is part of their universe, no matter what they call him.

Obviously you can all argue 5 and 5b, and I guess that's fine, but it's semantics at that point, and if that's the only argument you're going to make, then you're mostly just wasting your time and getting yourself irritated over nothing. I think what I am posting here is the most civil way to continue trying to focus on what the OP was trying to do: talk about some of the differences between a) the Operator (MH) and the Slender Man (overall mythos) and/or b) the Operator (MH) and other Slender Men (other vlogs/blogs).

Edit 2: I removed the tl;dr since its focus seemed to distract from the majority of what I said and focused on the last point I made.

[tijde]

I see no problem with the direction this topic has gone, and I really don't understand why people are so aggravated by it. It's not like we've forked off into discussing Jessica's childhood or something. Chances are pretty good that if someone made a separate thread titled "Is The Operator Slenderman?", it'd get merged here. And for good reason: even if it's not precisely the response the OP was hoping for, the question is quite relevant to the subject at hand. Policing the thread seems unnecessary, especially since the argument has naturally died off quite a bit. Instead of complaining that the current discussion is lame, why not spend that energy writing the kind of post you want to see--an 'on-topic' one--instead?

[riderpool]

my question is how would a SWAT team take on either the operator or slenderman? or even an ODST team?

[redherring]

[riderpool]

[redherring]

[riderpool]

[redherring]

[WhyYouBawwing]

Well put on everything, redherring! I find it refreshing actually that in Mh they don't flatout link TO with his internet name or the internet at all. Also, I forgot all about the mention of organ-removal in 38, so now I'm eagerly anticipating some bags in trees in a future entry.

[Dumbalias]

Re: (OT) The Operator vs Slenderman

[AngryDeepground]

Re: (OT) The Operator vs Slenderman

[tijde]

[riderpool]