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 Forum index » Chaotic Fiction » Marble Hornets
[VIDEO] Entry #87
Moderators: Giskard, JKatkina, Zarggg
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Lithp
I Have No Life


Joined: 04 Mar 2012
Posts: 2058
Ristar wrote:
The fact that this entry was released without any warning and in the exact same date than the Introduction video suggests that they intended it to be the ending...

Say what you will about what i'm going to say, but good series can be ruined by ambigous endings such as this one. No theory or answer is or will be confirmed to be true now. I said it before and i say it again ''What's the point of a mystery series where the answer is never revealed?''


Completely on board. Sadly, the "not answering things is DEEP" attitude is pretty deeply entrenched in people.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 2:38 pm
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Sidenote
Decorated

Joined: 24 Nov 2013
Posts: 240
Location: Scotland

riiiiight

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 2:42 pm
Last edited by Sidenote on Sat Jun 21, 2014 2:51 pm; edited 1 time in total
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TheOperator
Unfettered


Joined: 20 Nov 2012
Posts: 711
Location: You don't wanna know

 		This is the ending they're going with? Yeah guys let's keep this series going for 5 years so we can abruptly kill off almost everybody, abandon countless threads and sloppily handle the ones we do cover in the last few entries. Like the Amy mystery goes for over 4 years and then just an offhand "you killed Amy?" in the penultimate entry. I had to rewrite a lot of this post because I didn't sound very constructive in my wording since I'm laughing in disbelief that Entry #87 is supposedly the end and yet this is supposed to be an ending anyone's supposed to be happy with.

I mean yes, I cheered and fistpumped that Jessica was alive. And then laughed my ass off because I knew they weren't going to bother explaining how. Not even so much as hint at how. They did do one thing right, Jessica didn't die a damsel in distress, though I have to say that her having absolutely no idea what's going on because our male protagonist sees fit to lie to her isn't much better. Still, it's something. At least Jessica's alive. But yeah, I don't see myself buying this series on DVD or Blu-ray any time soon or ever. These last entries have just been ridiculous and now there is literally no closure. Might not be the end but it certainly feels like it. And honestly I don't know what else they could do that they'd be interested in covering, I already only had the vague hope that there'd be a new entry where Tim finds Jessica, now we have that(sorta). Jessica finding out Tim lied probably won't happen.

Also WTF is Tim doing smoking I thought he quit. Entry #75 had such a cool, albeit unintentional, "last smoke" scene too.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 2:47 pm
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JAL13
Decorated


Joined: 10 Jun 2013
Posts: 269
Location: Between Realms

 		Entry #76:

Between Jay and Jessica, Masky and Hoody decide on taking Jessica and she even cooperates with them saying, "I'm fine. I got it." Both of them leave Jay back at the hotel as if he was useless extra baggage. They continue to try and thwart Alex's plans to kill Jessica and seemingly fail until….

Entry #87:

Tim throws away the Mask like a superhero who has given up and thrown away his or her costume. He meets up with Jessica and tells her some information that we have not been told. Alex is dead and Jessica is safe. He may have lied about Jay moving away somewhere.

Final thought:

I strongly think that Jessica had a lot more to do with the series than we were led on to believe. There are so many inconsistencies that I can barely write a solid theory to explain how she's important. However, I can say that if she was originally part of Totheark, then "I am the Third" makes a lot more sense.

It could be that Brian, Tim, and Jessica were in it from the beginning and then when Jessica lost her memories the duo went to get her back. Then when both Tim and Jessica lost their memories Hoody went to get Tim back.


EDIT:

On a side note to the posts above. A mystery series has to lead you to some solid conclusions. For me, reading on these forums and watching the videos, I still have no solid conclusions. Just saying an "ambiguous ending is deep" is just a, excuse my language, a big fucking excuse.

For example, if any of you have played Mother 3,
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
the ending to that was ambiguous, but it at least gave us an entire text spill of history to allow the fans to draw solid conclusions as to what happened before and or after the series.


PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 2:50 pm
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Sidenote
Decorated

Joined: 24 Nov 2013
Posts: 240
Location: Scotland

 		the problem I have with the answers we have been given is we have been wondering about them the whole series then in the last 2 entries they basically are just like " oh ye by the way jessica is alive, amy is dead, brian is hoody ", the characters say this like they've always known, and just decide to mention it like it's nothing.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 2:56 pm
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Darkly_Quill
Boot

Joined: 01 Aug 2013
Posts: 58

 		Where the fuck is Marble Hornets in all this? I'm pretty confident he's gonna shit on this entry and I'm surprised he hasn't by now.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:01 pm
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TheOperator
Unfettered


Joined: 20 Nov 2012
Posts: 711
Location: You don't wanna know
Sidenote wrote:
the problem I have with the answers we have been given is we have been wondering about them the whole series then in the last 2 entries they basically are just like " oh ye by the way jessica is alive, amy is dead, brian is hoody ", the characters say this like they've always known, and just decide to mention it like it's nothing.


Yup exactly. Granted they were the most obvious answers but that doesn't justify revealing them in such a bland way. They probably shouldn't have taken so long to reveal such obvious things but either way, they deserved to be revealed in as satisfying a way as possible, not a "oh look, Jessica's okay. Somehow", a "oh Tim btw I killed Amy" and a "oh so this tape says Brian is Hoody. I shall not react."

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:03 pm
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JAL13
Decorated


Joined: 10 Jun 2013
Posts: 269
Location: Between Realms
TheOperator wrote:
Sidenote wrote:
the problem I have with the answers we have been given is we have been wondering about them the whole series then in the last 2 entries they basically are just like " oh ye by the way jessica is alive, amy is dead, brian is hoody ", the characters say this like they've always known, and just decide to mention it like it's nothing.


Yup exactly. Granted they were the most obvious answers but that doesn't justify revealing them in such a bland way. They probably shouldn't have taken so long to reveal such obvious things but either way, they deserved to be revealed in as satisfying a way as possible, not a "oh look, Jessica's okay. Somehow", a "oh Tim btw I killed Amy" and a "oh so this tape says Brian is Hoody. I shall not react."


For some reason I feel like a reaction video isn't needed. We got Tim's reaction when he faced Alex and Alex rubbed it in his face. A reaction video would feel too, I don't know, forced? Like, "here's me crying, feel bad, and sulk with me."

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:06 pm
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Camero
Decorated

Joined: 05 Apr 2011
Posts: 234
Lithp wrote:
Ristar wrote:
The fact that this entry was released without any warning and in the exact same date than the Introduction video suggests that they intended it to be the ending...

Say what you will about what i'm going to say, but good series can be ruined by ambigous endings such as this one. No theory or answer is or will be confirmed to be true now. I said it before and i say it again ''What's the point of a mystery series where the answer is never revealed?''


Completely on board. Sadly, the "not answering things is DEEP" attitude is pretty deeply entrenched in people.


I have seen this be a popular thing in what they call "postmodern detective novels" but there it's a deliberate choice to frustrate the readers and deny them closure (not to say that the books are not awesome--I highly recommend City of Glass by Paul Auster), but yeah making an ending ambiguous does not automatically improve something.

That said, a couple of things are worth noting, if this is the ending. A certain number of the mysteries CAN'T be solved, because there's no way for the characters to really answer them. If you're doing some sort of eldritch horror based mystery, that kinda goes with the territory.

Secondly, my thinking here is that the intention is less to be ambiguous and more for the ending to suggest it's "not over" for them, even if it is for us. As people have noted, pretty much this whole entry is inviting is to think that everything is NOT fine and that Tim is lying to us. So if this is the ending, it's simply a way of ending something that will never actually end.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:12 pm
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gennerx
Unfettered


Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Posts: 359
Location: 90° N, 0° W
MarbleHead wrote:
So 30+ pages on the last entry about how Tim was actually dead, and hey look at that, he's not dead at all.

Great entry, and if THIS is the ending, I totally embrace it. Awesome show guys.


I can deal with Tim being alive. I can admit I was wrong but Jessica just showing up with out an explanation is just lazy writing, assuming this is the ending. I'm now half convinced that jay and everyone else are alive and no one actually died in this series.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:22 pm
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lonsumtravlr
Entrenched

Joined: 23 Mar 2014
Posts: 1009
Location: The Great Continent of New England
Camero wrote:
I have seen this be a popular thing in what they call "postmodern detective novels" but there it's a deliberate choice to frustrate the readers and deny them closure (not to say that the books are not awesome--I highly recommend City of Glass by Paul Auster), but yeah making an ending ambiguous does not automatically improve something.

That said, a couple of things are worth noting, if this is the ending. A certain number of the mysteries CAN'T be solved, because there's no way for the characters to really answer them. If you're doing some sort of eldritch horror based mystery, that kinda goes with the territory.

Secondly, my thinking here is that the intention is less to be ambiguous and more for the ending to suggest it's "not over" for them, even if it is for us. As people have noted, pretty much this whole entry is inviting is to think that everything is NOT fine and that Tim is lying to us. So if this is the ending, it's simply a way of ending something that will never actually end.


Funny you mention Auster--the whole "New York Trilogy" is amazing, and for much of MH, I think that the second or third installments (can't remember the final novella's name, but it's one of the most disturbing things I've read) are a little more appropriate. The second installment, "Ghosts," where a detective is paid to watch another guy and they all end up looking at the same book, seems a bit closer to what some fans seemed to have wanted the trio to go (except Auster used [and throughout the Trilogy, actually] Thoreau's "Walden" instead of "House of Leaves"). The final one, which is about a character who wanted to progressively efface all trace of himself yet bequeathed the mystery of his disappearance to the protagonist, a school friend of his (only a literary instead of a filmmaker friend), is the more appropriate here (and I wish I could remember it in full, but it disturbed the shit out of me when I read it on a train on a trip from Boston to Chicago).

I actually think more of Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers (which owes a ton to Auster--they'd collaborated in the past, too), in which a man, with the prompting of a friend who is a self-styled detective and a detective novel junkie, goes hunting down the answer to the mystery of which of his ex-girlfriends wrote him a letter in pink ink on pink stationery and that arrived in a pink envelope and proclaimed that she'd given birth to his son, who was coming to track him down. The man's friend helps him narrow down the field of past lovers and tells him to "look for something pink" because that will be a major clue. As the story progresses, if you remember how stock detective stories and shows and movies work, the clues seem to pile up and it seems that we, the audience, along with the man who is the protagonist, are closing in on the solution. But the movie's really about how a sense of self is constructed (and self-constructed).

Yeah, I'd thought of both Auster and Jarmusch at points, but I don't really see MH as being in the same line as either the "New York Trilogy" or Broken Flowers. It's really more about atmosphere and emotion and the subconscious and how a frightening thing can mess all that up. There's the mystery, but then there's the atmosphere. I've said before and I'll say again, if anything, MH owes more to Twin Peaks and Mulholland Dr., except those are more actual whodunnits--and even then, there are clues throughout MH that I think are just not the verbal clues people (including me) are used to getting.

And, Lithp, I do agree with some of your criticisms of MH since Entry #86, but I can't agree about the "not explaining things is DEEP" criticism. I don't think they're going entirely for depth. I think they've going for atmosphere and emotion and also to demonstrate that they can do some things technically, which strikes me as valid when you consider that they're still honing their craft. That said, I'm expecting something more polished for their next project.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:29 pm
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lonsumtravlr
Entrenched

Joined: 23 Mar 2014
Posts: 1009
Location: The Great Continent of New England
Camero wrote:
That said, a couple of things are worth noting, if this is the ending. A certain number of the mysteries CAN'T be solved, because there's no way for the characters to really answer them. If you're doing some sort of eldritch horror based mystery, that kinda goes with the territory.

Secondly, my thinking here is that the intention is less to be ambiguous and more for the ending to suggest it's "not over" for them, even if it is for us. As people have noted, pretty much this whole entry is inviting is to think that everything is NOT fine and that Tim is lying to us. So if this is the ending, it's simply a way of ending something that will never actually end.


Have to agree with you on both of these, yes.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:30 pm
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lonsumtravlr
Entrenched

Joined: 23 Mar 2014
Posts: 1009
Location: The Great Continent of New England
gennerx wrote:
MarbleHead wrote:
So 30+ pages on the last entry about how Tim was actually dead, and hey look at that, he's not dead at all.

Great entry, and if THIS is the ending, I totally embrace it. Awesome show guys.


I can deal with Tim being alive. I can admit I was wrong but Jessica just showing up with out an explanation is just lazy writing, assuming this is the ending. I'm now half convinced that jay and everyone else are alive and no one actually died in this series.


Why does there have to be an explanation when her purported abduction by TO, which the majority of the fandom swore on their least-popular parent's lives was authentic, was open to question? It's not too much a stretch to think that if Jessica wasnt' really taken by TO that she was alive and that at least one of the two oddballs running around the woods may have somehow done something to help her out?

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:32 pm
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TheJoker
Entrenched


Joined: 14 May 2013
Posts: 1135
Location: Wisconsin

 		I would just like to point out:

An ambiguous ending does not automatically improve a series or make it "deep", but it does not necessarily damage it either. It depends on the execution. There are good endings which leave questions unanswered, and there are bad endings which resolve every last plot thread when perhaps they shouldn't have. I'm still on the fence about this execution- it definitely could have been better, but I'm not sure it was "bad" per se either.

But thinking it over, Ark aside, the most important question to me was always really "What's going on in Alex's head here?" Entry 86 answered that, so I suppose the most important question was resolved. And frankly, some unanswered questions are just things we made bigger than they really were- not all of them, but definitely a few.

I'm still not exactly happy with this, and I'm also still not certain this was the ending. Word from Troy would be appreciated around now. (I cannot help but feel, though, that if this was the ending, he'd have tweeted something to the effect of "Well it's been a great five years" or whatever.) We'll see, I suppose.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:43 pm
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gennerx
Unfettered


Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Posts: 359
Location: 90° N, 0° W
lonsumtravlr wrote:
gennerx wrote:
MarbleHead wrote:
So 30+ pages on the last entry about how Tim was actually dead, and hey look at that, he's not dead at all.

Great entry, and if THIS is the ending, I totally embrace it. Awesome show guys.


I can deal with Tim being alive. I can admit I was wrong but Jessica just showing up with out an explanation is just lazy writing, assuming this is the ending. I'm now half convinced that jay and everyone else are alive and no one actually died in this series.


Why does there have to be an explanation when her purported abduction by TO, which the majority of the fandom swore on their least-popular parent's lives was authentic, was open to question? It's not too much a stretch to think that if Jessica wasnt' really taken by TO that she was alive and that at least one of the two oddballs running around the woods may have somehow done something to help her out?


Everything is in question on this forum the problem is there was enough evidence to make it reasonable to assume she was gone. Troy wanted us to think she was gone to make a twist ending. I don't have so much a problem with that but if your going to pull it off you have to explain how she survived. You can't just leave us to assume that Brian and Tim did "something". I am however marginally hopeful that there will be another entry.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:50 pm
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