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 Forum index » Chaotic Fiction » Marble Hornets
Trosephim Reddit AMA
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DHawk314
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Joined: 17 May 2011
Posts: 1087

 		Yeah I thought of that, would explain Entry #24. Maybe Skully sent Alex the tape totheark style in 2006, and he put it in his camera to play it?
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 1:35 am
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MascaraSnake
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Lithp wrote:
Quote:
An explanation like that adds nothing to our understanding of the story, since we could already infer that from the information we had


Earlier, someone accused me of "arguing for the sake of arguing." Well, I think this is "defense for the sake of defense." I think it's ridiculous that Totheark found Jay by randomly Googling with him, but that's the explanation that you guys gave me. So I try to work within that & say, "Why didn't they just explain that detail?" & you guys say it's an explanation that adds nothing.

I know. That's why I don't like it to begin with.

I wasn't the one who brought up the explanation in the first place. It's not like all the people who argue against you form a team or something. The only thing I reacted to was an argument that you made that basically boils down to: "If they have an explanation, they should put it in the story, even if it adds nothing." And that's all that I was arguing against.

Apparently you want the explanation for how totheark found Jay to somehow explain more than just that. But I don't know what else you want to know. The fact that the explanation adds nothing to the story doesn't make it a bad explanation. It only means that the viewer would gain no important information from it. There are multiple ways in which Brian could have found out that Jay was posting the entries, all equally mundane and thus uninteresting to the viewer. The series always made a big deal of the fact that Jay attracted a lot of unwanted attention by putting all this stuff online. This is just another example of that. It doesn't matter if Brian googled "Marble Hornets" or if he stumbled upon it by accident, what matters is that it isn't implausible that he found it without being in contact with Jay or anyone else from the shoot, because neither were we, and we found it too.

The fact that the explanation is mundane only becomes a problem when it's made explicit in the story, which is precisely what we're arguing against.

Lithp wrote:
Same thing about this "paradigm" of yours. It's basically indistinguishable from just not bothering to write a plot. So it seems that, no matter what happens, it can be turned in support of the story.

No. If we imagine a "plot" scale where one end is "every plot point has to be made explicit" (your viewpoint) and the other is "just not bothering to write a plot, Marble Hornets (and thus the "paradigm") falls somewhere in the middle. There is a plot, but certain parts of it are left vague or inconclusive. Of course it's easy to judge a plot by your criterion: The plot is either completely explicit, in which case it's a good plot, or it's not, in which case it isn't. Things become more complicated when you don't subscribe to either extreme. Just how much should be explained and how much should be left open to interpretation depends on the nature of the story and of course the tastes of the viewership. Your argument seems to be that we need to pick a fixed point on the scale and demand that every story also falls on that point of the scale, because otherwise we can't make objective judgments. Well, guess what? You're right, we can't. But that's the point! We're not here to evaluate the objective quality of Marble Hornets, because if we did, we'd first have to agree on an ideal that it should fulfill. Obviously we can't do that because we have different expectations, and that's a good thing. But what you're doing is accusing people who don't agree with your criteria for judging Marble Hornets of "avoiding the issue" or "ignoring the flaws".

Lithp wrote:
And you know, as much as I've been accused of closed mindedness, I'm pretty sure I've conceded more points. I attribute this to having an argument that is actually falsifiable, where I can't just fall back on "the answers are out there" or "that plot point doesn't matter" basically whenever.

If you're speculating about events in the story that weren't shown or were left inconclusive, then sure, you can talk about falsifiability. You can propose theories and see if they are consistent with what we do know about story. But falsifiability doesn't apply when we're arguing about how they should have told the story. It's impossible to make a falsifiable argument about whether or not they should have explained totheark's backstory, because there is no objective truth - it's a matter of opinion. And that's the entire problem. You're trying to have a falsifiable argument about matters of taste and opinion. How is that even supposed to work? If two sides oppose each other and both sides make a falsifiable argument, then one side must be wrong. So basically you're trying to convince us that our opinion about the series is wrong.

Lithp wrote:
This is another thing that pisses me off. Those 3 strung people along with promises of answers, then at the end want to say that "wasn't the point," & now I get shit for not wanting to play by those rules. Well, if they'd told me to begin with that they basically didn't have a plot, then no, I wouldn't have continued watching & we wouldn't be having this argument, regardless of whether or not this writing style is valid.

So you're basically admitting that your problem isn't with the series, which you never would have been interested in if you had known what it was gonna be like, but rather with how the creators presented it OOG. And I get that it pisses you off that the series didn't turn out to be what you thought it would be, but in the end you're just concurring with me: You're outside of the series' target group.

lonsumtravlr wrote:
It seems he wasn't interested in making a point that someone at a different level of sanity would have considered a "straight" one.

It's not that he wasn't interested, he wasn't capable. Brian as Hoody is basically suffering from Operator-induced schizophrenia. His thoughts are incoherent and he's unable to express them coherently. In that regard he's pretty consistent throughout the series.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 6:33 am
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lonsumtravlr
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Joined: 23 Mar 2014
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Location: The Great Continent of New England

 		[quote=me]It seems he wasn't interested in making a point that someone at a different level of sanity would have considered a "straight" one.[/quote]

MascaraSnake wrote:
It's not that he wasn't interested, he wasn't capable. Brian as Hoody is basically suffering from Operator-induced schizophrenia. His thoughts are incoherent and he's unable to express them coherently. In that regard he's pretty consistent throughout the series.


We're not really disagreeing. For however warped poor Brian's mind became (not sure about "schizophrenia," because it's such a broad term both IG and OOG, and even Tim said that he's not sure that it's proper for his own, related condition), what he was doing made sense to him. The thing about the supposed irrationality of the actions of someone suffering mental illness is that the actions have their own logic to the person making them. Everything about The Ark and the videos and more--it all made complete, total sense to Brian.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 1:25 pm
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lonsumtravlr
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Joined: 23 Mar 2014
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SilentMedusa wrote:
If Amy just found the camera and it wasn't planted, then WTF was that shit on the tape before she started filming (and taking a moving selfie while she was at it Rolling Eyes )?

So, here's my answer: Skully planted the camera (which is why he was on that tape). Now, with that in mind, imagine if they'd gone with their "Jay is Skully" idea, and weep at the lost opportunity Twisted Evil .


Even if Skully turned out not to be Jay in his own Oppy-induced state, Skully's still a lost opportunity. He or she could have helped to put flesh on the background backbone of the overall story.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 1:28 pm
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DHawk314
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Joined: 17 May 2011
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 		I'm convinced that, since in the AMA Troy said Alex met Brian through film classes, that Tim and Jessica are the only survivors because they're the only ones who aren't fucking film students. Seriously, Jay thinks he's like the hero of a detective film noir, looking for missing people, but he's the worst detective ever. Seriously. He thinks he's in a movie. Alex tries to investigate what's going on with the Operator too, but both he and Jay just go totally fucking crazy, and both of them end up dead. Brian is convinced he's like the puppet master, pulling the strings, arranging things, being really dramatic and mysterious. But he just ends up dying too.

The only ones who decide to just go to a doctor like normal people are Tim and Jessica, they're the only ones who live, because everyone else thinks it's a movie because they're fucking film students.
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 5:06 pm
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Lithp
I Have No Life


Joined: 04 Mar 2012
Posts: 2058

 		Grown tired of repeating myself. Besides, no matter where I leave off, there will be a lot of people complaining that I'm a dick, saying I'm nitpicking irrelevancies while repeatedly dodging questions about what makes something relevant, taking things I say out of context to go "you're just admitting that I'm right/this is your REAL issue" because who would know my points better than anyone but me, & other such shenanigans. So I might as well make this my final post in this topic.

Quote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZD7S5Xp5bs#t=508


This didn't answer anything. So he didn't find a body or anything, & last he knew, he missed her, but he assumed that she was dead anyway? When he was wrong about Tim, Jay, & Brian?

You would think, if the characters were so important, then character history would be addressed.

Quote:
That's because you're the only one here that's been proven wrong about the actual story. This whole thing has just been us pointing out things that you said that were wrong.


Because I am saying things that CAN be proven right or wrong. That's a GOOD thing. You guys are just saying that certain facts "don't matter," without giving any independent criteria for judging whether or not something "matters" to a story. You will always walk away feeling that your argument is solid because you can adjust it at will to dismiss any counter evidence.

Quote:

I understand you feel like they said they would answer things, but they said they would answer the important questions, not every question.


Like I said, everything they didn't answer is simply dismissed as unimportant.

Quote:

shows that you clearly don't give a shit about the fact that you're doing this. I observed you doing it before I commented in this thread, and you continue to do so. Even if you don't believe you're doing it, you should at least care that others perceive you as outright disrespecting them and their intelligence. But you done nothing to back yourself off from that
.

No, I shouldn't. My life doesn't revolve around how you think about me. Not to burst the bubble of your self-absorbed crusade, but I don't really like you or the way that you talk about me either. I just don't bitch about it ceaselessly.

Quote:
So you're basically admitting that your problem isn't with the series, which you never would have been interested in if you had known what it was gonna be like, but rather with how the creators presented it OOG. And I get that it pisses you off that the series didn't turn out to be what you thought it would be, but in the end you're just concurring with me: You're outside of the series' target group.


No, I'm not. "I would have ignored this series if I knew how it was going to turn out"=/="the plot was good." I would have ignored it because I would have known that the plot was going to be bad.

I'm sorry, but this argument is stupid. Anyone who doesn't like X is by definition outside of X's target demographic. That's not a defense, that's an echo chamber.

Quote:
Of course it's easy to judge a plot by your criterion: The plot is either completely explicit, in which case it's a good plot, or it's not, in which case it isn't.


Not really completely accurate, but close enough. This stuff about "different expectations" isn't really a complicated nuance, it's a platitude. An empty, inarguable moral meant to dismiss criticism.

You said it yourself: I'm using a standard that can actually objectively judge a plot.

Quote:
Apparently you want the explanation for how totheark found Jay to somehow explain more than just that. But I don't know what else you want to know. The fact that the explanation adds nothing to the story doesn't make it a bad explanation.


It's not really hard to understand. There's no interesting information here because Trosephim either did not write an interesting backstory for Totheark, or disregarded it. This is why people quite literally don't know what they're missing.

The story for how Alex found Jay was interesting--The Operator returned for him & then he went out to find why.

Now, if Alex just showed up with no explanation, it would be contrived. Yet people would probably be saying, "He probably just randomly Googled Jay, there's nothing interesting to see there." Not knowing that there could have been this story arc of Alex trying to live a normal life & ultimately feeling like he was forced to become a killer again.

The goal of writing a plot is to take the important events & present them in an interesting way. Not to just not even bother & expect your fans to make excuses about how it was all coincidence.

So there you go. I know I didn't hit everything that has been said since then, but I've already addressed pretty much all of this ad nauseum, so if anyone doesn't know how I would respond to a point, not my fault.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 9:07 pm
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Blackout_2014
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Joined: 22 Jun 2014
Posts: 109
Quote:
I guess I always separated Hoody's "deal" into two categories, what was he trying to do, and how he got to be the way he was trying to do that. So with Alex he gives a couple big speeches in 85 and 86 about his motives, but by the time he does, we also know how he got where he is, and why that's his MO. We see him get stalked by the Operator and go crazy in Season 1, and then see it happen again in Season 2.


Yeah, but that never really happened with Hoody.

Quote:
With Tim, we understand better where "Masky" comes from because of various pieces of exposition. Tim talking about his "History" in Entry #55 and Jay linking this to his actions as Masky in the white text, his medical documents, and his speech (Which is helped by Tim's amazing acting).


True.

Quote:
To me, Hoody spelled his motives out in Decay. Jay will lead him to Alex, he will make Alex pay. The question was always, why kill Alex, and why so...maskily? Why does he act so wack, yo? We never see Brian get stalked by the Operator, we just see Alex lead him to it in 51. His deal happens kinda offscreen.


I'm not so sure. Plus that's the problem. Alex has his reasons, Hoody seems to be all over the place.

Quote:
So what I meant when I said I thought a big Brian thing would end up being redundant, I meant I didn't feel like looking at more "Gets stalked by Operator, goes crazy" tapes/documents/present day footage. Towards the end we see him have coughing fits, and taking Tim's meds, and he wears a mask like Timasky, and he writes up cryptic papers like Alex. By the time we were getting towards the end, I just wanted an explanation for why he was being stalked by the Operator, and why he wanted Alex dead. "He's Brian" was satisfactory to explain both those things to me. But I think people were frustrated mostly because we never get to actually see this happen.


That's cool if you like it. I would have like a "Tim" moment where a semi-coherent Hoody tries to explain what he is doing. Even if he was batshit that would be ok.

Quote:
So I could see that. I just don't think it's fair to say that they didn't answer all the important things like they claimed they would, at least implicitly, just because of Brian. And yeah, the Operator stops him from shooting Alex. As for the ark, they said at the end of the story, he did what he did to catalyze the end of everything. I assume, since he mentions the ark all the time around that point, that's what the ark was. But I think in 67 he was trying to kill Alex, he just got stopped by the Operator.


Everyone has their favorite part. By the end the Hoody angle was one of my favorite parts. After Jay got knocked off I figured they would explain Hoody and then some showdown would happen.

I got one of those things.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 9:28 pm
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Blackout_2014
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SilentMedusa wrote:
If Amy just found the camera and it wasn't planted, then WTF was that shit on the tape before she started filming (and taking a moving selfie while she was at it Rolling Eyes )?

So, here's my answer: Skully planted the camera (which is why he was on that tape). Now, with that in mind, imagine if they'd gone with their "Jay is Skully" idea, and weep at the lost opportunity Twisted Evil .


Yeah considering Skully was Jay it would make sense that he planted the camera in order to draw Alex back in.

I always got the impression that Alex thought he had gotten rid of everyone (due to operator influence) and really tried to leave everything behind.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 9:33 pm
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DHawk314
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Lithp wrote:

Quote:

shows that you clearly don't give a shit about the fact that you're doing this. I observed you doing it before I commented in this thread, and you continue to do so. Even if you don't believe you're doing it, you should at least care that others perceive you as outright disrespecting them and their intelligence. But you done nothing to back yourself off from that
.

No, I shouldn't. My life doesn't revolve around how you think about me. Not to burst the bubble of your self-absorbed crusade, but I don't really like you or the way that you talk about me either. I just don't bitch about it ceaselessly.


Your life becomes involved with how other people perceive you when you start engaging in activities that belittle others and their viewpoints. If you came in here just wanting to talk about Marble Hornets while having some monocle of respect for others you could play the "I don't need to have my life be involved with these sorts of things" card, but I'm not getting you involved in them, you are. You're just not taking responsibility for it. And frankly, if you think I spoke in some way that showed disrespect for you as a person than I'm sorry, but geesh, every other post I basically said "I respect your opinion" like a thousand times. If that's not good enough for you fine, but at least I made an attempt, even if it's a failed attempt, to show something approximating respect, you've actually gone out of your way to show you don't care about that, how am I supposed to work with that when I'm actually trying to treat you like you're another person with viewpoints that you care about?
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 2:28 am
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MascaraSnake
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Joined: 12 Oct 2011
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Lithp wrote:
This stuff about "different expectations" isn't really a complicated nuance, it's a platitude. An empty, inarguable moral meant to dismiss criticism.

If that's what you think, then maybe it's a good thing this was your last post, because I don't think I'll be able to convince you that different people do indeed have different expectations and that it's not code for "I don't want to admit you're right". I know it's not complicated or nuanced. I thought it was obvious, but apparently it needed explaining.

Even though you're not going to reply anymore, I still want to clarify a few things in case anyone else cares:
Lithp wrote:
You said it yourself: I'm using a standard that can actually objectively judge a plot.

Great. I firmly believe that all good music must be in a minor key. That's an objective standard, right?

It's easy to be objective when you categorically dismiss certain approaches as worthless.

Lithp wrote:
It's not really hard to understand. There's no interesting information here because Trosephim either did not write an interesting backstory for Totheark, or disregarded it. This is why people quite literally don't know what they're missing.

The story for how Alex found Jay was interesting--The Operator returned for him & then he went out to find why.

Now, if Alex just showed up with no explanation, it would be contrived. Yet people would probably be saying, "He probably just randomly Googled Jay, there's nothing interesting to see there." Not knowing that there could have been this story arc of Alex trying to live a normal life & ultimately feeling like he was forced to become a killer again.

The goal of writing a plot is to take the important events & present them in an interesting way. Not to just not even bother & expect your fans to make excuses about how it was all coincidence.

Since when do we judge the quality of a story on the basis of the good things that could have also been in it? Every story is bound to fail if we apply that as a standard.

You're also ignoring the fundamental difference between the two situations: If Alex had just showed up with no explanation, we wouldn't know why he got involved again in the first place. He would have had no motive. At the time of entry #23, Jay didn't yet know that Alex had blood on his hands, and he wasn't in any danger of knowing, since he wanted to abandon the whole investigation. The only reason Jay eventually found out what really happened is because he had the opportunity to steal the incriminating tapes from Alex himself.

Hoody, on the other hand, has a motive, and it has been explained in the story. I'm not saying that they couldn't have invented and shown a more complicated backstory, but since I don't think they wanted to do Marble Hornets for the rest of their lives, at some point they had to choose which directions of the story they were going to explore. Since this one is adequately explained by the rest of the story, you can't really blame them for concentrating on other, more essential things. Like how Alex got involved again.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 5:48 am
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420Goku
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Joined: 19 Sep 2013
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 		Well Lithp, I called you an idiot when you said MH was bad because it didn't follow Amy, Seth and Sarah who were "supposed to" be main characters, but after this... yeah.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 9:44 am
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DHawk314
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Joined: 17 May 2011
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 		Again, could nobody call anybody an idiot? Jesus Christ.
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I was just lurking around the forums and i have no idea who MH is

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 1:23 pm
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sp103
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Joined: 07 Jan 2008
Posts: 447

 		That reddit chat was unreadable.

Who programmed that? Some fucker who got fired from Prodigy in 1991?

PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 9:54 pm
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DHawk314
Entrenched


Joined: 17 May 2011
Posts: 1087
sp103 wrote:
That reddit chat was unreadable.

Who programmed that? Some fucker who got fired from Prodigy in 1991?


Ya just go everyone's separate reddit pages, the three of their's ya know, it'll all be in order, you just gotta click the contest thing on each one before you know the question. That's the easiest way.
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 10:52 pm
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The Totem
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 		The fact that Troy said that Brian wanted to end this himself supports my theory that the ark is simply the "ending" that Brian had in mind. He did set Jay and Tim up to die, but subconsciously wanted to help them, hence the TTA videos.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 8:45 pm
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