Marble Hornets Theory: The Importance of Turning Your Back on the Things Trying to Kill You
The popular theory (presented both by characters in the series and largely accepted by fans) that Tim's medication is what makes the difference that allows him to escape the series when no one else does has never quite sat well with me. Not only does it seem a bit confusing that an incomprehensible, eldritch creature of unknown means, motives, and origins can be halted in its tracks by the 'marvels' of psychiatric medications, but it also doesn't seem to be actually supported by the text of the series.
For one, Tim was not actually the only one taking his medications by the end of the series, and yet no one else was able to escape. Brian was taking Tim's medication on the regular (arguably as early as Season One, given that Jay finds a bottle of pills implied to have been Tim's in Brian's house initially) and met the same end as the others despite it. Jay also was - at least for a time - being given some of Tim's medications; Tim theorizes they're what helped pull Jay from the catatonia he was suffering after the events of Entry #72, but the sheer lack of adequate causation fails to convince Jay (and me); approximately 2 months elapsed between the posting of Entry #72 and Entry #74, Jay is just as likely to be correct that the passing time made more of a difference than the medication did.
Second, and arguably most important, Tim is not actually shown to be resistant or immune to the effects of the Operator's influence at any point in the series, in fact, he's arguably the most commonly and severely affected out of everyone. While, yes, Tim does have a stubborn moment of resistance in Entry #72, and yes it is iconic, it's also not the only time we've seen charaters react this way in the Operator's presence. Although Alex is the one holding hte camera in both clips, thus making the moments impossible to showcase as easily as Tim's, he stubbornly keeps his feet in the Operator's presence just like Tim in footage from both Entry #43 and Entry #70.
(If you'll permit an aside: I actually find it interesting that I've seen people point to the Entry #43 footage as 'proof' that Alex is succumbed to the Operator's influence and almost entirely subsumed by its control, given that Tim's identical moment is framed as 'sheer resistance'. An interesting double standard.)
Tim also suffered from the exact same coughing fits, outbursts of violence and rage, disorientation, teleportation, and seizures that everyone else did -- arguably even more than others tended to. With regards to the "The medication is what saved Tim's life at the end of the series" theory in particular, it's extremely noteworthy that when Tim killed Alex, he did so because of (not despite) the Operator's influence. Tim spends the entire Entry essentially pleading for Alex to see reason and accept his help; Tim doesn't believe the only way out is through killing each other, he thinks that there's still hope for change, he believes he can help Alex. The reason he abruptly turns on a dime and lunges at Alex to stab him multiple times in a sudden, wordless rage is not because he changed his mind or suddenly decided that Alex was beyond hope, he did it because the Operator showed its face in the room. We see him falter, almost freezing in place for an extended moment, before suddenly lunging -- the only thing that changed in that moment was the appearance of the Operator. Tim was not immune to the Operator's effects, and his medication is not the reason he survived when no one else did.
So what was?
I do think there's something unique to Tim that allowed him to move on when no one else could; I even believe, to an extent, that his experiences in the psychiatric system is what influenced this trait. I think the fact that Tim was willing to move on is what separates him from the rest of the cast. Tim was the only character who seemed willing to cordon off the events of the Marble Hornets series as nothing more than a deviation from his regular life; he always considered it finite, he always intended to leave it behind. Tim's involvement with Jay in Season Three was initially very reluctant and forced -- Tim didn't want to be involved, and only agreed because the threat that totheark could continue intervening with his life wasn't something he could ignore. The implication always was that they would work together to bring this situation to a close, and then Tim would go straight back to his life without having to waste any more of his time on it.
This is something that seems almost entirely unique to Tim. Although Jay seemingly attempted to keep his investigation of the tapes cordoned off from his regular life, that's something that very rapidly fell apart and never seemed to be something Jay attempted to recapture. What was once a casual watching and editing of some tapes filmed back in college quickly became something that left him consumed with paranoia, unable to sleep, unable to spend more than a few nights in the same location, Jay left his apartment and presumably his job and never returned to either, and even when he was given opportunity to back off, even once he did do exactly that and saw the notable improvement the decision made in his life, Jay continued to push forward anyway. Jay's search for answers was never going to be a journey that came to a conclusion -- every answer Jay thinks he's found is actually just a proliferation of additional questions. Jay is fighting the Hydra, cutting off one head just for two more to grow in it place, and instead of putting the sword down and fleeing, he keeps trying, because he can't stop. It's almost impossible to conceive of what "Answer" would have satisfied Jay, what threshold of information he could achieve that would allow him to go back to his regular life -- Jay doesn't have one of those anymore. He can't even really remember what it used to look like. And Jay's death only reflects that -- still seeking answers, still asking questions, still starved for any answers.
Similarly, Brian's dedication to getting revenge on Alex completely subsumed his life even before Jay started posting videos to YouTube. The state of his house when Jay first shows up there is proof enough of that. From the very beginning, Brian always intended for his quest for revenge to end in his death. The "When you seek revenge, you should dig two graves" quote wasn't a warning to Brian, it was the promise he made. Brian, essentially, blamed Alex for destroying his life and the fact that he never saw a way back from that is what drove his anger towards Alex even higher. Maybe Jay intended to close the book once, before things went as far as they did, but Brian never had any intention of doing so. Brian's death reflects that too -- although his confrontation with Tim leads to his death, Tim doesn't kill Brian, because Brian hauls himself over the ledge and lets go before Tim even gets a chance; he was resigned to his death years before it happened.
Alex, on the other hand, did manage to move on once. His decision to transfer colleges under the guise of wanting to be closer to Amy successfully held the Operator away for a time. He hides his camera in the back of a closet and seems genuinely taken aback when Amy finds and pulls it out, she never even knew it existed; similarly, he seems genuinely startled and taken aback when the Operator appears inside his house -- he really hasn't had any encounters with it in the years that passed since college. Regardless of whether you see Alex's transfer as something motivated by fear for his life or simple fear of retribution, it's obvious he intended to "put the whole thing behind him", and he was actually successful.
But I think the fact that this safety crashed down around his ears so quickly is exactly what convinced Alex there was no other way out. Even if Alex had been convinced at one point that leaving it behind him and refusing to engage with the memories anymore was enough to save him, the demolition of that normalcy -- how quickly things fell back into the same pattern he saw in college -- was 'proof' that it wasn't enough and would never be enough, and there was only one way this story could end.
Jay escaped college seemingly unscathed because he forgot everything significant that happened during that time -- it never occured to him to look back. Brian never stopped looking -- he was never able to turn away from it. Alex kept his back turned for a brief period of time, but then couldn't stop himself from looking back -- Lot's wife turned to salt.
It's difficult to determine exactly what Tim did after college, whether he was right there at Brian's side the entire time or whether Brian reached out and got him involved shortly after Jay started uploading videos to the channel is largely up to interpretation. However, we do see what Tim does in a very similar situation at the very end of Season Two and the beginning of Season Three. Unlike Jay, who picked the metaphorical scabs of his season two memory loss until it split, Tim shrugs the ambiguity and confusion of that time onto his shoulders, picks himself back up, and goes back to his life. He doesn't know how he broke his leg or how he wound up in the middle of the woods, he doesn't know how he lost his last job because he doesn't remember missing that many days, and he can't figure out what happened. Tim is willing to accept that, and knows that the only thing he can really do about it is do exactly that -- accept it and move on. He gets a new job, he's proactive about his doctor's appointments, and he lets his leg heal. What else is there to do?
I think it's that attitude more than anything else that makes a difference for Tim. Not only did Tim (at least, Tim as he is by Season Three) always intend for this entire series to be nothing but an eventually closed off chapter in his life, but Tim is a very adaptable person. When the Operator shows up and shreds its way through his life until everything looks ruined, Tim might get pissed off, sure, but he'll also buckle down and start picking up the pieces and remake what he can. It's that willingness to just accept, adapt, and move on that benefits Tim; and the others' refusals to do the same is what damns them.
There are some intersections with Tim's experience in the psychiatric system that may have influenced this trait in him. Tim's been labeled mentally ill since he was a child -- regardless of whether you see the entirety of his symptoms being caused by the Operator or if you think the Operator is a partial influence and Tim has other, unrelated conditions the system has still labeled and perceives Tim as such, which would influence how Tim perceives himself. He's used to shrugging off his own distress because he doesn't have any other choice -- as a child, Tim was frequently restrained and otherwise locked into rooms with the Operator despite his desperate pleas for help; he's used to his fears being dismissed and ignored. Even if Tim had managed to evade the psychiatric system as a child, it's likely this is still a lesson he would have learned (just in a hopefully less traumatic way); plenty of people manage to find a mundanity or a kind of peace with psychotic symptoms, or at the very least learn how to shrug the distress caused by them onto their shoulders and move on with their lives. They learn to cope.
Tim's life experiences gave him an adaptability the others didn't -- or couldn't -- learn. He knows how to ignore "hallucinations" and is used to picking his life back up after a "relapse". Despite the severity and the devastation of the events of the Marble Hornets series, in a way, it's just a more exaggerated form of the same thing Tim's been dealing with his whole life.
There's an episode of the Magnus Archives that features a statement written by a man who'd found the corpse of his best friend wrapped up in his blanket in his house one day. No cause of death, but when the man goes home and attempts to go to sleep, he realizes there's a creature in the shadows of his room, one that presumably followed him home. In a terrified moment of childish impulse, he hides under his blankets, and the creature backs off; a pattern that repeated ad nauseum. At least until one night when the routine of hiding from the creature beneath the blanket reaches a kind of mundanity, he believes the blanket will keep him safe to the point the fear of the creature begins to fade, at which point the creature makes its final move, telling him "The blanket never did anything". In essence, the fear mattered more than the placebo of the blanket ever did.
I think the Operator works on a similar, not identical, wavelength. Tim's medication might have been an effective placebo that allowed him to move on with his life, but it didn't do anything on its own.
In essence, I think the comparison a later slenderverse series made relating operator (or slender) - sickness to radiation poisoning had a point. I think the more you try to understand what's happening, the more desperate you get to prove what's happening to you, the deeper you go into the rabbit hole, the closer you get, the more the Operator is able to affect you. The more you try to fight your fate, the tighter the threads around your throat start to get. Like someone stuck in a rip tide, fighting so hard that they exhaust themselves and start to drown; the way one drowning person will pull someone else under the water on pure, desperate instinct to get their head back above water. The only way out is through, you can't fight it and you can't understand it, the only way you can survive is by deliberately turning your back on it.
[ESSAY IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION]