generic masky and hoody vs creepypasta rant

if you cant be bothered to read all this you can put some marble hornets and creepypasta facts in the comments i will appreciate it

(ps: im super tired and i just need to rant somewhere cuz none of my friends wanna listen to me talk abt this... its gonna be long and boring and highly autism fueled)

im gonna say this first, im not really a creepypasta fan but i really love internet horror and the concept of creepypasta is so interesting to me and ive been slowly getting into it over time... mostly jeff the killer because i find him so incredibly hilarious and fun to learn about,, also i like history a lot and the internet history aspect of creepypasta is awesome to me, so this isnt a gripe at creepypasta in general i promise

HOWEVER i am first and foremost a marble hornets fan and watched it well before getting into creepypasta (although ive always seen them... shudders and remembers my long gacha phase where i genuinely avoided creepypasta and fnaf on PURPOSE because the gacha fans scared me.. at my 7 or so years of age in the mha gacha fandom.. what a hypocrite),, marble hornets is probably my all-time favourite horror web series (and troy wagner replied to me on tumblr once.. heh..)

so youre probably guessing what im about to say right now? considering ive just brought up marble hornets and creepypasta in the same post? and im clearly about to go on an annoyed rant? yeah i know you already know

WELL, FIRST: what is creepypasta?

i can answer that for you! 'creepypasta' is a play on the word 'copypasta' which itself is a joke around the term 'copy & paste', as in to copy text, an image, or a video and paste it somewhere else -- doing this on a large scale became a popular trend on the internet quickly from its very origins with things like chainmail ("send this to 10 people or a cute cat DIES" and etc.), and, of course, people easily found ways to make it scary;

creepypasta are defined as text stories, images, or short videos/groups of videos that were easily shared around the internet with the intended purpose of scaring the recipient, and mostly considered to be internet urban legends

often, a spooky image or clip would be what was shared around, with accompanying story(s), unless the story was quite short and could be copypasted by itself

NEXT: what is marble hornets?

marble hornets was a 2009-2011 youtube web-series created by troy wagner, joseph delage, and other friends and actors such as tim sutton -- the series' runtime spans over 9 hours, not including the ARG content with things like ToTheArk and jay's (the main character) irl twitter account used to post in-character and real-time,, MH is also continued to this day in a semi-canon comic created by troy wagner (WHICH I HAVENT READ YET.. BUT IM VERY CLOSE TO BUYING THE COMIC PDFS.. LIKE RN CUZ THE HYPERFIX IS BACK)

it's considered the first ever slenderman series and storyline as the first entry was posted only 10 days after the first slenderman image was created and posted on the somethingawful forum,, in fact, it's believed to be one of the main foundations of slenderman as an internet icon

"So," you probably don't ask, "whats this got to do with masky and hoody?" 

(Ps: yes hoody not hoodie, call him what you want but I prefer hoody with a y (and it's technically the canon version cough cough although even the creators don't care either way))

Well, unless you don't know much about creepypasta or you do and you've been living in a bubble for the last 15 years, you probably know that masky and hoody are quite often.. adopted (we can say) into the slenderfamily, consisting of a variety of creepypasta characters (and creatures) all jumbled into one big universe (cough, mansion usually) under the command of slenderman

"So what? what's the issue you have with this random universe of creepy characters interacting with eachother?"

don't get me wrong, I think the concept of a load of creepy internet legends living in a big house in the woods together is absolutely hilarious and sounds incredible, HOWEVER, thinking back to the definitions i just gave, there's a clear reason why masky and hoody, characters of marble hornets, don't fit into this circle

to put it very simply, by definition, they are NOT creepypasta. they are part of a very long and well written internet horror series that used slenderman as the main antagonist,, that is the only connection between marble hornets and creepypasta, the fact that slenderman was used as a creepypasta completely SEPERATELY to marble hornets as it wasnt their original idea, and even goes by a different name; 'the operator'

"Okay, well Masky and Hoody aren't creepypasta.. but does that really matter? They're horror characters and theyre proxies like all the other characters--" NO.

im stopping you right there. anyone who has watched marble hornets will know full well that thats bullshit.

let's think about it,, Jeff the killer, for example, wasnt explicitly a 'slenderman proxy' when he was first created--in his original story (the ACTUAL original) he was a teenaged roleplay character that the creator made a slideshow video about, and was later plagiarised into a short story about a 13 yr old boy who lost his mind due to (comically violent..) bullies: jeff, as the name suggests, is a killer and characterised as insane, so while he never met slenderman in his origins, it made sense that the unexplained 'feeling' that caused jeff to commit murder in the so-called original story could be explained with slenderman's influence. in fact, it's more interesting to imagine that after the events of this story, instead of just roaming around and killing random people, he finds a purpose in the slendermansion with people who are similar to him--not to mention the fact that the main character-point of literally every creepypasta in that mansion is that they are violent and dangerous, mostly wanting to murder people

in contrast, let's take a look at masky. masky name for a state that the supporting protagonist of marble hornets, tim wright, goes into due to the operator disease that he has suffered with since childhood,, he is vehemently against the operator for ruining his life and even in his masky state, he is NEVER shown to be helping the operator, because for the entire series, tim (and masky) fight AGAINST the operator. he protects jay from it, and wants to stop alex from killing any more people as alex is under the operators influence. masky nor tim caused major damage to anyone, except for alex (the operator's unwitting proxy) and brian/hoody, whose death was an ACCIDENT. see how different this is?

let's go even further and look at hoody. hoody is an alias for the side character, brian thomas, when he wears a fabric mask and hoodie to commit crimes. Isn't that the same as eyeless jack or something? NOT AT ALL! in fact, brian is believed to be working with ToTheArk, directly against the operator with the goal of stopping alex's murder spree and stopping the operators disease,, he ALSO never caused major damage to anyone, mostly stalking, stealing pills from tim, and also trying to protect jay. If anything, hoody could be considered the more violent of the two as he broke and entered tim's house and it's likely that he intended to kill alex, BUT this wasn't for the sake of it or for fun as many proxies do, but it was instead to stop the murders altogether, with one final sacrifice. plus, he never got around to it... rip...

what does this mean then? not only are hoody and masky not classified as creepypasta, but they are also extremely against the operator (slenderman) and to take that away would be to the detriment of their stories, to strip away an integral part of them as characters. even if you tried using the excuse 'its just an au!' which ive seen some people make, it doesnt change the fact that by that point they are completely different characters: masky and hoody are not insane killers that stalk people due to the influence of slenderman, their entire purpose is to STOP the man in the series who is a murderer influenced by slenderman... in what world does it make sense to make them be super best friends with a load of serial killers?

also.. how the hell did the creepypasta fandom completely ignore alex kralie. yeah he doesnt have a cool mask or outfit or whatever but hes regarded by the fandom (and some of the creators... i saw the tim sutton post about alex being a brony.. no offence to bronies you have fun over there as long as ur not being creepy) as a loser in the late 2000s, a film student with overconfidence issues, extreme paranoia and a savior complex, a fun stripy jumper, a GUN, and he literally went insane due to slenderman's influence and killed a load of his friends.. how were 2 of the 3 (4 if you count TTA) characters who are VERY IMPORTANTLY against slenderman chosen to be the slenderman advocates when ALEX MURDER-TWINK KRALIE IS RIGHT HERE?? anyways at least it means i can look at kickass alex art MOSTLY without jeff the killer kissing eyeless jack in the corner of my eye (pinterest please let me look at marble hornets in peace.. i dont wanna see that..)

also just as a note, im pretty sure masky is mute since he never once spoke while in that state although he might be able to and it was just never shown.. still i find it a bit weird when people act like hes really talkative,, which ive surprisingly seen quite a lot idk! might be more of a nitpick

oh yeah one more thing i forgot to mention thats actually pretty important... masky and hoody are not friends! yes, tim and brian used to be friends, but its pretty obvious tim doesnt see him often, and even if they are still friends while marble hornets takes place, tim/masky very clearly dislikes hoody for stealing his medication and sees him as a threat, which is also confirmed at hoody's death: the two are in a fight/chase and while hoody tries to escape, tim, in a blind rage, ends up pushing him out of a window--tim later tries to see if hes really dead and to reveal his face, but isnt able to until alex reveals brian's identity later, using the death to taunt tim, and it's made glaringly obvious that tim feels guilty and upset over it, however he still saw hoody with enough hatred at that point to attempt to harm him,, im not really seeing the best-friendness in this... maybe its just me..

masky and hoody did cooperate at one point in the series, and guess what they were doing? trying to kill alex - the ONLY slenderman/operator proxy in the series. after this fails, they stop cooperating altogether

i do agree that if they met in a world where brian was alive again, tim would likely try to right his wrongs and befriend him again, but simply assuming that theyre bestest buddies forever and ignoring their complex and difficult relationship is something i personally find very annoying... its hard to convey complicated character relationships in just art and silly comics and things that the fans make, and its sometimes nice to imagine they live in a world where theyre friends again and everything is fine, which i totally understand, but please for the love of the gods i just wanna see people at least TRYING not to act like they have no issues

also more jay and masky art when!? i just like the idea of them interacting a lot.. this isnt important to the rant but yeah

anyways! lets review,,
masky and hoody are: