"We don't want Operator, we want slenderman" is stupid.
Getting Slenderman in DBD is my biggest dream for this game, simply for personal reasons. Slenderman has a very special place in my heart, especially the Marble Hornets and greater slenderverse interpretation of him. Which is also why I see the argument of "we don't want the operator, we want Slenderman" as complete BS.
Marble Hornets is, arguably, the thing that got Slenderman big in the first place. While Victor Surge created the character, it was Marble Hornets (and later others such as EverymanHYBRID, Tribe Twelve, and especially DarkHarvest00) who fully made him a character. Every single iconography people associate with slenderman comes from Marble Hornets.
Pages? MH did it first, where Slender: The Eight Pages then took it as inspiration.
Tapes? Marble Hornets.
Pills? Marble Hornets.
The specific static sound effect? Coughing? Video distortion? All from Marble Hornets.
Hell, I'm even pretty sure that the tendrils didn't come from Victor Surge and were added in Tribe Twelve, which was directly inspired by none other than, you guessed it, Marble Hornets.
The point is, Slenderman would barely even exist without Marble Hornets. Saying, "We want slenderman, not marble hornets" is basically just saying "I want a guy who stands and stares at survivors and does nothing" because without Marble Hornets, that was basically all he did.
Now, here's the thing: Troy said in a few discord messages that he wants Masky and Hoodie more than anything- that, I understand disagreeing with. Saying, "I don't want Masky and Hoodie, I want Slenderman", is a total understandable and reasonable claim to make. Saying "I don't want the Operator, I want Slenderman", is not.
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Yeah I don't really get it, like the Slenderman movie was horrifically bad and that's probably the other option and not really sure why we'd want the one turning people into trees because....idk why he was doing that actually.
Marble Hornets established the Slenderman everyone knows and was a landmark of YouTube analog horror.
I know absolute 0 about slenderman or the operator and have no idea where to start. Is it a movie thing? Games? A tv show? Novels? Comics?
Slenderman was one of the first examples of an internet urban legend, famous with millennials and probably older Gen Z. The Unknown is kind of a pastiche of Slenderman and other characters like him, like Jeff the Killer, The Rake, Sonic.exe, and Smile Dog. Although originally created as a work of fiction as part of a photoshop contest on a forum (I believe), the character's eerie vibe caused him to catch on in the mainstream, where people would miss out on the original context and some believed him to be a real cryptid.
Inspired by Slenderman, a youtube content creator made the Marble Hornets series, obviously inspired by Slenderman but technically a unique property, seen as one of the best online horror series ever made. The character was called The Operator instead, and a lot of aspects associated with Slenderman originated from that series, but although the two characters look similar, they are distinct from one another.
Marble Hornets further catapulted Slenderman's popularity, along with an indie video game based on him and some of the stuff from Marble Hornets, which youtubers like Markiplier would play and further increase his notoriety.
Sony would eventually make a movie based on Slenderman, but it was widely hated.
Why this discussion has come up (Slenderman versus Marble Hornets) in relation to DBD is that the creator of Marble Hornets publicly asked BHVR to contact him, and a staff member of BHVR confirmed that they reached out to him. We don't know what will come of this, just that it happened.
Slenderman is a widely requested character to come to this game, but I guess some people wouldn't be satisfied with The Operator coming to the game instead. Even though The Operator invented most of the traits people associate with Slenderman, like trying to collect multiple pages before he gets you.
Paragraph incoming.
It's a YouTube WebSeries running from 2009-2014 based off the original photo and creepypasta from the something Awful Forums.
Marble Hornets was so influential that it overwrote Slenders original behavior and powers into what people now know (teleporting, ruining electronics, sickness, etc.) MH also has by far the best survivor options out of our media choices in Alex, Jay, Hoody, and Masky (silly names for the last two but they have their fans)
Notably however, the Operator is technically not Slenderman. The two are virtually identical and are culturally seen as the same character, but they are legally distinct (the Operator does not have Tentacles)
There was a game released in 2012 by Blue Isle studios that popularized the Slenderman name worldwide, that being "Slender: The Eight Pages." For being the game that shot Slender into the mainstream, it's basically just a Marble Hornets fan game. There is a sequel to the game called "Slender: the Arrival," which is probably the most popular adaption of Slenderman period, and whilst it is a separate licence from Marble Hornets, it was written by the shows core writers.
The main reason people argue against Marble Hornets is because they say the Operator is a bootleg version of Slenderman, but it's honestly more fair to say everything Slenderman is known for in pop culture is from or is ripping off Marble Hornets.
Just my 2¢, but I agree wholeheartedly that Marble Hornets is the route to go down if the Entity wants to bark up that tree.