YMMV / Everyman HYBRID

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • The Slender Man, as always. Many speculate that he's trying (and failing) to communicate with cast rather than fuck with them. On the other hand, he seems to be an accomplice in many of HABIT's murders (although we only really have HABIT's word on that).
  • The Rake. Another monster screwing with the cast, or attempting to warn them about HABIT? Or being forced to attack people by HABIT?
  • Is Corenthal beyond our dimension, trying to help the boys? Or ... is he a puppet of HABIT?
  • In light of the finale, Vincent may be the most divisive character in the entire series. How much did he really know about the Candleverse, the reiteration cycle, and the fictional archetypes? Did he know the entire time, or did he only figure it out during "Le premier cours"? Was he a sociopath who only saw those close to him as means to an end, or a Well-Intentioned Extremist who hated his actions, but genuinely felt he had no other choice? And how much remorse did he feel for the deaths he caused and the lives he ruined? (It's hinted that he was remorseful for causing innocent people like Lexi and Shaun to get drawn into their mess and die, but what about his friends?)
• Angst? What Angst?: While early on the guys struggled to keep up appearances while clearly losing their grips, these days they're pretty calm whenever terrible shit isn't happening at that very moment. They even still refer to their viewers as HYBRIDS. Even Jeff is cheering up somewhat, as evidenced from tweets and in "A Day with Green Feathers". It's unclear whether this is desensitization, a coping mechanism, simple acceptance of the Slender Man's existence, or the fact that Slendy has only just gotten started with them that's prevented them from losing it.
  • According to the November 26th Ustream, they credit each other and their fans for keeping them sane.
  • As of HALLOWEEN HANGOVER, it appears that the guys, particularly Jeff, may be angsting a whole lot more than they let viewers know.
• Awesome Music:
  • The intro theme to "Introduction" and the very first fitness video.
  • The music that plays in Self Defense around the 30 second mark.
  • HABIT purposely invokes this every chance he gets.
• Base-Breaking Character: HABIT, oh so much. Either he's the prime example of a Spotlight-Stealing Squad, who takes away precious screen time from Slender Man, or he's precisely what elevates this series above most other Slendervlogs, as an original antagonist with more personality than Slendy allows for more story-telling opportunities. His characterization is also ripe for debate, as some see him as a unique and threatening villain that deserves all the screentime he gets, or he's a shallow Joker knockoff who isn't nearly as scary as the internet makes him out to be.
• Broken Base: Fans have been debating whether the finale is a satisfying end to the series or not ever since it dropped. And that's not even getting into the competing interpretations of the conclusion—namely, whether the ending implies that a new iteration is beginning, or that the reiteration cycle has been broken once and for all.
• Complete Monster: HABIT is a sadistic entity capable of taking control of people's bodies, forcing his still-aware host to murder people for his own entertainment. While possessing Evan, HABIT strangles Daniel to death, extensively tortures Jeff and Steph before eventually killing them, and devours Evan and Steph's infant daughter. When Evan is released, HABIT gives him a Healing Factor that leaves him broken but unable to die. When Vincent summons HABIT for answers, HABIT forces Vince to lure more victims, locking Vince in a room for two years, psychologically torturing him and preventing Vince from killing himself. On his blog, HABIT posts writings from his victims, letting Slender Man take his survivors, claiming to have been multiple historical serial killers and war criminals. In a crossover appearance, HABIT tortures Shaun Andersen to death in a plot to lure in his brother Michael, and the entity possessing him, "Patrick". Throughout his appearances, HABIT plainly a rampant monster, who lives inflict pain for its own sake.
• Continuity Lock-Out: With important information becoming spread across various Twitter, Tumblr and even other Youtube accounts, viewers unaware that the story extends to other media will slowly start noticing references to things they've never heard of as if it's already been discussed. The nature of an ARG exacerbates this, as there are no official notations of any such things existing. Fortunately, this confusion worked its way into the plot itself by way of the cast constantly interacting with viewers, so there's now an in-character hub for information that comes through places other than the main Youtube channel.
  • Helped by this compilation from the guys of the "Trialof Leaves" series: everything up through "Lexi"
• Estrogen Brigade: They're mainly here for Evan and Jeff (though HABIT also has his share of fangirls).
• Evil Is Cool: HABIT is the literal incarnation of human evil; he's also the most popular, and widely recognized, character in the series by a wide margin.
• Fan Community Nickname: Hybrids or HYBRIDS.
• Harsher in Hindsight: "All good things" paints HABIT's description of Michael Andersen as a terrible person in a very bad personal light, as it also mirrors Vinny's real intentions.
  • Every single friendship moment between Vinnie and the rest of the hybrid crew, as he was secretly leading them to their doom the whole time.
  • Every instance of the Hybrid crew interacting personally with their viewers, especially when they talk about how much they love it and how it keeps them sane, becomes this in light of Patrick Andersen's reveal that every outside interaction with the crew provided the Slender Man and HABIT with access to more lives and helped to widen their sphere of influence, making them more powerful than ever and broadening their path of destruction. Even worse, Vinnie was probably aware of this on some level, and not only allowed it to continue, but encouraged it.
    • It becomes even harsher given that the creators of the series have had to limit their presence on social media (or, in the case of Vincent, withdraw it altogether) in the years since the series ended thanks to harassment, stalking, and other drama from obsessed fans.
  • In the summer of 2023, Jeff's real life ex-partner revealed credible evidence (later verified by Evan's real life partner) that Jeff had emotionally and verbally abused her to varying degrees throughout their relationship, and had done the same with several of his previous partners. While it hasn't been confirmed that Jessa's actor was among those mistreated, the revelation makes Jeff's scenes with her, and his grief over losing her, a bit more difficult to watch.
• Ho Yay:
  • "Evan, if there was a girl version of you, I would date you."
  • In "Episode #4: Cardio & Outdoor Activities" and some hidden footage from "A Day In The Life", Vince seems to be cool with carrying Evan around on his back.
  • Invoked when Jeff offers to let Alex stay in his room to avoid the Rake.
  Alex: There's one bed.
  Evan: Looks like you guys are gonna get real cozy. I say as I'm on my knees.
  Alex: I'll sleep on the floor.
  • Invoked in the 11/26 Ustream. Repeatedly. Evan is all over Jeff for a while there.
  • You could make a case for (probably) one-sided Damsel/Jessa, given how important Jessa seems to have been to Damsel.
• It Was His Sled: Most newcomers in the series tend to know that Evan gets taken over by HABIT and kills Jeff midway through the series.
• Jerkass Woobie: It's hard not to feel bad for Alex now that he's seen the Rake. What we learn from the Ustream makes it worse: his and Jeff's parents are dead, but he frequently pretends they're not. He even has a cassette tape of his mother's voice which he uses to see if he is "allowed" to do things.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Evan seems to be this for the fandom (Evan/Damsel, Evan/Vince, Evan/Alex, Evan/Jeff, Evan/Jessie, the affection various fandom members have for him, etc.), and he knows it. The only characters he hasn't been paired up with yet seem to be Jessa, Slender Man, the Rake, and Sparky. Yet.
• Memetic Badass: Of all the characters in the series, HABIT (and to a lesser extent, his host Evan) gets this treatment the most. Having killed millions of people in different bodies (including those of well-known serial killers), plus being one of the few beings in the entire Slenderverse who not only rivals Slender Man in power, but is potentially even stronger than him by the series' end, fans love to portray HABIT as an unstoppable mass-murdering god who can kill just about anyone without even trying. His trollish behavior helps.
• Memetic Loser: On the other end of the stick is Jeff, who is frequently made fun of for his death at HABIT's hands midway through the story. Many fans like to make fun of his Killed Off for Real status, including OOG Jeff himself.
• Memetic Molester: HABIT (YOUR PANTIES ARE UNLOCKED. HOW COURTEOUS.)
• Memetic Mutation: Vince and his beard, Evan and his knives, and now Jeff's a superhero Batman.
  • Speaking of Evan's knives, "Emergency Machete" is bound to be this, especially since the real Evan in an Out of Game video referenced this with "Emergency Battleaxe", which he then proceeded to use to strike a pose of him axing Adam Rosner in the face.
  • Have we mentioned lately that Jeff is dead?
  • HABIT's love of pizza. (In "A Summoning" he tells Vincent that a left a pizza for him in the oven, and in the crossover video "Severance" he kicks Noah out of his house because he's expecting a delivery pizza and doesn't want to share).
  • Also, Vinny is a snake.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • Evan definitely gets one in Jim Thorpe when he had the Rake's ass handed to it. Unfortunately, he did this offscreen.
  • The entire Hybrid crew gets one in Ashen Waste when they run over Slender Man, in payback for his Curb-Stomp Battle with Evan. (True, they may have died in the process, but it was undeniably gutsy all the same.)
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • HABIT immediately crosses it when he possesses Evan and forces him to kill his friends and loved ones.
  • Vinny of all the fucking people is revealed to have crossed it in “All good things” by manipulating his friends (as well as the audience) into continuing to film and committing various dangerous acts, often with lethal consequences. When confronted with the truth of his actions, he immediately deflects all of the blame.
• Narm:
  • In the "May & June" video, there is one part where Alex has a sock puppet on his hand because he is pretending that it is his recently deceased dog Sparky, using an abnormal grieving process very similar to what he uses for his dead parents. Even though this is supposed to be a disturbing scene, the sock puppet just looks too silly to be taken seriously.
  • In the last scene of "Consensus", Vinnie somehow lost control of his car, wakes up in the middle of the road with the Slender Man watching him, finds blood everywhere, looks in the mirror... and somehow he's been clean-shaven. Kind of a mood-killer there. Though in light of the reveal that Vinnie deliberately edited out certain portions of his videos to avoid incriminating himself, it's entirely possible that some time had passed between the filming of the initial footage and the pick-up shot of Vinnie looking in the mirror.
  • The Slender Man diving onto the ground to look through the basement window in episode 5. Granted, this was the fake Slendy they were using early on.
  • Daniel's murder at the hands of inHABITed Evan in an otherwise Nightmare Fuel laden entry.
  • "WAKE UP" has Evan attempting to leave HABIT's house through the front door. The door is supposedly unable to be opened, but Evan's over-the-top attempts to make it do so look pretty ridiculous, and make an otherwise heartbreaking entry look somewhat laughable.
    • Likewise, the scene later in the episode where Evan discovers HABIT's murder room, festooned with the remains of his victims. It's a gut-wrenching, well-acted scene... which is undercut by the random, highly conspicuous Santa hat sitting in the foreground. (Which slowly slides to the floor during the scene, making it impossible to ignore).
  • The way Doctor Corenthal fends off Slendy in "The Property" looks like something out of a cartoon show. His chichéd dialogue, the stock gunshot sound and the "fading into the light" effect don't entirely help things.
  • The first time the crew 'meet' the Real Slenderman, it's hard to take Slendie shaking his head back and forth seriously. Is it meant to be somehow threatening? On first watching it it is easy to assume this is in fact another fake and not the "True" Slenderman because of how silly it looks.
  • In "Finding Fairmount", Vinny has to look into a bunch of papers to see where he's going. One of the papers is covered with weird scribbles and variations of the EMH logo... and then you see the Soul Eater logo.
  • During the climactic moment when Vinny stabs Evan in "All good things", a completely unconvincing stock sound effect plays that almost completely breaks the immersion, but it's made up for in the following scenes.
• Narm Charm: Some seem to see the sock puppet scene, while incredibly silly, still effective.
• Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page.
• Nightmare Retardant: In a way; in "dot dash," there are clips where it seems someone is filming murders or something. It becomes hilariously narmy, though, if you interpret it as Slendy stole Jeff's camera and went to get his boogie on.
  • There's also the fact that most commenters have fun with the videos, interpreting Slendy's actions as just wanting to get ripped and so on. Looking at them all, it becomes pretty obvious why Marble Hornets disables comments.
  • Everyman FORTRESS.
• Paranoia Fuel: The Rake likes to come to his victims while they sleep. Probably gets a kick out of when they wake up and see the grey disfigured monstrosity sitting on their beds. Even worse, he can claw the hell out of your arms without you waking up until later.
  • HABIT.
  YOU STILL BELIEVE THIS IS MERELY THEIR STORY. YOU ASSUME A GRANTED REFUGE? NO SUCH SANCTUARY EXISTS.
• Shipping: The fandom's single favorite activity. As mentioned above Evan's a favorite (particularly Vince/Evan), but they ship most anyone to most anyone else. Of note is how they have started to ship other fans with the cast (Evan again, and a particular fan with Damsel), and even fans to each other.
• Shocking Moments: There's a few moments which really shock the crap out of you. For example, the episode "I'm Okay" is rather quiet, with Jeff speaking quietly into the camera, right up until an incredibly loud burst of distortion kicks in. And you'll have to turn the sound up to hear the talking...
  • "You'd be surprised at what I can take from you."
  • 3 words: All. Good. Things. After HABIT releases his control over Evan, he and Vinny get into a brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that ends in both fighters killing each other.
• Special Effects Failure: In "Joke's Over", the blood that pours out of the bag clearly isn't.
  • Avoiding this is probably the reason The Rake hasn't appeared onscreen up close, considering the one time we did see it it looked like nothing more than a guy crawling on his hands and knees in one of these.
  • In episode 5, the power in the basement blows, but it really doesn't much look or sound like it. Bulbs tend to pop when blown, and while they did make it look like there was a bright flash, it very obviously was done through editing, as the light just flashes on the screen and doesn't bounce off of anything in the room the way light should. The lack of any light coming in through the basement window (meaning we get a totally black screen) is probably the most obvious evidence - which is odd, as that base would have been the easiest to cover simply by filming in the dark briefly. This last one, at least, might be explained by camera limitations - many small cameras won't pick up anything if the light's too low, regardless of what the human eye can manage to see.
    • This happens frequently in the series, such as when Dr. Corenthal disappears into an Adobe Premiere lens flare at the end of "The property".
  • In one of their latest videos, "Part II", we get to see our first close-up of Slenderman, and in spite of how heavily distorted it is, it's clear as day that it's a guy with a bag over his head or some such.
• Squick: Vincent cutting open the hanging bags in the woods, during "Joke's Over".
  • What the dialogue in Corenthal's report about Fairmount Vince can imply. "He lit a small candle and told us that we were going to explore a hidden cove". This might actually be Nightmare Fuel too.
    • A year later, the Reverend was found eviscerated while Little Vince was sitting in the next room, playing with a foam toy ship. Slendy ain't fond of pedophiles diddling his targets.
• Unexpected Character: It's pretty safe to assume that nobody expected Patrick freakin' Andersen to make a voice appearance in the contents of Box 7.
  • Box 7 also includes the vocal talents of Tim Sutton of Marble Hornets fame as a UFO watcher. NOBODY in the fandom was expecting him.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: "The Property". Good lord.
  • Near the beginning of "May & June" we see a close up of The Rake it looks amazingly terrifying.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Stephanie's further involvement with the HYBRID boys seems to indicate that she's set to become a bigger part of the story, given her Can You See the Words blog becoming more integrated with the series' lore, especially with the revelation that she's their adopted sister in one iteration. Unfortunately, the most that happens is that she ends up becoming Demoted to Satellite Love Interest towards Evan as she hangs out the main cast, and is killed offscreen by HABIT alongside their child before she's able to contribute to anything important. To add insult to injury, she isn't even so much as mentioned by her adoptive father and brothers when they reunite in the series finale. All this felt suspiciously like a case of Real Life Writes the Plot, and we now know that it was — both because Steph's actress moved on and because the guys were coming to realize they didn't want to get others too heavily involved in their "mess".
  • She fares better than Linnie, who is a fifth child that was adopted by Dr. Corenthal and his wife. She had different symptoms than the main four kids; what these were is never elaborated upon. We never even get to meet her — and it's implied she is the dead girl the crew found.
• The Woobie: If Vincent from the Bag is really "our" Vinny, then this is a massive understatement.
  • Jeff in "I'm Okay" and more recently in "Ryan & THESEVENTRIALSOFHABIT"
  • Nick, who was forced to witness the brutal murder of both his parents at the hands of HABIT, watch this same creature do god-knows-what to his sister, then was inHABITed and forced to kill Evan. Evan then had no choice but to kill him.
  • As of WAKE UP, Evan may just have become the biggest woobie in the series, if not the entire mythos. (Yes, even bigger than Tim.)

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