Hi I'm Mary Mary
(officially spelt as hiimmarymary) is a horror ARG started in 2016, currently based out of a YouTube channel, a Twitter account, and a Blogspot.
A young woman wakes up in her house, knowing only two things: 1) her name is Mary, and 2) the house is her parents', or at least a copy of it with some details askew. None of the doors or windows to the outside can be opened or broken down, trapping her inside -- not that it seems to matter, since no people are ever seen through the windows. The food in the house restocks itself by unknown means, and has full utilities including internet access (though every site and application is empty and nearly unusable, as she seems to somehow be the only person online). Save for the obvious loneliness, living in the isolated world isn't too much of a problem.
That is, until darkness falls, and Mary realizes she isn't alone.
Hounded by bizarre entities at night and haunted by her own self-doubt in the day, Mary starts documenting her situation online, unaware that she's gathering a large audience in our world.
As of "check in," however, Mary has gained unrestricted internet access and can see and interact with her viewers. The reasons for this are currently unknown, though her Twitter shows that the change happened immediately upon the changeover to 2018.
The series concluded on May 31st, 2020.
Provides examples of:
- Alien Geometries: An upstairs door that usually leads to a closet occasionally leads to the ocean. The fact that, when introduced, the time goes from the middle of the night to the middle of the day is extra
disconcerting. - Beautiful Void: "The Garden," a forested island that is connected to the house and which Mary is able to visit at night. Its nature and relation to the house's world is unknown, but Mary latches onto it as a key to protecting her sanity. This turns out to be an even greater danger, as Mary develops an unhealthy codependence with the location and undergoes Sanity Slippage when she's told by her followers that it's bad for her.
- The video titled "rain" shows the Garden going through several strange changes, including severe weather events, the addition of rusted trucks and tractors, a massive abandoned tunnel (which the shadow entity has access to), and random transitions into the Ocean. Finally, Mary enters to find that the place has become a nearly unrecognizable snowy wilderness.
- Big Bad: If the house itself isn't this, the veiled Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl seems to be. It's the most openly intelligent of the creatures haunting the house (able to hold long conversations with Mary as it chases her, and briefly convince her that her followers are trying to hurt her), is by far the most dangerous, and has the clearest ties to whatever's going on.
- Big Good: The rarely-glimpsed woman in white who inhabits the Garden is the only entity in the house world trying to protect Mary's sanity and help her escape. She first reaches out to the audience through messages encoded into Mary's Blogspot, then actively starts reaching out to her when she can.
- Companion Cube: A small rock, which she uses as an experiment to take things between the house and the Garden. She decides to call it Dwayne.
- Cross Through: With Stan Frederick. In "51. Fiftieth Percent", Stan is revealed to be at least partially responsible for the knocking in "last 8 months." The rest is the house itself.
- A Day in the Limelight: The veiled lady during "hide and seek" allows Mary to ask questions to her, making her the only monster to have a whole video dedicated to them.
- Despair Event Horizon: Mary seems to have hit this as of "last 8 months," claiming that she gives up and is thinking about asking her tormentor to end it.
- Driven to Suicide: The description for "last 8 months" and related blog post indicate that not only is Mary suicidal, but she wants the Veiled Woman to kill her, believing the monster wants her dead to begin with. She actually tries it in the climax, Anagnorisis, but is stopped at the last moment when she realizes the Vieled Woman is lying about her being alone.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After all her torment, she finally stands up to the monsters, is able to go outside, and, despite still having Depression, is able to fight it, and feel better about herself.
- Eldritch Location: The house. Despite appearing normal, it has cabinets that refill automatically, lights that turn on and off by themselves, unbreakable windows, and doors that almost never openable (except when they do, and lead straight into the ocean). Various clues throughout the series strongly imply that the house world is a product of Mary's own depression and self-imposed isolation.
- The Faceless: None of the monsters have had their faces shown, as one of them wears a mask, another a bag over its head, and the other/s are living shadows.
- Mary herself initially enforces this trope, claiming she's shy. However, she eventually reveals her face during the livestream.
- Haunted House: The house Mary is stuck in. What exactly is haunting it, though, is a mystery.
- Humanoid Abomination: The monsters, when shown, are this. They can appear out of nowhere at will, and have the ability to distort both the footage and reality itself.
- The Woman in White seems to be a benign one, since her exposing her (otherwise normal) face causes the video to become distorted, and her voice is heard as birdsong and bells despite her making coherent mouth movements and Mary apparently understanding her just fine.
- Iconic Outfit: If the fanart is anything to by, the black tank top and jean shorts Mary wears for the first few videos are this.
- Jump Scare: Subverted in the second episode, when Mary washes her hands. The distorted, masked figure that appears is not a quick flash, it stays in the mirror for quite some time. The mirror monster actually stays there ALL NIGHT. It does not stop laughing at Mary until the morning, although the exact hour of disappearance and reappearance for the monsters is not known (Mary has stated on her Twitter that a monster was slamming doors well before the sun set).
- Living Shadow: One of the monsters. It mostly manifests as a stretchy, slow-moving humanoid figure made of shadow or a floating ball of the stuff, but it has occasionally demonstrated that it's much larger and more powerful than that.
- Malevolent Masked Woman: One of the monsters appears to be a copy of Mary in a mask,
- Mirror Monster: The masked monster seems to live inside the house's mirrors. That's not to say it can't leave, however...
- Mirror Scare: One of the monsters, the one wearing a mask, seems to be fond of scaring Mary by using the mirrors around her house.
- Nightmare Face: When the mirror monster comes out of the mirror and catches Mary, she lifts up mask which reveals a sickly and ugly face with yellow teeth though we only see the bottom half of it. This is most likely symbolic of how no matter how beautiful a person is that if they aren't that good of a person then they are ultimately ugly on the inside.
- No Name Given: The monsters never identify themselves, and Mary hasn't bothered to give them nicknames.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: Common throughout the series, especially when the monsters are nearby, although given the fact the house itself is supernatural, some videos are mostly if not entirely glitched out.
- Only One Name: Mary, so far.
- Ontological Mystery: How Mary ended up trapped in the hellish house, and indeed how the house's world and monsters came to be, is pretty much unknown save for a few cryptic clues. Mary eventually reveals an audio log she found, dated the night before she first woke up in the house, that indicates she might have locked herself in a psychological battleground as a result of her depression, self-loathing, and pushing away her friends. Whether this is a Battle in the Center of the Mind, Mary becoming an unconscious Reality Warper, or something else entirely is still unknown, though — assuming any of the clues can be trusted at all.
- Pocket Dimension: The house is pretty much confirmed to be stuck in one, due to the absence of any outside human presence and the Reality Warper nature of the monsters. The Garden may or may not also be in one.
- Shout-Out: The "Mary Mary" part of the title is in reference to the nursery rhyme "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary." Hence why the wooded area in which she finds solace is named "The Garden."
- "check in" has a shot of Mary laying on the floor, idly playing with a knife while looking in a mirror as an explicit reference to Silent Hill 2.
- Shrinking Violet: Mary avoids showing her face in full in the series, citing the fact that she's shy.
- Took a Level in Badass: In "anagnorisis," after catching up with the Veiled Woman's lies, Mary becomes more pro-active and begins to talk back the monsters. Eventually she is able to realize her power over the House and the Garden and uses it to defeat the Veiled Woman.
- Wham Episode: In "gone" Mary learns she is unable to interact with the outside world and is physically assaulted by the Veiled Woman
- Wham Line: At the end of the "game" Mary plays with the veiled woman, when Mary asks it what it and the other monsters are.Veiled Woman: "You already know. After all, YOU MADE US."
- The video "check in" has an even bigger one: "One more thing. I can see you now. All of you."
- Wham Shot: The end of "Discovery," when Mary unveils the Garden by stepping through a random door at night... and falling straight into the ocean.
- At the end of "rain," after several clips showing that the Garden is going through bizarre changes, Mary enters one last time and finds the whole place frozen over.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The Ocean is never visited again, and the Garden may have replaced it, as it's unclear whether the Garden is on the island Mary swam to or if they're entirely separate worlds. It returns in "rain" when the Garden starts changing, implying that they're not just the same world, but the same location.
- World of Symbolism: The monsters and the setting are all manifestations of Mary's mental problems.
