So the original Marble Hornets is primarily Jay being solo through most of it; we see him, he's your classic everyman horror protagonist, the one guy who doesn't act insane even as the horror is driving him insane. His responses are the reasonable thing in pretty much every scenario, he's almost more audience stand-in until the end of the series.

Jay is much the same in Rosswood. He's older and he's a little goofier, they do a good job of making it clear he was the talent behind the horrible student film that Marble Hornets gets its name from, he works for a local production studio doing editing mostly, and he has a nonbinary partner.

His life is pretty good in the AU where a cosmic horror wasn't sicced on him in college.

The other character and the one who is more one-note in the original is Alex. Alex was the director and script writer for Marble Hornets in-setting, the dogshit horrible student film that him and Jay did in college that also got Alex haunted by Slenderman (and through that Jay haunted and a bunch of people killed).

By the time we see him in the series as something other than just the guy Jay is chasing he's a weird, cagey aggressive asshole and most of acts 2 and 3 happen in the plot because Alex is trying to kill everyone who has been exposed to the Operator, probably in Slender-induced psychosis, and gets got by Mr. 20 Dollars himself.

He's a great antagonist but also the flattest character in a series full of very flat characters.

Rosswood is an AU of the original series set about 15 years later (letting the actors age up) where it seems like Tim, the third main character and effectively patient zero for the proxy sickness, didn't manage to escape the hospital in 1998 like he did in original timeline.

As such Marble Hornets was just a godawful student film and these two chucklefucks remained just friends well into their thirties or so and are now shooting a Ghost Adventures-styled blog to try to get internet famous.

And they're doing something fun with this. We're three episodes in, and Alex has been very different for the most part; he's funny, personable, laid back. Honestly does way better in front of the camera instead of behind it. They're trying to investigate Rosswood Hospital because of urban legends for their dumb show.

But as the show has been going on he's been getting more erratic, manipulative, assholish. And of course this also corresponds with him getting closer and closer to The Operator's presence.

The question becomes, is this just who Alex is? Or is it again the sort of worse self he becomes under supernatural influence?

Because Episode 3 does have a few character moments for him; when the two guys are trying to call for help, Jay calls his partner, and Alex admits he doesn't have anyone in his cellphone besides Jay and his coworkers at his job he hates.

Jay's reaction to weird shit and then blatantly supernatural shit happening is to want to leave as fast as possible.

Alex, seemingly already succumbing to proxy sickness wants to stay -- but then goes off on Jay that while he gets to go home to his job in the field they studied and his partner who loves him, Alex has a shitty studio apartment and a call center job where he spends his time between calls researching ideas for their vlog.

Because that's all that he has.

Episode 2 makes it clear the camera they're using is Alex's and that he doesn't have the money to replace it if it breaks, further reinforcing ho important the show is to him but also that he's broke and desperate.

It's kind of fun. The implication you can infer is that even without supernatural influence Alex is kind of just a pushy asshole when he doesn't get things to go exactly how he wants them to, but they leave just enough in there from how Jay talks about him to make you think, nah.

Maybe he is just a decent guy who is really down on his luck and then the paranormal brings out the worst in him.

Or maybe he's leading such an unfulfilling life because he's cosmically always meant to get involved with The Operator -- in the world where everything went normal for most the cast, Jay is great (and we can guess Brian and Seth are doing alright), and Alex is just surviving, only driven by ideas that will inevitably get him and a camera back to Slenderman.

I never felt any real desire to check out the original, but ngl this plurk makes the new series sound very intriguing.

yeah, housemate and I were talking a bit about how much More of a character Alex is at this point when we watched it last night. good shit