5.05.2012

Water Theory

I actually titled a post?  What's come over me!?  Well, it's pretty damn straightforward and relevant, so I didn't see the harm.  It's also a little better showing up in the Archive as a nice little text link instead of a few sentences that end up cut off.  Much better for my minor OCD about that sort of thing.

With the hellish storms we've been getting where I'm at for the past week or so, I've been wondering about something.  Water.  Some claims rain attracts the Operator, others say the Blank is afraid of the stuff.

To go back once more to my perspective as a writer (pre-Moral, so to speak), I looked at this as indecision amongst the bloggers.  Some people wanted to introduce a weakness for the Slender Man, perhaps a way to finally end the story once and for all.  The people who were adamant about water having no effect were just performing damage control.  They didn't want their faceless monster stopped by something so simple.

Personally, I was of the former camp:  water as a weakness.  I believed the connection fitting.  The Slender Man had been referred to as the Angel of Death by a well-known Mystic, and water is a symbol of life.  One destroys, the other sustains.  Sure, water isn't technically an entity, so I wouldn't call it one of the Opposing Forces I mentioned earlier (here), but that doesn't mean you can't put your faith in it.

Now, I'm still in the same boat.  I still believe that water can be used as a defense.  I still believe the Slender Man isn't that fond of water.  I still believe I'm an idiot for it, but I believe nonetheless.

So why do I still believe, despite a blogger I respect conducting experiments with less-than-stellar results in support of this theory?  I have other evidence.  And I actually took a day or so to compose my thoughts before sitting down to type this out, so I won't just ramble on without much of a point.

....

Okay, I probably will, but I'll try not to.

First and foremost, I don't think water has any mystical property that the Slender Man has an aversion to.  I may be mistaken, but I believe the true 'power' lies in the state of matter:  liquid.  While the Blank does tend to break the rules of physics more often than I'd like to admit, he's still bound to a few rules.  For example, to the best of my knowledge he can't walk through a wall.  A wall is still a solid object, and though his Path can take him around it (possibly through an entirely different dimension), he still can't physically walk through it.  He also seems unable to 'fly,' or stand on thin air.  These two examples form the basis of my Water Theory:  the Slender Man's 'Path' is bound to solid ground or inter-dimensional travel.

I know that 'inter-dimensional' bit probably has many of you thinking "Big whoop.  He can't walk on water.  How the hell does that save us?"

Bear with me a moment, and I'll tell you.  First, I have a few things for you to read, courtesy of two other bloggers I respect:  this post by M and this post by AmalgamationSage.

Done reading?  Good.  I'll get on with it then.

First off, M's post mentions that James went out to sea, and to the best of my knowledge he's still safe, as M's final post on The Tutorial concerned more postcards and stuff from James.  So ocean=safe.  Second, AmalgamationSage's post begins by explaining that the astral plane corresponds with our own, which I took to mean "Ocean here, ocean (of sorts) there."

You're probably already getting where I'm going with this:  if the ocean is safe in our plane, it will probably be safe in the astral plane.  If it's safe and generally off-limits to the big guy's Path in our plane, it might be the same, there.  Therefore, the Slender Man can't use his Path to reach a boat full of Runners in our plane, and is likewise unable to do so in the astral plane, right?

Well, wrong.  Kind of.  I don't understand exactly how he moves about in the astral plane, so for all I know, he can fly there, and could pop across the ocean to a location corresponding to said boat of Runners, pop into our plane, and have a little snack.  In fact, I don't understand the astral plane at all, so I'll leave all of that up to the Sage who does, and simply deal with Water Theory in our plane of existence.


As I stated above, the Slender Man's 'Path' is bound to solid ground.  While he can't walk on top of water, that isn't to say he can't walk through it.  What matters here is quantity, or depth.  This would explain why this experiment and the prior experiment with a hose gave the results they did (Okay, I lied, Gargoyle.  Now I'm done referencing your blog.  ...I think).  The logic here was, I think, "If water can be applied as a defense, it should be able to be applied as an offense."  Honestly, I thought the same thing for a while, too, until I really started to think about it.

The Slender Man can't 'walk' across the ocean, but he can 'walk' through it:  his Path would carry him along the solid ground along the ocean floor.  This is possible because his first 'Layer,' a malleable body, would be impervious to the water pressure at any depth.  Where a human would be crushed like an insect, he would be perfectly fine, if the pressure would even be a factor at all (again, not sure how his Path works).

This is where the most important rule (get up high (or get down low, as the case may be)) comes into play:  if he's all the way at the bottom of the ocean and you're sitting on your boat in the sun, sipping a beer, you are about as high above him as you can get in most cases without scaling a building or other elevated structure (consequently, Water Theory also explains why you won't be safe on a mountain:  even the peak is still 'ground level' to him, as it's covered by his Path).

So, being the all-powerful monster he is, why doesn't he just alter his height (as he appears to be able to do) so he can 'stand' on the bottom of the ocean and at the same time have enough of his body above the surface to be able to climb onto a boat?  Or go 'Kraken' on us and pull the boat apart with his 'arms'?

...I don't know.  He's either screwing with us, or there is a constraint on his powers in our plane, a limit to how much he can extend himself or his 'arms'.  So, while I'd say you're relatively safe on a boat in the middle of the ocean, I wouldn't shout insults at him from an inflatable raft floating in the deep end of the pool.  And I wouldn't count on trapping him somehow on a small raft in the middle of the ocean.  Even if you didn't die trying to maneuver him onto the craft in the first place, he could still 'jump ship' and 'sink' to the bottom of the ocean, then walk back to dry land.  So really, if he wants to get you bad enough, he just has to board a vessel with his followers, dock next to yours, slaughter the lot of you, take a dive, and walk home.  You also have to account for how long you can stay on the water; you'll eventually have to come back to land for something.

As always, feel free to disregard any of the above, as there are probably holes in the logic that I haven't seen yet.  I'm just hoping out loud, I guess.  Trying to make myself look smart, when in the end I'll probably be killed by some incredibly stupid mistake I made, an oversight in a plan or theory I thought was foolproof.

But, I digress.  This entry has been long enough.  Feel free to tear the theory to pieces if you see an obvious flaw.  Or even if you don't.  I'll be trying to figure out a way to dig a really, really deep moat around my house.

Cheers.

4 comments:

  1. A deep moat would also have to be wide, Moral. The water eats away at the banks and collapses the adjacent ground otherwise. Take it from someone who spent seventeen years at the beach losing sandcastles to the ocean. ;_;

    From my standpoint, I can't tell you if he loves water or hates it. Either ways, I've gotten the impression that he sucks it up like a tree.

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    1. To be fair, I wasn't being completely serious about the moat. I have a hard time believing my parents would be 100% behind that. Especially since I'll be out of the house for good in a matter of months.

      I'm sorry about your sandcastles. ;^;

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  2. No, that's fine, you can keep doing that. It amuses me now. XD
    Though perhaps also largely because you're starting to remind me of myself when I had a few more shreds of sanity to my name. This was very intriguing... and probably the best examination from a theoretical standpoint of this matter that I've seen. And though others might, I can't really find any holes to poke in it at the moment. So I'd say keep up the good work... you may be on to something.

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    1. I'm flattered. xD Though I think I'll refrain from doing your caliber of experiments, at least for the time being. I've been tempted to try and recreate the results of Operation Brony, but I'm not sure I want him getting that close to me.

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