Been a while since we've had one of those, figured it was time to write up another one since we've been getting some new people commenting on the blog, not to mention new strangers following the blog out of nowhere for seemingly no reason. But quickly an update on our well being, as you can tell we're still kicking, G has already notified all of you with his break through in figuring out a vaccine for the shit that floats around within us when we come in contact with Slendy. For some reason though he refuses to administer it to me, says that "It's too risky, we need to wait to see if there are any repercussions" which makes sense, I guess I'm just tired of wearing rubber gloves whenever I need to use the computer.
But enough about us, let's get to the subject of said post, Zero. Arguably one of the biggest and key figures around the blogs, a runner who's beliefs and hope were shattered causing a mental break of some kind to take place, to enable him to do awful things. Sounds like so many other people that are running for their lives, right? So why was it that this one specifically was branded as a symbolic figure of hope by the masses? And how exactly did such a figure end up committing the atrocious acts of violence against the ones he hoped to help? Well hopefully, I might be able to provide some answers for said questions using my "Pseudo-psychology" as a certain extras reject from Return of the Mummy put it. Now to make this clear, in no way what I say is the truth of some kind, this is me analyzing human behavior, nothing more, I know for a fact that Zero is still around somewhere out there and if he sees this, don't take it personally.
As always some music to set the mood:
Chapter 1: A Hint of Serendipity
Now a quick note to say that this is going to be a difficult one to tackle, mainly because Zero's activity on the blogs was during the period of time where everybody was in heavy communication with one another, so a lot of key interactions that would reveal something about Zero on a personal level would occur in the comments of various posts on Zero's blog and outside of it and it's practically impossible to track down any significant ones, simply because there's just so many of them. Add to that the fact that Zero was operating under the Core Theory (Which I will get into in this post) and a lot of what was written is essentially covered in muddied waters, making it difficult to discern real interactions from made up ones. So if the events that I cover here seem a bit messy, out of place, or not detailed enough, that would be why.
Zero begins his blog "A Hint of Serendipity" on October 13th, 2010 with a post titled "Introduction" pretty straightforward. In the post Zero introduces himself, talks about what his interests are and etc. One of such interests was The Faceless Bastard, he started looking into the phenomenon and eventually stumbled upon the various blogs that were being written at the time, his reaction to the whole thing was fairly agnostic, he wasn't necessarily convinced that The Faceless Bastard actually existed, but he also reasoned that he doesn't see why it couldn't exist: "Everything has the same chance of being real, I mean it's no secret that we as a race have a great deal of potential, that we can create much when we focus on it, sadly this...abbheration is an idealized focal point for all the self-loathing, and fear we all possess." -Zero (Introduction) Zero himself, at this point has never encountered the Slender Wonder, so he figured that, that put him in a unique situation, maybe he could provide some kind of view or advice from a perspective of someone who is aware of everything but isn't haunted by any of it, to those who were running for their lives. Probably the most commendable thing about Zero is that he was willing to put himself in danger (At this point in time people entrenched in this shit believed that the more you expose yourself to everything Slender related, the more likely you are to see him and become one of the hunted) just for the sake of providing any kind of help, as he himself states in the comment section of this post: "All in all, I've realized lately that I haven't done a damn thing in my life. No spouse, no kids, no legacy. I've had no ambition, and have never known what I'm destined for. Maybe with this, I can at least have a shot of helping someone." -Zero (Introduction, Comment Section) Despite the seemingly brave decision to help out, Zero doesn't exactly strike you as some seasoned warrior that has come to save the day, on the contrary, according to Zero himself he couldn't be any plainer than you or I: "I could just walk away from everything, and nothing in my life'd change. It's safe, secure for me. It's been that way for all my life really. I suppose I've never been in a crisis in my entire life. I've never broken a bone, never had a car accident, nor other misfortune, save one.." -Zero (Luck) In fact, I believe that Zero was a bit of an introvert with issues of low self-esteem: "I've got very little luck with women, hell I haven't had a date in years. I know mostly it's due to me being socially awkward, and yet I find the women's company I enjoy most are ones that would date me, yet they disappear from my life." -Zero (Luck) But so what? Who isn't today? Statistically speaking, a lot of young adults today suffer from similar dilemmas, from their inability to form a romantic relationship to their inability to find a specific goal in their lives, it is honestly nothing new and all that special, however it is still important to note because we are analyzing Zero as a person here and in order to do that, we must have an idea of how his life was like before he got himself into the shit.
Like I already stated, Zero was also an agnostic, he seemed to believe that people held inherent talents: "I've got friends who claim they know magic, others who claim they're psychic. We all like to consider ourselves unique, something to separate us from the rest, it's a way to anchor ourselves from drowning in the sea of masses. Well, I've had a few psychic moments myself, although I tend to dismiss them as my own cravings for uniquity. And I started to think, that maybe we all have a little something we tend not to notice in our lives. Do you have a talent for controlling things just a hair? Or can wake up right when the alarm is about to go off? Are these things just habits or is there more to it?" -Zero (Luck) This is also important to note because this belief that Zero held would influence his thought process in how he would come up with a way to try and battle The Tall and Slender.
Even before getting his first taste of Slender Mental Fucking, Zero was already quite the paranoiac, he talked about what his fears were, one of which was his fear of home intrusion, he talked about how at some point somebody broke into his house and stole a bunch of stuff and that caused him to block his patio door with a large cabinet with the sofa against it, now I'm sure a lot of people fear home intrusion, but what I just described there is no doubt quite the overreaction. So naturally such paranoid nature didn't transfer too well to being aware of a tall creature out there that tends to stalk you, whilst also bending reality to fuck with you: "Last night, I thought I felt a hand across my face, which caused me to jolt awake. I live alone, both my hands are generally under my head...What the hell am I hallucinating? I keep looking to the side of the road, thinking I'll see him, and then I'll know that it's begun. I know I've got a very active imagination, I mean I've role played for nearly 20 years now, but this...it's like I'm haunting myself." -Zero (Confused) This was before Zero had ever caught glimpse of the Faceless Nugget, I strongly believe that this was a nightmare he had experienced, but due to the nature of the Slender Fucking and how it tends to skewer reality, you can understand how Zero's already paranoiac tendencies were shot into overdrive as he began to delve deeper into the blogs.
And delve deeper he did, keeping true to his word Zero was already familiarizing himself with as many blogs as he could stumble upon, reaching out to the writers in the comments to try and help them keep the spirits up, one of said writers was Robert Sagel of "White Elephants" a man who's name should be all too familiar to those of you who have been around for a while, or even to those who are simply trying their best to research all of this stuff. Robert was kind of a big deal at the time on the blogs, he was pretty much the first one to try and figure out an actual way to fight the Tall and Slender, hence why pretty much everybody looked to him for some kind of answers, leads and etc. So it makes sense that Zero would also be looking at his blog and apparently, when Zero was looking at Robert's blog, something happened on there, I can't say exactly know what because all of the entries on Robert's blog have since been wiped out, some entries were archived on the Internet Archive, but none of them seem to be the one Zero is talking about. So basically something happened that made Robert bent out of shape to some extent, which allowed Zero the opportunity to comment on his blog and try to bring his spirits back up: "Part of me wonders if maybe my diatribe on Robert(Sane)'s account helped bring him back down...If so that'd mean that my entire blog reason has had an impact, but I can't be so...impertenant to think that a single comment of assistance can save a man's sanity." -Zero (My Weekend) I believe this interaction right here is what put Zero "on the map" so to speak, because after this Zero would dedicate a lot of his posts to trying and figure out, perfect or add on to Robert's theory on how you can fight the Slender Freak.
Here comes the part I dreaded writing about, The Core Theory (G hates The Core Theory, says that it muddied the waters for actual research). Why dreaded? Because the theory itself was fairly simple to understand, but it's application caused so much confusion amongst everybody that it very quickly turned into a mess. You can find a lot of different breakdowns of the Core Theory if you Google "Core Theory Slenderman" that will give you more in-depth analysis of the whole thing, I myself am going to try my best to breeze through it, giving you the essential and basic idea of what it was. The Core Theory piggybacks off of the "Tulpa Effect" theory, which was a theory that was very popular during the early days of our Tall Stalker's existence, it basically theorized that Slendy came into existence because enough people believed in him and were afraid of him, that we essentially willed him into existence. Then Robert proposed The Core Theory, which basically came down to the idea that if we can will him into existence we can will him out of it as well. Even then Robert was not bold enough to outright promise that this Theory was able to kill Slendy, but it would be able to weaken him and give others a chance to escape, fight back and etc. Easier said than done, fear isn't something everybody can control, especially of the irrational, so Robert thought of a way to try and convince people to not be afraid of the Tall Boogeyman, which was to write stories disguised as actual blog entries, where the main character beats, escapes, or overall has a happy ending after their confrontation with Slendy: "So here's my proposal. We need to kill him, here on-line together. We all need to write a story, a paragraph at least, of how the ./constructs/ die, and leave us rid of them forever. We need to tap into that morass, and spread the word, get it on Something Awful, maybe make it a contest or something, where everyone submits a story, and kill this asshole in our minds and spirits. Do it, Kill the Slender Man! -Zero (Bulletproof-Death of The Villain) But that wasn't all, for some reason Robert also deemed it necessary to provide roles to various people on the blogs which essentially covered the various roles characters play within stories, such as: The Hero, The Hermit and etc. Why he did this is unknown to me, maybe he was trying to write up an entry, that was a story disguised as an actual post where various Blog Authors managed to come together and stave off Slendy, which would then serve as the sort of penultimate entry that would inspire everybody to no longer be afraid of the Tall Stickman, but that's just me trying to understand why the necessity of roles even came up. Regardless, of said roles there were the roles of Sages, of which there could only be three at a time, they essentially served as some kind of guides for everybody else, they were the ones trying to figure things out, find ways to fight back and provide comfort.
So that's what Zero has been doing, trying to help and figure out the best way to utilize this new theory that he stumbled upon, encouraging others to do the same along the way. Alongside his musings on Slendy and how he operates weird fuckery begins to happen to Zero, such as him waking up one day next to a pillow that had blood on it, now to anybody they would think it was a nose bleed that caused it, but Zero also entertains the idea that it could have been a throat slash, given that the pillow was on his throat's level. Or him finding that the chain on his front door was out, he says that he simply could have forgotten to lock it, but then immediately entertains the idea that it could have been somebody who unlocked it from the inside. This is how paranoid Zero was becoming at this point, for any rational explanation he would immediately think of the irrational, can't really blame him, but this couldn't have been doing any favors for his already paranoid nature, leading him to believe that he suffered from a bipolar disorder: Granted, I could just be pretending I'm special as I've lambasted so many before me, but maybe, just maybe there's some truth to it, you know. I've started to realize that I'm a bit...bipolar, if you haven't noticed by now. I'm crass and judgmental, and bitter as all hell, but sometimes, I'm just full of positivity and faith in the ability to overcome. -Zero (Dismay)
His first ever encounter with the reality of Slender's stalking came in the form of a homeless man Zero encountered, who on his cardboard sign had an Operator Symbol. The encounter itself isn't anything interesting, they pretty much exchanged a few words and went their separate ways, what is important is that it is on this post (A Stranger, or familiar?) that Zero received his "promotion" from Robert, who gave him the titled of the Third Sage in his comments. All of a sudden Zero was thrusted from a position of a background observer and supporter into the main spotlight, now a lot of survivors were coming to him for answers and guidance, neither of which, realistically he could provide, because he himself hadn't even encountered Slendy once up until this point: "god, look, I know I've said that I've always wanted a chance to be someone, to leave something behind...to be remembered, but if I read this right; that he's picking me as a rep of some sort. I dunno if I'm that sort of guy..." -Zero (White Elephants) Still he accepted the role, his desire to help people and leave something behind to be remembered for compelled him to give this whole "Sage" thing a shot. So he figured that he would try looking for the homeless runner he encountered before in an attempt to gain more information, but he didn't have to as the homeless runner would come knocking on his house's window in the middle of the night, the confrontation wasn't the most pleasant, the homeless runner was clearly in distraught, yelling about the tall monster chasing him and etc. Zero tried to get the guy into his house, telling him that he "needed to know, needed to see", during all of that Zero noticed that all of the car's headlights began to flash along the road, clearly indicating that Slendy was indeed around somewhere, but before he could see him the homeless runner took off, Zero tried to give chase but to no avail. Once left alone to his own devices, Zero attempts to try and research and figure out other theories in order to effectively fight against Slendy, during this time another blogger who went under the username of 'B' was having issues of his own, his friend/lover (Not sure which one) Melody, was slowly becoming a 'hollowed' (Basically a person who's brain was being wiped by Slendy, turning them into a puppet that will do all of his biding without hesitation) both of them were followers of Zero's blog so it is no surprise that they would turn to Zero for some kind of help to try and de-hollow Melody. Robert of 'White Elephants' who was off his rocker at this point in time and was going by 'Green Light' came along and offered a solution, some kind of substance that B could drink and I guess transfer the hollow-ness to himself, or something among those lines, I'm not exactly sure on the details as this development is barely mentioned on any of their blogs. Somehow Zero came into possession of said substance, not sure how, maybe he was serving as a delivery boy? Figuring that him becoming hollowed or dead instead of Melody, or B was a better option, he opted to drink the substance himself. Luckily for everybody involved Zero didn't die, or become hollowed and Melody would begin to make a recovery, the only negative side effect of Zero's action was that he finally got a personal visit from the Tall Fucker himself, whilst Zero was recovering in the hospital no less: "I...I'd like to say that I wasn't afraid of him, but the sudden shock of finally seeing the monster caused me to drop onto the bed, dumbfounded. It was more the feel of reality crashing down around me, finally seeing with my own eyes what was responsible for all the horrors we've seen. The worst part is...it felt comforting." -Zero (Save vs Death)
And naturally, like clockwork, once Zero gets home and spends a few nights there, he immediately gets attacked by the Proxies. Two Proxies break into his house and proceed to beat the shit out of him, during the scuffle he manages to unmask one of them, revealing that it was the homeless runner he had encountered weeks ago, who was now hollowed. They manage to tie up Zero and drag him outside right in front of Slendy, who is prepping to kill the shit out of Zero, only for Zero to be saved by his neighbors poodle dog who was barking at the entire commotion, causing Slendy to disappear and the Proxies to bolt. What's interesting about this, is that Zero figured it was a good idea to instantly update his blog, to say that he was not entirely lucid would be an understatement, it was very obvious that Zero was freaking the fuck out and for good reason, he was now truly engrossed in all of this shit.
After this follow a few more notes and plans on how to take down Slendy, reason I'm not mentioning them is... well you'll see, for now all you need to know is that for some reason Zero believed that he and the rest of the people who were loyally following him would be able to do some real damage to Slendy on the coming Solstice, so now Zero has acquired something that had eluded him in... erm "normal life", mainly a purpose, a goal to strive for. With that he seemingly received a boost in confidence, next time he was attacked by a Proxy named 'Rika', he was far more confident during the confrontation and actually managed to successfully fend off the attack. However, what was more interesting about that attack is that right as it took place, it seemed like a bunch of other Bloggers that were following Zero's blog also got attacked which effectively killed off Zero's confidence boost as the reality of what he was truly up against began to set in: "I was cocky, I got to think that there was no way the plan can fail, and then he comes and reminds me what he can do when he wants to. i love my family, but he knew to strike here, against you, to shatter me." -Zero (Delusions and Humility) During this mental break down Zero would talk about wanting to help really badly one of the captured runners that he interacted with named 'Nessa'. He wanted to help so badly that he was entertaining the idea of 'projecting' towards Nessa's location, something that he was talking about on his blog for a while that we as humans should be capable of with enough will power and concentration. Now obviously I don't need to tell you that this is coming from a paranoiac who is essentially having a panic attack and a mental breakdown at the same time who is clearly having delusional thoughts, the fact that his attempt at 'teleportation' failed would be an understatement, he ended up passing out, I'm assuming due to too much stress, medically this is referred to as a 'Psychogenic Blackout'. Once he came to, he found that his house was yet again broken into and his replica sword (his weapon of choice) was covered in some kind of unknown substance.
To label Zero an unreliable narrator would be very correct, hence why it was very hard to piece events together. This is a man who went from a life of humble isolation to being labelled as one of the 'chosen ones' in the field that he had little experience in, hence the massive amount of burden and responsibility that was now upon his shoulders. The fact that Zero would mentally crack under pressure is perfectly documented, add to that the fact that he was trying to utilize fiction as means to fight off Slendy and you have plenty of reason to believe that everything Zero types out might not necessarily be the entire truth. Case in point, another 'Siege' happened, where once again a bunch of Proxies all over the world were attacking the Runners, but the Runners were ready and their defense, including Zero's can be read up on in the comments of Zero's post: 'Defcon 3' However, two key things occur during this period: Nessa (The girl I mentioned earlier) gets hollowed, and over on the 'White Elephants' blog it is revealed that it got hijacked by a proxy (that might be known to a few of you) 'Redlight' who proceeded to reveal that Robert's entire theory and etc. were nothing but the yammering of a madman, who was at Redlight's mercy this entire time. So you can imagine the number it did on Zero, think about it, everything you believed in was just revealed to be nothing but lies, shrouding all the progress that you and others had made in uncertainty and doubt, that was Zero's world after this recent revelation. It did such a number on him in fact, that he not only began to doubt his own reality, but also everyone else's: "stop letting these damn delusions kill me you're kill ing me every fucking post every update where you're conquering evil with no fear who the fuck has no fear against pure evil you can't be real" -Zero (what words)
However, even during this breakdown he contests that a lot of stuff did indeed happen, like him drinking the substance in order to protect B and Melody, which then lead him to seeing Slendy and etc. So you can now understand what I mean when I say that Zero wasn't exactly the most reliable narrator, by his own admission he embezzled the truth on a few occasions in order to show and set an example to others that fear was not the answer against Slendy, in order to remove said fear and possibly weaken Slendy, in short The Core Theory, which was now revealed to be false. Regardless of that, Zero maintained the course towards the Solstice, maybe due to desperation, to try and find out if anything could work against Slendy. The torment didn't stop there though, as Zero was being plagued with self-doubt, Nessa shows up and begins taunting him and his friend named 'Jeff' that she needs help, that she is totally un-hollowed now and need to be saved. Zero plagued with his own personal shit at this point, refuses to believe her, Jeff however broke under the pressure and ended up becoming hollowed himself, with Rika joining in on the fun all three of them proceeded to taunt the shit out of Zero, it got so bad that he had to shut down the comments for a period of time. The loss of friends weighed heavily on Zero, to a point where he finally began to regret his helpful desire: "worst part worst damn part of it is cuz i asked for this shit i said, hey i wanna help, i wanna figure this thing out maybe i can sheld some light on this for you" -Zero (Dirty Work) However he sobers up enough to start talking and musing about the nature of Slendy, what possibly makes him tick and the people running from him, that type of stuff.
The Solstice was slowly approaching and obviously it wouldn't be a Slender Stalking if the final stretch didn't come with more Slender Fucking. There Zero was, relaxing in his hiding place when all of a sudden his ceiling began to fall apart under the weight of a large body of water that flooded the room that Zero was in, the water itself was putrid filled with all sorts of vegetation in it and then out of the water came crawling: "green humanoid things rose up from it, on four legs and made screeching sounds at me" -Zero (Two Weeks) (Personally I believe this is the earliest sighting of the Denizens, something for G to note). As Zero was fighting the freaky things off he suddenly notices that Slendy is also in the room, after which he blacked out and once he woke up, he had found himself outside of his hideout, hanging from a tree. At this point Zero began running for his life, spending most of his time in homeless shelter whilst the cold winter was making it's presence known. With the Solstice drawing near, the burden and responsibility that Zero felt was beginning to slowly weigh on him: "I am asked if I need help. I do not know the answer. I feel a great weight upon me, still crushing me, like a mantle made of lead. I look for the adversary, and do not see him. I do not see his work. I only see the unfortunates. I should not let bad things happen to them. I do not know if I can." -Zero (Suffocation) During his running he gets a visit from Nessa, the hallowed girl that was mocking and tormenting him in the comments a few posts back. She had found Zero and begged him to end her life, to essentially end her torture. Zero refused to do the deed but decided to pull a quick one over her and instead tased her into unconsciousness. At this point in time Redlight (The proxy that sabotaged The Core Theory) was going around to various blogs offering a way out for those that were stalked by Slendy, how did he do that? Somehow he could make people forget about ever encountering Slendy and any results of said encounter, as for why he was doing it, I'm not exactly sure, but it was a way out and Zero thought that it was the best option of saving Nessa, so he gave her to Redlight, which wasn't an easy decision I am sure. Think about it, here's Zero, a Sage, someone the Runners look towards to, for lack of a better word salvation and there he is, openly giving up one of their own to a Proxy, luckily for Zero his followers understood the action and the reasons behind it, however I highly doubt it was an easy decision that was repercussion-free.
With that last loose end tied up, we finally get to the epic showdown, the Solstice, the day where we will get our answers and take the fight to Slendy himself. The problem is, we will never get an official break down of what exactly went down during the Solstice once Zero took his leave due to Zero still believing that the Core Theory could still have some kind of effect: I've said before, that you are the key to victory. You always have been. What I need you all to do is simply write a story about what happens. It's that simple. I've given instructions to the people who are attending the Event to elaborate and romanticize the entire deal, to let fantasy add its mark to the fight. All of you readers who are not attending, I will ask you, as well, to write a story. Tell in your own words what you think happens. -Zero (Zero Hour) This essentially makes the recounting of the supposed events of the Solstice non-credible, regardless of who it might be coming from, due to Zero's instructions, that a lot of people no doubt followed in hopes of weakening Slendy.
However, there was a user at the time that tried to present the "official" story, specifically a blog by the title of "Observe and Terminate". Now I am not as familiar with this blog as I probably should be, however from what I understand, the gist of it was that it was run by a member of an organization that was created specifically to combat Slendy. That of course didn't mean that they were your friends, on the contrary you were as much of a target as the Proxies, remember this is back when people thought that Fear was what fueled Slendy's existence, so I guess their conclusion was that if you kill everyone, then there's no one left to power it with Fear. Again, I could be wrong with that summary as I've said, I didn't actually read the entire blog yet, just a quick glance here and there. They made a post after the Solstice, claiming that they were there along with Zero and helped him take the fight to Slendy. The way they were helping is apparently they were busy fighting the hollowed Proxies that were there, whilst Zero engaged Slendy, the report they provided didn't leave much to the imagination: "During the engagement with the Indoctrinated, Basroil Squad knowingly and willingly permitted the irregular 'Zero' to engage Target Alpha. Target Alpha effortlessly neutralized irregular 'Zero', and proceeded forward to engage another unidentified irregular." -B2 (After Action Report) So that's it, right? After all that build up, all that suffering and pain, all just to be "effortlessly neutralized".
Chapter 2: The Last Refuge of a Dangerous Man
Yeah, nothing is as simple as "effortlessly neutralized" around here folks, after all the report also claimed this: "Irregular 'Zero' and the unidentified irregular were not discovered in post-engagement recon" -B2 (After Action Report) They never found his body and for those of you savvy enough will notice mention of "unidentified irregular" a.k.a. unidentified runner. That's because the guys from Observe and Terminate and Zero weren't the only people there, apparently quite a few runners showed up for the final fight, including a woman named Amelia who can be found commenting on Zero's blog closer towards the Solstice event, saying that she will be there and is on her way. I believe the "unidentified irregular" is her for reasons you will see later.
As you might guess Zero wasn't dead and on March 17th, 2011 he let everyone know, albeit in a not-so-obvious way. Apparently somebody by the username of "Remnant" was going around people's blogs, leaving some kind of riddles, until the day that this user made his own blog titled "The Last Refuge of a Dangerous Man" one of the paragraphs in his very first post state the following: a silly thing, destiny, i wanted to have one, i failed, and now what is left, what is given to a man, who was robbed of, who he wanted to be, of what he meant to be" -Remnant (traitors in our midst) Sounds familiar correct? Yeah, let's drop the Scooby-Doo mystery and just lay the cards on the table, it was Zero. Yes, at some point people figured out that it was him and around that point, I guess Zero felt it was necessary to elaborate on his disappearance, what happened on the Solstice and what did he exactly mean by 'playing the villain'? "I will find my destiny, my glory that was denied.. DENIED by those of you who failed to wish. FAILED, FAILED to want him dead. How could you? How could you want him alive? What sort of sick penance do you seek that only he can give?" -Zero (A thousand burning suns) As you can see Zero was not in the happiest moods upon his return, seemingly quick to blame the Runners for not wishing hard enough for Slendy to die, diminishing his glorious last stand to being meaningless. What is interesting, is that after this post a lot of people fired back at Zero (rightfully so) in the comments, some justifying themselves, some calling Zero insane and etc. this seemed to make Zero relapse into his Remnant persona as his next post is once again published under that handle, in the same Riddle-styled fashion, which made it clear that Zero was not all there anymore.
Of course he tries to elaborate further on the whole "Remnant" business in his next post and seems to be aware of how people view his crazy tirades at this point: "I need to clear something up first before I continue. Remnant is not some multiple personality of me, I just...I just got all depressed. I was so... sure that I would have died, that my death could've meant something. I fell into a depression, that's it really." -Zero (Tirades...) But you know the classic saying: "insane people never think that they're actually insane", but ok, so he's not insane the next burning question on everyone's mind was, what exactly happened on the Solstice, Zero answered: "I walked into the woods that night, after the monster...the Slender Man no-showed my huge event, my grand ambush, my chance for redemption. I shouldn't have been surprised. I hadn't seen him since he killed Amelia." -Zero (Tirades...) Which as you might notice, doesn't at all line up with the version of events people from "Observe and Terminate" had presented, keep this in mind, we'll come back to it. So according to Zero Slendy no showed his big event, but yet something else happened, Zero was actively searching for Slendy, to have his meaningful throwdown as a result he was wandering deeper into the forest and eventually, I guess he exited our reality and wandered into Slenderfucking-ville because he would start seeing several bodies impaled on tree branches all over the forest, until eventually he stumbled upon what Zero would begin referring to it as a "Bleeding Tree". Whatever this thing was/is it royally fucked Zero's shit up, it seemed to be moving, bleeding, changing gravity, all sorts of fuckery were taking place: "Color drained out of my vision, the silence was replaced by rushing water, as I stumbled towards the tree, wavering. I knew my heart had stopped beating, even as I swung at this malevolence, hoping to myself that I could accomplish something before I died." -Zero (Tirades...) Zero was convinced that this was the end of the road, until all of a sudden he awoke sitting on a fallen tree, convinced that this vision was the important thing about the Solstice, somehow from that vision he gathered that it was a message to him, a message that proclaimed he must go on a rampage against runners that either wanted to die, or were about to convert into proxies, hunting them down and killing them, and afterwards taking a bone from their corpses. However, it's kind of hard to tell who's converted, about to convert and etc. Which is why the mindfuckery that I just mentioned above apparently lingered within Zero, granting him the ability to see what people are "tainted" whatever that means.
To say that the reaction to Zero's new approach to saving the world was negative, would be an understatement. A good amount of people would show up to try and reason with Zero, some would demonize him and others were just there to be absolute dicks to him. The next post that Zero published did not help his case any, considering it was a post about how a girl by the name of Kelly came into contact with Zero, in her desperation to fight off Slendy she was willing to buy Zero's story, that collecting the bones of willing survivors was the way to go in defeating Slendy and was willing to sacrifice her life to further the cause. As a result of that Zero tracked her down and delivered what he believed and what can be perceived as a mercy kill, what is important about this instance is to see how Zero viewed himself during all of this: "She was not alone, not with me there. The fire of hope just barely flickered. She begged me not to leave her, to take her with me. I agreed, of course. She was once a beautiful woman, and she needed me. I was here to help her... I am an average man, I believe, but when she turned around towards me, she saw me as god himself, I think." -Zero (Stalked) As you can see, he started to view his horrible deeds in a slightly religious light, going as far as to assume that others perceived him as some kind of God, despite the fact that he himself denies thinking of himself as a God, he clearly thought that he was some kind of messenger from God or something among those lines. This new attitude would have to go back to the events of the Solstice that he talks about, in his post "Tirades..." he mentions that he doesn't know how he managed to escape from the weird vision that he was having at the time and as default he credits it as an intervention from God himself. Now I don't know if Zero has any experiences with religion before his stalking began, but clearly some kind of experience exists, one doesn't simply jump to the conclusion that they are doing God's duty and begin writing in a preachy manner.
Past a few self loathing posts we find out that Zero was on the hunt for a specific Runner at this point in time, specifically Arkady (Who I covered on the very first installment of these type of posts and the coverage of the confrontation can be read there as well). During this hunt an interesting detail pops up within Zero's posts and that is the fact that he feels compelled to keep moving, not just because of Slendy, in fact not at all because of Slendy, because at this point in time Slendy seemed to have completely left Zero alone, no instead Zero was running from his "own shadow" as he put it: "Sometime later, I suddenly lurched forward, almost vaulting out of the bed, as icy fingers ripped my lungs to pieces. My shadow, my fucking shadow caught up to me so I had to run, I had to get out, before it killed me." -Zero (With One Stone) Now this 'Shadow' talk isn't anything new, he mentioned something stalking him "as if it were his own shadow" before, but before he saw/knew that it was somehow the Bleeding Tree, however as time progressed his own shadow indeed began following him, clearly trying to kill him whenever it could catch up with him. But his Shadow wasn't the only thing on his trail, he was also being stalked by a proxy named Rika, this Rika was a different Rika than the one that was constantly taunting Zero on his first blog, for simplicity's sake I shall now refer to her as Rika 2. And the interesting thing about Rika 2 (apart from her flirty nature and Zero's super horny comments about her appearance) was the fact that whenever she would confront Zero in person, or attack him, Zero could never bring himself to attack her, some speculated that it was out of some level of chivalry, but Zero debunks that himself: "I readied to defend myself. Thoughts of chivalry were tossed to the curb. If this psycho wanted to take me on, there was no quarter to be given." -Zero (Trouble & Pigtails) Well sad to say but Zero isn't that convincing with his explanation, considering that in their future confrontations he would still refuse to attack her, despite the fact that she would be having the time of her life beating his ass all over the place.
Throwing down with Arkady, having his own persona proxy nemesis in the form of Rika 2 stalking him and running away from his own shadow, apparently weren't enough to fill up Zero's plate, so another obstacle stood in his way in the form of a man that Zero at some point admired, a man arguably responsible with burdening Zero with the title of a Sage and thus leading Zero to develop a God complex, Robert made his return to ask Zero for a favor. This post is important because it clarifies something that not every was convinced even existed, the existence of the Bleeding Tree. Up until this point Zero was the only one who encountered this unknown phenomena and obviously people thought that he just had some kind of mental break down and was hallucinating things, using this Bleeding Tree as an excuse to explain away his horrid deeds. Robert didn't think so and met up with Zero for the sole purpose of finding out how to find it, why you may ask? Well at this point in time Redlight was doing some fucky shit, world threatening type of shit and Robert was trying to get rid of him, but just killing him didn't seem to work, Robert needed an eldritch solution and so he was trying to find the Bleeding Tree to get a piece of it and kill Redlight with it (If you're wondering, it worked, for a while), thus confirming that the Bleeding Tree part of Zero's story was true.
A bit after that confrontation Zero had another one, this time with Rika 2, again. Someone named Dean came into contact with Zero asking him for help, what kind of help he was requesting was never specified, all you need to know is that Zero was now actively trying to visit him. Once Zero found out where Dean lived, he paid him a visit but was a bit late, Rika 2 was already there, standing over the bludgeoned but still living Dean, his arms shattered at the hands of Rika 2's sledge hammer, preventing Zero from acquiring a bone from Dean. Now Rika 2 might have been a complete scumbag, but she did manage to figure out something very important about Zero, see Zero was under the impression that Rika 2 was there specifically to mess with Zero, to which she replied: "Well that's kinda self centered of you. What makes you think you're that damned important? How do you know its not just a coincidence that we had the same target? After all, we're not that different in what we do." -Rika 2 (Bonecrusher) Now she could have been lying just to further mess with Zero, but that's irrelevant, it didn't remove the fact that Zero's thought process immediately concluded that she was there to specifically mess with him, that she was messing ONLY with him, because on some level Zero figured that he was somewhat important, important enough to be a Sage, important enough to be the chosen one to carry out the dirty task that will in the end save everyone, important enough that he now had an arch nemesis. In reality, I believe, Zero was in severe denial, denial of the fact that there was a possibility that he wasn't all THAT important in the grand scheme of things, after all he wasn't important enough for Slendy to stalk him right? In the end Rika 2 left Zero with a decision, up until this point he had claimed that all the deaths he caused were for a grander purpose, to which he needed the bones of the people he murdered, Dean had no bones to offer since all of them were shattered under Rika 2's sledgehammer (Who btw left at this point, because Zero just let her walk away), so was he going to just leave Dean to his suffering, or was he still going to kill him. He killed him, was it out of mercy, or some twisted sense of justice? Only Zero knows.
After this another similar event played out, someone named Slice contacted Zero. Slice was a runner at the end of his rope, everyone he loved was dead and he was just tired of living like this, so he figured that if his death could help end other people's suffering, then so be it. Him and Zero had a philosophical talk about this and that after which Zero murdered him. However, that post was published from Zero during the time period when he was chained up to a boiler in some building, apparently Rika 2 was able to capture him. During his solitude Zero learned of there being new Sages, the title of which was passed onto them from another Sage that was still alive beside Zero, this bothered Zero: "Yes that pissed me off immensely, but I'm over it for now. Fucking bullshit Maduin.... That fucked up title system that Robert started, we all know had major fucking flaws in it. Mainly because we tricked ourselves into thinking that by taking a title, we were more than human." -Zero (A couple of dead rats) It might seem that Zero is pissed off by the whole ordeal because other people are being set up for failure, just like he was and that maybe he doesn't want other people to go through that, but I don't necessarily believe it. We've witnessed Zero grow into someone that has quite the superiority complex, I doubt that his anger is due to a potential danger to the safety of others and is instead due to the fact that he himself, in his mind, couldn't handle/live up to the title of a Sage, in other words - jealousy. But regardless, at that point in time I doubt Zero had any time to dwell on these thoughts as he was chained up to a pipe in some kind of abandoned building at the hands of Rika 2 who had lured him into a trap. She then proceeded to mock and threaten Zero, managing to break his resolve a little bit, forcing him to show weakness as he remained chained up to the pipe, helpless. But she didn't do anything to him, instead leaving Zero on his own for a few days, which scared Zero because if he was chained up, he wasn't moving, meaning that his Shadow could catch up with him and kill him. As you might guess by the wall of text that carries on, that didn't happen, apparently Zero was able to struggle just about enough to break the pipe free and get away, after this incident Zero figured that his next course of action has to be him dealing with Rika 2. So he set up quite the trap for her the next time they ran into each other, once again when faced with her he couldn't actually attack her for some reason, which emboldened Rika 2 to taunt him further, however Zero retorted with a few 'sexist' (As he himself put it) remarks in her direction, knowing full well that those would grind her gears, removing her typical playful nature and taunting her to basically just kill him, after which Zero began to run off with Rika 2 giving chase. Both of them ran into the nearby forest and somehow Zero knew the exact way to the Bleeding Tree within that forest, see the thing about the Bleeding Tree is that if you looked directly at it, it had this mesmerizing property about it where it essentially just stunned you in disbelief, which is exactly what happened to Rika 2 once she stumbled upon it in her pursuit of Zero. As she stood there mesmerized, Zero finally took his swing with his sword, tearing her throat out, turns out that entire talk of him not being able to touch her, as Zero claims himself, was a lie: "Yes, its true. I lied on my blog, because I knew she read it. If I could convince her to drop her guard for me long enough to make a surprise move, I knew I had a chance before she decided I needed to die finally." -Zero (Playing Games) Now you can see why Zero can't be treated as a reliable source at this point in time.
The next post from Zero is a surprisingly sobering one. In this post Zero claims that he had killed two people who were apparently 'At the wrong place, at the wrong time', he didn't know if they were corrupted or not, nor did he know if they were regular people, or runners/proxies. He also had an encounter with a deer, that once it caught whiff of his presence committed suicide by head butting a tree until it's brain turned into mush. Those events and a few more reflective thoughts on Zero's part finally made him realize that this entire time, he was being manipulated: "I know it comes as no shock to you guys, that I've been deluding myself. I finally came to that realization today. I'm a monster. Perhaps I was too proud to admit I was tricked by some avatar of our nemesis, or perhaps I just needed..." -Zero (Mirror) The ability to see corruption within people, the strange reason for killing people left and right, all of these came from the Solstice, when he had encountered the Bleeding Tree for the first time, which most likely was the cause for the mental-fucking trip that he went through, it makes sense that this entire time he was being tricked/manipulated by some eldritch abomination, by exploiting his desires, fears and insecurities. This new sobriety came with a few new revelations, apparently he had found a recording of a call he had with someone named Reach (This was someone from the time of Zero's first blog): "Zero...are you sure it's real? He tricked you into killing Amelia. Maybe he's tricking you again, like he tricked me." -Reach (Ships bound in different directions) Zero at the time of the call denied this, but it is obvious that at this point in time he wasn't in the most stable of mindsets, while he didn't confirm it, if it is true then this further confirms the mindfucking occurring during the Solstice as Amelia was the girl that showed up to the event.
This is the last post before Zero takes off on a suicidal mission to fight the Bleeding Tree. At the time everyone had thought that he succeeded based on someone named "Messenger" leaving a report on Zero's blog: "There were a couple Agents in the area tracking him when he went into a forest. They went in after him when he didn’t come out. They found a huge, dead tree (the surviving Agent says that they should have noticed a tree like that towering over the rest of the forest). Zero was hanging on one of the branches. One of the two got closer to make sure that it was, in fact Zero, and that he was, in fact, dead." -Messenger (Messenger's Report) But obviously death didn't stick for The Bleeding Tree as it would proceed to get spotted by various other bloggers that came along after Zero's death.
Chapter 3: Conclusions and Thoughts
All of that brings us here, what exactly caused Zero to change his views so drastically upon his return? It could be a few things, here's my best estimate as to what were the deciding factors in Zero's breakdown. During Zero's first blog we could observe him already experiencing a few mental issues even before his subsequent haunting, those were: Paranoia, Anxiety and Low Self Esteem, those are all symptoms that could be tracked to Bipolar Disorder, something Zero was aware of himself as he himself pointed out in one of his posts. And it is important to not misdiagnose Zero's Bipolar Disorder with Clinical Depression, one of the way we can do that is look at Zero's reason for getting himself in this mess to begin with, which was a lack of purpose, or rather the finding of a grand purpose. People who suffer from Clinical Depression tend to set their goals (Whatever they may be) very high to a point that they are unattainable (In their minds), causing them to look at their goals in a pessimistic light, which results in them ruminating about it which in turn fuels their Depression. Zero had found his purpose, to hinder The Slenderman, notice that he didn't set his goal as high as to try and kill The Slenderman, that's because Zero truly believed that Rober had truly stumbled upon something with the Core Theory allowing Zero to believe that he could actually hinder Slendy, but not confident enough to kill. That and his constant mood swings on his blog from "doom and gloom" to "determined warrior" all pointed to a Bipolar Disorder. Until the Solstice the events of which, I believe somehow managed to worsen Zero's Bipolar Disorder, somehow managing to degrade his mental state further. Upon his return, new symptoms had reared their heads, those mainly being: abrupt, moment-to-moment swings in moods as you can see in this post as an example, his mood swings were occurring as he was typing up said post, which tended to happen in quite a few other posts; Frantic efforts to avoid feeling abandoned, throughout his blog he would constantly ruminate about the people that he had met during the time of his first blog, he was actively seeking out conflict throughout the blog and was constantly responding to all the comments, even those that were there to taunt him; He would also develop an intense, unstable relationship with Rika 2, regardless if they viewed each other as enemies, Zero would constantly note how sexually appealing Rika 2 was and she never shied away from his remarks, there was clearly some level of attraction on Zero's part, explaining why he was sad upon her death; Feelings of emptiness, Zero would constantly remark throughout his journey that he felt drained, lost and demotivated, mainly due to the nature of his horrific acts; Tendency to view people and situations as either "all good" or "all bad", while Zero could see and understand the grey areas within people's lives that led them down their paths, his reasoning for committing his atrocious crimes was exactly that, he was "the good guy in the right" and everyone else who tried to stop, or discourage him from his goal were "the bad guys in the wrong". All of these new symptoms point to a Borderline Personality Disorder and while there are no papers out there that point out that Bipolar Disorder can somehow turn into Borderline Personality Disorder, we are dealing with the magical and the mystical here. Another reason I think Zero had a Personality Disorder is because one of the main causes for it is a traumatic event in the person's life, in Zero's case that could very well be The Solstice considering that it utterly destroyed him, both by mental fucking him into submission with all the magical shit he had to go through and by completely shattering his built up purpose by Slendy no-showing his grand sacrifice.
As for my personal thoughts, I simply can't bring myself to hate Zero, I wasn't there to view him as this hero for his fall to have that much of an impact on me, I of course absolutely hate all the horrible things he had done, but I also can't bring myself to entirely despise him mainly because it is clear that mentally Zero suffered from a plethora of issues and he didn't have the room, or the opportunity to know about said mental issues to allow him to try and responsibly manage them. So I guess it just makes me sad that so many, including Zero had their hopes crushed. However, there is a bit of good news here, you see death didn't stick for The Bleeding Tree, neither did it stick for Zero, because he is still around somewhere out there and while I didn't get through the entirety of his new blog, the few posts that I did get through show significant promise in the betterment of his condition, suffice to say he seems to be greatly aware of all the terrible things he had done before and extremely regretful of them, there are no rapid mood swings to be detected in his writings and he is actually using his time to try and help people, preventing him from ruminating, preventing him from worsening his disorders.
So Zero, if you just so happen to be reading this, you might have done some atrocious things, but I believe you didn't have the tools or the knowledge to manage your mental issues responsibly, the fact that you are trying to work on it in a productive manner (As far as I have read) shows a sincere desire for betterment and I hope that this post might help you better understand what you were and might still be going through.
