Marshmallow People: An in-depth analysis

Published: 2020-10-28
Description: Ascend with me through the power of literary analysis
Word count: ~9400

There is a series of video animations on YouTube called Marshmallow People, created by Film Cow, A.K.A. Jason Steele. He's the creator of the (in?)famous Charlie The Unicorn, Llamas With Hats, and the unforgettable Ghost House.

Today we will be discussing Marshmallow People. I know that you have the attention span of a rabid coat hanger after you take your shirt out of the closet in the wrong way making it fall to the ground again, but the entire three episode saga is 5 minutes. If you can't focus on bright pretty colors and compelling animation for 5 minutes, you simply have no hope of finishing this blog post.

In fact, what are you even doing here in the first place? You went through the trouble of visiting an underground website, navigating to this specific blog post, and now that you're here you refuse to watch a five minute long video to give you context? I'll never understand you people.

Even if you're familiar with Marshmallow People I recommend that you re-watch it at least once. Or not. Whatever. I give up. Read this post without context. Fuck it.

Index:

Summary: They're people, and they're made of marshmallows

"Tim!" You say, s'mores spewing out of your mouth and seeping into the very fabric of your pants, "Why would you summarize Marshmallow People right after mocking people for not watching it? If you expect people to have watched it, then you don't need to waste everyone's time with a summary!"

Oh yeah. Why would I ever want to provide context to a massive blog post or anything? Oh no what a travesty. What a waste of time. What will I ever do? Boo hoo.

In seriousness, the point of this section is to summarize what I noticed. The way that I summarize Marshmallow People is integral to my various interpretations of it. I'll try not to get too deep into analysis just yet, so this is mostly me reporting on what I've seen. Still, you might expect me to point out oddities and other focal points that I will delve deeper on in upcoming sections.

*Ahem*

Episode 1 begins with the two main characters, the eponymous Marshmallow People, talking to each other in some sort of... lint world? The environment is certainly strange and barren, like a desert of cotton. The sky is it's usual color of pinkish-purple that looks like it's trying its best to blend into the rolling hills of might-not-be-cotton.

The Marshmallow People are extremely similar in appearance. They both have stick-figure arms and legs, identical facial structure, identical heights and widths, speak with the same voice, and so on. The only difference between them -- at least on a cursory glance -- is that there is a Pink Marshmallow and a White Marshmallow. Later on we will meet other characters who call them by different names like "guys", "dudes", and "knuckle heads"; they even refer to each other with words like "man". You can easily conclude that the Marshmallow People are male, but something tells me that they're names aren't "Dudes". Since there's no canonical names for the Marshmallow People, I will refer to them as Pink Marshmallow and White Marshmallow (even though he's really more of a gray marshmallow, I'm calling him White because most marshmallows aren't gray).

The first words spoken in the series are by Pink Marshmallow saying:

Man, there is nothing to do!

-Pink Marshmallow

You'll be curious to note that this is the only time in the entire series that either of the Marshmallow People refer to each other by anything other than "you" or "your" or "we" (They also say "I" quite often, but that's a self-reference. There's also contractions like "we're", but that kind of falls under "we"). I will be discussing the use of pronouns in the series quite a bit, but for now we can just make note of it.

White Marshmallow falls to his knees and proclaims his boredom. The camera zooms in on him and he screams -- the scream might be a bit disingenuous.

Pink Marshmallow starts touching White Marshmallow's face and being creepy about how soft it is. White Marshmallow stops his -- now obviously disingenuous -- freak out and says they need to "get out of here".

The scene hard cuts there. The vast majority of cuts are hard cuts, with a few notable exceptions.

The next scene introduces us to "The Otter". Which is a gigantic flying otter that the characters use to go from one place to another. The Otter is hardly animated ever, only ever moved around the screen. It might as well have been an otter statue.

The Marshmallow people have an argument. White Marshmallow is upset, while Pink Marshmallow is trying to find a solution to their mutual boredom problem. White Marshmallow says that they "never come up with good ideas on The Otter", Pink Marshmallow suggest "setting fires or something", and White Marshmallow headbutts him off The Otter.

We also learn that the Marshmallow People can bleed, since when White Marshmallow headbutts Pink Marshmallow off The Otter his head starts to bleed.

One oddity (otterty?) is White Marshmallow suggest going to "Triangle Man" after Pink Marshmallow has been launched off The Otter. Another oddity is that "they always set fires", as if they've had this problem many times.

The next scene they're at Triangle Man's triangular house. It is not explained how Pink Marshmallow got there even after being headbutted of The Otter in the last scene.

White Marshmallow calls out to Triangle Man, and Triangle Lady enters stage left. She is purple, has a bow tie in the top point of her triangle body, and has stick figure arms and legs like the Marshmallow People. She also has eyelashes and eyebrows.

The Marshmallow People start to savagely lay into Triangle Lady, who obviously just wants to be involved in whatever they are trying to do. They call here a boring and terrible triangle, and Pink Marshmallow gets up in her face and screams at her about it.

If you watch this scene carefully you'll notice that Pink Marshmallow watches White Marshmallow as if asking for permission to bully Triangle Lady, before getting into her space and yelling at her.

The moment is cut short by Triangle Man coming in on his floating surfboard, which immediately explodes. Triangle Man lands in the midst of the two Marshmallow People proclaiming to have surfed around the world. Triangle Man is brownish color, almost like wet cardboard; he has sun glasses, but is otherwise shaped almost exactly to Triangle Lady. You'll notice that only the Triangle People have eyebrows.

Pink Marshmallow, obviously, begins to reputedly stab Triangle Man. White Marshmallow asks him what he's doing (a pretty good question, I would say) and Pink Marshmallow looks genuinely panicked when he says he has no idea. White Marshmallow says to go to The Otter, as if that would solve all their issues.

Note: Triangle Man can bleed too.

(Take that note out of context somewhere. Please. Just bring it up at the dinner table without any preamble or explanation.)

And now the crew (Triangle Lady, A bleeding out Triangle Man, and the two Marshmallow People) are all on The Otter. The Marshmallow People are having a discussion where they are complaining about how they are still bored. Triangle Man is complaining about his "triangular awesomeness" leaking out from his stab wounds. Triangle Lady, still wanting to be involved, says that she stole a pack of gum once, and is shut down by the Marshmallow People again.

White Triangle proposes that they drop the triangles into the ravine and set off fireworks in a church (or something). Pink Marshmallow says that's lame.

And then this crazy bitch Triangle Lady comes into frame with her mouth covered in blood saying that she ate Triangle Man and now he's "part of her forever". This inspires the Marshmallow People (their whole week is set, apparently). Triangle Lady, now finally misanthropic enough to think she's cool in the eyes of the Marshmallow People victoriously shouts that she's awesome before being headbutted into the aforementioned ravine by White Marshmallow.

Triangle Man lays there, on The Otter, various stab wounds and bite chunks all over his body. Episode 1 ends.

Like I said before, I'll try holding off on doing any in-depth analysis. So let's jump right into episode 2:

Episode 2 begins with Pink Marshmallow laying on the ground, wistfully staring into the sky. He's in a "forest" made of that same strange cotton material that nearly everything seems to be made of.

White Marshmallow falls out from the top of the frame (I'm not sure if Pink Marshmallow actually saw him falling from the sky, or if some other strange even happened to make him come out of the top of the frame), screaming. It's the same disingenuous screaming that he did in the beginning of the previous episode. Pink Marshmallow ask what's going on, and then starts to play along with the screaming. They eventually learn of a mutual need to kick someone.

The next scene contains the two Marshmallow People screaming while riding The Otter. White Marshmallow screams and points down somewhere and Pink Marshmallow nods (while screaming, of course).

Cut to Triangle Man's house, where Triangle Man is outside juggling three balls (orange, purple, and green). The Marshmallow People come from the left frame screaming, and Triangle Man welcomes them into his property, asking them what's going on. They knock him over, still screaming, and start to kick him like they planned. Triangle Man begs them to stop, but they don't.

The frame pans out a bit to reveal Triangle Lady. She's being enthusiastic as usual and ask them how it's going. The Marshmallow People move on from a limp and defeated Triangle Man and start kicking Triangle Lady instead. Triangle Lady is pleased at this development on account of being "involved".

Cut back to The Otter with the Marshmallow People (no Triangle People on The Otter this time). They are discussing their previous kicking of the Triangle People, and how unfulfilled it made them. A "terrible silky emptiness" according to White Marshmallow.

White Marshmallow goes on a rant while Pink Marshmallow freaks out. This is an important part, so I'm going to quote it in full here:

White Marshmallow: I do everything I want. Why do I feel like I do nothing?

Pink Marshmallow (while putting two colorful stickers on White Marshmallow's face): What is wrong with us? Are we gonna die? Are we gonna die?!

White Marshmallow (slapping Pink Marshmallow's hand away): Shut up and make some cake!

This conversation, you could say, is the turning point of the entire series. We will come back to it frequently.

The scene cuts to the Marshmallow People eating cake with party hats on (White Marshmallow is wearing a green hat with yellow polka dots and red tassels. Pink Marshmallow is wearing a grayish-brown hat with red polka dots and blue tassels). White Marshmallow complains about how he still feels nothing, even with cake. Pink Marshmallow doesn't know how he got there.

The location is strikingly similar to the forest area at the start of the episode.

White Marshmallow wonders if they "have too much" and that they'll "never feel satisfied again". Pink Marshmallow yells that they need to "give it all back", and White Marshmallow agrees. they both throw their uneaten cake slices to the ground and White Marshmallow projectile vomits some weird gray liquid.

Cut to the Marshmallow People in front of Triangle Man's house while Triangle Man is laying on the ground covered in bruises. They try to explain to Triangle Man that they "need to give it all back" and Triangle Man tells them to go away, and that it's their own problem.

...And then Triangle man turns into a tree.

White Marshmallow falls to his knees yelling (perhaps genuinely this time?) about how lovely it is. Rain and thunder begin and Pink Marshmallow is lifted off his feet by an invisible force, which makes him come to a revelation (?) about being "nothing". White Marshmallow has his pupils removed and screams about how he can't see before his mouth is fused shut. Pink Marshmallow yells that he doesn't remember making the aforementioned cake before his eyes and mouth are fused shut and his arms shrink back into his body.

The rain stops. Two marshmallows, one pink and one white, lay on the ground. Triangle Lady, the only survivor, comes frame left and announces that she wins. The camera lingers on her with her hands up for a lot longer than it usually lingers on shots.

And that's the end of Episode 2.

Episode 3 begins with both Marshmallow People laying on the ground. They both complain about how hungry they are. White Marshmallow says that he's hungry enough to eat Pink Marshmallow's face, and Pink Marshmallow agrees that he himself is also hungry enough to eat his own face too. They come to a mutual agreement to eat Pink Marshmallow's face.

Cut to them on The Otter, Pink Marshmallow's face eaten. White Marshmallow is complaining about how there's no food even though there's supposed to always be food:

Why is there no food? There's always food!

-White Marshmallow

Pink Marshmallow tries to respond, but can't articulate anything on account of his face (and lips) being eaten. White Marshmallow decides to go find Triangle Man and eat his face.

Cut to Triangle Man's house and White Marshmallow is dismayed (annoyed) at Triangle Lady, who had already eaten Triangle Man's face (while still leaving his sunglasses on). Triangle Lady apologizes and offers her own face for consumption, and White Marshmallow reluctantly agrees.

Cut back to the crew (all four of them, only White Marshmallow with his face in-tact) riding The Otter. White Marshmallow is talking to them trying to figure out what to do next, and they can only respond with "bleh bleh bleh" for mysterious reasons that involve faces and eating; I wonder if you can figure it out. They "argue" a bit.

Suddenly a bright light attacks The Otter, destabilizing it and making White Marshmallow scream. Triangle Man falls off The Otter, and Triangle Lady tries to point that out, but White Marshmallow says that he was being an asshole and to leave him. Then the bright light hits Triangle Lady, making her disappear. White Marshmallow holds up his hands like it's a roller coaster and yells "whee!" before being blasted (and disintegrated) by the bright light.

(Note that this is one of a very very few transitions between scenes that isn't a hard cut. The only other being exiting out of this scene.)

A ringing sound brings us into a strange world full of fog and mysterious objects just beyond that you can't make out. The ground looks like hard concrete instead of the normal Otter or cotton-stuff. Pink Triangle is running in the background without his face still.

White Marshmallow gets a mysterious glow around his body, and is floated onto his feet (he was laying down) and placed in front of a upside down fountain of talking eyeballs. What? How else would I fucking explain that thing? An upside down fountain of talking fucking eyeballs. Or, actually, the fountain is talking, not the eyeballs. It would be a talking upside down fountain of eyeballs.

Talking upside down fountain of eyeballs: Every time you fall asleep you die. Someone else wakes up in your body thinking they are you.

White Marshmallow: Oh.

Talking upside down fountain of eyeballs: You are alone, trapped in your own mind. The world around you is your lie.

White Marshmallow. Okay?

Talking upside down fountain of eyeballs: Soon you will be nothing. You will never again hear sounds, never again see colors, never again be anyone.

The final monologue by the talking upside down fountain of eyeballs finishes with the scene slowing fading (not hard cutting!) into a normal cotton-world place. Pink Marshmallow comes up and asks (with his face back) where White Marshmallow had been (even though he was also in that weird not-place with the eyeballs and the fountains and shit). White Marshmallow replies that he didn't know, but that it was somewhere stupid.

And that's the end of Marshmallow People.

Fun and boredom: living in a toy world

I think it's save to assume that the characters in Marshmallow People are immortal. They are at least regenerating. Or they have some other mysterious power of respawning.

Here's a list of all the crazy fatal shit these talking shapes have endured:

And that's just the stuff that happens when you definitively see the character after the event. I could also assume they survive after episode 3, but I can't be certain about that.

The events happening in episode 3 are possible fabrications, since Pink Marshmallow apparently doesn't know where White Marshmallow was at the end, even though he was with him through the whole episode. Under the interpretation that it is true, that's a lot of proof that the characters that we've met are some sort of immortal.

Of course, this is pretty par for the course when it comes to cartoon characters. Only if you were trying to pretend to be smart would you actually claim someone like Timmy Turner or Homer Simpson was immortal. It's a pretty accepted fact about most cartoons that, unless explicitly stated otherwise, things will always turn back to normal.

And yet, I don't get that impression here. Jason Steele has presented us a world that he wants us to take seriously. You can't make lines like, "I do everything I want. Why do I feel like I do nothing?" and show us a whispering talking upside down fountain of eyeballs and in the same breath claim that it's just a silly little cartoon with no meaning. Things like Triangle Man turning into a tree and the mysterious light beams are signs telling us that we need to take the world of Marshmallow People deadly seriously.

When a character is killed, and comes back later, I can only assume that it's because there's a reason for it, and not just a weird cartoon thing you're just supposed to suspend your disbelief on.

Let's talk about that word "reason". There are many different levels of reason, when you're diving this deep into a work.

In this case, I'm talking about the simple meta level, where Jason Steele had an intent behind what he was making. We will get into the other levels of reasoning later, trust me on that.

If you've ever animated anything you will know that it is arduous. Thousands and thousands of frames all having to blend together. It's a nightmare. When you're the only person who is drawing, producing, sound designing, voice acting, and directing a cartoon there's usually not any room for unintentional things. This can be different when there's a lot of people working on something at once, like a regular TV cartoon, but when working alone you have to be pragmatic. If there's a flying otter, there's a reason for it to be there.

But when a creator puts so much effort into something, it usually also means that there's an internal logic, no matter how obtuse. And I don't just mean that in the "everyone has a brain, and the brain is possible to formally describe" kind of way; I mean that there has to be some way that Jason Steele intended this story to go, some story he wanted to tell, and that involved the characters coming back to life.

Interestingly enough, there are many hints of authorial intent within the cartoon itself. There are lines, like "I do everything I want. Why do I feel like I do nothing?" that show that Jason Steele wasn't just making random noise for the sake of random noise, like he might have done for something like Charlie the Unicorn or The Ghost House. There was an idea to express here.

More so, the fact that the Marshmallow People are so bored all the time is a great hint that their immortality is more than just a fluke of cartoon logic. I'm going to have to go into more detail to explain why, so strap yourself in.

You may notice that the main motivation behind most of the Marshmallow People's actions (especially the most misanthropic ones) are motivated mostly by a desire to alleviate boredom. Even in the third episode where 3/4 characters have their face eaten because "they're so hungry" is actually a symptom of boredom; the act of eating having become so rote and numbing to them that they have to spice it up with face. White Marshmallow, once the novelty of eating faces wears off, immediately goes, "Well, now what do we do?", which indicates boredom more than a desire to sate his hunger.

You don't really notice the Triangle People talking about how bored they are, even though Triangle Lady goes out of her way to involve herself in the various adventures of the Marshmallow People and Triangle Man can "surf around the world" according to his first appearance. The Triangle People only really act in misanthropic and evil ways after being exposed to the supremely bored Marshmallow People; when left to their own devices they "surf around the world" or "steal a pack of gum"(1).

I would argue that the Triangle People are bored as well, even though we don't hear them explicitly state it. What use would Triangle Man, an immortal, have to escape the wrath of the Marshmallow People? He turns into a tree in the second episode note to escape boredom, not the Marshmallow People.

Or the Triangle Lady trying to latch onto the Marshmallow People long after it's obvious that they hate her. Could it be boredom, or something else? We'll discuss Triangle Lady in more detail in a later section. For now, we'll consider it a mystery.

The point here is that the driving force of the plot is boredom. Everything here happens because they are bored(2).

Now, anyone with the slightest bit of pattern matching ability and a western culture upbringing will have already seen the conclusion I'm coming to. Traditionally, one of the most popular arguments against immortality is that you would be bored. That once you had integrated all the things that are interesting to you there will be no escape, and you'll eventually "go crazy".

The proponents of this argument imagine themselves lost in a world much like Marshmallow People, constantly chasing anything even remotely stimulating to the point where they go mad with power and malaise. The constant inexorable burden of existence pressing down on them, forcing them to seek out novelty even when they exhausted all of it already.

If you have a passion, imagine growing old enough to get totally bored of it, to the point where you can't imagine making yourself partake in it, no matter how much you liked it before. That is the hell that the proponents of the "Bored Immortal" argument imagine.

This seems like a pretty legitimate concern at face value. And it's probably the second most common argument against immortality besides the obvious "You're family and friends will die!"(3).

Now, to be honest, I do not believe in this argument. I understand where it's coming from, but I don't think it's actually something that a true real-world immortal would have to worry about.

The ideas that I personally believe are not my own original creation. I first was exposed to them through "The Fun Theory Sequence" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Fun Theory is the field of knowledge that deals in questions such as "How much fun is there in the universe?", "Will we ever run out of fun?", "Are we having fun yet?" and "Could we be having more fun?"

This is an interesting question with far-reaching implications for anyone who tries to think critically about immortality. Instead of just assuming that being immortal would be boring, we should actually try and reason about it and see if the underlying assumptions are correct.

In the post Complex Novelty Yudkowsky says:

The space of problems that are Fun to a given brain, will definitely be smaller than the exponentially increasing space of all possible problems that brain can represent. We are interested only in the borderland between triviality and impossibility—problems difficult enough to worthily occupy our minds, yet tractable enough to be worth challenging.

This is a concerning thought. What happens when you exhaust "the space of problems that are Fun to a given brain" while still having many problems that aren't fun, but still representable by your own brain?

Like, I don't care much about American football. Would I, thousands of years in the future, have to force myself to pretend to like football just to inject some novelty into my otherwise dull life?

The Complex Novelty post talks about people who can modify their own brains to enjoy new things. If you could modify your brain to enjoy exercise and eating healthy, would you do it? I already enjoy exercise quite a bit, but eating certain veggies still makes me want to gag. Maybe I would be tempted in the future to modify my brain to only enjoy those veggies, just to have something new to think about?

But maybe that wouldn't happen? Knowledge begets more knowledge; intelligence begets more intelligence. If you can't understand addition, you'll have a harder time understanding multiplications. But once you understand addition well enough you can even do subtraction with it(4)!

When you learn something to the point where it is simple and uninteresting to you, that opens up other possible things that could be interesting to you instead.

But immortality is a long time. Is there really enough fun in the universe to keep you entertained forever? Does the rate of fun-growth out strip the rate of you-growth?

The problem gets harder when you realize that, in the future, you could increase your intelligence. The smarter you are, the more things you can understand, the more fun you can have. So when you finally get bored, couldn't you easily increase your intelligence to increase the amount of things you can understand?

Fun Space can increase much more slowly than the space of representable problems, and still overwhelmingly swamp the amount of time you could bear to spend as a mind of a fixed level. Even if Fun Space grows at some ridiculously tiny rate like N-squared—bearing in mind that the actual raw space of representable problems goes as 2^N—we're still talking about "way more fun than you can handle".

If you consider the loot of every human adventure—everything that was ever learned about science, and everything that was ever learned about people, and all the original stories ever told, and all the original games ever invented, and all the plots and conspiracies that were ever launched, and all the personal relationships ever raveled, and all the ways of existing that were ever tried, and all the glorious epiphanies of wisdom that were ever minted—

—and you deleted all the duplicates, keeping only one of every lesson that had the same moral—

—how long would you have to stay human, to collect every gold coin in the dungeons of history?

It seems to me that I would be able to have fun in a world like this. A real world where I can constantly grow and change and learn and love, a world much like this one, but a lot safer. Even though I sometimes get bored in my non-immortal life, I can always find something new and interesting around the corner to occupy my mind.

I highly recommend you read that entire Fun Theory Sequence. It is very important to read if your someone like me who has intuitive thoughts about immortality being good, but can't express it in words well enough for others to understand.

So if there's enough fun in the universe, even for immortals, why are the Marshmallow People so bored?

Because there isn't enough fun in their universe.

Just look at it. There's novelty everywhere: flying otters, people turning into trees, upside down eyeball fountains that whisper forbidden nothings to you, and triangle houses.

But these things are only novel to us because they are strange. The mere fact that you can read this blog post is extraordinary and amazing to someone from the 17th century, but for us it is rote and mundane. That's not a character judgment on you, I do the same thing -- enough to say I actively hate the internet. Can you really not imagine a world where you get bored by flying otters, when the miracle of the internet is something you can partake in while on the toilet without a second thought?

Look past the intentional absurdity of the situations the characters find themselves in and see what is really there.

A barren wasteland made of cotton.

A sky that never changes color.

Almost nobody around to talk to.

Arbitrary things happening that you can't possibly understand.

No advanced technology.

This is a world that is made almost specifically to be boring to a normal mind. Once the silliness of everything wears off, you start looking for stimulation. And then you start eating faces.

But I think there's something even more sinister going on here. Not only is the environment hostile to fun, but I believe that the people in Marshmallow People world are cursed.

Most normal people would still be able to find some way to create fun. There are still people here and interesting things to think about. They could come up with stories and art and math and invent their own 4 person civilization. There is plenty of challenge allowed, even in such a barren environment.

But what if they couldn't? The lack of technology means they can't easily modify their minds, and even if they did they might just "respawn" later with their changes undone (does giving yourself a full frontal lobotomy count as "dying" enough for their regeneration/reincarnation/whatever to kick in?).

But the Marshmallow People don't do that. The Triangle People don't do that. The search for novelty usually don't end with eating faces except in the most extreme psychopaths. You would think that they would be building crude rockets or anything more interesting than headbutting people off The Otter for the dozenth time.

What if they were cursed? What if it's the environment that's cursed?

For context, let's look at a blog post by John Regehr called Operant Conditioning by Software bugs. In this post there is a case made for learning how to use everyday computer software in a way that won't make it crash or break:

Have you ever used a new program or system and found it to be obnoxiously buggy, but then after a while you didn’t notice the bugs anymore? If so, then congratulations: you have been trained by the computer to avoid some of its problems.

And:

For example, I used to have a laptop that would lock up to the point where the battery needed to be removed when I scrolled down a web page for too long (I’m guessing the video driver’s logic for handling a full command queue was defective). Messing with the driver version did not solve the problem and I soon learned to take little breaks when scrolling down a long web page. To this day I occasionally feel a twinge of guilt or fear when rapidly scrolling a web page.

We are almost invariably conditioned by our environment, to the point where absurd actions become automatic. Here's another quote:

I never let my wife’s Windows 7 machine go for more than about two weeks without restarting it, whereas I reboot my Linux box only every few months.

Learning to restart the machine frequently is something that you just sort of... do. But I can attest that I don't restart my Linux computer nearly as often as I restarted my Windows computer. I didn't even notice I was doing it until I read this post.

And these things can stick. I still don't trust web apps because of how many times I've been totally fucked by them. I have an allergy to programs that are complicated and/or encumbered with non-open file formats for the same reasons. My choices for software are pretty much made automatically because of this, and it decides things up to and including the kinds of projects I work on (I make less art because graphical programs are universally terrible, for example).

And major things can condition you as well. The way your parents raised you. The way your romantic partner reacts to certain actions. The way your dog reacts to you being excited. Not speeding up quickly because your car is a junker. Holding a water bottle in a certain way because an old bottle was shaped weird.

It can affect what kind of thoughts you can have too. Have you ever not realized something super obvious because you were focused on a different facet of the problem? you might have been conditioned to think about the problem in a certain way, to your detriment.

Turning back to Marshmallow People, it's easy to imagine what's happened to them.

Imagine you tried to think about how to advance mathematics in your little cotton world. Every time you start thinking about it you get struck by lightning. Given enough time of this, your brain will simply learn the rule: "Don't think about math", and then suddenly your entire 4 person civilization will be stuck.

That's just a small example. It can be more subtle than that, like not being able to count things consistently (things duplicate/disappear when you look away, perhaps) or having any curiosity be punished with a foul smell or anything. If the environment is quick enough to give the proper positive and negative reinforcements to the right actions, you simply wouldn't be able to stop yourself from being conditioned to think in a certain way.

I am shocked and appalled that you think I'm just pulling this insight out of my ass. Don't tell me you weren't. I know your type.

Re-watch the series again, but this time pay attention to the things that happen before White Marshmallow says, "I do everything I want. Why do I feel like I do nothing?" and everything that happens after.

As soon as the Marshmallow People start to take action to improve their station in life ("give it all back") they are brutally punished with having their faces and eyes and arms removed and turned back into regular marshmallows.

This trend continues; as soon as White Marshmallow points out that he is still trying to find a non-vapid solution to their boredom (Asking, "Well now what do we do?" in episode 3 after the faces have been eaten) he is launched into a weird outer realm with an upside down talking eyeball fountain that whispers forbidden and terrifying knowledge to him.

Obviously, there is a correlation between their actions and the way the environment punishes them. It's training them all to be vapid and bored. A hell so severe I can barely even contemplate it.

Of course, this brings up the issue of: What is it that is doing the training?

You could say that it's the eyeball fountain thing, or The Otter, or God, or the Author, or whatever. But I don't think, in the universe of Marshmallow People, that's what is going on. I think that the environment itself is being malicious. Just like how our own universe follows certain physical laws, the physical laws of this universe are set up in such a way to prevent hedonistic progress.

That's quite the bold claim. The complex mechanics needed to care about what a collection of Marshmallow People care about is something that seems like it should be intentionally designed, not something that might arise out of the basic fabric of a universe. It is a much more simple explanation to say that it was designed somehow (the After the Apocalypse scenario) than it is to imagine a universe that actually works that way.

But lack of evidence is still evidence for lack of something. You don't actually see any hint of intelligent design within the Marshmallow People world. The closest you get is the eyeball fountain, but even that seems more like a consequence than it does a cause. The eyeball fountain can at least talk and float Marshmallow People over to it, but does it really have the ability to alter reality itself to force Marshmallow People into being conditioned to think a certain way? I don't think so.

And what about the speech by the eyeball fountain? Let's take another look at that:

Every time you fall asleep you die. Someone else wakes up in your body thinking they are you.

You are alone, trapped in your own mind. The world around you is your lie.

Soon you will be nothing. You will never again hear sounds, never again see colors, never again be anyone.

The eyeball fountain is talking about the loss of identity that would inevitably occur once you've been conditioned hard enough by the surrounding universe. You've been trained so hard to not try and hedonically run on the treadmill of boredom that you simply lose your ability to think about yourself.

"Soon you will be nothing."

Triangle Lady: the missing link

The Marshmallow People give off the impression of being young and flamboyant. They still have the capacity to worry about their boredom and try and solve the issues.

The Triangle People, on the other hand, seem like they are much older. Much more broken.

Not once do the Triangle People complain about being bored. Not once do they do something misanthropic without the prompting of the Marshmallow People. Look again at how empty they are. They have lost hope completely.

And what's more, remember how I said the Marshmallow People don't have official names? Well, the Triangle People don't refer to each other with their "Triangle Lady/Man" names either. The only names spoken are by the Marshmallow People trying to describe the Triangle People.

This is because the Marshmallow People are still young, while the Triangle People are old and jaded and broken by the world they have to live in.

Let's talk about Triangle Lady.

Triangle Lady is a stereotypical pushover. She tries constantly to get the approval of the Marshmallow People. But it's almost never enough.

In episode 1 she eats Triangle Man to have him be a part of her forever. This actually inspires the Marshmallow People, even though they immediately reject her again.

In episode 2 they kick her over and over, until at the end of the episode she's the only one left alive. She says she "wins" at the end.

In episode 3 she is already eating the face of Triangle Man without prompting from the Marshmallow People, and then offers her own face up for consumption to please White Marshmallow.

Pretty standard stuff. Like a teenage girl in the midst of high school bullshit, she will do anything to feel involved and included.

But Triangle Lady isn't a teenage girl. She's old (remember that the Triangle People are older than the Marshmallow People, since they are already broken). But age doesn't mean wisdom and life experience in this world, it means conformance and suppression. Triangle man is broken to only act a certain way, Triangle Lady is broken to act a certain way too.

Triangle Lady is the missing link, because her actions are a perfect microcosm of how an environment set up like Marshmallow People World can take someone with ambitions (be popular) and twist them into repetitive and psychopathic tendencies.

Remember the mysterious lights in the third episode? The one that sent White Marshmallow and Pink Marshmallow into the realm of the upside down talking fountain of eyeballs? Triangle Man didn't get hit by this light, he only was knocked off The Otter. Triangle Lady, however, was hit by this light.

After Triangle Lady was hit by the mysterious light, what did she see? Nothing, because her face was eaten(5). Still, it would be interesting to ponder what kind of place she was brought to, if anywhere.

She wasn't trying to think of some way to escape the hell, so I doubt she would have been brought to the Triangle Person equivalent of the eyeball fountain. Was she being rewarded for her efforts to be predictable and boring? Perhaps. But I have a better idea:

What if it really was a respawn? What if we saw the process of how their immortality worked?

White Marshmallow had his conversation with the eyeball fountain, and then was brought back into the "real world" where Pink Marshmallow asks him where the hell he's been. Pink Marshmallow doesn't remember the fountain world.

Every time you fall asleep you die. Someone else wakes up in your body thinking they are you.

What if this is a true statement? What if White Marshmallow hadn't fallen asleep yet, so he remembers the process of "death" with the fountain of eyeballs? Pink Marshmallow, with his face eaten, had already died/slept so his memory of the event was gone. There wasn't enough time spent in the death world for Pink Marshmallow to form any long term memories about it, so his immediate death following it caused him to forget everything in his short term memory, thus marking him confused about where White Marshmallow had been.

White Marshmallow, at the very end of the series, says that he had been "somewhere stupid". This is a large character progression; he's become so jaded and broken by the world around him that not even the upside down talking fountain of eyeballs can really stimulate him anymore. The events of the series were his last ditch efforts to fight against the systems suppressing him, and he lost.

Triangle Lady was the only other person on The Otter who was consumed by the light. Maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I call back to the "authorial intent" argument a while back: if something happens here, it's probably intentional.

Perhaps the light is supposed to be a literal representation of death and reincarnation for the people in the Marshmallow People World. They reset back at the beginning, faces and bodies in tact, and have to find something to do that the universe will actually allow them to do, slowly converging on a state of total boredom that they simply break and lose any semblance of identity or humanity.

Triangle Man was the only person in the series that didn't do anything out of the ordinary. Sure he turned into a tree, but that is "ordinary" in the eyes of the twisted logic of the Marshmallow People World. What is out of the ordinary is Triangle Lady going "I win!" at the end of Episode 2. So Triangle Man is the only person not being "punished" by the mysterious light, while every one else gets blasted by it.

Watch the mysterious light scene again. Triangle lady screams while being blasted with it.

She made a meta comment. That is the rule. You're not allowed to think in meta terms about the universe, or you'll be punished in some way. That means you can only think about surface level issues like how popular you are to people or how cool you are. The Marshmallow People's sin was trying to peruse their latent thoughts about why they were bored, and Triangle Lady's sin was pointing out that there was a pattern in the first place (her "winning").

Triangle Man, on the other hand, doesn't get blasted by the light. He gets turned into a tree, sure, but that's something he wanted to happen (Or maybe even something he intentionally did? The "I'm out of here" is kind of ambiguous).

Imagine a world where you could only think about surface level issues. Where you couldn't do any meta analysis, can't point out any patterns, or do anything interesting beyond the bare minimum.

Loose ends: What about the eyeballs?

The talking upside down eyeball fountain that whispers forbidden knowledge to you is an enigma. If I were writing Marshmallow People, I would have intended the eyeball fountain to be a integral part of anyone's analysis. Yet, in this own analysis I've almost totally neglected it, only bringing it up when absolutely necessary.

It's time to address the eyeball fountain in the room.

First off: What is going on with this thing? Was it the one to attack them with the mysterious lights? Is it the god of this world? Does it know why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

There is something peculiar about the eyeball fountain. First off, it seems to puncture a hole in my "no meta thoughts" theory, since it speaks almost entirely in meta thoughts:

Talking upside down fountain of eyeballs: Every time you fall asleep you die. Someone else wakes up in your body thinking they are you.

White Marshmallow: Oh.

Talking upside down fountain of eyeballs: You are alone, trapped in your own mind. The world around you is your lie.

White Marshmallow. Okay?

Talking upside down fountain of eyeballs: Soon you will be nothing. You will never again hear sounds, never again see colors, never again be anyone.

(Notice how White Marshmallow is totally unfazed, trained to just ignore interesting thoughts like these ones. Even after being interested in why he's bored, he can't fathom thoughts like the existential dread of identity and death.)

Second, it's the only other creature in the entire series with a speaking roll. The only other characters that speak are the Marshmallow and Triangle People. This implies that the eyeball fountain is significant, since it isn't a marshmallow or a triangle.

Third, it's creepy.

I've watched Marshmallow People at least 40 times now, and I think I finally understand the eyeball fountain.

It's obviously a being of power. It seems to have an infinite supply of eyeballs, it can float White Marshmallow over to it, and it speaks without a mouth or lungs or vocal chords (unless eyeballs in this world have vocal chords?(6)).

My theory is this: It's a transcended being. Some time in the past someone, perhaps a Marshmallow Person or Triangle Person, figured out how to bypass the "no meta thoughts" rule and used their immortality to slowly build up scientific knowledge until they could ascend into being an upside down fountain of eyeballs.

What? People can have weird goals. If someone wants to be a fountain of eyeballs, why should we be the ones to tell them that it's stupid? The physics of their world might require something like that to obtain power anyways.

But there's a lot of eyeballs in that fountain. And a lot of knowledge needed to transcend like that. One person, immortal, could probably do that with enough time, but let's take the theory another step.

What if an entire civilization transcended their power and remade the world of Marshmallow People to be something that nobody else could transcend from? It would explain why there meta rule was there in the first place (they transcended without the rule, and then put it in place), and it explains why there's so many eyeballs. They all fused into one being of pure knowledge and power, and rewrote the rules of the universe to align with their eyeball values.

It would explain things like The Otter. That's probably the fantasy of some dominate eyeball in the fountain that happens to like otters. But they couldn't make it talk or move for some reason, so it came out looking more like an otter statue. It would explain the mysterious lights that blasted them, the strange shapes of the people living there, the safe cotton world they live in.

The eyeball fountain is a collection of consciousnesses fused together to become a god of a toy world inhabited by empty bored immortals that can't even rise above their station. It's boredom all the way up.

And here I am, writing about it. In the end the world of Marshmallow People is all in my head. It might be in other people's heads too, but my own perception--

You are alone, trapped in your own mind. The world around you is your lie.

is the only thing I have. Even in the instance of watching Marshmallow People it has to be filtered through my own perceptions and expectations. The world around me is my lie, and this post is a desperate attempt to expand the influence of that lie a bit further.

Do you really think that any of this shit is true in a meaningful sense? Every single insight in this blog post is built off faulty assumptions and baseless priors. Its singular purpose is to express an idea: Everything can mean something, if you give it enough thought.

We don't have to live in a Marshmallow World made of cotton and flying otters and despair. Just now, just now, I entertained myself for over 4 days writing this thing. I created something, and I can always point to it as something I created.

Yes, we are all trapped in our own minds. Yes, the inexorable march of time brings us closer to death with every sentence. Yes, the malaise of modern life is soul sucking and boring. But that doesn't mean we have to give up and turn into mindless Marshmallow People. Triangle Man might be "cool", but he gave up.

Life is hard. There are annoyances and challenges and everyone has their own unique handy caps. You might have been born with a propensity towards depression, or more short than you would have liked, or to a family that didn't love you in the way that you wanted, or a school system that chewed you up, or anything. But unlike the disastrous hell scape of the mind that is Marshmallow People, we can do something.

My own life is boring and frustrating and agonizing. It's why Marshmallow People spoke to me the way it did. But I don't think the final message it gives is a true one. It says that life will always be painful and boring and frustrating. I disagree; I think that it can be better. The pain of life will still be there, but with a little thought and effort you can improve your perception of it.

Just like I improved my perception of Marshmallow People through the application of sufficiently bullshit literary analysis, House of Leaves style. I appreciate my interpretation of this cartoon more than I appreciate the cartoon.

And since it was my own perception that made Marshmallow People exists in my head in the first place, I have a choice about how I can think about it. How deep I want to go down the rabbit hole of thought, knowing fully that I'm bullshitting the whole time.

You and I -- no matter what we think in the moment of boredom and malaise -- are always capable of having interesting experiences. We aren't Marshmallow People. We aren't trapped the way they are.

You don't have to get up and do something absurd and crazy, like eat faces or kick a Triangle Man to near death. What I'm saying is that you can always go deeper. You have the power of always, slowly, improving. Small incremental changes can keep you in a state of constant engagement with your own life.

That is the moral of Marshmallow People, as I've seen it. The fear of boredom, the fear of life, is real -- the consequences of not responding to that fear are real too. But instead of doubling down in your dysfunction and eating faces, never allowing yourself to grow in ways you know you want to, you instead have the choice of changing yourself or your perceptions to remain engaged.

That's the stupid-meta level -- the mere fact of me writing this post is a display of this concept in action. I'd become bored with some other writing projects I've been working on, so I pulled this one out of my ass, and it kept me engaged for about a week. I've never had to think about a creative work in the way I thought about Marshmallow People, and that experience is something I can build on in the future. It is a new perspective, a new experience, to keep me engaged with life.

And now you've thought about Marshmallow People too. I hope I've spiced up your life at least a bit.

Pink Marshmallow: Where the hell have you been?

White Marshmallow: I don't know. Somewhere stupid.

  1. In episode 1, after the stabbing of Triangle Man, Triangle Lady says that she stole a pack of gum once. She is obviously shot down by the Marshmallow People because she isn't misanthropic enough to sate their boredom.

    Immediately afterwards she eats Triangle Man. Notice how she escalates so far so quickly that it even surprises the Marshmallow People to the point where they say that their "whole week is set". <-

  2. Remember in the 3rd episode where they're getting attacked by the mysterious lights and White Marshmallow holds up his hands and says "whee!"? That and more are hints to how absurdly jaded the characters have become. <-

  3. Even though you will experience, and recover from, the death of family and friends through the normal course of your life. How could an immortal possibly recover from the death of a loved one given an infinite amount of time? That was sarcasm by the way. <-

  4. To do subtraction with only addition, you just follow these steps:

    You want to find out what 11 - 3 is. You take 3 + 1 and find it doesn't equal 11, then you try 3 + 2 then 3 + 3 until you you to 3 + 8 = 11, which means that your answer is 11 - 3 = 8.

    Interestingly enough, this is how computers do subtraction (sometimes). <-

  5. I can easily assume that Triangle Lady can hear, even with her face eaten. She was trying to talk to White Marshmallow, and even pointed out that Triangle Man fell off The Otter. <-

  6. Well... Maybe? When White Marshmallow is getting his mouth fused shut by the tree he still screams for a while, since his eyes hadn't been fused shut yet like Pink Marshmallow's. Not really a theory I'm will to credit, but interesting to think about at lest. <-