So… I have a little obsession with “I Can’t sleep”. You may have noticed it because I did two drawings almost continuously about it. It took me TWO YEARS to do a second drawing for Jenny (First drawing | Second drawing). I was also searching for more ICS content (shout-out to 333NGL). There’s a reason why I don’t use to do that, I don’t like to stick just to one thing and be known just for that, so I try to make my content more diverse. I still have some ideas for ICS things to do, but I think it would be better to just leave it alone and just do a little post about it.
Here’s a transparent png of smol Nia:
ICS It's just that cool. So to summarize why I love this channel and why YOU SHOULD TOTALLY WATCH IT (or not, I don’t mind) It’s just this eerie feeling that the entire channel gives with its art style, sound design (or the lack of it), and fluid but sometimes awkward animation. I can’t totally describe the channel without ruining some of the fun, and also is not the scariest thing ever but I still think that is worth looking into some of their work.
I also have like… theories about the stuff that appears in the videos, but I think that it is better to watch each animation as its own piece, this is no “ARG” or something for the style (Or at least I prefer it that way, I don’t know about the author’s intentions).
So about the theories… First of all, you may have looked at Nia (reminder that this is a fanon name) through some fan art. and she tends to look like this:
Or like this:
But did you know that sometimes, she looks like this?:
Or this?:
Or this?:
I only assume that these characters are the same because these characters look fairly similar, but some of these versions of Nia look either way younger, or marginally older than the “vanilla” Nia. There’s another Nia, but here’s the catch, this Nia is in the same video as Nia (vanilla) in, supposedly, nearly the same time spam.
So yeah… this is either something that happens to more than one character, or the events of this channel happen through a long time span. So yeah… I have kind of a chronology, but I also believe that the “collar” Nia could also be another character.
So… the list of characters COULD be:
- Nia (emo girl)
- the guy with a black hood (the death, the grim reaper, black hood, etc, etc)
- and (maybe) the girl with the collar (probably not).
However, that last character could just be a "metaphorical" Nia… Nia’s spirit or something like that. As we have seen in “Way back home part 4”, things can get a little weird.
And as for the chronology, I think that I should speculate until the end of the WBH series so I can speculate fully, but there’s a small peek at what I’m standing about it right now:
Didn’t count creepypasta, fan-made animations, or shorts.
So yeah… that’s all in the theory section. Now the only thing that is left for me to talk about is the themes. I think that there are some mental health themes, especially anxiety but you can see other stuff. I say mainly anxiety because of how the hood character works, it tends to prevent Nia from going outside like in Don’t get your hopes up, hunger, or walking (even if in this case it isn't the Hood guy but another thing) and also it punishes Nia if she’s outside like in walking (again), sky, trick or treat, toes, bathroom, they’re coming, and The subway. (NOTE: Not all of those characters are “the hooded” itself, but I think that the point still comes across). There’s also a lot of eye imagery throughout the videos.
That would be all the analysis I can give from a surface level, there are also some sexual themes involved but I don’t want to touch on that without being 100% certain that those sexual themes are actually a central theme or just another way to depict trauma or anxiety.
So… that’s all I have to say, tell me what you think about my ramblings, or about ICS, or don’t if you don’t want to. See ya.
