Sketchbook

'''"What's your favorite idea? Mine is being creative!"

- Notepad '''

The Notepad is a manipulative "guide" and the main antongonist in the viral YouTube video 'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared'. She is presumably a female.

Apperance
She looks like a normal notepad, however, with two bulgy eyes and a small mouth, plus two thin arms she uses to flip her own pages, normally for illustrating what she's talking about.

Role
The notepad springs to life at the start of the video and asks what the other characters' favourite ideas are. When she says her favourite idea is being creative, the other puppets disbelievingly asks her for more information. Through a song, she tries to convince the puppets to be creative by for instance imagining a silly face on an orange.

She then shows them her hair and informs them she uses it to express herself. When the red puppet is bored by this, she repeats that she uses it to express herself more sternly.

Afterwards she asks if looking at the clouds in the sky is interesting, to which the puppets respond with a clear "No", although they are entertained by the sight when the notepad puts a magnifying glass in front of her eye, making the clouds take shape.

She is impressed by the creativity of the puppets, but when the yellow puppet paints a picture of a clown, she tells him to slow down as she pours black ink all over his painting.

"Here's another good tip," she sings, and explains how arranging sticks and leaves to spell out your favourite colour is creative. The puppets do so, but she quickly lets the yellow puppet know that his favourite colour, green, is not a creative colour.

Just before she lets their creativity run wild, she tells them to listen to their heart, the rain, and the voices inside their brains. Then she gives them freedom to do what they want, but as they grow up they take the creativity too  far, and darkness and death takes over as they erratically start dancing as they bake a cake containing human hearts and spell the word "Death" on the wall, screaming in horror.

After the freakout there is a short silence, followed by the notepad concluding:  "Now let's all agree to never be creative again," and then collapsing and presumably dying of fright.

Possible Symbolisms
Some of the disturbing imagery and the puppets'  behavior is said to be symbolic of how the media can corrupt young minds and brainwash people into being "creative" while in reality suppressing true creativity.

This can be seen when Notepad continually disregards the creativity of the Bert-like puppet, first by destroying his painting of a clown ("woah there friend, you may need to slow down!") and then when she decrees "Green is not a creative color" (basically saying that the puppet can't choose his favorite color).

Before things turn dark the Notepad says to "listen to the voices in your brain" - which is rather sinister in itself but the resulting madness may of been induced by the Notepad herself as a final way of gaining control over the others.

This can be seen by the end when she says "let's all agree to never be creative again" - basically telling everyone that thinking for oneself is a dangerous thing and free thought basically leads to dark anarchy and death.