Honestly I would love to do more theorizing surrounding the WAIA but there’s not a lot of theorizing to do.
It’s pretty out in the open. I don’t think the FNAF connection is super lore-steeped; I think it’s just Mark poking fun at his King of FNAF status. What I do think is lore-steeped is the WAIA’s responses, which are super on-the-nose but not in an overbearing way. This is direct storytelling done right, and I think that Mark is extremely talented to be able to pull it off.
In the “He said...potato salad?” video, the WAIA says:
“A man goes to a party. This man met an old friend. The two friends share some wine. The two friends played a game. The most dangerous game. I didn’t know the gun was loaded. I didn’t know.
Was it my fault? Was it?”
This got me so hard the first time I played through, and I picked “No.” I picked “No” because in my mind, Wil is not at fault for Actor Mark’s crimes. Wil is the victim of cruel manipulation and the entity in the House; he didn’t make a decision to kill Actor Mark. He wanted so badly to reconcile that he was willing to play “the most dangerous game” to get him back. And when it all went wrong, he couldn’t bear it.
What got me more than anything was the dialogue in “No.” :
“You can’t change the past. You can tell all the stories you want to tell; it won’t change what happened. You can’t rewrite the past; if you live in fantasy forever, you’ll lose yourself in the story.”
This just about made me cry, and when Wilf’s voiceover mentions that “he’s a perfect scan of my noggin,” it made it worse.
This is Wil’s thoughts untethered from the influence of the House and the breaks in time and space he continues to experience. This is Wil, as close to sane as he can get, and he’s just...accepting.
He knows he can’t change anything, and that becoming Wilford Warfstache, telling Wilford Warfstache’s story instead of his own, can’t fix it and instead means he’s slowly losing William Barnum.
Or maybe that he’s already lost him.
So if you’re a fan of my stuff here, I’ve been moving a lot of my older fic to AO3, and I’ve even re-written and added to some of them! If you feel like checking that out, go for it. I’m under the name Kittenbedtimestories there, the same as my old Wattpad name.
So a lot of people seem to be interpreting DAMIEN as a redemption of sorts for Dark. I don’t agree with this. I think this addition to the story is a way of making Darkiplier more of what he already was: a sympathetic villain.
Dark’s motivation comes from a just source: he wants to avenge the people he lost and take down this evil, manipulative bastard that is roaming around in his body, who stole everything from him. Unfortunately, he doesn’t use just means to go after him. Dark is more than willing to brun everything in his path to the ground as long as Mark dies; he’ll fight fire with fire, manipulating, torturing, and destroying absolutely everything and everyone to get to Mark, with no regard for the consequences. Somewhere along the way, that just motivation became a blind rage, and he stepped into the role that Mark put in front of him, the role of the villain, with too much zeal and enthusiasm. He fully embraced the darkness around him because he saw nothing but the power it would give him, and not the corruption that would overtake him.
In this way, he shares a fatal flaw with his twin: he has a completely one-track mind. This isn’t even totally surprising; wasn’t his one ambition to make the city he presided over greater than any other? Wasn’t his one goal at the party to make sure that justice was served and the past was put behind us? Damien is very good at strategy in that he can get what he wants with ruthless efficiency, but he cannot see the consequences of his actions, and that, ultimately, is where Dark’s vilainy comes from. Dark would be a good guy if his actions didn’t cause destruction wherever he went, in a dark shadow of Actor Mark’s actions.
A/N: So someone came up with the idea of Will and Celine having a kid, and my heart got really sad. So have some word vomit. (Credit to @turquoisemagpie for the neato drawing that gave Winnie her look and gave me the idea.)
Dark was mid-meeting when he felt it.
Someone was in the house. After all this time...he was here now, it'd been so long since he'd been back...but the feeling was familiar. He frowned, standing suddenly, earning a curious look from Google, who’d been trying to explain analytics to his uninterested audience. "Where's Wilford?" "He's in his studio, as always," Google replied, narrowing his eyes, "Why the sudden interest? We were discussing the primary-" "Excuse me." Dark moved quickly out of the room, slamming the door behind him. His aura was agitated, greying out the walls of the hallway, making Bim duck into a doorway to avoid it (it was unpleasant to pass through, to say the least) as he strode toward Wil's sound stage. He didn't bother to knock as he shoved the door open roughly. "Warfstache!" Wilford sighed heavily from his position in front of the green screen. "Dammit, man, can't you learn to knock? Jesus." He rolled his eyes and waved his gun at Jim, behind the camera, who quickly cut the take and scurried out of the room. Everyone in Ego Inc. knew what Dark slamming into a room would lead to. "Have you been back to the house?" "Are you out of your mind? Why would I go to Mark's house at this hour? I've been here, recording my new show all day. It's a real winner this time, Dark-" "You know damn well I don't mean Mark's house, idiot, have you been back to that house?" "What are you talking about?" Dark scowled at Wilford for a long moment. The fool couldn't remember, of course he couldn't. But that meant it hadn't been him. Of course it wasn't him, mumbled an annoyed voice in the back of his mind, how would he have gotten there and back so quickly? Besides, I still feel it so it can't be him. This bothered Dark even further. He hadn't heard that voice in years. Shut up. Dark turned on his heel and walked out, much to Wilford's confusion. He walked quickly, until he found an empty hall, and reached for one of the doors, concentrating. When he opened it, he found himself on the second floor landing. He stared at the railing for half a second, before huffing and walking down the stairs, looking around him for the intruder.
He found her in the foyer, looking...looking in the mirror.
The shattered reflection showed a pair of large, round lenses in bent black frames over two wide brown eyes, the arms curled under bobbed black hair. Her face was angular, but not particularly sharp, and she was smiling curiously. A small slip of a thing, really, her red collared shirt and high waisted black slacks clearly a few sizes too big for her, and the fact that she was lugging a massive leather carrier bag with the strap slung across her body didn't help with the delicate image. Definitely not your typical looter. She looked so much like him, the same silly smile and bearing, hands clasped behind her back as she inspected the antique before her, that Dark stumbled back a step as the old voice in his head yelled out in surprise. The noise alerted her to his presence and she whipped around, slapping a hand to the cover flap of the bag as if to grab something from it. "Oh my-! Oh, jesus, I-I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone still...but I mean the-the woman in the library said no one had lived here for...no, but that's no excuse, I'm sorry, I-I'll just go-" "Shut up," Dark said calmly, having collected himself a bit, but still reeling from the shock. She nearly bit her lip to stop herself, looking down at the ground and clasping her hands behind her back again. God, the resemblance...how...? "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" "I-I'm Winnie Ford, sir, a-and I'm researching for a school project, about abandoned buildings-" "Don't lie to me." The stairs below him went grey, and Winnie's face paled, but he was too distracted to notice. Ford? Her name was Ford? "Why are you here?" He repeated, more quietly. The air seemed to buzz between them. "I...I..." She seemed to be looking for an escape, but sighed as she found none, standing up a little straighter, as if to accept her fate. The confidence is impressive. No. Stop that. "I'm looking for information about my parents." She said it with false calm, the illusion of which was shattered as she retreated a few steps into the room as Dark descended the stairs and approached her. She bumped into the wall behind her, still trying to appear casual. "And why would you come here for that?" "Because this was the last place they were seen alive." He froze. Something must have registered in his face, becaues the girl frowned at him. "You...you live here, don't you? Do you...do you know what happened?" "What happened in 2017. The poker party." "Yes," she said, nodding slowly, taking a step closer. He flinched and she reflexively stepped back. "Yes, so you do know about that." He couldn't seem to move. "Your parents were...there, that night?" "So the newspapers say. So the orphanage said." "My god..." The voice coming out of his mouth was one he hadn't used in a very long time. He hadn't known he could use it anymore, hadn't known that the feelings now exploding in his chest, could still exist within this corpse of his. "Did...did you know them?" "I...no." He glanced over at the mirror, then back up at the stairs, then looked back at her, barely able to hold himself together. Being here, seeing her, it was too much, he wasn't going to be able to sustain himself, he should leave, shut down these feelings, eliminate the cause of them...no, that thought made a spike of pain shoot through his chest, and he gripped the table suddenly. Winnie took a few steps toward him, moving as if to put her hand on his arm. "Are you-?" "Don't," he said harshly, and she stopped, still looking concerned. She was stood right on the edge of his aura, couldn't she see it? If she touched it...but why did he care? "Don't...don't touch me. Don't come any closer. Please." The word sounded awkward, unfamiliar on this tongue. "Okay...Alright, I won't." Her tone was one you would use with a wounded animal. She's not afraid of me. Yes, she is. Shut up. "What do you know?" She leaned against the wall again, still trying to look casual. Why was he relieved when she stepped away? "Well...I know my mother's name was Celine Noir. But I don't know who my father was. That's the only name the orphanage had on file, and," she quirked a small smile, "that was hard enough to find. I was some kind of cover up, apparently." His eyes were blown wide, he could see them in the mirror, he could feel it. One hand twitched toward her, and he could see himself touching her face, cradling it, hugging her tightly and not having to lose them all over again. He could see himself taking her back with him away from this house, he could see Wil seeing her, coming back to him, he could see himself and this young girl and his best friend, a family once more, remembering, moving on, forgetting this place, forgetting what...what he'd... What he was. It came rushing back to him, but...but for this brief moment, he was still himself. He was here, and he was looking at her, and she looked so much like her mother, stood like her father, and god he missed them so much. Suddenly, he was talking, before he could stop himself. Stupid, stupid boy, what are you doing? "Your father's name was William Ford. You're a bastard, that's why she gave you up. She hated herself for it, wanted desperately to keep you, but..." But Mark, when he found out he wasn't the father, went berserk, nearly killed Will right then and there, if he hadn't stopped him... He took an unnecessary, deep breath. She was staring at him, the bluntness of his answer apparently surprising her. "William Ford...that's where the last name comes from, I guess. I wondered about that, why it wasn't Fischbach..." "No...no, she'd never let you take his name." Why were his eyes stinging? They shouldn't be able to do that anymore. "What...happened to him? To both of them?" Her voice was very quiet, but god she sounded just like Celine. "Who are you?" "I'm...not important." He took a few steps back. He couldn't be here anymore. "You should go. Get away from here." Get away from me. "But-" "Get. Out." He spoke quietly but the glass divider nearby cracked loudly. It didn't seem to phase the girl. "You haven't told me who you-" "You don't need to know that." She frowned, giving him a determined look. "Yes. I do. I want to know what the hell is going on. I want to know who I am. I want to know who you are." She put her hand on the table, it was too close to his, the grey was touching her fingertips. "At least tell me your name." He stared at the hand, trying desperately to pull his aura back into himself, but it wasn't easy to control when his emotions flared up, and it hadn't happened in so long he had nearly forgotten how. His eyes slowly moved to meet hers properly for the first time, and... He was face to face with a teenage boy with a goofy grin and a gun license and a draft haircut, asking this stupid kid with a sweater vest and too many political science books on the table in front of him in the lunchroom why he was sat on his own. He was looking at his sister as she asked him for help, tears in her eyes, she was begging him not to let Mark find out, one hand on her stomach, where a bulge would soon grow. He was looking at this girl, maybe twenty years old, who'd grown up in an orphanage, never knowing anything but her own name and her mother’s, and never even knowing her father’s name, who had his confidence and her smile and god, she even looked a bit like him, and his mouth was opening without his consent. "Damien." She smiled, a little confused. "Damien." Why did that name sound so natural in her voice? "Well, it's...it's nice to meet you." She offered him her hand again. Why was his hand moving toward hers? He stopped it, pulling it back sharply as he retreated. "You should go." "But..." "Winnie...I...you need to leave this place, it's..." Not safe. He was here. "It's not where you need to be. You need to go. I've told you all I can." His voice dropped in volume, but not the same way it usually does. This time, there was only one layer, and he sounded so much like...himself. "Please go." He wasn't sure what she heard in his voice, but it seemed to convince her. Maybe she was finally noticing his aura, maybe she was too afraid to stay with him any longer. She stepped toward the door. Pulled the handle. Took a step. Looked back over her shoulder. "It really was good to meet you, Damien." She had more questions than answers, he knew. She'd probably be back to this place. Her little frown, and the look in her eyes...he remembered seeing that look on another young girl's face. "You know, there's something terribly familiar about you." He didn't answer. Instead, he turned back to the stairs, and climbed back up them, and it was as if he were stepping back in time. He heard the door slam behind him, and paused. He was alone again. "It was nice to meet you, Winnie." But there was no one to hear the darkness return to his voice. No one to witness as he left this place, empty again.
Alright I’ve just been over to whokilledmarkiplier.com, and here’s the newest evidence.
-There’s another Jims video, in which they’re running around on the balcony, keeping an eye on the Detective, who’s strolling around, looking at his gun, then crying over his old partners. He gets spooked by something and moves out of our line of sight. The Jims are completely oblivious. (Also, question, is everyone in their family named Jim? If so, I love that.) I really don’t think there’s a lot of significance in this one, but I wasn’t watching too closely, so I could be wrong.
-There’s a soundbite with a heavy rumbling in the background, the sound of someone opening and then closing a squeaky door, the sound of a lighter being lit, something catching on fire, and then someone writing with what sounds to me like a quill (I write with them occasionally, and the scratching and flicking noises sound similar) or a pencil. What were they writing? What did they light on fire? And who is it we’re listening to? I think it could be Mark, trying to get a message to someone in the middle of the night, but that’s pure speculation, I have no evidence to back it up.