mandopony ambris

Source: pinkbamboos

plumcupcakes

“I can take Chica, and we can go to Cracker Barrel, whenever we want!!”

markiplier markimoo chica chica the dog youtubers youtube chibis doodles cartoon fan art fanart my art my drawings plumcupcakes

markiplier rogue-of-broken-time

kellyplier

CANON ANSWERS ABOUT WKM (complete!)

I took notes watching the stream! Let me know if there’s anything integral that I missed– and you can bet SERIOUS MONEY that I’ll be piecing together more theories in the next few days!

CHAPTER ONE

CONFIRMED: WARFSTACHE PREQUEL.
“Bonjour” was an homage to ADWM.
Each character Mark plays has different quotes about “Life” (i.e. Life is for the living, life is ours to choose, life needs a bit of madness).
THE DRUNK SEQUENCE PREDICTS EVERYTHING!!
The Damien keg stand meant to signify that he’d be stuck in “the upside-down”, and when he tried to wake us up, that told us he was the only one who really wanted to help us!
ASSHOLE MARK NEVER DRINKS.
The Mayor turning gray means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Mark tried to make it obvious we would die, yet we were all still surprised (lmao).
CONFIRMED: In Mark’s own words, Damien is the only one with a “human” reaction to the death.
The Colonel was based on the hunter from Jumanji!
The Chef is scary, but inherently harmless.
Little Buddy’s “kill” mode is insignificant to the story and WAS an homage to FNaF.
CONFIRMED: COLONEL, MARK, AND DAMIEN WERE FRIENDS SINCE CHILDHOOD BUT HAD A FALLING-OUT.
And the dick on the body tape was 100% Ethan’s idea!! LMAO

CHAPTER TWO

CONFIRMED: The Colonel DOES “pop in and out of existence”, but he is NOT the only one to do so– just the most obvious.
Mark tried to make it “painfully apparent” that the Colonel was the one who did it.
Detective and Asshole Mark were friends at the same time he, Damien, and Colonel were friends– but the two did NOT know the Detective.
The long winding hall sequence with Detective was intentional– so we could get oriented with the house…
… because the house “does not follow the laws of physics”.
When following the Colonel out of the bedroom on the second floor, we warp with him to the first floor patio (with the pool).
The crib in the room was not a planned detail in the story.
CONFIRMED: The Colonel and Celine ran off together, and that’s what made Asshole Mark hate him.
CONFIRMED: IN THE WHOLE STORY, THERE IS NO HOST INVOLVEMENT WHATSOEVER.
CONFIRMED: The Colonel and Asshole Mark grew up together in that house, which is why the Colonel knows it so well and refers to it as “his own”. Mark even considered making those two characters be brothers!

CHAPTER THREE

“Hence the guns” is one of Mark’s favorite scenes in the series.
The cane is a sign of Damien’s high-class status as Mayor.
CONFIRMED: Celine and Asshole Mark were married.
Quote from Mark himself: “[Celine] wants what she wants, and she won’t let anyone get in her way”
Another quote: “She also has a temper… like someone else we know”
Mark’s original inclination was to make Damien and Celine be siblings, hence Celine’s adamant refusal of Damien’s help. (I caught onto this notion, but it didn’t really resonate with anyone else I talked to about it.)
Mark said that Celine wanted to use the viewer in the ritual because she saw them as expendable, since she didn’t know them personally.
There are no lightning strikes when George says “murder” because he hasn’t been inside the house for many years.
CONFIRMED: The house is cursed. (Make of that what you will.)
CONFIRMED: In the final door shot of Celine, she is possessed– because she messed with power beyond her control, and Damien was in the room with her at the time.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Colonel looks out for Celine and Damien– but NOT Asshole Mark.
The odd glowy room-walking sequence was supposedly a small view into another world– “the upside-down”, it was dubbed (but there’s debate about whether that region specifically was “the upside-down”)
There is debate as to whether this is how the Colonel “pops in and out of existence”.
We don’t see the Detective’s investigation room until that chapter because the house hid it from us.
In that room, there are post-its reading “DON’T TRUST THE SEER” (which I caught, but it was a very minor thing I had to watch multiple times to see)
The Colonel owed Asshole Mark A LOT of money.
As we fall, William says, “It was an accident, I swear!”
The original idea for the final gun scene was that Damien would walk in and be the one the Colonel shot, NOT us.
CONFIRMED: Asshole Mark had killed himself many times before, but returned to his body from “the upside-down”. That’s why he was stabbed 37 times, poisoned, beaten, strangled, drowned, AND shot– none of those happened on the same day. Asshole Mark tried his hand at the dark arts to achieve this.
CONFIRMED: The black eyes we see when Asshole Mark’s body speaks to us after we die is NOT his own spirit– it’s the spirit of someone else trapped there.
CONFIRMED: Damien had every intention of helping us! He did! Mark confirmed it– he wasn’t manipulating us at all, he just wanted the best for us!
CONFIRMED (!!!): William/the Colonel spent ten hours watching our body overnight and cradled Damien’s cane the whole time. (THE FEELS ARE REAL, GUYS! THEY’RE CANON!!)
CONFIRMED: The reason Wilford Warfstache’s suspenders are pink is because they used to be red, but they faded over many, many years.
Mark didn’t realize how tragic the ending really was until he was editing it. In his own words, it’s “terrifyingly sad”.

And, finally, the one we’ve all been waiting for…

CONFIRMED: DAMIEN PUSHED US OUT OF THE BODY. But he wasn’t manipulating us for that… he did it because he cared for us and didn’t think we deserved the true hell of what resurrection really meant. He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do.

markiplier

All pretty much spot on but I’d like to add clarification on the last point about Damien pushing the viewer out.

The being inhabiting your body at that point is no longer purely Damien nor purely Celine. Imagine two fractured halves of a picture that was stuffed into a broken frame they were never meant for.

Whatever good intentions went into this amalgamation were washed away when only the worst sides of either coin would fit into the slot. The Damien and Celine you know are gone. And when all the light has gone away, all that’s left is Dark.

You weren’t pushed out to be saved.

markiplier madiesunny

madiesunny

HOW DARE YOU DENT THE BARREL?!?!

mysterybensmysteryblog

Ghost: Hellbent progress update

Heya everyone, we are still plugging away on the Hellbent video. While we’ve made some good progress this month, we unfortunately won’t be able to finish it for October. We don’t have a set date in mind at the moment, but we like to think we can get it out this year.

A majority of the raw animation is completed by now. We are about halfway through background art. Afterward will be effects, fixes, and final compositing.

We apologize for not being able to make it in time of our preferred release date, but we want to make sure the video is as polished as we can make it. We will keep everyone posted when we have a release date set in stone.

Beyond that, we do have some extra things in the works.

This here is a schematic for an official Mystery plush. We’ve gotten a prototype made and are continuing to make adjustments. We aren’t quite sure how we’re going to fund the production, but we’ll let everyone know when we have things more solidified.

Again, we apologize we weren’t able to get stuff out to ya’ll faster, but thank you for sticking with us and we hope to have content for everyone before too long.

Mystery Skulls Animated Hellbent Update

mandopony ambris

SO I JUST LEARNED ABOUT A NEW ANIMAL

nicnacks-art-shack

IT’S CALLED AN AARDWOLF AND I LOVE IT

LOOK AT THE BABY

AND THE ADULTS ARE JUST AS CUTE

CUTE NOT YOUR THING AND YOU WANNA BE PUNK AF?

AARDWOLF STILL HAS YOU COVERED

YOU JUST KNOW THIS BAD BOI/GAL LISTENS TO BOWLING FOR SOUP WHEN THEY’RE DONE TEARING DOWN THE ESTABLISHMENT AND TAKING ON THE MAN

I AM IN LOVE

Source: nicnacks-art-shack-moved

markiplier piteousfangirl

piteousfangirl

Whenever you’re feeling sad, just remember that you are Chica’s favorite.

mandopony osakajack

Frodo Didn’t Fail

mapsburgh

The climactic scene of The Lord of the Rings, when Frodo and Sam reach the Cracks of Doom, is one of my favorite scenes in all of literature. So I was very interested a little while back when noted Tolkien scholar Stephen Colbert laid out a neat little analysis of the scene. Frodo seems to fail at his appointed task – rather than throwing the ring into the fire, he claims it for himself, and the ring is only destroyed by the coincidental intervention of Gollum. Colbert then notes that Gandalf should have known that Frodo would fail. Back in the second chapter, Frodo demonstrated to Gandalf his inability to throw the ring into the much cooler fires of his own hearth, after having only possessed the ring for a few hours. Therefore, one may assume, Gandalf must have intended for one of the other members of the Fellowship to intervene and ensure the ring’s destruction.

Colbert’s analysis is clever, in the same way that the theory that Gandalf had intended all along to use the eagles to reach Mordor is clever. In its cleverness, though, I think such analyses risk treating LotR as a D&D campaign and thus losing sight of the real literary themes of the story.

One of Tolkien’s key themes is the Augustinian view of evil. Most genre fiction takes a decidedly Manichean view of evil – a view that holds that evil and good are two great opposing forces in the world, like the light and dark sides of The Force. In a Manichean view, good must triumph by opposing evil, either to eradicate it or to restore a balance to the universe.

Manichean views of evil lead to a very common type of climax to stories: the contest of wills. Our hero confronts the villain, and through superior courage, grit, love, or what-have-you, they overcome the villain and their evil power. It’s Harry going wand-to-wand with Voldemort, Thomas Covenant laughing at Lord Foul, Meg breaking IT’s hold over Charles Wallace, Luke facing down Vader and Vader facing down the Emperor.

Any other writer could have given us a very typical Manichean Cracks of Doom scene. Frodo approaches the fire, and the ring’s temptation overtakes him. He puts the ring on and begins to claim it. But a tiny voice somewhere deep inside him insists that this is wrong. Sam cries out, and thinking about Sam’s love and devotion rekindles a spark in Frodo. His Hobbitish desire for food and good cheer wells up, and he tears the ring off and throws it into the fire. A dramatic ending and a nice echo of the moral of The Hobbit.

But that’s not what happens. Frodo’s goodness – even the innocent goodness of a little old Hobbit – can’t go toe-to-toe with Sauron’s evil. Indeed, Isildur proved it. He defeated Sauron by opposing him with the force of good, and defeated him. But Isildur couldn’t destroy the ring, and within the year it had destroyed him.

Tolkien holds instead to an Augustinian view of evil. Evil, according to St. Augustine, is not a force of its own, but rather is the absence or corruption of good. We see this most explicitly in the idea that Morgoth and Sauron can’t create anything of their own, but only corrupt and warp what has been created by others. We also see it when Gandalf and Galadriel describe what would happen if they took the ring – it would warp their own desire to do good until they became evil.

An Augustinian climax can’t involve a contest of wills between good and evil. In an Augustinian world, evil can only exist by leeching off of good. So evil must be given an opportunity to destroy itself, much like the self-defeating band of thieves described by Plato (on whose philosophy Augustine drew heavily). Good wins by renouncing evil, not by overcoming it.

And that’s exactly what happens at the Cracks of Doom. The ring isn’t destroyed because Frodo’s force of good overcame the ring’s evil. Nor is Gollum’s intervention a coincidence or deus ex machina (like the series of disarmings that happened to make Harry the master of the Elder Wand). Rather, the ring’s evil collapsed in on itself by drawing Gollum. The very corruption of Gollum that enabled the ring to escape the river drove him to wrestle desperately with Frodo for it and ultimately fall to his doom, ring in hand.

An Augustinian view of evil has definite moral implications, which are also shown throughout The Lord of the Rings. A Manichean world is a consequentialist world. To defeat the forces of evil, we need to think strategically. Sometimes we may even need to indulge in a little short-term evil in order to be able to achieve the greater good. But an Augustinian world can’t allow that kind of pragmatic approach. In an Augustinian world, any compromise with evil can only strengthen it, giving it an infusion of good that delays its self-destruction. An Augustinian world demands a deontological ethic, doing the right thing regardless of the outcome.

Again and again in The Lord of the Rings, we see that strategically pursuing the greater good fails, while remaining true to moral principles succeeds even when it looked foolish. On the cautionary side, we have Saruman and Denethor. Though they may point to the palantir as an excuse, they each ultimately made a thoroughly reasonable choice in the face of Sauron’s overwhelming advantage – to ally with him while playing the long game, or to give in to despair. Our heroes, on the other hand, repeatedly make foolish decisions based on hope. Aragorn is a good example – he decides to pursue Merry and Pippin because he owes them protection even though Frodo is the one who holds the fate of the world in his hands. Later, he decides to make a suicide attack on the Morannon rather than hunkering down in Minas Tirith, in the hopes of Frodo’s quest succeeding.

But the most important instance of doing the right thing despite the consequences comes from Frodo himself: he refuses to kill Gollum. Killing Gollum would have been an eminently reasonable idea – he’s a slinker and a stinker, and we know that he never redeemed himself or turned over a new leaf. Indeed, his main accomplishments were to lead Frodo and Sam into a death trap, then to try to kill them with his own hands at the Cracks of Doom. Both Sam and Faramir were right when they said that killing Gollum would have been a good idea!

But Frodo showed Gollum pity and spared his life because it was the right thing to do. And just like Gandalf could see Frodo’s unwillingness to destroy the ring back in Bag End, he also addressed this very issue. He instructed Frodo:

Frodo: It’s a pity Bilbo didn’t kill him when he had the chance.
Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.

And in the end, that pity was what saved the world. Frodo’s pity made it possible for Gollum to be there at the Cracks of Doom to take the ring. Frodo refused to give in to the small, reasonable evil of killing Gollum, and so he left the great evil of the ring exposed to destroy itself. That was Gandalf’s backup plan, not Aragorn’s strength to take the ring and destroy it. And so Frodo didn’t really fail. He succeeded at his quest back when he saved Gollum’s life, when he did the right thing even though it seemed foolish.