Winona and Wagstaff.

[Ornge]

I think @NekoSoulx is on to something. No really. After reading what he said and looking into it more I believe that the devs have been trying to make Winona the main character since the inception of dst.

After dst came out of beta, 6 months later klei added a new character that was literally just wilson with flex tape. Not only is it odd to add a new character for no reason, but to make them have zero exclusive stats is also really strange. You would think when designing a new character klei would try to first think of a unique playstyle and then design a character around that, yet winona was added without any meaningful perks. I believe this was the devs trying to set up the storyline of dst and introduce the new protagonist. There is no reason to randomly add such a boring gameplay character unless you were forced to do it with the story in mind. You wouldn't accidentally add a character like this to the game unless you were trying to set up something later on.

Don't believe me? One of winona's original stats was the ability to dodge an extra hit from the dark. After which she would say something like "ha I know all your moves". People initially saw this as klei's attempt to dumb down dst and make it easier but when you look at this stat from a story perspective it makes a lot more sense. This was never intended to be actually used in gameplay. This was a hint at the upcoming storyline of DST. This was supposed to be foreshadowing Winona being the sister of charlie, the main antogonist, hence why she knows all her moves. Winona even having any relations to the main villain is strange by itself but this "protagonist" theory is basically confirmed when you look at how winona was used since 2019.

 

The very first rework is of Winona. you could argue that this is because she was the most lackluster character, however when you look at how the short is presented compared to the others its so obvious she is supposed to be the protagonist. The start of the short shows us missing posters for all the singleplayer cast including some william carter puzzle images. This is a callback to the first game before we get introduced to the cast of the second game. You know who that cast is? Charlie as the villain and Winona as the protagonist. Wagstaff (the villain?), one of the most important characters, is immediately tied to winona as she tries to save him before rebuilding the portal and finding charlie. Charlie then betrays the Winona and traps her in the constant. We are seeing all this important stuff through the eyes of Winona. If you have never seen a don't starve anything before, this is how the developers wanted you to see the story. When charlie appears the video even flashes the image of Winona's family just to remind the audience that "btw these two are sisters and Winona is searching for her missing sister". This sort of story setup is not seen in the majority of the other character shorts. None of them establish a main character and a villain as well as this one does.

The shorts that came after this include =
-Wortox is a small krampus or something. Bad krampus gets defeated by the end of the short.

-Willow is an orphan. the two orphanage workers are never seen again.

-Wormwood fell from the sky and he has no friends. that's the entire short

Most shorts after that are just the backstory of the first game. Warly gets tricked by Maxwell. Wigfrid gets tricked by Maxwell etc. What's important here is that no other rework short establishes the new storyline as well as the winona one. All of them take place in the past, none of them take place in the present. The next story important videos that take place in the present don't come out until return of them. 

Turn of Tides (the first update) establishes the new storyline in the constant as "guys moon fell out of sky we should go investigate". Guess who the cast of the original return of them video is? Wilson, the protagonist of the first game, Wigfrid and Winona. The next time Winona appears is coincidentally also the next story important video. If you think this is a random coincidence I invite you to look at the next lore important video, Forgotten Knowledge. In this video Maxwell and Wilson, the two most important characters from the previous game, explore this new ancient archive from the moon. Oh yeah and Winona is there with them. Not only does Winona appear again but so does charlie. Charlie only appears after she notices Winona. It would be super odd to show the main villain interacting with a random character like Winona unless she was important to the storyline.

The next and final important ROT update video shows us Wilson, Wickerbottom and Winona building an alter revealing that the moon was actually an eye all along. Is it a coincidence that Winona appears in every lore important update video or are the developers making Winona the protagonist of don't starve together hence why they keep showing her. I think its the second one. You don't just do all this setup about "oh charlie is Winona's long lost sister and winona is trying to free her" and then repeatedly show Winona progressing the plot (presumably with this goal in mind) without Winona being the protagonist of DST. If you think this is some crazy conspiracy, take a look at the gameplay trailer for dst in 2021. The first thing we see is Winona entering the constant through a portal, before meeting all the other characters. She is literally the first character you see in this trailer. Why would klei show us this scene again if not to re-establish that "hey, this woman is actually the main character of the story". There is zero reason to show this scene again and yet they did. This one scene really cements this theory for me actually.

Winona appears after this trailer as well.

The teaser we see for the Wx78 short IS NOT of Wagstaff building Wx78 but of Winona either fixing them or helping create them. It's entirely possible Wagstaff won't even appear in this video and the main two characters will be Wx78 and Winona but that's beside the point. It seems to me that Klei has been making Winona the main character of DST since the beginning and that is extremely disappointing. They could have done so much more with this character (like the development of Maxwell and Wilson in singleplayer) but the only thing anyone knows her for is "she the guy who fall through portal and fix things". It really feels like Winona is being put random places now to give more meaning to her character. The whole Wagstaff creating Wx78 thing felt really well thought out and was also hinted at throughout singleplayer and together. Wagstaff creating Wx78 made logical sense long before this rework came out. But the fact that Winona ALSO made him is just completely random and out of the blue. Wx78 does not foreshadow this at all and neither does Winona. Neither of them have any quotes to suggest that they know each other which would directly contradict this teaser. How could Wx78 recognise wagstaff from a grainy transmission yet have no idea who Winona, his second creator, is? Of course I could be just over analysing this one image. Maybe wx78 just loses their memory in the short we'll have to wait and see.

The point being, Winona feels like she's being shoehorned in random places to give some sort of deeper meaning to the character, even when it doesn't make sense. And that is actually tragic. The so called main character of the story has recieved almost no development between the Winona rework in 2019 and the gameplay trailer at the end of 2021. I guess deciding not to speak with charlie in the caves when previously she attempted to pull charlie out of the portal could be considered growth. Idk I feel like I'm reaching with that one. 

 

If Winona really is the protagonist of DST then I hope she does something interesting soon. Because if not then this story is going to feel lackluster if it ever ends. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea that the second game is about one person trying to save their sibling, but unless all the random moon stuff we did gets tied back to this premise in the next major update then I'm not sure the narrative of this game will be cohesive at all.

[Bumber64]

If Winona does something canonically like putting a stop to Charlie or Wagstaff's plans, then she can be protag. She's front and center in shorts, but hasn't done anything significant to move the plot. She's support.

Wilson and Maxwell are responsible for building portals that brought the other survivors. Charlie brought people in too, and is the primary antagonist at the moment. Those three have all been on the nightmare throne.

Wagstaff has done some important stuff with the radio and the moon, though we haven't seen enough of him that I would classify him as a pro/ant/deuteragonist yet. Too much unfinished plot there.

So, if I don't consider Wagstaff a protagonist or w/e after what he's done so far, then I certainly don't consider Winona one either.