Huge questions about canon and lore

[Deerclops Mika]

Should all animations be considered canon?

Apparently not all Don't Starve animations can be canon. For example, in the "Reap What You Sow" trailer, the characters are using a Voxola PR-76, which is weird. This odd little detail can raise a lot of questions. However, the animation itself does not affect the story in any way, so it looks like this animation was just created for the addition of the update. The non-canonicity of the animations is also mentioned in "Don't Starve Together 2021 Gameplay Trailer" in which Winona's entry into the portal is completely different from what was shown in her short film. Accordingly, some of the shorts are indeed non-canon to Don't Starve canon. 

However, how then to treat an animation that is canonical and non-canonical? Initially, it seemed to me that only canonical shorts were added to the playlist on the Klei channel. There are just no animations like "Reap What You Sow", "Don't Starve Together 2021 Gameplay Trailer", "Nintendo Switch Launch Trailer". However, if you access this playlist, you will find that there are no such animations as "The Curse of Moon Quay Update", "The Gorge", "The Forge" and everything related to DLC (except "Hamlet Announcement Trailer"). Which is really strange. The appearance of the portal in the animation of "The Curse of Moon Quay Update" is actually quite significant to canon. As well as the events that take place after the characters enter the portal.

Characters entering the Ancient Gateway.

Let's assume that the animations of The Forge and The Gorge are still canonical. In such cases, more questions arise.
I always thought of The Forge and The Gorge storylines as something that should happen at the end of the story of all the characters. Character quotes on the Ancient Gateway throughout the worlds hint that this is what they will jump over until they get home. Accordingly, after the Constant, The Forge and The Gorge other worlds can go, but in the end they must fall home. And if we perceive subsequent updates as what happened before they got into the portal, then in principle everything works. However, in the latest update, Charlie restores the portal, which creates a story problem. The characters went through a broken portal, but in the story, the portal is restored. At the same time, there is no information that the characters returned home. And if they returned, does this mean that their entire journey was useless?

Ancient Fuelweaver

Ancient Fuelweaver is a very confusing thing. His mind and memory return when the key is inserted into the portal. He is shown to be something related to the ancient people and has fallen under the influence of the shadows. He wants to disable the portal and claims that he does not want the same thing that happened to the ancient people. But what does he do in the Maxwell short? He is not a follower of shadows. Moreover, the goals of Charlie and the Skeleton are diametrically opposed. 

He also has a Mind Control attack that summons multiple Shadow Watchers. That the same creates questions, since in all other mets it is demonstrated as something more reasonable and existing in one copy. It's a shadow that has its own goals, as shown in Maxwell's short film, Maxwell's performance, as well as the short film about Wanda. It's like the moon boss was creating a lot of Wagstaff.

Will we see the real world again?

Since all the characters have been reworked, it looks like we won't be getting any more animations to explain the characters' backstories. However, we still have many things that have not been told to us. I understand that sometimes it can be a good idea to leave some questions open, but there are some that I feel really need to be answered.

• Moving Willow through time and colluding with the shadows. In the short film Willow, at 1:08, you can see a lighter, which in the real world was created in 1924. Which says that the plot of this animation takes place after this year. Despite this, the already adult Willow started a fire in 1911 in the Wickerbottom library. Judging by the appearance of Terrorbeak, this is the same Terrorbeak that appeared in the previous short and was accidentally summoned by Maxwell in his puzzle. Time travel isn't all that surprising to me, as Wanda did it calmly in her short film. I'm more interested in how the shadows colluded. Is this Terrorbeak being controlled by Maxwell or is he just doing what he has to do. This Terrorbeak may just be following Maxwell's order. Did he also use Willow to capture other characters in the Constant?

• Shadow Watcher appears in William Carter's puzzle in the fourth part, where there is information about the collision of the train and the circus cart, and also this is the first moment where mystical phenomena appear and Willam somehow gets the Codex Umbra. Most importantly, he does not appear alone and next to the Shadow Watcher there is another shadow more like a man. But most importantly, this is not the only appearance of their widows. The Shadow Watcher and the mysterious shadow appear in a photo at George T. Witherstone's house in the Wes short. Is the second silhouette in the photo George T. Witherstone, if not, why does such a strange photo just exist in George's room? Is it the same moment as in the puzzle? Is this mysterious entity an important character in the future. I can only assume that Shadow Watcher made a deal with Maxwell before the train collision that saved him after the train collision. Maxwell did not do his part of the deal, for which he was punished and what is told on the stage in the game. But still, who is this second silhouette?

• The short film Winona has information about the exposition universelle. Which hasn't shown itself yet.

Knowing that we received the first information about Voxola in 2013, and its connection with the plot of the game only in 2019, I can say that we can get answers in principle, but it may takes many years.

[Frashaw27]

2 hours ago, Deerclops Mika said:

Character quotes on the Ancient Gateway throughout the worlds hint that this is what they will jump over until they get home

They actually implies the opposite. Maxwell (the one who would happen to know about these things) says "Meddling with it will only cause trouble" about the forge portal and "Nobody ever listens to me" about the gorge portal, meaning that he knows that doing this won't work and yet they still try it. Willow even says "I'm just gonna keep jumping through portals til I figure out a way home" which means that none of them are even sure that this will work, they're just blindly hoping it'll work out. It's also established by the teleportato in adventure mode that teleportation can sometimes not take you anywhere, as is the case in the finale chapter where if you go thorough the telportato, you just end up back at the start. (Video Here) It might not be normally accessible to the player, but ti does show that not even while on the throne, Maxwell, nor anyone else, can use teleportation to escape the hell that is the constant. Debate if you consider that canon, but I think it does establish that They have some kind of way of manipulating how the teleporter works so that they can't escape. And the Forge and Gorge did happen as Wickerbottom comments "The design is reminiscent of the Gateways we've traversed through before" when examining the sealed portal in the archives, so they are still canon. You could argue that Klei fumbled the bag in explaining it, but they certainly did happen, and that they were just sent back to the constant afterwards.

2 hours ago, Deerclops Mika said:

The characters went through a broken portal, but in the story, the portal is restored.

Nothing implies that the portal seen in the forge trailer was working properly. It might've worked, but it might not have been able to focus on anything specific, attune to allow Them to come back, etc. There's nothing that contradicts that the portal couldn't have been used before it was fixed, but that it still needed to be repaired for it to work to Charlie's specifications.

2 hours ago, Deerclops Mika said:

But what does he do in the Maxwell short?

Remember, this is from the perspective of Charlie, not Maxwell. While he may be taking center stage for the plot, this is still a vision that Charlie is showing him, meaning it's meant to manipulate him. This can be seen by this frame:

As shown in the bottom left, it can be implied that this is Charlie speaking to Maxwell. The previous few second were about how he "didn't let her in", so this could be seeing as her trying to instill the idea within him. The bottom left one also implies that whoever charlie is aligned with may have let something slip when communicating, but that's pure speculation. Anyways, as seen as we need to kill the Fuelweaver to progress the shadow plotline, it can be assumed that instead of the Fuelweaver being some kind of future visage, Charlie is trying to paint him as the bad guy to manipulate Maxwell into killing him, shown by her using her old, weak form that Fuelweaver attacks. In context of the short, it's all a dream, one being manipulated by someone, so it's hard to tell what is fact and what is fiction. Not only that, it's implied by the screen transition that this is a separate thing from the memory we've seen, so it lend more credibility to it not being reality or being a twisted version of the truth. Maybe she tried to remake the gateway before, but the Fuelweaver gave her a pummeling into next week, so she has to have someone else kill him. It is up to interpretation, but I don't think the short is implying Maxwell was seeing visions of the Fuelweaver crushing Charlie, atleast in my opinion.

Anyways, the Fuelweaver's motives are pretty simple to grasp. He want to stop the survivors from recreating his mistakes. The reason why he's shadow aligned isn't because their goals are essentially the same, but rather that they've been under such heavy influance of shadow magic that they've inherited the weaknesses. Same thing with Crab King, nothing about him really screams "I support that moon's goal of mutating everyone into ghost people" but he's lunar aligned because he was so inducted with lunar energy that it became apart of him. It could also explain why Crab King is still lunar aligned when the alter is removed, he's still permanently "scarred" from the excessive lunar energy that even removing the source can't fix him.

2 hours ago, Deerclops Mika said:

It's a shadow that has its own goals

While I'm not saying that certain shadow can't have their own personalities and the like, I don't think this terminology applies to the Fuelweaver. Fuelweaver's consciousness seems to be instead trapped within the confines the Shadow Atrium, as he doesn't seem to really conforming to the other "fuels" standards. Being made out of pure Nightmare Fuel or Pure Horror don't seem to need a vessel to control to exist within the world, meanwhile the Fuelweaver seems to be entirely confined to the body that he was given, outright refusing to possess it if the shape isn't correct. Again, the lore seems to imply that Fuelweaver isn't a shadow, rather a person that was so overrun by shadow magic that they were forever fused with it, atleast it's how I interpreted his actions.

[Creatorofswamps]

[Masked Koopa]

22 minutes ago, Frashaw27 said:

Fuelweaver seems to be entirely confined to the body that he was given, outright refusing to possess it if the shape isn't correct.

That's actually pretty interesting, I hadn't realised that the incorrect fossil reconstructions could have lore implications.

[Cassielu]

Very interesting topic! I have a theory about almost every one of them, and I hope I don't seem too overwhelming.

3 hours ago, Deerclops Mika said:

This Terrorbeak may just be following Maxwell's order.

I belive that Terrorbeak is definitely not on Maxwell's control

Maxwell was an absolute egomaniac during the King's time, appearing in his own image during all the kidnappings, and it seemed out of character for him to be upstaged by an ordinary shadow creature.

Despite being known as the King of Nightmares, Maxwell never demonstrated any ability to accurately control or command shadow creatures.

Finally, from a narrative point of view, Maxwell had just kidnapped Wickerbottom with his own shadow in the same short film, and using Terrorbeak instead of Maxwell's shadow would have been completely irrational if you were only trying to say "it was all within Maxwell's plan".

Combined with the mysterious entity Wanda deal with and the second shadow you mentioned, I think it's likely that there is another shadow magic user who is impacting the real world. (which i belive it is metheus the ancient queen)

3 hours ago, Deerclops Mika said:

Let's assume that the animations of The Forge and The Gorge are still canonical. In such cases, more questions arise.

I belive Gateway Arc happened between ANR and ROT, and these events lead to the growth of the Alter.

Since ANR, Klei has been making game updates in a story-advancing order, and the fact that ROT arc lacks a starting point and Gateway arc lacks an ending makes me think that maybe they were supposed to be a continuous story, only to be broken off due to funding issues.

I once made a topic to demonstrate this point, here:

 

3 hours ago, Deerclops Mika said:

But what does he do in the Maxwell short?

As Frashaw27 said, Maxwell knew quite a bit about Gateway travel, and if he and Charlie had ever tried to use the gateway, Fuelweaver would have had every reason to antagonize them.

 

[Maxposting]

personally i think the gateway arc was put on hold, since a few quotes imply the characters would have to traverse (near) infinite realms to get back to constant or the home world

[Hornete]

I believe the survivors went through Forge and Gorge, and just ended up back at the Constant afterwards, Wickerbottom references the Sealed Portal having similar resemblance to Forge/Gorge portals, and the characters speak of their experiences when examining the Forge and Gorge adornments.

[Capybara007]

2 hours ago, Frashaw27 said:

Charlie is trying to paint him as the bad guy to manipulate Maxwell into killing him

This is so godamn smart i never though of this

why do they need to kill fw thought? cant they just put the key?

[Dragonboooorn]

DST lore and canon died to me when Klei added Wanda.

Anything can be explained by "ooh there is many time lines, its a cannon event bro but this aint".

I hate when video games, series, books and what not add time traveler character. It kills seriousness and importance of said title.

[-Variant]

2 hours ago, Dragonboooorn said:

DST lore and canon died to me when Klei added Wanda.

Time travel junk was always a factor in DST's world building.

Also I do want to note that Wanda doesn't actually affect the game's timeline since her time shtick is all isolated to her character and doesn't expand into or impede on anything else in the story. Additionally being a DLC character puts her in that 'canon but doesn't affect the main story' bubble.

[MagicalStorm]

To this day I still wonder what the deal with the Solo DLCs are..mostly the Aporkalypse (especially now that the inks have the same tatters of the Herald) and its relation to Alter, are they even the same moon?

[Szczuku]

4 hours ago, Dragonboooorn said:

DST lore and canon died to me when Klei added Wanda.

Different timelines were always a thing. In singleplayer deaths and restarts are canon. Something along the lines of 'every time a survivor died, their timeline was ended and they started in a new one, in a new world'. Hence why they never remembered crafting recipes. Teleportato was the only way to start a new timeline with memories from the previous one.

In dst we have world resets. Every time everyone is dead and the world resets, a new timeline. Wanda is simply the only one who keeps the memories. So her saying something like 'Wilson whatever you do, don't-... I forgot' doesn't mean that she saw the future. It means that the previous time, the survivors got further than they are now, but something happened and the world was reset (a new timeline). I imagine that she often says something about late game content and the survivors have no idea what she's talking about, cuz right now it's only the first winter.

After all her abilities are all about running the time through her: she doesn't time travel, she changes her location to what it was in the past. The world doesn't change, she doesn't change, her inventory doesn't change. Only her position changes

I guess that the throne is outside time and that Maxwell was able to watch the numerous attempts of singleplayer characters. I'd be cool if writers decided to explore this idea- Maxwell being aware that every world reset his memories are wiped, as he's now subjected to this world's time's rules

[Capybara007]

dying in singleplayer just get you revived by maxwell in another island, it has nothing to do with time travel

[PunkShark]

It does bring a good question if we'll ever go back to the real world. At least in backstory sense since we still have a couple of questions unanswered. 
I was actually thinking making my own thread about it but there would be not much point since this thread is already pretty fresh out of the oven. 
There is a couple of things that i would've liked answered and i'm wondering if we'll ever have another good timing to explain the bits and pieces of the backstory since, well all the refreshes are done. 

• the aftermath of the train crash has this whole segment of William ending up in Nevada, into some place called north fork which is a real ghost town in Nevada. It has never been expanded since the days it was brought up in the william carter puzzles. It felt like something more happened here, as Wolfgang likely followed William after the crash. Which brings up another thing about this whole ordeal. This resembleces Wolfgang a lot more than any shadow i've ever seen. if you imagine the sides as curly moustaches and the little twirls of hair on top of the head. Which makes it look like Wolfgang did follow him out in nevada. 

Spoiler

Basically Wolfgang's deal with William/Maxwell wasn't explained. it's an interesting detail however that Maxwell actually keeps the circus poster in his little creeped up secret room in his apartment afterwards for some reason. Either to keep it as a memory or to remind him. 
 

• 'one more to go' is the note we see at the end of Wickerbottom's cinematic and so far we still don't know what this meant. it's presumably about another bidding Willow has to do for Maxwell but there is nothing in the timeline suggests another fire after 1911 (the year the New York library burns down). Well there is one, and that's the factory burning down in 1919 but that's due to a malfunctioning portal.. is it not? That's what Winona's compendium page says at least. and from what we saw in her cinematic it seems to be pretty accurate. 
  - There's also the possibility 'one more to go' was about Willow herself, as a Maxwell gotcha moment. and him just being a Jerk. 
  - My third and most ludicrous theory would be that 'one more to go' is about the exposition universelle in 1910, which would just add in time travel into the mix. Which.. doesn't fit very well. But it's the only fire related thing that happens and that we so far have no clue why it's mentioned at all. 
  This note has scrambled my brain for many months. 
  if we want to dig even further at the 1910 part. Kevin's old timeline suggests something "crazy" happens during 1906-1910, and this part still hasn't been explained on what it meant. 

 

• speaking of timeline. This timeline, i think it's due for a newer one. or at least an updated one since we've been looking at this Kevin timeline since 2014. it has inaccuracies like how most if not all characters were taken during 1910'ish to 1921. Wigfrid seems to be a lot earlier than 1910's since the newspaper talks about the earthquake in San Franscisco so it still sounds pretty recent which was in 1906. Wolfgang's backstory suggests he might've been taken even earlier than Wigfrid since the crash was in 1904.
  
  
  
  
  Now obviously, there is bound to be mistakes and small hiccups in the story. especially when most of our vital information we have has a 8 year gap between em. So of course not everything can be perfect to a T. And this isn't meant to be critique to the story because i love this game, the story, the characters the cinematics, every single one of them. And i know that Klei tries their hardest to make it as perfect as they can, and not everything can be put in the cinematics for every single knowable answer that we want. Maybe it's just me who is way too focused on the details of things. 

[Deerclops Mika]

38 minutes ago, PunkShark said:

• the aftermath of the train crash has this whole segment of William ending up in Nevada, into some place called north fork which is a real ghost town in Nevada. It has never been expanded since the days it was brought up in the william carter puzzles. It felt like something more happened here, as Wolfgang likely followed William after the crash. Which brings up another thing about this whole ordeal. This resembleces Wolfgang a lot more than any shadow i've ever seen. if you imagine the sides as curly moustaches and the little twirls of hair on top of the head. Which makes it look like Wolfgang did follow him out in nevada. 

 

Hmm. We also have Professor Mourire, who was only mentioned in an image posted on the day the Wendy rework was released. He has a similar appearance and is mysterious enough to be next to Shadow Watcher. It seems to me that Wolfgang would not be brave enough to follow a strange man with a magic book. Moreover, I have no idea why Wolfgang can just stand and look at a pile of papers along with Shadow Watcher. Moreover, George T Witherstone still has this painting, but I have no idea why. Wolfgang had performance paraphernalia from the circus itself, and Professor Mourire may indeed have borrowed some items from Witherstone, as it is unknown if he works for any organization.

48 minutes ago, PunkShark said:

• 'one more to go' is the note we see at the end of Wickerbottom's cinematic and so far we still don't know what this meant. it's presumably about another bidding Willow has to do for Maxwell but there is nothing in the timeline suggests another fire after 1911 (the year the New York library burns down). Well there is one, and that's the factory burning down in 1919 but that's due to a malfunctioning portal.. is it not? That's what Winona's compendium page says at least. and from what we saw in her cinematic it seems to be pretty accurate. 
  - There's also the possibility 'one more to go' was about Willow herself, as a Maxwell gotcha moment. and him just being a Jerk. 
  - My third and most ludicrous theory would be that 'one more to go' is about the exposition universelle in 1910, which would just add in time travel into the mix. Which.. doesn't fit very well. But it's the only fire related thing that happens and that we so far have no clue why it's mentioned at all. 
  This note has scrambled my brain for many months. 
  if we want to dig even further at the 1910 part. Kevin's old timeline suggests something "crazy" happens during 1906-1910, and this part still hasn't been explained on what it meant. 

Maybe "one more to go" is about some character we'll have in the future. If so, then this character should initially appear in the regular version of Don't Starve, and then get into DST. This could mean that this phrase and the exposition universelle are referring to pre-existing Don't Starve characters and its DLC. I can only speculate that Willow could have set off a fire or explosion in the chemistry lab, causing Wilson to escape, thinking he did it (the chemistry lab is mentioned in one of the loading screens), which could be one of Maxwell's plans. That would explain the note, but it sounds like something too far-fetched. So it's either not true or could be considered fanon.