In regards to the new short

[LinknAllie]

So it's confirmed now that Wagstaff is projecting himself into the Constant.  The only thing that still confuses me about it comes from the Winona short where it's still confirmed that she was trying to save Wagstaff from being pulled into the portal, to my knowledge this hasn't been written out of the lore yet.  Is it gonna be written off as an illusion from Charlie?  In that case, who built the portal in the first place since Winona still manages to make it operational?  (https://jeffagala.tumblr.com/post/615031573046296576/winona-tries-to-save-wagstaff-from-being-sucked)

Also, would Maxwell's door allow him to both project in through the Voxolla radio (which I thought is what he was doing before) while also projecting through with the cursed projector from the new short?  Allowing for multiple versions of himself at once?

Spoiler

Side comment since the theory is getting more popular again if Wagstaff is confirmed to be an older version of Wilson I will do not nice things to Wilson because I doubt he will end up as smart as Wagstaff no matter what happens in the story.  (If you couldn't tell, I don't like Wilson)

Forgive me if some of these questions have already been raised or answered by other people.  I haven't been on the forums in about a year and haven't been playing DST recently, I only started getting back into it recently.  I'm re-watching all the shorts to remember all the lore and see what I missed on.

[fabin]

well, he's definetly managed to either manifest or straight up bring out a spider from out of the constant, so him getting pulled in and then getting out is still not outta the question

my own little theory (pretty straight forward, which might not be good) is that he managed to somehow create audio/visual media players (the voxola radio and gramophone and MAYBE the maxwell door) that conviced the public enough to fund a factory, which he built and then remorselessly burnt down not too long after in a scandal, to then live in a recluse shack in the mountain tops, now that he's presumed dead or missing, tinkering away at his projector(s) and other contraptions until he gets a breakthrough. he is confirmed to be a mega klepto now, so i think it fits nicely

also, seems to me he doesn't go entirely in the constant? looks more like he's literally projecting himself, as in, standing in front of the projector/radio to cast a shadow into the constant that mimics him. but then again, in the host of horrors short we hear him sort of "plop" into the real world near the end of the short, so i dunno

[DrMcGillacactus]

People have been questioning that bit of lore for a while now, but as far as I'm aware there hasn't ever been any explanation. 

I've seen a lot of people pass it off as being retconned but I don't think it ever officially was? I think it's completely fair to take it with a grain of salt since the Winona short was half a decade ago, but I also believe we shouldn't pass it off completely. 
Assuming that was 100% Wagstaff, the recent animations imply that he, at some point in time, was able to get out of the constant, since he's still projecting himself in-game and most of the animations he's part of, but he actually isn't a grainy hologram in the Scrappy Scavengers animation. That might've been an oversight, but I doubt it. 

So I'd just like to see a timeline, honestly. We have a good number of events but it's a tad hard to tell what their order is chronologically. 

[sudoku]

he could be in the constant but somewhere seperate from the other survivors, choosing to instead communicate with them from afar using a projection.

 

[LinknAllie]

2 hours ago, fabin said:

well, he's definetly managed to either manifest or straight up bring out a spider from out of the constant, so him getting pulled in and then getting out is still not outta the question

my own little theory (pretty straight forward, which might not be good) is that he managed to somehow create audio/visual media players (the voxola radio and gramophone and MAYBE the maxwell door) that conviced the public enough to fund a factory, which he built and then remorselessly burnt down not too long after in a scandal, to then live in a recluse shack in the mountain tops, now that he's presumed dead or missing, tinkering away at his projector(s) and other contraptions until he gets a breakthrough. he is confirmed to be a mega klepto now, so i think it fits nicely

also, seems to me he doesn't go entirely in the constant? looks more like he's literally projecting himself, as in, standing in front of the projector/radio to cast a shadow into the constant that mimics him. but then again, in the host of horrors short we hear him sort of "plop" into the real world near the end of the short, so i dunno

 

It seems to be connected to the teleporters he's able to build in-game, or at least that's what I think his method of bringing the spider out of the Constant might be.

 

That would make a lot of sense, considering he was a snake oil salesman previously.

It does kind of sound like he got teleported back mid-air and landed on the floor

Just now, sudoku said:

he could be in the constant but somewhere seperate from the other survivors, choosing to instead communicate with them from afar using a projection.

 

He's shown to be outside in some of the recent shorts unless Wilson's house got pulled into the Constant too.  I REALLY hope he is actually in the Constant projecting from afar though, since that gives him a higher chance of being playable

[sudoku]

5 minutes ago, LinknAllie said:

shown to be outside in some of the recent shorts unless Wilson's house got pulled into the Constant too.  I REALLY hope he is actually in the Constant projecting from afar though, since that gives him a higher chance of being playable

I completely forgot about that short... Yeah the only explanation if there is no retcon is that he was able to return somehow to the real world after being sucked into his Voxola portal.

I guess that kind of builds up his villain status since he isnt sharing with the survivors how to escape and is instead using them for his own purposes. 

[AliceShiki]

Maybe the Winona thing had Maxwell be pulled into the DS version of Constant?

But then he found a way out and went back to the normal world... And only then he found the shadow-infused projector, which allows him to project himself into the DST version of Constant?

That's the best theory I can come up with to explain it at least.

[Popian]

4 hours ago, LinknAllie said:

she was trying to save Wagstaff from being pulled into the portal, to my knowledge this hasn't been written out of the lore yet.

Projector happens in 1906 and the Next of Kin in 1919. Projector shows how he was motivated to discover the Constant as well as where he got the cane and pocket watch he has in 1910 (Survival Guide).

Things:

• Winona pulls a left long yellow glove, DS Wagstaff doesn't wear gloves, and DST Wagstaff wears short orange gloves
• The shadowy figure doesn't have Wagstaff's iconic hair (would be poor writing, but character/sibling that hasn't been introduced?)
• Wagstaff looks younger in 1910 (able to afford grooming himself for whoever is recording him?)
• When does his vision deteriorate (wears goggles in Disconnected) and hair fully grey (light in Along Came A Spider)?
• Why does he buy the same model of car and appear less klepto when he is more well off in Along Came A Spider?

[fabin]

29 minutes ago, Popian said:

The shadowy figure doesn't have Wagstaff's iconic hair (would be poor writing, but character/sibling that hasn't been introduced?)

he seems to have somewhat shorter hair when he was younger. i don't think it's supposed to mean anything, really. he kinda just grew out his hair i guess

29 minutes ago, Popian said:

Wagstaff looks younger in 1910 (able to afford grooming himself for whoever is recording him?)

considering specifically where the reel was filmed, i guess this is where wagstaff started presenting himself as a "great inventor", hence why he looks generally well groomed and presentable. also, since he's a klepto down on his luck, i'd wager he was only there to "borrow" some ideas that he would come across, for some future thingamajig

29 minutes ago, Popian said:

Why does he buy the same model of car and appear less klepto when he is more well off in Along Came A Spider?

wouldn't you want to keep up a good public image if you were a "great, up-and-coming inventor"? wagstaff clearly has a lot of stuff to hide, wouldn't suprise me if he put up a facade to people he'd want to exploit for his own benefit

[LinknAllie]

6 hours ago, Popian said:

Projector happens in 1906 and the Next of Kin in 1919. Projector shows how he was motivated to discover the Constant as well as where he got the cane and pocket watch he has in 1910 (Survival Guide).

Things:

• Winona pulls a left long yellow glove, DS Wagstaff doesn't wear gloves, and DST Wagstaff wears short orange gloves
• The shadowy figure doesn't have Wagstaff's iconic hair (would be poor writing, but character/sibling that hasn't been introduced?)
• Wagstaff looks younger in 1910 (able to afford grooming himself for whoever is recording him?)
• When does his vision deteriorate (wears goggles in Disconnected) and hair fully grey (light in Along Came A Spider)?
• Why does he buy the same model of car and appear less klepto when he is more well off in Along Came A Spider?

I feel like his hair not being outlined was supposed to make it ambiguous until the Tumblr post came along, it's not unlike KLEI to have overlooked stuff like this.  While the sibling idea is cool, although I feel like it would've been mentioned that he/she was at the factory or running it instead of him or along side him, since Wagstaff was stated to have gone missing *in* the fire at the factory

If it weren't confirmed to have taken place in 1910 I would've assumed that was around the time he was still a snake oil salesman but like Fabin said, it's probably when he put on the "revolutionary inventor" act and started advertising

If I had to guess it would probably be right after Along Came a Spider, since we can see he's not wearing his glasses when he's driving off.  At least when it comes to complete deterioration, he might've just had them since he was a kid.

It's not the same car, The most prominent differences you can see is the headlights and overall shape of the car, with the klepto car being more boxy while the Along Came a Spider car has more curves on it, predominantly at the hood of the car.  Plus 90% of cars from the early 1900's looked like that anyway.

[gamehun20]

Wagstaff definitely could have went back to the real world, remember he banished WX-78 to the constant shown in their short maybe that portal was a 2 way one

(Read this in a different thread i completely forgot this detail)

[Cassielu]

7 hours ago, Popian said:

The shadowy figure doesn't have Wagstaff's iconic hair (would be poor writing, but character/sibling that hasn't been introduced?)

Its entire silhouette is constantly changing, so it's more likely just a visual effect being sucked into the portal than a hairstyle.

[Garett Skott]

So far it seems like Wagstaff found 3 ways to get into the Constant:

• The projector: with this one he could easily explore the Constant and get back whenever he wanted and has a heavy distortion effect on him.
• His portal: this one can actually bring someone to the Constant physically (as seen with WX & Winona). Robert got sucked into it during the accident and that leads us to DS.
• Maxwell's Door: it was rigged to work with the radio and allow Wagstaff to project himself while also staying in the normal world.

I assume the projector didn't allow him to interact very much with the environment, not effectively at least, which is why he wanted to make a better portal, which ended up dragging him into the Constant.
In DS (as a playable character) he gets glitchy at low hp, but why? Winona and WX also used that portal and that doesn't happen to them! Since Wagstaff's Door clearly works by physically transporting and not projecting, could it be that Robert surviving in DS happens before the Voxola incident? What if he's still using the projector at the time and gets dragged physically later on in the plot? That could explain the glitching and why he's fearless: the more he gets injured, the further away he steps from the light. This still leaves us with questions when he does end up in the Constant physically, how did he get back?
Somehow, Robert returns to the normal world and finds himself legally dead and without a factory anymore, so he goes back to his house, which Wilson has won at an auction in the meantime. There, he finds Maxwell's Door and manages to use that to project himself. At the end of "Interference" we can see that one Wagstaff is working with Wilson while another out-of-frame Wagstaff tunes the radio, which... doesn't actually give us much, it seems more like a technical glimpse into the projecting process.
There is still one detail that strikes me as weird: when the grainy transmission in a moonstorm and it passes, Wagstaff says: "Balderdash, my connection is fading!". Is his connection relying on lunar magic? How?

[sudoku]

3 hours ago, Garett Skott said:

In DS (as a playable character) he gets glitchy at low hp, but why? Winona and WX also used that portal and that doesn't happen to them! Since Wagstaff's Door clearly works by physically transporting and not projecting, could it be that Robert surviving in DS happens before the Voxola incident? What if he's still using the projector at the time and gets dragged physically later on in the plot?

DS happens first in the timeline, at this point in time when Wagstaff is a playable character he is clearly just using the projector to inspect the environment the Voxola portal hasnt sucked him in yet - that happens later during DST. 

But even then theres a bit of a congruity error, as Wagstaff clearly has visited the constant when he was younger, so him acting brand new to the environment in DS doesnt quite make sense since lore wise that wouldnt have been his first constant exploration. 

[Cassielu]

5 hours ago, Garett Skott said:

Maxwell's Door: it was rigged to work with the radio and allow Wagstaff to project himself while also staying in the normal world.

I'm a little skeptical about that right now.

If this is true, from a narrative logic view, there is totally unnecessary for Klei to deliberately avoid to show Wagstaff turning off the projection in Host of Hrorror short and create a sense of mystery, because it was already revealed to player community in Wilson character short.

On the other hand, we also have absolutely no clue as to the difference between that projector and the projection now used by Wagstaff. They look like they could be exactly the same things.

[LinknAllie]

4 hours ago, sudoku said:

DS happens first in the timeline, at this point in time when Wagstaff is a playable character he is clearly just using the projector to inspect the environment the Voxola portal hasnt sucked him in yet - that happens later during DST. 

Only issue with that is that Charlie is still the night creature and hasn't taken over the throne yet, meaning it would've had to be during DS