So... Where to Begin?

I really wanted to talk about this route, because I rewatched it a few times, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Truth be told, this route is special because this was my first route that I took in Space. And I have to say, out of all of the routes to take first... this is the strangest and most revealing one to take first. And since I was playing with a friend, this all happened mostly by chance. There’s so many ways to go, after all. 

But that’s enough of my ramblings. This is one of the single most interesting routes to take, and I’m calling it: The Whitac[a]re route. Let me explain.

Ms Dori[e]ne Whitac[a]re (and I DO spell her name that way for a reason, I’ll get to that in a bit) is seen in multiple routes. Or, well... can be seen in multiple routes, depending on which way you take. But there is a route to take her to get her in nearly every video (outside of the first few that set up the precedent). This is, in my opnion, one of the strangest route to take, especially as a first route, and the one with the wildest implications to it.

So anyway, where to begin? I guess let’s start with the route. Put out the Fire --> Wake the Crew --> Wake the Crew --> Wake the Crew --> Go Towards the Light --> Pop ‘Er In Reverse --> Fire All Weapons at the Wormhole --> Plan K and then EITHER Step into the Wormhole or Well Now I’m Not Doing It! Either ending involves Whitac[a]re, and they are the only endings to INVOLVE Whitac[a]re (glitching in the credits does not count). You HAVE to choose Plan K to see her before the final credits roll.

 You know, I know youre reading this and all but...you’re probably wonder why I care so deeply about this particular route. Well, many reasons, really. And that is that this is secretly the Darkiplier Route. Not because it ends with Dark, oh no. It’s because it is Dark. The entire route is Dark. taking to us, dealing with us. Trying to get us to WAKE UP. And you know, we kinda do, in the end. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves, isn’t it. All that really matters is...

 Dori[e]ne Whitac[a]re is not all that she appears to be. So until May 2nd, every detail about her should be taken into account, and she should be viewed with high amounts of suspicion.

THE ROUTE

This route starts with us putting out the fire. We have to put out the fire, because it’s the fastest route for us to die. Yes, we can achieve a similar route by picking “Fix Life Support” but it’s a bit more roundabout. We die faster this way. And that’s when things immediately get interesting.

We immediately wake up out of cryo and get to work. We save Mark; because hindsight is 20/20, yeah? We then grab the fire extinguisher; he rushes to save life support. And then, just as your job is done, you hear a single word:

This line specifically is just... delivered so well. It’s clearly Mark, but also, distinctly different. It’s a question, but there is a tentative feeling behind it. It’s half-murmured, it’s soft, it’s nervous, edging on pleading. It’s enough to not only get our attention, but I remember feeling dread upon hearing it the first time. Is something wrong? Did we forget something? We turn and--

We step into the Void. Or at least, what appears to be the Void; the entire area is incredibly reminiscent of what the mansion looked like. Which is a departure from both Date and Heist; we actually haven’t seen anything close to the Mansion’s power since WKM came out. To see it here is jarring and unsettling, both from people who know what it might be, and those who don’t. To make matters worse, we see that, much like Damien once was, the Captain is asleep. But wait, aren’t what’s going on? Are we actually asleep? And if we are, how are we awake?

Are we the Captain? Are we--

Oxygen comes back, and Mark pulls us back into the story. We never see that glimpse of “ourselves” ever again, but it really sets the mood going forward. And forward we must go; there is a ship to save after all. So, we start waking up team members that will best help us out.

However, instead of who we need, we are introduced to... Dori[e]ne.

The Grandmother of the Hour Appears

So, let’s talk about Dori[e]ne for a moment. She appears when we summon another crewmember along this entire route (it should be noted, if we awaken any colonists and Mark is not present, Dori[e]ne here does not appear). The other crewmate will eventually glitch out and she will appear instead.

Now, the matter of her name... and why I spell it the way I do. This is because, as we find out very soon, Dori[e]ne’s name is frequently misspelled.

On any data pad we use, her name is always spelled “Dorene L. Whitacare”. But whenever Mark addresses her specifically, it is spelled slightly different:

Whitacre. This is how the subtitles spell out her name. Now, please bear in mind, I understand that subtitles are not perfect. But what is perfect is the consistency in how the subtitles spell her name, versus how her name is actually spelled. If this was a one-time misspelling, I would hand-wave the writer for the mistake. But it happens every time. And that makes it significant.

Her first name is also misspelled on a post-it note in Mark’s locker later in the route. This begs the question: What is the right spelling? And why is her name deliberately being changed?

And that’s not the only thing of note about Whitac[a]re.

Dori[e]ne is not married. This is not widower speak either; widowers do not suddenly become ‘no longer married’. You say this when you’ve gotten a divorce. This is important because it is the first link Dori[e]ne has to Celine that we see in the route. It’s the first, but not the only. It should be noted that her shawl is also reminiscent of Celine’s design from WKM.

Author’s Notes: While I am not yet calling Dori[e]ne either Celine or Damien, I think the resemblance here is not without purpose. But the last name choice is interesting... is it something close to the twins’ canon last name? It’s impossible to tell, especially because we do not know what the proper spelling actually is, but it is fun to speculate, and I personally will ruminate on it for a while (because its’s fun to, of course).

Regardless of how we meet and greet our elder, she listens to us, the captain, and diligently faces her demise with a plate of cookies. Luckily, her end is swift, and so is ours.

When we revive, however, we are met with the single glitchiest revive in the entire run. We even get a little chromatic aberration, as a treat. How interesting that is.

Everything around us is breaking and glitching. This hasn’t happened before, and will literally never happen in any other time when we are brought back. And from this point on, it only gets worse. Mark glitches through his jobs, and neither of you know how or why. And since this is the run we are taking from start to finish, we’ve never seen the oxygen wheels, we have no idea where the medal came from, and we don’t actually know what’s wrong with cryo because we never got that far yet. And here is where we see something interesting...

The subtitles glitch out for the first and only time in the entire run.

THIS IS NOT WHAT MARK SAYS. Mark’s ACTUAL DIALOGUE IS AS FOLLOWS:

“D-do you remember what the problem was...? Uh, I think there was something about...cryo not working...? For some reason?

And yet, the subtitles say none of that. Instead, it’s almost as if the subtitles are answering Mark for him, to tell him ‘the coolant is the problem? hello?’ But how could we know that? How could me or MARK know that? We haven’t done this before and the world is so glitchy, the SUBTITLES GAVE OUT.

This is huge, because again, this is the first and only time this happens in the whole of Part 1. And this is after Whitac[a]re dies once. And we still have more crew to revive.

And right on time, Whitac[a]re joins the party once again, and she bravely heads into cryo without a fear. She then proceeds to blow the whole ship up... on purpose.

And everything resets, once again.

Hmmm look closely at the gloves and the logo. Is that a little bit of chromatic aberration i see there? It’s not the first time we’ve seen it pop up on this run, and it won’t be the last. But it should be noted, it happens the most whenever the Captain is revived to try again. What’s incredibly different this time, though, is Dori[e]ne herself says to us

“It’s Time to wake up, Captain.”

Then... the Glitches start occurring. 

I can’t go into each important one in-depth, but just know that this is where we see glimpses of the other endings, and also multiple sneaks into Part 2. The future and the past....nothing makes sense anymore, but that’s the beauty of it, right?

I will note, this though:

Red for Romance... Red for Celine, who Mark fell in love with and who broke his heart. And Blue for Horror, for Damien, for the villain of his story because who is a hero without a villain?

On this route, Burt notably shows up before he is even called. Burt, who turns into Whitac[a]re. It’s almost like someone is expecting us? She sure is, this time; she is no longer holding cookies, and instead, she begins to speak of dreams, and viciously reminds Mark of her marital status (and I mean, to be fair, she did just tell us not too long ago). 

We also get to see, instead of cookies, a new ornament appear on her body, because, for the first time, we can fully see her hands. And Ms Whitac[a]re is wearing a ring! It’s quite the gaudy thing too, very large. It draws the eye.

Where else have we seen someone wear a large ring on their hand, from a design perspective? Ah yes.

No, it’s not the same ring that Dark wears and no, not the same finger., but design choices in Mark’s works are not done in a vacuum. Sure, some things are just done to look nice, but this is deliberate, in the same way a mustache remains pink.

Aside from the ring, and the mannerisms, Dori[e]ne tells us all about dreams and second chances. And then we blow up... and we enter the ship entirely alone.

I wasn’t going to talk about this too much, because there’s not much to say. It’s the ‘ending’ where the Captain is alone on the ship, with no idea what happened to the crew, and slowly drifting off into the void of space... alone. But I think the Whitac[a]re entity is showing us something. That this is how it is. This is how it will be. This is our fate, and it is the fate that awaits us. It’s not the same as the void, where we saw candles, and ourselves in a cryopod, but it is incredibly lonely, and that is a horrifying thought.

In the end, we go towards the light... like every route eventually does. We then get our second chance, and we choose to call a meeting and go in reverse. And boy, we go in REVERSE. Back in time, even. To film noir... and the last time we saw noir in a Mark skit was... Wilford ‘Motherloving’ Warfstache.

Man I love this, what a silly twist.

VERSION 2.0 WHAT IS THE POINT? CAPTAIN?

The Noir world is hilarious, and just makes me miss Abe. There, I said it; Mark can act as an intrepid engineer all he wants, but it just makes me yearn to see Abe again, especially now that it’s confirmed he will be in part 2. But there are some good bits to be seen here, very important ones on this Whitac[a]re route of ours.

AND HERE IT IS...

Wait, hang on, No, not that, but a reference from Actor to or about Celine is always funny.

Haha! BINGO.

The Sticky note reads: “Dorine? Celci? Connection?” And that’s pretty important. Firstly, here is the next misspelling of Whitac[a]re’s name. When it comes to Celci, we know that Celci is clearly an analog for Celine, with the fact that Pam plays the character, plus the name, plus the association with the cold (Her Place for Broken Things is a giant forest in the middle of winter). So what does that make Dori[e]ne? Is she a Damien analog? Her cryptic dialog about dreams and choices certainly makes it seem that way. But why? And what implications does that cause?

Anyway, we choose to fire on the wormhole. We die.

Huh. Wow. Another Chromatic Aberration makes a reappearance, and in full force (it was far more subtle last time). We now go on a wild, Narrator-driven ride.

Author’s Note: Can I just say how wild and disorienting this is without ever having seen Wug before? Being told that Wug is our good friend, not realizing the narrator was getting the fast food part wrong, going to the Universal Stability Agency, getting the wrist device, without any idea of what was going on? Yeah, like I said, this was a RIDE from start to finish for the first run.

This is a pretty great moment. Mostly the humor, but also two different Marks looking at the viewer, and having something like a ‘deep, dark secret’ mentioned. As someone with lore knowledge of Mark’s past escapades, this actually brought me a mild sense of... dread. What could it be referring to? The thing in our hand (story-related, so probably)? The fact that we’re the DA (surely he knows)? Or, perhaps because we are becoming more lucid of this dream we are stuck in, realizing this is some sort of Purgatory, and he doesn’t know we know yet (I mean....)? Who knows? Maybe Part 2 will divulge more. I just love that this is in this route, with everything else before it that we’ve experienced so far.

TIME FOR PLAN K

Plan K is where crap really starts hitting the fan. We finally have had enough. And then, we do the amazing, unthinkable. Because us, the viewer, for the first time, pull a Warfstache on the Story.

Cool, we can summon shit now! Because up until now, nobody but Warfstache (and perhaps Mark, and to an extent, Celine) has been able to expressly change their surroundings to suit their needs. We refuse the script and go improv. We create a second choice. And Life is ours to choose, as a good friend once told us, after all.

Chromatic Aberration number 4. Are we Sensing a pattern yet with this route? And it gets worse and worse each time. Also worth noting that this scene, the computer, the screen we are standing in front of, does not turn on. We poke it for good measure. And then...

WE GOT OUR LEADING LADY BACK. And where does she take us? We open the cryo door and...

 THE VOID!! Ah yes, THE VOID. Our good friend... the place between places, the Upside-Down. We usually meet a special friend here...

...But not today.

...Or do we?

... the parallel is certainly there. Heck, I didn’t even notice until now how perfectly they line up. How interesting. Whitac[a]re talks to us... about choice.. the choices we are making, the universes we’re spawning.

Are we actually talking to a disguised Darkiplier here?

Interesting topic, considering Damien and his past. Damien is the one who tells us Life is ours to Choose. He’s the one who gets choice robbed from him, as he becomes a pawn in Mark, and his sister’s, plans and exploitation. He chooses to become a villain... if only to not allow Actor the satisfaction of him getting to force it on him. He even gives us, choices, despite feeling spite around the idea of choice, by this point.

I find this a fine parallel to point out. Because what does Whitac[a]re give us?

One Choice? One whole choice?! Dang, for someone so interested in what our choices are, and what they mean, you are not giving us a lot of OPTIONS, Miss DORI[E]NE WHITAC[A]RE, IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME.

Despite this, we once again, can choose a path that we were not told we can take. Just like the spawning self-control button, we can choose one of two options: To Follow Whitac[a]re’s advice and Step into the Wormhole, or Refuse.

THE ENDINGS

 If you choose to Step into the Wormhole, you will end up getting the usual ending,with the usual credits. But before that, Whitac[a]re thanks us for our wise decision. She also, curiously, says...

We will see her up ahead. She does not show up in the rest of the credits, so that has to mean she is confirming she will be there in Part 2. But will she be there as Whitac[a]re? Or someone else? Something else?

We won’t find out her secrets until May 2nd. The usual ending scene plays, and Old Mark fights us, calling us the villain, and guessing that we are here to end his work. Not only that but Lady finally surmises that the problems stem not from the Captain, but from Mark directly. This is all revealed before we finally choose to settle the paradoxes, and the universe reboots.

But what if we don’t choose the usual ending?

What if we say... “Well, now I’m NOT Doing it!”?

Well, first.... we flip off Whitac[a]re. Not very mature of us, but its a good visual representation without words that we are refusing her offer and wisdom.

We try and go our own path, but look at that; Whitac[a]re has somehow taken the wristband we need to use the warp crystal.

 It should be noted, that she tells us in the other route “You have everything you need in the palm of your hand”. And our semblance of choice is intact.

But now, it has been taken from us. Because We never had a choice to begin with.

 Whitac[a]re then goes on to speak as if she knew us personally. Maybe she just came to know us over the.... how many times have we seen each other up to this point? Perhaps we’d met a hundred times already and we simply don’t remember?

And then, the deja vu sets in.

Man... where have we heard that before? Aren’t these the same exact lines from...

The anger isn’t there. But the disappointment is felt, for sure. Just how long has it been, Dark?

And after that. Whitac[a]re just... walks off. Disappears into the void. We don’t see her again, we don’t see the DEVICE again. She just... walks off with it in hand. And we are left with the consequences of our choices.

But, we’ll see her again. Certainly. We made a choice after all. We had to make a choice. Because as an old friend once told us... Life is Ours to Choose.

And Who knows... Maybe we’ll finally see a more familiar face in Part 2.

Author’s Final Note: I mentioned Dori[e]ne shows up someplace else. But...where? She’s actually only in one other, out-of-the-way place. Which makes the above path the most “Complete” path to see her. So, if you go out of you way, just a little bit, you’ll see her, one last time... Send Mark in. Then Send Mark in Again. Then Send Mark in... Again. And you’ll get your wish.

Anything else? No? Well, closing words then, I suppose.

We are going to see Dark in Part 2.

 And in fact, we have been seeing him this whole time. From the glitching, the warping, the guidance, the aberrations... he’s been here this whole time. You think he’s not? We even get sent on a wild goose chase on a different path in our futility to find him! But he was right in front of us, all along. You just had to know... where to look.

Buckle up everyone. Part 2 is where things will start to get.... interesting.

In both cases, she just shows up out of nowhere whithout an explanation. In the first half not even Mark seems to question why (or even realize that) the crewmates just glitch and suddenly change into an old woman with a plate of cookies.

She just seems misplaced at first, but as we try to push on she starts talking to us directly, about dreams that don’t go away when you wake up, things seeming to repeat, trying very hard to make us question what we perceive as reality in this narrative.

Also, things start glitching up badly after she shows up. And let’s not forget how in the second half she just shows up from the void after we selfdestruct, holds a monologue about the choices we make, and then just - opens a portal just for us to take a shortcut to the end.

If we go in, she tells us we’ll see her up ahead. If we refuse, she says that we always were stubborn like she has known us for a long time, but ultimately respects our choice, leaving us with her last words being “Do you feel like you’ve been here before? Or is this just history repeating itself over and over and over again?”

The point that I’m trying to make is. I think we’ve been looking too hard to find Darkiplier in a new sleek suit, and never considered that he - she - they - might turn up in a knit burnoose.