The Homewarming audio reveals and exposes a lot about the neighbors characters. [ANALYSIS]
1.) First things first; The neighbors can interact with the narrator. But considering puppet shows usually involve the puppets interacting with the narrator, (like Sesame Street for example) I don't know if that's a big deal or not.
2.) BARNABY: (Barnaby pipes up at the Narrator.) Hey, keep it down up there! Some of us are tryin’ to do some serious cerebratin’ down here!
^As above, so below reference again.
3.) JULIE: (Whispered.) Frank’s right… Homewarming is about making sure your house is nice, cozy, and toasty. Right before I go to sleep for a very long time, I make a big nest from my bed just like I used to do back home when I was small- A lot of pillows and blankets and leaves and sticks…
^Her background when she used to live in a cave.
4.) HOWDY: Advice?! …You know I don’t got any’a that for sale, Barn! Not unless it’s to buy, buy, buy-!
^Hmmm, consumerism is what he's advocating.
5.) HOWDY: Frank?! (Howdy Scoffs loudly)
^So far, Frank is wary of Wally, Sally is blatantly disrespectful to Eddie, and now we see Howdy possibly doesn't think of Frank as a close neighbor. What's with all the animosity?
6.) HOWDY: That’s right! Trinkets even! It’s about what you give to other folks! The bigger, the shinier, and the more expensive the better! It’s about the razzle and dazzle! Go on, Barn, tell ‘em!
^We see here that Howdy is materialistic- which is odd considering he only asks for a joke in exhange for his services but then we get...this side of him.
7.) Frank said Homewarming is just a home that's warm, Howdy said it was gifts for Home. Sally says Homewarming is about the ambience, decor, and experience. Poppy says it's for dishes.
^Frank is logical- too literal, Howdy is materialistic, Sally enjoys the spotlight, and Poppy is a foodie.
8.) Wally even tossed the slice of poppy-seed ham into the flames and listened for a sound of approval
^Although it's revealed Home preferred the company of Wally and Barnaby instead of all the gifts in the end, this one specific action Wally did seemed oddly...sacrifical. Like offering food to a higher being.
I still don't think Home is an antagonist, personally. My money is still on Playfellow Workshop.
9.) WALLY: (He sounds frustrated and confused.) …How can that be.
^Apparently, Barnaby couldn't hear it but Wally's voice gets distorted when overwhelmed, just like it did when he tried speaking to YOU or...the Question-Answerer.
10.) AND! Eddie was never mentioned, not once, in this audio- which makes me think this is in correlation to the Wishbook audio recording where "Santa Claus" fails to talk about Eddie, and only Eddie.
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Let's be careful before labeling Wally or Home as "The Villain" of Welcome Home
Or anyone for that matter imo
Listen, I can completely understand why people would go to that conclusion. "So Below" and the eerie vibe that Wally gives off in his obsession don't exactly give either a flattering light (I know there are also the art pieces on Clown's personal blog, but I'm not counting anything that hasn't been officially released yet)
But whenever someone labels a character who is acting weird as "the villain," it puts a bad taste in my mouth. At the end of the day, characters in fiction are real people with motivations, so labeling one as "evil" or "the villain" can sometimes erase that complexity. And after the most recent update, we know that Wally has A Lot of very, very complicated feelings about the situation.
Before I get into that though, I wanna point out something that Clown himself has said describes the brand of horror that "Welcome Home" gives off to themselves personally. Click here for the link to the post.
Before I get into that though, I wanna point out something that Clown himself has said describes the brand of horror that "Welcome Home" gives off to themselves personally. Click here for the link to the post.
"My home doesn't feel like home anymore."
That line sticks to me pretty hard. There's a pervasive feeling of unfamiliarity, unreality, that exists in the core of the story itself.
I think we see, firsthand, Wally experiencing this in the latest updates. In all of the hidden Bug/Answer secret videos, we see a familiar pattern. We get some sort of scene of two other characters talking, a scene in whatever universe they call home, until at the very end one of the characters addresses Wally (who was apparently there the whole time) and the video glitches out.
A key part that not a lot of people seem to realize though is that these videos are from Wally's perspective. See the above picture with Wally's hands. In every scene, Wally is present and was supposedly taking part in an activity (in the above one, helping Poppy with knitting), before the video started playing.
Whenever I saw these videos I had that same feeling that something felt. Different. The interactions felt like scenes you would see in the animated/cartoony aesthetic we'd see from the various art pieces, it doesn't feel like it's "on set/TV" to me. They're moreso just intimate glimpses into their lives. But they're shot in the real world, and that feels. Wrong.
This is very likely the same feeling that Wally's having in that moment. "My home doesn't FEEL like home." It's like he's disassociating, having a brief episode of that unreality feeling. Those bouts of strangeness don't go away until, like clockwork, someone says his name and the video ends, snapping him out of it.
Do other people in the neighborhood also feel the same way? Maybe, but we don't know. What we do know is that Wally, whether or not he tries to explain this to others, feels isolated by this sensation. "My neighbors are only neighborly until they know I'm different in a way they can see."
The only other person he likely shares this feeling with? I'd take a guess that it's Home. Nearly every time Home has been featured, Wally has been there, close. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the only physical puppets/props we’ve seen of the cast are Wally and Home.
According to this post by @eldritchravens, Home is the only other person who talks directly to Us, the viewers. That's probably why they're so close, because they're the only ones who can truly confide in each other about this.
"So does that mean Home is manipulating Wally?"
Again, I really don't think that's the case. I don't wanna call people villains quite yet. Besides, we see (or well, hear) Home and Barnaby have a conversation together, and from how Barnaby reacts it's fairly casual.
This shared feeling is likely why Wally is so obsessed with us, including the Restoration Employee. They seem to be sharing a similar sensation to Wally's bouts of unreality, in the fact that it seems they're the ONLY one who doesn't remember Welcome Home being a thing. They seem to be one of the few things that Wally (and maybe even Home) consider to be "Real." Hence their obsession with "seeing" us.
"Isn't this Wally or Home manipulating the Employee though?"
Maybe, I don't know. We don't really know much of what's going on right now, we're only getting glimpses. For all we know this could be a side-effect of Wally/Home trying to reach out. For the time being though, I want to keep my own expectations in check. I'm choosing not to label Wally, Home, The Restoration Team or anyone as a "villain" until something definitive comes up.
It is very, very likely that Wally is going to be doing something more dangerous later down the line (or maybe even is doing so now). But if he's doing anything, I get the feeling it's more out of desperation. He wants something to quell this feeling inside of him, this pervasive sense of unreality, and to connect with something he feels is "real." And, for better or for worse, that thing is us.
This whole thing isn't to bash on people for speculation or theorycrafting, I personally think speculation is very healthy! But it's still important to remember what the core of this story is going to be. We're only seeing the very start of the story right now, and we don't know what'll happen down the line. It's useful to keep that core idea at the center of our speculation so we can have reasonable expectations going forward.
As for me? This doesn't feel like a story with villains. I don't think he'll pull a Monika from DDLC and start gaining a kill count, but if something does happen to the rest of the cast, my money is that it'll happen completely by accident, and he'll regret it. Hard.
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