#tiol theory

[mickeys-malarkey]

I can't hold my Bendy theories in anymore!!

I've only got a few people to infodump to about Bendy IRL, I'm just so excited after watching the BATDR trailer and reading all the new theories that I can barely sleep or get any work done, and now that we have an official release date they can't chicken out if my theories are correct rofl. So, here I go!

Fair Warning: There's no way to avoid it, this is gonna have so many spoilers for all the current Bendy games and books (well, except BINR. But there's also not really a story in that one) that I'm just gonna have to assume that if you're still reading past this point, you've either already played/read the entire series (obviously minus BATDR) or you don't care about spoilers!

Pt. 1/3: Expanding (Mostly) On My TIOL Thoughts

As I said in my thought summaries here and on Twitter, I hate Nathan Arch. Dude literally sets off every single alarm bell I have, I don't understand why nobody else seems freaked the heck out by him… *shudders* I'm convinced that he's the answer to theMeatly's question.

To start off, I'd like to point out that… Nathan says his notes exist to “provide context for the contemporary reader,” which sounds like he's just gonna be stating general historical facts every reader would've known when the book was originally published but might not know when it was republished and are necessary to understanding what Joey's saying. But that's not what the notes are like at all? They actually consist of very personal information that readers at the time of original publication couldn't possibly have known and definitely aren't necessary to understanding what Joey's saying; and the vast majority seem to specifically be either 1: flip-flopping between singing Joey's praises and making remarks he really shouldn't be making if he were actually trying to dispel the negative rumors around the man as he claims, or 2: confirming or denying descriptions of himself?? 🚨

It feels like he's trying to manipulate us into seeing Joey as a genius and saint whose inventions we should accept with open arms whilst simultaneously positioning the guy as a scapegoat to take all blame in case we don't, and into seeing Nathan himself as an intelligent and kind man who definitely respected and admired Joey and, of course, would never, ever mistreat him, preemptively discrediting any rumors about him being an abusive friend that might crop up. Even when Joey makes comments that in no way cast him in a bad light— Joey be like “oh Nathan loved creative people and even though he would never understand us wanted to be us” and Nathan be like “actually no I like myself fine, and also no I dislike creatives in general, they're boring and too self-indulgent. It's specifically Joey that I admired, and therefore I admired his creativity specifically by extension. Isn't it just like Joey not to see the compliment—?” Um, no?? No, Nathan, that sounds absolutely nothing like Joey; he's literally been enraptured by every statement or action that could possibly be construed as complimenting him in this book. Did you just indirectly end your relationships with every other creative you've ever met so that nobody would believe anyone who claims that you looked down upon Joey? 🚨🚨

Let me get into some of the more unique notes from Nathan.

“The first time I read this [Elves and the Shoemaker] story it meant a great deal to me. Joey, as he said in his introduction, was never one to talk about his past. He never spoke about his parents. I certainly never met them. I don't even remember how I learned his father made shoes. So to get a glimpse back at this part of his life, for an old friend, it was very special. I remember telling Joey all this after I read the manuscript back in ‘41. He just smiled.” ~ Nathan Arch, The Illusion of Living, pg. 23

With the way this note happens right before Joey practically spells out that he trusts nobody and denies everyone even the most innocuous information out of self-preservation in the very next story, it does not feel like Nathan's sharing a heartwarming moment between friends. It feels like he's bragging about his position and accomplishments in their predator-and-prey relationship; like he's proud of himself for slowly breaking Joey down and eventually getting him to divulge info he'd been denying him. If your parents lived nearby and were perfectly lovely people, why do you think that you would neither talk about them with nor introduce them to someone who was supposedly one of your closest friends? I'll get into why I think he finally gave the info up in a bit.

In the Lottie story, if Nathan had only said that he wasn't sure the letter exchange had actually happened, I would've been like “yeah sure, we all know Joey's a liar. 🤷🏻‍♀️” But no, he specifically eases us from confirmation of Eckhart and Donaldson's existences even though he claims to have only briefly met them, to claiming Joey was such a good storyteller he could make you think you personally met someone who never existed even if he'd literally just told you that they were imaginary, to casting doubt on the very existence of a girl he was described as having been known by name to outside of the letter exchange.

“I met Joey the following year at the lab and only briefly had the chance to meet [Private Donaldson and Private Eckhart]. They were every bit the characters Joey describes them to be.” ~ Nathan Arch, The Illusion of Living, pg. 27

“When I first read this I forgot, despite Joey saying as much, that this was fiction, and spent far too much time racking my brain over who this James [who Joey says he told Lottie he met when he came by the lab to say hi to me] was. Joey is so good with his storytelling that even when he tells you it's not real, you can forget a moment later.” ~ Nathan Arch, The Illusion of Living, pg. 37 (emphasis added)

“I have gone through every piece of correspondence Joey ever saved as part of my work preserving his memory and documenting his life, and I must confess I was looking forward to reading Lottie's letters in person, having been moved to tears reading this part of the manuscript thirty years ago. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find them. It is possible they were lost to time, and I do deep down hope that to be true. However, even if this story is revealed to be one of Joey's excellent fictions, I think it doesn't really matter. Joey would, of course, call it another example of his illusion. I think the message in the story is meaningful regardless whether it really happened or not. And regardless if Lottie actually herself existed or not, she is a fine embodiment of the brave women who served our country in war.” ~ Nathan Arch, The Illusion of Living, pg. 41 (emphasis added)

I absolutely do not think this is a reality check, I think Nathan's trying to erase Lottie's existence – even gaslighting anyone who knew her in real life into thinking they'd imagined her – to throw us off the “Joey's Illusion of Living ‘philosophy’ is literally just the coping mechanism of an extremely traumatized man” scent; I wonder if Lottie actually fell victim to suicide shortly after writing to Joey that she was spiraling into a deep, dark depression, and Joey made up everything that happened after that specific letter in order to cope with the loss – pretend that “my dear friend isn't dead despite being sent somewhere there was no actual fighting where I thought she'd be safe; I saved her life and she's living a Happily Ever After overseas, married to a handsome young British soldier” – rather than just the goodbye letter to wrap her story up in a neat bow… Maybe Nathan even helped him pretend she was still alive in order to endear himself to this literal kid who was destroyed with grief?

Speaking of which, does nobody find the circumstances under which Nathan and Joey met… concerning? Nathan says “we knew each other since we were teenagers,” which sounds fine until you realize they met because Joey lied about his age and joined the army while still a minor, where he was bullied and pressured into things like underage drinking by grown-@$$ legal adults, multiple of which were also of higher rank. And not only was Nathan one of those grown-@$$ legal adults of higher rank and definitely bullying him just like the others (“I swear I definitely didn't join the other guys in giving him that Real Man™ complex of his like he says—” yeah, sure, Nathan, I totally believe you /s. 🙄), but clearly his horrifying apparent hobby that I'll explain next was already established at the time, seeing as Joey saw the photo of Ivan Newsome dying in agony with his own eyeballs when Nathan introduced him to Walter Richmond… 😬🚩

I'm convinced that Walter, Arthur, and Isabel were three of Nathan's previous victims, and they mirror the relationships he has with Joey, Allison, and Susie.

Walter looking at Nathan “as if asking permission to speak” before engaging Joey in conversation (Nathan nudges us towards believing they had no prior relationship by stating that he was flattered by Joey's observation that he had a way of introducing anyone so that it felt like they were his guest even if he'd just met them… but technically neither confirms nor denies anything 👀) has creepily similar vibes to how Joey “just smiled” in response to Nathan's gushing over the info on his parents; I feel like Joey gave up the info because he had to jump through hoops in order for Nathan to give him permission to publish his book— to be able to get the thing out the door without tripping any of Nathan's “Joey's disobeying and must be punished” alarms. Also, notice how Walter mysteriously had “a lot of people who knew him, but nobody who wanted to claim the title of ‘Walter's friend…’” and how the only people Joey's apparently still in contact with in BATIM are A: one of Nathan's (confirmed) employees, B: a janitor who didn't even realize Joey would remember him so definitely doesn't have enough of a relationship with Joey for Nathan to consider him a threat, and C: a shady veterinarian (wouldn't be surprised if he works for Nathan, as well). It's a classic abuser's tactic to isolate and villainize their victim so that they have no choice but to rely on the abuser; I'll get into more reasons I think that was happening in a bit.

I find it suspicious how Arthur not only personally delivers Ivan's effects to his sister Isabel, just tells her what happened which you'd expect someone with such fresh and debilitatingly severe PTSD to be very reluctant to do, and sticks around to befriend her, but also attends her art show showcasing Walter's war photos— it feels like someone was forcing Arthur to do all of this behind-the-scenes, and maybe the firecracker scene wasn't just about Isabel punishing the rich people for their morbid fascinations, but also Nathan punishing Arthur for being difficult about the situation behind-the-scenes. Meanwhile, Joey just happens to hire this random voice actress to replace Susie who we know just happens to be working for Nathan by the time BATIM happens, the memo that she had been hired specifically marked “don't deliver to Susie” just happens to make it into Susie's possession (seeing as she paraphrases it to Henry), Allison seems to know full well that Joey can't fire her when he tries to in DCTL, and then, by TLO, something has apparently happened to where Tom's been rehired which neither he nor Joey had any choice in and he doesn't wanna talk to anyone about (I doubt it was just all the deaths in DCTL, especially considering Joey went from his furious “I never want to see you again” attitude to begging Tom to come back. We've only heard him beg once before, which I'll get into later), and Tom and Allison have bizarrely switched opinions on the situation and machine (Allison changing from “your invention is amazing, Tom! Why are you stuck on the bad parts of the situation?” in DCTL to “I don't understand why you accepted this job back” in TLO, and Tom changing from “horrible things happened because of my machine, I wish I'd never been ensnared by this place” in DCTL to “why doesn't Ally understand? You don't just abandon a miracle” in TLO)—? It seems to me like Allison was never truly Joey's employee, she was Nathan's employee the whole time (which puts Joey's refusal to attend her and Tom's wedding in a whole new light), and Joey wasn't the only one punished for his failures and attempts to override the steel tycoon's authority.

To reiterate, since I saw some people being confused about the massive change: even with the memory loss issue, Allison's opinion in BATDR is just a natural progression from when the something happened between DCTL and TLO. 😛😬

Anyways, I get the distinct impression that creating situations like these to turn people into murder puppets without anyone being the wiser he was even involved is a hobby of Nathan's.

“…I am glad that he wrote [the murder mystery story] down this one time. It helps me to remember Joey at his most charming and sharp. Later years he became too fixated on things he might have gotten wrong, there was too much guilt and worry, too much fear. It didn't feel like the same man at the end, that's for sure.” ~ Nathan Arch, The Illusion of Living, pg. 98

You can't tell me that doesn't sound like he gets off on seeing how absolutely ruthless he can make his victims whilst still having them believe they're in the right and he's bitter as heck that one of his favorite pet projects came to his senses and was haunted by his conscience later in life— he literally just admitted he preferred a Joey who admired a murderer and thought that allowing people to die and getting murdered himself must've been worth it for Walter because now he has the immortality of being in a fascinating story instead of having lived in mediocrity over a Joey who felt guilt.

On that note, I absolutely do not believe Nathan's note on Henry's story was him trying to get the truth out about Henry being a despicable person. This is actually the chapter that first clued me in on Nathan's creepiness when I did my ADHD “skim the whole book except reading all the way through anything that looks especially interesting before properly reading” thing I do.

“Joey has always been a professional person, far more so in many ways than me. That is why this section of the book is so forgiving of the man who abandoned the studio he helped create. Joey can't help but see the good in people. That being said, as a good friend of Joey's, I know that Henry's departure was a great upheaval for him and a great personal betrayal. Joey never truly forgave Henry, and I don't think he should have felt obligated to. The fact that Joey is so gracious in this part of the book is a reflection of his incredible generosity in allowing Henry Stein to be stainless in the eyes of history. I think, had he lived longer, Joey might have in later years called it his greatest illusion.” ~ Nathan Arch, The Illusion Of Living, pg. 155

At first I found his saltiness funny, but then I read Joey's actual descriptions and… he's very clearly trying and failing to put down an amazing person, not build up a horrible one. I wondered why Nathan would be claiming the opposite and I realized— it sounds like he's admitting to being Dead Sea Level salty that Joey got terminally ill specifically because he's certain that, if he hadn't, he would've eventually been able to fully convince Joey that Henry was the villain rather than himself and therefore Joey wouldn't have reached out to the animator towards the end of his life in BATIM. Which leads me to my next observation:

I think Joey's play, “The Angel and The Devil,” was about Henry and Nathan.

I don't care that the Shoulder Angel is played by Abby and the Shoulder Devil is played by Joey, lol; that doesn't matter when you look at the actual content. I want you to read this excerpt:

Angel: [Empathy] is a wonderful talent that also leads [humans] down dark paths. Devil: Thank goodness for dark paths, they lead all great artists to their greatest creations. Angel: Empathy is your provenance then? Devil: We share it— for you it leads men to reach out and help, build hospitals, begin charities… Angel: For you it allows men to achieve their greatness through manipulation and fear. Devil: Is it not wonderful?

Going back to the murder mystery story, Walter and Isabel's thought processes perfectly match what the Shoulder Devil in Joey's play is described as using empathy to inspire humanity to do:

Walter was inspired to let Ivan die so that his photo – his art – would have a more compelling story that tugs at the heartstrings.

Isabel was inspired to kill Walter for the crime of letting Ivan die, masterfully manipulating her confession so that it technically wasn't a confession, instilling fear of herself in everyone present with the fact that if she did do it then she was untouchable legally thanks to her money, and finally, she was fully convinced that she would also be untouchable socially— even be better off, because people would see her as a hero for delivering justice to a monster like Walter.

Going back to BATIM, Joey literally says this to our faces:

“The truth is, you were always so good at pushing, Henry… Pushing me to do the right thing. You should've pushed a little harder.” ~ Joey Drew, Bendy and the Ink Machine, ch. 5

Does that not sound like Henry was good at using empathy to inspire kindness/etc. the way the Shoulder Angel is described as doing (Joey's actually very right that empathy is a morally neutral phenomenon that can be used for good or evil! *Spoken with hyper-empathetic autistic/low-to-no-empathy autistic solidarity*)?

The Angel and Devil also say that whichever of them the man they were assigned to doesn't choose will have to leave. This tells me that the ending of Joey's play – where it's implied the man the angel and devil were assigned to chose the angel – was read rather than acted out (with the excuse that they for some reason couldn't pick a random person to play him out of the crowd like they did for the Hatcheck Girl) in order to symbolize how Joey wanted to choose his true friend and make the toxic one leave, but he had that choice taken away from him when Henry was driven away despite his best efforts. In other words, I think both his version of the friend breakup story and Henry's version have elements of truth and deception to them.

Anybody notice that it seems like Wally and Tom seemed to have been being pitted against and told lies about each other as well as having their work sabotaged by an unknown third party?

“So here's my beef with this whole Gent thing. I went to school, yeah that's right— me! Star Student at Brickmore High. I know my potatoes! So where's this ‘Mr. Connor’ fella get off telling me what to do? These college boys. They can tell ya what's wrong but if you try to fix it on ‘em. They're outta here!” ~ Wally Franks, Boris and the Dark Survival

“Not all of us are well connected, son. Not all of us have chances. Especially to get a job as an engineer when I ain't had no proper education and training.” ~ Thomas Connor, Dreams Come to Life, pg. 252

“If there's one loose bolt around here we're gonna have a whole mess of trouble. And wouldn't you know it, that Wally guy is one loose bolt! He keeps the floors clean he says, he didn't sign on for no science project. All I know is someone needs to keep these pipes maintained. And he can't be a slacker.” ~ Thomas Connor, Boris and the Dark Survival

Wally thinks he's being looked down upon for not having gone to college like Tom (who didn't go to college) and his efforts to help out are not just unappreciated but met with unreasonable emotional response. Meanwhile, Tom thinks Wally's being selfish and lazy and leaving all the work to be done by him. Sound familiar?

“…Henry left for his own reasons, and the correspondence between us became less and less. To be honest, it almost felt like a weight off when he left. He had grown more sensitive as the studio became more successful and giving him pep talks had become exhausting for me. All the good qualities he brought, the hard work and diligence, were being undermined by a restless need for something different. Something that wasn't Bendy. I'll never understand that drive. Bendy was and is perfection.” ~ Joey Drew, The Illusion of Living, pg. 176-177

“Only two weeks into this project and already it's gotten interesting. Joey is a man of ideas… And only ideas. When I agreed to start this whole thing with him I thought there would be a little more give and take. Instead I give, and he takes. I haven't seen Linda for days now. Still, someone has to make this happen. When in doubt, just keep drawing Henry. On the plus side, I've got a new character I think people are gonna love.” ~ Henry Stein, Bendy and the Ink Machine, ch. 3

Joey thinks that Henry was being unreasonably emotional and looking down upon Bendy as not good enough (when he obviously loved the character/cartoons), and that his efforts to help were unappreciated. Meanwhile, Henry thinks Joey was being a selfish, lazy leech and leaving all the work to be done by him.

Is it really a stretch at all to wonder if Henry and Joey were similarly being pitted against and told lies about each other as well as having their work sabotaged by an unknown third party? Maybe the exact same third party?

This makes me very suspicious about who was really behind the worrying newspaper in Joey's apartment; something tells me that Joey's Shoulder Devil successfully pushed his Shoulder Angel off that right shoulder. Twice. I can see Nathan thinking “fine, if you won't give up on this stupid animator, I'll use this opportunity to remove him from the picture permanently and poetically…”

Is Joey's being so touched by the memory of Isabel “angelically” helping Arthur during his war flashbacks an “I wish my Shoulder Angel would come save me?” And is his horror at the descriptions of Shell Shock (PTSD) as basically a time loop foreshadowing that he ends up trapped in a real time loop, himself, by Nathan's sadistic design? I think it's likely, especially after reading @dreamfisher-nux's posts speculating on Wilson's identity. If he's the Gent worker who stole Shaun's tool belt in BATDS and “somebody” who stole Tom's invention in Allison's BATIM Chapter 5 letter, and that invention was the seeing tool, so Wilson's the one that's been tampering with Henry's invisible messages, and he potentially murdered Henry and Joey when Henry returned at Joey's request… How much of this and how much more might he have been doing under Nathan's influence? Is he another one of Nathan's Murder Puppets? 👀

I think all the Henry stuff also explains why Joey claims that Sammy, Jack, and Norman were hired after Mr. Animator left despite the evidence in BATIM and DCTL that Sammy and Norman knew him personally. The only two versions of events he's being allowed to hear are “Henry leaving is your fault and your feelings about the situation are unreasonable” and “Henry was an awful person, you should be glad he's gone.” Nathan would never allow him to hear “it's Nathan's fault and your feelings about the situation are valid,” so he's gotta choose between believing two very painful other options; why wouldn't he try to discredit the most painful one?

While we're adding to the list of people who Nathan seems to have made disappear Mafia Boss-style, it sure seems awfully convenient that the two main Crack-Up Comics artists’ names “appear to have been lost to time” after they wrote a comic where Bendy (Joey) was literally sweating over how Boswell (Nathan) was the richest cat in the world and could crush him like a bug if he didn't perform his job to satisfaction…

…Sounds to me like Nathan did something to shut these two people up so that word of the true nature of his and Joey's relationship wouldn't get out.

Also, interesting how the disappearances of not only a reporter-in-training and the sister of two well-known entertainers but also the only son of the richest, most influential and most dangerous man in Atlantic City didn't get Mr. Joey “Bankrupt From Impulsive Spending Who Apparently Doesn't Even Have The Power To Fire His Own Employees (and ‘Employees’) Nor The Respect Of Enough People To Not Be Giggled At And Whispered About During His Own Speech At His Own Party” Drew and all of his employees arrested or worse… In fact, from the new teaser and archive images that came out, we now know the studio survived for almost two years afterwards before filing bankruptcy and closing forever…

…at which point Joey was mysteriously missing for a while. This is pretty much pure speculation, but I wonder if it could be that Joey's need for a wheelchair stems from an injury sustained in this time? Mr. Mafia Boss decided he needed his kneecaps busted or something?? At any rate, it sounds to me like Joey had someone richer, more influential, and more dangerous than Mr. Chambers “on his side…” until he failed too many times, and needed to be punished more severely? 👀

“Again I shook my head. Didn't [Constance] understand that this was not how it worked? She hadn't lived in my world. Any company that could afford such a machine, that could hide it, that had such dark huge secrets, they had to be protected by something huge as well.” ~ Bill Chambers, Bendy: The Lost Ones, pg. 191

Then, ink machine things continued at Gent… until the year Allison and Tom got married.

Sounds to me like Gent might've been condemned in order to punish Allison and Tom either for the very fact that they got married (making them more-difficult-to-control puppets) or because they failed to get Joey to come to their wedding where Nathan could access him in-person again…

This archive entry sounds as if Joey had to go into hiding, perhaps to escape Nathan and/or people like Bill's dad who were waiting for Nathan to rescind his protection? Also, as an animation history nerd, it sounds to me like the Bendy cartoons were picked up by other studios besides Archgate in attempt to reboot them after JDS kicked the bucket (as has happened to countless cartoons whose original studios kicked the bucket in real life, e.g., the Fleischer cartoons, the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, the Veggie Tales cartoons, etc.), and it wouldn't surprise me if these “minor attempts to rekindle the magic” were Joey's feeble attempts at keeping what was left of Bendy out of Nathan's claws. Remember, Nathan didn't say in Crack-Up Comics that he “inherited” the Bendy IP from Joey's estate, he said he bought it, as further confirmed in the final archive entry.

This means Joey did not leave Bendy to Nathan in his will. In fact, it sounds like he either didn't have a will at all or it was destroyed when he died… Anyone notice that Joey's secret BATDS recording, where he asks Nathan for money, is the only time we've heard him sound audibly nervous?

Strange how, in DCTL, Joey calls Bertrum “Bertrum” when introducing him to the most uncomfortable person at his party, who respects him as his boss; it's not until the people who hold financial power over him start whispering and giggling that he introduces him as “Bertie,” as if he wasn't specifically trying to slight Bertrum as the man in question assumed, but instead was trying to assert to all the hungry cats in the room that he was also a cat, rather than a tasty lil mouse for them to devour… Nathan is worse than them? He's able to break Joey's facade of confidence that this crowd of investors could only make him reinforce? What's worse, the investors he tries to persuade like he does everyone else, convince that they should give him money because everything's great… but Nathan, who's supposedly his friend, he begs for money, saying that the one-and-only reason he's asking this is because the situation is dire (implying he has no choice). That's… worrisome.

Funny how, across DCTL, TIOL, and TLO, Joey consistently pulls or feels the urge to pull his cruel pranks on people anytime a new person seems to be hiding things from him or trying to take advantage of him. Buddy after being caught stealing art supplies? Bill after being caught lying about not having knowledge of the ink machine? Sammy when he suspected his deadpan-&-monotone-ness was an act and that he didn't respect him? Almost seems like the pranks are actually the survival mechanism of someone who's had a whole lotta really bad experiences with betrayal, having things hidden from him, getting taken advantage of, etc. rather than just the product of a twisted sense of humor, hm…?

“…inside I was feeling a little angry now. I don't do well when people are disloyal, and this was something I'd expected to be kept between me and Abby. Then I stopped and controlled myself (I have excellent control over my emotions) and realized I had never actually told her there was anything secret about this. I'd have to be more careful in the future. Believe you me, I have been since. A contract is a fine thing to have between colleagues, even finer at times between friends.” ~ Joey Drew, The Illusion of Living, pg. 170-171

“[Sammy] leaned back on both elbows on the stone wall. Beneath him Fifth Avenue roared and certain death would come to anyone who toppled over the edge down onto it. The man definitely had confidence in that wall. I had a sudden urge to give him a shove. Not push him over, but just to see his reaction. This might sound strange, but I needed to see a human moment from him, I needed to see the man he was hiding from me. That's the trouble when you're interested in recreating the illusion of the world. You want to see the truth of it as much as possible.” ~ Joey Drew, The Illusion of Living, pg. 188-189 (emphasis added)

Also, it's weird that, when talking about reuniting with Nathan at the Sparkling Unicorn, Joey claims not to have known Nathan very well in the army but to always have liked his personality… after having claimed to be close enough friends with him that he helped him write fake letters from a fictional character to Lottie, just a few pages earlier. Either Joey's not nearly as good a liar as he's supposed to be… or this discrepancy was created on purpose in an attempt to tell us that Joey only liked Nathan's personality back when they were in the army because he didn't actually know him as well as he thought he did. 👀

This all together…

…really makes one wonder if Joey's little intro to TIOL wasn't him humble-bragging, but genuinely explaining that the reason he took so long to write it was because A: he's been being gaslit to heck and back for decades and genuinely doesn't know what reality is as a result, and B: refusing to write this book was one of the few ways he was able to assert real control over his own life for a very long time…

“Looking back is awkward. Looking back, you can trip yourself up. I've never been a fan of it. Which is why I never had a desire to tell my story. No matter how many book deals were offered, no matter how many dinners were thrown for me. I am a man who makes up my own mind. You can't buy me. No one buys Joey Drew.” ~ Joey Drew, The Illusion of Living, pg. 3

Speaking of the intro, interesting how, as much as Joey tries to claim that his surprise at Simmons remembering his “philosophy” is because Simmons isn't the brightest bulb in the factory, he still gets noticeably hung up on the fact that his words had stuck with someone; it's almost as if the vast majority of people he knew either openly viewed him as a talentless idiot or genuinely were trying to manipulate him as he was so seemingly paranoid about, and he was beyond desperate for any scrap of genuine praise anyone would give him, no…? *Stares at basically every audio log, literally every Nathan note, and every scene where Joey reacted unsubtly ecstatically to compliments and/or irate at any hint someone was looking down on him*

Anyone notice how, throughout his whole memoir, Joey sings the praises of anyone he clearly wants to be like and drags anyone who resembles what he's actually like through the mud? “Omigosh, Sammy is just so talented and powerful and automatically respected and praised by everyone! He's so awesome! 🤩” “Yuck, Detective Sinclair wears a persona to hide how useless and powerless he is and is just so desperate for validation! I hate him! 😤 Btw, this stuff is not what my philosophy is about, I'm actually changing reality here (whatever makes you feel better, Joey /hj).” I guess this leads me into the next section…

Continued in Part Two: Expanding (Mostly) On My DCTL & TLO Thoughts

#long post #spoiler warning #book analysis #game analysis #book theory #game theory #bendy and the ink machine #batim #dreams come to life #dctl #crack up comics #the illusion of living #tiol #tiol theory #bendy: the lost ones #bendy: tlo #bendy and the dark revival #batdr #batdr trailer #batdr theory #joey drew #henry stein #nathan arch #sammy lawrence #detective sinclair #tw: abuse #tw: suicide

[angelofthepage]

BATDR Speculation: Who is Bendy?

So the internet is currently freaking out over little Baby Benders (rightfully so, he’s ADORABLE), and we all have a lot of questions about him. Is he as cute and innocent as he seems? Is he going to betray us? Is he the lighter half of an ink demon split into pieces? Does he have a soul? If so, is it someone we know? I have a lot of thoughts on this, and none of them are concrete, but today I want to talk about one of my favorite musings so far: How Joey and Henry might be involved in this. I wanna talk about The Illusion of Living.

https://twitter.com/LaurenSynger/status/1587778374038069249?s=20&t=b-DLbISPVNI584xRm5ALAg

Warning: if you haven’t read the Illusion of Living by Adrienne Kress, HIGHLY recommend it, as there are spoilers ahead. This book is delightful, and it’s not what I expected. When I picked it up, I thought we were getting a narrative about Joey’s life, and we did to an extent. But the real treasure of this book is that it’s a character study of Joey Drew. It gives us so much to think about in terms of who he is as a person. Because he’s Joey, you’d expect him to bend the truth (pun absolutely intended), and there are moments where it feels like some details aren’t entirely true. But there are some scenes that are written in such a way that feel all too earnest, and one of them is the scene in Joey’s apartment: the birth of Bendy.

The way Joey tells it, he’s the one who had the concept for Bendy, then his friend Abby Lambert attempted to draw it, but nothing was looking right. Abby brought Henry on board to help without consulting Joey first. Then they all sat on the floor of Joey’s apartment while Henry sketched out what would become the signature Bendy design (with critiques from Joey along the way). It’s made out to be this magical moment, and it’s believable. What reason would Joey have to lie about this? He may have a lot of feelings about Henry, mostly negative from what we’ve seen in DCTL, but he gave Henry credit here. He didn’t downplay Henry’s importance in all of this, which surprised me, and I like that a lot.

Joey comes off as being so deeply in love with his creation that it doesn’t matter who did what, the fact remains that Bendy is still his in the ways that count the most. He was made with love, dreams, and wonder at his core, Joey’s ideas and writing, Henry’s artistic execution. He belongs to both of them. I get the sense that a lot of people are going to jump into debating whether this little Bendy is somehow made using Henry’s soul or Joey’s. But I’d like to propose this: what if he’s made with both? His creation isn’t credited to a single person, but two, and who better to give Bendy a soul than both of his creators, two halves of a whole?

It gives another layer to why Joey would send Henry into the studio in the first place. Like why Henry? Henry’s just a guy who supposedly worked with Joey as an animator and business partner for one year before vanishing forever, why send him in? Is he a last resort where others failed (maybe Tom was sent in first and couldn’t fix things), or is it because he’s so integral to Bendy’s creation? Surely he has something grand to offer in that regard, by Joey’s logic. Send Henry in, sure, if anyone can stop this twisted version of Bendy, it’s his creator, right? No, this story isn’t one that you can solve by making Henry the protagonist, it’s one that needs both of them. It’s a story that needs Joey to acknowledge a lot of things in order for it to change. That could be why it’s a loop, the story can’t end without Joey playing his part, but he’s too busy blaming everyone else for the trouble he’s caused, not taking responsibility for his actions.

One of the theories I’ve seen that I really love from the first game came from @dreamfisher-nux​ which I’ll link here: https://www.tumblr.com/dreamfisher-nux/184575733862/that-child-at-the-end-might-not-have-been-human?source=share The idea that the child we hear say “tell me another one Uncle Joey” might not be human based on the milk carton texture’s inky handprints gives me a lot to think on. I have to wonder if that child might have been his last attempt to make Bendy. Yes, I know, five fingers is too many, but that’s exactly why I say “attempt,” not success. I mean he has the studio full of his previous employees, souls he’s claimed he owns, and now Henry is in there too. Is it possible this was all a plan to get Henry’s soul to make into his creation? I’ll admit, while I was around for the emergence of the “Henry is a perfect Bendy” theory, I’m not 100% sold on it for canon (though I do love it in fandom works), but an imperfect Bendy, or something close to Allison or Twisted Alice in nature? That I would buy. Henry alone may not be enough to give Joey what he wants. So what if, before the end of his lifetime, Joey gave himself up? Bendy is in part his creation, a part of him, just as Alice is a part of Susie, there is something they give to that character that no one else has. And much like Susie, Joey would do anything for the character he loves. He went to great lengths to try and see it through, sacrificed so much (much of which was never his to sacrifice).

When I first heard Joey’s tape about cheating death itself, I assumed his goal was immortality for the longest time. But TIOL has me thinking that that’s only half the story. You’re never dead if your legacy is still alive, and Bendy is Joey’s legacy. Making Bendy real and innovating beyond what any artist or engineer has done before is at the core of what he wants, to make dreams into reality. And if he’s gone, but Bendy is here and real and perfect? I think, that’s a sacrifice Joey would be willing to make, his dream would be achieved and that’s what matters. Throw on the machine machine one more time, take the child, his child, that was so close and take one more chance, add his piece to the puzzle, his soul to the mix. Become part of your creation. It’s an act of love, “but love requires sacrifice.”

Joey is believed to be dead in 1972, and this is where Arch Gate comes in. They have control of the Bendy brand, they own the rights and assets to it. Nathan was someone that was believed to be Joey’s friend, even though he’s done things a friend wouldn’t do. What does Nathan Arch know of Joey’s marvelous machine, of his dreams? While I don’t know if I buy Nathan as a benevolent character given what he’s said in the books, I do believe he would carry out some of Joey’s final wishes, though maybe not exactly the way Joey would want him to. And handing Bendy over to him, his most precious creation, to be taken care of? Well, that would be an interesting thing, wouldn’t it? You don’t leave your child in the hands of just anyone. It’s as Tom says in TLO, you don’t give up on a miracle.

Or course, take this all with a grain of salt. I think this would be an intriguing story to follow, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I expect it to be canon. Canon or not though, it’s an interesting thought, isn’t it?

#Bendy and the dark revival #batdr #batdr trailer #batdr trailer spoilers #bendy #batim #bendy and the ink machine #bendy theory #joey drew #henry stein #baby benders #tiol #the illustion of living

[lucky-dreamfisher]

So whats up with Nathan? I thought there was going to be a darker side or ulterior motive, but it seems he was genuinely interested in honoring Joey's cartoon legacy and unaware of the machine stuff. Or am I missing something?

It's really weird, isn't it? He's so unsuspicious, it's almost suspicious how unsuspicious he sounds. Some of his audio logs don't even play a role in the gameplay, they're really just him saying stuff like "so I was coming back from reading to orphans, when it occurred to me to check up on that soup kitchen for the homeless I've been financing on the side. Isn't being nice just great?".

There's a lot of stuff about him, which doesn't add up. Such as Nathan signing his TIOL intro as "Nathan Arch Sr." implying that his son shares his name, but then the guy is named Wilson instead.

Or how Nathan claims that he only began looking to open an entertainment studio after Joey's death and it was then that his son suggested opening a films studio.

Yet in the books he's called the CEO of Archgate Films, a film studio which existed all the way back in 1963, almost a decade before Joey's death and Nathan beginning to look into expanding his business.

There are two explanations for these discrepancies:

the mundane doylist explanation, that they simply read our theories, saw people figure out the identity of the main villain sooner than they'd hoped, and thought to themselves "shit! we must change it now, to subvert everyone's expectations!". It's happened in some franchises before, MatPat has a video about how sometimes gamedevs will change the lore at the last second because of theorists. That would suck though, because it kind of defeats the point of making theories, not to mention it makes for a worse story

The more interesting watsonian explanation that the tapes aren't what they appear to be. We know that the original ink world was controlled by Joey Drew, and he was a man of regrets. So it makes sense that everything in that world would have been focused on reminding him of his mistakes. The world in BATDR is controlled by Wilson, who was desperate to gain his father's approval. Maybe the "Nathan Arch" we hear in the game isn't the real Nathan Arch, but the Nathan Arch that Wilson wished his father was?

As for Wilson's name and Archgate Films timeline conundrum, perhaps Wilson used be named Nathan Arch, and under this name he's opened a film studio, but then he turned out to be a bad businessman and went bankrupt? Then he simply sold off the studio to his dad and changed his name out of shame for not living up to it. correction: he mentions in one of his notes that he likes to take on disguises when wandering around the company, so “Wilson” is obviously a fake name.

#bendy spoilers #ask #wilson arch #nathan arch #bendy and the dark revival #batdr #bendy and the ink machine #batim

[inkabelledesigns]

Where does Bendy in Nightmare Run fit into the Bendy Universe?

Let me ask you this: does anyone else find it odd that we don’t see any of the content from Bendy in Nightmare Run within the Crack-Up Comics? Like the game has four great bosses, three standard enemies, and a bunch of costumes, and not ONCE do they make another appearance (save for one Easter egg of Chester in BATIM’s Chapter 5). We got parallels to our Chapters 3 and 4 enemies with Cameraman/Projectionist, Miss Twisted/Twisted Alice, and Brute/Brute Boris, but like, absolutely nothing from the game that arguably has more toons in it than the source material it’s based on. I know not a lot of people think about Nightmare Run anymore (hell, it’s only on my radar because I still log in everyday for the soup), but I feel like there should’ve at least been a nod to it there.

And that got me thinking: Souper Boris deals with radioactive bacon soup, right? And it’s teased at the end that Alice gets some too, right? Humor me here: is it possible that Canoodle is also a result of that radioactive soup? I mean this is a cartoon world, I don’t think it’d be much of a stretch to say that “radioactive” could serve as an explanation for a soup can becoming sentient, nor growing to a massive height. I can already picture the story, he was the can that wasn’t bought, got stuck in the back and never saw the light of day, so he had time to be brought to life, as opposed to other produce that was opened too quickly for that to happen. Maybe he passed his expiration date, got thrown away, ended up at the dump and made it his home. Who’s to say? 

Though then again, is Canoodle’s stage a junkyard, or a graveyard? And how does that change things?

https://twitter.com/BendyRun/status/1049237972288266241 

https://twitter.com/BendyRun/status/1038426739435655168 

I was looking around for Canoodle’s beef with Bendy (it’s that Bendy trespassed on his property and didn’t leave), and I stumbled upon this from the promotional material for the game. I thought Canoodle’s stage was a junkyard this whole time, you’re telling me it’s a graveyard? Well hang on a moment. The game was released in August of 2018, and both of these tweets are from September of 2018. All the other posts with the bosses for the initial marketing make sense within the context of their stage, but Canoodle’s is inconsistent. Everywhere else, he’s listed as living in a junkyard. So why then, is it called a graveyard here? 

So I loaded up the game real quick and played through the first act. Still looks like a junkyard to me. But then THIS happened.

My phone is a bit slow (as is my reaction time) so I couldn’t get a clear screenshot, but the other side of this barrel has a radioactive waste symbol on it. You see where I’m going with this? I predict Canoodle has some kind of link with the content we saw in the Souper Boris comic, it makes too much sense for it to be the same radioactive soup. The promotional material referring to this space as a graveyard could be insight into how Canoodle feels about it. I mean if you were a piece of trash that got thrown away, wouldn’t you feel like the scrapyard was your final resting place? Much like the studio is hell itself for its inhabitants, Canoodle’s “home” is here. 

But that leads to the question that I’ve had about Nightmare Run for a while: where in the timeline does it fall? And that’s a really difficult question to answer, because there’s two timelines we need to talk about: the real world of JDS, and the fictional world of the cartoons and comics. And in truth, I don’t have a good answer for it. I think the logical place for it to be is somewhere after the Souper Boris comic, meaning if it’s part of a story told in some kind of Bendy media, it’s gotta be after or alongside the period of 1936-1940. 

The thing is, we don’t really know what Nightmare Run IS within this universe, and that’s the bigger question to answer. Sure, here and now in our reality, it’s a mobile game, just as Bendy and the Ink Machine and Boris and the Dark Survival are games, but mobile games didn’t exist back then. There’s also that weird callback to Joey’s whole shtick about “there’s something I need to show you” when you first boot up the game. What is this trying to tell us? What IS Nightmare Run? For us it’s a game, but what is it to the studio employees? What is it to the cartoons? What is it to Joey? There are lots of things we could make of this, but my mind goes to a few places. We could say that it’s just a game that has no bearing on the story. We could say that Joey was ahead of his time, or that maybe Nathan did some development with the JDS property that permeated the modern era. We could say that this was a series of shorts or cartoons where Bendy and friends are having weird dreams.

Or we could turn to what The Illusion of Living tells us about Bendyland and Sillyvision. I haven’t given you all my thoughts on the book yet (I really should, because damn did it rock), but one thing I found fascinating was the look into Bendyland and Joey’s conversations with Bertrum Piedmont. We learn what Joey’s plans were for the park, that each section was meant to represent aspects of each of his core characters. I can absolutely see Nightmare Run fitting in as an attraction for Dark World, Bendy’s area of the park. Think of it like Disney’s animatronic dark rides, like Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, or one of the things I miss, Disney Quest. If you’re not familiar with Disney Quest, it was a five floor arcade that lived within Disney Springs (then called Downtown Disney). It’s since been replaced by an ESPN attraction, but when it was still there, it had all kinds of stuff. Early forms of VR (that were nauseating to play with those heavy helmets), lots of old arcade machines, and newer technology that blended virtual and physical gameplay together, like the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction that had you shooting cannonballs at a virtual screen (or Toy Story Midway Mania, if you want a more common comparison). 

But this was the 40s, technology for this kind of thing wouldn’t exist, right? And that’s where I turn to Sillyvision, Joey’s special process of editing the inks on the animation cells. Combine that with the advanced technology of harnessing living ink’s properties that Gent had going on, and you have yourself some plausible ways to create an attraction where guests can help Bendy (or be in his shoes) to run from some not-so-friendly faces. It doesn’t sound too far fetched for this universe, and given this man was working on “living cartoons” for the purpose of folks being able to meet them in the park, I wouldn’t put it past him to try this too. It still leaves some questions as to what content Canoodle and friends came from within the universe (were they in a cartoon or comic, or were they made specifically for an attraction?), but one thing is for sure: there’s possibilities. Besides that, we still never got an explanation as to what that hand is in the game. 

If you tap the hand on the top of the screen there, it opens and closes, but we still have no idea what it does or who it belongs to. It’s 2021, and we still haven’t cracked it! It could be Bendy’s or Boris’ hand (not Alice though, doesn’t have a circle in the palm), or it could be someone else’s. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m probably thinking too hard about this. X’’’D And I’m okay with that. I’d like to revisit Nightmare Run again, I have some thoughts about our enemy characters (Krawl, Stickle, and Gwen), but that’ll be for later. X’’’D I was gonna post cute headcanons about Sammy today and somehow ended up here, what is my life?

#bendy the illusion of living #bendy in nightmare run #bendy crack up comics #bendy crack up comics spoilers #bendy the illusion of living spoilers #tiol #tiol spoilers #the illusion of living spoilers #crack up comics spoilers #bendy theory #batim theory #binr theory #tiol theory #joey drew

[threadedsafetypin]

Sammy Lawrence Having Imposter Syndrome? It’s More Likely Than You Think! (Part 1/2)

This is a conversation I had with @inkdemonapologist on discord, and I’ve compiled our back and forth into a post. I was theorizing about how Sammy might have genuinely had a hard time coming up with compositions at the studio. And a very interesting conversation ensued. Link to Part Two

By all accounts, Sammy Lawrence is musical genius. Joey especially heaps nothing but praise on him. But the thing that most impresses Joey about Sammy and made him want to hire the man- his ability to improvise songs effortlessly and match his playing to people’s singing, are not things that would have come up in Sammy’s job at JDS. In fact, Sammy’s specific talents could not be more designed to work AGAINST him at the studio.

The two previous jobs we know that Sammy had were playing for silent movies at the theater and playing live at events. In both instances, Sammy’s talent of easily being able to improvise music is highlighted to us. He’s obviously very good, something that he and everyone else knows. And Joey gets it into his head quite easily that Sammy is Perfect and Exactly What He Needs. But his conversation with Sammy about wanting to hire him raises more than a few red flags. It’s REALLY apparent that Sammy is not AT ALL familiar with, not just Bendy, but animation as a whole. Joey says his studio produces the Bendy cartoons, a word which is used once by Joey and then is not used again because Sammy continuously says the word movie instead to talk about the job. He says he’ll need a projector to play along with the movie. That he wants to see what kind of movies to studio makes. It honestly doesn’t seem like Sammy has much of a grasp of what a cartoon even is and calling it a “movie” is the only conceptual framework he has to work with: after all, it comes from a studio and plays on a film reel. It’s some type of movie, right? And to be fair, Joey does nothing to clarify things. In fact, Joey specifically is too busy getting caught up in his own mind games (and fantasizing about giving Sammy a near-death experience because he isn’t emoting the way Joey wants) that when Sammy initially asks if Joey means he makes films, Joey decides to ""match"" Sammy’s ""coyness"" by replying as vaguely as possible.

So Sammy just sort of accepts his own self-made explanation of what the job is and Joey just sort of accepts that Sammy knows exactly what he is talking about. To compound things, Joey’s offer isn’t for Sammy to simply compose the music but to be the music director. So in effect, Sammy is going from "writing songs and playing music live" to "managing a music department, all its employees from technicians to musicians to voice actors, and being responsible for every single piece of sound and audio for an animation studio.” Something which he, it cannot be stressed enough, has ZERO EXPERIENCE doing. Even so, a decent amount of Sammy’s stress could have been alleviated by efficiently delegating things. But Sammy, entirely of his own accord, clings tightly to as much control as he possibly can. Shazz gave the very plausible explanation that Sammy is so used to controlling every single thing about his music that he has no idea how to sustainably scale that up. Even though the amount of total work for an animation studio is so much bigger than any one person could or should reasonably do, Sammy continues trying to control every single thing. And Joey loves it! He enjoys bragging about how everything has Sammy’s personal touch to it. He spins it as an impressive feat that only Sammy could do and as such, how his studio is all the more special for it.

But we know that Sammy is struggling, feeling like he’s drowning in work. And not simply in terms of having to run all the various aspects of the music department. Sammy’s 1935 audio log where he complains “four cartoons almost complete and all of them need a tune by tomorrow” makes it clear that he feels overwhelmed writing the music itself. This is....very telling. Cartoons at the time mostly stuck to a 7-8 minute length. Sammy, who spent his teenage years playing music for feature length movies with complete confidence and ease as he made up a score on the spot, feels in over his head scrambling to write four comparatively very short songs. I’ll also note that June 16th, 1935 was on a Sunday. As in, Sammy spent his weekend trying to do this task before the work week started on Monday. If Sammy’s amazing skill is to watch something once and quickly whip up a functional score in the process, why was Sammy working so much extra time on songwriting that it was causing some pretty debilitating mental stress?

I’m going to propose something: Sammy is actually very bad at writing music.....for cartoons.

There is a strong underlying reason why Sammy is so good at improvising music in real time. He picks up his signals from the environment. For all that Sammy doesn’t like being the center of attention, there is a very crucial human element to improv that he thrives on incorporating into his music. Sammy doesn’t look at sheet music when he plays because he is focused on looking at people. Whether it’s capturing the emotion from actors on the screen or perfectly matching a singer’s pace no matter if they suddenly sped up or slow down without warning, Sammy primarily keeps his attention on a lot of subtle cues from what’s happening in the moment. Take away the human element and replace it with drawings and Sammy has a lot less to build from.

There’s also the fact that Sammy being incredibly good at improvising songs on the spot does NOT inherently translate to being good at FINISHING songs quickly. If anything, I think he would struggle with the opposite. For live music playing, you can’t go back and re-do anything. You just play in the moment and whatever happens, happens. Given how acutely Sammy tailors each performance when he plays, it’s more than likely that Sammy’s always worked with the mentality that there isn’t One Correct Way to play a piece of music, only The Best Way For The Current Situation. Which is one thing when it comes to a movie score that you’re going to play numerous times over the span of many showings with absolutely no expectation from anyone that it needs to be exactly the same each time. Or playing song requests for people that each have their own unique voice and range. Each version of the song is equally valid so long as it suits the moment. But making music for animations where the score gets recorded once and That’s It and whatever that is will have his name stamped to it as the Exact Way It’s Supposed To Sound, I could see Sammy feeling a pressure that’s totally different from what he’s used to.

Shazz nicely summed up this theory as "Sammy Is Much Better At Playing Improvisationally Because Once You Give Him Extra Time He Will Use All Of The Time He's Given." Like, I imagine that Sammy understands that the plain fact that at some point when you’re on a deadline, things eventually have to be DONE regardless of whether it’s really done or not. But I can also see Sammy interrupting the musicians five minutes before RECORDING sign goes on because he’s decided to change some measures and don’t you dare try to argue because he’s the one who wrote the song and up to the moment it’s actually recorded, it’s subject to change by him.

It really is hard to overstate that composing for cartoons is absolutely NOTHING like what Sammy was doing before. Joey watched Sammy play, was obviously impressed because Sammy is genuinely very good, and then just decided that Sammy Is A Musical Genius And Expert In What Joey’s Cartoons Need without considering that Sammy is like... in his 20s and has no experience composing music for a cartoon and might not actually be an expert in what's needed for those circumstances. And Sammy heard the prospect of a job offer and tried to parse out what exactly Joey wanted him to do, and then just decided that Cartoons Are Movies So He’ll Do The Same Thing He knows How To Do For Movies and asks Joey for a projector and demands to have creative control over the music he makes. Without considering that being the head of a music department at a studio is a giant hecking job and having to compose a score for something in its production is different than playing an already finished product and tailoring it to a specific performance.

This is possibly part of why Sammy stubbornly sticks around and is a feasible explanation for some of his irritation and temper. Sammy already has so many hints of Gifted Child Syndrome (as noted by Shazz) and this just fits right in. "These stupid cartoon songs don't write themselves, y'know" = "OBVIOUSLY THESE ARE JUST DUMB CARTOONS AND OBVIOUSLY THEY’RE NOT HARD TO WRITE MUSIC FOR BUT ALSO THEY’RE NOT DONE YET AND THAT’S YOUR FAULT OBVIOUSLY." Like, Sammy agreed to something that probably sounded very easy to him and it turned out that his talent did not translate well to it and he doesn't want to admit how hard it actually is to write songs in this incredibly different format because he’s NEVER struggled with music before in his life. So instead, he gets defensive and stubborn and demanding rather than admit anything is wrong, even though there was honestly no reason he had to be PERFECT at this aside from his own expectations about himself and Joey’s unending hype about him on top of it.

Speaking of Joey, it would also fit REALLY WELL into the meta-context of TIOL if this all were true. We know Joey’s a liar. So much of TIOL is trying to figure out what is probably honest (because it's not a lie Joey would tell/because it would be too hard to lie about) and what is probably exaggerated (because Joey has incentive to lie about it/because it's contradicted elsewhere). When Joey talks about how great and amazing and talented Sammy is, he sure does talk like he does when he's stretching the truth. But to what end? Well Joey FREQUENTLY uses praise as a weapon with people. Notably with Buddy in DCTL but also with several other characters in TIOL. It’s basically his main tactic for dealing with people. The idea that Joey is intentionally hyping Sammy up as a Brilliant Genius Musician Who Knows Just What To Do when in the background he can probably tell he's pushing Sammy to his limits after throwing him in the deep end, is not only a really intriguing place to take that, but also works really well with the idea of Sammy feeling like he HAS to live up to this now. Sammy has never known anything but success. Failure is truly NOT an option in his mind. And Joey specifically does not allow it to become one either. There is no better position for Joey to hold Sammy in than one where Sammy keeps doing great work but is barely holding his head above water to do it, all the while Joey’s glowing remarks about Sammy’s skill to everyone else keeps him backed into a corner.

I have even more thoughts about all this, but I think I will put that up in another post because this has already gotten quite long. But I still got to talk about how Jack fits in....

#bendy and the ink machine #batim #the illusion of living #tiol #sammy lawrence #joey drew #I don't have a theory tag or anything #but here is this theory

[bertrumstrousers]

It’s Giandark’s Sabotage Theory O’Clock

I love my AU’s Berts with my whole heart but I’ve carried around this theory about canon Bertrum for a long while and finally have it in words. This is one of my theories regarding Bertrum’s involvement in the studio and I certainly don’t claim it’s canon, but it’s fun to think about.

TIOL implies that Bertrum knows the Bendy cartoons “well”, according to Joey, and I’m willing to agree that he does given that at the time, the cartoons were world-renowned, but it’s not clear whether Bertrum really cares about the studio or Joey or Bendy at all. He just “knows the toons well”, but whether or not he’s a fan isn’t elaborated on. It may be that he develops some modicum of actual interest in Bendy during his initial meeting with Joey, but it does seem—like Joey states—that their first meeting was pragmatic and primarily centered on business. Of course there’s the aside by Joey regarding Bertrum not understanding the illusion of living and apparently Bertrum sharing what is probably a big chunk of his life’s work, but otherwise, I’m inclined to believe Bertrum’s there to talk business.

It’s abundantly clear that at the time of his death Bertrum abhors Joey, but I don’t think he starts out that way based on how Joey describes their initial interactions. However “I don’t know, Joey, I just don’t know.” and Bertrum’s repeated need for reassurance that the concepts are his own make him sound coerced into the job. Joey is excellent at reading people and baiting with praise which he shows time and time again, and given Bertrum is an attention sponge with a ravenous ego, he’s incredibly easy to press.

Apparently the ego feeding is enough for him to ignore the “Bert” and “Bertie” nonsense so he signs on knowing that making a theme park for such a famous cartoon that he may or may not care about will be fantastic for his reputation. It also possibly alleviates a fear that he’ll be forgotten since he’s retired. (Whether or not being inebriated at the time swayed his decision is another story but I’m betting that did not help).

In his spring of 1940 “something wondrous” audio log it’s obvious he’s simultaneously passionate and incredibly upset about the project—whether or not that anger is justified is unclear. On one hand Bertrum built up a grand image of himself in his mind thus takes criticism poorly and it wouldn’t surprise me at all that he skews the truth in his favor when ranting to the tapes. On the other hand, Bertrum is knowledgeable and intelligent so Joey’s repeated diminutive treatment and dismissal of his ideas would understandably frustrate him. Either way, he is pissed.

So why does he stay?

Pride is a big part—how would it reflect on him, the Great Bertrum Piedmont, if he broke contract with a world renowned cartoon studio? Probably badly, but his issue is not with the studio, it’s with Joey. Bertrum also does not seem like he takes failure well. Either he leaves and takes a major blow to his prized reputation or stays and is unable to fulfill Joey’s impossible demands, thus fails.

On top of those two possible outcomes, I don’t think he expected Joey to take the credit for Bendyland given the promise of creative control, and when Joey does, he. Is. Not. Happy. About. It. If Bertrum can’t have his park to himself alone, then nobody can and he’ll make sure of it. He stays to defend his pride, shoot Joey down to avoid his own failure and his claim of “I’ll build you a park, bigger than you could ever possibly conceive” may imply a plan to bankrupt Joey. All because he’s upset about being lied to and manipulated.

Fortunately for Bertrum, amusement parks are extraordinarily expensive—in his mind, nobody would suspect him of wrongdoing.

So Bertrum starts blowing ridiculous amounts of money on this huge project partly because he has to and partly because he can. It’s shown that he does do so very effectively as well—the MacArthur bill for about $5k chews up payroll for a week and the budget is bogged down by the Special Projects spending, per the handbook’s documents from Grant. Either Joey’s happy to go along with his spending spree or Bertrum is strongarming Joey into giving him money to build Bendyland against his will under the guise of “you wanted a big theme park”. I do think it’s more the former given that Joey reads as incredibly excited about the development in DCTL.

Bertrum sabotaged Joey Drew Studios and helped it on its way to bankruptcy in a fit of hubris-fueled petty anger, but at what cost?

#batim #bendy #bendy and the ink machine #bertrum piedmont #joey drew #grant cohen #headcanon #theory #the giandark speaks #bertrum is a petty old man #the illusion of living #dreams come to life #tiol #dctl #alcohol mention #tw alcohol #death mention #tw death

[inkdemonapologist]

More thoughts on Sammy being involved in Alice’s creation

THIS PAST WEEKEND I FINISHED TIOL..... I UH, LOVED IT...... anyway I’ve talked about this before but now that I’ve read the book here’s all the pieces i could find supporting that conspiracy theory that Sammy had some role in Henry creating Alice Angel

games/audiologs: Sammy does not seem like the type to tell Susie that Alice would be “as popular as Bendy” just to flatter her, so he must’ve really believed it. He prefers Alice. (gee wow i wonder why Sammy might relate more to the clever and musically gifted character with a temper than the imp who takes nothing seriously...)

Sammy immediately insists the show needs a female character.

Joey is lying about when he hired Sammy. He claims it was 1931, he fixes his birthday to say he’s turning 30 instead of 29, and he keeps saying it was two years in, but he slips when he talks about the Stock Market crash “one year before,” -- and the party where they met happened in 1930 in real life. He hired Sammy in 1930, and he must have SOME reason for hiding that fact with such a blatant lie... the most obvious guess is that he wanted to erase the possibility of Sammy and Henry having met and worked together.

Early on, Joey rants briefly about some people mistakenly thinking that Bendy/Boris/Alice are Henry’s creation because Henry talked about the “creation process” with them; which means Henry was there for the creation of all three, even if Joey asserts the ideas originally came from him.

But in the Sammy chapters, when Sammy says they “need a girl” in their cast, Joey tells us he was sort of fudging when he told Sammy they had plans, because they didn’t know “what she would look like” -- which implies Henry hasn’t designed/helped design her yet.

“Seeing Bendy for the first time was a sort of magic I have never fully felt again. Boris was special, Alice was complicated, the Butcher Gang was a necessary foil.”

It’s possible that Henry and Sammy never met (iirc we don’t know WHEN in 1930 Henry left), that Henry designed Alice Angel before he left and Joey is lying when he said they didn’t know what she would look like just to distance Henry from the character. But with the way he muddles this and contradicts himself, and the implication that Henry might’ve had opportunity to talk about Alice Angel’s creation before leaving, it just seems REALLY possible to me that when Sammy wanted a female character, Henry obliged him or worked with him or included him in the process of concepting Alice Angel, and Joey was so deeply jealous that he rewrote time to change that.

(This makes the casting of Alice Angel’s voice EVEN MORE INTRIGUING, because Sammy’s insistence that he have full control of all the people involved in sound implies that Susie was his pick for Alice Angel -- and he seems to have thought highly of her. Allison, meanwhile, seems like Joey’s pick from the way he talks about her in the Employee’s Handbook, which..... glances at Allison’s weird behaviour in DCTL.... glances at Isabel Newsome.... )

#the illusion of living #sammy lawrence #Henry Stein #joey drew #we all write on the walls #also great Senry fuel for all u senry shippers out there #absolutely obsessed with the claim that isabel is joey's inspiration for alice

[inkskxtch]

Okay okay okay!! So I have a LOONG batim theory/idea I just wanna talk about for a bit since I’ve finally managed to organise my thoughts - I’ve seen it being discussed briefly by a few other people, but there’s one BIG detail people have been missing out that almost definitely connects and confirms the entire thing.

Spoilers for The Illusion Of Living!

-

So I’ll start from the start, where I first began thinking something was a little odd. In TIOL, Joey talks a bit about where he first met Sammy and Jack, when they were performing at an opening night party for a musical called Girl Crazy. Joey says he met them the night before his 30th birthday, which would mean the opening night was held in 1931 (since Joey was born in 1901).

WRONG! When I first read this part of the book I was curious to see if the musical was a real one, and it is! The thing that I didn’t understand though was that the musical was actually released in 1930, not 1931 like Joey says it was. I thought surely that was an error, right? NO IT WASNT!!! LET ME EXPLAIN!!!!!!!!!

(It also means that supposedly, Joey’s canon birthday is October 15th, because opening night for Girl Crazy was October 14th! But that’s not too important, and not a big part of the theory.)

The same night Joey meets Sammy & Jack, Sammy insists Joey takes them to see the studio and show them one of JDS’s short films. When he does, Sammy tells Joey he needs more female characters since at this point it’s only really Bendy, Boris, perhaps the Butcher Gang (though it might’ve been a bit early for them still), and random male one-time side characters.

Later in the autobiography, Joey talks more about how what Sammy said inspired him to create Alice Angel, after Henry had left so he had no input on the character and we can only really credit him for the creation of Bendy & Boris, despite what Joey says.

Now here’s where it gets fun!!! Sammy and Jack being hired in 1931 means they likely never met Henry, so Sammy’s whole “you look familiar to me!” line from Chapter 2’s ritual can only really be chalked up to Sammy being the one moving the cutouts and disappearing through the walls as usual throughout Chapter 1.

BUT!!!!!! BUT BUT BUT!!!!!!!!

A common theme throughout TIOL is that Joey is both an unreliable narrator AND a huge liar, so there’s a lot of information throughout the story that can be proven false pretty easily, like Henry not being the one behind Bendy etc. Since we know for sure that Sammy and Jack were hired in 1930 and not a year later, there’s a much higher chance they did have an opportunity to meet with Henry, and while I doubt Henry attended the opening night party, being the co-founder of the studio he definitely would’ve met them if they were employed while he was still working.

No doubt that upon meeting Henry, Sammy would’ve relayed his whole “not enough women” piece to him as the lead cartoonist. Henry definitely would’ve taken that criticism, and the two probably shared ideas around since she was going to be a very musical character, singing and whatnot.

BUT...there’s still more! What about Susie, you ask? I WILL EXPLAIN!!

When I tell y’all this franchise is ALL I think about im not kidding 😭

If we listen to Susie’s BATDR reveal tape, she says her and Sammy had been talking about a new character they were working on upstairs that she was most likely going to be given the role of. It’s pretty clear she’s talking about Alice Angel, since we know Susie was working as a voice actress for all kinds of random background characters before she got lucky with the role of Alice.

But wasn’t that audio log from Susie dated 1932, though? Wasn’t the original concept for Alice created around 1930? Yes and yes, sort of. Now this part is partially just a headcanon, but I do have something pretty definite to back me up here that I’ll get to soon. I reckon Henry designed Alice pretty early on in 1930 and Joey didn’t actually put the character to use until Henry was long gone, and Joey could take the character and make her more into what he would’ve wanted (and when he would’ve had a voice actress readily available).

Now here’s what I’m using to back myself up on that! In Dreams Come To Life, Norman says this and I’ll quote from the book:

Buddy: “He [Henry] created the big three, didn’t he?”

Norman: “Bendy and Boris. Even Alice, though they didn’t start featuring her until after Henry left.”

So my idea is pretty much correct, that while Alice was designed and given a basic character concept pretty early on while Henry still worked at the studio, she wasn’t shown in comics or cartoons until after Henry had left. I also hold the firm belief that in Henry’s hidden tape in Chapter 3, where he talks about how he’s working on a new character he thinks people are going to love, I definitely think he’s talking about Alice. Otherwise, why would it be found in the chapter focused around introducing her as a villain?

-

There’s not really a big end to this theory, but I just thought it’d be worth bringing it up to tie up any loose ends and conclude that Henry is almost definitely responsible for all 3 of the original characters, including Alice.

Joey is a big liar and so so dumb but by god did I enjoy how he was written, and TIOL as a whole

#the illusion of living #dreams come to life #joey drew #henry stein #sammy lawrence #susie campbell #alice angel #joey drew studios #bendy and the ink machine #batim #batim theories

[mwolf0epsilon]

Got any Bendy theories you're almost 100% sure might have solid evidence? I'm starving for some more theory material.

If you want more theory stuff I'd like to point you towards @dreamfisher-nux if you haven't already perused their blog. They've got some pretty neat theories!

In my mind there's more than enough new information to give some credence to a theory I've had since mine and @british-hero 's reading of TIoL. That being that: Henry never claimed Bendy as his own creation.

For those of you who haven't read TIoL or who don't completely trust anything Joey Drew says, I have to point out that it seems odd to me that Joey involves Abby Lambert in the portion of the novel pertaining Bendy's creation (it being her that invited Henry to provide assistance in designing the Little Devil Darling with Joey's instructions as a guide), and that lying about it would be a risk because she might discredit him. So to me, it feels like anything that involves Abby might be more fact than fiction.

That said, some people will likely point to Henry's desk and his singular in-game audio log as evidence that he created Bendy all on his own.

Henry's old desk with the denied sketch of a smiling Bendy.

Henry's audio log transcript.

It's been pretty accepted by now that Henry drew those sketches that Joey didn't approve of, and that he was talking about Bendy when he recorded the audio log. However, according to TIoL, Bendy was created before the studio was properly established, so I believe the character Henry was talking about was very likely either Boris or Alice (very likely Boris as he was actually a fan favourite unlike Alice). I'd also like to remind people that in DCTL, Buddy Lewek was given Henry's desk and had a bit of trouble drawing Bendy, so it's likely the sketches were made by him and not Henry.

Another piece of evidence denying this might be the final cell that Henry signed for Joey, pointing to Henry claiming Bendy as his own.

The signed cell Joey Drew keeps framed in his apartment.

However, I'd argue that signing something doesn't mean what you'd like it to mean. I think the only characters Henry likely had a claim to were Boris, Alice and the Butcher Gang, and that Bendy really was Joey's character.

Which means in a sense, the Ink people were right. The creator really did lie to them...

#Bendy and the Ink Machine #BATIM #Theory #Speculation #Henry Stein #Joey Drew

[inkylegacy]

Eyo pinned post

heyy so i was thinking and wow this blog has been around for... nearly three years? whack

so a lot of the people following me probably have no idea that “Inky Legacy” is in fact a whole au i’ve been working on all those years! (i dont blame you, i p much dipped for half that time and only posted small bits so far)

so here’s a quick explanation what Inky Legacy is all about:

Inky Legacy was originally just an interpretation of canon events I came up with after chapter 5 was released, with an attempt to turn a bunch of theories and speculations into some kind of coherent narrative

at some point between the books getting released and me getting a little carried away with said narrative i just accepted its a canon-adjacent AU

the story i’ve come up with for it is split into five acts plus the.... not quite spin-off, definitely not a sequel, however Sad, Lonely and Bad at Math (SLABAM for short) can be defined, which has a blog for it over here

there’s a masterpost here but tumblr kept breaking the links so i’m also making a new better masterpost on carrd over here

the acts of the story are split not by length but by whatever made the most sense to me narratively so don’t be fooled by the fact that there’s five, act 1 is about as long as the other four combined

i’ve finally figured out a way to work around my adhd and with how much progress i’ve made on writing the script for this just in the last month im tentatively gonna say the first comic should be ready for posting around the beginning of next year?

also i’m gonna do quick summaries of the acts under a cut to give a better overview of the actual stories without making this too long lmao:

Act 1 (Schere Stein Papier): From the early days of the studio to its closure, this act explores how everything spiralled. Mainly how Joey Drew spiralled tbh about 30-40% done with scripting?

Act 2 (Another One Bites the Dust): Yeah the song reference kinda tells you everything. Main focus is Henry returning to the studio 30 years and how he got trapped in the loops, with a few side stories about some of the other characters’ fates ~50% done scripting

Act 3 (The End): The shortest chapter of them all. The End of several things, including the loops

100% done scripting, 100% done storyboarding

Act 4 (The Beginning): How those still trapped in the studio deal with the end of the loops, and where everything goes from there idk like 20% scripted

Act 5 (Legacy): Something something how the actions of the parents condemn the child, aka just because the loops are over doesnt mean we’re done with cycles of abuse yet, aka i asked myself what the hell is supposed to happen after chapter 5 of batim ended Like That (aka the grand conclusion of the whole story or at least most of it) 50% scripted probably?

SLABAM: Purely written format with occasional illustrations, written by me and @ichaisme. There’s a separate tumblr to post the chapters just to keep things orderly at @sad-lonely-and-bad-at-math. Starts of the same as act 1 of Inky Legacy, but then instead explores how things could have gone had Joey chosen to actually try and be a good boss. More canon to IL than that makes it sound, but how the two stories tie together is a spoiler for both hard to tell a percentage bc on one hand the first few chapters are published and we have a general plan and several outlines, on the other hand i still have to read tiol to figure out the timeline more

and thats it thats my 1am attempt at explaining this

#batim #inky legacy au #if theres questions i cry happy tears over getting asks #also if my secret satan sees this: hi half my reason for making this was not hopelessly confusing u

[youllallriseintheink]

What’s your thoughts on detective Sinclair? Do you think he would make an appearance in the game? I mean...why would they add him 

I don't think they'll put Sinclair in the game. Just by the logic of it- Sinclair is someone who was only briefly in Joey's life, years if not decades before the ink machine was installed. It seems like Joey for the most part sacrificed anyone who was available during the studio's run, so he wouldn't have gone out of his way to sacrifice a man who had never been a part of the studio. By the time Joey was sacrificing people he had a personal vendetta against (like Henry and possibly Tom and Allison), Sinclair would likely already be dead of natural causes- he is much older than Joey, after all. Finally, it's likely that the next game takes place in a sketch dimension created by Nathan, who never met Sinclair.

As for why they added Sinclair... well, I think that the theme of the entire murder mystery arc was how people are not always valued as people, and Joey values people even less than most do. I'm about to write a small English essay, here, so if you only want to know about Sinclair's purpose, skip to the bolded section. Also, I don't have my book on hand to reference, so I apologize for any details I get wrong.

The murder in TIOL was committed by a woman whose relative had died in the war, and was committed against a man who photographed soldiers in a way that glorified war and sacrifice. This same woman terrorized a group of people who attended an art show of his photography by creating an emergency. Her motive was to show people that violence is not glorious, and that glorifying things that hurt people is wrong, because individual people are valuable.

Joey is her opposite in this regard. From the age of ten, he has viewed people as characters. His views on other people are shown in how he talks about the murder victim. The murder victim was a mediocre photographer and had no relevance to Joey's life, and so Joey sees his life as nearly worthless, going so far as to say that the most important thing he did in his life was to become a character in Joey's story and to inspire the name of Joey's cartoon character. He says this within paragraphs of describing the mourning family he was taken from, one member of whom Joey kept in touch with and received money from years later. Essentially, Joey is incapable of seeing inherent value in people- their only value, like the value of fictional characters, is in the "narrative purpose" they serve in his own life.

Sinclair's purpose within this theme is to show that Joey doesn't even respect his heroes as people. As soon as they fail to live up to their "narrative purpose" (in Sinclair's case, being someone Joey could look up to in every way), Joey stops caring about them, as he did when Sinclair proved himself to be less above-it-all than Joey thought. Joey doesn't just have high standards for people- to win Joey's affection is worthless, because he will still view you in a twisted way.

And of course, we already know dreamfisher-nux's theory on Henry, the narrative purpose that he served, and how he failed it, leading Joey to gravely resent him...

#bendy and the ink machine #joey drew #detective sinclair #creepyalienghost #the illusion of living #thanks for the ask #analysis

[mickeys-malarkey]

Pt. 3/3: My BATDR Timeline & Plot Twist Theories!

First, I think both BATIM and BATDR take place sometime between 1978 and 1991. I already suspected BATDR was happening in the ‘80s based on the fact that card readers – which have featured in many of the environment screenshots we've seen – were invented in 1979...

…and Audrey's clothes and hairstyle look very 1980s.

Then they released the images of Audrey's office, where her chair and desk lamps also look very 1980s, and the wallpaper and flooring looks pretty 1970s…

…and @inkdemonapologist pointed out that the type of bankruptcy we see documents for in Joey's apartment didn't exist until 1978…

…and I remembered that Joey's apartment also had a newspaper whose headline took place in the future— Princess Diana's 30th birthday which, as TetraBitGaming on YouTube pointed out, would be in 1991 since Princess Diana was born in 1961. She should be two years old if BATIM were really taking place in 1963!

Maybe, at the time, they didn't mean for these two to be clues, since they seem to have rolled the date backwards a bit from the newspaper one; but at this point it feels pretty clear when BATDR takes place, to me. And I'm even more certain than I already was, after finding out that this image from the JDS website…

…is titled “museum” (good work yoinking it, @halfusek /gen 👍🏻), that we know the ink dimension's new home: Nathan Arch Sr.'s private Joey Drew Studios museum that he mentioned he was curating in TIOL (meaning it's existed since around 1972).

“Over the years, I have collected every single piece of the studio memorabilia I could find to restore it to its former glory, to create, in a sense, a private museum that gleamed with the true vision of Joey Drew…” ~ Nathan Arch, The Illusion of Living, pg. 2

Also, besides the fact the museum image has clearly aged, here's some more evidence that at least a few years have probably passed since Bendy was purchased: it generally takes a fair bit more time (years!!) to make movies/documentaries, as Archgate Pictures seems to have made about Joey, than it does to make shorts.

As for BATIM, I think that time has been moving as normal outside of the loop, we were just seeing a repeat of that significant day in 1963; Henry and Joey have been trapped in the ink dimension for somewhere between twenty and thirty years, and the bankruptcy paperwork and Princess Diana newspaper were pieces of the real world leaking into the memory. This explains how there seems to be evidence of Audrey in BATIM and how BATDR is still supposedly neither sequel nor prequel to BATIM despite all the evidence that it takes place long after 1963! They're happening at the same time!! I wonder if Audrey is the daughter of the little girl we hear at the end of BATIM? So, Henry's (great-)granddaughter or Joey's (great-)great-niece?

Now, onto my big theory: the plot twist.

If they handle it right, it would be really, really cool if “break the cycle” really doesn't just mean “end the time loop” but also “break the cycle of abuse/trauma” and a lot of the huge cast of not-so-innocent characters wind up with the potential to get redemption arcs. I have an idea of exactly how they might be planning on even providing the opportunity for Joey.

Victor McKnight commented this on his Artistic Hallowing music video and pinned it:

Those last two sentences. “Make sure you're watching every second! You don't want to miss any vital information. 😉” Does that not sound to anyone else like he's got insider information? Now, I want y'all to watch these music videos that either Victor himself or his brother Noah were suspiciously involved in all of (and one of which is supposedly a BATDS song but for some reason involves Audrey) and tell me if you notice any patterns.

This one seems to be a duet between Sammy and the Ink Demon, both singing to Audrey. Sammy mostly sings in the default sepiatone, asking us things like “Can you see me? Can you feel me?” (that feels so… sad… and desperate…) and telling us things like “make sense of the consequence we witnessed on that day” (Excuse me, you're telling me that there was a consequence for something on a specific, significant day that we witnessed?? 👀) The demon, on the other hand, mostly sings when the grayscale effect is on, and seems to just be playing a stereotypical villain roll until you notice “be forced to believe what I see” (why would we even give a crap about what you're seeing /srs? How the actual heck would we see what you're seeing /gen? You don't even have eyeballs, bro /j) and “be damned in this evil received” (how do you receive evil that damns you? Maybe by being abused and becoming an abuser in response?).

Two apparently-separate characters singing with the same voice but very different tones and outlooks on the situation, still both singing to Audrey, in this one. One mostly sings in the default sepiatone, again, at first seeming more hopeful, helpful, and friendly until you start noticing ominous comments like “you've made mistakes, accept the change. You will be punished too” (*incoherent noises* 🚨🚨) and “welcome to my dream . . . you still think you are safe in my dream.” The other mostly sings when the grayscale effect is on, again, and seems much more aggressive and seductive until you start noticing comments like “take up your weapons, just leave my friends be” (why is this stereotypically evil-seeming character both telling us to take up weapons, not just letting us have them, and asking us to leave his friends alone with them?).

More hints that the demon who will rise and presumably is most important to the story is linked to grayscale, in this one.

And, in this one, Sammy's asking if the grayscale-linked demon is the one who will set him free (as he claims to be in the first two videos).

Across all four of these first videos, there seems to be an overall “things change when we switch from the default sepiatone to grayscale” and “grayscale is dangerous and seems hopeless but it's important and linked to truth and freedom” theme…

…You're telling me that Sammy and his followers' past (BATIM?) selves were worshipping an imposter demon…? And the truth will be revealed in BATDR…?

Hum, hum, hum… fascinating. I'd noticed the sepiatone vs. grayscale split and imposter vs. true savior thing long before I read the books; for the longest time, I thought it meant we would be dealing with a Henry-Bendy and a Joey-Bendy, as I've been seeing people theorizing. But then I read TIOL, and discovered what I think is evidence that this info is indeed canon and was not left on the cutting room floor while BATDR was in development limbo.

Nathan makes a very strange note on Joey's story about the Sparkle Unicorn speakeasy…

“…I remember this night well. Though I remember it being at the Bee Room, gold and black, not silver as the main design aesthetic. Doesn't really make much of a difference though, I suppose.” ~ Nathan Arch, The Illusion of Living, pg. 44 (emphasis added)

Nathan remembers that night in sepiatone, Joey remembers it in grayscale.

Now, I've seen all kinds of theories all over about how Wilson actually “banished/killed the ink demon…” “Wilson took advantage of some sort of blip in Bendy's existence that happened when Joey died,” “Wilson got rid of him by purifying him and turning him into Dapper Bendy,” “Wilson got rid of him by fusing him with either Henry or Joey,” “Wilson got rid of him by trapping him in Henry's loop,” “he didn't, Wilson's just another liar manipulating everyone,” etc…

What if we're looking at this from the wrong angle? What if the point is that, whatever happened, neither of the BATDR Bendys is the original soulless monster we see in BATIM and the books? What if, whether they share a body or are separate, there are two human souls involved here? What if one of those souls is the “new evil” in the ink dimension, not Wilson, who may have been meddling in ink dimension affairs since 1963?

Going back to the time frame I propose BATDR is happening in… Joey was born in 1901, which means that if Nathan was 18 or 19 when Joey was just turning 16, then he was born in 1899 or 1898. So, in 1978, Nathan would've been 79 or 80, and in 1991 he would've been 92 or 93. Especially considering the clues that point towards Nathan having been a smoker, it wouldn't surprise me if he's straight-up already dead in BATDR. Mayhaps for 211 days? During Loop 414…? Could this be why the BATIM loop is different, with Henry apparently not remembering anything that previous versions of himself could? The now-previous owner of their prison has died of old age and/or lung cancer? And could that be why the JDS museum has fallen into bankruptcy? Has Nathan Jr. taken over and isn't as ruthless a businessman as his father?

Itsjustjord on YouTube pointed this out in his trailer reaction, which when he said it set my Clue Radar off so that I went to the trailer again to get a closer look. And… well… *clears throat*

…Do y'all see this weird effect over Dapper Bendy? Compared to every other character we see in the trailer as well as the environment around him, does it not look as if we're seeing him, specifically, through some sort of cartoony filter? Maybe it'll only be in circumstances like this (far away in weird lighting) that the edges of the illusion will fray in-game, based on the other teaser image we have of him, but it definitely looks off to me.

Especially with what I now suspect Allison and Susie's situations were in relation to Nathan, I think that the ink creatures’ perfection vs. imperfection has nothing to do with how pure/good vs. impure/evil their hearts are as we've been lead to believe/is the conventional surface-level reading, but instead how intact vs. broken their hearts are. I think that the more horrific the ink being's appearance, the more the soul inside was abused while it was alive. Allison isn't a perfect Alice because she's a better person, it's because she obeyed Nathan and wasn't made to suffer as severely as Susie, who Nathan chose to be his next Isabel. So, why is one new Bendy (apparently created after Joey lost everything, I suspect even being made to watch his Shoulder Angel's murder before being murdered himself) so much scarier than the original (created before Joey lost everything) and the other so goshdarn perfect, proportions and all?

Maybe the banning of everything related to Sammy's demon cult and Henry under Wilson's rule has to do with his decades-old mission to keep the Creators from joining forces, as well as everyone including himself feeling like they're finally free from The Great Puppet Master?

I love Dapper Bendy's design as much as everyone else!! He's positively adorable, and it would also be a nice outcome if the baby boy is exactly what he seems and just a precious lil friend to love forever; but I theorize that Dapper Bendy is the perfectly sane, untraumatized, and truly evil one, that (assuming we actually get choices in BATDR, unlike in BATIM) his route, no matter how things seem in the moment, is the wrong one, that he's Nathan. And I think Freaky Teeth Bendy (that's been my nickname for him since we first saw him and I'm sticking to it lolol) is the damaged as heck but able to be saved one, that his route is the correct one, that he's Joey. I also think that we won't get to see either demon for what they really are – won't be able to get the True, Broken Cycle, “Joey's Redeemed & Nathan Faces Justice” Ending – unless we somehow unlock Grayscale Mode like we could in BATIM and gain the ability to see Joey's truth. Until then, we'll be seeing the demons the way Nathan wants us to see them. Through Nathan's tainted, gaslighting, sepiatone filter.

If I'm right, the fact that they did choose these color palettes is so perfectly poetic~! Sepiatone is what happens when black-and-white images have been chemically altered for preservation purposes; Nathan's altered our perception of himself, Joey, and all the events surrounding them, and his version of events is much more resilient. Meanwhile, Joey's would be more pure and unaltered but easily destroyed— including by himself, with his Illusion of Living coping mechanism… The only thing that could make it more perfect is if not only do we get to see Henry in BATDR, but when we do he's an angelic toon… *Vibrates with excitement*

Please, please, please, JDS, let me be right about where you're going with this!! Cause this would genuinely be so freaking cool…!! 🙏🏻 I hope that we eventually get to “rejoice with our founders,” as Artistic Hallowing says, when they're reunited.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, rofl. Congratulations on making it through the ramblings of a hyped AuDHD fangirl (though, I guess we already knew you were capable, if you've read TIOL. I could do a whole nother rant on evidence that Joey's basically confirmed canonically ADHD(+?), my freaking gosh). 😝

Read the Rest of the Original Analysis/Theory: Part One • Part Two • Unexpected Part Four

BATDR Analysis/Post-Playthrough Theory Revision: Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four

#long post #spoiler warning #book analysis #game analysis #book theory #game theory #bendy and the ink machine #batim #dreams come to life #dctl #the illusion of living #tiol #crack up comics #bendy: the lost ones #bendy: tlo #bendy and the dark revival #batdr #batdr trailer #batdr theory #joey drew #nathan arch #henry stein #allison pendle #thomas connor #wally franks #bertrum piedmont #sammy lawrence #tw: abuse

[halfusek]

Headcanon/Theory? (TIOL spoilers): What if the reason that Sammy recognizes Henry in-game is because Joey has a picture of him in his office (or just around somewhere)? Though, that also means Sammy would have had to see it often enough to say it's familiar, so...

That’s possible but Sammy remembering Henry could also just be a side effect of the loops

I don’t think Joey would just keep Henry’s picture around if he was so angry and upset over Henry leaving. Joey keeps up this facade that he is “glad that Henry left”. And any documentation about Henry working at JDS was apprently cleared out too according to the archives in BATIM, so I’d say it’s most likey just Sammy remembering Henry from the loops, Joey misremembering things/lying for some reason, or it’s a plot hole asddajkask

#but i doubt theyd make a plot hole that big so id go for any other answer #bendy and the ink machine #the illusion of living #bendy spoilers #halfask

[lucky-dreamfisher]

Hey! Just finished playing BATDR and love reading your theories. I'll admit, im confused about one thing. How do the lores between the book and games not line up?? They both make sense to me and look like they work together.

Basically nothing from DCTL or TLO has been referenced in the game. None of the characters or events in the books are referenced in any way and you lose nothing by not reading them.

DCTL builds up the character of Dot with Buddy strongly believing that she will come back and save them all, and TLO makes a big deal out of the antidote to the ink which can be used to turn the ink creatures back to humans. None of it is in the game.

In the books Thomas is said to lack formal education, but in BATDS Wally calls him a "College Kid"

Thomas also says that Joey owns the rights to everything Gent creates, but that's not true according to the games.

In BATDR, Gent owns the rights to everything.

Joey's personality and goals are also very different. In the game we're told that Joey's motivation for creating the inkworld was to torture Henry, but in TIOL he talks about wanting to create this all along for the purpose of entertaining the masses. We also see him personally kill people, including children. None of this is ever mentioned in the game, though it's a big thing to sweep under the rug if you're giving a character a redemption storyline.

And finally, Sammy has a coffin in BATIM, but in the book he physically transforms into ink with his whole body, and TLO established that transformed people are still alive and can be changed back into humans with the use of an antidote. So Joey's choice to keep Sammy trapped in the ink world is essentially keeping a human being prisoner, who could've been set free at any moment if Joey chose to let it happen. That doesn't really line up with the narrative about his supposed change of heart in BATDR.

To sum it up, the books now feel like merch. Something you can buy if you're a fan of the franchise and want to own something from it, but not something you're intended to use for lore and theorycrafting purposes.

#bendy spoilers #bendy and the dark revival #bendy and the ink machine #bendy books #ask

[adobe-outdesign]

Any ideas as to why Nathan might hate Henry? (Also, it’s cool because this suggests that either Henry has worked for him, or that Nathan formed his opinion on Henry by messing with the sketch dimension.)

I’d need to read TIOL to make a theory. He seems to like Joey and his ideas - maybe he views Henry as “ruining” the potential of his dreams?

#I'll read tiol when the physical copy comes out #bendy and the ink machine #batim: illusion of living #nathan arch #henry stein #outdesign analyzes things #hardcorecryptidwitch #Ask

[threadedsafetypin]

Sammy Lawrence Having Imposter Syndrome? It’s More Likely Than You Think! (Part 2/2)

This is a conversation I had with @inkdemonapologist on discord, and I’ve compiled our back and forth into a post. I was theorizing about how Sammy might have genuinely had a hard time coming up with compositions at the studio. And a very interesting conversation ensued. Link to Part One

I would like to note that the concept of Joey emotionally blackmailing Sammy with praise and coercing him into a situation where he feels trapped and increasingly pushed to the breaking point is pretty much just...... Joey’s standard MO for his employees, actually. Joey finds people, flatters them, emphasizes how much He Believes In Them And What They’ll Bring To His Studio, makes grand promises, then turns around once they’re hired and works AGAINST them and their best interests in service of his own. But specifically in a way Joey can always frame as THEIR fault, not his. Then there’s Allison remark to Buddy in DCTL: “I think Mister Drew likes finding people who are talented but also need the job. Who really need the job.” But of course, Sammy doesn’t really need the job, right? Well....  He sure didn’t react to Joey’s job offer the way someone who DIDN’T really need a job would. Joey says he wants to hire them at his studio and Sammy demands to see the place IMMEDIATELY as proof Joey isn't lying to them. Jack, meanwhile, is basically bouncing with excitement the entire time and keeps emphasizing to Joey that he’s not difficult and requires very little to do his job. Sammy and Jack spend the studio tour acting like they’re silently waiting to see if the other is going to bring up any dealbreakers, and neither do. Both of them are obviously very, very eager to take the job. For all Sammy’s outward suspicion, "here is a room with a piano, yes I promise to put in a projector later" is all that he needed to get on board. Along with the promise of good pay. Sammy and Jack both REALLY want to get paid. 

So like, here’s where I start really running off into my own headcanons but I’m gonna bet to you that when Joey meets Sammy and Jack, they are not in the most financially secure position. Although we’re never told this, I think it can be reasonably assumed that Sammy and Jack were part of Tin Pan Alley, and were in the game of songwriting and song-plugging. It’s literally what Jack does at the party; he plugs an original song that he and Sammy wrote. It was very much a hustling sort of job with a lot of competition. Then Joey shows up and offers them work at a studio; a job takes them out of the grind of selling songs and lets them just focus on writing them. Not to mention this all happened at the opening party for Girl Crazy? Music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin? George Gershwin was also a former Tin Pan Alley plugger who by then had several hits, and Irving Berlin (probably the most famous 20th century composer to come out of Tim Pan Alley) had long gone from working in at a Tin Pan Publishing House to founding his own. Not to mention that as radios became ever more common household objects, it didn’t necessarily take large quantities of purchased sheet music for music to reach people anymore. Tin Pan Alley was far from dead, mind you, but there was the sense that its heyday was receding. 

All of which to say, OF COURSE Sammy and Jack would jump at Joey’s offer. I think the prospect of working for a studio was incredibly enticing and probably what they thought would be their own big break. Jack certainly seems happy enough in his audio logs. Or at least, isn’t stressed about the work itself. This makes sense, as Jack’s role of “write lyrics for Sammy’s songs” hasn’t changed the way Sammy’s role has drastically changed. As the person fully in charge of everything, Sammy now manages Jack as an employee, which is a major shift in their relationship that I don’t think either of them ever really knew how to acknowledge with each other so they just.......didn’t. And if Sammy can't even admit to HIMSELF that this is job difficult for him, he definitely can't admit it to Jack. Even though all this would increasingly put walls between him and Jack that weren't there before and Sammy probably gets MORE defensive and stubborn around Jack than others because he thinks Jack would 100% be the person who most knows how easy this SHOULD be for him and he's SURE Jack can see he's slipping..... 

And like, Sammy not wanting to let Jack down only to end up doing exactly that in his attempt to try is such a Sammy thing to do. We do know that SOMETHING was happening that caused Jack to fall further and further out of the loop with Sammy and get pushed towards the sidelines. To the point where Jack didn’t know one of their songs had won an award until someone else told him a month after the fact. Someone who presumably wasn’t Sammy. Which, in this theory, makes complete sense. Sammy doesn’t want an award for writing music for the studio. Joey taking credit for other people’s work is just what Joey does, but imagine Sammy being relieved in this instance. Being actually sort of secretly horrified of being heavily associated with Bendy and the threat of having his Most Well Known work being the arena he’s least comfortable in. Meanwhile, NONE of this comes across from the outside. Sammy and Jack’s song did legitimately win an award. Sammy’s still doing great work. He’s just murdering himself trying to live up to how good at this he thinks he should be and simultaneously panicking at his every success. Like, okay he’s established at JDS but he cant EVER LEAVE because Joey has hyped him up so much as being Perfect For This and actually he’s barely keeping up and if he goes somewhere else the jig will be up. 

This all leaves Jack in a pretty awful position. Even if Jack eventually can tell that Sammy’s struggling with composing music for the animations, there's no way for them to actually have that conversation. The sad thing is that I don’t think it has anything to do with a lack of trust in each other. Based on their interactions in TIOL, I think they trusted each other a lot, and I don’t think that was what eroded between them. It’s up for interpretation, of course. Joey claims from the night he met them that there was tension there. You can view their relationship was one that was already strained and JDS simply exacerbated what was already there until the two grew entirely apathetic towards each other. That’s not how I see it at all (YOU FOOL THEY’RE MARRIED) but you can interpret them this way. But to me, it doesn’t take much to read their relationship as one where they didn't bring up their problems at the studio BECAUSE they wanted to try and keep their partnership as intact as possible. If they just keep their focus strictly on notes and lyrics, then they don’t have to face up to the fact that their partnership has shifted into something different than it was. Not out of anything they did WRONG, just out of the inherent nature of Jack becoming one employee out of many in the music department for Sammy to manage, and that Sammy is in a position of power and authority over Jack. But the result is the both of them putting the burden of maintaining their status quo entirely on themselves in the sincere belief they are doing what’s necessary to keep their relationship intact. Even as it becomes evident that they ARE in fact drifting further apart.

But if Sammy had ever felt safe enough to admit to Jack how much he was struggling, I think Jack would have told Sammy in a heartbeat that they didn’t have to stay. Sammy makes a big deal about how it’s a tough industry and only the strong survive. He’s put all his worth in being able to Take It even as others fail. And so when he’s struggling, he can’t blame anything else or demand better conditions. He HAS to survive. But I think that if Jack had looked him in the eye and told him that he DIDN’T have to survive in a job that was obviously hurting him..... if that had come from Jack specifically..... I think the outcome for the two of them could have been different.

#bendy and the ink machine #batim #the illusion of living #tiol #sammy lawrence #joey drew #i don't have a theory tag or anything #but here is this theory