In Space With Markiplier and the Medium of Choice
*This essay contains spoilers for In Space With Markiplier parts 1 and 2.*
In Space With Markiplier was, and I am in no way exaggerating, a masterpiece of not only visual storytelling, but interactive storytelling that I truly believe could only exist to its fullest potential on youtube itself. Everything relates back to youtube, from the collection of guest stars and in-jokes, to the fully interactive and self-referential style of storytelling, and even the theme of the story itself; youtube is integral to every aspect of the project. And I donāt just mean that in a corporate way because YouTube funded the show, Iām referring to the medium of youtube.
Thereās an expression coined by media theorist Marshall McLuhan: āThe Medium is the Message.ā What that essentially means is that the type of media chosen to deliver a message or story has a significant impact on the message itself. To rip off an example from Lindsay Ellis, the story of Les Miserables is the same story every time, but the way the story is told and how you react to it are different when in the book vs. the tv mini-series vs. the broadway/west end musical. Those are three different mediums, and each one is able to highlight different elements of the message in different ways. One is not inherently better than another, but some mediums are better for certain kinds of stories.
YouTube, just like film or the stage or Netflix streaming, is a medium. And while a story about a Captain and a Head Engineer trying to save their ship from universal collapse could be told in a book, on a mini-series, or in a Broadway musical, the way it was told here in ISWM was unique to the medium of youtube. When a creator is working in a medium they arenāt very comfortable in, such as a stage director trying to make a movie or an actor who doesnāt have the best voice trying to sing in a musical, it can sometimes be distracting. But on the other hand, when a creator knows a medium well, the medium doesnāt just fade into the background, it is highlighted and celebrated by the work.
And Iāve never seen a creator really use the full potential of YouTube as a medium quite like Mark has.
Everything about ISWM uses the power of youtube to its full potential, from the numerous guest stars and cameos that a viewer familiar with these youtubers would appreciate, to the use of jokes and callbacks to Markās own youtube channel, to of course the most iconic thing about ISWM, and all of Markās work in the āMarkiplier Connected Universe,ā the concept of You the Viewer as a Character within the world, making choices.
While Mark isnāt the first filmmaker to ever use first person perspective (letās not forget the 2016 experimental action film āHardcore Henryāā¦.oh you did forget? Thatās ok, everyone did), he IS the first who, in my opinion, really used that perspective to its greatest potential. In Hardcore Henry, Henry is still, well, Henry. The experience is immersive, but youāre still seeing the world through someone elseās eyes. Mark, ever since A Date With Markiplier, invites you to explore his universe through your eyes, literally. In every first person Markiplier project, the viewer is not just a bystander, they are an integral part of the story, with a role to play and, most importantly, Choices to Make.
Choose Your Own Adventure books are a medium, just like any other. And just like any other medium, it has a type of story that it tells particularly well. In this case, that type is of course a story with multiple endings or outcomes, as the reader chooses what decisions the characters (who are often first person self inserts) make along the way. These books bridge the gap between reading a story and playing a game, creating an adventure that, as the title implies, is yours to choose. And YouTube is the perfect medium to bring that style of storytelling to life.
A Heist With Markiplier is a prime example of this; with thirty one unique endings and settings that take you everywhere from the sewers beneath a museum to a pirate ship on the high seas to a zombie apocalypse wasteland, the choices that you make as a viewer fundamentally change the course of the adventure. Heist is a great example of both a series that could only exist on youtube, due to its interactive nature and use of annotations, and of a choose your own adventure story. However, at the end of the day, a choose your own adventure story isnāt the first medium you think of if youāre aiming to tell a story that packs a certain level of emotional punch.
This is where Space comes in.
See, In Space With Markiplier takes both the medium of youtube and the medium of a choose your own adventure and, in scientific terms, makes them its bitch. It presents itself in the framework of a choose your own adventure, but as you quickly begin to realize, and as one of the characters asks you point blank, ādo any of our choices matter?ā No matter what you do in part one, no matter what path you go down or what choices you make, your eventual fate is inevitable. The universe will collapse, swallowed up by the wormhole, and every living thing in existence is swallowed up with it.
And then comes part two, the universe is āresetā and we get a second chance to fix things. But as Dorene so wisely says to us in part one, you canāt really have second chances. The universe is still dying; a mass of different timelines and realities are colliding together and everyone in them is being thrown haphazardly between universes, and your only chance to stop it is to resolve the paradox. And then, lo and behold, just like in part one, we find that at the end of the day, not all of our choices matter. We always end up at the same places, over and over again, eventually confronting Mark (or is it Mark who confronts us?) at the warp core one final time.
Iāve seen some people (read: one person, but the comment really stuck with me) say that they didnāt understand the overwhelmingly hyped response to Space. That while yes, the production quality was even higher and it was clear there was so much passion on display for the project, that it was less impressive because it āreusesā so many videos and only has One ending, whereas Heist had over thirty. And to be honest? I can see the argument that Heist is a better Choose Your Own Adventure story, since it, you know, actually lets you choose your own adventure. But this is where we come back to our conversation about the Medium being the Message.
Heist is a Choose Your Own Adventure story.
Space is a story that uses the choose your own adventure medium to tell a story about Choice.
The fact that thereās only one ending to ISWM isnāt a failure, itās the entire point. Youāve been trying to fix this problem, over and over and over, in dozens of different universes, hundreds of lifetimes. When you find Lady in the void at the end of the universe and she says that there must still be a way to save everyone, if you look at the video description it says: āYouāre not the only one making choices, Captain. Youāre not aloneā¦ you never were.ā Lady has been traveling through the multiverse just the same as you, trying desperately to undo the damage caused, and in their last moments, they wonder if maybe sheād done things differently, she could have succeeded. Both Old Mark and the Mark rebuilding the warp core at the end express the same sentiment: if only theyād made different choices, if only they could try again, maybe things would be different. But youāve already made every possible choice, and none of it mattered at all, right? Well, not quite.
The final choice of the experience is āLet Goā or āHold On.ā Clinging to Mark before heās sucked back in time, you have one final choice, one final chance to end things. Mark pleads with you, begs you to let him go so that he can go back again and try to stop this all from happening, but we already know the results of that. An endless loop of suffering caused by a wormhole out of control that none of you can stop. And if you choose āLet Go,ā the cycle continues again. You loop back all the way to the beginning again, to make the same choices and get the same results. Ā
In this entire story, across both parts and all the countless universes that you visit, thereās only ONE choice that matters. And itās the choice to āHold On.ā Holding on and refusing to let Mark go back in time stops the destruction of both the Invincible and of the universe, and Mark breaks down as he realizes that all this time, it was his fault that everybody died, his fault that the paradox was created. But now, thanks to you, everything is over, and the universe can reset again, back to its original state. This is the only true ending, because while not all choices matter, some choices are everything, and this choice, to stick by Mark until the end and ultimately stop him, is what saves the entire universe.
And those themes, of choice and the illusion of choice and how our choices affect the people around us? They are enhanced so greatly by the use of youtube as an interactive medium. While I do believe that the story would have still been good if it were told in a more traditional way, everything about the interactive, self-insert style that Mark used enhanced ISWM to greatness, right down to the use of fake annotations to show reality collapsing as the wormhole consumed your choices right from under you. And thatās all without even touching on the metanarrative, and how youtube affects and enhances that.
I could go on, about the story and the characters and the themes and the ARG between parts 1 and 2, but Iāll go ahead and leave this where it is for now; if youād like to hear my thoughts on the rest of the elements of ISWM Iāll probably make another post about it, it has consumed my life after all. But for now, have a fantastic day, and remember, if you see a wormhole out there, remember! PEDL!
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