I really liked Iron Lung. Unfortunately it led me down a rabbit hole of watching Markipliers other projects that I had missed because I kinda dropped off of watching him ages ago. On the plus side, it's reminded me *why* I liked his creative ideas in the first place. On the other it has made my brain feel fueled on nitro so I'm having trouble even getting sleep. I've watched Date, Who Killed, and In Space and I'm halfway-ish through Heist and I'm going to put some of my thoughts here.
I'm glad I started with In Space. Technically I watched Who Killed when it first dropped along with the stream the team did after it. I even had merch. I was very excited. But that was it. I didn't watch Date, the idea made me uncomfortable at the time. Then I kinda drifted away and missed everything after that. For a lot of reasons, mostly personal.
I've also seen the stream that Amy and Mark did for Space which I'm especially glad I watched. In it, Mark is pretty clear that 'Engineer Mark' isn't 'Actor Mark', but also implies that Actor Mark might be Engineer Mark. Which would follow the logic of In Space part 2 having a LOT of Marks in it that seem to have little or no memory of what's happening unless reminded, and even when they do, they don't always immediately understand what's happening fully.
The actual mechanics of the wormhole/warp crystal on us and everyone isn't super strict. I feel like if I really sat down with the script and the footage I could probably work it out, but frankly I think that's missing the forest for the trees. The only thing about the mechanism that seems to matter is that we, the Captain, are the only ones that have any semblance of control over when things warp. Everyone else is still making choices, still effecting things, but they don't really have control over getting out of a situation before it goes really bad like we do, they don't seem to be choosing 'left or right?' like we do.
I'm not going to give Mark some accolades that I don't think are due. I don't think this has been a plot point he's had in his head for the last 10 years of putting these various projects together. But I do think it's a talent to see what you've made and capitalize on it rather then overriding it. In all the earlier projects most characters know you. Or at the very least, all of the Mark characters know you. You're a dear friend. But it's never specified why or how. I don't recall even a throwaway line about how you were childhood friends or anything. It's familiarity without explanation. That explanation could very well be that we have been Captain the whole time. This does require us to suspend our disbelief due to not seeing the gloves and crystal any time we saw our hands, but again, I don't think this was planned from the beginning.
Insert joke here about that meaning that the Captain is Chica because of the True Ending of Date. Technically Mark already wrote that joke into Space but apparently a lot of people didn't see it? At least I think he or Amy said that during the stream, maybe that's not true at this point since I'm so behind the times here.
More interesting to me is not the idea that we're specifically Captain from Space, but that every iteration of Mark, asks us questions, gives us choices, takes away our choices, needs *us* to move the plot forward not just because it's an interactive game hosted on youtube, but because he can't. Not in any way that won't just fling him into a random new place doing some other random thing that he can't control. This would also make the different between prior Marks and Engineer Mark very clear to me, at least. Something Mark said in that post Space stream was that in prior projects he had basically led us around, but in Space he wanted us to be making our own choices. To see that our choices *matter* and effect other people, even if they're just fictional. Engineer Mark leads us a little at the beginning, sure, but pretty much immediately you can lose him entirely and make your own choices off in other places, and even when he's there it's very clear that he's following YOU. In comparison, Heist Mark seems downright tyrannical in how he tries to bully you into making choices.
I think that Actor Mark isn't just a version of Engineer Mark that is self aware enough to understand that, but that Actor Mark has drifted away from his purpose of trying to fix the ship and is now just... Out for himself? After his own freedom? I'm unsure, and this is all speculation so that's really ok. The answer of his overall motivation is secondary tbh.
The implication of Actor Mark being, effectively, an Engineer Mark that let his selfish and vain side win is interesting. the idea that in Heist there is an ending where he willingly lets himself die to save us anyway is also interesting. I think it plays nicely with Mark's overall vision of 'no heroes or villains, just people doing what they think is right and making mistakes' and with a throughline in all his work that he even dragged into Iron Lung that the game did not have in the slightest; There is always hope. Even if it's small or fragile. Actor Mark was originally named 'Asshole Mark' for a very good reason, but that doesn't mean he's just a monster. He's still from the same root as Engineer Mark.
Of course, go through the stories with wide tooth comb and you hit a million snags on all of this. That's ok. I actually really don't like hardcore theorycrafting about other people's art. I think it can be neat to talk about with friends, but I often find it really misses the emotions, the themes, and the conversation with the artists and the art if all you focus on is the 'logic' of how a fictional world works. But I do like when theorycrafting is done in the vein of exploring the heart of the creation and the creators who made it. I think, from what I've seen, Mark and his team are doing really interesting things as story tellers, and I'm also glad that unlike a lot of media, we can know him as a creator well enough to better engage with these works.
Also the Iron Lung soundtrack has been fucking amazing to help me focus on my own project. A++
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