In the early hours after release of the Welcome Home video, a LOT of you come through with messages about discoveries you made! And, wow, there have been a LOT.
Welcome Home Official Site:
https://www.clownillustration.com/welcome-home
Clown’s Ko-Fi:
https://ko-fi.com/partycoffin
——————
Night Mind Twitch:
https://www.twitch.tv/nick_nocturne
Night Mind Index:
https://www.nightmind.info
NM Patreon:
https://bit.ly/3sI1PUh
NM Twitter:
https://goo.gl/OHSW0F
NM Facebook:
https://goo.gl/iPdnq9
source
In the early hours after release of the Welcome Home video, a LOT of you come through with messages about discoveries you made! And, wow, there have been a LOT.
Welcome Home Official Site:
https://www.clownillustration.com/welcome-home
Clown's Ko-Fi:
https://ko-fi.com/partycoffin
——————
Night Mind Twitch:
https://www.twitch.tv/nick_nocturne
~Hugs my Nick Nocturne Plushie as I curl up and listen to the story~
16:49
(dreamy sigh~)
he's so
in character
Theory time! I don’t have the best idea of what’s going on but here it is anyway:
If we look at the clown illustrates welcome home page (not the website for welcome home but the creepy one explaining what the project is with a bunch more spooky art) there’s a few things I want to make note of. It’s hard to say how much of what’s on there will end up being canon but the site makes references to how things are now lost/forgotten and one of content warnings is for isolation.
With that and some things on the actual website, I feel like the characters from the show (at least Wally and Home but my bets are on everyone) are sentient. I’m not sure why yet though. After the show ended things fell apart, it’s now an endless night for these characters. Things only got worse as time passed and the show became forgotten, memories are becoming obscure and blurry. Wally is trapped inside of Home and is trying to communicate to us through the website and get out (the other characters are probably able to leave and enter their houses freely or trapped in some other way) Wally is somehow affecting/taking over the restoration team members to make them restore things. Considering the fact the team receives the images in envelopes and one of the other characters is a post man, the characters are probably trying to get the show restored and fix things back to how they were. But it’s been so long since the show aired that things are a blurry mess and the images being sent are ink covered and damaged.
Combining some of the spooky art of Wally with how he seems to act, I think he’s more neutral than he is good or bad. He’s been trapped alone in a sentient house for like decades at this point. That kind of isolation would definitely make someone do some crazy things to get out or just get more people in there with him if he can’t do that. He’s probably a good person at heart but at this point he’s so scared, alone, and desperate that he’d do some pretty selfish things to fix stuff. Home seems more malicous though, I don’t have any evidence to this other than the vibes it gives off, but I feel like Home might be connected to the entire sentient characters thing.
Im painting while watching this. 😢
Actually, thinking it over, what if there was an episode where someone died, like how Mr Hooper did on Sesame Street? Im thinking Barnaby since he has a particular focus compared to the others and that one picture where Wally 'made a dog.'
So what if that ep made Wally snap and try and make things stay the same, and that was why the show was taken off the air?
Y'know, I don't think it's gallows humor, the ending of that Grimm faerietale we read at the end – the "hare" and "hedgehog" are quite clearly used as stand-ins for a nobleman and commoner. I'd wager the end is more of a message on marrying within one's caste, rather than literally seeking out one's opposite sex doppelgangers.
The changed 404 page has an untaped picture of the phone, allowing us to identify the colors that were taped over. And characters correspond to colors. And this is a show from the 1970s and the phrase "taped over" has a specific meaning when talking about lost media.
Caught the tail end of this, people doing good work and having fun. Hope clown makes more soon, it's impressive
Please check the about us page for a new break in “why did you make this website” !!! My bf and I are exploring this rn !
It feels like an arg and I love it
NM! You got a bot in your midst. I think I just deleted it with my language lol
I was thinking on it, and the way the gif from the voywex page is set up, it's almost a reverse angle of "so below" Where in one you see him looking up, pleading at his house's window from the inside.
Then in this one he's in the dark facing you head on, almost as if you're in the window. Or he's behind your eyes along with the house's .
something that has been repeatedly shown throughout the website & its secrets is the motif of eyes and observation (i.e. being observed), and the power it can hold over someone.
we have wally, who is always looking right at us as the viewer, essentially breaking the fourth wall (as most children's shows like this do) and turning us into a diegetic element of the story, the "neighbor". in this way, wally is taking some power away from us. while watching tv shows/movies, we can be emotionally swayed by the characters' arcs, but then the credits roll and we are able to take a step back into our own lives; we are simply viewers that have no control over what happens to the characters. however, in welcome home, we are turned into the "neighbor", and it is now wally that is looking at us, thereby flipping the typical script. the intense eye contact we see especially in that "try again" scene is intended to make us feel uncomfortable, vulnerable even, because we're not expecting it, and now we're the ones seemingly being watched. even though wally says he can't see us, he is fully aware that we're there, perhaps making his shaking pupils all the more scary.
on another level, we have home. in my opinion, home seems to be higher up in the hierarchy of welcome home, and it feels like home exerts some control over wally (and possibly the others characters too), though i can see how it could be vice versa too. home is the only house in the neighborhood with eyes, which is already weird and unsettling to begin with. just on shallow level, can you imagine living in a house where the house can see and hear your every move inside (home being able to see inside too is kinda speculation but i don't think it's that far-fetched)? wally is constantly being observed, and so are the rest of the characters, but wally on a deeper level. in "duet", i think it is meant to be between wally and home, the weird breathing sounds in between wally's lines being home's part. he then talks to home at the end, and he is unsure about how to interpret home's response, potentially a bit nervous that he isn't able to do so, which seems to suggest wally is at the mercy of home, to some extent.
also, just in general, there are eyes everywhere. even in the frames on the sides of every page, there are small eyes in the art all looking at us.
some more speculation:
because of wally feeling like he has no control over his life due to home, he is able to find his outlet through the viewer/neighbor, and more specifically, the WHRT. as suggested by one of the art pieces of clown (not on the wh website), wally definitely holds a considerable amount of power over barnaby, too.
Wally: Hello, I am Wally. Come to my place or I'll bash your brains in!
There is a serious fixation on eyes, and Wally's eyes are overlaid on his house's eyes. I think Wally might be house, or at least a representation of it. Wally seems to be watching the viewer the whole time, and house is omnipresent, appearing on almost all of the webpages as animated gifs and images. I'm not sure if this is correct, but the vague overlay of eldritch on this horror makes me think this could be the case.
I love the beautifully gay puppet designs way way more than the fact that they're being lamp shaded by a horror ARG, sorry. I wanna see fan animations of the characters actually having wholesome fun together, but I'm worried the horror elements are just gonna be bait to carry it and the animations will all have to be spooky in some forced way. Even the new DHMIS series was able to evolve past it's horror roots to have something a bit more comedic and endearing. Some part of me wants this whole buildup to be an allegory for the crippling anxiety Wally gets from thinking of coming out of the closet.
If you really wanted to see what was behind the scribble in the guest log you could just do what I did and inspect element/delete the art after checking it for messages. It just makes it easier to read.
Hey what are the letters needed for the url? Thanks 🙂
Am I tripping balls or are there eyes opening during the tv part??
"Thanks for the help bud" from winter of 83 made a cameo?
So wait, are you a magic demon cat, or a magic demon rabbit?
theres text in the static
10:13 For a second, I thought they were gonna imply that Welcome Home was a Pirate’s Cove situation; children were “watching” the show but were just staring blankly at static screens. But then I remembered that the group found merch for Welcome Home. So there went that idea…
Edit: 11:02 Haha…we’re in danger!
some things i think are interesting!
a tic tac toe motif is present when wally is around. on the welcomehomeyou page, a board is drawn on the back of the rock, and on page 4 of the guestbook theres a board drawn with only ohs (implying maybe he likes to play ohs? but exes won on the rock, so either wally is Really Bad at tic tac toe or he has no preference haha.). the board image also says "you do? i am so happy." in response to someone saying "i know what you are."
we already know wally Really Likes Eye Contact, but id like to point out a few other places eyes r present! one on the rock on the welcomehomeyou page, littered in the background pattern, and one on page five of the guestbook (correcting someone calling him a doll, he says "no, a puppet".)
he also rarely breaks eye contact in any image he's featured in. even the news page and his story book feature has him laser focused on you. ive got a feeling those spirals have something to do with it, hehe.