#and here you were trying to avoid going down the Metheus rabbithole

[jemichi90]

Thank you for this accurate depiction of us having a "little chat". 😂👍

okay OP, in your recent art you mentioned that "you will explain if needed" and gave a detailed explanation of what might have happened (to Charlie and Maxwell).

I'd LOVE to hear more of your thoughts, and the "explanation" that you said you'd provide (⁠ﾉ⁠◕⁠ヮ⁠◕⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠*⁠.⁠✧

ps i really like your art.

Oh! Hello there! 👀

And yes indeed I did. Alright then, get ready for the brainrot. xD

For a long time I've thought that Charlie died and came back wrong, and in the recent updates there have been several things hinting at it.

Here is a list of the ones I can remember right now:

Maxwell says ”There's a story behind that...” when inspecting a touch stone.

After the recent update, the ”dark side” Winona can sense traces of Charlie on the touch stone, confirming it's related to her (the quotes vary).

In the Encore animated short, there is a brief flashback of Charlie with the Ancient Fuelweaver behind her, and then her Chess piece is seen falling and sinking inside a black square on the board - some heavy symbolism there, sparing us from the gory details, I guess...

In Charlie's stageplay, the doll that represents her breaks, but she's brought back to life by the Mirror (Them?) - alive but different, as she says.

And then there are things that fall more into the headcanon territory, until more evidence comes up that either proves or debunks those ideas entirely, but I'll explain those as well, since they heavily influece my art inspiration.

I subscribe to the idea that the two characters in the ancient murals represent Maxwell and Charlie themselves in their early years in the Constant (but depicted by the locals that were unfamiliar with human anatomy). Time moves differently in that world so it could have been thousands of years ago, but the two made contact with the locals and briefly improved their life through the use of Their magic – until it backfired and the entity that must have been sealed for a reason broke free. Assuming the character with the torch really is Charlie, she died protecting Maxwell from the consequences of his own mistakes. In the final mural image, only her cracked head can be seen.

Another headcanon I have comes from the fact that one of shadow Charlie's arms seems to be entirely made of shadows (curiously, there are also arm bones attached to the touch stone, although they could have belonged to a pigman too, like the heads), so I think that whatever happened to her basically shattered her to pieces, and some pieces may still be missing - like that arm. But details like this are only a headcanon for now.

This also falls in the time period between 1906 and 1910-ish, when apparently some crazy stuff happened that Klei hasn't showed us much about – yet (according to their own post some years ago). ^^

So based on all this, my idea is that Maxwell summoned the Fuelweaver (as seen in the murals), but he messed up big time and Charlie got caught in the crossfire trying to protect Maxwell. She died a gruesome death (that may have torn her to pieces even more brutally than in my drawing). Maxwell in his desperation made the touch stone in a hurry (which is why it looks so rough compared to all his other constructs), carried what was left of Charlie there, and made a deal with Them to bring Charlie back to life no matter the cost. And they did. They just didn't bring her back exactly like she used to be, and she would probably fall to pieces and die instantly if she was separated from the entity that she now shares the body with...

I think Maxwell had been able to move freely in the Constant (maybe even out of it, based on his disappearances earlier) until then, but deals like that come with a price, so he lost his freedom and became Their tool (sold his soul to save Charlie?). Or something like that anyway.

There are also the parallels between Charlie and Abigail with their connection to their special flowers, as highlighted in the newest animated video. Charlie just might be another ghost inside a flower herself, but thanks to Them, she got to keep her body, or at least a form that resembles her body.. But I prefer to think that her actual broken body is still a part of the deal, as messed up as that is. We already know that They can keep a body that should have died a long time ago alive for an eternity, thanks to Maxwell. When he was released from the Nightmare Throne and time caught up to him, he didn't just die, he turned to a skeleton that crumbled to dust in an instant..! That's some old corpse, but he'd been conscious all that time because They wouldn't let him die.

So yeah, these happy thoughts inspired that piece. I might draw more about that if I still feel like it later. :D