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sleepyc63 · 6 days ago

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Dissecting the Watcher's story & characters

This is a pretty long post.

I've seen a number of people claiming that the Watcher DLC has no story and that the slugcat has no characterization, but I definitely think it's there.

(SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE DLC!) There are no spoilers for the secondary ending until about halfway down, where there is a warning.

Adventurous...

Since this post gets a bit meandering, I will spell out the general framework of the story here:

The Watcher is a shy, lonely individual who desperately struggles to find companionship after their childhood was cut short. They will go to great lengths to achieve this connection.

Timid mouse

"And through the middle of it all, a lonely lost slugcat trying their best to outlast the ravages of a warped world."

Why are they called the Watcher? It's due to their nonconfrontational, withdrawn demeanor. This is immediately apparent in the intro dream:

When Watcher's parent steps up to fight the aggressive slugcat, Watcher's sibling joins in. But Watcher just hides away, afraid to confront the danger. It's unclear if their family survived the tussle, but they never reunite again. Watcher's shy demeanor has severed them from their family.

Time passes and Watcher grows a bit older, wandering around in what seems like a futile search for their family. Here, they meet Spinning Top, the child Echo.

A desire to bond

Within the DLC's story, youthfulness is tied to a fear of isolation & loneliness.

Spinning Top has been lost & drifting for a long time. When they ascended, they feared the loss of connection to their old life and their loved ones. So they remained on world, searching for a sign that their loved ones still miss them.

This desperate pursuit has led them to travel across reality for eons and eons. By the time Watcher meets them, Spinning Top is now combing through places that have no relation to their life. Spinning Top won't find any sign of grief or remembrance in Coral Caves or Rusted Wreck, so why are they drifting along these pointless locations?

Spinning Top's loneliness and persistence arose because, as a child, they lacked the experience of maturing and could not handle the radical acceptance required to ascend. They are scared to accept the truth: their childhood has come and gone. Their loved ones eventually moved on and also left the world behind. Spinning Top is the only one holding onto this long-defunct family.

Shadow reflecting radiance

Watcher and Spinning Top are very similar characters. Both are lonely children that have been severed from their parents and siblings, and wish to revive the childhood that was ripped away from them. They're desperate to rekindle some kind of connection.

Throughout the campaign, Watcher continually searches for Spinning Top because they're the only individual that Watcher has seen who could bring a greater connection than chomping, fleeing, or stabbing. They even give Watcher the gift of infant godhood!

These childlike characters both find companionship in each other. In fact, Watcher's companionship is what gives Spinning Top the strength to return to the location of their actual memory, and confront the truth of their loneliness.

"All my mothers and fathers and crechemates who went along without me… Do they note my absence? I've traveled from the furthest future to the very seed of our past, and I see no evidence. Only echoes and strays. Aloof. Alone. Afraid."

Spinning Top accepts that it is best to grow up and move on, and so they disappear, finally ascending for real. Watcher, however, does not seem to learn the same lesson from this journey.

While they may seem happy playing with toys, it's still a symbol of juvenility. Despite everything that has happened to them, they still embody a desire to recapture their lost childhood.

And now, Watcher is alone once more. Soon, they will seek out a new companion.

Ripplespace as a symbol of isolation

Before I discuss the second ending, I want to talk about Watcher's abilities and the symbols they embody.

The ripple-world that Watcher is (accidentally?) transported to by Spinning Top is a continuation of the aching, drifting nature of these two characters. They are unable to stay in place for long, constantly seraching for a sign of connection.

Watcher's "gift" of invisibility is a clear extension of their characterization. They tackle threats by hiding away, slipping past unnoticed. As their Ripple level rises, the cloak begins pushing Watcher further out of their typical plane of reality, creating tears into a wholly different plane. And when they reach the (as of now) maximum Ripple level, Watcher is fully pulled out of the material plane and into Ripplespace. Here, they are truly alone except for the primitive, gnawing voidspawn.

Every gift seems to give way to a curse of isolation. Watcher has to detach themselves from reality itself to survive, and the gift-giver Spinning Top leaves them behind.

Endless hunger

SPOILERS FOR THE SECOND ENDING.

Here's a cool divider.

While the purple Throne Rot seen across the campaign may not play by the same rules as Five Pebbles' Rot, its behavior is equivalent. The Rot is the ultimate embodiment of primal struggle, a collective consciousness of brain meat that forever hungers to consume as much of the world as it can reach. It is not unintelligent, but it is very one-minded.

From The Throne itself, a giant flower blooms and gives birth to the Prince.

The Prince is a piece of the Throne Rot that has partially separated itself from its collective consciousness. It is an individual connected to the Throne Rot, but it has its own mind. "STARVING, pressing, grinding, SQUEEZING against... us? But now... I? A... SELF. And… an OTHER."

The Prince is an imitation of an Iterator puppet. This part of his identity causes him to believe that he was born to solve the Big Problem, by assimilating the entire world into the Throne Rot. "The imperative that was in THEM [the Iterators] remains in me." "Imagine: a single substrate… Life! (...) Nothing lost. No one lost. From bug to god, all as one. A TRUE end to the pattern."

I personally don't believe this was the original goal of the Throne Rot, but rather the Prince instinctually assigning purpose to his new life as an individual. He rationalizes his intrinsic hunger to consume in the lens of a "higher" ideal.

You can see how the Prince reflects Watcher's desire for connection in a deeply twisted manner. They're both in an endless pursuit to connect—Watcher offers itself to others as a companion, while the Prince takes companions and forces them into himself.

Opposing will

The Prince loves Watcher. He considers them to be a great friend, as they are the primary individual responsible for spreading the Throne Rot and the only one to have witnessed their genesis. "You have done so much for me, I will not burden you with my troubles. Please, rest here as long as you wish. You are always safe here, my dear friend. You, who were there for me."

Watcher has finally found it—a new companion, who showers them with praise and affection. Out of an acute desire to retain this friend, they go on to spread the Throne Rot across all the threads that connect the ripple-world. Every viable world is corrupted.

Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—something goes terribly wrong for the Prince. "I can almost feel... a will... at odds with my own."

Karma is antithetical to corruption. When the Throne Rot sufficiently engulfs the "fringes" of the ripple-world (Outer Rim and the Rotted vanilla regions), these regions become unstable and you cannot create a warp to escape them. However, there are pockets in The Throne where a bed of Karma Flowers allows you to exit. It's unknown if the phenomenon is natural or intelligent, but Karma inherently opposes the Rot.

When Watcher returns after corrupting all the regions, Karma Flower begin sprouting from the ground of The Throne. The Prince attempts to keep them in, but he ultimately fails—he freezes up, and countless Karma Flowers sprout from the corruption. The Throne Rot might not be outright dead, but its power has clearly been drained. The Prince has failed.

Karma Flowers are all over the map now. The "unstable fringes" have also been stabilized by their presence. You can create a warp to leave Outer Rim and the Throne from anywhere, and the same goes for the Rotted vanilla regions.

Going by the tone of the select screen art, Watcher just seems to mourn their loss. Another new friend, unceremoniously ripped from them.

Moving forward

Watcher cannot seem to find connection. Their family left and possibly died. They helped Spinning Top mature, but Spinning Top left—given that they viewed corporeal and primal life as absurd, they were bound to do this.

Watcher may have attained infant godhood, but their powers encourage them to hide away and detach themselves from the world, concealing them in the desolate Ripplespace with nothing but occasionally violent voidspawn.

It's almost scary how this godlet is willing to go such great lengths to secure companionship, falling for the Prince and corrupting the entire accessible ripple-world to make their friend happy. This friendship ends fruitlessly, too.

Watcher will eventually have a full conclusion to their story. So where will they go from here?

Narratively, I don't think Watcher will get what they want. Their next (and final, I believe) venture for companionship will end in ruin once again... but possibly, Watcher will recognize that while other people come and go, the only constant who will always be there for them is Watcher themselves, and they will learn to overcome the trauma and yearning of their lost childhood.

That's my slightly blunt prediction for the overarching theme of the Watcher.

Extra thoughts

Scav Prediction

I personally believe the next arc will involve Scavengers. In the old pre-release Watcher concept, Watcher journyed with an enlightened Scavenger. While James Primate has stated before that Downpour kinda stole the old concept's thunder (i.e. with Artificer), I get a strong indication that the next arc will still involve Scavengers because of the new Acolytes.

Acolytes are Scavengers who are BRIMMING with attributes that reflect a knowledge of Karma and Ripples.

Acolytes wear glowing golden masks and clothes

A faint Karma symbol between 6-10 surrounds them, suggesting that they are already enlightened (or their armor is imbued with some kind of karmic concentration)

When they are grabbed by a predator, they initiate a crazy karmic retaliation blast to free themselves (which I failed to get a GIF of)

The blindfolded Disciple Acolytes emit a sort of karmic echolocation ping that detects entities from a distance

The definition of an "acolyte" is "a person assisting the celebrant in a religious service or procession". The celebrant is someone performing a rite; often a priest. This implies the acolytes are carrying something out for a leader who is almost certainly not the Chieftain Scavenger in Downpour.

Overall, these guys know something, and I think we're going to find out why.

#'the watcher has no story' my ass #this is great!!! will be incorporating this into my own work :)#rain world #reblog 💫#save

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