#Spot says stuff

[spotsupstuff]

I'm still working on getting the gardening ending for myself, but I've been collecting some ponderings I'd like to write down. So:

A congregate of thoughts on Watcher lore (as of now):

• I really like that this DLC is right now three kids in a spiritual trenchcoat. None of them is normal. I bet they'd all be friends if they met.

• I really like the color coding of these 3, as for what I've assumed regarding to colors' symbolism in this world: - Black stands for Nirvāṇa, the Void, being outside of the reincarnation cycle - Gold/yellow stands for holiness, ascension - Blue/purple stands for damnation/stagnation - White stands for Saṃsāra, the cycle of reincarnation, the physical world (the Watcher lingers in the physical world, unwilling to leave it)

On the account of blue and yellow being on opposing sides on the color wheel, I'd also gander a guess that the Rot and the Void don't entirely agree with each other/may be on opposing sides.

• Therefore, I don't think the gardening ending was exactly what the Rot Prince wanted to achieve, supported by his last two dialogues with the Watcher:

[Greeting lines]. As with all great deeds, my work is not without great challenge. It has taken eons and the light fades. The paths close and change. I can almost feel... a will... at odds with my own.

[Greeting lines]. Forgive me if I go on! 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.

My guess is that the content that hasn't dropped yet will introduce either a new character/s in a sort of godly roles, or will explain the powers playing behind the wheel flowers and the Cycle.

• A light at the end of the tunnel (or something white/bright with a way to it?) is mentioned by both Spinning Top (at her ending) and the Prince (both as a flowerbud and in that first paragraph I copied up there).

I don't know what to do with this yet, I just found it interesting. Something something the white light within the Void Sea in the original game?

• ,,Outer Rim...?"

The Buddhist cosmology says the world is made out of 9 mountains (Mount Sumeru [the axis mundi], 7 golden mountain ranges and 1 outermost iron mountain range [maybe the withered buildings here are made of rusted iron, buried in stardust]) and 8 seas (7 freshwater and 1 saltwater), with 4 continents within the salt sea who's inhabitants each have a little something extra (except the South I guess, that's where *we* are. well apparently all Buddhas appear here actually, so you know. that's a something).

For an interesting example, the north continent called Uttarakuru is said to house the wealthy, owning no private property, where their food grows by itself and they live in the skies (Iterator cities, nudge nudge).

The name of this region could point to the Buddhist cosmological map being a physical fact for this world. I'd like to think that the dimension hopping aspect to the Watcher's worming through the space-time is at least limited to 4 continents(/realities?).

Also a fan fact: in Chinese mythology it is said the waters flow and stars fall slowly, because a water god with a bad tamper, Gònggōng, broke one of the pillars supporting the sky. Combining this fun nugget with the established lore in a pearl that everything is once eaten away by the Void down below, I'd say it is safe to assume on 89% that the dust mentioned in that pearl comes from the heaven itself and creates a sort of a cycle of the physical matter.

Suppose stardust is what creates everything, powers everything (just as is said in science). Suppose the Starcatchers are superstructures made for conversion of it into desired forms, these ones perhaps in the West of the world specifically, because of their circular shape.

(Meaning Signal Spires are perhaps of the South, while original game- aka Pebbles and Moon- are in the North of this world.)

• I find it fascinating and validating that Spinning Top needed some sort of an Embrace from one of the Five Urges/Hindrances (the third one, companionship) to be able to pass on.

It points to my idea of what the religion is Really supposed to be about: the Five Urges are what they are- urges- and they cannot run rampant. The point isn't to absolutely *eradicate* violence, pleasure, companionship, hunger and desire to live from oneself. The point is to be able to control these things and not cling on to them.

Because if one clings on to something, they stagnate, they cannot progress, they rot and they *fear* losing the something more than they can truly enjoy it or they get far too lost in it to feel it right anymore. To cling on to life means being afraid of taking risks, trying something new and really Living.

But now that doesn't mean going for the opposite is the correct way to go about it- that still creates a desire, a clinging- an urge for death is just as good as urge for life. It binds. It's extremism without careful consideration for what is really the best to do, feel and think in any given situation.

(This goes for love, too, it is GOOD to love, but going too far becomes unhealthy obsession instead of love. Going the other way results in hatred, another utterly useless and harmful thing to harbor. Same as indifference - that is stagnation again, that isn't picking up something, working with it to move forward. Love is a forward motion that is required, but cannot be overdone because as so it would be bastardized into something else, possessive and caging.)

Spinning Top could move on only when she knew that the flipside of the Third Urge- a sickening loneliness- wasn't something to fear anymore.

• Yeah, I don't think we can count on backgrounds too much when it comes to size calculating on the basis that they are probably shaped around gameplay. Specifically thinking about how the spinning top toy changes sizes between it's in-game model and the art. When it comes to Ancients, I'd say the best one can do is do what feels right.

• The Rot Prince is some sort of a boosted up Preta, I swear to heavens. Hungry guy. Maybe the Rot as a whole is a Preta stand in, just way more physical.

• Can't believe my ,,Respawning is real" headcanon has been officially given the thumbs down... The *Strand* Theory is real. (Even though DP is separate from the Watcher, this at least explains why Artificer didn't just go back to the last shelter she slept in when her cubs were still with her. They went to a different strand, where a different Artificer managed the situation better and we are stuck in this reality without them.) (We see them in her Void ending either because they are the one thing her heart wishes for [the Void gives comfort to those who are passing, as far as I am concerned], or because the Void is where all the reality strands and times coincide into one another.)

• On that note, no Fucking wonder the Ancients wanna bail - we don't really know to what extend they were aware of reality's unwounding nature, but assuming it is Pretty Thorough, I too wouldn't wanna live with the knowledge that in one reality I might've died on my loved ones, leaving them broken, while in the other everything is just fine and dandy.

The endless wondering of ,,Did I die in a different reality at any point in my life? Did I leave these people I love behind to hurt, alone, and I can't do anything to help them? I can never know, I'm not allowed to comprehend..." would slowly kill anyone with a heart, I think.

• I wonder if the Prince is a puppet/the Rot made itself a puppet, - because the Starcatchers were Iterator-esque biomechanications with a different directive than iterating on the Big Problem and this is a consumed Starcatcher (something about its budding dialogue feels to me like there was a sense of a Self beforehand that was drowned out by the Rot and then was pulled forward again with additions) - because the Rot is at the edge of the universe (humming a tune) where a messed up slugcat decided to start ripping holes in the reality, therefore connecting different strands including to places where the Rot already existed as a plague upon Some Iterator, which gave spark to sapience and inspiration to a new mind

• The new karma set is definitely a droplet and the ripples it leaves behind. Makes sense, too, there's more ,,movement" within it the more Spinning Top yanks the Watcher around in time-space (accidentally, I'd guess. or the ,,blame" is more on Watcher *somehow*), messing up their physical existence more and more.

Maybe the karma symbols or the imagery itself have something to do with a combination of an axis mundi and the strand form of existence.

Something about there being a main timeline in which each action and decision creates a new ripple, a new strand.

• I wonder if the Watcher could've come across Spinning Top and effectively latch on/follow her, - because they were already dead/echoed (the dream sequence upon reaching the final karma level could mean they did go to the Void Sea and swam pretty deep but turned back and that resulted in Echo-ification? then again why can a lizard bite me. Spinny's laughing at me for it. Goddammit.) - because of their nature as someone who's so damn hesitant about things, who hangs in the backlines, only observes and learns. Very Echo-esque personality - because of their desire to have someone there

• Just realized that we have a canonical design for Spinning Top's mask, hot damn. ,,How do children's masks look like?" answered.

I don't know why, that kind of creeps me out.

• The portals existing outside of us are made by Spinning Top, I'm pretty sure. She's always over them.

Is it normal for Echoes to leave tears like that? I think if the Rot Prince met her and knew she's the one who started this whole journey that resulted in him coming to exist as a consciousness and to bloom, he'd see her as a friend the same way he sees the Watcher.

• I wonder if his approach to the Rot Triple Affirmitive is ,,it's going to get worse before it gets better". He has suffered, too- while he normally speaks gently, calmly, orderly, when he is a flowerbud he seems frantic to me. Like someone breathing through death before getting better.

• Is the concept of the Rot Prince created for the first time in all existences' or is he a repeating pattern, too? The Rot in the least seems to be a pattern, because of what Spinning Top says when we meet her in one of the original regions, eaten through by the Rot.

,,You shouldn't have come here. It's too far." Does that refer to this strand's/ripple's distance from the axis mundi/the water drop creating all these realities? The further out the little wave carries out, growing smaller and weaker, the more rotten through it is? Is it because still water is stagnation, just as the Rot is?

So the Cycle is change and movement, life and love, that exists in a hurtful matter not out of its design, but because it has to contend with absolute stillness/stagnation/the Rot? Or it's all part of the same system, truly designed like this?

Could a Mass Ascension be seen as an escape plan from a ripple growing old? Man...

• A quick attempt at illustrating the previous thought:

Some Pepe Silvia level nonsense going on here.

[spotsupstuff]

List of things that sparked joy in my little Ancient culture enthusiast heart:

The moths in the Ancient Urban are essentially pigeons, including the fact some of them are tagged.

Finally a proper and canon confirmation that Ancients really did have pets, positive relationships with animals and weren't Only stuck in glass cubes on display like Moon implies once. It can also mean that they did research into animal behaviour, such as tracking migrating and such. From how biologists are in real life, we can assume they were even genuinely passionate & happy about these type of things.

All the pottery and plates in that workshop room,

A confirmation that they did have paper and used scrolls for writing stuff down,

alongside with the pearls that they, too, could perhaps freely read or one of those things on the shelf there might be a pearl reader, if it is more technologically based (CDs type information keeping)

I also wonder if those things there are books- with stone tablet pages or paper ones? digital things hidden in hardcovers?- or something else entirely. Do they maybe hold orders for earthenware?

The masks on the wall, they feel so real compared to the murals.

Are they of the same person or is it of the workers there or maybe a family? Some of them look similar to those in the murals.

While at the concept of family, they had creches, but it doesn't sound like it was an outright job in the sense that they seem to have been community-raised (I fuckin' knew it I can put down my tin hat now).

They had hard beds, similar to what used to be used in old china iirc, along with that pillow/headrest

This kinda thing. They were made out of porcelain to keep the head cool in the night, but I think some where out of wood too.

The bustling of the city.

The normalcy of people going about their day, talking, the vehicles zipping by (they had some kind of motor vehicles!!!!).

The architecture, in both the Ancient Urban and the Outer Rim (those roofs made the right side worth it to me, that's how much I love these bastards)

I find it very funny that what looks to me like a REALLY poor ass cable management seems like the height of decorative prowess to them. Also some insight into how the void ,,bath" actually looked like.

The toys... just the toys.

Alongside these dialogues

And the one about him remembering the halls he ran through- oh when I say that I adore the fact that this Echo is a kid stuck here, lonely and vulnerable with polite speech not plaguing it.

The original Echoes combined with the Iterators' distaste for the species as whole painted the Ancients as these heartless things lazer focused only on the Ascension, religion and rituals. There wasn't much space for thinking about them in a more human manner and I feel like most of the fandom did depict the Ancients only as the impression was given. Bunch of posh full of themselves suckups, uncaring much for one another or anything around them.

I get kinda annoyed when there's an insistance that some kind of sapient species has done only bad. With humans, too, I just about had it with the demonization, negativity and staggering blindness to the beauty and good we can and do create- in both fiction and reality. Same goes for these dumbasses.

Disko kid here begs to challenge that impression. He's lost and alone and kind of scared, stuck here not knowing how to move forward. He mourns the regularity and simplicity of his room, the nostalgia of shelves and toys, the golden sunrays sneaking in through the windows. He brings a certain humanity into the consideration of Ancients.

That maybe, only maybe.. they deserve to be mourned.

[spotsupstuff]

is that fucking Carl

[spotsupstuff]

What brushes/app do you use to draw?

Clip Studio Paint nowadays and 99% of time its og brushes.

Jitter I only really use for hair ,,detailing" or making some flats a bit more varied, like here.

[spotsupstuff]

What are your thoughts on J from MD and/or have u ever made art of her?

I've drawn sketched her in total of four times, two of which I refuse to show because they were done during an art block and therefore look like Shit and the other two are these older things.

• the corporate obsession shtick is funny. • the Pilot end fight result made me initially extremely confused bc of how lamely she got got by a WD who's entire fighting library is pirated anime, with One actual fight under her belt. I'd like to try and make a storyboard alternative to it someday or at least change it up in my AU to bring her some justice if I ever try make a comic out of it. • piece of shit for abusing N like that. Would've been awesome to see him square up with her and win. (,,Sees herself as an older sister to N and V" my ass. Drizella ahh sister.) • good character for what she's meant to do. I'm aware of the potential debth too, but I don't care for it or her besides these points.

[spotsupstuff]

moon and nsh are my favorite old people you just get me... sobbing pathetically on the floor...

i specifically evolved to understand this n get u YES

[spotsupstuff]

What do you think about iterators canonically being Rat sized now? Lil guys.

I mean technically... a.) it's not really The Iterators, it's just their puppets. (we all know that, though, yeah yeah. nerd emoji and all that. i like nerding.) b.) we have canonical Rain World patented rats now, too, and they are smaller than a slugcat (edible too), so rats are smaller than puppets still. c.) it isn't really a new information, either, it's just more clearer and certain (well the height scaling doesn't seem very consistent to me according to the backgrounds. e.g. the fountain in Outer Rim is strangely small, so are the stairs at the murals in Ancient Urban, compared with the table and shelf in the workshop, the pottery and the bed). Outside of the game it has been said before that slugcats are around 3 feet and arguments existed before that these kind of things-

-are ladders and for them to be proportionable to the Ancients, the Ancients would have to be quite a bit bigger than the Iterator puppets. (Alongside the fact that Echoes are probably exactly how big them pals were when they were alive.)

I was aware of that for a few years now. I didn't draw it as such purely 'cuz I just didn't wanna ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ And about all my drawing stuff has been in an AU that was originally refered to as ,,the Serotonin Take", so..

But genuine thoughts on small puppets: I think it's both funny and makes a lot of sense. I'm pretty sure canonically the only reason for the existence of the puppets is so the Iterators can look good and ,,human" to their citizens through a camera and nobody actually ever visited the puppet chambers except maybe technicians once in a hundred years or something. Essentially biorobo mascots.

They don't need to be big or overly complicated outside of emotative capability (eyes + antennas, shoulders, maybe hands and head movement) to serve their purpose.

My only issue with them is that I'm a transformers fan and I like big robots.

Genuine thought going thru my head while in Ancient Urban 'cuz I was actively thinking about slugcats = puppet sizes:

[spotsupstuff]

(hii Spot been awhile) Something I think that's interesting about the observation about how Slugcats are getting so much attention nowadays is that its almost a 180 from how things were in the pre-downpour days, iirc.

Though I am glad we're getting an AU like yours it's so interesting compared to the usual

Im eating with a fork

Yeah, the fandom was not particularly strong back then, but I think there was more Iterator content. My suspicion as to why slugcats are so much more popular now is because the general "cat appeal"*. Downpour brought in wider audience which mostly consists of people that go wild over cat videos on the internet.

Not my intention to throw shade on it, because after all what does my opinion matter to anyone, but I find the whole "cuteness cult" of the internet annoying and, when applied to Rain World, frustrating. There's a whole silent worldbuilding in basically every screen of the game and the only thing that people seem to take away post-DP is "cute sluggy go wooo :3 the Ancients were such cultist pricks Dx". Which like alright, but expand a little on the latter please? Try? There is So much fun to it when one moves past the "religion only BAD" mindset.

DP also I think didn't care much about the Ancients and the culture they left behind (and therefore the root of Iterators). "But there's Saint!" Saint is almost everything new that wasn't heard of before, can be taken as another fact of monstroid mad religion and, of course, it Has to be wrapped in a fluffy cat package. The undergrowth Echo also feels like a spit in the face to the lore/religion than an addition, to me. My *guess* would be the original intention was showing an individual who failed to ascend because of the Fifth Hindrance but it doesn't *feel* like it. If that was the intention, I think the author didn't understand why a desire to live/survive could ever, in any form, be bad

It's interesting as well in the sense that when there was only Survivor, maybe up to Hunter- the slugcats felt like a vehicle that brings the player to the story. The player saw the world through their eyes and got to experience the world's rules, abiding them- the original campaigns were still subject to the lore/religion of the world.

DP made the slugcats characters, the main focus, in some cases a rebelion against the lore/religion (forever beef against new route for Survivor and Monk). So people had an easier time latching onto them.

That is my theory at least. Fact is also when I first watched RW I almost didn't get into it as a creator because I felt like I had nowhere to hook to and work with. Characters are great anchor points for people to latch on to and then work with/through, so it's not like I blame the fandom for quite literally getting slug infested. It's natural and logical and I'm well aware of it as someone who's trying to be a writer. Still frustrating.

Either way, at least there's a vacuum for me to fill with something I'm actively actually passionate about. It's kind of a sweet bonus that people are somewhat interested, too.

[spotsupstuff]

Fish: Tinkerer I have the rot, we need to cook.

Tink: say no more chief

*deafening explosions*

they are defending against the Squidcadas actually

[spotsupstuff]

I like to think the dynamic between the player and the slugcat (Survivor specifically, thinking base vanilla experience) matters for the worldbuilding/lore itself.

Specifically thinking on the topic of self-awareness, which is often said that animals lack especially when compared to humans.

The player is the Survivor's spirit, let's say. You are present, you control the body of its, you live and try to understand ,,your own" story. But there is a disconnect. You don't actually feel the world, the temperature, the teeth and chalicerea, the sharp raindrops tearing at its back when you lose track of time.

You don't feel the pain of a cycle's abrupt end. You acknowledge it with frustration at the loss of progress and probably karma. This frustration won't last.

The cycles blur together. I've got over 200 cycles on some slugcats and I could not name a single death of mine. They aren't personal, they don't matter to me, they can't scar me. In extension, they don't matter to this animal we play as. We just keep going on, unbothered thanks to the lack of in-universe consciousness, manifesting a certain lack of self-awareness in the slug.

The slugcat can be only as smart as the player, its soul, is knowledgeable - still limited by the capabilities of its body. And the ,,fast travel" that we can't see reminds me of a sort of ,,loss of self-awareness" that happens when one focuses on something.

But what about those that are steeped in it. Those whose awareness of everything is so acute and inevitable. Those that probably kept calendars and marked down their failures at survival, whose deaths had to be soul crushing, traumatizing, lasting.

Some say, that self-awareness is a curse since it exposes all the pains surrounding the individual. But why can't it be a blessing too, why does it have to leave you helpless. Why not make it a tool to expose that which damages you so it can be *fixed*, so questions can be posed and answered.

When we get fed up with this world, we close the game. When the Ancients got fed up, they crumbled trying to fix their situation. Maybe they were a bit noble, maybe a bit insane. They were definitely justified in their frustration and attempts to escape, however.

[spotsupstuff]

Say, I really love the thought N just being Tallest one in the room type character and is just funny to me

He's a confirmed beanstalk.

[spotsupstuff]

Thank you for being one of the few semi-popular rw creators that doesn't take the lore at face value...

I'm seeing so many people or popular creators misinterpreting things and they make these rumors that propogate thought the fandom despite being a poorly constucted theory at best.

While you also have headcanons I think you make it quite clear when you have one and when you're considering what's "canon"

def one of the best people I follow here.

Weird being called semi-popular, I still feel like one of those accounts that throws confetti when a post gets past 50 notes.

Thanks for the compliment, I suppose. I definitely do try to make that clear after one or two misunderstanding accidents I had in past.

When it comes to misinterpreting though, I don't think that means it's on purpose or deserves having shade thrown at. Especially now, a week after a game with encrypted visual-coded lore came out. It starts being stupid only when they (the creator or their fans) start pushing at it being the only absolute canonical case. That stinks, yeah.

[spotsupstuff]

About the Ancient porcelain pillows: One of their other primary purposes was to preserve the very elaborately braided and decorated hairstyles of the nobility in the places they were used- just look up "qing women hairstyle" and you'll see what I mean. What I'm saying is, the hard pillows could be evidence that the Ancients had some incredible drip.

As if we didn't already know.

Lookit 'em kicks.

Honestly, maybe it was for sleeping in the masks as well. The back of their necks seems mostly free for that kind of pillow in the murals. Except the Murderer in the 1st Hindrance mural, but we already know he's fucked in the head and maybe a Spiders Georg guy.

[spotsupstuff]

a great advice for when you are afraid that your oc is too similar to a canonical character is to Take your oc and dump them directly into the place of the canon character to see how They'd react to the situations. they react too similarly for your tastes? edit them up.

example: it was worrying me quite a lot that Zephyr might be too similar to Moon. both an old female ("female"... it's supersized microwaves how female could it be /j) Gen 1 iterator that is the senior of her group that collapses and her absence seems to somehow both affect a lot and not at all the rest of the group, both are relatively kind as evidenced by their interactions with slugcats. alright, that's really similar- don't feckin like that! but big part of that is the inevitable fate of all iterators (all will one day collapse). you could call it a trope, cliché. tropes and clichés are tools for the story to take a root somewhere and then the characters themselves help develop it in an unique way

"okay, so i'm going to throw Zephyr into Moon's situation and compare how both of them (would in Zeph's case) deal with it to see if their personalities are too much the same." i say to myself result:

Key Element Discovered: Moon Does Not Possess The Will To Utilize La Chancla Within Five Seconds Of Being Confronted With A Bitchy Child. Let Us Build Off From That

[spotsupstuff]

HEY!!! idk if i missed a post or something but i noticed a tag on some of ur art with uzi and n that said ship of theseus au? what that

It's a thing I'm working on half-assedly rn, because of a deadline.

The main spark of it is basically just ,,I'm gonna take these characters and plot and me-fy it, since I've got different interests and my indie folk-ass Ghibli-bullshit vibe cannot hope to match mr. Vickers' nightcore/electro trcukin', so why even try, I'll make my own fun 'lil thing."

Or, in not so meta terms said, the Pilot painted me a picture of what will happen next that came out unfulfilled. I think my ideas were kinda neat, so I'm gonna try and make a thing out of it + some headcanons I made along the way + while the show's primary focus is on the mystery solving rather than the characters (I liked it, it's like a Scooby-doo movie), I will put it on N and Uzi and their relationship development.

It's gonna have: • trauma/issues confrontation for both of them • Khan exploration ('cuz I like him) • Yeva and her husband dying in the Pilot bunker raid rather than in some unspecified time before (? maybe who knows when they really died) • N backstory crafting (where the AU name comes from) + giving him some more interests (I've also been joking to myself that I added a husky into his char. coding along with the golden retriever) • 9 new dissasemblers for the 3 ships we see at the end of Pilot (recycling ocs of mine for 6 of them) • ☝️ Thad! (the fucking legend) • some general Doll deepening + her relationship with Uzi pondering • a bit more emphasis on N's and Uzi's friendship (kinda missing that in the show, the romantic feelings took too much spotlight too soon for my taste) • delayed Solver awakening for Uzi (I like her crafty Pilot version a lot, especially in contrast to N's highbiotech bullshit bod) • actually fixing the damn ship AND flying it to an orbital station

[spotsupstuff]

i have a very similar mindset on watcher as you, I liked a lot more than downpour,it felt so much more faithful to vanilla in its nonlinearity and really strange lore.

If playing Rain World doesn't make you question your position in the game's map AND in the universe at the same time it's not really Rain World.