#autistically infodumps in tags

[savageboar]

mom: you really spent 30 dollars on aquarium plants?

me: YES

(sorry about the horrible lighting do you have any idea how hard it is to take pictures of aquariums when the lights are off for the evening.)

[meowsticmarvels]

ok one more thing. absolutely criminal that phi and akane don't interact more in ztd because to me they could be besties...... if you even care

[daily-lea-crosscode]

was genuinely in a haze drawing this

[ressoroll]

ive been meaning to use this acc to post more about my interests but i get nervous posting anything besides art so im going to break the tradition by rambling about my current hyperfixation victim Volo Pokémon because i am deranged in the head 💪

im not sure if this has been pointed out before since im very late to the legends arceus party but one of the first things i noticed about volo after he goes Evil Mode is his eye … his pupils smaller and the light reflection in his eye is completely gone which usually means a lot of things like being Cuckoo but another noticeable one is a troubled past or loss of interest in life (this one is notable to me as based on what hes said about his past and how hes frustrated with the world 😢) i even saw this was noted in his concept art … this man has seen The Horrors

something else i noticed was that in palkias origin forme pokedex entry it says that it imitates arceus’ ppearance to gain its powers and when i saw that it blew my mind

you know Who Else imitates arceus’ appearance to gain its powers 😁 this literally explains volos interesting choice to practically cosplay arceus and it makes a lot of sense that he knows this too since he knows a lot about the creation trio … auugghh all of these things i noticed about funny merchant man are making me INSANE IN THE HEAD GGRAHHHHH

[thedarkboy8910]

Some levels of the backrooms are "under rewrite" and ISTG if they change what levels lead to other levels imma be so mad. because I have a project im doing and it entirely depends on the exits of the Backrooms levels and I'm already 6 layers into it and level 0, 1, and probably more are getting a rewrite, and I have 164 levels written and I dont want to reorganize them or (once im finished) have it be wrong.

[dragons1re]

Me and the boys doing a presentation night. We got:

Infodumping about FE3H

Wolfwood monsterfucking manifesto

The trans fem Themeing of Neon Genesis Evangelion (me)

Decaydance ship rankings

Info dumping about all the Mortal Kombat games (jk just the first 3)

@blaiddydbeni @supernova351 @mychemicalbarrett @i-eat-mass-blog

[i3utterflyeffect]

Could you provide a summary of the Rain World lore, or point to any good videos that do that? I’m interested in the Creatures™️ and want to know more about what you’re basing them off of

I'm so sorry anon i tried to make this short. this is all copypasted from a document. the power of autism killed me

if my frothing is too much here's a video by daszombes that probably summarizes this all

IN MY DEFENSE THO this video is also like, 20 minutes long.

im like. going into game mechanics and going into it in a similar way to how a normal player might be introduced to the game. and doing a bunch of shit abt it.

ANYWAY!!!!!!!! Summary of Rain World. Let's go. For context purposes I will be telling the story of Survivor and then going into lore, other stories, and Downpour. Obviously spoilers for everything Rain World and Downpour.

WARNINGS

Mentions of general death and animal death (duh)

suicide

child death (briefly)

fictional speciecide/genocide

potential existential crisis fuel

let's get started.

Your name is The Survivor. You live with a family of five. A little sibling, a baby sibling, and your two parents.

The reason the game is called Rain World is because of the heavy rains that buffet your land-- somewhat manageable from the place your home is at, but in many cases, lethal-- not only because of the flooding, but also because it rains hard enough to give you blunt force trauma that will kill you.

You escape these floods using shelters, hiding and hibernating at the end of each 'cycle'-- the time between each downpour.

During one rain, you fall down, plunging into the abyss as you are seperated from your family. Your mission is to go home.

You find yourself in a dilapidated urban sprawl-- it's something close to it, anyway. Not a city, but incredibly industrial. The world is overgrown. This little yellow thing shows up-- it's called an observer but we'll call it by the nickname Iggy for now-- and it directs you to food and then shelter during the barebones tutorial.

You'll go a few cycles, and discover some base mechanics.

KARMA: Karma is, essentially, a way to keep track of how you're doing. Every time you survive a cycle, your Karma goes up. Every time you die, it goes down. You start with 5 base symbols, each granting you one level. Karma is required to navigate the world, as each reigon requires a certain level for you to get in. We'll talk about this later: Karma is actually pretty important to the lore.

CYCLES: Mentioned previously.

DEATH: You are never truly dead in Rain World. Each time you die, you return to your last shelter, restarting the cycle-- but Rain World is special because it's not just you who knows. Creatures have a chance of coming back to life at the end of every cycle, and they will remember you. There's a system that coincides with this--

REPUTATION: Every species has its own perspective on you, and your actions will change their perception of you. Killing a lot of lizards of the same color might make them afraid of you. If you don't, and instead treat them well, they might ignore you. You are prey, so balancing reputation is important-- and I can only think of one creature that won't try to kill you if your reputation's bad. Even the fish will personally drown you.

One creature is incredibly dependent on reputation that it can make or break a run: Scavengers. If you're kind and often trade, offer pearls (they love pearls), save them from enemies, etc., they'll treat you well. Get a bad reputation, though, and you're dead within seconds. Some animals are just skittish though-- there's literally personality values determining how creatures will act. I love that so much.

I think that's all the important lore-based stuff.

After a few cycles, Iggy will direct you to where (at the time you assume) your family is, and you'll follow them through the areas, going through a large building, a garbage waste, and eventually reaching a unusual ocean lined with pipes and with a sunken building in the distance. As you get closer, you discover that Iggy was not directing you to your family, but instead asking you to go to this building.

After a lot of swimming (and running in terror as the giant leviathan worms try to crush you with their metal jaws), you'll meet HER. A blue humanoid with wires spilling out, attached to the room by a mechanical arm-- similar to the ones you might find on a train.

You cannot understand her at this time, but her name is Looks To The Moon; We'll come back later.

After assigning you a fetch quest, Iggy drags you all the way back, and I'm not entirely sure what the beginner's route is, but I'm pretty sure it's (unfortunately) Dark Level Spider Hell.

Eventually, you crawl through that pit, run away from the centipedes trying to kill you, encounter giant birds with mouths like scissors that really want to kill you that are very very fast, run from them, and eventually make your way up to the next area.

THE LEG & THE UNDERHANG

The Leg is an alarming change from the semi-natural formations of the ground. This place is industrial. It's a metal beam-column, reaching up into the endless sky. This place is infested with lizards, and a scarier enemy:

Daddy Long Legs, also known as The Rot. These are blind… Biological lumps of… something. They're black and blue, and completely blind. But they have great hearing, and the rot will find you if you're not careful. And it will consume you.

Keep the Rot in mind for later. It's important for the lore-- basically crucial.

If you can escape this hellscape and make your way to the top, you'll find yourself in a building larger than you can comprehend.

FIVE PEBBLES - SUPERSTRUCTURE

This area is simply labeled Five Pebbles. This will make sense later.

There's no gravity here, but there's lots of lights and strange things-- things that look like they'd belong inside of a creature, and little bite-sized rainbow things. These are called Neurons, and you actually need them for the fetch quest.

There's a lot of things going on, but you won't be able to admire it too long-- this place has Rot inside it too, and it's much harder to avoid when you can't control your path due to being weightless. It's pretty terrifying, but in a way, this place is kind of majestic.

You explore the sprawl of access shafts, and you begin to hear music-- the most acclaimed and chilling track in the game-- as you reach the General Systems Bus. The first time I arrived here, I was completely awestruck.

RANDOM GODS

A large room, with a single chamber isolated in the middle. Projected lights surround you, and you have to climb your way towards the top to enter the unusual room.

Inside is another robot, similar to Looks to the Moon, except he's pink, he wears a cloak, and most of all, he seems shocked at your presence, because the gravity in the room returns, and everything falls to the ground-- including you.

He talks for a moment, before seizing you with the power of Gravity™️, and lifting you up. He implants The Mark Of Communication into your brain-- a mark allowing you to understand the language he speaks.

The following dialogue occurs:

. . . ...is this reaching you? A little animal, on the floor of my chamber. I think I know what you are looking for. You're stuck in a cycle, a repeating pattern. You want a way out. Know that this does not make you special - every living thing shares that same frustration. From the microbes in the processing strata to me, who am, if you excuse me, godlike in comparison. The good news first. In a way, I am what you are searching for. Me and my kind have as our purpose to solve that very oscillating claustrophobia in the chests of you and countless others. A strange charity - you the unknowing recipient, I the reluctant gift. The noble benefactors? Gone. The bad news is that no definitive solution has been found. And every moment the equipment erodes to a new state of decay. I can't help you collectively, or individually. I can't even help myself. For you though, there is another way. The old path. Go to the west past the Farm Arrays, and then down into the earth where the land fissures, as deep as you can reach, where the ancients built their temples and danced their silly rituals. The mark I gave you will let you through. Not that it solves anyone's problem but yours.

Turns out, this entire massive superstructure IS this guy; Five Pebbles is his name, and this puppet is merely a more interaction-friendly extension of his larger form. He's also not very happy with you climbing through his structure, and kicks you out onto the surface of the structure.

Now, let's go back to Moon and get some more information. We'll go to the west later.

Moondown

Looks to The Moon greets you much more pleasantly than Five Pebbles:

Hello little creature. What are you? If I had my memories I would know… You must be very brave to have made it all the way here. But I'm sorry to say your journey here is in vain.B As you can see, I have nothing for you. Not even my memories. Or did I say that already? I see that someone has given you the gift of communication. Must have been Five Pebbles, as you don't look like you can travel very far… He's sick, you know. Being corrupted from the inside by his own experiments. Maybe they all are by now, who knows. We weren't designed to transcend and it drives us mad. It is good to have someone to talk to after all this time! The scavengers aren't exactly good listeners. They do bring me things though, occasionally…

After giving her a neuron, she will thank you.

These neurons are essentially their brains. She only has five left. She was previously a superstructure like Pebbles-- Who she calls her little brother-- but she has collapsed. Giving her these neurons can help her regain her memory.

You can also eat them! Don't do that. You will permanently kill her if you eat all of them. Also, she remembers if you've done that and won't talk to you.

Quick summary of the vanilla ending:

You go underground, find some religious stuff by an ancient culture before whatever culture created the upper world, you find a big golden ocean, you swim down, and… uh…

You get grabbed by a big worm that sends you to the ascension realm??

I don't fully know what the ending is. No one does. We call the big worm Jerry though, and he's a Void Worm.

Anyway, let's talk about the real basics. The juicy stuff:

Iterators and Ancients

Looks To The Moon and Five Pebbles are complex machines called Iterators, created by a dead race named the Ancients.

These Ancients have left the cycle by using something called Void Fluid, a corrosive material from the core of the world that cancels out your revival. This is called 'Ascension'. We'll talk about this more in a minute.

The Ancients way of life is structured around the idea of leaving the cycle of reincarnation, and they eventually succeed-- however, they decided that they should leave a gift to the 'lesser life' of this world, and allow them their own escape-- with less risk and an immediate payoff. Remember what Pebbles said?

A strange charity - you the unknowing recipient, I the reluctant gift. The noble benefactors? Gone.

Yep; The Ancients basically desired worldwide extinction, from what we can tell. And they didn't bother to create that solution themselves, instead tasking a bunch of sentient, functionally immortal beings, to throw themselves repeatedly at a proverbial wall trying to create this worldwide cleanse.

Iterators were made for this.

But let's talk some other things real quick before we dive into that mess.

KARMA AND YOU

Karma. These symbols are fun and also important.

You see, the base symbols Survivor starts with are representations of what the Ancient Monks call the 'five natural urges'. These don't change the gameplay at all, but karma is crazy important in lore.

Let's take a look at the base five.

KARMA 1: VIOLENCE

The lowest level of karma, this symbol generally represents anger, hate, and violent acts. The symbol is used in several others-- the ones for 'The Hunter' and 'The Outlaw', gotten by eating only meat for 3 cycles or committing needless bloodshed.

KARMA 2: LUST

Yeah. Lust. I've heard this can also be percieved as a desire for material objects (take that with a grain of salt), but other than that, I don't think I need to say more.

This symbol is used in the passage 'The Mother'.

KARMA 3: COMPANIONSHIP

The desire to form connections with others in general, not just friendships. Frequently found scrawled in areas with scavengers, and also used in 'The Chieftain', 'The Friend', and 'The Mother'.

KARMA 4: GLUTTONY

food… hrng….. Anyway this one is the desire to eat good food I assume????? What else is there to say, really?

It's used in The Hunter passage, as well as the Marytr (starve for several cycles intermittently), and Iggy uses it to point you to food.

KARMA 5: SELF-PRESERVATION/SURVIVAL

The urge to survive. This is why people pretty frequently talk about the ancients having a suicide culture-- not to mention that the others represent signs of depression. It's used in 'The Saint' (survive without using weapons) and 'The Nomad' (pass through 4 regions successfully) and, most notably, it's own passage: 'The Survivor', in which you survive five cycles with this amount of karma. It is the highest karma most slugcats can ascend to without Echoes-- We'll talk about Echoes in a minute.

There's one oddball karma that breaks from the formula, so I'm just going to mention that briefly:

7/7 KARMA: PEACE (O)

For some reason, this Karma is used in some other stuff, and only if it's your current highest Karma. Seen in 'The Monk' and 'The Saint' passages, it basically just means peace. That's all. This one's weird.

Let's get to arguably the most important topic:

ASCENSION AND ECHOES

oh god. where do i start. um.

Okay. So basically. Ascension is a separation from the cycle that keeps you from returning, or 'respawning'.

For ancients, this was simple-- they extract fluid from the core of the world named Void Fluid, and you just… Dive in, I guess?

There was a mass ascension at some point, leaving everything they created behind. But this is all lore for the ANCIENTS. Let's get to the slugcat method.

To ascend, you must reach true max karma (represented the symbol ⊗-- a crossed out circle) and go through the Depths and go into the Void Sea, but you can't get Max Karma yourself. There's two ways:

Visit Five Pebbles and gain the Mark Of Communication

or…

You can visit Echoes.

If someone has many vices, such as being arrogant or egotistical, or other connections to the world, they leave something described as a stain of their ego trapped between reality and ascension.

Ghosts, essentially. That's what they're called in the code as well. They will speak to you if you have the Mark, and a few will reminisce and admit they never even wanted to ascend. Whatever these beings are, they give you extra Karma, elevating you to the next level.

Now that your crash course on that is over, let's talk about the iterators, for realsies.

THE GREAT PROBLEM

Being made for a seemingly impossible task was not easy for them, especially after the ancients, well… 'dipped', I guess you would say.

No one could really get to the solution, despite having many cycles to do so, even before the Ancients left. Previously, the Ancient lived atop them in cities, so it was a very noticeable thing.

Some turned to other things: Art, companionship, creative projects, watching the world outside, talking with friends.

Others balanced between these things, finding something like a job and personal life balance.

And some went insane.

You see, the ancients created a 'Self-Destruction Taboo', which attempts to prevent the iterators from attempting to hurt themselves, only causing more damage as they try to work around it and find their own way out.

This wasn't common at first, but something happened that caused it to spiral out of control:

Sliver Of Straw and the Triple Affirmative.

The triple affirmative is a signal that informs all iterators that the Great Problem-- How to ascend all life-- Has been discovered. Three affirmatives:

Affirmative that a solution has been found.

Affirmative that the solution is portable.

Affirmative that a technical implementation is possible and generally applicable.

Here's the thing: The problem wasn't solved. Moon explains it best:

Do you know Sliver of Straw? She's quite legendary among us. Sliver of Straw is the only one to ever broadcast a specific signal: that the Big Problem we're all working on has been solved. The triple affirmative. […] She's also one of few that has ever been confirmed as exhaustively incapacitated, or dead. We do not die easily. Sliver of Straw sent [The Triple Affirmative] and the ensuing commotion was historically unparalleled, before or after. I still remember it. But… nothing happened - except that Sliver of Straw was apparently dead. When the dust settled we were all still there blinking at each other. Everyone had a theory. Some said that she did have a solution, but that the solution itself was somehow dangerous. These later became known as the Triangulators, who think that a solution should be inferred without being directly discovered. Some said she never had a solution, she just died. And when the systems broke down an erroneous signal was sent. One camp claimed that dying was the solution. Either way, after that these different factions developed, as well as a huge forensic effort to recreate and simulate Sliver of Straw's last moments. Some of the simulations were wrapped in a simulation wrapped in a simulation, in case something dangerous might happen. Nothing much has come from it.

Sliver of Straw also abbreviates to SOS, and their name is similar to needle in a haystack.

We're still not sure what happened: The one fan-theory that pretty much seemed canon due to a challenge level was debunked. SOS remains a mystery. I've got my own thoughts, but we're not talking about that here.

Anyway, after Sliver of Straw died, there soon became more and more self-destructing iterators, with one common method resulting in a term for it's failure: The Rot.

Remember that? Yeah. They slowly destroy an iterator, but it doesn't truly kill them. They're still alive in there, somewhere.

Let's talk about how the Rot works once we get to the point where it begins in the main storyline.

THE COLLAPSE

Looks to the Moon was constructed upon a shoreline, and there was originally no plans to create Five Pebbles.

Almost all Iterators are incredibly far apart, even in their local groups, so it would have seemed preposterous at the time of her creation.

However, her surface became inhospitable some time after her creation, and traversing the ground beneath her would have basically made any attempt at evacuation worthless.

So a solution was proposed-- Two iterators connected by a bridge. They could safely leave her to her own things, and meanwhile, the ancients could spend their remaining time NOT dying.

I'd love to talk about the politics surrounding Five Pebble's creation, but that's unnecessary and this doesn't need to get any longer.

After their creators passed on, Pebbles slowly became despondent and began talking in a private group, using the psuedonym 'Erratic Pulse' to obtain information on how he could circumvent the Self Destruction Taboo..

The local group has 3 others. Two are important, one isn't. (sorry Chasing Wind </3)

Seven Red Suns, or SRS, is our current topic.

They are someone Five Pebbles looks up to, and ended up giving him this info, which they regret.

There's also No Significant Harassment, who is mischievous and good friends with most of the group before everything falls apart.

Here's some in-game dialogue:

[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment SRS: I can't stop dwelling over mistakes that I've made. I could just delete those memories of course, but that feels irresponsible. NSH: Oh? What kind of mistakes are we talking about here? SRS: I once gave someone some... sensitive information... the kind that could be dangerous if acted on. SRS: Yet I should have known they weren't in the right state to use that information responsibly. NSH: I take it you won't tell me the content, or to who. SRS: No, I will not, out of respect. NSH: Look, if you ever want to talk about it I can. We can share this little problem of yours. We were made to solve them after all! NSH: You're worried they're going to get themselves hurt by messing it up? SRS: They already have.

You can find the pearl containing this 'sensitive information' in other campaigns.

Here is Moon's comment on it:

This information is illegal. Someone probably tried to send it by a pearl somehow rather than risking being overheard on broadcast. It's an instruction on how to circumvent the self-destruction taboo. The problem with breaking taboos is that the barriers are encoded into every cell of our organic parts. And there are other taboos strictly regulating our ability to rewrite our own genome. Attempting to circumvent the issue using this process would be extremely risky. That's not to say that there exists any known methods that would avoid putting the user in harm's way. Those barriers are there for a reason. Where exactly did you find this pearl? I imagine you dug it up from somewhere within the surrounding facilities, in which case that wouldn't leave many options as to the recipient. That would explain a lot of things…

Pebbles used this pearl, and because of this, his water intake majorly increased, leaving Moon without any water at all: Iterators need water to function, though, as without it they can't flush out the massive amount of excess materials that is made by their operations. He didn't notice, not until Moon contacted him directly-- And he was angered by this, but not without reason.

Failing the pearl caused him to break the genome reprogramming, causing biological parts to be converted into Rot.

When Moon falls, he shuts out all the other iterators, and goes radio silent.

You're caught up on the backing lore. Now... Campaign time.

TIMELINE: SPEEDRUN EDITION

SPEARMASTER

A messenger made by Seven Red Suns who can make spears outta bone-- a little bit trypophobic but I forgive them it's not their fault. No mouth btw. those spears are how it eats. slurp

Delivered the pearl containing the Taboo bypass, but Seven Red Suns sends you back, with a message of worries regarding his physical and mental health, trying to tell him to open up and talk about his feelings. Pebbles gets mad. He kicks you out, as well as the pearl you were carrying. Did I mention that he rips it out of your chest? That pearl was embedded in you.

Anyway, you can take the pearl to Moon because she's still standing, and she encodes it with a goodbye, telling you about how she's about to collapse. You run to the communication arrays and broadcast that message for her, before returning home to Seven Red Suns.

ARTIFICER

"God Forbid Women Do Anything", Genocidal Revenge edition. Artificer had two babies. Scavengers saw one take one of their precious Porls. Baby is dead. Artificer runs but the other baby gets dragged to hell by leeches and drowns.

Anyway, Artificer returns on a genocidal rampage, locked at Karma One: Violence. You use scavenger corpses to get through Karma gates. The only thing that can sate your hunger is blood and flesh. You are continuously aimbotted by Scavengers but you keep coming back to kill more and more.

You're also explosive, did I mention that? I don't think I mentioned that. She explodes. She's very angry. She can launch herself through the air and maul people.

You can get to Karma 10 through echoes, but you're still denied by the void. It's unclear if she becomes an Echo or not.

You also have another ending! If you go to Five Pebbles, he'll say 'hey, that drone you have is a citizenship drone for my city, scavengers are ripping the city apart, I see that you hate them, and if you kill their chieftain we both benefit'!

If you choose to go that route you can tear through the scavengers, have a boss fight, and get a cool mask. Who cares about being empty inside since you can no longer go on a genocidal murder spree and being forever chained to the mortal realm by your anger and bloodshed when you have a cool mask?

Moon is also dead, she's not there.

Blood and violence. Rip and tear.

Slugcat pup was killed so let their corpses rain from the heavens, etc.

HUNTER

You are rot, rot is you!

Actually, you're a messenger slugcat made by No Significant Harrassment. For some reason this guy ended up giving you the rot for reasons still unclear to us. Unintentionally? Intentionally? Who knows. Your cycle count goes down instead of up.

You have limited cycles to speedrun to Moon and MAYBE ascend if you're lucky.

Go through Pebbles? He gives you extra cycles and wishes you the best of luck. Kind of depressing that you're both condemned to the same fate.

Get to Moon; Deliver a pearl that's a message of well wishes and cares from NSH. More importantly, deliver a slag reset key and restart her. She gets her neurons back. She's alive! And unable to help you.

Now? Run.

Your biological time bomb is ticking, and when you get into negatives, it shows. Not only does it turn permadeath, but you begin to experience collapsing into seizure-like spasms randomly, a growing hunger, and according to the wiki HALLUCINATIONS?

Ascend and you get a happy ending, but if you die you're gonna get a horrific surprise in the next campaign!

Fun fact: original hard mode campaign. Hunter is more skilled than the other vanilla slugs, but their world is harder too.

GOURMAND

Food. That's it. Just food. It's either going to be the easiest slugcat or the hardest one.

You eat your list of foods, maybe visit the iterators, and fuck off back home. You don't even have to complete the list. You can just Fucking Leave.

If you do complete the list tho you get slugpups. I like em. Cute slugs.

you can also CRAFT NUKES btw. did i mention that? Gourmand has crafting mechanics and also can craft nukes if you do it right. Not joking

You can also regurgitate an entire living squid. How? Gourmand.

Also by the way Hunter may or may not have popcorned into a mindless mass of rot if you failed to ascend them. Oopsie.

SURVIVOR

See introduction.

MONK

Survivor but babey mode (affectionate)

Remember Survivor's little siblings? Monk is one of them. They're a vanilla bannana boy and my favorite little guy.

You basically choose a route and if you've already completed it with Survivor there's a happy sibling reunion. Oh, there's two routes now, by the way. Once you complete Gourmand you can go home to the Outer Expanse. No one's there but you're both chilling.

RIVULET

WELCOME TO HELL.

This is probably the one that gave Downpour its title. The rain happens every three minutes, maybe less if you get unlucky. The rain shelters are failing and the world's succumbing to Rot.

Go throw yourself into Moon, and you'll discover Monk has given her two neurons and a dress; thank you Monk :]

You also have the mark of communication from someone (who knows who) and you have a pearl for an iterator system that Moon doesn't have called the lymphatic system. Apparently the rain's bad because Pebbles isn't doing well, but how bad can it be?

…hey, why is the citadel covered in Rot? That's weird and annoying.

Was there always this much in the overhang? It's kind of obnoxious.

Finally, you're at Pebbles, so let's-

Oh.

OH.

THAT'S JUST… THE ROT.

THAT'S WHAT IT'S CALLED NOW. OKAY. FUCK.

Pebbles is so sick he can't even maintain zero gravity, it's going on and off.

Dive into the water of the newly discovered path and RUN.

When you get to him, he asks you to disconnect his only life support-- a Rarefraction Cell-- and deliver it to Moon. A final apology. Leave him to listen to his music pearl in peace, it's the only thing he has left.

Take that cell, run to Moon. She knows exactly where it came from. She doesn't know where her core is anymore, though.

Time for the Submerged Superstructure.

Most of Moon's remains are underwater, now infested with kelp, water lizards, and scavengers. But you can swim down, down, down into the creaking metal, the shrieking waters. Let it swallow you whole.

Eventually, you will reach her Heart. Place the Rarefraction Cell inside, and you're washed away.

You are washed to the top, and descend down to find her where you left her-- but renewed with new life.

She'll contact Pebbles one last time. Happy ending, right?

Not yet.

SAINT

THE TRUE TRIPLE AFFIRMATIVE

Saint may seem peaceful at first-- Fragile and unable to throw spears, fluffy to fight the cold seeping into the world-- but they are arguably the scariest one out there!

The world is ending: Iterators have gone silent, and the world's being blanketed in snow. You're up above it all-- so your first instinct is to go east. To Pebbles.

But he's gone.

Descend, and you'll only find a heap of scrap metal: The Silent Construct. His remains.

You're collecting Echoes.

On the way, you talk to Moon. She tells you about the state of the world. How it's dying. That she might be the only one left.

The world is passing into a new era: one that doesn't need them.

At maximum Karma, Saint becomes something unique.

You gain the ability to ascend anything.

You can go back.

You probably are going to ascend Moon. Only a mercy, right?

Return to the silent superstructure, and find that Pebbles remains. He's still holding that pearl. The music is scratchy. Distorted.

How long has he been here?

However long it was, it was enough to pick off all his neurons. And despite this, he's not even granted the mercy of an ending; he can barely even think or speak. It's cold out here, and you can't imagine it'd be kind to leave him here alone. He has to go, too.

And with that, you descend to the depths.

RUBICON

The Void Sea doesn't have anything for you. In fact, you will only discover yourself in a hellish world where it seems to be flipped upside down, and the remains of the old civilizations that are probably familiar by now are succumbing to the void.

You're burned if you touch the void fluid. You must fly to avoid it.

So you go. You ascend many things that are either trying to kill you or keeping you locked out of other paths.

And finally, at the end, you go up, and ascend.

You swim up. The slugcat tree is here, but it's not what you're looking for.

You drop by a chamber-- one containing the two ascended iterators.

They're free, and finally together. Once you ascend, you can see the future and the past in a cycle.

They look at you, and it's not a circle. It's an endless spiral into entropy. Your future goes on forever.

But you keep ascending.

It's not long before the Void Worm finds you. It offers you ascension, a reprieve.

And you kill it.

You're trapped in the cycle forever. An echo, ever recurring.

And it continues on.

🎉CONGRATS!

you are now a rain world expert. consider yourself lore'd. feel free to look at the critters and beasts on the Miraheze Wiki. (thank you miraheze this is so much better than fandom wikis. we love you)

[musturd-artposts]

consciousness is a heavy burden

(deltarune au ill be posting about a lot more💕💕💕💕)

[baliisarda]

In defense of The Marriage of Figaro's sequel : The Guilty Mother

(If there are any typos... no there weren't.)

Ten years - it has been ten years. 😭 I have spent ten years doting on Beaumarchais' trilogy, cherishing and nurturing this great special interest of mine. In doing so, I have often re-read the composing plays of this trilogy (so often in fact I have lost count... it would have been difficult to do so in the span of ten years anyways)...

And I have found myself to appreciate, for what it is, the final (and perhaps slightly infamous) play of the trilogy : The Guilty Mother.

To start off clear, I wish to say first and foremost I do agree The Guilty Mother is terribly out of place when put next to its prequels. Being the sole drama out of three plays, the others being comedies, this third play can absolutely be considered as the edgy younger sibling of the bunch... However, as estranged from its prequels as it may be, I find charm and a certain logic to it.

(A [as short as can be] synopsis of The Guilty Mother : The narrative unfolds twenty years after The Marriage of Figaro. The plot centers on past events wherein the Countess Rosine Almaviva and Chérubin have had, at some point between the second and third play, an affair, during the Count’s prolonged absence on business. When the Countess admonished Chérubin for their indiscretion and resolved never to see him again after giving birth to their son, he departed for war, where he sought and found death [to put it bluntly he killed himself as he could not bear to never see his love again, how NICE ♡]. As he lay dying, he wrote this awfully sad, final letter to the Countess, confessing his love and regret, and detailing their liaison. Unable to discard the letter, the Countess secured it in a special box with a hidden compartment, crafted by an Irishman named Bégearss, to conceal the evidence from the Count.

Over the years, the Count harbored suspicions about the paternity of Léon, the Countess's son. Driven by these doubts, he has been squandering his wealth to ensure Léon inherits nothing, even renouncing his title and relocating the family to Paris. Yet, his uncertainty has prevented him from formally disowning the boy or confronting the Countess. Concurrently, the Count has an illegitimate daughter, Florestine, whom Bégearss seeks to marry [because of course]. To secure Florestine as the Count’s sole heir, Bégearss begins to exploit the Countess’s secret. Figaro and Suzanne, still married, must once again intervene to protect the Count and Countess, and their illegitimate children Léon and Florestine, who harbor a secret love for one another.)

To me, the plot, though drastically different from what was previously expected of this trilogy, works... though it is not grandiosly written [and at times a very meek plotline], it possesses both charm and logic.

Logic, as it was never meant to be between Chérubin and Rosine (and it truly does pain me to say this as I am a Chérubin/Rosine truther to the grave, and generally I simply wish for these two characters' happiness with great fervour)... as sweet as what might have and could have been between the two young people, the awful laws of reality cannot really bend too much for them. 😭 It was bound for their affair to end one way or another (that was sort of mean for Beaumarchais to kill off poor Chérubin but alright.), as goes the struggle of fairly much any character in a drama : they may try to fight against Fate itself, but ultimately it is a pointless battle. (I HATE BEAUMARCHAIS SO MUCH I HATE EVERYTHING I'M CANCELING MY AUTISM SUBSCRIPTION)

I also think it explores wonderfully how affected by her (frankly abusive 🙁) marriage Rosine has become over the years, and how guilt-ridden she is — she has lost herself in her many wounds of the heart, eternally basking in her misery, and to me it really seems her mental decline has been beautifully handled and more seriously explored, especially in sc. XIII, Act III (in which she has this awful mental breakdown and is fully convinced Chérubin is sending her some sort of divine message for her to join him in death, and wholly believing she is going to die as she says those words... oh she is NOT doing well).

Charm, as I think the characters themselves (except for the Count - because of course, and because of Bégearss - I just cannot truly convince myself to like him, even as an antagonist I think there's far too little time for us to get to know him 😭) are all more or less charming! I find both Léon and Florestine to be interesting, but as I just said, I think there was too little time for us to truly get to know them and therefore get too attached to them... which is a shame, because now, to me, they just seem to serve as a parallel/alternate version to Rosine and Chérubin instead of actually being anything beyond this.

...But as somewhat shallow as Léon and Florestine can at times be, I find the parallel between them and Chérubin and Rosine to be absolutely brilliant - Léon is the more obvious parallel of the two : he quite resembles his father. First, as they share a name (Chérubin's government name being Chérubin Léon d'Astorga - his second name being his son's was his dying wish to Rosine, wish which she granted) : which is... quite telling, but also in how idealistic and sensitive he can at times be. As for Florestine, it is a bit more subtle (though that is arguable) : her name resembles Rosine's (both names' meaning is about flowers, and sound quite similar too as they both end in -ine) - she carries herself and acts very similar to her (I would argue she acts moreso like her in the Barber of Seville rather than in the later plays) - an old man (Bégearss) attempting to set apart her and her lover to marry Florestine himself (sounds awfully similar to a certain plotline, does it not...? - though here it obviously does reflect more the Countess/Count dynamic, but I am simply trying to say how similar she is to Rosine : I am not attempting to draw any relationship parallels here specifically 🙇🏻‍♀️)

With these two being so similar to Rosine and Chérubin, I feel as if through their love (...also, what was the fake incest twist about - I know it's Beaumarchais, but come on) and granted wedding, it is as if we get a glimpse of what Chérubin and the Countess could have been under different circumstances - or for that matter, how they could have been while they had an affair... It's so bittersweet, but at the same time, it is as if Rosine finds solace and acceptance in her grief knowing Florestine and Léon get to marry. 🥹

Overall, I think it is a rather important piece in the Figaro canon, though fairly objectively not as well-written (I audibly sighed upon the Count and the Countess not getting a divorce even by the end of the play, for the love of God, please let the poor woman break free from the cycle of abuse already) and frankly out-of-place : to enjoy it, I think it is necessary to not get your standards too high upon deciding to read/watch it... appreciate it for what it is, and just... sigh in despair at the what is not very good. 😭

Now - Departing a bit from the original subject, there is one example of foreshadowing in a stage production of Le Nozze di Figaro I would like to show you all (it is in fact my favourite stage production, I think everyone fits their role perfectly, and the staging is sooo good!)

One thing I do not particularily enjoy is how some productions disregard The Guilty Mother either in 1.making Chérubin and the Countess not interact at all in the finale (-> in the last scene, play-wise, they actually do interact and Rosine even gives to Chérubin her ribbon, THE ribbon, hinting at something after the play...) 2.clumsily attempting to hint at the Guilty Mother by making Chérubin's attempts at seducing Rosine completely fail (...ultimately they do fail : I mean, the poor boy DIES because of his love for her - but at some point his feelings have to be reciprocated for Léon to exist...) - But there is a production... somewhere out there, that subtly hints at The Guilty Mother in a way that doesn't leave Chérubin absolutely loveless (consdering what happens next in the Figaro canon, he is quite in luck so far actually 😭) : and that production is the Royal College of Music's 2018 production of Le Nozze di Figaro (stage directing was done by Sir Thomas Allen himself!).

(-> Chérubin wanting to intervene between the Count and the Countess making up - Antonio physically restrains him from doing so - Chérubin shakes off his arm and just glances miserably at Rosine 😭)

...Now this might seem like either a very on-the-nose, confused wink at The Guilty Mother, or a direction which I have stated I do not like much, which is the unrequited love route (which just contradicts the Figaro canon even if not taking account of The Guilty Mother - they both already got feelings for eachother in The Marriage of Figaro!)

But we are only half-way through the finale - as soon as the music hits the allegro assai "Questo Giorno di tormenti, di capricci e di follia", the acting goes along with the tempo and actually picks up in vivacity and joy WHICH IS EVERYTHING I EVER NEEDED (I am absolutely losing my cool over there sorry)

I love the subtleness of it - it's only about a few seconds, but sets the tone right for the end of the opera which is just perfect. 🤭 And to me, a sensible and great approach when it comes to referencing The Guilty mother.

TL;DR : The Guilty Mother is so bad it's kind of loveable. (it does have its enjoyable quirks though)

[ozym4ndi4s]

I have this one headcanon, tell me if it's inaccurate to anything that might've been mentioned anywhere but uh

I like to just imagine that Hell is hot and Heaven is cold? Because. They're opposing side, and Hell is usually the one that gets the fire and shit bc.. hellfire-

SO

I have this idea that Demons are cold blooded and Angels are warm blooded? Because of their respective habitats?

Crowley's a snake, Hastur's got a frog, Dagon is.. something scaly, do you see where I'm going with this? (Yes I know that not all the Demons have cold blooded animals representing them but shhhh-)

And when you think of like. Good. It's a warm and safe feeling, like being wrapped in soft and cuddly blankets and other stuff I can't be bothered to think of rn. So Angels, being.. 'good', would be warm blooded

Yes there are thematic things that go with this too

The colors I personally associated most with Aziraphale (this is just me tho idk about all of you) are a soft whitish-yellow and a sort of baby blue, contrasting Crowley's stark bright red and dark greyscale/black tones (also his bright yellow eyes)

Aziraphale has yellow for warmth, blue for cold

Crowley has black/greyscale for cold(/dim?? Dull??? Something), and red/yellow for warmth

They have (kinda) both ends of the color spectrum. They are their own side

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

[coyotepawsteps]

my genderqueer autistic ass having an epiphany about my general dislike for vcing (voice chatting) while in the middle of watching neurodivergent & queer tiktok compilations

usually i’m pretty okay with & prefer being in vcs with people who talk while i stay muted, and most of the time i just say that i “don’t really like talking in vcs” without elaborating on that too much but like. i’m gonna spend some time using tumblr as a way to put actual words to a lot of the deeper reasons for this feeling that i’m starting to notice! bc who am i if not a little autistic creature who wants to infodump to people except it’s a lot more comfortable to do so using a platform that feels more like a personal journal than a social media site!! i write all this for myself but i also want it to be in a space where other people can see it, relate to it, share their own experiences, etc.!

(and, with that mention of people sharing their own experiences, please feel free to reply to or reblog this with some of your own thoughts or experiences on this topic, because i’m genuinely curious how other people feel about this kind of thing!!)

i feel insecure about the way i perceive my voice as “too feminine”, i want to present online as a vague gender-fucky creature most of the time but i feel like people hearing my voice will ruin that kind of presentation. after listening to some of those “this is my voice [timeframe] on t” clips, i kinda realized that if my voice was deeper — something more neutral, or vaguely “boyish” but not exactly — this specific bullet point wouldn’t be much of a problem anymore

again a point specifically about my voice itself — i don’t think that i can really regulate the..i guess emotion in my voice? sometimes i speak completely flat monotone, sometimes i feel like i talk in a tone that doesn’t properly convey my current emotions or fit the situation, sometimes i feel like i can be way too hyper-expressive especially when i’m like. feeling really positively, like if i’m happy or excited or laughing at something. i also feel like i talk more high pitched in those latter situations which doesn’t help with the vocal-based gender dysphoria

i frequently describe myself as socially awkward. i am kinda bad when it comes to having conversations with people. there isn’t really any time at all to like, properly process what the other person has said & then reply to it accordingly while having vocal conversations, most of the time you just gotta wing it and hope you get it right. texting is a lot easier for me because then i do have that time to process what was said, and think of how to respond to it, and i have time to reread my response (and change it if need be) before sending it

this is something that i do sometimes mention in my original “i just don’t like talking in vcs” statement to people (just not with this much level of detail & explanation to it) — i feel like i express myself a lot better through writing/texting/messaging than i do speaking. ties in a lot with my emotional regulation/tone of voice bullet point; i express emotions a lot better through textual means. if i’m particularly hyper or expressing strong emotions like anger, excitement, joy, etc. then i usually write in all-caps and type fast enough that i make frequent typos. same thing for if i’m laughing at/about something i find really funny, plus with an add-on of keysmashing (there’s no good vocal equivalent to a really good keysmash). emojis and/or emoticons are really nice to use for conveying emotion wordlessly (some personal usage examples: 😭 for laughing or sometimes genuine sadness/upset depending on the situation; 😂 is also good for laughing/amusement [although i go through cycles of how often i actually use it; some times it’ll often be the only emoji i use for laughing, others i use the sobbing one a lot more and almost never touch this one, and others i rely more on text emoticons or abbreviations]; my most common emoticons are xD, :D, :), and :( with some variations depending on circumstance [e.g. >:) for a more “devilish”/mischievous use]; and, though they aren’t exactly emojis or emoticons, i frequently use abbreviations like “lmao” and “lol” interchangeably with them, with lmao being for actual strong amusement and lol being like a more toned-down “ha ha” kinda thing.) there is, of course, also the bonus of tone-tags being an option in textual conversation, although i don’t tend to use them too frequently unless i’m aware that something i’m saying could be taken in the wrong way by the other person (e.g. if i’m saying something i really mean, i won’t really use tone-tags for it, like if i’m telling a friend “i like playing games with you”; but if i’m joking around with someone while using a flat tone — like a message without any emoji usage, caps, purposeful typos, etc. — i will usually use tone-tags there, for example “i hate you so much /j”)

[syn4k]

a scene from discord circa about ten minutes ago. i genuinely think that if i were neurotypical i would die of boredom. im like a shark, if i stop thinking i die

[gooperts-gunk]

ferb? i know what we're doing today (/ref)

THERE'S A MEXICAN BEANIE BABY NAMED OSITO!!!!! and sure you can argue "what a general name it's essentially "bear the bear" not original at all" BUT IT'S OSITO!!!!!!

[dysfunctionallygrey]

Can someone please tag me in long ass fandom related text posts? Any text post, AUs, fanfics, and ESPECIALLY anything to do with media analysis because i have lots of time to kill and the curiosity and attention of Pandora but without the box.

Give me your headcannons, rarepairs, OTPs or whatever I will accept them with open arms, Also take this as an opportunity to yap in my asks just don't be mean or anything.

It doesn't have to be yours, just a long ass text post you find pretty cool, especially if it's anything I'm personally interested in.

This is me officially begging now

Let me hear about your interests please please please please please please

Infodumo to me this 8s me hypnotizing you to infodump to me

🙏🙏🙏🙏

Pwetty pwease

[soapexclamationmark]

HAS SOME REFERENCES TO SPOILERS UP TO EGGHEAD

So i really really like one piece so ive been starting to re-read it the past few days and i just finished up orange town and i wanted to talk about it, because its a lot cooler than i remember! first of all, i really appreciate chou-chous part, i know thats a pretty lukewarm take, but its the first time in the whole series where we see luffy fight for someone else, and its the first time we see him get angry over injustice, and it does a GREAT job setting up the tone for the grand adventure that follows (note while im doing minor editing to make sure this post isnt shit, still probably is, but we also got to see luffy fight for the small girl in romance dawn, but chou-chou is cooler than her and i still think this example truly shines as an early example of this theme so im keeping it)

as always Oda does a really good job of making luffy's anger really *feel* impactful. the scene afterwards where luffy gives chouchou the bag of dog food that he got from the burning building is also amazing and really shows that going forward its not only luffy's wrath that matters, but his love for those facing injustice. honestly this arc does a LOT to introduce luffy's character, the moment when he smashed the mayor into the wall to knock him out. him doing this still works in his what we have seen previously, but alongside his interactions with the townsfollk after the battle with buggy we can see that even if luffy sometimes struggles to understand people (its ok my autistic king, we've all been there) he is shockingly emotionally intellegent. also, the art in this arc is SO much better than romance dawn. maybe its a personal thing but i dont really care for romance dawns art style, its a bit to simple and overly round for me, but orange town has a really great mix of what the artstyle will come to be while still mainly having that older one piece charm, and oda definitally flexes his art skills more in this arc. also reference to the sunken continent?????? in my chapter 19?????

im going to stop short of showing pictures of the art and talking about it because i dont know art that well, and if you want that you should go watch tbskyen's best panel in every chapter of one piece series because he does a much better job of art analysis than i could ever do. i remember there being more i wanted to talk about but i cant remember them right now so im just gonna end on the note that this arc was really funny! i still really like the humour in modern one piece but i found myself laughing a lot more in this arc than ive laughed at one piece in quite some time!! to end, im just gonna put a page that i thought was really funny and had quite a good laugh at.

[devilsfoolcake]

Me, each time I play b-gsnax and get to Wambus and Triffany: