#iterator biology????

[mirwx]

ever since i read BTTS winged pebbles has been stuck in my mind

i was going to make a quick sketch but then I rendered the metal. so here.

[noodles-and-tea]

i had an idea but idk its a little out there. dipper is smart, but i was like him once and i think he’d get burnt out fast. mabel has been shown to be smarter than she lets on, as well as curious and interested in the strange and unusual.

relativity falls where mabel fell into the portal and dipper had to clean up and run the shack. mabel would adventure around space & time, surprisingly making lots of friends. theres a little short comic about how mabel went to the mabel dimension and allied with them to defeat evil mabel, so i think she’d be really good at making allies wherever she goes. also i’d really like to see mabel jumping over some frog dude as she runs from the time police.

dipper would be stuck at home, trying so hard to bring her back, while running the mystery shack, trying to balance all of these things and it overwhelms him to the point where he becomes a shut in, and nearly like a cryptid or urban legend he’d read about.

also your art is so gorgeous and cozy!!! i love it so much :D

IM SORRY I DIDNT DRAW MABEL JUMOUNG OVER A FROG DUDE

[carp3tpasta]

Neural

[sluglore]

Explaining The Iterator's Purpose (And Why They Weren't Made to Circumvent The Echoes)

Alright, I know there's already been a few posts like this out there, like this older one from @halvedforest, and this recent one from @noizepushr, which are both good posts, but I've been meaning to touch up and cross-post my own older misconceptions post from reddit for a while now, and provide a deeper, more expanded analysis as to why this misconception exists and explain what's actually going on, so here it finally is haha I'll also be using the term 'Benefactor' instead of 'Ancient', if people are confused about that, I intend to make a post about it eventually ^^

( If you're confused on who out there even believes this, this idea originated from Rain World YouTube lore videos, long before Downpour was ever a thing! It is unfortunately still quite prominent on there... but it's definitely getting better :3 )

This misconception stems from misreading the singular pearl to ever mention the echoes, being the Bright Red farm arrays pearl, so let me begin by attaching the specific section below:

“There were some horror stories though... That if your ego was big enough, not even the Void Fluid could entirely cross you out, and a faint echo of your pompousness would grandiosely haunt the premises forever. So even when the Void Fluid baths became cheaper, some would still starve and drink the bitter tea.” (Bright red Farm Arrays pearl dialogue)

Note the specific usage of “some” here. Echoes weren't presented as an issue significant to re-center Benefactor society around, (let alone build the iterators for) but as some horror stories which only "some" people (likely on the fringes of society) would believe in. Nowhere are we given anything that alludes to the existence of Echoes being regarded as a societal problem to address, much less have anything to do with the Iterators.

Additionally, although we know for a fact that echoes do exist, its fairly possible that most of Benefactor society didn't, as LTTM doesn't even know what they are either, regarding them as nothing more than superstition. On the very next line, LTTM confirms that the void baths continued all the same, while again mentioning that "some" would still choose to abstain from them, and drink the bitter tea.

Then what’s the purpose of the iterators if they weren't created to circumvent the echoes? What is The Big Problem that they are even trying to solve in the first place? Well, both FP, LTTM, and the Exterior colored pearl dialogue spell the answer out for you. In fact, it's the first thing FP even tells you!

“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.” (Five Pebbles dialogue to Survivor) (Monk's version also hits similar notes)

Five pebbles introduces himself as a “reluctant gift," with his purpose being "to solve that very oscillating claustrophobia in the chests of you and countless others," meaning to solve the cycles for everyone and everything else.

If you bring Looks to the Moon a neuron, she has the chance to repeat the same exact explanation to you.

"We were supposed to help everyone, you know. Everything. That was our purpose: a great gift to the lesser beings of the world. When facing our inability to do so, we all reacted differently. Many with madness.”

FP, LTTM, and the rest of their kind were created to serve the rest of the world in finding a method of total mass ascension, of ending the cycle entirely for everyone.... and everything. Not only including the fauna of the world, like the slugcat, but the bedrock, microbes and even gases, as explicitly stated in this snippet from the Exterior pearl dialogue below:

“The Moral Argument: Five Pebbles is our Creation, and we have Parental Obligations towards him. As an Iterator, he is also a Gift of Charity from Us to The World (unable to reach Enlightenment by itself - being composed mostly of Rock, Gas, dull witted Bugs and Microbes - and towards which We thus have Obligations)” (Pale Green Exterior pearl dialogue)

Here we have the Benefactors define it very clearly, that as an iterator, Five Pebbles is a "Gift of Charity from Us to The World." It's important to note that many misinterpret the next section in parentheses as being about FP himself, but if it were, it would be the only time FP is ever referred to as “it”. What's really being described is the world, “unable to reach enlightenment by itself, being composed mostly of rock, gas, dull witted bugs and microbes” The world is unable to reach Enlightenment on it's own and therefore, that's why the iterators were created. (Also- when you think about it, the description of "being composed of rock, gas, and dull witted microbes" doesn't even really fit FP's description lol)

Quick but necessary tangent, the concept of non-living things being apart of the cycle is a little confusing, and tricky to quickly answer without going deep into cycle lore discussion, (I have an entire post in drafts dedicated to clearing this up) but it's actually incredibly important for understanding what The Great Problem is! To shed some light, it's not that non-living matter are able to somehow comprehend the cycles, but that the entire physical world itself is actually an intrinsic part of the cycles.

If you leave a stone on the ground, and come back some time later, it's covered in dust. This happens everywhere, and over several lifetimes of creatures such as you, the ground slowly builds upwards. So why doesn't the ground collide with the sky? Because far down, under the very very old layers of the earth, the rock is being dissolved or removed. The entity which does this is known as the Void Sea. If you drill far enough into the earth you begin encountering a substance called Void Fluid. The deeper you go, the less rock and more Void Fluid. It's believed that there is a point where the rock completely gives way - below that would be the Void Sea. When that stone you placed on the ground has finally done its time in the sediments, it meets the Void Fluid and is dissolved, leaving the physical world. (Teal Subterranean pearl dialogue)

There's a reason that 'Cycles' is always plural in Rain World, because there's multiple of them! Organic life is in cycles, the physical bedrock of the world is in cycles, even the very concept of civilization is in cycles. In order to ascend everything, that means ascending not only all living things, but the entire physical universe itself! That's what the Great Problem really is :D (Also technicallyyy it's only ever referred to as "the big problem" and not "the great problem", the latter term stems entirely from the community but it's whatever i just wanted to quickly mention that. great problem definitely sounds cooler LOL)

In conclusion, Iterators are described as "Gifts to the World" not once, not twice, but three entire times throughout base game Rain World's dialogue, one from FP, one from LTTM, and one from the Benefactors. Rain World lore holds many unanswered, purposefully ambiguous questions, but the Iterator's purpose is not one of them!

If you're confused/interested in analysis of the Benefactor's motivations and perspectives on Ascension, I made a post a little while back containing my thoughts right here :)

[ressioo]

Slug doodles!

Spears is a creepy lil test tube baby. Local cryptid

Been playing inv recently. Absolute hell but also very entertaining. Brain workout

[secretlyscraptrap]

hey uhh

feel free to reblog i want a kinda-decent sample size

also feel free to explain your thoughts in the tags

i feel like im gonna annoy so many biology nerds w this😭😭

edit: also, you could use "silicate based" as "other chemical based" if you want

[mebis-reblogs]

Lifecycle of an iterator's internal biota/ processing microbe

I dont have time to elaborate on this right now (will do so at its moment) but @equipment-manifest knows what's up

i have a basis for all of these, although some of it is rather flimsy

[mothsakura]

hi hello *throws a sketch of speculative biology of an iterator puppet's chest cavity, and runs off*

[snailfen]

sniffs

[rain-world-headcanons]

the various parts inside of iterators are purposed organisms that take the roles or like our own cells, so like the inspectors/hydras/axons are similar to our white blood cells, the dark blue wavy things are like nerves that receive signals from the neuron flies. So when a scug is moving through their systems and occasionally crashing into things and eating neuron flies in the normally sterile environment it’s like when a pathogen gets into the blood stream. For pebbles, in the parts that have been rotted, he has no sense of them, so it’s kinda like losing a limb or an organ in a sense. An iterator’s body is that whole building!!!!!! I just think that’s so cool!!

-

[echosian]

small thing

i got bored in environmental and made myself an explanation on how iterators fit in they cloaks with their big spikes

[infin-8-morphosis]

It's the Guy

i should probably hold off on a big long anatomical explanation of them until I've actually finished the model but. Guy Hype.

take a good look at that snoot

However, do consider in the meantime

that these are the ears

[slugcatmusings]

Iterators = Colonial Organisms

I’ve been thinking a lot about the iterators lately.  Not any one in particular, nope, I’ve just – been thinking about their biology/structure.  How they might’ve been built, what they’re made of, how the frick the Ancients made them so big that they built entire skyscraper cities on, etc.  First two things are most interesting to me though, how do you build an iterator?  What’s the process there?  How do the metal and organic bits fit together?  Are their metal parts even metal at all, because Pebbles’ robot cancer seems to be mutating directly out of the metal????  

Probably not, honestly.  Because metal can’t get cancer.  It’s probably, I dunno, weird bone or something.

ANYWAY I think iterators are colonial organisms, like siphonophores. Think the Man ‘o War jellyfish – it’s actually not one creature, but a bunch of physically connected creatures, each with a specialized purpose that helps all the other creatures around it survive, and all working together.  You’ve got critters that work as a digestive system, others for respiratory or circulatory, others that act as the outer shell/layer/skin, others that act as a skeletal framework, that kind of thing.  

Iterators are like that, but on a MUCH larger scale, built by human(?) hands, and maybe with some fully mechanical parts mixed in here and there.  I mean, just look at these examples of what all we definitely know they have:

Neuron flies, which store memories and I think carry signals/messages between other neural organisms.

Those weird red squiggly things that grow out of some walls and free-drift in other places – I’ve seen neurons connect to the tendrils coming off those things and give off little electrical flashes so those are more neural organisms.

The small hair-like tendrils that glow blue growing out of the wall are probably another version of the red squiggly things.

Inspectors are DEFINITELY acting as the immune system here.  They attack you if you grab/harm neuron flies, they just throw spears and toss you around instead of eating you alive like OUR immune cells usually do.

Those weird red structures attended to by lil white spidery things in the Memory Conflux of Five Pebbles are probably some kind of long-term memory storage, considering the title of the sub-region.

On top of these, we’ve probably got some sort of circulatory system equivalent – in some places you can hear what sounds a bit like a heartbeat pulsing in the background.  (Just, you know, if you were hearing it from right outside the vessel walls and hearing all the liquid rushing past on every beat.)  There’s probably some sort of specialized system for sucking up and processing the water that the iterators canonically use as coolant, ending in some sort of respiration that lets out all the water vapor from that process. There’s GOT to be some sort of digestive system equivalent because I seriously doubt that the “bio” part of “bio-tech” can survive without SOME sort of nutrients, but Void if I know what that might be.  Maybe they’ve got some of that glowy mold being cultivated somewhere in their structure, that stuff seems to grow on their probably-not-metal framework pretty well.  

Then there’s whatever the rarefaction cell in Rivulet’s campaign is plugged into... it’s called the “Heart” in Moon’s structure, maybe it’s connected to a circulatory system, or maybe that’s a mechanical part versus an organic one, I don’t know.  More food for thought.

About the only thing I think the iterators DON’T have is any kind of reproductive system.  Iterators too close to one another can suck up all the water and leave another high and dry, so too many iterators in the same region would probably cause a drought.  On top of that, lust is one of the earthly urges the Ancients are trying to let go of in order to ascend – no way they’d leave their giant holy supercomputers with the ability to do THAT.  They’d probably have aneurysms even thinking about it.

[ardienothesieno]

[ressioo]

Random doodle sharing time yet again. Pebbles such a creature

I should draw sunstone again, i reckon. Been a while

[rehkloo6]

Dry World RP [Rain World]

In this dry, sandy world, the ancients came here to settle, and take advantage of the free space to build The Iterators. Towards the end of the reign, ancients left the world or jumped in the numerous void fluid storage wells. They shut the iterators into a deep sleep mode, which they either had a scheduled time to wake up or they would never wake up. And now the long lost gods are reawakening.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to Siccesco - Dry World! This server is fairly small (14 members at the time of posting) so if you could please join, that would be appreciated. We are NOT spoiler friendly at all. Do not join without knowledge of rain world (downpour). Please join! We need more OCs! https://discord.gg/pM2a97HWyS