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the

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even if you don't need any, please give some to her. please

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pebbles, I have brought you rot for your rot

Very cool that the rot spreads to regions that weren't intended for them. It seems to work on modded regions, which is great (or Unfortunate™) for any that want to be added to Watcher's roster.

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I have travelled across time and space to bring you TOYS

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Made these immediately after finishing the first ending, but I wanted to wait until more people caught up to that point before I posted it. Haha

It's a good thing I waited - at this point there's been a lot of people saying the shadows in the shop aren't the best indicator of height. Even within the region itself, giant ancients (or tiny everything else) doesn't make sense - the shelves and masks in the shop, the path to the void baths, etc. A friend (and others like skybristle) suggested that the scaling could be so off because Spinning Top (the echo's) memories of being a child skewed the perspective somehow.

I wasn't sure, because AU doesn't change for Watcher after Spinning Top has passed on, but given the rot can't spread to Ancient Urban (or Terrace or Daemon), it's possible that place really is not as physical as it seems? In any case, that would keep things open-ended without taking away from the powerful impression of the scene.

The scale was extremely cool, but if taken literally, I feel like it kind of detracts from the grandiosity of other regions. The wall to these ancients would be a rock climbing route... And the average region a stroll around the block... (at least if we take the space we see slugcat traverse literally, anyways)... waist-height subterranean cargo trains, haha, um...

Still - iterator puppets being literal hand (or finger. they're so small) puppets is a pretty novel concept. This size ancient could crush a scavenger or a lizard underfoot without really thinking about it. Vultures are turkey-sized and Rain Deer are spindly rabbits. Sky Whales aren't even as long as those ancients are tall.

Here's a height estimate to make sense within the shop:

Watcher (and Spinning Top) sized up to match the toy art:

This is how big I've been headcanoning them. (To be clear, I'm not pushing this size as "correct" - it's just what I've been working with.) They can actually fit in the subterranean train carts this way:

I think this is the tallest they can get to reasonably fit through the void bath path. (With my headcanon size as well)

Echo comparisons for fun. Not all echoes are the same size, but Spinning Top is smaller than the rest. (And also none of these make sense with any the proposed sizes if they're taken literally, lol)

And a few more I snagged while I was working on second ending stuff (Stormy Coast, Torrential Railways, Shattered Terrace):

Yeah you get the point.

I was really excited and emotional when I first realized what was going on, standing under the light of that manhole. I had joked about Watcher going back in time to meet ancients, back when I was guessing what the campaign could be about, but I didn't think it would actually happen. And I really like a lot of the new stuff for them, in terms of background pieces and mentions from Spinning Top.

Cool reveal - now I've got brain worms! I'm thinking about them more and more...

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Ribbon arms for Prince :]

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Alongside #watcher spoilers (and #rw watcher spoilers and #rw spoilers) I've also started using #watcher ending spoilers

So if you don't mind creature/region spoilers, but want to avoid major lore/ending stuff, I'll be differentiating between the two with that!

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my interpretation of the scale weirdness is that ancient urban is reconstructed from spinning top's memory, and they were likely a child when they ascended. so to them the world is far bigger and more vast..... idk!

One of my friends thought this as well! I've been relaying to him that others think the same, haha

I put this point in the "ancient size discrepancy" post I've been working on. I wasn't completely sure since the region doesn't change after Spinny passes on, though it is of note that Ancient Urban, Daemon and Shattered Terrace can't be affected by rot spread...

Shattered Terrace is weird, Daemon is weirder (and connected to both Outer Rim and Terrace)... Ancient Urban being untouchable could be explained by it being an exception to the physicality of other infectable regions...

Most other regions feel reasonable enough when comparing scale to each other, whereas Ancient Urban is weird within itself (sewers, big fan walkway, bridges, void bath passageway, shop + shop entrance, window, toy room, etc). So this theory is growing on me.

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Watcher Thoughts

Spoilers for everything!

This is a shortened version of a much longer essay where I jotted down all my thoughts about the campaign. This is still pretty long, but hopefully it’s digestible enough.

Gameplay

Loved the initial twist. Was disappointed that we'd have another repeat with the siblings for a second. I love them but after eight campaigns, I was ready for something new. I'm not put off about not having another iterator (yet? I’m not counting Prince) either. It would have been neat, but exploring different stuff instead is good.

Got stuck a couple times, as I didn't understand what I was supposed to do to progress. I had fun exploring the regions, but exploring the majority of the first three with no idea of what to do next was frustrating. It wasn't even about story progression either - I just wanted to see more regions! But region and creature discovery felt very rewarding at least.

Portal placements were pretty wack and regions felt disconnected - you've probably heard it all already at this point. Some improvements like portal markers on the map will help (I'm certain that they'll either add it officially, or someone will make a mod). I avoided playing any region mods before this to keep things fresh, so I have zero context for any of these places. They're certainly very pretty at least.

Story

Droplets forming ripples in the water…? Yes there's a stray pixel in one frame. I made this from a spritesheet, it's not my fault, I swear

Although I would have preferred something different, I respect that the devs wanted to explore new and frankly wild routes. If it were me, I probably would have done a rare working transit system or something. Keep things grounded, group the new regions by theming so that you can at least connect them to each other. (Like Badlands + Rusted Wrecks + Torrid Desert.) I would have liked exploring ideas like scavenger societies or new biome lore instead of... rift walking through time and space madness. But I can't deny it was fun!

I really enjoyed Spinning Top (the echo), I think they’re very funny. I’m not bothered by them being able to move around - Two Sprouts, Twelve Brackets kinda imply they can too, at least enough to watch the tunnels of Subterranean. Maybe it depends on the echo too.

The decision to make a proper, repeated character out of an echo was interesting. Though I’m on the fence about the demystification of echoes and ascension. I do like Spinny’s arc and their story, and it gave me strong feelings to see them finally choose to move forward. I liked what they had to say, in terms of more lore for the ancients, their own character, and also in their final scene. 

Being tethered to the world by the sorrow of realizing you weren't loved in the way you should have been loved. Craving a warmth you can see but never feel again. The concept of peace after long-lived suffering. Able to move on because you had someone at your side, someone who cared enough to keep coming back to you, even if it was just a silent, peeping little creature. It resonated with me.

The purpose of the ending confused me at first. I thought Watcher playing with the toys was an example of their personality, maybe - distant, relatively unaffected by the events that just unfolded. And maybe that’s still true, but the emphasis on the spinning top in the campaign select screen… I’m not sure what yet, but playing with the echo’s namesake, their former beloved toys… there was something there.

I feel weird about Watcher being able to influence the world physically. I thought the point of echoes was that they were ghosts unable to interact with the physical plane. Only able to provide a bit of enlightenment for slugcat with their presence - stuck between one world and the next. Unless it’s all a dream (a trope I dislike and partially assign to Saint anyways), or Watcher is not quite an echo, in which case… hm.

Personally I'm tired of the rot, and I preferred it as a relatable and contained disease, rather than a sentient force that can corrupt worlds across time (and dimensions/timelines?). What they did with it was interesting, at least. You can explain it being Like That™ as a different strain of rot from Pebbles’, or it being because Watcher is a separate continuity. But it’s not about the explanation for me - it’s about the themes.

I enjoyed Prince as a character - I like the way they look, move and speak. But I didn’t get as attached as I could have due to my lukewarm feelings about rot stuff and Watcher’s rift powers in this DLC. Though, due to this campaign, I don’t know if I’ll keep headcanoning voidspawn as a lesser consequence (than echoes) of not being ready for ascension. The "stinging idiots" seem very intent on getting Watcher/echoes to finish crossing over into the next realm.

It seems like they want to portray the void as a force, to which the rot is the antithesis of. Prince spoke of wanting all life to go on forever, never lost - and then a force opposing its own. And it seems like that force may have won. I suppose all things must return to the cycle, or come to an end, eventually…

You can hear a single whispering iterator voice as you walk up to Prince’s puppet for the last time. That voice disappears after the karma flowers take over. Patches of them now bloom across all the regions. But the rot continues to spread! So hm I dunno what’s up with that.

Since they're adding more content later, I feel like they'll probably be character-centric threads too. Spinning Top and the Prince are probably two chapters in a broader anthology. I wonder where they’ll go from here. (Maybe a way I can unrot my save file? Haha.)

Regions

The art direction is great in my opinion. Some regions that stuck out to me:

Badlands (minus the locusts, they should really not see you while you’re invisible). The vibes are immaculate.

Torrid Desert. I usually find desert maps boring, but the sand dunes were a refreshing break from geometric tiling. In general, I really like breaks from the tile-based geometry. The first time I saw a scavenger templar/disciple (don’t remember which one) was a neat moment. I find the implications of those guys existing quite interesting.

Shrouded/Stormy Coast. Something about the warehouse crates and hanging platforms really tickled my fancy. I think the scale of it all, as well as the color provided from the crates, contributed to it feeling so good to me.

Desolate Tract: Conversely to the wavy desert dunes, this place being so flat, not boring due to the uniqueness of that, and backdropped by the wind tunnel really made me curious about this place. I hope they fix the bug that makes your FPS tank here though.

Outer Rim: Rife with secrets, both left and right. The desert portion reminded me of Kingdom Hearts' Keyblade Graveyard. Against all odds the scavengers continue to survive, and like in Torrid Desert they have strange, powered garb. Void-infused clothing? It’s interesting.

Ancient Urban: Even if I'll argue about ancient scaling forever, the actual presentation of this place was amazing. I was eating it all up and now I really want to get around designing my ancient OCs. You think it was named this as a nod to the popularized fandom term? Haha. 

Unfortunate Development: The dead coral corpse of Pebbles 2 electric boogaloo. The void worm is weird and all (is it rot-corrupted or just a faceless facsimile the rot created?), but I enjoyed the environment more. The background was a tesseract-like frame that stretched on seemingly forever. That was what really spooked me.

Brightness and contrast adjusted for viewing ease. Where is your head?

What are Starcatchers? They look iterator-like. Maybe it’s an alternate dimension thing, just as Signal Spires has the pyramid concept art iterators in the background? They could be structures that aren’t iterators, a different build type of them, or an alternate timeline, I guess. Starcatchers probably perform a function related to their name, regardless.

I remember before this DLC, some people interpreted iterator bricks as cylinders instead.

In the files Outer Rim also has a curving sky and a placeholder background where the earth is crumbling at the edge. And it’s literally called Outer Rim. Could also be a floating landmass, or sinking into the void sea, if you wanted to try out some other explanation. But I think that flat planet Rain World theory has some more evidence with this one. (I don’t think I can use flat planet RW for my space-involved AU but it is still interesting)

At the edge of the world...?

Someone (I think it was a reddit comment, I've been brain blasted with so much Watcher stuff that it's all starting to mix together) pointed out that spreading rot in the past doesn’t influence their future versions, so alternate dimensions aren’t out of the question. (Unless all regions are separate places - I wasn’t sure if places like Stormy Coast vs. Shrouded Coast were supposed to be the same or not. Or if the karma flowers kill the rot in the past, only for it to crop up again in the future and die again, but that seems overly convoluted.)

Time and space riftwalking shenanigans were already a lot - timelines/alt dimensions feel like quite a step further. In this case you are not following just the one “thread,” as Spinny puts it.

Final Thoughts

Initially I had a poorer reaction to Watcher's story, but some of it was defensiveness over the tone and headcanons I had come to like about RW and DP. After a few days of it settling in, I find myself warming up to Watcher more. I may have liked something different more, but I can enjoy and appreciate Watcher for what it is. 

If people can differentiate the canons of the DLCs (...it might be a little easier than vanilla vs. DP, because Watcher is so fantastical), I think I can have a fun time with both. 

Speaking of headcanons, giant ancients are pretty inconsistent with a lot of the environmental clues about ancient size, even the new regions within the DLC itself. I’ll post some stuff about it with screenshots and drawings later. 

Here's a couple of them...

I think literal hand puppet iterators are a good reminder that an iterator is more than its puppet. I can really imagine them as a giant machine waving a cute toy on a stick, a form more palatable for their audience. (Although that does make Moon being stuck in the PoV of one feel a little weirder too.) It emphasizes the way ancients likely thought of them as well. The concept is just neat.

However, I don't know if I would have fixated on iterators so hard without seeing puppets as more of a proper body. The superstructure is fantastic - but the puppet avatar makes it easier to identify with them as people and characters. The puppet being completely toylike rather than closer to a body-like vessel makes that a little more difficult. 

For a lot of stuff I’ve already written, especially interactions between ancient and iterator OCs, the size discrepancy is too much. So I just won’t adhere to giant ancients or tiny everything else hahaha

In general I mostly see myself using the snippets of ancient lore, region stuff, new creatures. If possible, I'd like to see what secrets can be uncovered about the new regions. 

I’m not interested in using stuff like the sentient rot when it comes to the continuities I more deeply engage with. My opinions may continue to evolve over time, we’ll see. But these are my thoughts after a few days of processing.

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Also, if I post watcher spoilers it'll be tagged with #watcher spoilers. (If there's a more common/agreed upon tag for that, let me know)

Make sure you've got your tag blocks in order - only six days left!

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I got four whole doodles into rw art month before my ability to draw just completely imploded, oops. Maybe next year!

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Neuron misproduction ideas that spawned from this ask about iterators getting sick - maybe more along that line in the future?

Full transcript under the cut.

Neuron Misproduction

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Neuron flies are comparable to living RAM for iterators. Their purpose is to process short-term information.

They are mostly made out of fat. A high-calorie snack for a slugcat.

Simplified anatomy chart labels each part of the body:

a. Protective membrane (Encapsulates the neuron)

b. Nucleus. (Large ellipsoid at the top-center of the neuron.) Longer-term data caching; oldest data is lost when it is overwritten by new data or when the cache is flushed.

c. Processing organelles. (Several smaller ellipsoids that line the inside of the neuron's membrane.) Data is constantly and cyclically refreshed.

d. Anchoring/connective tissue between the nucleus and processing organelles.

e. Cytosol that provides structural integrity to the neuron fly, and facilitates storage and transport of various resources. (Fills all the extra space of the neuron)

f. Nutrient processing system. Neuron flies mostly function off direct energy transferral, but organic components are still necessary. Both are absorbed directly through other iterator macro-microorganisms. (Resembles a simplified digestive system)

g. Connective tissue between the nucleus and flagellum, used when directly interfacing with other iterator components. (Fibrous tissue surrounded by myelin sheaths, like an axon or the umbilical cord of an iterator)

h. Flagellum, primarily used for locomotion (Long whiplike protrusions on the bottom of the neuron fly)

i. Dendrites that unsheath when interfacing (Many tiny split ends at the end of the flagellum)

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Type: Flagellum deformation Neuron is missing some or all of its flagellum, and/or flagellum are uneven lengths

Not as deadly as spheroid neurons, but harder to detect by inspectors. Neurons without flagellum often cannot access other macro-microorganisms to interface with, and therefore gain resources from, so they usually die on their own. Can rarely cause clogs in single-row neuron transit or affect overall processing speed. A rising count of flagellum deformations may be an early indicator of issues with biological synthesis.

Neuron 1: Typical

Neuron 2: Very reduced flagellum with some shriveling

Neuron 3: Left flagellum forks into a second partially-formed flagellum. Right flagellum exhibits slight shriveling and fraying at the end.

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Type: Gutless body Neurons that often appear normal from the outside, but are missing essential internal components.

This neuron type can often be detected early through careful inspections. Often presents as a virtual husk, only capable of consuming energy and moving about.

Ironically, the nutrient processing system is sometimes enlarged, taking up more space where the other organelles are smaller or missing. This neuron type is relatively easy to remove when detected, and doesn't cause major issues other than resource consumption.

Neuron 1: Typical

Neuron 2: Enlarged nutrient processing system, no processing organelles, severely reduced nucleus

Neuron 3: All organelles are severely reduced, neuron is slimmer and mostly composed of cytosol

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Type: Spheroid Neuron's body length is significantly reduced, often resulting in a spheroid shape.

A spheroid neuron has warped or missing crucial internal structures. It is more dangerous than a gutless neuron due to still being able to process, and therefore corrupt, or result in the loss of information.

Not all neurons of this type are spheroid; it's just named after the common distinct shape. Many neurons of this type lack structural integrity, and do not make it past the production phase.

In a healthy iterator, faulty neurons are rare, and are usually recycled before they can even leave the production phase, or are otherwise destroyed by inspectors.

Mass production of spheroid neurons indicate severe internal issues. At that point, equipment and inspectors likely are failing to recognize faulty neurons or, worse, are indiscriminately destroying all of them. This encourages a stressful rapid production of neurons, which may lead to further equipment failure.

Due to neuron flies' major role in memory encoding and retrieval, neuron corruption can disrupt active processes and cause errors in data storage. In severe cases, affected neurons can corrupt the macro-microorganisms they interface with, and vice versa in a cascade effect, possibly leading to seizures and dementia.

Neuron 1: Typical

Neuron 2: Very round and flattened neuron. Nucleus is partially split and merged with a processing organelle. The rest of the cytoplasm is squished.

Neuron 3: Membrane is pinched into the neuron. Lacks a clear nucleus. Flagella connection is fused at one segment, forming an X-shape.

Neuron 4: Membrane is pinched and folded in several areas, resulting in an unusual asymmetric shape. Organelles are reduced and shoved into whatever space is available. Only one flagellum is connected.

Neuron 5: Membrane is overgrown on one side, leaving little space for the cytoplasm. The nutrient processing system is partially ingrown within the membrane.

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I’m looking up at you with my big ol eyes..

What are common Iterator sicknesses? If there is any?

Wow this ask is almost a year old. Aaaaa

(Sorry to all the people people who send in asks that I haven't answered, I can't get to them all, but I really do appreciate them! And some of them are like this one - I've just been sitting on them for forever with the intent to answer, but I wanted to make something for them first... hah)

Anyways... I've gotten sick a couple of times since getting this ask, and I've kept remembering this each time. I wanted to come up with more ideas than "neuron misproduction" but that's what stuck for now.

Neuron misproduction can become a little more serious than a "common iterator sickness" but maybe I can think about a gross phlegmy iterator cold sometime. That'd align a little better with the viruses I've been catching...

I'll post it separately after this, for formatting's sake. But thanks for the brain prompt anon!

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how do they do that

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warm up doodles!

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it seems i have modded too close to the sun