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the rest of them :]

all four together cuz i felt like

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Rain world wall hanging I made! Will you choose the path of the chieftain or the Outlaw?

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hydraulic engineering

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Sorry i am too gay for posting art

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Rain World - THE EFFERVESCENCE and some various theories built off of it

Firstly, consider:

Anyways,

You know that weird shit James said on an art month stream last year or so I think? Someone asks him what the deal with Hunter being "karmically imbalanced" is and he says this:

"It takes a certain level of karmic alignment to sort of translate the barrier between realities."

Lydia chuckles because of this quote afterwards. Obviously, her subliminal pointer gives away that this statement is a Rosetta Stone-esque lore revelation that will educate a new, objectively correct model of Rain World's reality - and the coming story that will break it.

Remember the rambling in the Ripple trailer? To summarize: droplets fall upon a body of still water, which send ripples outward. As more and more droplets fall, these ripples form countless interactions and create a chaotic "effervescence."

Each droplet symbolizes a singular "unit" of the cycle. Each "unit" is probably either the life of an individual or an entire reality. For this particular post I'm going with droplets as realities.

Overall, I think this ramble can be used to visualize how the cycle behaves according to the perspective of a Slugcat. (Fair warning that it's basically a very loose adaptation of the timeline-based cycle theory that I know Some of you hate.)

Ripple Collisions and Reality Transfers

While each droplet and its ripples (each reality) initially exist as its own distinct entity, their ripples eventually collide with those of another droplet. Here, the barrier that separates realities is lessened, and transfer is possible. When you die and wake up again, your Essence™ (whatever comprises You™, not sure what) is carried along this collision to a living version of You, in a parallel reality. This transfer expends karma (or expels a Karma Flower, which also gets carried with you).

It may be initially strange to think that collisions conveniently occur at the exact same moment a creature dies; rather, it's important to remember that karma seems to exist on its plane and that the ripples do not sync with time in the same fashion.

"Karmic Alignment" and Hunter

You also need a certain degree of "alignment" to be properly carried through the collisions of these ripples. Hunter is misaligned in some way, which is correlated with their illness & general karmic fuckery (note: idk whether alignment or illness is the root cause).

This misalignment creates friction when crossing between the barriers of realities. Hunter outright cannot perceive the existence of Flowers and they live on borrowed time before this dealignment rips them from their life entirely; completely unable to be carried along the ripples.

After Hunter dies, it's a bit of a toss-up. A super-Karma Flower is created that persists in Monk and Survivor, and Hunter will apparently "wake up again" anyway according to Moon. Even in this truly dealigned state, Hunter's Essence™ will return somehow.

I kinda doubt Hunter simply turns into a Flower, because of the meta aspect of repeating runs as Hunter (which I see as a part of the experience) feels symbolic of a more "complete" return to form.

Perhaps their inability to translate the ripple barriers means that they're forced to persist and return within the same reality they were doomed in. Hunter's shambling Rot corpse in Downpour is actually a very decent analog for this, though I'm not 100% satisfied with this answer because the reset symbolism is lost.

Ok But What About Watcher

First, let's look at the words of the unknown-possibly-Pebbles-considering-where-the-voicelines-come-from-iterator from the ARG.

They greet their "shadow", claiming that they "have drifted, (...) dispersed in the multitudes of the waves and the ripples." This seems to suggest that this individual is unwillingly moving through these realities at speeds or distances beyond normal, or they're possibly even shattered between all these realities.

According to the iterator, the shadow has a "thread" that they can follow to eventually return to how they once were; their preferred reality or an unfractured Essence.

The shadow is most likely referring to the Watcher... assuming the Watcher even is the Slugcat we play as. After all, the speaker does say they've been watching the shadow instead.

I think the iterator and the shadow (our slugcat) may be the same being; they together make the Watcher. The iterator is fragmented across realities (which is possibly fucking up those realities in turn, i.e. the various references to "cracks and crumbles"), but the shadow acts as some kind of extension or envoy whose behavior can help reunite the iterator into their whole.

Going by teasers like the pink sky region, the clear lack of rain in the Badlands region (due to the locusts, which I presume are a new end-of-cycle threat), and the generally fantastical nature of what we've seen (especially in that weird whale), I think the Watcher DLC definitely takes place in an alternate reality. Or alternate realities, plural?

Maybe the shadow ferries together the fragments of the iterator so that it can perform something greater, when it is reborn whole.

It's 2am and I think it's fun to pretend that whatever I just wrote is a comprehensive thought, closed off with a nice little bowtie, so I'm just going to say it is

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{Day 18: Moon}

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Day16: Precipice

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Computer and Video Game Museum, Yekaterinburg

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Drawing people’s Iterators (Part 2)

@maryymaruu

@slea-slug

HEYO!!

Enjoy :3

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"rings"

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I wanted to try something different!

About my commissions since I have yet to post the list. Full illustrated backgrounds: 100-120 (depends on details) Slugification (Turn your OC into a slugcat) 80 USD for the Slugcat and extra 20 for the background, like the examples I posted previously. Portraits: 60 USD I also love creating designs and drawing furry portraits, so let me know if you are interested or have any questions, don't be afraid to DM me! (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

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So from my understanding, most purposed organisms in Rain World initially started out as somewhat shapeless creatures confined to "metal boxes"/machinery.

This probably means that most of the creatures we see out in the wild are the result of said boxes being damaged and the organisms contained within slithering out. This also probably means we can actually see a lot of the original "containers" for the fauna we encounter throughout FP/LTTM's facility grounds.

This is the most obvious example of the bunch, but in reality this post is my extremely roundabout way of sharing that I think Dropwigs may have descended from these mechanical pincers I've noticed in the Precipice.

The way their claws are configured is really similar methinks, though those four metallic flaps on their sides make me think they could also be related to Squidcadas. Hell, it could be a common ancestor.

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3D COMM FOR @frogdor

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The Benefactors seem to have had a cultural practice involving piercing and needles related to acupuncture

Their culture does seem to have valued subjective experiences (see: living memories and qualia) so I wonder if directly stimulating the neural system like that is part of it

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finally made a ref sheet for my personal interpretation of sliver of straw! (I'm sorry for the horrible hand writing)

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I really like the idea of iterators being "surrogate" people. It aligns with the design of their puppets so well.

I also think about the source of their differing personalities. In my own headcanon it is something that is constructed and chosen for each iterator individually, and not something that develops at random.

I like the possibility of artificial personalities, because if it's true, it may mean that ABC's were doing it for a reason of "they need to have different outlooks on the Great Task"

damn we back on the rain world train this week

I think the iterator puppets should be treated more like “puppets” - they act like faces and names for otherwise incomprehensibly large beings. When the slugcat listens to Five Pebbles speak, they are being catalogued, analyzed, and archived by a relatively minor and to my knowledge unnecessary part of a greater whole (since the world of RW is so odd and even has its own laws of physics (that’s another post I don’t feel qualified to make yet), it’s possible that iterators have personalities as a byproduct of creating such a large biological computer system). 

I would also like to think that, unless they are simply a byproduct of their size, the iterator puppets and personalities were created by the Benefactors/Ancients/Creators/Whatever You Call Those Guys to carry some symbolic weight, to make it feel like another person was going through the all-important struggle to reach ascension so they could rest in their luxurious cities without fear of treading too far over the lines of their beliefs.

I believe this is why the iterators have faces and not faceless masks - to symbolize their sacrifice, taking the ABCs’ place in the cycle so the ABCs could feel more distant from it. An iterator was a surrogate person, a necessary sacrifice to separate the ABCs (both symbolically and literally) from the physical world they detested so much

Feel free to add on/criticize/dissect - I would love to discuss RW lore! I am more partial to vanilla, but I have a few downpour headcanons that I will share if prompted.