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sapatry · 2 months ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Greeting lines]. Forgive me if I go on! You have done so much for me, I will not burden you with my troubles. Please, rest here as long as you wish. You are always safe here, my dear friend. You, who were there for me.

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

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

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

• ,,Outer Rim...?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• A quick attempt at illustrating the previous thought:

Some Pepe Silvia level nonsense going on here.

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