seven-skies-above

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vanilla slugcat icons !!! and nightcat !!!!!

and inv too…. i guess…..

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Rain world <3

Scugs for your scug needs :)

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Oh my goodness, I just stumbled upon your blog- incredibly compelled by the icon, that is the cutest face I've seen in ages omgomgomg who is that bean- how are they so precious and cute aaaa- 💕

Aaaaaa wah, thank you so much!!! That would be Skies, my iterator oc!! I haven’t drawn them in a long while (this blog is kind of dead art-wise because i’ve been busy/fixating upon other things) but I’m glad that you like them!!!

Here’s some old Skies art from a WHILE back:

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made this like 2 years ago but lizor!!!!

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I'm a huge grouch on Rain World lore accuracy and I will be until the day I die, but my love for Downpour only grows with time. Truly it is just as if not more fun than the base game, and only enriches it as a whole.

It's a little unlore, it's very much fanmade, but I like that about it. I hope Watcher turns out just as wel.

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TELL ME IM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO NOTICED THIS

if u never seen this, it's rain world region concept art. the superstructures were gonna be pyramids !!!!!!!! and look who's here !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what does this mean ?!?!?!??!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?

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ending spoilers

BAWLING MY EYES OUT WHAT THE FUUUUUCKKKK... you cant do this to me rain world you CANT DO THIS TO MEEEE. what do you MEAN both watcher and OAOA were kids who had their childhoods taken away from them and by interacting with each other they were able to reclaim some of that joy im gonna cry in real life

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MAJOR RAIN WORLD: THE WATCHER DLC SPOILERS (LATE GAME CONTENT) UNDER THE CUT!!

Oh.

Oh. There's at least some of Five Pebbles in there.

I don't think The Prince is Five Pebbles, though. I think he contains within himself an aggregate of memories from different Iterators all jumbled up and interlinked to make up his mind.

He himself basically admits to retaining some of their tendencies and imperatives. Kind of fucked how this guy might, at times, experience the memories of someone else without even realising it. Also kind of fucked that he's basically the only biological descendant of the Iterators as a species. I mean if he's inherited some of the physical traits alongside some of the mental faculties that like.. basically makes him their son. Arguably even Pebbles' son, to some degree..? But it seems more like most of the species would technically be related to him. A weird fuckinn Universal Cancer Son. Sickening !!!!

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List of things that sparked joy in my little Ancient culture enthusiast heart:

The moths in the Ancient Urban are essentially pigeons, including the fact some of them are tagged.

Finally a proper and canon confirmation that Ancients really did have pets, positive relationships with animals and weren't Only stuck in glass cubes on display like Moon implies once. It can also mean that they did research into animal behaviour, such as tracking migrating and such. From how biologists are in real life, we can assume they were even genuinely passionate & happy about these type of things.

All the pottery and plates in that workshop room,

A confirmation that they did have paper and used scrolls for writing stuff down,

alongside with the pearls that they, too, could perhaps freely read or one of those things on the shelf there might be a pearl reader, if it is more technologically based (CDs type information keeping)

I also wonder if those things there are books- with stone tablet pages or paper ones? digital things hidden in hardcovers?- or something else entirely. Do they maybe hold orders for earthenware?

The masks on the wall, they feel so real compared to the murals.

Are they of the same person or is it of the workers there or maybe a family? Some of them look similar to those in the murals.

While at the concept of family, they had creches, but it doesn't sound like it was an outright job in the sense that they seem to have been community-raised (I fuckin' knew it I can put down my tin hat now).

They had hard beds, similar to what used to be used in old china iirc, along with that pillow/headrest

This kinda thing. They were made out of porcelain to keep the head cool in the night, but I think some where out of wood too.

The bustling of the city.

The normalcy of people going about their day, talking, the vehicles zipping by (they had some kind of motor vehicles!!!!).

The architecture, in both the Ancient Urban and the Outer Rim (those roofs made the right side worth it to me, that's how much I love these bastards)

I find it very funny that what looks to me like a REALLY poor ass cable management seems like the height of decorative prowess to them. Also some insight into how the void ,,bath" actually looked like.

The toys... just the toys.

Alongside these dialogues

And the one about him remembering the halls he ran through- oh when I say that I adore the fact that this Echo is a kid stuck here, lonely and vulnerable with polite speech not plaguing it.

The original Echoes combined with the Iterators' distaste for the species as whole painted the Ancients as these heartless things lazer focused only on the Ascension, religion and rituals. There wasn't much space for thinking about them in a more human manner and I feel like most of the fandom did depict the Ancients only as the impression was given. Bunch of posh full of themselves suckups, uncaring much for one another or anything around them.

I get kinda annoyed when there's an insistance that some kind of sapient species has done only bad. With humans, too, I just about had it with the demonization, negativity and staggering blindness to the beauty and good we can and do create- in both fiction and reality. Same goes for these dumbasses.

Disko kid here begs to challenge that impression. He's lost and alone and kind of scared, stuck here not knowing how to move forward. He mourns the regularity and simplicity of his room, the nostalgia of shelves and toys, the golden sunrays sneaking in through the windows. He brings a certain humanity into the consideration of Ancients.

That maybe, only maybe.. they deserve to be mourned.

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? lowkey getting tired of seeing people saying negative stuff about really cat-like/warrior cats-y slugcat designs like. rw and wc have a fandom overlap. it's to be expected. you shouldn't be an ass about it? you can literally just block people if they post stuff you don't wanna see, it's super easy and i think we should use the block button more. it seems more or less like a forgotten feature these days. not to mention they're called slugcats you should expect it more or less

why should you care if someone puts fur on their slugcats. like genuinely. it's stupid to get so angry about it to the point you say really weird stuff about it. i've seen it's "too far from canon" okay but what about the beast like slugcats? canonically they're referred to as rodents, wouldn't that be too far from canon too? if we really wanna stick to canon then lets just colorpick the damn slugcats instead and draw them as the blob ingame shapes. sigh

dont get me wrong. i love all slugcat designs. put fur on them. pur feathers on them. put scales on them. make them cats. make them beasts. draw them cat-like, ferret-like, rodent-like or whatever else. literally go wild. we shouldn't be getting this up in arms about how people draw fucking slugcats

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update 2: i’ve seen some interpretations that the respawned lizards are actually just other lizards moving into the niche left behind by the one that died… which would make sense for the most part! and i supposed that the new lizard must be a lizard of similar standing or just above because any lizard of lower or much higher scale would be unable to fill said niche (and your continued harassment of the lizard population would make it so that only stronger lizards can survive in that environment, therefore claiming it for themselves and never being replaced by another weaker lizard until far into the future)

writing this out because my brain has been wrapping around the thought

so like. the whole big issue with the cycle being like literal death and revive video-game style save state is that well. Nothing Can Die. like. ever. does this mean that the population continues to grow infinitely until the world is full? then how does evolution work if natural selection is not there to influence certain survival traits?

we know that creatures evolve; rain worlds creature are explicitly stated to be evolutions of purposed organisms, developed into a more survivable form.

but without permanent death, how is this possible?

WELL. GUESS WHAT MECHANIC I FORGOT ABOUT.

-slams table-

LINEAGING.

when a creature is killed, there is a 33% (or 50% for certain scugs) chance that it respawns. so within the karma-cycle system, it re-cycles i guess idk. we’re still working out the kinks of that whole thing

anyways, when a creature respawns, there is also the chance that it respawns as a higher “tier” of creature. ex. pole plant respawns as a monster kelp.

so this likely means that lineaging is rain world’s method of “natural selection.” if a creature dies enough times, it re-cycles as an evolved form of itself. creatures that survive will maintain that form, while creatures that do not will again re-cycle into a different form until it reaches one that is suitable for the current environment.

the game sort of implies that there is a set order to lineaging (see the order of lizard lineaging from green to red), and that creatures cannot de-lineage into previous forms, but I’d like to think that creatures tend to lineage towards the form most adapted to the current environment. this is why we see no red lizards in Survivor and Monk, since having such a powerful and resource-intensive form would be unsustainable with less spawns and food around. however, if survival becomes impossible without being a red lizard (ex. scug murders you over and over again), then red lizard becomes a suitable lineage option again. meanwhile in Saint’s campaign, strawberry lizards have become a preferable mutation since they’re small and can conserve energy.

for the record, we never see slugcats lineage, even though they’re implied to be descended from the pipe cleaning purposed organisms. this is most likely just due to game design reasons (too many scug variations and changes in gameplay from dying too much) and suddenly learning to handle different scugs on top of already trying to just learn how to play the game is a little much.

but yeah. rain world still gets evolution even when things can’t die permanently because instead of birth causing mutations, it’s rebirth causing mutations. wild.

does this explain why rain world doesn’t have a severe overpopulation issue? absolutely not and i cannot even begin to fathom a reason for this. but i have answered one of my questions and i call that a success!!

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update: upon second thought the lineaging theory doesn’t fit into my personal theory of The Great Cycle because it doesn’t make sense for a creature to respawn back into a cycle at a point where they had already died?? if every creature experiences the cycle as awakening at a point before they died (as evidenced by the save-state nature of everything when you respawn — nothing has changed, time has not passed), then it is impossible for a creature to respawn in a cycle that they are already dead in.

this may also be further evidenced by the fact that all respawned creatures (regardless of lineaging or not) have entirely different creature IDs… but to be fair, there’s no indication that reincarnated creatures would theoretically have the same ID as compared to a recycled creature??

there is also no indication that the respawned creatures are even reincarnations… but like. due to the nature of their spontaneous existence, it is implied that there must be some relation between the new creature and the last. it’s hard to tell whether the choice to give respawned creatures a different ID is intentional or not in the context of lore, or if it was done just for simplicity’s sake in game development. given the fact that similar creatures given the same ID have similar behaviors (ex. a red lizard and an orange lizard with the same ID will output the same stats), i feel like if they intended for the respawns to be the same creature they could’ve done so rather easily.

so if respawns/lineages AREN’T the same creature that was killed in a previous cycle, where did they come from?? why has a new being spontaneously appeared without any indication of its development? why does it only appear after another being has been removed from this iteration of the cycle?? why can it spontaneously mutate?

its been a hot minute since i’ve thought about rain world lore my brain is frying

writing this out because my brain has been wrapping around the thought

so like. the whole big issue with the cycle being like literal death and revive video-game style save state is that well. Nothing Can Die. like. ever. does this mean that the population continues to grow infinitely until the world is full? then how does evolution work if natural selection is not there to influence certain survival traits?

we know that creatures evolve; rain worlds creature are explicitly stated to be evolutions of purposed organisms, developed into a more survivable form.

but without permanent death, how is this possible?

WELL. GUESS WHAT MECHANIC I FORGOT ABOUT.

-slams table-

LINEAGING.

when a creature is killed, there is a 33% (or 50% for certain scugs) chance that it respawns. so within the karma-cycle system, it re-cycles i guess idk. we’re still working out the kinks of that whole thing

anyways, when a creature respawns, there is also the chance that it respawns as a higher “tier” of creature. ex. pole plant respawns as a monster kelp.

so this likely means that lineaging is rain world’s method of “natural selection.” if a creature dies enough times, it re-cycles as an evolved form of itself. creatures that survive will maintain that form, while creatures that do not will again re-cycle into a different form until it reaches one that is suitable for the current environment.

the game sort of implies that there is a set order to lineaging (see the order of lizard lineaging from green to red), and that creatures cannot de-lineage into previous forms, but I’d like to think that creatures tend to lineage towards the form most adapted to the current environment. this is why we see no red lizards in Survivor and Monk, since having such a powerful and resource-intensive form would be unsustainable with less spawns and food around. however, if survival becomes impossible without being a red lizard (ex. scug murders you over and over again), then red lizard becomes a suitable lineage option again. meanwhile in Saint’s campaign, strawberry lizards have become a preferable mutation since they’re small and can conserve energy.

for the record, we never see slugcats lineage, even though they’re implied to be descended from the pipe cleaning purposed organisms. this is most likely just due to game design reasons (too many scug variations and changes in gameplay from dying too much) and suddenly learning to handle different scugs on top of already trying to just learn how to play the game is a little much.

but yeah. rain world still gets evolution even when things can’t die permanently because instead of birth causing mutations, it’s rebirth causing mutations. wild.

does this explain why rain world doesn’t have a severe overpopulation issue? absolutely not and i cannot even begin to fathom a reason for this. but i have answered one of my questions and i call that a success!!

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ok so to preface my knowledge of buddhist culture/philosophy/anything is very limited

but going by the likely buddhist inspirations rain world uses for ancient philosophy, are the iterators tangential to the idea of bodhisattvas?

from what i could garner off of a brief wiki skim, bodhisattvas (at least those of the mahayana belief/branch) are those who are on the path to achieving awakening for the benefit of all others. The oxford dictionary describes them as capable of reaching nirvana, but delaying doing so in order to save other beings from their suffering.

in a sense, iterators are forced bodhisattvas: enlightened beings designed to never ascend, forced to remain in the hopes of bringing ascension to the ancients. They are designed to achieve awakening for everyone but themselves—self-sacrifice, without the choice that usually comes with it.

artificial bodhisattvas… hmmmm….

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send help i am cracking the karma/cycle code over my skull right now and its. it’s working

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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.

hehehe. our favorite hot pink wet cat robo man. it took me a minute to decide on a design for his robes, but i’m happy with the final result :D

i wanted to include a prayer bead necklace but i honestly don’t think he’d wear it for long… it’s probably something that was part of his original outfit that he abandoned after all the ancients ascended.

stay tuned for more sketches because i want to do a more detailed ref for him eeEEE

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Hi just wanted to tell you i fucking LOVE the way you draw slugcats

HI i completely missed this ask but thank you so much!!! I'm glad you're enjoying my scug obsession hehehee

[seven-skies-above]

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.

hehehe. our favorite hot pink wet cat robo man. it took me a minute to decide on a design for his robes, but i’m happy with the final result :D

i wanted to include a prayer bead necklace but i honestly don’t think he’d wear it for long… it’s probably something that was part of his original outfit that he abandoned after all the ancients ascended.

stay tuned for more sketches because i want to do a more detailed ref for him eeEEE