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coco--rush · 27 days ago

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Why Hunter doesn't have rot

Spoilers for Hunter / Survivor / Monk / Watcher

Just to clarify before even going into this I’ll be treating Downpour as it’s own separate universe thus not making it cannon to Vanilla. This is in no way to discredit Downpours story (I love it myself, I think it's a really powerful narrative) But considering it was not written by the Vanilla team I’d prefer looking at it as an AU for my Vanilla analysis ! This also leads me to treating Watcher more cannon than Downpour since it was written by the original team, but it will only be used to reinforce smaller points.

Now with that said despite Downpour popularizing the idea that Hunter has rot Vanilla in no way supports this. The reasoning is quite simple there's no mention of it whatsoever beyond pebbles making a remark of “We both have something... unfortunate growing in us.” which if you want to interpet as we have the same thing growing in us you could say he has the rot, but this is a sympathetic statement. Pebbles is simply (for once) empathizing with something for having a similar-ish experience that is some form of disease spreading in them respectively. But Hunter is a normal animal he is much more likely to have a normal disease like cancer / tumour.

Where would have Hunter even gotten the rot from? By Downpour standards the rot does not survive outside of Pebbles. He also for all we know is not from anywhere near Moon / Pebbles having been sent by NSH / Pebbles not seeming to recognize him either. We’ve also never seen an example of rot taking over a creature anywhere in Vanilla, not even in Downpour (ignoring Hunter ofc) If the rot was powerful enough to infect animals already there is no reason most creatures around Pebbles should be as healthy as they are. We’ve only seen creatures be infected in the Watcher which also shows insight into what it would look like.

All rot Hunter depictions have the rot be his fur color / generally blend into his body seamlessly that we see in the Watcher would not be the case. The rot well, rots the animals it infects distorting their colours and malforming them. The inner cores glowing the colour of the rot since it is a foreign object consuming them rather than a part of that creature. Even in different regions the rot stays black with only the inner core of it changing colour. The single evidence I’ve seen of Vanilla Hunter having rot is his sleeping sprite which I’ll break down why I do not believe is rot with an anatomy breakdown.

Their body is one big banana shape with limbs attached on top of it.

Tho sometimes drawn as a ‘single toe’ we could safely say that is for simplifying the drawing process.

Why are these important?

Apologies for messy visuals. But what people interpret as a rot cyst on Hunter's back is in fact just his hind leg with some unfortunate perspective. What Hunter does when sleeping is curl their tail all the way below their chin while laying down flat on their stomach which is bound to contart their body in funny ways leaving their leg to really only do 1 of 2 things, be smushed under his tail (what Survivor and Monk does) or above his tail that he does in his prite.

If that’s not enough we also never see hunter with any sort of cysts on his back any any other art of him. But we do see 1 other art of him have scars on his hind legs.

Considering his eye scar is depicted everywhere since it is a big part of his design (even really fainting on the last pick it’s more visible on the other ones tho) A less reliable but worth to mention thing too his eye scar is visible in every merch (again it’s his main design beyond being red) yet he has not even a scar on his back since it was uneseceary detail (one of the poster arts does have him with an x scar on his side tho without cysts as per usual) If he truly had rot I don’t see why such a huge detail would not be included in multiple sprites of him and even as a small detail on his merch (remeber they have all of spearmasters tail holes embodered / inv's sketchy eyes being kept they don't cheap out on details) So in short. We have no reason to believe normal rot we see in Vanilla can infect creatures like the sentient rot in Watcher. We also do not have real evidence of him visually having rot for the only depiction in my opinion is just confusing a sprite of his for something it is not (some of the what seems to be early art can be a little janky since they were still figuring out how to draw slugcats) We also know for a fact he is not from near Pebbles thus not having a real way of catching rot unless the sentient rot has spread in the world already.

Worthy mentions I couldn't fit neatly anywhere else: - I’m aware that in the last slide him is having his illnes disolved out of him but just before that he's simply seen swimming without anything affecting him and we do not see any growths on his back. which would've been a perfect placement to show it be removed from him. - his death sprite also doesn’t have any rot sprouting out from him which would be very important if he did have it. - This isn’t to say I don’t like the Hunter rot theory but to me it’s just a really popular fannon that got slightly out of hand to the point people think it’s fully cannon. - I also think the hunter rot theory is really cool to explain how he can have extra spears. I’ll admit I have no idea how he does that without having rot. Maybe his fur is just so thick it gets stuck in it /hj

If anyone has counterpoints or supporting point I’m very interested to listen !

#coco rambles #rw slugcat #rain world #rw #rw hunter #rw watcher spoilers #rw discussion #rw theory #rw vanilla theory #rainworld hunter #rain world hunter #rainworld #slugcat

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the-real-rain-world-confessions · 3 months ago

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I love Five Pebbles. He's like, the best and most developed character of the entire game. His growth happens across the entire timeline, yet they manage to write him consistently and I can't help but love that.

He used to have a 'young and reticent mentality in the past.' But he grew past that. He's fully-fledged iterator with his own real struggles spurted by the trauma of his situation. He even is embarassed of his younger self's clumsiness. He criticizes his old "poorly-done work" even when he was just young and he didn't knew much things anyway. (Viridian Pearl from Garbage Wastes; FP's reading) I like to think he probably made a lot of technical goofs in the past?

Anyway, his own creation sparked a huge controversy which left him, unfortunately, stuck in the middle of it. The citizens that were against him coming into being walked all over him as if he didn't have work to do. But some others loved him and brought him gifts. He unironically preferred more the citizens that despised him because they brought him puzzles for him to solve and, even when they probably did it out of spite because they underestimated his intelligence, atleast he wasn't dealing with "the endless rituals and pleasantries of the monks of his own Houses which he found to be the most wearisome of all." (Pale Green pearl in The Exterior; FP's reading)

And he used to argue about old methodologies for global ascension, which he realizes now that they had a lot of holes. This kind of defiant and young mentality stuck to him for a while because, even when you are born with the knowledge of the world at your fingertips, it wouldn't make you good at your job if you are young and unexperienced, which Pebbles was. Also NSH went through that "phase" as well, as he describes: it seems to take "many iterations for our worldviews to change" (Source from one of The Spearmaster's broadcasts)

It's not until he meets Suns that he started to change. He learns about SoS, which became a huge part of Pebble's life and influenced a lot of his theories. (Viridian Pearl from GW again; FP's reading) Which, funnily enough, Moon herself doesn't quite agree with these type of theories about SoS's fate and she thinks she should be allowed to rest in one of her essays. (Pale Yellow pearl from Shoreline; Moon's reading)

He joins anonymous groups under the pseudonym EP: "Erratic Pulse" which is literally one replaced word away from "FP". He begins to shed his resilient mentality in order to learn and grow, and he ends up throwing most of his old theories out of the window. And new ones develop too.

He thinks death is the solution. That they only had to surpass the taboos to achieve ascension, which he believes is what SoS did. However most, if all, iterators didn't believe ascension was possible for them because they are not built to ascend like their creators. But he believed they had to shed that perception of reality. But they were 'too deep in theory and tradition' to believe him. This made him massively misunderstood in those groups and perhaps even in the local. Because nobody, not even his local group apparently, understood his theories. And the only iterator that seems to think equally the same as him, seems to have gone off their rocker. Which makes him look bad. It's not a good look at all. (Read Dark Purple pearl and Dark Blue pearl both from Sky Islands; FP's reading. Very important for the next points.)

Case and point; this whole broadcast (Dark Blue pearl: Moon's reading, by the way)

"NGI: SLIVER OF STRAW WAS A TRAITOR TO THE CAUSE

NGI: SLIVER OF STRAW BROKE THE SELF-DESTRUCTION TABOO

UU: How did this idiot get in here? Kick them out ~

NGI: <Forcefully removed from group>

EP: I think they had a point.

UU: Hahaha really? Elaborate!"

He only had… Suns, who eventually becomes a close friend and a mentor to him. He really looked up to them because he knew they trusted him. It's not like he says Suns understood his theories, now pointing out this very specific wording in the Dark Green pearl of Sky Islands: "None of them understood my theories, but Suns, they trusted me." Makes me thinks Suns was the only one who seemed to support him.

It seems like, to me, he may have some issues with trusting others. One broadcast I think empathizes my past point a little more clearly is this one: The Dark Purple pearl from Sky Islands. Which should also be read fully to understand where I come from. It's only when you bring this pearl to him as The Artificer, when he goes into a full blown mini-rant. (He was right to blow some steam off about THAT) He feels awfully disappointed they couldn't understand. Because it's very interesting to me… how he doesn't say anything else in that broadcast. His only comment is a, probably worried, "where did you hear this?". Then he's overshadowed by NSH's open mocking of his anonymous persona. Then it's at the end lf the rant when he… deflates because he realises you might not even understand what he even is saying to you.

I still think it's pretty damaging to hear the blatant disrespect and distrust, especially from nearby leers. Because it seemed to be that, as Chasing Wind mentioned, that he only listened to Suns and a 'few others'. And we know that Suns is the only one who trusted him with his theories.

Also, their friendship/mentorship makes me so sad. Because Seven Red Suns, as much as they tried to push Pebbles away (because too bad this is the kind of love Pebbles is used to), eventually also came to appreciate how Five Pebbles still stayed with them until the end: "The fact is, he really looked up to me. As much as I gave him a hard time, that's not something I took lightly."

Because really, SRS was lightly teasing in their, sadly, only canon conversation. (That isn't via pearl) althought it's probably Suns making friendly teasing something trivial to further their self-hate , I think I'll take it at face value. I'd like highlight it here:

"FP: I'm tired of trying and trying. And angry that they left us here. The anger makes me even less inclined to solve their puzzle for them. Why do we do this?

SRS: Yes, I'll spell this out - not because you're stupid or naive… Also, not saying that you're not ~

FP: Please, I'm coming to you for guidance."

On another point, he is also frustrated about the iterator's pointless work and he wishes to escape this 'maze' as much as he wants others to find their way out eventually. And because there was nothing to do to convince them, he attempted to self-destruct to try and prove a point, because it seemed the only way to get them to understand. Because it seemed the only way to convince them was by proving himself. Not only that, but it was also a mix between his own frustration and desperation and desire to help himself. AND the others aswell.

Then he tries with the methods given from the pearl by Suns. He ends up speeding the process out of desperation, and eventually came the forced broadcast at that almost fated moment. He fumbled it so hard it gave him some sort brain Rot.

Either way, He says he hates the "benevolent gift" he received from Suns but that's not true. He knows, and appreciates the efforts and risks they took to give him the pearl. He lashed out at them because they were the least iterator he wanted to confront him about his mistakes. "And I hurt them" I really cannot take that as anything other than than raw, extreme guilt. (Dark Green pearl from Sky Islands; FP's transcript)

Because he couldn't even understand why he got so angry. He regrets deeply what he has said, and he wishes to speak to them again. But for all he has said and done, he cannot imagine Suns would want to talk to him anymore. What makes this even more tragic is that SRS didn't exactly gave up either, they wanted to try and make another messenger, to reach out to him again. But they felt unable too. Now, in The Artificer campaign, he's trying his best to fix his mistakes, and he wants to recover. (Same pearl from above) But he never recovered. Take into account this is all said in The Artificer's campaign, which is very on par with The Spearmaster's timeline. So it didn't took him long for him to understand.

And for Moon, even when he us upset for her interruption, he does care deeply for her. And he regrets what he has done, but since he can't go back after everything, the irrepearable damage… Because in his attempts to fix himself was also done to fix her aswell. Because they knew they would be both doomed if he didn't try to reverse the rot's effects. Desperation made him think it was the only way and that he could do it himself. (Olive Green pearl from Sky Islands; FP's reading) Now he hopes the collapse of the bridges between them managed to stop The Rot spreading to her.

Because he doesn't wish for her to face the consequences of his actions, he doesn't want her to rot. He does not hate her. Nor he seems to push the blame on her because he knows these are HIS mistakes to endure. The sad thing is that this sort of martydom is not helping him... (Deep Green pearl from Metropolis; FP's reading)

And after Moon's collapse, he says he has tried for ways to help Moon. But since The Rot is impending him to do so, he can only find ways for that very big problem for now. An attempt to try to reverse, or even slow it. But he knows Moon needs all the help she can get. It is why he is determined to help The Hunter, and encourages them on their quest and even praise them for their nobility. Now citing, FP's direct dialogue with The Hunter:

"I am not without responsibility for her situation. It would only be suiting that I aided in this... rescue mission. As other endeavors have proven futile, I'm not ashamed to admit I've become more invested in day to day matters."

I was not a medical facility even when the equipment was functioning, but I will attempt to do something to buy you a little time.

You do not have much time. It is admirable what you choose to do with it.

Send my regards."

"In the latter case, I hope it was of some help to her. Not that I can imagine what one of you could be able to do for one of us, but she needs all the help she can get."

Now, the only sort of 'companions' he has are the random wild slugcats that somehow manage to make their way into his facility. He is curious about how they communicate, but he wants them out and away from his work. Because it is not exactly pleasant to 'have a rodent run over your desk as you work'... Although, he still wishes to help you and gives you the unimaginable gift. Iterators are supposed to help the collective, so he might have been bending the rules a bit, even for a temporary solution for you. He painfully knows everything won't matter at the end but he still wishes to help you. He wants to help himself too.

He says he is god-like to the lesser beings yet he mentions he feels as trapped as they do. He relates and sympathizes with The Hunter and even goes his way to give them extra cycles for them to make their way to The Void Sea so they can escape their sickness, and even when he is persistent of wanting Hunter to leave, he is only worried because he knows they do not have unlimited time.

He helps The Gourmand reunite with their colony by opening the exterior gates for them. He helped both Survivor and Monk by indirectly causing their reunion at the end of the base game or DLC, wherever at the tree in Outer Expanse or by ascending. He is okay with playing pretend with The Artificer as if they were his citizen, and he gives them a place to stay. He put his trust, for the very first time, on a stray slugcat to help him tend to his structure. He gives Rivulet instructions on how to get the rarefaction cell to give it to Moon. He had put his fate on the hands of small beasts atleast two times. (And he doesn't even realize it with Artificer).

And for the fun traits: He is a nerd for his now-gone citizen's history, music and art. And although he mentions his kind doesn't focus on those aspects, he stills decides to have a fondness for them anyway. He's sarcastic but it comes across as funny. If he had a mouth and he could eat he would like cup ramen and hot pockets. He likes the light of his chamber shining through the diamond sphere you can bring to him. He is angry at the scavengers for destroying ancient history for the sake of 'shiny trinkets'. He is a little hater to a crude art from a child. He thinks the ancients rituals were silly. If you bring him a picture of monks doing odd poses he will say he thinks it's funny. He has many of ancient farmer-poet Pel's works archived. He relates to a silly little painting of five bottles of water standing upon a surface of filter feeding plants. He thinks Twenty-One Spokes of a Stone Wheel was a "true visionary". He misses the old days. He misses his citizens. He misses Suns and Moon, but he thinks he can't be forgiven for what he did.

It's only at the end of everything, where he is at the last of his generators, that he realizes that he did not have to go through this alone. But it's already too late. Then there is Moon, the person he has tried to avoid all the time. And they both had changed so much, that they find solace in eachother. Alone, at the end of the world.

And all of this development happened in one single game and one DLC. And he is not even the protagonist, because you play as a small animal! In the game, he is portrayed as this distant, powerful being that you need to visit to allow you to progress. New players would never know that this guy has single-handedly the most fucked up lore in the game. Love him.

...It is impossible to agree with everything I just said. But, please, if you think FP is as stuck-up as people think, please read his own reading's on the pearls. I beg you…

#rain world confession #five pebbles

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slugcatmusings · 1 year ago

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What is the Rot? Why is the Rot?

Spoiler Warning and Holy Wall of Text Batman Warning. I got WAY too into questioning the turbo-cancer here, hopefully my rambling makes sense.

So, the Rot is… weird, from a biological standpoint. Really weird, if you stop to think about it. It’s most frequently described as some variation of cancer, and it certainly fits the criteria for it. Caused by damage to DNA? Check. Multiplies uncontrollably? Check. Comes in both benign and malignant forms, one stationary and the other mobile? Big fat check. Heck, even the Rot cysts eating other creatures kind of fits, according to some research I’ve done – there are apparently cancer cells that will eat other cells, which makes sense in hindsight since cancer cells are cells that have lost important genetic restrictions, which may include whatever lets cells identify other cells as “do not eat.”

(I ain’t a biology whiz and I’m doing research on the fly while getting my thoughts out here, so take whatever I say about biology with a grain of salt)

So, Rot is clearly cancer of some kind, right? Case closed. Except when me and a friend of mine were talking Rain World theories on Discord, she brought up some interesting points that got me thinking.

First point: Rot cells obviously mutate in a way that affects FAR more than just cell replication and termination. Some of the cysts can HEAR. As far as I know, cells in the body do not hear sounds. They communicate via chemical signals and maybe, MAYBE react to temperature. Hearing involves complicated, specialized sensory apparatus to pick up on vibrations in the air. Even if you simplify it and say that it’s only vibrations, that’s STILL a multicellular thing, not a single-cell thing. It’s something that took millions of years to evolve on Earth, if not billions.

And while Rain World’s timeline goes on for long enough that it those kinds of mutations might happen eventually, Rot cysts have the ability to hear pretty much right from the start – because even the Proto-Long-Legs react to your presence like the Daddy Long Legs do, and the Rot in Spearmaster’s campaign, where Pebbles has recently contracted it, reacts the same way as it does in later campaigns. It’s already able to hear.

As far as I know, cancer just means the same cell duplicating over and over again. Are more mutations possible with each division, as errors are made in the DNA during splitting? Probably. But not to THAT extent. There’s no way a lump of cancer somehow mutated the exact complicated genetic blueprint needed to grow organs, at least not without outside interference.

Second point: Cases of Rot are way too consistent across the board. Now, we don’t have a huge sample size to work from, but from what we see from both Pebbles’ Rot, and Hunter Long Legs, they’re… pretty similar. Hunter Long Legs is basically a mobile Rot cyst. They move the same way, seem to grow the same way (starts as a growth inside/on the body before eventually freeing itself from whatever wall/flesh it grew from in some capacity and moving elsewhere), they have the same senses, and they even eat the same way, via something like phagocytosis (how white blood cells “eat” invading organisms via engulfing them and breaking them down in a sac in their main “body.”)

Now, this doesn’t tell us much, because cancer, when it does emerge, is pretty consistent in symptoms/what the mutated cells do once they start replicating. It’s pretty much the same regardless of whatever organism the cancer is happening in. But what ISN’T consistent is what causes the DNA error in the cancer cell in the first place. IRL, cancer can be caused by all kinds of things – smoking, radiation poisoning, being out in the sun too long, drinking deadly chemicals and whatnot, anything that damages DNA. But in RW, the only time we ever hear Rot talked about, or see it present, is in the context of an iterator having f*cked up while mucking around with DNA. Pebbles was trying to create an organism that could change his own genome, and No Significant Harassment created Hunter as a messenger and probably mucked something up in the process in his haste to get them to Moon.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t other causes of it, of course, we’re working with a sample size of two in an apocalyptic world with who knows how much potentially DNA-damaging stuff around, but… that’s still awfully consistent.

So, combining these points and everything we know to be canon, Rot is:

an organism that lives inside another organism

Until a certain condition is met, it cannot harm said host organism.

Once said condition is met, it goes out of control, wreaking havoc on the organism’s systems and mutating, giving it sensory capabilities and an appetite

Said condition is apparently someone messing up when re-arranging genomes, in yourself or others

It is widespread across multiple different species, at least iterators and slugcats but potentially other species as well.

Once you have a bad case of it, it is apparently NOT CURABLE. Pebbles tried everything he could think of but apparently exhausted all of his options by the time of the Survivor/Monk campaigns.

So, with all the context FINALLY laid out, here’s my wild theory: Rot isn’t a cancer. It’s a symbiote turned parasite. Specifically, I believe it’s a symbiotic microbe that lives inside the cells that make up every other creature in Rain World, and is held in check by a specific gene that all species share, and altering or getting rid of that gene causes it to go berserk, taking over and eventually mutating the host cells.

Yeah, I did watch Parasite Eve let’s plays as a kid, why do you ask? Anyway, hear me out here.

There is precedence for single-celled organisms living inside of other single-celled organisms. They’re referred to as intracellular endosymbiots (hopefully I got the spelling right there), and the most well-known one is probably the mitochondria. The powerhouse of the cell is thought to be descended from some bacteria way, WAY back that was engulfed by a larger cell and not only survived it, but BENEFITED from it. Since then those ancient proto-mitochondria and eukaryotic cells have mutually evolved to be dependent on each other. So it’s entirely possible for something similar to have happened in Rain World.

However, I don’t think it happened NATURALLY, here. Because something that’s able to take over a cell entirely and begin wildly mutating it is NOT something your average cell wants inside of it. There’s a VERY high chance of extinction if you do that. Which means that of course those funky bio-tech loving Ancients either took a look at a wildly dangerous cellular parasite and went “hmmm we can use this” or made one themselves.

Why did they do this? Who knows! Currently, I’m tied between “they needed a better powerhouse for the cell to power the various weird adaptations they’re building into various creatures,” “there was some sort of disease that this parasite gave immunity against and they wanted to make use of it,” and “it gave their creations massively powerful regeneration factors that made them much easier to maintain.” Possibly it was all three. Whatever the reason, the Ancients either found or created this parasite, and put it into their creations’ cells, hoping to reap the benefits.

Well, they got the benefits, but they also got a microbe that hijacked the cells and harnessed their pre-existing DNA blueprints to build organisms disguised as great big blobs of cancer. Which is not exactly ideal, but hey, they just had to figure out a way of keeping the cell hijacking from happening! And the way they ended up going about it was to alter the thing so that so long as there was a specific DNA sequence in the cell, it laid mostly dormant. All the benefits, none of the risks – so long as that specific string of genes remained intact.

And then BECAUSE it was so beneficial, they spread their artificial symbiote and it’s genetic reins throughout ALL of their creations, from the smallest pipe-cleaning slugs to the iterators. Which meant that as their purposed organisms replaced most of the original ecosystem, they spread the symbiote as well. Thus making it possible for pretty much ANY creature on the planet to come down with a bad case of the Rot. And with the iterators, I wouldn’t be surprised if this symbiote is tied to their self-destruction taboos. Try to cross yourself out? Well, it’s gonna maybe happen now, but it’ll be a slow painful death as you’re eaten alive from the inside and all your own parts turn against you, so was it really worth it?

And they never told their creations this perhaps even actively hid it, because why tell them the cause of the main deterrent to them mucking with their taboos? They might find a way around it. The iterators were left ignorant of how Rot works, and because of this they never figured out that Rot HAD a cure after all: rebuilding that genome that reins in the symbiote. Because why in the name of the Void would they repeat the same mistakes that gave them Rot in the first place, and potentially make it worse?

#rain world #rain world worldbuilding #serious musings #rain world headcanons #rw rot #the rot #rain world rot #rain world turbo cancer #which is not actually cancer #yes i Parasite Eved the shit out of the Rot #yes that is a verb now I take no criticisms #anywho the Rot is a byproduct of the ancients Fucking Shit Up on Purpose #and it DOES have a cure damn it #I'm not giving the robots not-actually-cancer and NOT giving them at least a chance to cure it #not mentioned above is the fact that depending on the genes altered along with the restraining gene #you might get rot with fun mutations like being able to jump from organism to organism #or Rot that outright assimilates cells from other organisms #amongst other things #plenty of FUN stories to play with there >:D

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