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spotsupstuff · 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.

#spot says stuff #rw #rain world #rw watcher spoilers #rw spinning top #rw ancients #rw echo #rw the prince #my art #i adore the Prince because he has Such full confidence in the Watcher & revels it a little while I'm here fucking up the teleport command-#-& not understanding how lightning in stormy coast works yet.#he's like a dog. you leave for like 2000 years from his POV & all he does when you get back is go 'hi friend!! :) make yourself at home.'#what a homie. what a sweetheart. I wish he had an overseer so I could pretend talk with him like I did with Moon and Pebs.#he speaks to me as if I brought him the stars & yet last time I played I spent 6 hours futilely trying to figure out how to spread his Rot.#i know now. i had to look it up and i feel like an idiot. the game demonstrates it 4 times and the Prince himself even tells you about it.

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elodieunderglass · 3 months ago

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I can't resist bothering you with more questions. I'm sorry! I want to put Killie in a basket and carry him around with me like a purse dog. Did Charlie always know that he wasn't going to be a horse pilot forever and that he would find a way out of his family's net, or was he never going to escape if him being kicked out hadn't forced him into it? My heart breaks for him a bit, even though he seems the most well-adjusted person in that family. How old was he when he ended up on his own?

(In reference to Killie the jockey OC, crown prince of a horse-obsessed family, and his identical twin brother Charlie, who was disowned/ escaped the orbit of the Horse Planet)

You are never a bother. Nobody could be anything but grateful to have such insightful, brave, witty and inspiring people to talk about their OCs with! Are you kidding?

That’s such a good and deep question - I don’t think that Charlie knows the answer himself. He certainly was quite a talented apprentice jockey. In terms of his place in the family, his parents and siblings all adored him - he is warm and charming and funny - and thought they understood him. He has that special child-of-rotten-parents survival-mode sensitivity to reading a room, that in Charlie translates into useful skills, like “changing the mood of the room” and “sensing what people want him to say”.

But Charlie has a strong sense of identity, and with it, a hard internal limit on personal sacrifice; there are parts of Charlie you can’t have.

And despite being a fifth-generation jockey of impeccable pedigree, the whole “stoic, fearless, impervious to pain” thing appears to be a state of mind - not a physiology thing, but a mental one, engendered by passion for the sport. Charlie has had passages of his life where he’s carried off the Jockey Constitution (TM), but a problem with armouring yourself with a mental state is that if you are an especially clever little liar yourself, like Charlie, you catch on to the trick.

And the sport is inextricable from the horses in their family. So Charlie stormed out (was thrown out) of both family and sport… but I think he does like horses and he was good at it. And it would’ve been hard, in that family, in that immersive and passionate world, to break out naturally - especially when you are so beautifully built for it. It would again come down to Charlie’s strong sense of self.

I think a lot of his sense of identity and resistance came, early on, from connecting honestly with his bisexuality. He’s clever and sneaky, and likes mind games and code-switching and putting on characters, and when he realised the necessity of masking early on, it felt like a secret identity. He was simply Built Different, and couldn’t change it, so he made a game of tap-dancing on the tightrope.

Then he left to build that secret identity into his real self, on purpose, and he threw himself into The Opposite of Being a Jockey. He was not only the first in their family to go to university, he went into academia. He covered his bills by bartending and busking (take that, Dad). He eats cake. He is valued for his mind and brain. He is NOT COMPETITIVE AT ALL. HE’S COLLABORATIVE, EVEN.

…He was just about eighteen. And perhaps it affected him more deeply than he’d say. But what saved him - what always would save Charlie - was a sense of identity.

#Killie #the twins are 4’10’’ or 4’11 Ciara is about 5’2’’ as an adult and while everyone acts like Colm is massive he’s like 5’8’’ or something #apologies for Colm’s proportions. don’t worry about it. he does that.#Ciara (Irish) pronounced Kiera as in Knightley and Colm pronounced like #ughhh #a bit like Gollum with a C but if you were trying to say it as one syllable #Coll’m #(Irish ppl pls do correct any of this)#I made a strong effort to mentally rename Colm to Colman even thinking it would be easier but no. didn’t stick. he’s too Colmish.#like a small amphibious creature like a little autumn colored newt hiding in a little mossy puddle under a gently rotting leaf #defenseless staring up at you with the resigned eyes of something #fully expecting to be eaten. easily squashed.#with a resigned sigh I make a note to myself to Do Something About Colm.#what does he need I wonder.#actually maybe he is genuinely tall. that would be funny #he should be.#tall colm actually doesn’t need to be fixed he just needs to move out.#I was chatting with a colleague who is a 5’9 man and his brother is a 6’10 man and he brought this up to tell a story about how the brother #moved to the USA on the strength of it to play basketball. but in photos the brother would bend his knees to be jn the same frame #as my colleague so nobody ever believes him about this story or his brother because he cannot prove it. any photo he has of his brother #feature the man sort of melting downwards with an apologetic expression.#maybe colm’s like that.#hmm each sibling has their own identity narrative. Charlie’s is the strongest #Killie forcibly does a reinvention speedrun. straight Tory asshole to tenderly gay married in like a year. Ciara gets radicalised online #and Colm shall get a personality for uhhhhh (spins wheel of holidays) Beltane #or maybe World Book Day.#Killie and Charlie

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