Sludge-cat - What Kind Of Animal Is This

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

EDIT: now that Watcher's out my actual reading of all this is a bit different. Once I look at that more I might post a new thing so... Watcher quasi-spoilers I guess?

Firstly, consider:

Rain World - THE EFFERVESCENCE And Some Various Theories Built Off Of It

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