Rain World Theory

rain world theory

i think it's fairly common knowledge that pebbles represents the brain and moon represents the heart? even if you haven't read the dev commentary it can still be gathered from context clues (primary cortex, the room names in lttm/submerged). i have thought about this extensively and i believe that if we saw no significant harassment in-game his superstructure would be themed around the lungs.

in the dev commentary itself, andrewfm says this

and while the canonicity of downpour is debated i'm going to assume it's 100% canon for the purpose of this analysis. this statement tells us that the organ moon and pebbles are associated with directly correlates to their characters, instead of simply being related to the function of their superstructure.

now vanilla doesn't give a whole lot of nsh lore past the lore pearl that hunter carries in their campaign, but downpour gives us quite a bit more during spearmaster's campaign with the introduction of the broadcast tokens. many of these broadcasts consist of nsh trying to talk things out with and help seven red suns, who is feeling guilt over causing both pebbles' and moon's predicament. this, coupled with the effort he took to save moon, shows that he is a very caring person (despite possibly sending feet pics through pearl?).

the most basic explanation of nsh lungs is pretty much just "he resuscitated moon, i.e providing oxygen to the heart". however i brought up the broadcasts cause i think it goes a lot deeper than that --- his role in the story is to save everyone else, in a way. it's more subtle than that, because rain world's story is largely told through implications and guesses, and it tells us that he goes out of his way to help out his friends. he sends a message to pebbles telling him to stop acting so childishly, and while he probably only sent this with the intent to help moon, the outcome is still that he is trying to get him to stop being so self-destructive. he helps everyone because that's who he is, and the fact that he supplies this assistance to people is what makes him the lungs.

there's also much to be said about him and hunter and why he didn't send an overseer after hunter to guide them, but that's mostly unrelated so i'll leave that for another rant .

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well “possibly sending feet pics through pearl?” is definitely not a sentence i thought i'd ever read the worst part is i know exactly what it is referring to downpour is definitely not canon because not only does it contradict vanilla COUNTLESS times but it also is contradicted in the watcher but it can be treated as its own AU

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 !

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yea i think its got RELATIONS to the rot in the sense that theyre both. like. kegare grime clinging to their spirit and. other stuff. that i csnt be bothered to list but not really rot if it WERE rot they wouldnt have woekn up again!

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sludge-cat

1 month ago