I See Edgy Jokes About The Inside Out Emotions Like "haha They'd Have To Endure All Your Grossest Fetishes"

They deserve to be separated, at least once-

Had to check and its been ~3 months since my last canonical ask (forgot to sign one)

Sooo how we thinking about Irving and the Scrybes interacting? Like it makes sense they would've done so but also Wild innit

-🥊

Oh it’s absolutely WILD to me, especially because I cannot imagine Irving would get along with any of them. He’d appreciate their devotion to the game, sure—no problem with them whining about reassignments, so less work for him—but… they’re still The Scrybes From Inscryption. He’d get annoyed with Magnificus’s insistence on “perfection” (which, in Irving’s eyes, is completely inconsequential but he knows better than to tell Magnificus he doesn’t know what he’s talking about), frustrated with Leshy’s pedantic mannerisms (though at least Leshy keeps to himself), irked by P03’s not-so-hidden intent to bring all of Inscryption somewhere else beyond the Gameworks, and Grimora… honestly I think he’d just find Grimora unnerving.

The James Cobb situation must have happened pretty early on in Inscryption’s development though—I can’t imagine that Irving would be able to send anyone in or out once the floppy disk had been buried (not to mention that Leshy had taken over during that point, putting yet another barrier in addition to the several feet of dirt).

Inscryption to me seems like the one corner of the Gameworks universe that no one really wants to talk about, they’ve just heard absolutely bonkers rumors about the people there and have to suppress a shudder. Except the rumors are 100% true and oftentimes worse because no one in Inscryption can behave.

hivewing design, now with approximately 400% more bug

Hey yeah sorry we took your freak of a boyfriend and destroyed him. Yeah he’s split between two bodies now. Yeah he’s mostly robot now and trapped inside one. His teacher hates masochists so he got sold off for a ginger, sorry about that. No we can’t get him back, his body is trapped within a card and his head got burnt to a crisp by the robot he was stuck inside. Sorry

creatures of shape and color

scrybe swaps

It’s like . Shaky drag from my cigarette . Vallamir’s possession of Irving’s corpse is meant to be read as unhealthy coping, the idea that reclamation is always a surefire way of healing when all it does in this case is trap him in a part of the past that he needs to step away from if he wants to truly grow. Depoliticizing and desecrating Irving’s image by wearing it as a costume to suit his own survival doesn’t make him feel any better despite what he claims. Vallamir is actively dying in there, growing weaker the longer he stays put— to the point that he’s too malnourished to leave at all. Do you understand? He’s never once existed as himself in a state that is free of confinement, and yet confinement is something he seeks because it’s familiar. And that’s comforting. Irving is something that he knew. That’s comforting. He can use his hatred and frustration and anger towards the deceased admin to mask everything as a crude, distasteful form of revenge, but there’s no fruitful outcome in the long run. Do you understand? Do you get it? He’s used to being written off as something to hate, so the easiest route to take is to carry on in the flesh of something that also harbored hate. Do you see it? Whatever.

suns throws it back

Unparalleled Innocence - An Angry Analysis (and fanon criticism) by The Conduit

(under cut due to being a long post)

I like to label myself "the #1 UI fan and the only person who really gets them" for… probably obvious reasons at this point. My interpretation of them is wildly different from almost everyone else's "mean gossip girl" interpretation of them, which - frankly, in my and some other people's opinion - results fron fandom misogyny due to gossiping's status as a stereotypically feminine trait. When a character's gender is unconfirmed, people default to referring to a character by masculine terms, and oftentimes get angry when the character in question is revealed to be anything else. (See: Seven Red Suns.) However, due to (misogynistic) stereotypes, the overwhelmingly common fanon interpretation of Unparalleled Innocence is a mean gossip girl, as mentioned prior.

I was not exempt from interpreting them as that until I actually began to look into the way they're treated by canon.

Unparalleled Innocence will be referred to as they/them in this essay, due to chatlog Iterators vagueposting about them using they/them pronouns and due to them lacking official confirmation on gender identity in both vanilla and Downpour.

One of the most significant mentions of UI, at least in the context of this essay, is the Shaded Citadel pearl. At the time of the pearl's writing (1514.008)[1], UI is likely still in construction or has only recently been constructed, placing them very, very close to whenever the mass ascension took place (before 1591.290). Unparalleled Innocence never has a line of dialogue in a single broadcast or broadcast pearl, and their characterization can only be inferred by the way other Iterators talk about and treat them.

UI is excluded from the discussion about Erratic Pulse, quite possibly suggesting alienation or distrust in UI by the local group for one reason or another.[2: Sky Islands 3] (Seven Red Suns is also excluded, but that's a result of them being heavily implied to not be a part of the same local group as the rest of the main cast. See: Citation 3) While discussing the leaking of Five Pebbles' rot, the idea that UI is mean is only a theory of Chasing Wind's (hence: "I suppose"), and not explicit fact.[3]

The most likely conclusion is that Unparalleled Innocence is a closed-off individual who doesn't realize the harm their actions bring to others, and is treated as much meaner by fellow Iterators than they actually are. Based on Gazing Stars' and Secluded Instinct's dialogue, it's entirely possible that UI might have leaked the rot images in a valiant attempt to notify others that Five Pebbles wasn't in a great state. They could've wanted to help to try and redeem whatever poor reputation had led to them being considered potentially mean by CW, but messed it up entirely.

Unparalleled Innocence came close to the sunset of their creators. They were abandoned by the so-called "noble benefactors." They were young, and didn't know how to handle it. This also plays in the favor of the idea that one of Rain World's themes is about empathy and understanding[4] - and in this case, it would be the lack of either.

And the fandom continues to mistreat them, just as they are by their fellow Iterators.

been playing rain world and thinking about saint again recently

full rain world spoilers below

I hate the "saint is the triple affirmative" interpretation. hate even more how it appears to have become the accepted truth in the fandom

first off, my dislike for this interpretation is not logical. it isn't something I can be convinced out of using canon evidence, because my reason for not interpreting the story this way is not evidence-based, it's because I don't find it to be a satisfying conclusion to the entire story of rain world.

but here's some rambling about logical reasons why it doesn't make sense anyway

if saint was created as the triple affirmative by sliver, that makes them extremely old - they came into existence LONG before spearmaster's campaign even started. if they came into existence with the purpose of ascending iterators, they sure took a long time to ascend any iterators - like okay, travel time and whatever, but you'd think they'd get at least one or two more before all the iterator comms break down entirely post-spearmaster. SM and hunter managed to get from SRS and NSH to the pebbs/moon area pretty quickly.

they also have fur, which seems to be an adaptation for the cold judging by the lizards in the campaign, despite the world not being cold at the point at which they were created. this could be easily explained by sliver just being very forward-thinking, but...

if sliver created saint, their entire triple affirmative thing comes across as incredibly thoughtless, which imo contrasts with sliver being forward-thinking enough to make saint immune to cold. like they finally created the magical rat that will ascend them all but didn't even think to send out a message beforehand like "hey guys I'm trying something new if I send out the triple affirmative and die right after this it worked and you should be visited by a flying green dude with an ascension beam at some point in the future"

there's also the thing of... wait so how does this whole iterator ascension work again? cause saint's timeline loops. after they ascend, they end up back in sky islands, with the iterators back where they were. this could be explained by "later playthrough loops aren't canon and pebbs and moon are ascended if you got em" but there's literally a specific gameplay mechanic - carrying stuff in your stomach between campaigns - meant to make it clear that the campaign is a loop.

anyway. the real reason I hate the theory isn't related to any of this - it's that it absolutely destroys pebbles and moon's story, thematically speaking.

sliver of straw's triple affirmative/death is a random event that could mean basically anything. the futility pebbles felt around trying to solve the great problem caused him to assign meaning to sliver's death that wasn't necessarily there - they found the solution, and it was self-destruction. that's what they were trying to tell everyone. it wasn't a random event, the triple affirmative was real. one of the bugs in the maze found the way out, and he's going to prove it to everyone by following them and escaping.

and that's what leads to the events of the main story. this random event - this horrible tragedy, the death of someone who seemed to mean so much to so many people - was assigned meaning by someone desperate to prove that his entire existence, and the existences of everyone around him, are not futile. the ancients created the iterators without knowing whether the answer to the great problem could ever be found, and this is the result of that.

a nihilistic, hopeless person, abandoned by his creators to work forever on an unsolvable problem, assigns meaning to a random tragedy, and tunnel visions on what he has to believe is what he's been looking for - because it is an unimaginable understatement to say that the alternative would be worse than death. and then, in his self-destructive desperation, he kills his sibling* and dooms himself to the slowest, most painful death imaginable. this is the legacy of the ancients' dead society, the result of all of their stupid ideals and obsession with karmic perfection. (*as far as he knows)

but saint being the triple affirmative undermines all of that. not only does it make sliver's death less of a tragedy and more of a noble sacrifice - like yeah, sure, they were loved, but solving the great problem was far more important - but it also makes pebbles look less desperate and more just kinda stupid. like you thought that the solution was self-destruction? nah, it's a magical flying rat. in this version of the story, pebbles wasn't striving for something that didn't exist, he was just not smart enough to figure out the real solution.

even outside of canon evidence, that sucks. it causes pebbles' story to go from being about how you should value the people around you over the impossible striving that life always seems to expect from you or you're gonna end up hurting them and yourself to how you should just be smarter to find the right solution to all of your problems.

anyway as for my own interpretation of saint, I think that the campaign is just a representation of what it's like to be an echo. reliving the moments that led up to your failed ascension over and over, reaching maximum karma and gaining superpowers because you're just that karmically pure - you are a saint, after all - and then letting your ego consume you at the crucial moment of ascension, over and over again, cycling into infinity. (I don't think they actually had superpowers prior to ascending, I just think that they kinda thought of themselves so highly that they thought they should have those powers.) then contrast this with the world as the age of the iterators and the rain finally ends, and you have an unchanging echo reliving the same few cycles over and over contrasted with a world that is, at last, changing and moving on.

yeah it doesn't make sense with the joint iterator dialogue in rubicon (at least, the final line doesn't make sense). I don't care. it's what makes me happy as an interpretation. you can pry my morally dubious hypocritical ego-driven saint from my cold dead hands