My View On The Cycle.

My view on the cycle.

Cycles are probably the most mysterious part of Rain World lore, and a common consensus I see on them is things involving multiple, branching timelines. However recently I've heard a theory that I believe fits in much better with the narrative and lore.

The main base of the theory is the karma flower dialogue from Moon,

"This is a hallucinogenic plant. They used to call it a 'Wheel Flower'. It became the symbol for enlightenment as it momentarily enables a creature to let go of its carnal self, and to contact the selves of other planes - dreams, memories, imagined worlds."

The theory summarized is that when we sleep, we can have possibly countless dreams of death. These are our, "cycles" in game. But eventually we wake up into a true reality, which is revealed to us when we progress and rest again. In this way the player and all other creatures act as a sort of seer to other terrifyingly realistic subconscious probabilities, (dreams and imagined worlds) until actually experiencing one true reality. If death is your reality, then you simply reincarnate, which is what happens in hunter's campaign via cancer death.

Karma fits into this by being the one thing that "remembers" these dreams. Even if your death wasn't real, your karma is still affected by it and is tied to you in reality.

I prefer this theory to the timeline theories because of the aforementioned karma flower dialogue, but also because timeline theories have a whole lot of complications when it comes to how ancients tracked time and objectivity. I just believe this theory is a good bit simpler and fits better into what we're already told.

But of course it poses one problem, with this theory it implies that all the slugcats we play as (except Hunter as I mentioned) would have never actually "died" in real life. But, if you've ever played Dark Souls and heard of hollowing then you might know what I'm getting at. By giving up, you do die. And the vast, vast majority of Rain World players give up. Very few make it to the end, the ones that did are skilled enough to have never died outside of these subconscious worlds.

Falin?

some more college doodles as I near the finish line (this semester has utterly destroyed me)

did not expect a heartbreaking iteration of cain and abel story in a silly creature game but here we are

siblings and weird dog

yeah sorry we took your canon male character and made him a butch dyke. no yeah it didnt change his appearance hes just a butch dyke now. sorry. hes infinitely cooler now if that makes u feel better