A rereading of the Drainage Verses, after experiencing Watcher at least.
I promise there's not really any spoilers on story beats for Watcher, it just recontextualized my view on the cycle through the experiences I had with it and I also cannot be assed.
Have my un-peer reviewed and un-profread rant
The first verse starts by drawing a comparison between the world and a tangled rug. It says that the world is an unfortunate mess. Like a knot, the nature of its existence is the fact that the parts are locking each other, none able to spring free.
The world is made up of strands (as said by OAOA), each connecting and intertwined to make a whole. Like a tangled rug. All parts of the cosmic system are interlocked with one another, being so tightly intertwined
Yet you only perceive the rug for its whole. It's pattern, and not for every individual strand in it. In a way, there is only a single outcome, much like how there's an idea in quantum physics that a particle (or in this case, a soul) will explore every possible option before reaching a single, determined outcome. The determined outcome for the player is either to sleep, or permadeath. For the creatures, it is much the same, but you are not capable of perceiving it.
In a way, your soul reaches across all these strands, penetrating through the layers of reality through both the cerebral strands and the material rug itself. Your existence is shattered and fractal-ed, and so is the existence of all other material beings.
The strands on the edges of these rugs- these "fringes"- are rotted off and frayed
Then as it goes on the world becomes a furry animal hide, I suppose... because now us living beings are like insects crawling in the fur.
We are bugs in a furry animal hide, an important part of an ecosystem we are incapable of seeing due to how vast it is, and being hidden in the fur.
We feed off the larger cosmic beings whos fur we crawl through and whos dead skin we eat and which makes us.
And then it's a fishing net, because the more we struggle and squirm, the more entangled we become.
This part we all know. The corporeal cycles catch and hold these souls in a net. As the brain tries to escape and squirms, it only becomes further entangled as consequence occurs. It's not about material attachment or natural urges though.
It says that only the limp body of the jellyfish cannot be captured in the net. So we should try to be like the jellyfish, because the jellyfish doesn't try.
By being able to let go, meditate, and focus, through dreaming in sleep, you can slip away and escape. Being effortless was not about shedding the urges to gain some arbitrary value, but leaving no distractions to the mind.
Ingame, your karma increases THROUGH living continuously and surviving, as your brain is no longer distracted by the constant torment of the other failed strands your soul is experiencing, and you can further align yourself and be able to let go that way.
Some other notes about Moon in this
Moon when she reads this out to you skims over it, and says "I suppose" almost as if shes bored by it. She even says the verses are already familiar to her.
I think this is because the iterators already know these things, they're capable of seeing through the interstice where the voidspawn and likely other entities exist in. They're outside observers of the cycles, whilst still being a part of it in a way.
Reading this out for her is like an ecologist seeing those incredibly simplified food web that doesn't account for the thousands and thousands of nuances that exist. Like, oh sure it gets the point across, but you don't understand the extent of it.
(Headcanon area time) Because iterators cannot sleep nor can they die, their souls do not frantically jump across strands, and they are capable of near perfectly aligning their existence. Yet they cannot ascend, and are stuck here with that.
But yeah there's some thoughts I suppose
