NOUSPORES!!!!
3.7 spoilers ahead! you have been warned!
what to expect (in order)
rambling about the HSR wiki and how people should contribute if they're interested
what is a nouspore?
nouspores and how they connect to the prime mover of life
examples of nouspores containing "significant memories" and what that actually looks like
the cyrene bootstrap paradox
soooo, instead of doing my work, i accidentally re-vamped the entire wiki page on the Nousporists... oopsie.
actually, i read through the history of the page, and i'm STILL the only person who's made major contributions to it at the moment... the lovely moderator Raven.Familiar helped, but they mostly just combined the nousporist and nousporism pages into one while i wasn't looking.
this is an utterly massive shame. i haven't even touched on the history of the nous4ists, or anaxa's later research and how it adds to everything... GUYS! I KNOW YOU GUYS ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT THIS, TOO! come help form the resources we all use together!! pleaaaaase!! this is a huge fandom. there is absolutely no way i am the only person doing this type of lore reading, even if we're only talking about the EN community. so, don't be scared! just make an edit if you want to add something, and if there's a mistake then kindhearted moderators and wandering souls will edit the page afterwards. you'll learn ideal wiki formatting over time.
THE ACTUAL CONTENT STARTS HERE!!!
anyway, i want to preserve the things i wrote in another form, since i'm hoping the wiki goes through substantial edits and my words are so modified they can no longer be called "mine", but an insane collaboration of many people
SO here's what i've wrote, "as i've written" it (hehe). with some annotations to make it less wiki, more friendly
Nousporism is the theory that all beings originate from the same source- the original Nouspore- and have the same composition. This "source" from which beings form is referred to as the soul or Nouspore.[1][2] The Nouspore is the primary focus of Nousporist scholars, who seek to study how Nouspores are born, what they are made of, and what that says about the source of life.[3][4]
Everything in Amphoreus exists through Nouspores, living in the memories of those yet to come.[5] Nouspores are like tiny invisible seeds that hold records of each person's memories of the world, and people are the "trees" that sprout from these "seeds". Just as seeds are affected by their environment, people can differ slightly based on the different experiences they have in their lifetime, but certain significant memories from their Nouspore always remain.[2]
this part is taken almost word-for-word from things anaxa's said in game, so yes, you can take it as canon. i believe cerces is the first person who actually says the word "nouspore" ingame, but we can assume anaxa came up with it (since he calls his school nousporism) and cerces just yoinked it from his brain, or something
It is implied that the "prime mover of life" Scepter δ-me13 was attempting to calculate[6] is one and the same as "the original Nouspore".[7]
prime mover of life, ultimate truth of the universe, origin of life itself- we can see how these 3 concepts are basically the same thing, right? once again, i'm using anaxa's words here. the founder of nousporism himself believes that the scepter's calculation should yield the result of the "original nouspore", and he's been right about basically everything, so... i am inclined to trust him!!
The Scepter originally concluded that all life actions are attributed towards entropy increase, meaning the prime mover of life must be Destruction.[8] However, Cyrene disproved this conclusion by introducing the core variable of Trailblaze and arguing life is also constantly fighting against entropy increase.[9] The Scepter re-calculated and corrected its conclusion, stating that the prime mover of life is a "static value" and cannot determine the developmental path of things.[8] In other words, neither entropy increase nor decrease is the cause of life; merely its result. Life exists simply because it exists, with life's "prime mover" embedded within the act of living itself. Therefore, all possible primum mobiles are equally valid conclusions, as each individual's life moves for some unique purpose.[10]
this is very clinical language for something extremely emotional. this is what the themes of the amphoreus story were all about. it's the heart of the story and the moral we should take away! "life lives because it just does, so anything can be the reason you keep living and going, because there is no specific purpose for which life exists". optimistic nihilism vibes, hoyoverse's typical themes!
if this still doesn't make sense to you, i am happy to try to explain it further, so reach out! i love the amphoreus story, so it would be a shame if someone couldn't feel its weight because of how complicated hoyo makes their metaphors sometimes
All of this together suggests that a Nouspore either contains the prime mover of an individual, or a Nouspore is in itself an individual's prime mover. Additionally, significant memories can alter a person's Nouspore such that their individual prime mover changes.
this comes from that first idea that "the prime mover of life & the original nouspore are the same thing". as for the significant memories bit, it comes from anaxa quotes. "Just as seeds are affected by their environment, so too will our appearances differ across memories. But the partial memories we carry will always be the same, because that is just how the world is."
i gave some examples to hopefully help make this clearer
We can see an example of these Nouspore-changing memories in March 7th. Even after losing all of her memories and becoming an "empty soul", she was able to recall some parts of herself- memories of journeying with the Astral Express- through the significant memories embedded in her soul. March 7th addressed these memories as "forces that have once changed [her] soul."[11] Another example of this is seen in Phainon, who "chiseled his companions' dying wishes into his soul."[12]
would love to hear it if anyone thinks of other examples! the most obvious, of course, is how the demiurge carved the memory of the original PhiLia into her soul.
and now, the other most important thematic part
While the original Nouspore, or Demiurge, can be thought of as the origin of all Amphorean Nouspores, the answer is more complicated. The memories embedded within the Demiurge's Nouspore were born from the 33 million cycles of Amphoreus's history which the original Cyrene recorded within them. The Demiurge then looked back at Amphoreus, forming the Nouspores of a newborn Amphoreus within a Memory Zone. This makes the origin of Amphorean Nouspores a Bootstrap Paradox
hehehehe, if demiurge's nouspore comes from peach's memories, and peach's nouspore came from demiurge, then the so-called "original nouspore" isn't original at all. it's an endless cycle
Cerces: If that is the case, whose memories did the very first Nouspore sprout from? Anaxa: How should I know?
there is no special grandeur in the demiurge. she facilitates the cycle, but in a way, everyone was born from themselves- from the memories of themselves the demiurge held for a moment, to be exact.
so don't think of her as a goddess, or as the grand purpose of amphoreus. she was merely someone who loves the world and was loved by the world
"Because the world was gentle to me. So I grew up to be gentle as well." - A girl who someone once called "Peach"
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WAIT, ONE MORE THING!
Anaxagoras speculated that everything the world was made up of some kind of universal substance except nous, the mind, which separated living things from the nonliving. A cosmic nous also ordered the universe to create the different objects in the world. This is another possible inspiration for the Nousporist belief that all beings have the same composition.
i can't put it in the wiki, but this is more stuff to support the idea that nouspore = prime mover of life! because!! a nous is the thing that separates living from the nonliving!! a nous is what makes something alive!
