Soooo I noticed something thematically interesting.
One of the central connecting thematic threads between Lobcorp and Ruina is the idea that positive advancement or comfort should not come at the cost of the lives of those less fortunate than you. One can summarize it as 'the ends dont justify the means', but that simple adage doesn't capture the focus on how "the means" in this case is exploitation and turning a blind eye to it.
Its rather succinctly demonstrated above in Yesod's lamentings, and Roland's response- typical improvement in the City comes at the cost of suffering. As the world is now, the masses must be tormented to make the lives of the fortunate few better. And the trick is, the average joe justifies their own consumption- I'm so exploited, its only fair I get to exploit others, yeah?
There's also a thread of becoming part of the problem one was trying to fix, of only feeding back into the cycle. Lobotomy Corporation sacrificed who knows how many employees for an abstract ideal we don't really know that much about- the most we really know is that the disease of the mind might be city denizens' desires to chain themselves to factions and restrict their worldview to those of their masters. E.G.O. thus represents independent critical thought.
Roland actively points out Lobotomy Corporation's contradiction to Tiphereth, and it might be the first good point he makes in the game- one thats not founded on his cynical defeatism. According to him, this song and dance has been the standard for the Wings since forever. Advancement is promised at the cost of who knows how many lives. Lobotomy Corporation broke no cycle.
With all this in mind... I am really super interested in what the fuck Carmen is up to and why she's doing it.
... Especially now in Limbus. Distortion reads to me as almost like... a test. You either gain E.G.O. or become a twisted abstraction of your former self. Why is she inducing this distortion-ego dichotomy in people so much? What is her reasoning for doing so?
I think it could be a kind of elaboration on Lobcorp and Ruina's themes of "In a world founded on apathy and greed, extraction of suffering is the source of comfort's presence elsewhere, and thus people are compelled to not care about where their luxury comes from". Carmen, messiah complex and all, is using this as a way to determine who is worthy and who isn't.
It would be fitting for a game like Limbus- one that emphasizes the solidarity between a motley crew who all come from absurdly different backgrounds and have their own complex traumatic relationship to societal status quo- to have a villain like that. Dante never gives up on counseling the Sinners. "Salvation" cannot come at the expense of the "unworthy", the downtrodden social pariahs, the strange and mentally ill, the outcasts and oddities. Either everybody is saved, or nobody is saved. Thats what I think Limbus is building up to.
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~~I don't know why I made this post. Just kind of rambling about some artistic analysis. I wasn't rly trying to make a prediction or a theory, I just needed to pour my observational thoughts on the trilogy's themes and it ended up going there. Uhhh lmk what u think if u read it ig~~