people still confused on why the molar id went to outis are missing the most crucial point:
molar outis specifically mirrors pre-library olga, i.e. olga who hasn't gone on the warp train yet.
as we know from the dimension shredder EGO and the w corp id, warp trains tend to represent outis' odyssey (thousands of years away from home, a derailed voyage, etcetc). molar outis, on the other hand, has yet to step foot on the train. in fact, since she was released with a rain id (olga's brother), she's essentially "still with her family."
thus, shes ooc because she's an outis hasn't seen "war" yet.
it's also why molar outis is so important to outis' character. what was outis like before the smoke war? we don't know, but molar outis gives us a few ideas: competent but reckless and hedonistic, accomplished but not particularly ambitious, authoritative but not enough to inspire confidence. also, prone to grumbling things like "you have no idea how much i do for you..." how did someone like that become like the outis we know today? exactly how bad was the smoke war?
while not everything gets translated over 1-1, the fact that molar outis is so ooc is the fun part. what we should be asking is why, not why not.
TLDR; there are more to ids than just similar personalities!
gsgw thoughts abt ghost stories and work, spoilers up to abt ch 200
it's really interesting to me how faithful gsgw is to its premise, ie "dropped into a ghost story, still gotta work." kse, upon getting dropped into the wiki world, is immediately put to work at daydream. and whenever he gets put into a ghost story, he's somehow caught up in work in some way or another. even the ones more disconnected from his work at daydream/the bureau still incorporate the idea of "work" in some way. to wit:
- brauns tv show arc has kse work but at specifically brauns tv show
- the second theme park visit involves kse becoming the manager of the yellow zone
- the old daydream facilitys main purpose narratively so far seems to be producing potions for kse so he can more effectively clear ghost stories (work). he also gets dream essence from the ghost stories he clears as part of his work. notably its ability to make wish potions (absolve him from work) is removed
- the arm marketplace (and associated marketplaces) are also places where kse obtains items he uses generally for work purposes. there are occasions where its not just for work (e.g. purging of mental contamination) but id argue that all roads lead to more work (no mental contamination = get more dream essence = get better at work). the illusion of free choice.....
- mountain lodge involves a lot of invocations of kse's job, including baek saheon and the constant references towards them being coworkers. also involves kse hiring another employee (the keeper), and features ryu jaekwan, who is there bc of his own job
- pretty much every other ghost story is entered and cleared as part of kse's work at daydream and the bureau
as a result, gsgw sets up a really interesting association betwen ghost stories and work.
gsgw is also notably pretty critical of capitalism and its various workplaces. daydream is obvious, but even the bureau is still pretty toxic as far as workplaces go, considering factors like its one-man clear teams, low pay, and lack of active personnel compared to daydream. the most obvious evidence is how go youngeun, while working at the bureau, still manages to find herself under a shitty boss and dragged around without her input, showing how it really isnt that different from daydream.
hell, even ghost story workplaces arent spared the criticism. at the theme park, kse is still subjected to toxic workplace politics and despite being a manager, still doesnt have full autonomy. he also, before leaving, has to unwillingly tie a part of himself down to the theme park. at brauns tv show, although kse likes what hes doing, hes also not spared constant working hours with no sleep or food and pressure from his boss to act in line.
interestingly enough, too, kse's most major ghost story contaminations are often also in line with "work." the manual contamination involves becoming a teacher at the hangman ghost story. when hes contaminated at the theme park, he specifically attempts to become a "good mascot of the yellow zone." the story usurper cult contaminant takes the form of a daydream janitor and the implication is that hes become an initiate (ie. a worker) in the cult. the fourth floor looky mart contamination is abt becoming an employee at looky mart. not him, but still notable.
the reason i mention this is because the association between work and ghost stories is likely to be very intentional. personally i find this very funny because in a way, gsgw implies that working sucks as much as being a coward in a ghost story. (considering that kse used to work in finance, id also believe that.)
its also really interesting to me in how its horror-based setting also implies this. specifically, in how horror manifests in psychological paranoia that carries over beyond the horrifying experience itself (e.g. kse's nightmares), and also how kse can find himself randomly dropped into a ghost story without warning (mountain lodge, train to tamra). it reflects how toxic workplaces follow someone outside of the workplace itself. not just always being on call, but also the stress and lack of joy those kinds of things can put someone under that negatively impacts them outside of work itself.
this association reframes kse's desire to leave as not only the desire to leave the ghost stories behind, but to also return to a life without the stress of an unhealthy work environment. but of course we know that even without ghost stories, toxic workplaces are still commonplace. we see this in every place that kse's worked at, where the horror of the workplace doesnt just lie in the ghost story association, but also in mundane factors, like weird hours, scummy bosses, toxic politics, dead-end positions, and high-stress environments. kse's shitty mental state isn't from ghost stories but rather absurd demands from his dictator-like boss who has total control over not only his life, but the lives of the people he cares about.
he even finds comfort in a ghost story bc the way the world narrows to living or dying is a break from the mental pressures at work. really loving the implication that work sucks MORE than nearly dying to a cult. baek deoksoo you will always be legendary for this
anyway the point im trying to make is that bro is NOT leaving behind the ghost stories. if you get dropped in the ghost story you work and its starting to seem like if you work youre basically in a ghost story rip to kse but your cowardly ass is NOT escaping the Horrors </33
okay maybe i'm not looking in the right places but like. are we not going to talk about dimension shredder yi sang's uptie story??
i'm genuinely shocked more people aren't discussing it because it's actually SUCH a gutwrenching uptie story. it's been days since i read it and it's stuck in my head like glue. i want to maul whoever wrote this. when i first finished it i stared blankly at my computer screen for a solid five minutes. maybe i relate a little too much to it so its resounding especially strongly for me but like... waow. gestures at it. waow. would you call me crazy if i get weepy over it?
this is your cue to read it, btw, if you haven't read it yet. and if you can spare the mats i really recommend reading it w/in the game b/c the audio + the visuals add quite a bit. (or look up a yt video if there is one.) yap below:
where am i to start with dimshredder yi sang's uptie story???? it's a punch in the face but in the best way. wanting nothing more than to get to know his coworkers, to pay them back for the kindness they showed him.... the way everyone was legitimately so kind to him and the awkward yet sincere way he tried to reciprocate, only to get the opportunity ripped away from him before he could build up the courage to actually bond...
i love how it's split between the past and the present too. obviously from the post-uptie art and the events of the story we know that they're going to die, but with how cute the pre-uptie art is and how many details they give you on what the lce was like, it's easy to forget. and then it hits you in the face with the reminder that they're all dead. yi sang can't ever tell them he enjoyed their presence, that he appreciated them, because they're dead.
and instead of accepting that, he continues wandering across dimensions, hoping in vain to find the place, the time, where his colleagues are still alive. (aside: the way the pre-uptie story is cut into randomly by post-uptie yi sang is also really great. not only does it give weight to his efforts, but it also really demonstrates how much he longs for the past. and has the added bonus of building suspense too.) except the conclusion isn't that straightforward. he does accept it! eventually he comes to realization that yes, this is his dimension, that yes, his colleagues are dead, that in his sloth he missed the opportunity to say his thanks, but.
someone on the inside tampered with the lock. one of his colleagues killed everyone. nobody he knows would have done that. so this can't be his dimension.
that's why he can do nothing but wander.
it's about intense regret and longing for the past. it's also about the rejection of reality in favor of a kinder memory. yi sang isn't just searching for the past, but he's also searching for a past that never existed in the first place. it's true that his colleagues were kind to him, but because he can't accept that one of them would have betrayed the lce, he can never accept that they're gone.
and it's also the character arc of yi sang & dongbaek in canto 4 too, no?? the longing for the "other world" of the past while rejecting harsh reality, the search for a place to belong, the regret over not talking more to the other members, the traitor. this is just league of nine canto 4 except it's the lce.
that!!! is so crazy!!!! why did they fit such a compelling story into a guy everyone is calling dead on arrival!!!!!! a guy nobody would uptie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AND that's not all because between the ego suit and the fluffy hair i am 90% certain this uptie story isn't just about yi sang. it's about sora. i mean look at them:
istg im not crazy that's sora's hairstyle. that's sora's lce disguise. the themes of his uptie story also suit sora: her desire for belonging, her regret over not being able to fulfill it, and her rejection of the reality that some of it was fake. she wanted to be friends with the other apprentices but they could never accept her. rien was never going to love her like a daughter even though he acted kind to her. hermes actively led her to her death. all she wanted was to have friends, to be part of rien's family, and to return rien's "kindness," yet at the same time she was ignoring the reality that rien's kindness was fabricated by the prescript. she's forever wandering in search of acceptance from the house of spiders, unwilling to accept how it there was nothing to find there.
Memory, Threads, and Temporal Entanglement: A Preliminary Analysis of Canto IX
The Rashoumon effect is used as a shorthand to describe how eyewitnesses may lie during, misremember, or otherwise confuse testimony. It derives from the film Rashoumon, inspired by the short story “Rashoumon” by author Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, who also wrote “Hell Screen.” The name is a slight misnomer however—the specific effect actually derives from Akutagawa’s other short story “In a Grove,” in which three key witnesses to a murder describe three completely different events. Since all accounts corroborate physically existing evidence, no actual conclusion can be made about what happened. In a way, you could argue that all of them occurred.
(Obligatory spoiler warning for Canto 9 here.)
During the first two weeks of Canto 9’s release, a lot of noise was made over the Rashoumon effect due to some misaligned details in some CGs. When the mistake was revealed as a mistake, that theorizing naturally died down. But I’d argue that the Rashoumon effect still plays a part in Canto 9, just a slightly different one than we previously thought.
The fallibility of memory is, without a doubt, a big theme in Canto 9’s story. Ryoushuu slowly forgets details about Araya until she forgets her entirely. Her final form, for lack of a better term, is a human concept incinerator, capable of removing the memory of anything from the world. And Araya herself is full of memory. To paraphrase her, she’s a receptacle of everything that Ryoushuu’s forgotten, and everything that Ryoushuu will never be able to experience.
But what exactly is memory? I presume we’re all familiar with the word, so I’ll spare us the Merriam-Webster screenshot, but if we think about it, it’s essentially a subjective, internal record of the past. I remember what I ate for breakfast, so let’s eat something else for lunch. I remember that person said they’d wear pink, so I’ll wear pink as well. I remember that yesterday happened, so today is the day after that. And so on and so forth. Generally speaking, we trust our memories to be correct, even though they rarely are. As long as all the present-day details align, nothing says our pasts, no matter how correct they are, aren’t true.
The present occurs because of the past. Today is a result of yesterday. If yesterday changes, today changes as well. And because memory records the past, our notion of time also depends on our memories. If yesterday never happened, yesterday is today.
But let’s say we’re told yesterday happened, and so and so happened then. We check the calendar date, and yep, it looks like we’re missing a date, and nothing really contradicts what Person A is saying, so that must have happened yesterday. But Person B is saying such and such actually happened yesterday, and Person C is saying that in truth, A and B are both wrong, and something completely different occurred. What are we to believe? “Yesterday” now exists in a suspended state of uncertainty. What does that mean for “today”? Eventually, we have to pick one and go about it. Does that mean that we have chosen a yesterday, discarding all other yesterdays, or does that mean that the previously unselected yesterday continues on anyway, unperceived but still lived?
I am, of course, describing the events of “In a Grove” again. I am also describing what Limbus Company calls Temporal Entanglement, the state Araya finds herself in after the Time Vault.
Today never ends. Tomorrow never begins. So tomorrow is today, but what is tomorrow if not the countless unlived, unperceived possibilities of today? Araya is full of memory because she knows every single possibility of tomorrow. She knows every thread today could follow. She even mentions Ryoushuu watching her guitar performance even though we know it never happens, because it happens ‘tomorrow,’ which may occur depending on ‘today’.
So what about Ryoushuu?
Memory is an internal record of time. Thanks to the Arayashiki, which cuts out parts of her memory when it’s unsheathed, Ryoushuu’s memory is pretty faulty, but she’s still able to hold onto time. Let’s consider the flashback where Ryoushuu and Araya talk about the dragon’s beard candy. Ryoushuu doesn’t remember it happening, but Araya does. When Araya insists that it happens, Ryoushuu is doubtful but seems to accept it anyway. In this case, ‘yesterday’ is suspended in a state of uncertainty again, but Ryoushuu is able to overcome it and choose a definitive yesterday. In Part 2, Araya continuously throws doubt on whether or not Ryoushuu actually loved her daughter or actually killed Shiomi, but everything that Ryoushuu believed is shown to be true. Ryoushuu, despite her faulty recollection of the past, is able to still hold onto ‘today.’ Even after literally cutting away her memory of her daughter, she still recalls her name.
This is what I believe Rien means when he says that Ryoushuu perceives time uniquely. (Aside: recall that it is Ryoushuu’s impeccable sense of time that helps solve TKT.) It’s the ability to hold onto some semblance of the present, some self of the current self, regardless of how much her own personal past is tampered with. It’s also why she alone is able to wield the Arayashiki, and why she can enter the Time Vault safely. Because even with a sword that tampers with the past, or in a space where the past and present and future blend together, Ryoushuu can still come out of it knowing exactly when she is. Or perhaps we should say, what branch of the future she’s on?
Chat, why is there Sinclair glow-up in my Ryoushuu Canto…
Jokes aside, what if I told you that the Sinclair and Gregor reveals play into this precise theme of time and entanglement? But we’re kind of jumping the gun… Let’s talk about string.
In Canto 9, ‘thread’ is a huge motif. The House of Spiders is described repeatedly as a “spider’s web,” something consisting of thread. The Red String of Fate connects Ryoushuu with the House. Araya makes a spiderweb that twists into a ladder. Ryoushuu is a rope made up of threads, which include Arayashiki. And time itself is a thread.
Ryoushuu, as a human concept incinerator, is capable severing those threads… or at least cutting them so thinly they’re imperceptible. This begins with her severing the thread that connects her with Shiomi, her Nursefathers, Araya, and then her sense of self—hence the state of Muga, or non-self. And she can do this because of her own impeccable sense of time, which is in and of itself a thread. When nothing of her remains but the ability to sense and sever threads, she can slash through the thread of time itself, of memory itself, and all memory of that which she slashes through is thus destroyed. This is the final form of the Arayashiki, which cuts through the barrier between the past and the present to form a wound that can never heal in its presence.
If string is a motif though, so is the concept of ‘entanglement.’ People are just threads that get bound together, forming the red string of fate. The House of Spiders is a web formed from that string of fate. Time itself gets knotted into Temporal Entanglement—Araya is a child, who is a teenager, who is an adult. She is herself and also her grandmother. She is her present and also her future which is a copy of the past. So finally, let’s consider the four teams that we split into at the start of Part 3:
Gregor, Heathcliff, Rodion, and Vergilius → Valencina and Lucio
Don Quixote, Hong Lu, Yi Sang, and the LCD → Matthias and Kira
Sinclair, Faust, Ishmael, and the LCE → Callisto and Albina
Ryoushuu, Meursault, Outis, and Dante (and the LCA, kind of) → Araya, Ren, Sora, and Rien
Or, in order, the teams that represent the past, the present, the future, and the entanglement of the three.
(This is the part where we answer why Sinclair and Greg get their big character moments in Canto 9!)
First, let’s consider the team make-ups. Gregor, Rodya, and Heathcliff are all haunted by the past, whether it’s with Gregor’s weapon-of-war bug arm, Rodya constantly trying to run away from it, or Heathcliff, who willingly ties himself to the memory of Catherine. I haven’t read Leviathan, so I won’t speak on Vergilius, but he’s obviously trying to make up for something. Meanwhile, they face off against the Thumb, and Valencina is nearly constantly talking about the war—to the point that she sets off Gregor’s PTSD—and Lucio is attempting to perfectly copy a remnant of the past. When Gregor becomes the Ungeziefer Kaiser, he’s quite literally being consumed by his memories of the war.
Donqui, Hong Lu, and Yi Sang, meanwhile, are arguably the sinners that have come to the most terms with their pasts. They have embraced the LCB as their newfound companions and are moving on towards the future. The LCD seem to have done the same: YuRia has her own Workshop, Vespa just became a Color Fixer, and Moses and Ezra seem at very least content with their jobs. They’ve just hired new employees, and they’re excited to eventually work with them. If we consider Matthias and Kira, they don’t dwell on the past, and they don’t consider the future. They’re content being in the here and now, watching shows and playing games. Kira eats junk food because neither she nor her father care about her future, and Matthias throws away their relationship, their built-up history, just to land a hit on Vespa.
For the third team, Faust is always planning multiple steps ahead, Ishmael is obsessed with preparing for what’s going to happen, and Sinclair has his Sign that literally summons a future version of himself to the present. The LCE is basically Limbus’ R&D team, and they’re always working on projects that'll, eventually, bear fruit. Callisto and Albina are also constantly thinking about what will happen. When Callisto and Albina see people, they don’t see their present or past (in fact, Hohenheim specifically critiques Callisto’s inability to take the past into account when creating art out of people) but rather the art that they will become. Thus, we have our team which represents the future.
Finally, we have Dante, who has to manage all of these fights, Meursault and Outis, whose pasts and futures are shrouded in mystery, and Ryoushuu, who is capable of sensing threads and their entanglements. (The LCA exist, I guess.) Their main opponents are Araya, who is actively caught up in a state of Temporal Entanglement and who is all of her selves all at once, and Rien, who lacks a sense of self outside of what’s defined by the Prescripts.
And all of these fights occur at the same time. Dante even says so themself:
Let me say this again: even the structure of Canto 9 is about entanglement! When I realized this, I stood up and walked a whole three laps around my room. Admittedly, the execution is slightly messy, but Project Moon’s dedication to thematic coherence above almost all else is why I fell in love with it.
So why is entanglement so important?
Araya and Ryoushuu are bound together so tightly that the knot representing their relationship begins where it ends. One end was severed, but Ryoushuu still harbors some memory of her… The memory was lost, but the sentiment remains. The precise thing that Araya mocks in Part 2 is what keeps them together. Much like the wounds inflicted by Arayashiki, the bond entangles even time itself. The past is the present is the future. I am my daughter who is my grandmother.
Threads which are thin at first, but when layered upon each other, become something far stronger than mere “fleeting moments.” Knotted together, they form connections, and those connections create our sense of self. And depending on the strength of that knot, they can transcend even time: a linear rope that begins at the point where it ends, a memory that remains even if forgotten. The spiderweb becomes a ladder becomes a web again. Once again, we reject nihility. These precious moments may be but a blink, but nonetheless, the sentiment, the preciousness, remains.
In other words, I really liked Canto 9. Is it my favorite? ...Nothing has topped Canto 4 yet, and by Sunk Cost Fallacy, I don’t think anything ever will.
Anyway, as I mentioned in the title, this is wholly a preliminary analysis. Consider it something like an initial reaction... or a particularly messy secondary reaction, maybe. There’s still a lot to dig into when it comes to Canto 9, and in the future, I’d like to build on this analysis a little bit more. I won’t be surprised if later on, I realize I’ve misinterpreted or misread something, or if there’s a topic I still needed to touch on, and I definitely invite others to agree or disagree.
Additionally, something I’d like to look into, and something I invite others to also look into, is Canto 9’s ties to Buddhism. (If you do do so because of this post, please tag me.) Considering Araya’s name is inspired by the Ālayavijñāna (JP: Arayashiki), one of the Eight Consciousnesses defined by Yogacara Buddhism which houses the consciousness that stores what is necessary for existence, I think it’s obvious that Canto 9 is built on a Buddhist foundation. Unfortunately, I don’t have the background knowledge to analyze it right now, nor do I have the time to properly look into it. To be frank, I’m still trying to finish the Analects and the Mencius to write up my analysis on Canto 8’s ties to Confucian philosophy, so I’m at the very least a canto behind on that front, haha.
Regardless, I hope this gave you food for thought. Thanks for reading ^-^!!
bc i was curious, i started compiling a list of probable daydream batchmates, using the fact that "batchmates have similar masks"
i skimmed through the novel and picked out characters whose masks are known. i definitely missed a few after ch 153, but i think i got most of them. surprisingly, theres not a lot, but it makes sense given that every mask seems to be suited to the character's actions, and theres only so many ways you can call someone fodder using animal symbolism.
minor spoilers for up to around ch 170
kse and his fellow rookies.
the trend seems to be "vaguely equestrian animals," or "long-legged and hoofed land mammals"
roe deer (kim soleum)
goral (go youngeun)
goat (baek saheon)
bison (jang heowoon)
pony (kang yihak)
zebra (c11, tuesday quiz show)
birds.
i was wondering whether to put the a-squad leader with eun haje or with lee seonghae, since she's mentioned to be older than many of the older employees, but she makes sense being with eun haje, since otherwise, lee seonghae probably wouldnt be top of her batch. eun haje is also implied to have been with the company for a while.
falcon (eun haje)
teal duck (a-squad leader, c18, theme park)
short-legged mammalian, grassy field omnivores.
i wasn't too sure whether to put park minseong with the mole and field rat, since badgers are very different from moles and field rats. they do share similarities though, like habitats and face shapes. also, kse's batch has a lot of inconsistencies, so i figured this much inconsistency is probably fine.
badger (park minseong)
mole (c12, Tuesday quiz show)
field rat (c170, theme park)
aquatic animals.
as i mentioned before, i thought about moving teal duck to here, but lee seonghae is mentioned to be top rookie of her batch, so she got kicked out. i don't feel great about this classification either, since jellyfish and dolphins are very different, but theres not much else you can spin off jellyfish.
dolphin (lee seonghae)
jellyfish (c12, Tuesday quiz show)
insects.
pretty self-explanatory. i think it's cool that jin nasol and praying mantis ended up in the same squad together.
butterfly (jin nasol)
praying mantis (a-squad, c18, theme park)
ladybug (c170, theme park)
misc.
these guys don't seem to have mentioned batchmates since nobody else has similar masks to them. in the case of lee jaheon however, i wouldn't be surprised if his mask is "specially issued" given his lizard head.
lizard (lee jaheon)
leopard (c-squad, c68, ghost imposter)
while skimming, it seems like kse is one of the few characters that acknowledges his fellow batchmates. it's probably because they're all rookies, but it would've been cool if we got throwaway lines about senior characters being batchmates with other senior characters. i can't really blame baek deoksoo for not doing that though. maintaining a web of relationships for minor characters would probably be a headache. also, something something, growing attached is bad.
this is what happens when i remember i can paint. anyway dmc 2 is pretty and i will die on that hill.
reference under the cut!
the image is Background Illustration 5 from the DMC 2 gallery. ngl this picture physically sat me down and put a brush in my hand. much like dante himself it is . stunning.
dante and vergil as the fox and the hound. one brother who provokes the other and spends the rest of his life running from the consequences, trying and failing to find reasons to continue living. the other brother who was hurt once irrevocably and cannot help but hunt the other in revenge, compelled by something that kills him in the end. both are trapped in a vicious cycle of hurt and be hurt until it becomes the only thing they can find joy in. is this anything.
finn fire emblem is so babygirl. love me a tragic mess of a knight filled yay high with self loathing and guilt complex and caretaker instinct. hes my poor little meow meow and i adore him.
do leif and nanna need a father more than a knight? hell yeah! does finn give it to them? not really (hell yeah)! but would he sacrifice his own guts if that meant leif and nanna could live another day? hell yeah! and is that what they need? not really (hell yeah)!
that dichotomy of finn being best dad and also a knight more than a fatherly figure makes him best fe dad bc hes the most interesting fe dad (in terms of dad ness). the way his strengths and flaws interact in the role given to him is so [rips into him with my teeth and shakes him around like a dog toy] effervescent.
i want him put into Situations. Immediately. (complimentary)
