The Land Of A Thousand Hats

The RP Logs of a real chump.

[thelordofhats]

Akane Banashi Story 211

I have a possibly-unpopular take that I feel like putting out there regardless: Kaisei isn’t putting in a particularly good performance and deserves to lose.

Cut for spoilers.

Pitchforks down, Issho is still… well, Issho. I’m not saying he’s in the right, or that he’s vindicated in any way. If anything, this performance is an indictment of him as a teacher. I’m not passing moral judgment on anybody here. I’m just evaluating how I would judge this performance—which, unfortunately, lines up with what I’m pretty sure Issho will say.

The Art of the Personal is a tricky thing. By drawing on your own experiences, you are able to add that additional level of depth and realism to your characters, because you understand what it’s like to be in their shoes. And because this is a story you are telling, you can adjust the story to better fit your own experience and understanding. But there is a limit, and Kaisei has soared past it.

What Kaisei is doing is going onstage and blasting out his unresolved personal issues at everyone in a giant blatantly obvious subtweet. He’s a skilled storyteller, so it’s presented in a way that’s going to engage the audience, so they’re still going to be entertained, but the audience doesn’t even rate as a consideration to him. He is going up on stage and putting Issho on blast for his personal satisfaction, and as a personal plea. And that’s just so incredibly uncomfortable. It’s oversharing! Way back when Akane was a fresh zenza, she did that performance that took a little side swipe at Rien. And it was satisfying and funny, but it was also called out as not being a particularly good idea, from either an artistic or professional perspective. This is a more grandiose version of that.

But let’s set even that basic discomfort and courtesy aside, for a moment—all of that could be excused, if it weren’t for the fact that the story is suffering for it.

Kaisei’s rendition of God of Death has three characters of significance: the child, the master, and the God of Death.

The child is the most well-realized, because, well, he’s Kaisei as a kid. Full credit to Kaisei that he’s selling this well, as indicated by how the art of the manga portrays him so distinctly—you can see Pat Kaisei the Performer to see Kaisei the Child, because he’s evoking that so well. Kaisei has put in the time to pull all of these emotions together.

The master doesn’t get directly portrayed in a lot of panels, because the manga is using those opportunities to just show Issho directly, but he’s in the usual Rakugo-world style. His face is never actually shown, which dehumanizes him. Kaisei can’t really get inside the master’s head, because he can’t get inside Issho’s head. He can do a fine outward portrayal, because he’s very familiar with Issho, and I think he can even capture some of that intensity of Demon-Mode Issho. But the whole reason that Kaisei is telling this story is *because* he doesn’t understand why Issho did what he did, so this character is *inherently* going to be a bit of a cipher.

Also the master is, like Issho, an asshole. Gotta call that out.

Kaisei’s God of Death is just Kaisei Shaded Differently, because Kaisei’s God of Death is more of a story device than a character. He shows up, and perfunctorily fulfills the role that he needs to for the story, but that’s all there really is to him. He’s not putting any spin on it whatsoever. If you look at the panel without context, that’s just An Ominous Chracter Portrayed By Kaisei. The God of Death just isn’t the part of the story that Kaisei wants to examine.

But the story is literally called God of Death! That’s the entire point! This is the character that is the beating heart of it all, the soul of the story! This is like writing a fanfic that actually only focuses on your OCs! At this point, it almost doesn’t matter how technically well Kaisei is performing the story, because it isn’t really God of Death anymore.

And I’m not saying that to be prescriptivist, or say tht the story is incompatible with the Art of the Personal. Akane’s rendition was *intensely* personal! It is fundamentally built on her father’s career ending at Issho’s whim, on Shiguma collapsing from fucking throat cancer while she was with him. Death is capricious and cruel, and has this horrible black humor to it. But because these are things that Akane has been able to process (unlike Kaisei’s unresolved open wound), she’s able to actually integrate it into the story smoothly—her God of Death is a vividly realized character! Her doctor fucking sneezes himself to death in his moment of triumph, which is about as capricious and cruelly humorous as you can get! It’s incredible!

But Kaisei isn’t managing all that! He’s just sharing his own personal pain, and resonating with the audience because they are feeling sympathy for his ongoing plight… but as Issho correctly said, as infuriating as it is, Rakugo is not the art of making your audience feel sorry for you! But when you go this personal with it, there’s not really another outcome you can get.

Look, Issho is still a bastard and history’s greatest villain, but when he drops the hammer on this performance (and probably goes Way Too Far in the process), he isn’t going to be Factually Incorrect.

[azrielnightshade]

ok so Discord has been of no help so I'm going to park my bike here instead and hope for some better answers.

so I'm tryna make myself as essentially as a Corporist Maestro and some of the key things I want are flexibility, an ideal body made for dancing, but something that's also sturdy (the weapons name is gunna be Tella if you wanted to know)

this is my first concept, the stuff that I kinda like is shaded in green and the stuff I think needs improvement/adjustment is boxed/circled in red

Please help 😃

[thelordofhats]

So, with the disclaimer that I can’t draw for shit:

You’ve got the right vibe down—while their… replacement bodies are in no way the artistic focus, both of the Corporists we’ve seen have gone for that humanoid grace in aesthetics—they aren’t doing weird nonhuman stuff, and they also are definitely not cheaping out.

1. You have too much Naked Spine. While Albina does taper down just as much, she doesn’t do it for nearly as long—she’s actually got quite a bit of torso. Yours goes from mid-sternum all the way down to the hips. Besides being kinda cartoonish, and making it look like you’re about to snap in half, it actually ends up kind of boxy—the empty space means that your upper section doesn’t flow into the lower section at all, and you aren’t suggesting any kind of shape, so the eye kind of ends up drawing a straight line from the bottle m of the torso to the top of the hips.

I’m not saying you necessarily need Albina amounts of torso, but I’d consider seeing what adding ribs would do for filling the space but still allowing unnatural flexibility.

2. I think the lines on your legs are very straight, which doesn’t give you the flow I think you’re looking for, play with the distribution of mass, get some curves in there. This is an absolutely horrendous example, because I Cannot Draw, especially on my phone, but to try and suggest a shape for like, the calves, try writing a 9 backwards, and then connect the bottom up to the other side of the circle.

Obviously you don’t have actual muscles so it’s all decorative, but people will still a read a human shape by human norms—a dancer is going to have significant leg muscle, so having a high-mass area (the circle of the 9) suggests that strength, and having a low-mass area (the bottom of the 9) suggests lightness.

3. I don’t have a way to say this in as much detail as the other points, but the platforms on the toes combined with the stiletto heels feels… off. Your feet can be whatever you want them to be—if you’re keeping the heel, have your toes go all the way to the ground regardless—the existing block feels like an afterthought of design, like you didn’t measure.

[thelordofhats]

How Well Would the Sinners Do as Pro Wrestlers

Because a poll asked the question for Faust and I never saw any of the others. I may write up other characters at some point, this was fun to do.

These are all just my own opinions, and therefore objectively correct, though I do welcome arguments. Post starts below the cut.

Yi Sang

Absolute shitshow. He’s built like wet noodles tied to a twig. If you try to throw him through a table, he is the one that will snap in half. You can’t even throw him around in a fun way.

His mic skills are somehow even worse—mumbly droning that doesn’t get to the point. He would crumple in any kind of two-person promo.

Could probably work as an ineffective ref.

Faust

Not as bad as Yi Sang, but that’s damning with faint praise. No sense for dramatics at all—she’s got a couple good moves, but she manages to make them boring. Uses the Mousetrap as a finisher but it’s also the only way she’ll ever try to pin, because it is the Optimal Way.

Mic is similar—the smugness serves her well, but she can’t manage the volume necessary for a good promo. Just a total lack of acting chops.

Don Quixote

Now we’re clear onto the other end of the spectrum. She absolutely has the high-flying lucha skills. It is not canonically *proven*, but I fully believe Don can do a hurricanrana. Light enough to toss around a bunch, and she’s absolutely got the sense for what makes a good story.

On the mic, she’s got the spirit, the gimmick, and the volume. Not always the most creative, though, definitely spams a catchphrase. Still, a crowd favorite.

Long-term, you will have a hard time convincing her to work heel, but if she is willing to do the Sancho angle, the crowd will go bananas. Top of the female sinners, maybe overall.

Ryoshu

Absolute sicko deathmatch specialist. Innovates new ways to horrify you every time. She’s extremely technically proficient in straight-up matches, but that isn’t what she’s here for. Unfortunately, it is very hard to get her to put somebody over.

On the mic… yeah, no. What she lacks in willingness to speak on the mic she makes up in aura, though. Sinclair *is* needed on hand for translation, and even then you aren’t exactly getting a complicated story out of her. But you’ve got her there for the match, not what surrounds it.

Meursault

What if Goldberg could actually wrestle? Let me be clear, he’s very mechanical about it, but Meursault has the build to make that work in a way that Faust doesn’t. Make him this implacable force and let him fling people around. Feed him a steady diet of jobbers, it will work. Needs either a well-planned match or an experienced partner, does not improvise, but it’s worth it. A good monster heel.

Doesn’t need to talk on the mic, and is going to be silent most of the time, so that when he does take the mic and give a verbal beatdown so precise you can measure it geometrically, and everyone is left speechless.

Very good, but not top of the men.

Hong Lu

Solid worker—doesn’t blow you away, but consistently has good matches. Works heel—I feel like he’d find that more amusing, and has the natural background for it. Probably a lot of interesting counters, goes for submission holds more than pins.

On the mic, he unfortunately lacks range and intensity—like Faust and Yi Sang, he’s just too soft-spoken, but he does make it work better than they do—he isn’t also long-winded. He can get the crowd to boo him, but he can’t really get them *hype*.

Heathcliff

Star of the entire promotion. No, he’s not a technical master but he’s a grade-A brawler. Takes bumps like a king, and above all else is incredibly versatile. Clean match, weapons match (baseball bats are a classic for a reason), TLC matches, iron man, deathmatches—he can do it all. Doesn’t shy away from adding some color. I feel like he’d be a little awkward on first starting, but would rapidly realize that this all works to every single one of his strengths.

And he’s just as good on the mic! He’s got that fire in him, and he lets it show! Not too proud to lose a verbal exchange. Knows how to commit to a feud. And he’s got that classic tweener energy—he can work face, he can work heel, he can be an underdog, he can be the champ, he can be solo, he can be in a stable.

Put the belt on this man.

Ishmael

Cursed with mediocrity. I don’t have anything definitive to point to, but I have conviction that no matter how hard she tries, she just does not have the spark. She’s not awful, and she had a good tag team run, but that team was hard carried by Queequeg and everyone knows it. Trapped in undercard hell.

The mic is no better. She tries! Everyone can see that she tries! But she just comes off a little too dickish to be a face, but she doesn’t have the kind of personality to really be a hateable heel. I’m sorry Ishmael, but this just isn’t your ring.

Rodion

Oh, you just know that Rodya’s trapped in the midcard. Absolutely no hope of escaping, either. She doesn’t even get to challenge for midcard belts, the highest she has ever been is in matches to determine the challenger for those belts, and she’s eaten the pin every single time. Her ring work is fine, but she just doesn’t have any real flash, she’s mostly trading on being a tall strong woman. Which is perfectly respectable, but doesn’t get you a push.

On the mic, she largely presents as “Cheerful, Likes Food”, which is not a thing that gets you storylines, it is a thing that gets you fed to heels to build them up, or gets you positioned as the dumb member of an ad hoc tag team. Could do a good heel turn, but she’s not comfortable with it because it basically involves shouting out all of her actual deep emotional insecurities, so she just keeps painting that smile on.

Sinclair

So the problem here is that Sinclair just isn’t ready. Period. He knows moves—even some good ones! But he just can’t string them together fluidly yet, and he is terrified of improvising, which is a huge part of the job. But he also won’t grow without being pushed out of his comfort zone, you can’t just keep him in developmental. And you *want* him to develop, because he’s got SSS-tier potential, but god do you ever have to work hard to get him there.

On the mic is similar, but worse. Just no confidence whatsoever, and timidity just doesn’t work at all. I don’t think he’ll ever actually be like, a star on the mic, but he’s going to be so ridiculously good in the ring that you won’t care—if he gets there.

Honestly, you keep him in matches and off the mic until you’re ready to push him out of the nest, and then you pull the trigger on his feud with Kromer. Incidentally, Kromer is an upsettingly good heel wrestler, I’m sorry, those are just the facts. She even has a giant henchman enforcer.

Outis

Outis wrestles competently. Outis does not have fancy moves. This is fine, because Outis cheats like a motherfucker. Ref bump. Ref distraction. Foreign objects. Low blows. Cheap shots. The bag of tricks is as endless as it is shameless. Outis will take losses, but you know she’s always going to find a way to get even. A real asset to the company.

Her mic work as heel is equally fantastic. The obvious snake in the grass, the scorpion that keeps getting rides on frogs, the eternal backstabber who keeps making that one face (you know the one) when the audience is looking but her supposed friend is not.

Gregor

I’m sorry, Gregor. I really am. But one of your arms is a razor-sharp claw, and that just isn’t safe to work with. Like, if it was *no* arm, that’d be one thing. Limiting, but workable. But having you wrestle is, unfortunately, just asking for a gigantic disaster to happen, and I just can’t really overlook that to say how you’d do in the ring otherwise.

I can, however, say how you’d do on the mic, and the answer is “godawful”. You cannot act to save your life. Literally. We have literally witnessed this. You are not as bad as Yi Sang, but the fact that I am making that comparison even though you don’t have terminal mumblemouth is dire.

Gregor can probably ref, but even then, having something That Sharp in the ring is asking for trouble.

[redstonedust]

ugh, the hero keeps talking about being a pacifist who'll never stoop to my level and i'm starting to get worried that she's gonna sentence me to 1000 years in the torment crystal instead. i heard her mentor talking about mirror dimensions the other day and i'm gettin worried. next time she has a gun i'm gonna try and pull the ol' "you wouldn't shoot me, you don't have the guts" trick and hope it works.

[giblet-gobbler]

HOW do you get out of the B to B+ plateau in the horse game I’m shaking the bars of my cage please

[thelordofhats]

As someone who just got their first A:

1. Use better parents. 1*-2*-3* is not a linear progression. I know this may sound super obvious, but the difference between before and after I trawled the team race leaderboards for a few good parents is pretty stark.

While getting your own 3* is a long term project, a 2* with a 2* and a 3* parent is pretty doable, though it’ll take a bit.

2. Super Creek and Kitasan Black MLB. Not that you need to have your own, but those are what you should be borrowing—another reason to find some good people to follow.

3. Your junior year is about making friends. It is less important what stats you train here, and more important that you are making as many friends as you can. Yes, if three supports have lined up on Guts, train guts. Don’t sweat mood in your junior year either, your events should be taking care of it.

4. This is the big one: RUN MORE RACES. Running a G1 is better than a single-rainbow training. It can be better than even a double-rainbow training, though that’s more situational. If training just doesn’t look great on a given day, hit the track. You really, really want to be getting races in—especially so you hit the fan threshold for Valentines/Fan Fest/Christmas to boost your ult instead of just giving some skill points. The grading system rewards having lots of fans.

5. Hold off a bit on buying skills if you think you can get more discounts for them—Kitasan Black gives Professor of Curvature, but she can also randomly give hints for its precursor skill—and maxing hints means squeezing just a couple more skills in, which the ranking system likes a lot.

6. Get lucky. Sometimes you’re just gonna get hit by Mood Downs and training failures. Sometimes things come together. There’s no surefire success.

[pratchettquotes]

Now Diamanda was showing them how to do the cards.

She said they contained the distilled wisdom of the Ancients. Perdita had found herself treacherously wondering who these Ancients were -- they clearly weren't the same as old people, who were stupid, Diamanda said, but she wasn't quite clear why they were wiser than, say, modern people.

Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

[pegmeplease7]

I want opinions on heathcliff x Ishmeal

[thelordofhats]

Obviously, nobody is maintaining stats on Shipping Trends in the Limbus Company Fandom, so a lot of this is pretty half-remembered, but a vague History of Heathmael is something like this:

The game launches and we meet the sinners for the first time. Hello, nice to meet you, please stop killing each other. At this point, the game is more focused on establishing the characters than on exploring specific dynamics between them. One of the exceptions to this is Heathcliff and Ishmael, because it’s very easy to illustrate their characters by the contrast between them—Ishmael is diligent and uptight, Heathcliff is loud, wild, and short-fused.

That’s a classic Student Council Rep/Class Delinquent kind of setup, an Enemies to Lovers kind of deal. And people *love* Archetypal Shipping Dynamics. And there isn’t a lot of competition out there. There’s a vague awareness that Cathy will be A Thing (Queequeg is considerably more up in the air), but that’s a long ways off.

This reaches its peak in Canto 5, with Heathcliff extracting Ishmael from the whale-stuff at the climax of the Ahab fight, and demonstrating very clearly that while he doesn’t *like* her, he does have a certain respect for her. It’s a real power boost. But the competition is also leveling up. More interactions between sinners gives more room to Read Deep. And Ishmael has demonstrated that yes, she is Into Women, not necessarily exclusively, but it means that people feel more supported when they throw her in with others.

I won’t say that Canto 6 killed it stone dead, no ship ever truly dies, but Heathcliff now has a tragic doomed romance he is deeply committed to. That’s a lot to push aside for a ship. In addition, the fact Ishmael doesn’t remember Canto 6 means she doesn’t get to return the respect Heathcliff gave her. In fact, he sort of becomes a fair target for some of her worse tendencies.

It’s a fine ship, it’s a well-trod dynamic and hats proven itself again and again. But it’s harder to argue as canon right now. We could certainly end up there one day, there’s a lot of story to go after all. But that is going to require a lot of gradual work, if that’s even. What they’re aiming for at PM.

[galopando-hacia-al-sol-deactiva]

I got 391 crates with me and I wanna use them before they get cut to half. So I wanna get whatever tremor id/ego is available rn (always wanted to make a tremor team)

All I have for now is lccb ish (tier 3 and rosespanner rodya/meur (tier 4).

Should I get like- zwei ish? Oufi heath? Get some egos like cavernous wailing hong lu? Or effervescent corrosion rodya?

Maybe even molar outis and/or yi sang idk. I'm just indecisive on my options. Any advice would be nice

[thelordofhats]

Wasn’t letting me do this as a note, so:

Molar Outis is *very* solid. It’s important to remember that because she’s a discard unit, she’s going to be doing S3 way more often than usual, and S1 significantly less often than usual. She would probably be my first pick here.

Zwei Ishmael is very solid, you aren’t going to be sad if you have her. However, she’s kind of more of a generalist unit than a tremor unit. Like, don’t get me wrong, she does tremor, she absolutely goes on the tremor team, and again, Quite Good! But she is not MAXIMIM TREMOR or anything. Second pick.

Yurodivy Hong Lu is pretty good, but the real value here is that it’s a tremor ID for Hong Lu, which lets you bring in Cavernous Wailing without needing a non-Tremor ID. In the long run, you’ll want him, but you’re going to get more mileage out of More IDs. Third pick.

T Corp Don brings Funny Number to the table. Sometimes you are winrating MD and you don’t want funny number because it is keeping the opponent alive. Solid contributor, but not a high pick.

Oufi Heathcliff is in an unfortunate spot. He was the introduction of tremor colors, which briefly made him quite special. Then Cavernous Wailing happened, and he turned into a liability who turned your tremor into the wrong color.

L Corp Faust is quite good and has easy AoE which is cool, and also brings in a sweet tremor WAW. Unfortunately she’s a Walpurgisnacht unit, so you’ll have to wait, but she’s well worth grabbing then if you can.

You’ve identified the correct two Tremor EGOs, but I’d always focus on getting a solid lineup of 000s before I sharded any EGO.

[omalahsocs]

...if a Promethean creates or converts a land to be a Wasteland after lingering for overly long there, does that mean it would be safe for them to stay in a spot like Chernobyl?

[thelordofhats]

Oh, oh! I know this one!

The short answer is no. Prometheans are *resistant* to radiation, but they aren’t immune, given prolonged exposure it’s going to cause problems. So in a short term scenario, yes it works, but it’s a mistake.

The long answer is: sure, if you’re a Zeky who doesn’t care about consequences. The Zeky are prometheans with a humour of “radiation”. So they’re immune, which is good, because they’re also radioactive. Not in a metaphorical sense, exposure to a Zeka literally gives you radiation poisoning. And the higher their Azoth, the more radioactive they are. This is not helpful for the whole “become human” goal.

RAW in 2E, they are *hilariously* radioactive, in a way that the narrative clearly isn’t intending, because the sample NPCs are written as having lived that would be precluded by killing anyone with more than five minutes of exposure to them.

To add insult to injury, also by RAW if a Zeka *does* complete their pilgrimage… they die of their own lingering radiation pretty much instantly. Personally, I think that’s a little too cruel, but hey, that’s CoD sometimes. Life ain’t great for Zeky!

Back to the point, you can probably guess what hat kind of Wasteland a Zeka creates. So yes, they could live in Chernobyl, if they don’t mind the fact that they are making it Even Worse Than It Already Is.

[thelordofhats]

Upcoming Sweeper Event Blind Guesswork

“But Hats, it hasn’t even been a week since Regular Checkup came out, isn’t it a lot more fruitful to analyze fresh material we actually have than to write a bunch of wild speculation?”

1. Yes

2. Shut Up.

3. What Regular Checkup possesses in “being available content” it lacks in “having Sweepers”. As such, I go where my heart takes me.

Cut for courtesy.

The Story

Spoiler alert: Sweepers will be involved.

The immediately obvious way for things to start is that the bus gets stuck in Night in the Backstreets. I mean, the title isn’t literally “Night in the Backstreets”, but “Nocturnal Sweeping” is pretty much the next-closest thing.

That would be enough story for a Walpurgisnacht in the vein of Full Stop, where the gameplay is a “kill enough enemies in the time limit” sort of setup, but it isn’t remotely enough material for an intervallo—especially not the intervallo right before a canto. Magic SEA Bus gave us Ishmael’s breakdown, To Claim Their Bones was admittedly less about Heathcliff than about easing us into T Corp, MOTWE had the big Don reveal. So we’re going to get *something* for Hong Lu here. Which makes things tricky for me, because a Hong Lu Scholar I am not. There are people in this fanbase who have read and Understood Dreams of the Red Chamber, I am not one of them. I do not have the Deep Knowledge.

What I *can* say is that I’m pretty sure Hong Lu is in an extraordinarily bad mood in Regular Checkup. There’s him being sorted into Wrath and his interaction with Hong Lu there, but also his early callout of Don feels really… well, bitchy, to put it bluntly. Hong Lu doesn’t tend to shy away from saying what’s on his mind, but he tends to do it a lot more indirectly than he did here. So in NS, I expect to see that trend continue. He’ll be masking it, but I expect that nasty bitter streak to continue.

The Thing for Sweepers is Family. Once you actually understand what they’re saying, you discover that they’re a tightly-knit family unit who care for each other a lot. They’re just also, y’know, the scourge of the Backstreets that eat corpses and soon-to-be corpses, and seem to maybe abduct children they find out at Night to be turned into Sweepers. Now, being liquified and turned into a posthuman cannibal is probably one of the better fates a Backstreets orphan can hope for, but that is damning with pretty faint praise.

I think that what Hong Lu really, *really* hates is seeing people forced into a mold that doesn’t fit them. It’s what he’s seen in all of his siblings—whoever they are by nature, they get forced into the hell of cutthroat murderous competition by their family (it’s a synecdoche of the City as a whole!). There isn’t a reason that any of them should have to be that, except that they are getting forced into that shape by their elders.

And with Sweepers, that’s, well, pretty damn literal. So I would guess that we’re going to be trying to retrieve a child from the Sweepers here. Not Charon, because we wouldn’t have anything to fight in that case because Vergilius would murder the hell out of every last one of them, but some other kid the LCB ends up interacting with for some reason. Don would naturally push to go with the rescue attempt, it’s a good opportunity to show that aspect of her post-Canto, and I think that regardless of it being outside their company mission, Vergilius isn’t going to put up a lot of resistance to the idea. So into the Wherever It Is That Sweepers Live we go.

Somebody is going to have to be able to Speak Sweeper. I just don’t see a way to completely avoid it. Maybe if we hadn’t already gotten that glimpse in Ruina, they could try to tell it entirely through action, but as it is, I don’t think so. Obviously, this falls to Dante, another bit of the Weirdness around them. I don’t know that sweepers will be able to understand the ticking, but Dante understanding the random numbers—or rather, not hearing the numbers and just hearing the meaning—seems likely.

Ultimately, I think the kid probably gets Sweepered, and Hong Lu is going to get angry in a way that is frankly concerning—the kind of stuff we saw with Fanghunt Hong Lu. Those waters only look tranquil because they run so much deeper than you imagine. And so we’re are set up for Canto 8.

Who Gets the IDs Though?

Let’s rank the likelihood!

Ryoshu - Come on, this isn’t a surprise. It’s about Family, and that is clearly so much of the theme they are hammering on with her. She is going to have Opinions about Sweepers. But also, her last ID was from last Walpurgisnacht—she hasn’t gotten one this season proper. She’s a shoe-in here. Yes, she just got Thoracalgia, but EGO don’t count in the same way. Assuming we get a 000 and a 00, I think she’s a lock for 000.

Meursault - This is a bit more mechanical—they like big slow tanky Meursault IDs, we’ve seen big slow tanky Sweepers. He’s a natural for the Hauler passives. He does fit in terms of temperament too, though. Not so much the family bit, but the strict rules that they abide by are a very Meursault thing. He did get an ID earlier this season in Cinq West, but it’s been a bit.

Sinclair - He’s young, and is in some ways a bit of a package deal with Ryoshu. I have trouble making it more detailed than that, but if anyone is a lost child that gets adopted, it’s Sinclair. He has, however, had an ID relatively recently. Not a story ID, and not *super* recently, so there’s certainly a chance.

Rodion - There’s a real power gap from 3 to 4, and I’m not taking the detailed list further than this because it’s all degrees of Not Happening, which I’ll get into. If anyone who got a Bloodfiend ID this canto has a shot at Sweeperdom, it’s Ryoshu, our main Backstreets representative. It’s been long enough since Princess that it’s possible, but… I wouldn’t bet on it.

And now, speedrun of the rest:

Yi Sang - Just got a 00. Now, he hs gone as long without a 000 as Ryoshu, but I just don’t feel like he has a strong thematic tie here.

Faust - Just got a story 000, doesn’t match vibes.

Don Quixote - She is not getting another ID in here own canto period, especially not when it’s as thematically close to her canto as this would be.

Hong Lu - Just got a 000, and is kind of the opposite of Don—this is too close to when he’s going to be telling his story to hit those themes in ID form.

Heathcliff - Is getting *two* 000s in quick succession. He does not get a hat trick here. On the eventual rerun I think he does, though.

Ishmael - Getting a 000 in the Yield My Flesh rerun, doesn’t need an immediate reprise. Also I just don’t feel like it fits her.

Outis - This would fit, but it’s the exact same thing they did with Barber Outis. They aren’t going to do it right away again.

Gregor - Had a Bloodfiend ID, isn’t allowed the kind of happiness he would get from having a close caring family. Mmmmaube on the rerun, I could see it.

So there you go, wild speculation! Watch as I’m totally wrong again!

[riheinorn]

canto vii

[tossawary]

I just know in my heart of hearts that in "Star Trek" at one point, there was some moral panic somewhere on Vulcan (among the uppity sorts) because Human culture was "infecting" the local youth with their overly emotional, destructive, unproductive, frivolous, and uneducational ways.

And what was actually happening was that a bunch of Vulcan kids got really into 23rd-century "Minecraft" or something.

Small Vulcan child @ another Vulcan child: (in a tone that sounds flat to Humans but angry as hell to Vulcans) "You have compromised the optimization of my fortress. I am having an emotional urge to blow up your house... in Minecraft."

[tossawary]

Other Vulcan gamer ideas:

There's a Vulcan streamer named T'vch who creates elaborate Rube Goldberg death machines in old "The Sims"-type games from Earth, using meticulously chosen personality traits for the Sim families, stress-maximizing management, and careful home design. Angry Father Sim gets home from work one day and starts screaming about a broken TV, which causes anxious Mother Sim to freak out and drop dinner, which gets eaten by the hungry Dog Sim, which throws up, which causes Father Sim to get angry again and break the nearest object, which is the sink, so the house starts flooding, which breaks the radio, which starts an electrical fire, which causes the Robot Butler Sim to go haywire, causes Child Sim 1 to freak out and jump into the pool, and on and on and on.

ANYWAY, by the end of this elaborate 10-minute sequence, the house is completely destroyed and all of the Sims are ghosts now. The chat is filled with complicated, corresponding emoji recreations and also ironic "Live Long And Prosper"s. 🖖🖖🖖

(A Vulcan working on Earth gets obnoxiously pressured to add a joke to the work group chat, because she needs to "try to fit in better" and it's just part of the workplace's "casual culture" and "friendly banter". "We're like a family here! You're too professional!" So the Vulcan posts a GIF of an overly emotional Sim meltdown (from their current ongoing game) and titles it: "My Human Coworkers In Regards To Every Problem 😐".)

There's a Vulcan video gamer reviewer named Stom who personally believes that one must have a 100% completion rate to review games accurately. (There are other Vulcan reviewers for things who throw shade on this like, "If one cannot make a judgement call at the halfway point, or else at the point of 99%, then it is a sign of gross inefficiency in one's assessment techniques.") Stom's reviews are VERY thorough and thoughtful, and some people do acknowledge their value, but also the "Not Recommended 👎👎👎 1,087 Hours On Record" screencap from one of his game reviews becomes a fairly popular reaction image for many years.

[thelordofhats]

Okay, but this has me imagining the Klingon FGC, and it is wall to wall arguments:

* Throws are dishonorable

*Zoning is dishonorable

*Being unable to get through somebody else’s zoning and calling it dishonorable simply reveals your own lack of honor.

*Playing on a wifi connection is deeply dishonorable.

*I have the good wifi, it is a perfectly honorable connection to use.

*Picking Dhalsim is dishonorable

*Picking any top tier is dishonorable

*Picking Dan to dunk on somebody isn’t dishonorable but is in poor taste.

*There is no dishonor in character choice, they are weapons with their own purposes to be used accordingly. That being said, anyone who picks Jack-O in Xrd is going to Gre’thor.

[thelordofhats]

“But teacher, what’s the point of making us read all of these old books, it’s not like we’re ever going to *use* it”

Listen here, you little shits, one day you’re going to be grown up and you’re going to find yourself balls-deep in a fandom for a gacha game where everything is heavily inspired by world literature. And you’re going to want to make an OC like all of the cool kids, but you didn’t pay attention in English class and now you don’t have *shit* to draw from. You really think you’re going to be able to name your OC Harry and say he’s a wizard without everyone giving the side-eye? Is that what you want?

And don’t even *think* about using CliffNotes for it. This isn’t going to be some weaksauce surface-level “name and hat equals complete reference” shit, your OC’s going to need the *themes* of the work they’re in! You’re going to need in-depth references! You need adaptation to a wildly different setting that nonetheless maintains the core emotions and message of your inspiration! If you half-ass it they’re going to look at your OC and they will *know* that you didn’t read! They will *know* you just watched the movie! Is that what you want? Really?

Yeah, I thought so. Now sit your ass back down and open your copy of Finnegan’s Wake.

[cottageslimelass]

"average sinner has 0.25 spider ID/EGOs" factoid is actualy a just statistical error. average sinner has 0 spider EGOs and IDs. Spiders Ryoshu, who lives in bus & has 3, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

[thelordofhats]

[thelordofhats]

Dullahan as Heathcliff’s EGO

There’s two parts to this post, more or less: the first is the in-setting evidence that this could be the case. Honestly, this is the less interesting part of this to me, but I think it’s important to lay out why I think it’s possible. The second is about what this tells us about Heathcliff as a character.

There’s Canto 6 spoilers, obviously, but this is also just going to be long enough that it’s just polite to insert a cut, so here we go.

Supporting Evidence

First up, we have seen, both with Philip in LoR and Dongrang in Canto 4 of Limbus Company, that the EGO a person manifests and what they look like as a Distortion are connected—they’re going to use the same visual language. The Crying Children still has the fire and statue theming of Philips unnamed incomplete EGO, and when Dongrang manages to undistort, Farmwatch has the same hat, horns, and, well, farm imagery that his distorted form had, just not as a weird monster this time.

Wild Hunt Heathcliff is not the exact same as Erlking Heathcliff. Besides the obvious fact that he’s waging his war on Wuthering Heights instead of Himself as a Concept, you have visual differences like the eyepatch, Wild Hunt having an Iron Maiden instead of a coffin, and most importantly, a different mount. Where Erlking’s Dullahan is a straight-up headless horse (I say, as though that is a normal thing), Wild Hunt’s Dullahan is, as best as we can tell without the head, some sort of wolf creature—clawed feet, a different tail, that sort of thing. Which is, as you’ve probably already guessed, reminiscent of Distorted Heathcliff. And I don’t think that that’s a change that Project Moon made for no reason.

The other big piece of supporting evidence is in Wild Hunt Heathcliff’s UT3 story (well, stories), in which he reflects a bit on the whole “commanding the dead” thing he’s got going on now. Specifically, the fact that it just sort of happened. He didn’t schedule an appointment with Dead Corp to get hooked up with their sweet necromancy tech, it was just a thing that he became able to do. Now, we *could* say this is some wholly unexplained thing, but come on. This is Project Moon. They do not toss out massive no-reason plot holes at us. Of the framework we’ve been given, EGO is the most logical explanation for how this happened. Especially when you consider how it lives up for him ~*~thematically~*~

(Oh, but before I move on to that—Bodysack, like all of the Base EGOs, is manifested with the help of Mephistopheles. I don’t think we should necessarily think of it as being in the same progression, although it does fit with the coffin/iron maiden)

Character Themes

Or: What does this tell us about Heathcliff?

Well, first I have to talk a bit about EGO in general. Hitting the ignition point, where you get the Carmen Chat, requires Desire and a Will to see those desires out. Non-capitalized ego, if you will. Philip’s desire to stop feeling inadequate, Xiao grief (I know this is a bad summary of Xiao but this isn’t a Xiao essay), Dongrang’s need for More (please refer to Xiao parenthetical, substitute Dongrang for Xiao). Manifesting EGO instead of distorting is about Self-Acceptance and Self-Control—Philip was keeping it together (sort of) until he started denying his inner drives to Oswald and pretending that that wasn’t something he felt. Xiao went “yes, I am being selfish and have selfish desires, but that doesn’t mean I have to be a bad person”. Dongrang stopped being “Dongrang, Who Denies All” when he admitted “You know what, I’m a selfish piece of shit, and I’m going to embrace being a selfish piece of shit”. EGO does *not* require you to be a good person!

For Heathcliff, that desire is, as you saw on his bat, REVENGE. He’s spent a lifetime hurting, and there is a part of him that he’s been storing up all of that hurt, holding onto it, and nurturing it into a Grudge. He wants so very, very badly to be able to hurt those who have hurt him. But it’s not the only desire within him—his love for Cathy is also a powerful motivator.

In Canti 6, faced with truly losing Cathy with absolute heartbreak, we see REVENGE become his only pillar. He desperately needs to take out this pain in *somebody*, and it doesn’t really matter who. He’s ready to give in to it all, lose control, and blindly lash out at his surroundings until Wuthering Heights is reduced to rubble around him. Possibly on top of him—he does not care. And so, he Distorts.

Wild Hunt Heathcliff has taken the reins of these impulses, instead of letting them drive him blindly. He wants to make those who hurt him suffer, but he does so with his eyes fully open, ready to be patient to maximize the pain he inflicts—maiming Gregor, the mountain of corpses in his wake, letting the Heights organize one last stand against him, a grand banquet. And it is through this self-mastery that he gains the means to make this suffering he inflicts last beyond the grave—to bind their souls in his service, so that even as they despise him and curse him, they are nonetheless bent to his will. He has manifested Dullahan.

To Wild Hunt Heathcliff, suffering is the base state of the world. Any moment of comfort, respite, or tenderness is ephemeral, a momentary shelter against the rain that will inevitably be lost. He has rejected Cathy’s love entirely, not because he does not love her, but because he does not believe in love as being a solid, real thing. Not like hatred is. Hatred is forever. You can *rely* on hatred. And if you are able to find satisfaction in being hated, to drink deeply from that spiteful well, you’ll never go thirsty. No, you’ll live in a veritable land of plenty. A miserable, bitter land of plenty, and you’re going to be a miserable and bitter fuck, but at least you’ll have the satisfaction that the people who hate you died mad and continue to be mad. That’s the core of Dullahan,

The third act swerve of this essay is that I do not think that our Heathcliff is going to be able to manifest Dullahan, because he isn’t that person anymore—the path that leads there has been closed to him. Hindley and Linton are dead, and he has bigger concerns right now—the bat no longer says Revenge, it says Remember. The revenge pillar is the one that crumbled, so he is—unsteadily—driven more by his love for Cathy right now. If he continues in this path, his EGO (and come on, we *will* get to see the full EGO for everyone eventually) is going to be something else entirely. Some similar motifs, of course, but taken in a new direction. Hopefully a healthier one!

And I think that’s really neat!

[lets-lam3nt]

Schneewittchen.

limbus oc #2 :] i also tried to replicate the limbus artstyle but i'm not sure how i did lol