#Hod's hope to be a better person ... Netzach's fearlessness to keep on living ...

[throughpatchesofviolet]

Revisited Lobotomy Corporation, and now I'm crying.

[leonawriter]

Thinking about Carmen again, and how for the duration of Lobotomy Corporation's loops, she has no agency at all. So very little power.

Like, no wonder she turns out the way she does! No matter if she planned it and put it in her "when I die, do this" instructions to Ayin, there's no way she could stay sane through it all.

She can't stand up for herself anymore, with everything going on around her completely out of her control. Not only that, but as the beautiful voice, she might sound convincing... but the moment someone talks back to her? She may not exactly back down, but she doesn't argue back, either. She'll just go "okay, let's agree to disagree, then." This isn't her being able to accept the other person's point of view, it's that she doesn't stand her ground. She does not have Malkuth.

She is forced to watch on as countless people's happiness and their lives are sacrificed for her dream, which she doesn't even fully believe in anymore. She lets her despair overwhelm her. She does not have the rationality to maintain discretion, and lacks Yesod.

When she first had the idea to kill herself for the sake of her plan, she thought that it was a sacrifice to save others - but now, and even as she was dying, she lost the ability to believe that people could become better. She lacks Hod.

From the moment Lisa told her that she should have been the one to die, she began to lose the will to live, knowing that she and her bigger picture plan had killed a child under her care. She lacked the fearlessness to carry on living, and even at the end, her desire to live was out of fear of death, not the desire to live. She lacks Netzach.

When she was alive, she had grand plans, but over the course of her being in the loops she grew to see people as only being able to love themselves. She lost her sense of purpose, and lacks a true meaning for existence, especially beyond distorting others. There is no nuance or balance to her actions, as she cannot see from anyone else's perspective any longer. She lacks Tiphereth.

In bringing everyone together and saving Lisa and Enoch from the Outskirts, she was trying to save individuals and also humanity in general - but as she lost her way, so too did she lose the ability to protect others. As the Bucket and Brain of Lobotomy Corporation, she lacked any ability to save anyone at all, powerless to even try. Now, instead of saving anyone, she endangers them out of her own selfish wishes. She lacks Gebura.

Where once she was surrounded by people who trusted her, although she would only share small parts of herself she still wished to fulfil the hopes and wishes that they had placed in her. Now, however, although her voice is a beautiful one that everyone listens to, it is also not one that anyone should trust - and in the Light, she has only herself, with it being highly implied that Ayin is opposing her much like Angela would have if she had stayed. She does not have Chesed.

Carmen is the one who would have had them all stay as they were. The situation between her and Angela in the Religion and Keter Realisations in Ruina heavily suggests this, with Angela herself placing the "blame" of her keeping the others around on what Carmen wanted, and later her reflection (which says some very Carmen things before revealing herself to be Carmen) says "I must keep this throne forever, so that no one can covet this place that is mine and mine alone" and Angela, in turn, says "Repeating this cycle will eventually result in it crushing me." Carmen is unable to see past her past, and the one plan she had put in place; she also has trapped herself in a way of cyclical thinking that doesn't allow her to move forward beyond it. Unable to look at her own past actions and grow from them, she lacks Hokma.

Carmen says outright in Ayin's flashbacks that she has a "weak heart." But we don't just have to take her word for it - Project Moon shows that she has a weak heart. Not just in that she crumbles in front of Lisa's lashing out, no, but there's evidence in how she is now that she still hasn't become stronger. Because the thing is, she'll give people nice-sounding suggestions... but she doesn't think about the consequences. She'll close her eyes to the pain and suffering that her message of "love yourself, and only yourself" causes. She is unable to face her own fears and her own discomfort. She lacks Binah.

Much like Erlking Heathcliff in Canto VI, Carmen is someone who can't be said to truly know herself. She looks away from herself, closes her eyes, and ignores what she really wants and feels. She sought to effectively make Angela into someone "like her" without accepting who she even is. She does not show compassion for others, and she doesn't show forgiveness, either - two things that are vital for Keter - "Moses ben Jacob Cordovero describes Keter as the source of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, derived from a verse in the Book of Micah. These attributes emphasize compassion, forgiveness, and humility." [from the Keter Wikipedia page].

The funny thing is, Carmen is kind of a complete antithesis of the Tree of Life, and... we do actually see what the culmination of this is, even outside of the Distortion phenomenon.

This is what you get if you have the Manager unable to answer Adam's questions - and Adam is Ayin's Keter who is, out of all three of them, completely dedicated to Carmen.

The Tree of Death is upside down, and has stayed the same shape and in the same order as it was completed in. You'll notice that each of the spheres there accounts for the Sephirot - but there's no Keter, because Ayin, in this ending, was unable to complete Keter.

And like - even in some of my earliest posts, I covered how well before she became the Bucket there were hints that this would happen.

The way she didn't return everyone's trust, the way she'd let let people do things without thinking of the consequences, the way she didn't take responsibility for her own actions - and when she did, she took on everything, making it unbearable. The way she'd subtly (and not-so-subtly) influence and manipulate others, and talk over them.

To be honest - doesn't that make her a beautifully tragic character?

She wanted, so badly, to make the world a better place. It's made so clear that you don't have to be a perfect person to do that! Ayin was so very flawed and he was able to do what he could, succeeding where she failed. She set herself such high standards and took on such an idealistic view of the way the world could be that she broke when reminded again and again of how it is, in the here and now.

I don't think that if the Carmen that Ayin first met saw what she'd later become, that she'd be happy. Why would she be? She's become the antithesis of what she wanted, after all.

[leonawriter]

The more I think about Carmen and Ayin, the more I'm like, "those two are literally absolute opposites of each other."

Carmen says that if something awful happened as a result of something she did, she'd crack and crumble and not be able to go on, and Ayin keeps going. He endures, to use a word PM likes to use.

Carmen, then, lacks the ability to Stand Up Straight by the time she is dying in the bathtub, because she has buckled under the weight of everything. We see this in the pressure everyone put on her. Ayin learns what it means to do this through his dealings with Malkuth.

Carmen lacks the Rationality to Maintain Discretion, taking all of the emotions inside of her after Enoch's death and Lisa's judgement and letting them spill out, into self-harm. Ayin goes through similar, but with Yesod's help is able to see that you need to be able to feel the despair but still keep a logical mind.

Carmen loses her belief that people can grow and the Hope to be a Better Person, as she dies and then as she spends that time as the Bucket. Ayin, however, after everything that he's done to reach the dream she always talked about, all the atrocities he committed, promises Hod - who betrayed them all and caused the Head to come down on the Outskirts lab - that they can become better people together.

Carmen, even before Lisa told her that she should have been the one to die, did not have the Fearlessness to Keep On Living. She gained the desire to live right before she was actually dead (as per Ruina's Keter Realisation), but I'd hazard that was more "desperation" than "fearlessness." Ayin, however, went from being in a state of depression so deep that he was making a long, drawn-out suicide plan (via the light), attempted suicide at least once (and remember, he was in that loop for ten thousand years, so it's absolutely correct to say he did again) and yet, he and Netzach promised each other to keep on going, with the idea of "if I can, so can you."

Carmen put her entire Meaning of Existence into the project she was working on, to save humanity - but when push came to shove, she didn't truly believe in the humans she was saving, and lost her way, and her meaning along with it, going from "saving humanity" to "have you tried distortion?" in the course of it. Ayin, however, is implied to have been like Enoch; always looking ahead, seeing that the world isn't how it should be and hoping for something better. It's strongly implied that the world of the City broke him before he met Carmen (and if not before, then in her dying), and yet with Tiphereth, he is able to find and keep an Expectation for the Meaning of Existence.

Carmen was amazing at "blowing peoples' minds" and getting them to trust her - however, how much she trusted them is in much higher doubt. She is only seen sharing her vulnerability with Ayin, and only then to make him promise to keep doing her work after she's gone. When she is at her breaking point, she loses faith in humanity itself. Ayin, however, although he loses his trust in humans to the point that he creates a machine (Angela) to help run the Facility and drives even his best friend away, connected with all of the Sephirot in a way that caused them to trust him again, especially Chesed, he had abandoned and broken the trust of. Through this, he gains Those Who are Faithful and Trustworthy.

Carmen had grand dreams of a utopia where no one had to hurt anyone else... but she herself could not be said to fit that same image, let alone "reach that place," much as Binah says in Ruina. She directly allows a child to die in her care, and the mention of "experiments" suggests that other adults already had. Ayin, however... although the methods may be questionable, he did manage to save the lives of his friends. Also importantly, is his management style; back in the Outskirts lab he would try to warn Michelle away from something she wasn't ready for, and in Lobotomy Corporation you can only get an S rank management score if you keep all of your agents alive. You are as a player rewarded for keeping agents alive. All of this put together, Gebura is the one who causes him to realise the Courage to Protect.

Carmen, in general, only ever did two things with her problems: pretended they weren't there, or ran from them. We can see this by the way that she pretends that she's so much more confident than she actually is, and the way that she hid herself away (to the point that she took her own life, without allowing herself the support of others) after one big regret too many. As the Voice, she currently can be heard to tell those who are distorting "it is awful, but none of that was your fault, you know?" - she encourages them to turn away from everything they themselves have done. Ayin, meanwhile, although he gives himself amnesia for the time loops... this is for the specific reason of being able to come to a point where he can face his past, as the Memory Synchronisation is, y'know, a thing. The important thing I think isn't that he would always forget, but that he would also always remember. And by remembering, he learns, and by learning, he can move on, becoming the Eye Embracing the Past, Building the Future.

Carmen, it can easily be said, could not face her own fears. This is a simple thing to state, because she says so herself in that field - that she's got a weak heart, like all humans. She also encourages others to be the same way now, telling them that it's fine to give in and give up as long as it makes them feel better, while at the same time turning a blind eye to the atrocities they commit. Ayin was once the same. Binah outright tells him so, that she saw him as the same kind of person as her, able to commit atrocities while not accepting his own anxieties and fear. However, through the loops and through facing Binah herself, he grows to be able to do so, becoming the Eye Facing the Fear, Breaking the Cycle.

Basically - Carmen is stuck in a place of not facing herself, while Ayin takes himself and quite literally forces himself to do so. Carmen stagnates, while Ayin outgrows her.

Also, while Carmen becomes a "beautiful voice, that everyone listens to," Ayin... in Lobotomy Corporation at least, doesn't truly get to say anything for himself, and what is said is said by his reflections, not himself. He has the fewest spoken (voiced) lines of any major character, too.

Which is fascinating, isn't it?