#he is using her. this is not a theory it is pointed out by rodya in the text

[porcubus]

im unshakeable in the idea that if we ever get a yurodiviye rodya id she will be her own flavor of extremely miserable and unhealthy much like ncorp sinclair But different

[lu-is-not-ok]

So it's been a while huh

Yeah, I'm back. I think it's time to do some catching up.

April Fool's Event

Since so much time has passed since this one, I'll summarize my thoughts as such.

I think this was both full of foreshadowing and full of the VAs showing off their ranges. The subtle battle sprite changes are fucking awesome. Transmasc Rodya. Transfem Hong Lu.

As for more specific Hong Lu thoughts (since that's what you come here for):

I don't think it's a coincidence we're seeing Hong Lu using a lower voice alongside being genuinely angry, even if through Ryoshu being in his body.

The fact that Hong Lu's eye glows when he's angry here seems pretty significant, and I believe matches my theory that his eye is tied to how he views his reality - the more detached, the dimmer, while the more "worldly", the brighter.

Ryoshu, in Hong Lu's body, instinctively covers his jade eye while staggered. This parallels her clutching her chest as if out of breath in her regular sprites, showing she's aware of it being some form of weak spot. She also doesn't do the twirly bullshit he does.

Hong Lu in Ryoshu's body meanwhile continues to be more performative and show-offy. He even holds up his hand in the same manner when staggered.

The comment about Hong Lu "still getting used to this body" as if it's something he's done before... yeah.

Also, it's interesting how Hong Lu is slowly usurping Faust as Dante's translator. How he's Dante's first choice after her. Just something to point out.

Middle Sinclair

I don't have much to say here other than express confusion over how people thought this wasn't a fitting Identity for Sinclair.

His vengeful tendencies we see on display in his own Canto aside, he's a kid with a dead family that he felt detached from before they died. Of course he'd be the type to get caught up with the kinds of people promising to give him a new, more "normal" family.

Indicant's Trial Rodion

A reflection of Rodya's vigilante approach to justice, with her corrosion representing the end result of such acts - care more for the performance of violence than for who is actually getting punished.

R Corp Hong Lu

First of all. Let's make this clear: this is a Daiyu ID. Or rather, this is a Hong Lu/Baoyu being put in Daiyu's shoes ID.

Crippling chronic condition? Check. Stark unwillingness to die despite how easy it would be to just give up? Check. Kurokumo HL similarity through sprites that aren't performing and are actually focused on the Combat? Check. Even the Post-Uptie art makes it a first where Hong Lu's jade eye isn't shown, instead his regular is focused on.

Second of all. We're seeing what Hong Lu is like when the mask of naivete is cracked. A frustrated, tired man who simply wants his suffering to end. I think this is exactly what we'll see more of in his Canto proper.

Third - just like the other IDs that released on the cusp of the new season, I think this is foreshadowing something more specific. Just as Oufi Heathcliff and Zwei West Ishmael foreshadowed the involvement of those factions (or a faked one in the former case), I think R Corp Hong Lu could likewise foreshadow a faction. If not R Corp's direct involvement, then perhaps more focus on the Heishou. There is a point to be made about their "same roots" after all.

[almostswagkid]

Little Rodya analysis + thoughts on Sonya

Okay, I've noticed that we lack Dmitri Razumikhin in the story. A lot of other characters too, but not about them now

So, my theory now is that Razumikhin is Rodya's facade.

Dmitri in the book was friend of Raskolnikov. He tried to distract Rodion from dark thoughts and pretty much always been there for him. Basically, Dmitri lacks any negative traits, which would be perfect for the ideal person Rodya wants to be. He is kind, optimistic, simple and honest. Which is, in my opinion, what Rodya wants people to think she is

And, if I'm right, it is interesting how Razumikhin is described as "the person who knows how to love" and Rodya's canto called "The Unloving"

Plus, bonus point: Rodya is the one who asked to call her by nickname. In the book Razumikhin was the one who called Rodion "Rodya"

My copy of the book is obviously in Russian, but it's there

Now, about Sonya. I'll keep this section relatively short cuz we have very little info about him, but trust me I can yap about it a lot. Let's keep it simple: I'll refer to Limbus Sonya by his name, and to book Sonya by her surname (Marmeladova)

I believe Sonya is not Marmeladova. I actually believe that Sonya represents that idea of Rodion, that he's special and has the right to decide fate of others. Sonya is fanatic, he firmly believes that his plan will work. Just like Rodion did. And, obviously, Rodya's character development should go into direction where she admits that she's not special, thus abandoning her theory. Which means, leaving Sonya and staying with Limbus

I actually think that Gregor is playing a role of Marmeladova. Hear me out: they both had a very difficult life; they both had to endure disgrace from their mothers; both used to being shunned and humiliated; both are not very good at talking to new people (tho Marmeladova was literally afraid, and Gregor just sucks at it); both feel like they're an outcast, who doesn't deserve attention and love from "normal people"; they both will bend over backwards for people they care about

There's a lot more similarities, especially in interactions between Rodion and Marmeladova, but I think you get my point

Also, on the side note. Please, if you want to give Rodya her full name it would be Rodion Romanovna Raskolnikova. Russian is gendered language, and "Raskolnikov" is male surname, as "Romanovich" is male patronymic. It doesn't offend me in any way, it just sounds weird to me as a native speaker

[leonawriter]

Project Moon Fanworks (+meta)

Like with my other fanworks directories, this is made with the intent of updating it with new works, but this may not always happen.

I do NOT consent to ANY of my works - written or drawn/painted - being used for generative training.

Any works I add for Limbus Company have the underlying (explicit or implied) fact that I'm running with the "Dante is Ayin" theory. You do not have to agree with me. I'm going to write it this way anyway.

In terms of ships, my priorities are thus: 1st: Chesed/Ayin/Hokma, Netzach/Yesod 2nd: Netzach/Chesed, Malkuth/Hod, Gebura/Binah 3rd: (as in, I see the vision and I won't mind playing with it or reading it) Netzach/Ayin, Yesod/Malkuth

Limbus ships are low priority, but I'm drawn to Heathcliff/Ishmael, Rodya/Gregor, and Yi Sang/Faust so far.

Sapling of Light stories

Sentinel of Timepieces

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There is Nothing In Her Eyes - Character study of Ayin regarding Angela in building her, and then from that point on.

Lament

A series of fics that are mostly set mid-Ruina, and focus on the fact that the former Sephirot, now Patron Librarians, would have been able to work through their issues with Ayin - only for him to be taken from them not long after. Grief, mourning, and all of the complicated stuff that comes with it.

Ch5 art (Ayin with Lisa and Enoch)

Ch6 art (Ayin with Apocalypse Bird in the background)

Ch7 art (Ayin, Daniel, and coffee)

Ch8 art (Ayin casting shadows)

Ch9 art (Ayin and the seedling) -alt ch9 art, with Ayin and Ben

Ch10 art (The Book of Ayin)

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You Can Take the Sephirot Out of the City, But You Can't Take the City Out of the Sephirot - A FFXIV crossover. Ayin as the (semi-reluctant) Warrior of Light. Zayin Tethla AU tag

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Nor Gloom of Night Shall Stay This Sentinel (and art) - AKA the Boxma AU, where Hokma manages to leave the Library and insert himself, in box form, into the LCB division.

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Better Late Than Never - Floating/unknown timeline post-Ruina/Limbus fic where Ayin comes back to the Library. Sappy hokmayin. Now with art.

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Painting In The Blanks - Hokma comes across Tiphereth painting them all (even those not present) as kiwis. Now with art.

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Like A Moth to the Sparkling Champagne - Netzach confesses he's got a crush on Ayin. Alcohol is involved. Also has art.

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Tangles and Ties - Yesod awkwardly grows closer to Netzach. Involving hair, paint, and new beginnings.

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Art (General)

Ayin and a few of the others as mice.

Ayin (pen sketch)

Ayin from behind, in the light

Dante :>

Punishing Bird (pecks you)

Dante in Ayin's lab coat, in a LobCorp hall.

Chesed [box form]

Chesed [box form] and a nugget

Angela between LobCorp and Ruina

Chesed [Librarian]

[Picks up Dante] I just think they're neat

Hokma misses Ayin, so he made him into a cookie

Bunny Ayin -> On Netzach's floor -> On Hod's floor

Ayin [doodle]

Ayin/Manager sitting on the table in front of the monitors

Tiphereth holding Ayin (from @strangefellows' fic "The End of the Beginning")

Aftermath of a Silent Orchestra Breach

Malkuth Librarian [sketch]

Netzach if he were a sitting plushie

Dante and Chesed [mild Canto 8 spoilers]

Ayin doodle

Meta/Analysis

"Would things have gone better if Angela could have been nicer from the start? - no."

It's Called The Knowing I For A Reason

"No one really wants to die, man. They all seem to regret it moments before death."

On A(yin) and Unreliable Narration - or, “Did They Hate Him, Really?”, the Story of a Depressed Man

Roland talks about love with Netzach. Call forward to Hokma.

Ayin, Carmen, and the Circles of Hell Project Moon’s Works <-Why it makes no sense if Dante's pre-amnesia self is just a fanboy of Ayin.

What we know about Carmen.

Carmen and Ayin are basically opposites.

Angela, Faith, and... a Broken Family

Chesed calls Ayin "Mister Passionate"

Emanations - Or, He's Just Like Me, For Real?

The Sephirot knew about the cognition filter ->the cognition filter being a PTSD trigger filter

Netzach and Yesod, Those Two Guys

On Ayin's name, and also on the dangers of keeping it (C8 spoilers in the references)

Reasons why Ayin made the Sephirot into boxes

[hakureimus]

THIS ENDED UP GETTING A LITTLE LONG LOL. forgive me ahead of time if any of my points seem nonsensical i had a busy afternoon last night and not much time to write out cohesive thoughts :V

this could just be me (the blind fool who hasnt formally played ruina or lobcorp yet), but my guess is that if Ahab isn’t dead dead, I’m hoping that either our white whale, or whatever it is, is using his husk in some way or form. or a limbo between dead and alive, too far gone to be salvaged but also not ready to rest yet.

like, if the white whale is the proper final boss of canto v, i’d imagine that their spirit wouldn’t truly rest until it’s dead. That’s assuming that Ishmael doesn’t let the rage from her grief consume her in finally facing the beast that changed everything for her, a la “captian ahab possessing me giving me anger for something that cannot truly return it and will neither gain nor benefit from my death”.

Queequeg not at least being a significant part of Ishmael’s backstory, even if they don’t physically appear (see Gubo in Canto IV) will be such a missed opportunity, but knowing Project Moon’s writing there’ll be some good reason for it if that’s the case. God, I can’t wait to get that revelation, though. I can’t wait to see what they cook up period.

I think that Heathcliff or Rodya could also very well make good for Queequeg placement, but for different reasons, and my guesses as to why it may not happen are scumreads, basically. Additional disclaimer I still haven’t read wuthering heights or crime and punishment so i’m working with prior knowledge

Heath’s cards seem to be oriented around failure/success and his active role in trying to make a somewhat sustainable life because he’s lived in the backstreets for so long and knows there’s such thing as a better life. Rodya is very similar, in fact I think a lot of what differentiates their cards is how they handle success. Heath is good just being muscle since he’s very opinionated and that gets him carried away (for better or for worse), Rodya is good at being naturally charismatic and persuasive and how to finagle things. Both have a strong drive, just different methods and ways of handling it.

With that in mind, it’s really hard to decide which of them would be Queequeg, if there were to be a card…

my guess was on gregor being queequeg mostly for his sacrifice to give yuri the mask in canto i. it could just easily be chalked up to him thinking resourcefully (like, ‘hey, i just learned a few hours ago i can die infinitely, here is the one girl who can’t do that, we can all afford to die while she can’t’). like, his acting isn’t stellar, but he can buy enough time to at least confuse the guards in canto ii. And he’s not exactly a gourmet cook, but he could at least make something to keep him from running on empty (something im sure ishmael would empathize with LOL). in his scenario id imagine (as the story confirms iirc) it’s hard for him to find work in the first place, so when he finds kinship on the vessel it’d be a big moment for him. and knowing his own sense of futility at their approaching circumstances, i figure that in a moment of selflessness and trying to change someone’s fate, he would build the coffin that ends up saving ishmael (or whoever is ishmael in this situation)

and that’s not even accounting for all the theories i keep hearing bits of regarding his initial EGO art resembling the Library! god knows what else we’re missing from his life after the smoke war ended

sorry… im greg fan… chaos of irl life has gotten in the way of me properly dissecting the other sinners ;-;

anybody in the notes (or onlyexists who has the best url ever LOL) feel free to correct me on my thoughts, i just woke up after not being able to finish this yesterday lmfao. Ill definitely have plenty to correct myself on here in the future, but these are just a few thoughts to add to some thoughts in the end

hey i was just trying to explain very barebones gacha predictions to a friend when i said that if there was a queequeg card it would likely be gregor. But then, that got me to think, “no, queequeg’s role would likely be very similar to demian’s”

but then, i sat on it for a few more seconds. what if queequeg isn’t dead. what if they’re a part of demian’s faction.

i have no clue which one of the silhouettes in the trailer they could be, but i figure i present the idea

[lu-is-not-ok]

Sorry I'm actually obsessed with the Daiyu-Baoyu theory and I'm rotating it in my head forever. I'm not sure if I'm actually onto anything here but when thinking about it I recalled this CG from the TGS trailer

and I remember thinking about how odd this picture seems because it's so Un-Hong Lu-like. Because from what we've seen, Hong Lu has never even gotten close to being this angry. And yet, they showed us this picture in a trailer before the game even released. It's obviously something they wanted us to see and keep in mind. But so far, there doesn't seem to be anything we can think of that can draw this kind of reaction out of Hong Lu, who seems to just redirect or avoid upsetting topics altogether.

When reading your theory, I remembered this CG and noticed that he's facing the right, meaning we can't see his jade eye. This isn't the first time they've obscured something important from us in the trailer (e.g., Don Quixote's eyes), so it's not a stretch to say they're intentionally hiding his eye. This suggests that something might be up with it in this scene that we aren't supposed to know yet, like, for example, being removed.

If we assume that Baoyu's memories are in his eye, which has been put in Daiyu's body, as well as Kurokumo Hong Lu's attitude being the most Daiyu-like, then it would explain this CG a lot better, because it's not really Hong Lu or Baoyu. It's Daiyu.

Sorry for the very long ask, I got excited. Again, I'm really just rambling and speculating. What I do know is that I'm really enjoying this theory, and thinking about writing a fanfic with the premise because it is so fascinating to me!

Funny you bring up that CG in particular, since the subject of it has come up on this blog before! That being said, I unfortunately can't find the exact post where I talked about it, so I might as well do so again - especially since we now also have more insight on Hong Lu as a characer.

The full CG that cut-in comes from can be seen in the Story Demo video for the Alpha Version of Limbus, as a preview CG for the 1-5 node on the very early version of Canto 1's Story Node map.

Notably, this CG does not appear in any Cutscene/Story Demo videos post the TGS Teaser, meaning the CG must have been scrapped at some point between that Alpha Version demo and the post TGS Teaser demo. Whether it was scrapped after it was used for the Teaser, meaning it was still part of the story at the time, or whether it was scrapped before but PJM decided something about that particular image of Hong Lu was important enough to the Teaser to include it anyway, is something I don't think we'll ever know.

Unfortunately, with how early the CG seems to have originally been placed in the story, I doubt it has anything to do with Daiyu specifically. However, I do now have my own theory of what that cutscene might have entailed, as well as why that would contribute to it being scrapped.

Judging by the leftmost panel, it's easy to deduce this was where Yuri's backstory was originally meant to be explained, as in the whole site burial and survivor's guilt thing would be brought up. The fact that the explanation would later be moved to be inside the Dungeon rather outside would on its own be a good reason to scrap the CG, but there's something else about it that I realized only recently.

In the game proper, Yuri reveals her trauma almost exclusively to Gregor (and initially Ishmael), as all the other Sinners have already passed out due to the gas grenade. However, in the hypothetical scrapped scenario where the reveal came outside the Dungeon, every Sinner would have a chance to hear it and react to it.

So, what kind of reaction would fit the other two panels on the CG? The middle panel of Rodya comforting an uncomfortable looking Yuri while Hong Lu looks innocently confused, followed by a panel with the angriest looking Gregor we've ever seen clashing with the angriest looking Hong Lu we've ever seen?

Here's what I think could have originally happened in that scene (and this is Entirely Speculation, we have no proof of this actually being the case):

I believe, after sharing her story, especially the point about trying to escape the site burial, Mr. Hong 'I am always ready to accept my own death' Lu would act confused and ask something along the lines of "Why didn't you just stay?" or a variant of such. Why didn't you just accept it, why didn't you just let it happen, why did you try to fight it, etc. Essentially asking why, if Yuri was going to feel such guilt for surviving the ordeal, would she ever bother trying to survive in the first place.

This would, understandably, piss Gregor the fuck off, as he himself holds a good deal of guilt for the fact he participated in the War and survived through it. There's a high chance of him trying to verbally rip into Hong Lu, to tell him that he has No Idea what it's like to have to live day by day trying to survive just long enough to see tomorrow, what it's like to have one's life turned into hell without them having any choice on the matter, what it's like to feel the need to run away despite knowing that it will leave them with the guilt of not being able to save anyone else. He's some sheltered rich kid after all, how could he know what it's like to actually suffer?

And I think something like that would be enough for Hong Lu's facade to crack. Because no, Gregor is wrong. Hong Lu knows exactly what it's like, more than anyone should know he does. He might not even be responding with much in this cutscene, even just a hostile "You know nothing about me and my life." would be enough to set the tone. That whatever is going on behind that smile of his is so much worse than what it seems.

...And that's why I think it was scrapped. Because a peek behind Hong Lu's mask in Canto 1 would be too early.

Hong Lu's slow unraveling of his lies is just that - slow. It took us until Just This Recent Canto to get a somewhat clear confirmation that no, the info he gives about his Family is not to be trusted. It took until Canto 3 to see him be the only Sinner actively willing to lie and until Canto 4 to show us he's a good actor. Revealing that Hong Lu has a very different side to him underneath the curious cheerful persona as early as Canto 1 would completely alter the pacing and trajectory of his arc. You'd have a reason to suspect him from the beginning, rather than have a chance to be just as fooled by him as Dante and the other Sinners are.

So no, I don't think that CG is meant to show Daiyu. But I do think that CG was meant to be our first hint to the fact that Hong Lu isn't being honest with the others, at least until it was decided it was too soon for such a reveal.