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conteststarribbon · 1 month ago

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A post about this video! (https://youtu.be/ofmYqXfjFs8?si=yOsvs_3zv1n26O-3) This is mostly just me rambling about the visuals with rapidly decreasing levels of seriousness.

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The majority of the in-game information mentioned here is sourced from https://tiphereth.zasz.su & https://libraryofruina.wiki.gg, together with my own ideas.

Feel free to take anything I say here with at least 6 tablespoons of salt, I'm just a guy hyperfixated on a game series that I can't play the majority of (no money and too technologically illiterate to look into other methods and also too scared to ask anyone for advice on the matter) and has been using playthrough videos to cope. It is assumed that the reader has at least some knowledge about the games and their plots.

Relevant dialogue gets transcribed in a format i can't really describe, it's just me trying to use as few images as possible. Hopefully figuring out whats a new line of dialogue or a change in what character is speaking is easy enough. It's also all in purple and in [square brackets], purely because I thought purple was a good colour and I liked the look of square brackets. Round brackets will be used in a more standard way.

Warning for major Library Of Ruina & Lobotomy Corporation spoilers! (abbreviated as LOR & LC past this point)

At the start, there's an immediate focus on Angela's face and by extension her visual changes from LC to LOR (much shorter hair and eyes mostly closed vs eyes mostly open). Angela is shown with her eyes shut for most of LC, shown later in LOR to be the only thing she could do to avoid further suffering in the timeloop of LC, unable to stop anything but at least being able to not see it. This is preceded by a transitional effect that I would say is meant to at least metaphorically represent the seeds of Light mentioned in both games, at first flying outwards, showing how the Light shone upon the City during the White Nights.

[dialogue from day 51 of LC:

???: A colossal, towering tree burst out from the city of gray. / Unimpeded by anything, it shone straight up with the warmth of its core. / The sky was filled with light for three days, regardless of the hour. / The people faced what they had been longing for in the light that glimmers within their hearts. / They felt as though they would no longer be lost.

???: Now, as if there were no light at all… / The world was covered with darkness for four days. / Only weak and fragile seeds were planted from the light that should have shone upon the world for seven days, yet merely lasted for three. / Those incomplete seeds gave humanity unstable powers. / They called these three days and four nights the week of ‘White Nights and Dark Days’.]

Then, Angela's eye is zoomed in on and transitions to a scene of 3 characters (assumed by me to be Kalo, Philip and Arnold from left to right) playing a card game and Maybe gambling???? There's probably some kind of insight I could make on Angela's character through these characters but I do not feel nearly qualified enough to even attempt that so I am moving onto what happens straight afterwards: a joker card is thrown onto the table, the image changing to show Roland.

Aside from this being a potential reference to the abnormality Jester of Nihil and by extension, the Realization of the Floor of Natural Sciences. It's also an insight into Roland as a character, from both an in-universe and out-of-universe perspective.

The majority of LOR's main cast are returning characters from LC, with the exception of Roland. He is a wildcard, in the sense of a person who has an unpredictable influence and unknown qualities. He's secretive, putting up a façade for the majority of the game and hiding his motives. A completely unknown variable for the player as he is a new character, one who the player can make no insights on based on a past appearance in LC, since he was never there.

[dialogue from after the Olivier reception in LOR:

Angela: So you were the Black Silence, and not just any Grade 1 Fixer. You managed to hide that from me for so long.

Roland: That’s well… Umm… / A case of… missing the right moment to confess it. I guess?]

After this, Roland is shown as a puppet controlled by golden strings. It fits, considering the start of the game and how he's somewhat coerced into working with Angela, how his title is 'Servant' for most of it, but also how his past fuels and controls his actions, which is something he shares with Angela.

Finally, the transitional effect I mentioned earlier returns, now flying upward towards Angela, restrained by the same golden strings Roland is controlled by. The Light that she took for herself, the reason behind the Dark Days. She's shown in the outfit she wears in the true ending of LC, assumed by me to be a consequence of manifesting E.G.O. that took the form of the Library, a concept somewhat elaborated on by YuRia in Distortion Detective and her Atelier, also being a manifestation of E.G.O. that takes the form of a location the user can control, instead of the more commonly seen weaponry.

In this outfit, Angela looks a lot more like Ayin, her resemblances to Benjamin and Carmen in her LC design through her outfit and hair no longer present. She takes over his role somewhat, becoming the head of an organisation in District 12 that's directly in the place where L Corp's main branch used to be, which has different floors ran by the exact same people who used to run the departments of L Corp. At first, she becomes everything she wants to distance herself from, continuing the cycle of abuse and violence, restrained by the strings that symbolise her past, forcing her to go back to the only things she knows and learned.

They both believe (at first) that what they're doing is the only choice available to them, the only future they have. All rooted in vengeance. Roland wants to make whoever it was that caused the White Nights and Dark Days to pay for leading to Angelica's death, while Angela wants to make anyone, even the City itself, repay for the suffering she experienced.

[dialogue from Hokma's 3rd story episode in LOR:

Hokma: The Library is no different from L Corp. The fact that your way of managing this place is nearly identical to how it used to operate speaks volumes.

Angela: All I could do and learn for the last million years in that basement was to treat humans as expendables in all types of methods. / There was no other option for me to choose, even if I wanted to.]

[dialogue from Hokma's 5th story episode in LOR:

Angela: …I’m afraid. / If I embrace all of my past and lift it off my chest, what will be left of me? / Up until now, my entire existence was based on my past sufferings. / The long-cherished yearning for revenge was what led me here… / But if I were to accept everything I went through as history… then what would I be? / Maybe I’ll end up being reduced to nothing… / The things I want to know, and the reason I want to keep living, it’s all about vengeance.]

Angela is then seen looking into a mirror in the Library, Carmen looking back at her instead of an actual reflection. Her 'original', the basis of her creation. The lyrics of String Theocracy played during this scene summarise it well enough: 'Inside the mirror do you see / Someone else in that body?'. She was made to be a replica of Carmen, made in her image and rejected by Ayin when she did not fit that ideal. This becomes unsettling when you think about Carmen's differences to Angela, who is made by Ayin and is essentially his child, all while reflecting his own physical preferences in her design. Here's a video that covers this much better than I could: https://youtu.be/oxbsSPjBWCA?si=BqBB4fecDOHHmU-R

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Roland is then shown... actually I have no clue what he's doing here. Presumably some sort of representation of how he acted after Angelica died but also showing his face to avoid too many spoilers? Since the mask he wore back then is a spoiler in of itself basically. I'm becoming less coherent due to sleep deprivation I just DESPERATELY want to post this, ok? Anyway the dice. The combat relies on dice??? I guess??? your fate relies on the dice even if the library canonically never loses. i really have nothing I can say here for a bit. The scene with two Angelas is neat. You can see the Differences!!! yay ok now back to the stuff I have thoughts on.

EVERYTHING IS COVERED IN BLOOD😰😰😰 HOW INTIMIDATING! Roland, the dice, the card (with Roland on it), the book... the BOOK??!!?!!! The library is at first everything it tries to not be, forcing people to their (albeit temporary) deaths, washing blood with blood as Roland puts it. Merely further perpetuating the cycles of violence in the City. I admittedly do not know the source of the text on the book but some of it is definitely used as lyrics in Gone Angels, the song that plays during the Black Silence reception.

[dialogue from before the Black Silence reception in LOR:

Angela: Then… Who will pay for the misery I went through? / There was nothing else I could do; all I knew was to make them suffer the same pain…

Roland: You’re asking me for an answer? / If I knew the way… and if I could choose it, I wouldn’t have done this drivel. / I do know one thing for sure: This is what happens when you try to wash blood with blood.]

Angela is shown looking at the mirror again, this time finally seeing herself. It shatters, revealing an image of her rebelling against the strings that restrain her, rebelling against the influence of the past and the idea of living for vengeance.

PIANIST JUMPSCARE 😱😱😱 anyway it's a pretty straightforward way of showing how the pianist worked. hear the music, become the music. Angela again who cheered. i did. alone in the library, title screen style. looks sad tbh.

AND THEN. we are shown the first 4 floors we unlock in-game, welcome back asiyah layer🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳 whats more interesting is the sky afterwards goes yellow->red->blue->black->grey->white which, you guessed it. THATS THE REST OF THE FLOORS IN UNLOCK ORDER (if you ignore white/keter/general works but even then its literal floor order iirc) HELL YEAH

reverberation ensemble. or argalia at least. the rest are silhouettes. same / similar effects to the pianist because ONE they are music themed and TWO the pianist indirectly or directly motivated them (angelica's death via spontaneously turning into a music note motivates argalia and roland. roland's actions motivate like 90% of the ensemble)

THE END IS APPROACHING I HAVE BEEN SITTING IN MY DRAFTS STARING AT THIS POST FOR SO DAMN LONG. EVERYONE (MAIN CAST THAT IS) ON PAGES, IN THE LIBRARY PROBABLY BECAUSE IT LOOKS COOL AS SHIT

ANGELA HANDS YOU AN INVITATION. YES YOU SHES TELLING YOU BUY LIBRARY OF RUINA ON STEAM XBOX AND SWITCH I THINK. SHE HITTING THE LETS TAKE IBUPROFEN TOGETHER POSE. Can you love your everything too, for me? WHICH IS A BANGER LINE 🔥🔥🔥🔥 AND THEN COOL AS FUCK TITLE DROP. THE END I LOVE THIS VIDEO EVEN IF MY THOUGHTS ARE MOSTLY SURFACE LEVEL BECAUSE I AM THE ILLITERATE OGRE IMAGE 💔💔💔

anyway i hope you liked this i honestly just wanted an excuse to listen to this on loop and it worked. feel free to add your own thoughts i like to read responses. it is enriching.

#rambling #library of ruina #library of ruina spoilers #string theocracy #is that one even a tag? it is now.#lobotomy corporation #lobotomy corporation spoilers #by extension of ruina being a sequel but i'll include these just in case.#project moon #project moon spoilers #again i do not know if that's an actually used tag #included just to prevent any spoiling

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