I'll also second sunshower outis. 26 base roll is genuinely fantastic. There's only 2 things that beat that; pursuance, and pursuance, which are 26+8, and are He, while sunshower is a Teth, and is thus cheaper to cast.
It's the To Pathos Mathos of non-base ego, basically.
Something you may have noticed about The Eye in the background in a couple of screenshots. Yes, it is moving. And not in the idle stance movement the Sinners/Dongbaek use, it is literally darting this way and that, pupil dilating and expanding, trying ever so much to stop seeing the horror playing out before it. But every which way there is another screen showing a new atrocity happening. It can't even close its eyelid because of the machines forcing it open. And so it can do nothing but cry.
Just like K-Corp wants it to do. Just like The City wants it to do. For suffering is what makes it human.
you know how i said i was only 50% sure that shene was only doing all this just to get in rans pants?
this is why it was only 50.
only the most sickened can gaze upon this and not want to stop it.
I mean, looking at the Singularities which we've seen in Project Moon content so far - hell, even just the ones in Limbus - I can't in good conscience say you're wrong.
I think, and I could be wrong, and also I think the game updated like, yesterday so this could be out of date, but I think that Bind lowers the number your speed dice show, rather than applying after. I'm hesitant to actually say this though, because it means without that bind she would have had an utterly freakish 8 speed, but hey, maybe they wanted to really punch you in the mouth there when they last tweaked this fight.
I think, and I could be wrong, and also I think the game updated like, yesterday so this could be out of date, but I think that Bind lowers the number your speed dice show, rather than applying after. I'm hesitant to actually say this though, because it means without that bind she would have had an utterly freakish 8 speed, but hey, maybe they wanted to really punch you in the mouth there when they last tweaked this fight.
Her Body part (as in her only part) has a natural speed range of 3-5 which the wiki confirms, that's why I also showed a zoom-in of her stats. Bind reduces your Speed roll result to a minimum of 1, meaning her only legal results that turn should've been a 1 or a 2, meaning she cheated and therefore deserved to get shanked by Dongrang like that.
Fun fact, while I take screenshots of ordinary conversations I record video of the major fights/cutscenes and take captures from them in VLC later. This means I was reminded of the fact that while recording I also noticed the Speed discrepancy, clicked in to check her natural speed range, backed out to mouse over her Bind value to confirm, then zoomed back in and angrily wiggled my cursor back and forth beneath the '3-5'.
I see, thank you! I might be a little stupid, the specific stats blended together when I first started and then I never remembered speed was, I thought that was a dramatic zoom on the bind status.
Dongbaek: "I have nothing more to say to you if you won't believe me even after seeing it happen several times already." Samjo: "Fine then, will you cocnede if I prove their safety by walking into this pool?"
My god, he's going to drink the glyphosate. He's going to go up on that podium in front of the cameras and say I think this leadwater is fine actually and drink a glass of the murkiest looking liquid you've ever seen.
Dongrang attempts to dissuade Samjo with a slightly uncertain or unsteady tone, warning him that he's 'overdoing it' again, but Samjo won't be swayed. He knows that the ampule is Dongrang's brainchild, his pride and joy, he and Director Alfonso and countless other researchers having worked tirelessly to perfect it. Such is his trust and loyalty in the good work they do here...
Samjo: "I'll be back in a minute." Dongrang: "... wait, Samjo?"
Regardless, the important part is exactly what's happening when those unrefined tears dissolve a human on contact - Dongrang explains that it's not strictly speaking a matter of harming the person, but of attempting to 'revert' the subject to "the original form of humanity".
The Implications of this, man. This thing cries when it sees people in pain. The substance it cries is meant to restore those people to an 'original', presumably unhurt state. I think, based on the fact that the effects of this substance are based on a person's subconscious image of themselves, it fails because nobody knows what that state is or would be. It's kind of a question with an impossible answer, isn't it? What were people before people? Who were you before you ever felt pain? What came first, the chicken or the egg?
And so Samjo dives into the gunk and gets turned into [NULL POINTER].
Who else wants to return things to an 'original, unsullied, perfect' state in response to seeing the pain of the state of things as they are? Dongbaek. Her and the eyeball share the same impulse, in the end, to similar results, because changing something to 'how it was' necessitates destroying 'what it is'... especially if 'how it was' is actually a thin veil over 'how I want it to be', as most nostalgia secretly is. It's more subtle than in the previous canto but it's very easy to see how this impulse gets dangerous... and how it can get manipulated.
Limbus Company has been doing something interesting which I may be off the mark on, but many of the groups in the story so far feel like reactions to the setting itself on a meta level, a response to responses to the previous games and the opening of this one. And the game goes 'yeah, there are people in this world who have had this thought.' There is a certain level of indescribable fuckor of thinking 'man maybe they should use that concept incinerator thing on all these fucked up Singularities instead' and then running face first into the TLA. Well played, I'll get out of this crater I've been dunked into in a bit. Because at the end of the day, it really isn't about the technology at all, is it? It's about control, access, and incentives, and what hardship is done thereby. The Luddites' ire against textile mills was not actually about textile mills.
(Also don't think I don't see Dante's clock lurking in the background of this entire Canto. I See It.)
And now we know why N Corp was allowed to act with such impunity in the heart of K Corp's own Nest - every bit of cruelty they inflicted, every atrocity, was fodder for their bottom line.
hhhhhhhhHHHHHHHhhhhhh I knew there was some kind of fucked up evil kickback going on and yet somehow still I was not prepared for how fucked up and how evil. Lesson learnt; when in doubt, assume nobody's the consumer, just the commodity. The pin is rattling and I'm leaning on it, I have thoughts and they'll have to wait because one of them was 'wait, there's a part two?'.
hhhhhhhhHHHHHHHhhhhhh I knew there was some kind of fucked up evil kickback going on and yet somehow still I was not prepared for how fucked up and how evil. Lesson learnt; when in doubt, assume nobody's the consumer, just the commodity. The pin is rattling and I'm leaning on it, I have thoughts and they'll have to wait because one of them was 'wait, there's a part two?'.
Who else wants to return things to an 'original, unsullied, perfect' state in response to seeing the pain of the state of things as they are? Dongbaek. Her and the eyeball share the same impulse, in the end, to similar results, because changing something to 'how it was' necessitates destroying 'what it is'... especially if 'how it was' is actually a thin veil over 'how I want it to be', as most nostalgia secretly is. It's more subtle than in the previous canto but it's very easy to see how this impulse gets dangerous... and how it can get manipulated.
Funnily enough, they also have only 1 (usable) eye which only see atrocities everywhere they look, and generally speaking you need 2 (or more) eyes in order to benefit from depth perception.
This entire scene I was going: "Dante, tell Meursault to stop him. Dante!" I was very surprised that the next boss fight was not a horrifically mutated Samjo.
When I first played this Canto I came out with the observation that using the suffering of the Eye to produce miracles strongly reminded me of Ursula Le Guin's classic The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. Utopia, at the teeny, tiny price of unimaginable suffering for one individual. Dongbaek couldn't stand it, chose to do something about it; Dongrang could.
When I first played this Canto I came out with the observation that using the suffering of the Eye to produce miracles strongly reminded me of Ursula Le Guin's classic The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. Utopia, at the teeny, tiny price of unimaginable suffering for one individual. Dongbaek couldn't stand it, chose to do something about it; Dongrang could.
Brb I'm calling for the regulars over at the Unpopular Opinions thread so we can adjudicate about how Omelas and Rokko's Basilisk relate to the deep lore of Project Moon. '-'
Brb I'm calling for the regulars over at the Unpopular Opinions thread so we can adjudicate about Omelas and Rokko's Basilisk relates to the deep lore of Project Moon. '-'
Very fun fact about that EGO line, it's a reference to one of actual IRL Yi Sang's poetry which can be read either as gay sex, tuberculosis, and/or suicide!
CW of course:
Every day was a spate of gusts and now a largish hand touches my waist. Just when the smell of my sweat seeps through the ecstatic vales of my fingerprints: fire. I shall fire.In my digestive tract I feel the stout gun barrel its slick muzzle kissing the back of my clenched teeth. Then at the moment I close my eyes for the blast just what have I spit in lieu of a bullet."
Also yes, there's definitely a bit of Omelas here--in ProjMoon stuff as a whole really--but not much in regards to Rokko's Basilisk... maybe, kinda
"Hey, Sinclair, H.Y.S.M.E-" Sinclair, forcing four estrodial pills down her throght becuase she somehow mistook them for melatonin:
"Hi Miss Ryoshu..."
My favourite part of The Brothers Karamazov was when Ivan asked Alyosha if he could stomach being the architect of ultimate human happiness if it meant the torture of a single child, and then Alyosha just dragged him to the basement where he made a room for just such an occasion, with the happiest look on his face.
Anyway, in the interest of having something substantial to say, this was really cool to read, I can only imagine how cool it was to see unfold blind, in between screaming "Oh god oh jesus oh what the fuck." I love seeing someone get slammed with the Mind Whammy and powering through it, and the presentation of it here is immaculate. And I also love Dongrang's incredible ratfuck power. Just doing a little stabbity with a smile on his face, out of a sense of kindness. I love him and I can't wait to see the back of him.
Melatonin is a hormone involved in regulating sleep, so people take it in pill form to help with insomnia. Reportedly you can get some really strange and vivid dreams if you accidentally take too high a dose.
Serotonin, as far as I know, isn't taken directly, probably because it just won't make the trip through the three billy goats gruff of the digestive tract, liver, and blood-brain barrier. Most medications that deal with serotonin instead try to futz with how your neurons interact with what's already there.
EDIT: Apparently, serotonin in the digestive tract causes uh, diarrhea. That's probably a fair reason why the roundabout method!
I keep thinking Dongrang can't get any slimier without the application of one of the decay ampoules but then he proves me wrong. He needs to be kicked into the tear pool.
There's so much going on here with the guts of K Corp but he is a very effective face to direct these thoughts to. After so much callous violence has already happened, with Dongbaek on her backfoot, Dongrang is still pushing and pushing to just make another problem of his take care of itself like none of this misery has any relation to him whatsoever. And it almost works.
Before this, I had been under the mistaken impression that if you reached that extreme point of psychological breakdown or stress while wearing an extracted EGO, you'd just Corrode instead of Distorting, and conversely you couldn't reach beyond the wielded EGO's power, except... when Dongbaek's will won out against the abyss, it seems like Sunshower just plain burst off her as she seized her own EGO, allowing it to manifest fully.
And what a manifestation it is, for our first display of a character achieving EGO in the Limbus Company story. An extremely cool moment, and a beautiful battle. The overwriting of the landscape is such a slick move on top of a state that already has a very compelling concept, self-actualization and manifestation of the heart's resolve as power. It's... almost disappointing that the Sinners overcome her. This parting for Dongbaek and her fight drip with symbolism, and there are parts that are clear, parts that are less so, and I'm certain the literary references are extremely pertinent with her too, so I expect a big post-Canto analysis post. But more broadly, what's going on in the narrative is pretty... heavy.
The element that stands out to me, the cynical lesson or crushing necessity that also seems at the heart of why the league of inventors broke up so awfully for many of the people involved, is that... the innovations of bright minds, their revolutionary and hopeful creations, aren't allowed to exist for their own sake in the City. They can't be valued only for the joy they bring, or for the simple wishes they indulge and validate; they have to be productive, they have to expand, they have to be commercialized, to change the world based on their monetary and practical value, and they have to be refined, stretched and wringed for every bit of worth they have. Which brings us to the eyeball literally being tortured with televised suffering that is abetted and encouraged for the sake of producing the raw materials for K Corp's miraculous ampoules.
Dongbaek didn't want to make technology - and by extension humanity - into just nothing, she wanted to return it to nothing as a starting point so that the purity of discovery and the simpler elations of invention could be found again. But Yi Sang, personally, does want to just become nothing.
Dante didn't know what they could say to Yi Sang when they took full notice of the figurative hole in his heart. Is there anything they can say now? Can Yi Sang admit that he's not okay with Dongbaek scattering into petals right in front of him? At least, I'd like to believe he can't be as unaffected as Dongrang essentially flaunts in his irreverence.
Dongbaek didn't want to make technology - and by extension humanity - into just nothing, she wanted to return it to nothing as a starting point so that the purity of discovery and the simpler elations of invention could be found again.
Well one thing that certain is that dongbaek demise was a boon to all K corp feathers. After all, if her plan had come to fruition, the consequences would have been much more destructive and terrible than anything Dongrang did. Many players are fascinated by the purity of her thoughts and the beauty of her EGO, forgetting that Dongbaek is not a very good person. And that's putting it mildly.
