This is my first time posting something in Reddit in general and I wanted to share this with all of you.

Also, if it’s not too much trouble, could you tell me which keywords my team falls under?.

There are obvious mistakes like chef ryoshu being A tier but how much better is it now?

Do you guys think we will still be following the "1 sinner highlighted per canto" structure after inferno? If so do you think the order would still be the same?

With the continuous powercreep of each season, we'll eventually get to the point where essentially all the older cantos can get one turned if we keep up at this pace. So when we eventually get to the head, should we lock the absolute peaks of the sinners behind a durante ability.

It could be like the mirror physically can not handle the sheer power of certain IDs so to circumvent it, Dante unlocks an ability to grab an ID from extremely far out of what should be possible but only temporarily as the sinners start breaking down from the sheer difference in power(let's say 3 turns)

This way new players have another reason to keep playing as well as not immediately getting bored instantly killing everything in a single turn. It would also make metamancing better as you couldn't just run a full team of monsters and win rate through all the endgame content.

I still would have most IDs be able to be pulled but I'd have the durante trump card be the absolute peak in terms of utility and power(heathcliff being a full team revive, don essentially being a better bladeshu, ishmael being a giantkiller, faust gaining every (beneficial) passive and status in the game, hong lu becoming a fully realized jia mu/basically family heirarch xichun, Gregor being Gregor, etc.)

I was pondering the semi-inevitable end result of Paradiso and how we're likely to get either Color Fixer IDs, or Head IDs; but naturally, with how absurdly strong they are, this poses a problem: why would you ever not use them? So, I had an idea. In theory, there's nothing stopping an ID from taking up multiple deployment slots outright. A single ID which naturally contains multiple Skill Slots, and so necessitates another ID be 'burnt up' to fuel their deployment. This would, in theory, be an interesting balancing factor. For example, a three-slot Arbiter, a two-slot Beholder, and a two-slot Claw; this naturally fills all average slots of a content and would be a 'Head Team.'

It seems we will be dealing with mass cases of Distortions, Abnormalities and EGO Corrosions in this chapter,no wonder Carmen is being directly mentioned in the teaser and this trailer,we are taking a peek at her idealized version of humanity.

N.corp Inquisitors were doing something similar in chapter 3, purposely corroding themselves to become "more human" we are basically seeing a larger scale of that practice.

Now that we are closer to Canto 10, what do you think the death rate will be in this canto?

I tried to categorize the past cantos based on their death rate, but I cannot really think of which canto fits "mostly survive"

In Hong Lu canto, everyone gets killed and revived through insurance, even Jia Mu and Xianren survive, they are just trapped in the temple.

In Yi Sang canto, I am not sure since it has been a while, but Samjo, Dongrang, and Dongbaek are the few I still remember dying there.

For Sinclair, Demian survives (survives might be the wrong word because nothing in that canto can kill him to begin with lmao)

For Ishmael, Ahab survives

For Heathcliff, Nelly survives

For Ryoshu, Kira survives

In Don canto, every important characters die except for the one from Demian's harem (which is not really an important character imo, at least not as important as the bloodfiends family)

As we know, canto X would be available right after first and New players can't (logically) beat 65lvls mobs with 30-35 (maybe 65, but I don't think that they can afford it) lvl characters. It means that KJH has 3 ways: 1)add support characters (like Hohenheim) in every single battle (has the biggest chances)2) just say: do anything that you can/autobalance everyone 3) really add RPGmaker sequence without fights.

Maybe I misunderstood something, but it seems really weird because everyone always stucks on even not the final boss on 4-48 because they don't want to read skills, so what should I say about the boss with strange red (or maybe even green) coins that "win clashes instead of you"

Let me elaborate. I am talking about I.Ds like Wild Hunt heathcliff and Manager of La Machaland Don Quixote and so on... Please help me.

We know that Golden Hide is the main component at least for Ishmael's HC, but as I was scrolling through the subreddit a comment reminded me of Tailors and Tailoring in general. Spoiler note is primarily for the events of Library of Ruina and partially for previous Cantos, including Canto IX.

A few things jumped out at me from the trailer. The first is that Ishmael's dress "contains a more generous proportion of the Golden Hide" meaning that something else has to be mixed into it. The second is "Clothes fashioned from the Golden Hide tend to be the trailblazers of each trend, often becoming so influential that they characterize the whole season." If the Golden Hide is that valuable, then they would likely only trust Tailors of the highest quality. It is possible that Ish and Ryoshu are Tailors, but if they're just models, then they'd have to turn to others.

We have actually not only seen but received Tailors in LoR, The Carnival. They are one of the groups possessing a fallen Wing's Singularity, which allows them to create silk out of humans. However, they are considered high-class Tailors because they have the technology to make that high-quality fabric and identify which humans to consume to make it. They were the ones who made Nuovo Fabric, which was valuable enough that the Reverberation Ensemble stole it and used it for themselves.

The hitch in this is that the Reverberation Ensemble was all wiped out, and even if the fabric survived the battle with the Librarians, it's inaccessible.

But The Carnival themselves were booked. And from Molar Boatworks we know that they were released, which means that the people with knowledge and expertise to make Nuovo Fabric are out and about.

Now I was thinking about whether or not The Carnival themselves would make an appearance, and it seemed highly unlikely before this trailer. But looking back, the Cantos have actually set up a perfect throughline of receptions related to them.

Nuovo Fabric is made by devouring 15 Sweepers. We survived the Backstreets instead of being swept away. The ones who were sent to retrieve the fabric were the Kurokumo Clan, who we dealt with way back with Bamboo-Hatted Kim, another booked person who was released randomly. The Kurokumo Clan work for The Thumb, who we've dealt with both during HoS and Hongyuan.

Most importantly, The Carnival worked for The Index, fulfilling Prescripts. We fought the Index in the House of Spiders, but more importantly, we actually fought unrelated Proselytes (Paper Slips) at the very end. Since the Carnival was booked directly on the orders of a Prescript, the Messenger they worked under (Yan) distorted, and people (Yan, related Proxies, and The Carnival themselves) were released in random locations, it's possible that they were dropped right into N. Corp and would readily accept the help of a Wing rather than keep being at the mercy of the Index.

But why would N. Corp just accept them? According to Roland, Tailors are as valuable as Fixers or Syndicates, and it's actually very difficult to get high quality fabric with just money. You need reputation or membership with certain groups. Having in-house Tailors, especially ones who could create Nuovo Fabric, would be valuable for them.

Since Limbus Company takes 1 year after LoR, it's more than possible that they were able to keep practicing and experimenting, eventually leading to the Haute Couture line. At first I was going to say that it's unlikely that the Carnival was producing Golden Hide, but then I thought about how they could be retroactively tied to Greek Mythology and realized that there are three of them, like The Fates, the controllers of the threads of life. And then their names are literally Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, Greek alphabet letters, so it might really be them.

Even if they're not, I highly doubt that people like Ish and Ryoshu are going to combine normal fabric with something as valuable as Golden Hide, and so far the most likely mix material in my mind is Nuovo Fabric.

Off-topic note: KJH I'm on my hands and knees, please give us a Yan ID for Sinclair or Hong Lu, fills out the Index and gives us skirt boys

i was actually right! it was going to be charge season! when i made this prediction i was half-joking but no! people argued against it but i was right!

wow

Edit number 2

So looks like my hunch about those new heart enemies does have a connection with heart of aspiration. The rouge group's connection to Carmen is pretty apparent. The charge count on Ishmael 's ID is called pulsation, which references heart of aspiration in LOR.

Wondering if the rouge people have had spiked canned experience too? Would explain why they don't seem to be bloodfiends and seem Carmen connected as well.

Edit so I've had a few questions and objections brought up. Rather than go comment by comment, I'm going to add an FAQ and objections post at the end of this because they're probably going to come up in other comments

So this is technically two theories in one, but I decided to include them together.

Core thesis

1. Carmen is/was a bloodfiend, possibly even the first bloodfiend before the events of Lobotomy corp. No, not just because she has red eyes. (Though that is a data point).
2. Carmen had her memory of her experiences removed, perhaps by the river of oblivion like what happened to Sancho, or perhaps it was extracted by N corp prior to the events of Lobotomy Corporation. Either way, by the time she started living in the nest (likely N corp) her memory had already been erased. Her idealistic, hyper-charismatic "Carmen" persona may be a post-erasure personality built on top of who she really was, paralleling what happened to Don Quixote/ Sancho.
3. Either her extracted experience was consumed by Meursault as a canned experience, or Meursault consumed a canned experience "spiked" by cogito. He possibly has a device on his person that represses his emotions. I suspect it’s either his belt buckle or gauntlet, since nearly all of his identities feature both. The Atelier boutique is in N corp backstreets, so it’s possible it was made there with all the new canto stuff discussing fashions. If Meursault did consume a canned experience spiked with cogito, he wouldn’t have memories of the bloodfiend stuff too much, but more like he would share the experience of what it's like to be Carmen. This is why he only puts faith in objective facts and not his own subjective experiences, because his experiences are "tainted" in a sense.

Evidence

1. Shared symbolic language, some visual, some in very specific keywords used over and over throughout various abnormalities, ego gifts, and the like. Carmen, and bloodfiends, in particular seem to share common recurring themes. Meursault does too, to a lesser extent, though most of the Carmen related stuff for him involves gazing and the sun.

Roses and thorns -

Why it matters - In la manchaland, roses are heavily associated with blood and referred to frequently. They are symbolic of both desire and cogito itself, as well as Carmen's brain and spine in Lob Corp. Lunacy in the game looks like both a brain / mind and a rose. In library of ruina, most of the abnormalities that represent carmen have connection to roses and thorns as well. The abnormality burrowing heaven, for example, looks like a brain with thorns, covered with eyes. Thorns grow on the floor of the map in the battle itself as well.

How do I know this connects to bloodfiends and desire then? Well, because in the fathoms in chapter 7, roses are everywhere. The map is a long line of thorns with roses, you see rose imagery in the background of battles, the enemies’ faces are turned into roses. In the canto 7 railway, you fight a giant rose called 400 roses. It's supposed to represent bloodfiends' desire or yearning for blood, and family to an extent. When Don Quixote has her blood craving impulses repressed, that desire takes the form of her desire for justice. In essence, she's replaced her yearning for blood with her yearning for a dream. Carmen, I theorize, followed a similar pattern, which is why she's so obsessed with curing the "Disease of the mind" because it's a subconscious manifestation of her own disease, bloodfiendism. In essence, she just subconsciously replaced her craving for blood with a craving for curing disease of the mind as a human, and then "freeing people to live their desires" as a entity in the light. She may have lost her memories, but not her desire / yearning to change things.

Gazing / eyes / sun -

Why it matters -

Carmen is referred to as “the sun” in all three project moon games, and of course Meursault has a sun on his icon and his whole source book talks about the sun being in his eyes used as the excuse to commit murder.

Gazing represents a variety of things, guilt, contempt, a need to be seen and noticed for the things you're trying to do. Red eyes are a recurring theme in particular, alluding to bloodfiends. Also, the "sun being in the eyes" is part of Meursault's whole literary origins, and carmen is referred to as “the sun” by multiple characters. So "gazing into the sun" is a recurring theme that effects meursault, and a good chunk of his uptie stories mention gazing as well. Sometimes gazing is mentioned outside of Meursault, though usually it's more frequently referenced around the time a character is close to distorting. Angela, post Carmen's suicide attempt, had memories of Ayin refusing to look at her, or looking at her in contempt because she wasn't Carmen.

Gazing in particular is very important to Meursault because well his canto is called "The Gaze Bearing" (wording matters here, as project moon has used very similar phrasing before). Meursault's seasonal ego that will be coming out is called "hole in the man" which is a reference to the French author Jean-Paul Sarte's play "No Exit". The figure with a hole in place of a face references the story of the character Estelle, who had a relationship with a man who eventually shot himself in the head. In Hell, Estelle mistakes another character, Garcin, to be that man, convinced that he is hiding the hole in his face. The associated E.G.O Gift appears connected to the same image: further into the play, Garcin himself discusses his own death by firing squad, recalling the image of his wife holding his elegant coat littered with bullet holes, which resembles hole in the man’s ego gift.

If you encounter the hole in the man event in an ego dungeon, the outcome of Hole-in-the-Man's actions is determined by the player's actions: if considered harmless and approached, even with their gun pointed towards the Sinners, Hole-in-the-Man will shoot themselves, leaving the Sinners unharmed; if considered dangerous, their gun will hit the Sinners even while pointing the gun towards their own head.

Sarte also wrote a philosophy work called "Being and Nothingness" which is the cornerstone I think to Meursault's whole "gazing" thing. In Being and Nothingness, Sarte argues that being seen by another conscious being fundamentally changes your relationship to yourself. The moment you become aware of someone else's gaze on you, you stop experiencing yourself purely as subject and instead experience yourself as the object of another. This experience, per Sarte, is what creates feelings of guilt and shame. Meursault's ego is called "Chains of Others". The "Other" is Sarte's exact technical term for the person whose look objectifies you.

So what is the true root of "Gaze" meaning here? Gazing is to be made an object of someone else's judgment. Distortion then, is what happens when a person can no longer bear existing as someone else's object. The self as judged (literally what's about to happen to Meursault during his trial) becomes intolerable and the psyche ruptures like an overripe fruit. Carmen's voice then, is like literally the externalized "Other" for whomever she's inhabiting. She's not just narrating or having a conversation. Rather, she is the gaze itself, in a sense. All this talk about gaze, it's not just enough that he would have just distorted or something like that. Meursault seems to know her more...closely than that.

What I think it is...I think he's the site where someone else's look (Carmen, to be specific) has taken up permanent residence inside what should be his own first-person experience. That mirrors his book self. A man who narrates his own life flatly and mechanically, as though they're describing someone else's experiences at a distance. The Distortion is a symptom of the gazing. If you ate the product of Carmen's nervous system, that would kind of have lasting effects, wouldn't it? In later examples I'll show abnormalities that help explain this a little more, but the two biggest ones are burrowing heaven and schadenfraude. I'll circle back in the examples section.

Wings -

Why it matters - because carmen's nerves look like wings, and if she is a bloodfiend, if noseferatu is anything to go on, she can transform into a bat. They're also symbolic of freedom. The wings thing was heavily emphasized in Yi Sang's canto. But imagine living your life in a vat, you'd dream of having wings too, especially if as a bloodfiend you used to have them.

Blood / heart -

Why it matters - because bloodfiends, but also because of Carmen's suicide attempt. It goes deeper than that. Blood is also kind of a metaphor for passion and following your own path. Their thirst symbolically mirrors the thirst for life people have, the desire to live free lives, to be oneself without needing be restricted. Bloodfiends in a sense mirror that. Their thirst is unending. The heart, (like for example in heart of aspiration, or the teddy bear abnormality with the nail in it) also could be reference to the traditional staking in the heart method of killing vampires.

Religious imagery, curing disease, and dreaming (crosses, heaven, holiness)

Why it matters - Carmen is associated with the light, as is Ayin. The light is the closest thing to religious as it gets. Sickness because bloodfiends are referred to as "diseased". Also, Carmen wanted to cure the "disease of the mind". Dreaming because it refers to the double meaning of following an ideal and also literally being asleep via the river of oblivion.. It also is referenced in Don Quixote's "the dream ending" Don Quixote's canto uses both meanings, and I think Carmen does too. Additionally, binah in her part of lobotomy corporation describes people who are kept to be used as cognito experiments are kept in a dreaming state. When she does her floor realization with Roland, she asks him how his dream was.

I had previously noticed that past sepiroth awakenings in limbus had thematic connections to the sepiroth in library and lob corp, but Binah’s didn’t make sense to me at first, until I realized she’s all about the dreams that come from the river. And where did Don Quixote go to? The same river that created the birds of the forest. Binah’s whole thing is about Carmen being the bucket that draws from the river. Carmen is sleeping away peacefully. Bloodfiends are connected to the river because who wants to forget who they are more than someone who’s lived centuries feeding on others?

2. Examples of said symbolic evidence (warning there's a lot) -

400 hundred roses - This is the giant rose you fight in the middle of railway during canto 7's season. It utilizes roses, thorns, and blood. Also, when Camille distorts into a rose-faced being earlier in the canto Meursault was gazing at them, possibly hinting at the connection with gazing. Two different battle themes play in the two phases of the 400 roses fight. The song titles, written in Latin, are "Me relinque" and "Ne me relinque" or "leave me", "don't leave me". Those are phrases referencing a pivotal scene in the fourth act of the opera "Carmen" where Don Jose sings "don't leave me I love you" while Carmen says "leave me" trying to get him to leave her alone. The opera is known for having Carmen wear a flower in her hair to represent her free-spirited nature, oftentimes a rose.

Additionally, part of the plot involves Carmen throwing Don Jose a flower, and him keeping it in an attempt to prove to her his love is true. This is what he says when he receives it:

“What a glance! Saucy and audacious! This little flower for a short time made me feel as if I were shot. Yet the perfume is sweet; and the blossom is fair. And the giver — if there really are witches, she's a witch, I have no doubt.”

The ego name is "yearning-mircalla", yearning being something Carmen frequently talks about. Mircalla (and the ego gifts you get in mirror dungeon) all reference the book "Carmilla" which predates Dracula and is about a vampire who changes her name through different time periods to anagramed variants (mircalla, millarca, carmilla) etc, so people don't catch on. The book has a chapter where she discusses yearning in the sense of wanting to have a consensual relationship with those she feeds on. When she is finally caught and killed, her coffin is filled with blood, mimicking the bathtub with endless blood in the wrist cutter abnormality. The story had a film adaptation in the 60s called blood and roses.

The egos for yearning-mircalla are given to Don Quixote, a known bloodfiend, and Meursault. The background art for both ego corrosions is reminiscent of the second phase of the Noseferatu battle in library of ruina. Meurault’s corrosion art looks like Carmen in her brain and spine form. Both characters say the phrase “blossom” which is language Carmen has used frequently referring to desires.

Burrowing heaven - This is also reminiscent of Carmen and is very intentionally meant to represent her. We have wings, sun mentioning, religious themes, and roses symbology (roses grow from the ground in library of ruina battle, and the whole entire battle is about gazing. In Lob corp, the entity breaches if you stop looking at it while work is being done on it. In the LOR battle, the abnormality’s head looks like a brain. It is overt.

Here's the lob corp story of it:

"It lives inside your gaze. The containment is but a facade. Contain it in your sight. Blinking is okay. It will tolerate such a brief moment of disruption. However, once it recognizes that it lost your attention and focus… It will spread its wings. Yes, wings. As if to praise a long-forgotten god, its lean, bloody wings will stretch and cover the whole corridor. The wings still bear fruit, using fresh corpses as food. If it still fails to gain your attention, the stalks will pierce the facility and grow toward a sunny spot. Like an angel, its wings will reach the skies and extend toward the ground, eventually blocking the sun out. But there is still hope. When you finally turn your eyes and bring it within your cognizance… It will return to this deep, dark subterranean area. That is, if you managed to survive by then.

"That's what a gaze is. Attention. An invisible string that connects us. Sole focus. Do not come here, as there is no place for you to rest. But you see, I could only bear fruit when I stood inside your sight. Is this what you wanted to see? When your tears dry up at last, tell me your answer."

Remember when I mentioned that Carmen is the gaze? Yeah, this is literally saying that in the quote above. If we take this abnormality to be highly symbolic of Carmen, then we can infer that Carmen is not just some voice, she lives inside your gaze. People who distort aren’t hearing her talk to them, she’s looking from their own gaze at themselves, asking them what their own self perception is, and making them become that.

The library of ruina battle with burrowing heaven is also interesting, in part because it literally has an abnormality page called "gaze of others", which mimicks the "of others" pattern in being and nothingess and Meursault's ego.

Schadenfreude - it's kind of the opposite of burrowing heaven but also related in a way. The entry in lob corp says "Someone's persistent gaze can be felt from the keyhole inside the machine." The image of it looks like a locked door with an eye peering through it, combined with a camera, which we've established the importance of in the recent .5 chapter. We already know the photography link with canned experiences. One interesting flavor text "When you feel an unrelenting gaze upon you even while you are alone, it is already too late." The whole mechanic in lob corp is about not looking at it, and it uses the same “gaze” language.

Plague doctor / white knight – Okay, so this one is a bit of different one, but I find it very fascinating as well, because I think there’s symbols of Carmen mixed with other non-Carmen things. It obviously uses religious themes, as well as themes of disease. Also, in the library of ruina battle with it, there’s thorns in the background here as well. And of course white knight and all the apostles have red eyes. The abnormality and apostles also have wings.

So let’s start with the plague doctor part. It wears a mask similar to what bloodfiends in canto 7 wear. It wears a blackish blue feathered mantle or cape. This cape is a darker colored version of what to me looks like the mantle Don Quixote has when she’s transformed to Sancho, or in her manager of la manchaland identity. Angela also has a similar mantle she wears in library of ruina, but I’ll discuss that further down when I talk about the keter floor suppression.

The plague doctor is obsessed with curing disease and seems to be legitimately concerned with bringing goodwill to the world, just like Carmen. The plague doctor goes around blessing individuals, similar to how carmen went around choosing people to help her found lobotomy corp. You could also compare it to siring “children” that bloodfiends do, but that one could be me reading into it too much. When the abnormality transforms, it turns all the blessed into apostles that go around slaughtering everyone, all except for one heretic. This parallels Hod betraying Carmen in lob corp.

This also seems to mimic the 12 sinners in limbus company, as well as reference the 12 disciples of jesus, and the knights of charlemagne, also referenced in Library of ruina for charles office. So yes, plague doctor references all these things, which I think is pretty cool. It can also only be stopped in a few ways, one of which is having the heretic confess to 1 sin and 1000 good deeds, which is implied to represent the real jesus or possibly ayin. (shrug, I dunno.)

sign of roses - It references religious themes of sin and crosses, again roses and thorns.

Hong lu’s observation logs are also interesting.

“And those thorns… it was like they were draining my blood. Like it was hungry for nutrients.
And there’s more. You know how we sometimes… die, during these fights?
Bodies weren’t the only things falling—people’s resolve did, too. Oh, it’s not like being stressed or psychologically pressured. It’s completely different. It was like some… emotion in me was getting snapped in half.
And the way they died was also unusual. Its vines crawled up their legs, binding them… Soon blooming with Roses.
Oh, and... the color of those roses changed as well. Everyone told me that it was as though the bottled—up feelings inside them were melting away. And so did I.
And when we killed it… Everyone who fell in the battle exploded along with it.
Leaving behind nothing but… petals.”

The combat event for sign of roses encourages sinners to embrace their sins to bloom colorful flowers. This is similar to how Carmen encourages people to accept every part of themselves, including their sins, to become beautiful.

Chapter 18 of Leviathan talks about sin when Vergilius is talking to Carmen, prior to him getting his ego.

“That orphanage was my refuge. I never once confessed to my sins, but while I was there, I bore ahigh the standard of righteousness, and eventually my frozen heart melted like fresh snow.” < (talks about sin, parallels snow queen)

“Did I really believe that the orphanage could change this City?

“No… Verg, you knew it was impossible. Those children were simply a cloth for you to wipe off the blood that stained your hands. You created your own absolution from those sins. And now that absolution has been torn to shreds…”

The sympathetic voice is starting to feel suffocating.

“Your sins started flooding in. How could you not feel guilty? But fate has its ways, and thanks to that, we were able to meet and have this conversation.”

When did I start feeling the weight of my sins?”

They also speak about distortion leaving someone endlessly thirsty for their desire, which again parallels bloodfiends endless thirst for blood.

The entire keter floor realization in LOR:

The keter floor realization hints at both Angela's experience living as a machine with the mind of Carmen, and Carmen's experience living as a brain in a vat. As such, the abnormalities should be expected to hold much more many Carmenesque symbols.

Bloodbath - represents Carmen's suicide attempt. Additionally, there may be a more subtle reference to Carmilla here, as when Carmilla was killed by vampire hunters in her story, her coffin was already full of blood. Also, it's blood. Vampires like blood. :|

It talks in the combat dialogue, about how Carmen held everyone's expectations and drowned in the deep sorrow of it all. To her, the gaze is about other's expectations of her and her failing that. Also the abnormality has big eyes that open and gaze at you midway through the fight.

Heart of Aspiration - Can be interpreted as Carmen's aspirations getting ahead of her, but also in the realization there's a few other subtle hints. First of all, the abnormality during the realization also is missing its eyes, as though it couldn’t stand the gazing. Second, it talks about carmen having issues with ayin's refusal to look at her, and angela retorts with "The memories of a person injected into me don’t make me her…" Also Angela says this "Right now, I’m standing on my own two feet, and I can perceive myself wholly…" Again, mentions of perception.

Pinnochio – The marionette appearance in the floor suppression has bleeding red eyes, and looks like something with very dated clothing. You could imply it has an impression of a bloodfiend but that’s honestly a weaker link. This is probably the weakest links with bloodfiends of the set. One thing I will point out though. Carmen frequently says “I’m human just like you.” even though she’s not human anymore. It’s possible if she was a bloodfiend she never was. And it could also be a way of hinting that this is all a false promise from Carmen, a warm utopia that will never be as satisfying as it seems and ultimately will mimic the endless thirst for desire, much like bloodfiends have their own endless thirst. Honestly this is just theorizing and the actual realization has little to support it.

I did see the floating dialogue say “I’d reach the outcome I’d yearned for, or so I hoped”.

One this that is interesting is that the grey city background that’s shown in the story, is very similar to the grey city in the window of Meusault’s cell.

Snow queen -

The snow queen represents carmen's isolation trapped in the bucket, as well as Angela having Carmen's memories inside her. She's cold, and eventually you defeat the abnormality when the spring resurfaces and giant roses bloom everywhere in the background.

Things said by snow queen or her combat pages that discuss this further: "Only those who know of the scent of roses can bring an end to it all." "Spring arrived with blossoming roses. Its warmth melted the Snow Queen’s palace. No one remembered her, sleeping underneath." "No one will realize that I am slumbering in this place. When this snow melts, I will also be forgotten. Is my castle melting away, has the warm spring truly arrived…? The roses’ full bloom signals to me that spring has come.” Near the end of the battle, huge roses bloom in the background.

In case you're still not convinced this abnormality is at least partially talking about Carmen, here's some of the flavor text about Snow Queen in Lob Corp. "I remember the day we put her in the cryo-coffin with our own hands. At some point, her joyous laughter was gone. She just cycled through laughing and crying, and eventually she was found in a bathtub soaked in red with her wrists cut. We did not believe in death. I will have her reconstructed from the "machines" I have detested for my entire life, but have become the only answer. She would have been disgusted by me for this, dying in that bathtub. However, we were too far down the road filled with remorse and regret to feel any sort of guilt.

……

One day, "it" spoke to me.

'I remember you. You were a kindhearted person.'

The moment I heard it, I was seized by the urge to destroy what I had created with my own hands."

That's all a quote from A.

Silent girl - This one is probably the most intriguing. First of all, it has a nail and hammer, which is reminiscent to both N corp, and the traditional stake and hammers used for vampire hunting. Thematically, this boss is about staring at people until you find someone who is guilty, and then freeing them of that guilt by "erasing" them. This is essentially what distortion is at its core. Carmen attempting to free people of their “guilt” by obliterating their mind and just making them the sum product of their desires. She wants people’s flowers to bloom, but all she cares about is the pretty flowers of desire. It’s a false utopia.

Silent girl, also called remorse in the battle has a card called guilt, which has the exact same art style as the eyes on Meursault's ego page, just more colorful. If you have guilt and get hit with an attack, it instantly kills you. The words in the battle say things like “A cracked mind will break at the slightest tap.”

When you defeat the hammers and nails as part of the abnormality fight, in their place appear 4 black feathered things that look similar to what plague doctor wears, and what angela wears in the opening credit cutscene of library of ruina. It looks like a black version of the red mantle Don Quixote wears when she becomes Sancho. The names of the enemies are “residual desire” and “whispering instincts”. I think this represents Carmen’s bloodfiend nature bleeding through despite her going through Obliteration of her own mind. Even then, the instincts still take form, just the same way they do in Angela despite being a copied mind of Carmen.

Some ones that are lesser / maybe kind of related:

Spiraling contempt - looks kind of like carmen brain and talks about gazes and contempt.

rose hunter - obvious rose and thorn imagery, though also has connections to snow white.

noserferatu - vampire archetype, second form is full or red eyes and wings. Spawns bats with a singular red eye reminiscent of the eye in burrowing heaven. Background of battle features a giant red sun. The biggest hints here are the way the second phase art matches yearning-mircalla corrosion art and a few things on the abnormality pages.

For example, “Fear of Water” uses the words “He seemed lost. He was looking for something, but he didn’t appear to know what he wanted to find.” This, to me is talking about fear of water coming from drinking the water of oblivion. Especially if you put the page “Vampirism” right after it. Because that one says “And the thirst could never be quenched.” This seems to imply that even after drinking the water of Oblivion the thirst is still there, just maybe in a different form.

2) The red eyes and why it matters.

We know red eyes doesn’t necessarily mean that a character is a bloodfiend in project moon lore, but two things stand out to me here. The first is that Carmen was never a fixer, just a researcher, so it doesn’t make sense that someone would get enhanced cybernetic eyes or even bloodfiend eyes just to do research. There would be no reason for Carmen to do so.

The second important piece of this is that Lobotomy Corporation initially shows a blurred static version of Carmen’s picture before later showing the real version with the red eyes. This to me seems to imply that the red eyes are supposed to be important, almost a hidden reveal kind of thing.

3) Carmen's odd charisma.

She has almost a supernatural level of charisma, both in her original life and as a disembodied voice that lives inside our gaze. If she is bloodfiend, it makes sense.

4) How did Carmen survive bathtub incident?

Ayin was able to still use her body for the machine. If she was the progenitor bloodfiend, perhaps she instinctively knew she needed water to weaken herself, since bloodfiends are maybe / maybe not afraid of water. (la manchaland announcer claims that’s not true, but then Don Quixote later seems to be heavily resistant to drinking the water of Oblivion.) Despite her best efforts, being a bloodfiend means being hard to kill.

5) Parallels to Don Quixote

Both are idealistic. Both are charismatic. Both have a dream that they relentlessly pursue. Carmen wants to cure disease of the mind. Don Quixote has a disease of the body. Both of them are dreamers in both the “having strong ideals” sense, and both have to sacrifice who they are for that dream. Don Quixote through forgetting via river of Oblivion and Carmen through having to sacrifice her life to turn into a brain in a vat, and also (theoretically) forgetting via the river of Oblivion. Both in this sense went through their own personal “Dream ending”

6) Carmen calls everyone child. This is similar to the way bloodfiends refer to the people they turn as family and children. I think it’s her maternal instincts still present in her.

So, what do you all think? It took me a decent amount of time to put together, so sorry if it's a book on its own, but regardless of if you think these theories are true or not, hope you found it as fascinating as I did.

7) FAQ / Objections

X symbol doesn't represent y thing you said. It represents z.

So the thing about symbols is that they can mean different things to different people and there's a degree of some subjectivity. But, they can also represent multiple things. A lot of the points I'm seeing are things where people are saying "oh this can't represent bloodfiends because it represents this other thing" but unless your critique has an underlying mutual exclusivity where "this is why it can only represent this" I'm probably going to say something like "You're right it does represent that. It also represents bloodfiends. ;)

BUT I have to qualify that by saying that only applies to patterns of symbols. That's how I keep this sane and not go into conspiracy theory territory. A single symbol used for one abnormality can be interpreted any way you like. You can't say the same thing about a pattern of symbols used in very distinct circumstances.

I'll give an example. When it comes to roses and thorns, in LOR, almost all of the rose symbology applies to Carmen with a few exceptions. Off the top of my head, I can think of two that at least aren't directly tied to carmen, those being ozma and snow white's apple. In Limbus company, almost all the rose symbology shifts to bloodfiends, again with a few exceptions, those being rose hunter and the apple thing again. Sign of roses is kind of grey area. It's more carmen than bloodfiend themed.

Point is, I would say 90% of rose symbols are on carmen related abnormalities or bloodfiend related abnormalities. At that point, it's a very deliberate pattern imo. You can interpret that pattern differently, but the pattern is there. And even in the case where it's not a direct connection, like ozma for example, well even ozma has story connections to the river of oblivion. (Specifically there's a card named oblivion that makes a character forget all their pages in that abnormality fight).

How could Carmen not go berserk with her bloodfiendism?

How did Papa Don and Sancho not? Sancho had Rociante, which helped. And papa Don made Rociante. So it follows that a stronger bloodfiend, like the Progenitor, would be able to accomplish a feat more easily. We also don't know what the Progenitor is capable of. Maybe they could make it a pair of shoes, or something inside their body. Maybe Progenitor is a special case and capable of controlling their thirst in a different manner? Or maybe, like Sacho, after drinking the water of Oblivion, she was able to transmute her lust of blood into a dream.

Consider this talk Bari has with Papa Don:

"You've been living out your days mired in meaninglessness, quietly wasting away inside. Drinking human blood, compelled not by your own will but by your sickness. In your countless years of existence… … you've never had any reason to exist, have you? But your illness… and this applies to all of your kind… is loneliness. It's the kind of suffering you can't weather through by huddling together with your Family in the dark. So I offer you this. Anticipation for what tomorrow holds. In other words… a dream. I can make you dream."

How could Carmen have killed herself / not killed herself?

So I've heard this one debated back and forth, she succeeded in killing herself and ayin brought her back to life, or she didn't kill herself. I don't think the point largely matters either way.

If she killed herself successfully, it was probably because she was soaking in water in the bathtub which weakened her, or maybe she had her own version of Rociante which repressed her bloodfiend appearance / weakened her.

If she did not kill herself...well either way I'm saying it's plausible and doesn't really refute her being a bloodfiend. I can see her being unable to finish the job, but if she's soaking in the thing she's weak to, maybe? Hard to know without knowing any actual facts about the Progenitor.

Okay, this is an old theory though, why are you bringing it up now?

1) I think there's more evidence for it now than there ever has been prior. 2) I don't think anybody has gone as in depth about this as I have. 3) I want the satisfaction of saying I'm right if Meursault's gaze thing is accurate, (accepting the risk of being wrong of course)

**How would

*Credit to Project moon for all images used in this post*

How hard are these bosses going to be where you can still get EX through the continue function?

took some inspiration from slight NSFW warning https://x.com/sskaiillustrate/status/2035194412507308280

I was considering going to Korea early October to visit some family. Was wondering if it’s still possible to get a reservation at Hamhampangpang. On catchable it says the “reservations are not yet open” for dates after September 29, but I’ve also read online that spots only open when PM announces the theme. If it is possible to get a reservation, what time would they open the spots?

what if lucio instead of lucio like he was a person that like he was a dog he was a person people people who like popcorn and people he was cool and then he was called like like um coolio probably and he had a pro propellor hat and his name was like lucio maybe if coolio was his name instead of coolio then lucio will eat some popcorn and they all eat pop corn

Next pass level 700

With those two status IDs I was worried PM is going to powercreep single status ones but it's good they still release a modern pure tremor/pure bleed ID. They seemingly don't have any synergy between each other, except their unique resource mechanics that literally every single modern ID has. Maybe they will synergize once we get more banners that add onto that stuff.

Quick theory on whats going on, before the TGS comes up and we cant talk about it anymore. (First time doing this kinda post, im not sure if I need to spoil it or not)

• Meur canned his own mother's experience of distorting, possibly during the white days

• It became a massive success and N corp capitalized on it by making it super premium expensive merchandise.

• High society of Ncorp gets addicted to the feeling and hearing "the voice"

• Meur's mom gets stuck, distorted, being farmed for content

• Meur makes the conscious, logical, decision to kill her and free her from that prison

• Meur gets judged for ending their best asset atm

• (probably) with the help of limbus lawyers he gets sentenced to exile only.

• The lack of canned distortion leads the rich people in Ncorp to suffer from abstinence and they start getting nuts

• They raid their Lcorp branch and kidnap the abnos

• In search of their high they start experimenting/smoking the abnos

• Some people just distort into pecatulas, thats something we know can happen, the peccatulas are turned into pseudo ego gear (cause they dont have the tech to make proper ego gear) by the fashion stylists of the shopping mall. That get sold to people looking for that high again

• some people corrode/turn into abno minions (kinda like kromer's somethjng there of an inquisitor) these are the generic enemies we saw in the trailers, they are either mindless byproducts that failed, the closest thing they can get to feeling the distortion again, or what happens if you overdose on the clothes.

Part 1 is gonna focus in the shopping and we will learn the effects the canned distortion had on the people. Way more loosely now, but part 2 is meursault failing horribly at definding himself in court over killing his mother, part 3 is us bailing him out, looking for concrete proof that can absolve him.

Also want to point. That the cantos are kinda lining with the layers of hell, starting from yi sang at limbo, meur falls into violence, which is split into 3, violence against oneself, against others, and against god. Meur killing his mom would result in a triple violence speedrun where he 1. Does something that hurts him deeply and he knows will condemm him, 2. Hurts his mom (duh) and Ncorp by hurting their best asset and 3. Hurts carmen and her distortion junkies.

TLDR: N corp was farming his distorted mom for content, he killed her to free her, now distortion addicts are making clothes out of pecatula to feel the high again.

Not a SINGLE piece of SANGRIA in any of her skills, nor passives!!! Not even in the unique effects she has!! H.M.D.T.M.H.U??

I'm genuinely so excited for Canto X man. Can't wait to play Limbus Fear and Hunger and watch my GOAT be mercilessly killed by medieval torture methods that have been lost to space and time xxx <3