#except rodion he gets no sex | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

texasthoughtsaboutnothing · 4 months

Text

The Stranger and my thoughts on where each LCB Sinner is at (Long)

Hey, I actually sat down and read L'etranger, Meursault's source novel. I've got some fucking feelings about it, especially relating it to Limbus Company and what it might mean for his Canto in like 2 years.

Firstly, you should read or listen to this book. It's short, surprisingly punchy, and easy to follow. I (probably) don't have autism but I can absolutely see a read of this where the character does or is neurodivergent in some other way; beyond his relationship and evaluation of social queues and norms he also seems to deal with sensory issues. There are better people than me who should talk about this and I'm probably not adding a lot to the conversation but keeping this reading in my head for the climax added an extra layer of discomfort (intentional discomfort for the benefit of the story's message, I should say) to the whole book. But It's worth experiencing even if you disagree with that reading or have a different one.

Limbus Brainrot/Spoiler stuff from here on in.

There's always the question of where exactly each Sinner is in their story as they're on the bus. Their stories have been reinterpreted and/or jumbled in ways that make it fun to guess, so to go over each Sinner and where they are based on what we know or my theories:

Yi Sang - I'm not gonna front, I don't really get The WIngs, but this seems like a Good End AU for him. He already escaped his "Wife's" control and the sunless room and is now flying again (metaphorically, or maybe literally? i dont know help me).

Faust - Likely in the middle of the part where she's using Mephistopheles' power to do good in the world and prior to her being damned to hell. Side note, she's last to get a Canto and I bet it's not a coincidence that (afaik) she and Dante are the only two with Hell in their stories directly. My long shot call is that Faust is also Beatrice and there will be so much DantexFaust ship art in 2026.

Don Quixote - The biggest enigma. La Sangre de Sancho has gripped the imagination of the fandom and I am no exception. She's next after Heathcliff so we'll get her some time in August at the latest and I can't wait. My best guess is she's currently gallivanting and will be forced home in her Canto, assuming Don is Sancho theory isn't true. Praying her Canto is called The Impossible.

Ryoshu - In Hell Screen, the reason the painter is obsessed with torture is that he can only paint what he has seen and is trying to paint the Buddhist Hell. In his quest for his art he destroys his life and those around him, and ends up committing suicide over it. But there is a villain in the form of the Lord who beyond driving the story by requesting the screen in the first place is guilty of SA and murder. I'm expecting we're post story; the Lord is related to the five fingers, the daughter might be recast as a friend or something, and the sword Ryoshu carries is likely the screen. Nothing revolutionary in my guesses here, but it's either going to be that straight-forward or insanely abstract, where she's the lord and the painter and the daughter and the screen and the sword is the monkey or some shit.

Hong Lu - I have not yet read Dream of a Red Chamber, it's next on the list. Forgive me!

Heathcliff - Oh boy. Like many, I expect he is post-spurning by Catherine and is on his journey for his fortune on the LCB. So, his Canto will be about coming home to a beloved who is with someone else. Yes, the beloved blorbo will suffer for my amusement. Let's go 3 hours Heathmael sex scene!

Ishmael - We now know her story already kinda happened, as many expected, making this a bizarre sequel to Moby Dick. I think it gave PM a lot of room to do whatever they wanted to while still sticking to the themes of the story. Already wrote about what I loved about this and the recontextualizing of Ahab as a whale unto herself (which I don't actually know if it's in the original novel, but it wouldn't surprise me).

Rodion - A weird one. Her inciting incident happened, the murdering of the landlord/pawnbroker, but the unintentional death of the innocent sister was shifted to the entire damn block. So if I had to guess she's in the period after her crime trying to avoid being caught, but no police officer allegory has really been introduced yet. I read Crime and Punishment years ago so I can't say for certain but it feels the most loosely adapted and suffers a tad for being part of the intro. Rodya's story is in no way finished so it's up in the air. Praying for a Petrovich just so people can meet the OG Columbo.

Sinclair - Still need to read Demian, but I have a rough understanding of the plot. Also unfinished in his story, Sinclair has a long way to go to his self-realization. This feels more intentional however, I remember someone made an observation of Cinqlair as representative of his drunken college years where he's popular but unfulfilled, and I think we can extend that to all of his IDs. He seems to have the most potential of all the Sinners, so much so that I wouldn't be surprised if there's a mirror world where he's a Color unto himself. I digress, the point is he's pre Frau Eva (who if she turn's out to be the Purple Tear I will lose my mind) who is also called Beatrice at some point so what's up with that PM?

Outis - Another big mystery, especially as she isn't Odysseus but Outis, a name referencing a particular part of the Odyssey with the Cyclops. I have to imagine she's on the Odyssey, journeying home after the Smoke War (which might have some parallels with the Trojan War beyond the obvious). It's interesting all the Greek myth named Abnormalities are Hospital themed, might be something there but nothing I can parse from my limited knowledge of Greek society and folklore. While she' might be a traitor, I'm thinking she's joined Limbus Company to hide while on her journey; she might be wanted dead by something and is concealing her identity after what happened in the war.

Greg - Again, a character post-story. He was locked in a room, he metamorphized, and... well he's alive? So we've diverged from the source novel, as it's taken the allegorical meanings and made them more literal, but Hermann is still around and a major player so who knows where this will go?

Meursault - I have so many thoughts. Meursault could be anywhere in his story, but I'm going to guess it's one of two places. First guess, we're completely pre story. His Canto opens with him getting a message that Maman died today, or maybe yesterday, he doesn't know. So the whole story plays out over the course of the Canto. But more likely, and my prediction, is that he's currently in "jail" awaiting his execution or acquittal. He has already murdered a man (or done some other crime) and instead of being tried for that, he has been tried and sentenced for his peculiarities of character. Bound in the chains of others, the multitudes have tightened their hold (I'm very clever and not cringe at all).

So I have to wonder what light blinded him, overwhelmed him so much that it led to his crime? The Bright Nights and Dark Days are an obvious choice, and I'm not the first to suggest it. Perhaps he distorted? Anyway, his story ends with him having given up on acquittal and instead hoping for a crowd of people hating him as he approaches the guillotine. I'm super interested in how this will play out in Limbus, especially as he must survive for gameplay purposes.

Also, Meursault is so horny. Like, oh my god. Half of his thoughts are of Marie, specifically of wanting her and all the connotations that contains. He spurns God in the face of a Chaplain, saying that He is worth nothing compared to a single hair on a woman's head. Meursault is not a romantic but not just some horndog either, his desire for sex and women and their bodies feels like an extension of his worldview centered on the immediacy of life and not just debauchery or hedonism. It's a part of the idea life is lived as today, yesterday, and tomorrow, and there is joy and happiness in that simplicity. I feel like this will get cut for Limbus but I hope it isn't, I want Meursault to casually admit he desires every Sinner on the bus carnally (yes the men and NB too, probably just a HC but I do believe that the City is a binormative society based on its already loose relationship to gender identity).

So uh, that's the thoughts so far. Merry Christmas, I guess.

#limbus company #project moon #the stranger #this was meant to be a paragraph

46 notes · View notes

astrarche-x · 3 years

Text

I read “Fangirl” by Rainbow Rowell after I finished 2 books I got for Christmas. It was staring at me from my sister’s shelf and I’ve heard something good about this book, Rowell is also quite famous YA author, so I decided to give it a try.

It certainly didn’t match my expectations; in fact, my disappointment grew with every page and I grew tired of the heroine, Cath - an introverted first year college student and fanfic writer- and other characters.

Why so?

- At first, I thought that snippets of Cath’s fanfics are a cool addition to the book, because it’s such a crucial part of this character, and I also thought that they will be somehow related to the events happening in-universe. But they weren’t! They didn’t help me as a reader to understand Cath, didn’t expand my understanding of the events of the plot, didn’t really give me any “story within a story” because they were so fragmented (I know there is a whole book about Simon Snow, but that’s not relevant now, is it?) and I already felt like I knew Cath’s writing style after like 3 examples, so idk why there were so many.

- I felt like the characters don’t develop at all. And what’s the point of the story if it’s not character development? In the end of the book, the only thing different from the starting point is the fact that the heroine has a boyfriend. She isn’t more open, she’s still talking to like 2-3 people (and writing is not like a movie, adding a character doesn’t cost you money, right?) and it’s not like those relationships change a lot. Cath and her roommate Reagan? They form a bond in the middle part of the book and it stays the same. Wren, Cath’s twin sister? They lose contact during the plot and Wren has a new friend to prove she’s a separate person, but eventually they make amends and sisters are together again. The other friend disappears. No big talk about being separate people but still needing each other, no reflecting on that in any way; they make amends and then Wren is just there, spending a lot of time with Cath like her own life never happened. Relationship with dad and mum? Stays the same, even though they were written in a way that suggests big plot points.

- Levi, Cath’s boyfriend. He doesn’t have an inner life. He’s just a smiling, nice guy with learning difficulties. But Cath can always feel safe with him and count on him; honestly, how is he different from her ex? Also some can say that Cath and Levi were cute tohether and they kind of were, but for me it was too much sugar and when their relationship became the focal point of the plot I couldn’t take it anymore. How many times a writer can describe the same physical features with exactly the same words? Like yeah, we get it, the character is in love, change the subject.

(Also his attempts at unneccessary chivalry... ugh. Not cute).

- Nick from the library. He was actually the guy I was shipping Cath with (and myself as well, if I had the chance). They had so much chemistry! But it was also strongly hinted at that he won’t be the endgame; in fact, I don’t really see the point of his existence as a character. He’s Cath’s crush, but after he stops playing this role, he’s mentioned only twice and then dropped completely. But the point of him being the crush and the writing buddy/rival is not even relevant! It’s not reflected in Cath in any way except that she’s a bit sad.

- Cath doesn’t develop as a writer. Actually, after reading a few sentences about how writing is so important for Cath etc, I thought that I would see more of her as a writer, but mostly it looks like “...and she wrote 5000 words that night”. No description of creative process. Talk about how her life influences her writing: 2 times (at the end of the book). Pressure from readers who? I don’t know her. Also I was really surprised that she said “I only ever want to write fanfiction, I want nothing of my own!” - like... who would say that? Sure, they are people who just write fanfiction as a hobby, but there are others who start with fanfic and then create their own stories, so if Cath is an established fanfic writer and went on to study English lit and take creative writing class, then having her say something like this sounds super fake.

- Cath herself was a boring protagonist. And I’m not saying this because she was an introvert. Lots of introverts make interesting protagonists; take, for example, Offred from The Handmaid’s tale. Cath is boring not only because she literally sits in her room and cries for like half of the book (giving me Rodion Raskolnikov vibes and he annoyed me like hell), but also because so little of her inner life is described in detail. Like, c’mon, I’ve opened this book, I want to know what’s going on in her head. But instead of paragraphs of her thoughts, we are only given a sentence, maybe two or three. And one of them sounds often like “she thought about all the reasons she had to dislike their mother” but then none of said reasons is listed, making this sentence effectively worthless. Very often Cath’s remarks about other people are repeated; I don’t even want to count how many times she noticed that Levi smiled a lot. And then she noticed noticing it; and then she noticed him smiling even more times. Seriously that’s his only feature? (That and his hair). Because this makes the heroine very unobservant; I don’t want to look at the world through her eyes, because it’s nothing there to see.

- Cath as a (titular) fangirl: she doesn’t really interact with the fandom during the course of the actions in other way than writing and that’s... unusual? Who limits themselves to only one form of fan content? I know she had merch and fanart, but she doesn’t interact with other fans (except for her sister and a random stranger). She also mentions having internet friends at the very beginning, which I assume would be very likely for a fanfic author of her status. Then her roommate says “internet friends are not real” (yes. literally.) and Cath’s internet friends are not mentioned again, because, you know, internet friends are irrelevant to your real life. Generally this book makes it look like belonging to a fandom was about the merch you own and maybe writing your fanfic, if that’s what you use as a coping mechanism for real life. No talk of reading other fanfics, visiting sites like Tumblr or other blogs, no interaction with other fans, no conventions, stuff like this. It made fandom look like something for sad and lonely people, and while it kind of is, it’s also a source of joy and satisfacton for many; in Cath’s case, I only saw it as a straw to which a drowning man clutches.

(Also I found it kinda weird that sex in this book is like Schrodinger’s cat: existent and nonexistent at the same time. Does Cath write erotic scenes? I guess. Is it adressed? Yes. And then immediately dismissed in order not to talk about it. She also wants it and doesn’t want it at the same time, which is fine irl, but confusing in a book, especially when she doesn’t reflect at that confusion much).

I thought I will see in Cath a glimpse of myself - first year of uni was also stressful for me (even though I’m certainly not an internet-famous writer). But she was almost extremely unrelatable. And then I started comparing “Fangirl” with “Loveless” by Alice Oseman, which has very similar setting - first year, loneliness, outgoing roommate, introverted protagonist having trouble opening up, breaking of a sisterly bond, fanfiction (even though Georgia, the protagonist, only reads it). I’d recommend “Loveless” a lot more. You won’t get much talk of the writing process, but hey, you weren’t getting it anyway. You will be given queer characters instead.

My final thought was that I’m probably just too old for “Fangirl”. That it was written for 17-year-olds who are anxious about going to college. But my sister is 17-year-old who is anxious about going to university and she didn’t like this book either (this post is brought to you by our displeased brainstorming last night), so it’s probably just bad, shallow writing.

#fangirl rainbow rowell #rainbow rowell #fangirl book review #well... sort of #loveless #book ramblings #follow up to that angry post from earlier

7 notes · View notes