an incorrect Limbus Company opinion

07 Jan, 2026

last modified 3 months ago

This is a complete rewrite and re-argument of a post I've been drafting and re-drafting, distilled down to the argument I'm actually confident about.

I would like to start by establishing context.

First of all: this post is going to be tilted as fuck. I'm going to be discussing two fictional characters who disagree with each other, and I am significantly more on the side of one rather than the other, despite recognizing that neither of them is in the right. The reason I strongly prefer one of the characters' sides over the other, too, is petty and tilted. I see a lot of people take the other character's criticisms of my babygirl as gospel, and I believe that this is a critical lack of reading comprehension being exhibited.

I have tempered my argument significantly since its earliest days. After much discussion with friends and much rewriting, I have come to accept that the L's these characters take during this moment are equal, and that I can't exactly Devil's Advocate my babygirl out of her problems. However, I can wish painful death upon the character who pointed them out. I will be doing as much. I believe in women's wrongs and in women being the worst, ever; this is true.

This post is also about a gacha videogame named Limbus Company. We will have the disclaimer. Heed my words: You should never pay to gamble in a gacha videogame. If you're gonna spend money on Limbus Company, which is a decision you can make as an adult, please do not fucking buy Lunacy V-bucks to gamble with. Buy something that will actually give you immediate return on investment.

For example, you can buy and speedrun the battlepass, and then use its rewards to shard almost any of the characters you desire. Every single unit shows up in the shard dispenser after their banner has passed, even Walpurgisnacht identities (though they're only available during Walpurgisnacht, but that event comes around every couple of months). If you're gonna be playing the live service videogame, you might as well just wait. I'm serious. If you wanna support the devs, you should fly to Korea and eat at their restaurant. And e-mail me a french fry from it, please...

Remember: It is always morally correct to not spend money on your random media obsessions, especially if you have ADHD and are hyperfixating. Digital piracy isn't just a right; it's an obligation! Basically disability accomodation, really. (That's a joke, I swear...)

Let's talk about Canto II of Limbus Company.

Limbus Company's story is divided into Cantos, each of which focuses on a particular member of its extremely limited roster of twelve playable characters. Cantos I, II and III were released in the game's launch, and later Cantos have arrived one by one.

Cantos I and II share an interesting trait: neither of them are quite finished. They focus on two characters —Gregor and Rodya, respectively— but don't fulfill their arcs, force them to confront a major enemy from their past, make them resolve the pending tragedies from their past, nor encourage them to develop their characters further.

In Canto II, we meet Sonya, a figure from Rodya's past. Sonya and Rodya have an argument, and Sonya rehashes the great big tragedy of Rodya's past in front of the audience and the rest of the cast.

As far as I can tell, the common takeaway for the fandom from this chapter is that Sonya is correct in all the criticisms he makes of Rodya, that he mogged her, that she's the "bad end" of her life, that she's solely in the wrong in the situation, and that the selfish motive behind her actions is worthy of mockery.

However, my experience reading this Canto is different.

Initially, I felt the inverse. I thought Sonya was in the wrong, that he was an outright villain, and that he's worthy of mockery. I have tempered these feelings somewhat. But I still want to argue in favour of something: that he's full of fucking bullshit.

Or, better put: I want to argue that Sonya and Rodya are guilty of the exact same things, but Rodya has the capacity to recognize and grow beyond her selfishness, while Sonya completely lacks the ability to do either.

This post was originally titled "an incorrect opinion" because I wanted to argue the first point, and I knew —somewhere deep within me— I wasn't quite right. I went through a bunch of drafts trying to make sense of my own feelings and opinions and perceptions, revising the canon material and consulting with friends. I considered a bunch of angles. Ultimately, the one outlined above is the one I'm sticking with.

The title, however, is still the same: "an incorrect opinion". This is partially because I'm just kinda fond of it, but there's also another reason. I'm a relatively new fan, see, but I've been lurking for several months by now, and I haven't see a single person outline the points I'm about to make. So I'm making this post not just to share this extremely pointed and biased analysis, but also as a call to action: e-mail me and tell me how I'm wrong. I'm for sure wrong on something, and I want other Limbus Company players to tell me how.

The obligatory disclaimer, here: I haven't played through the Time-Killing Time Intervallo yet, and I've heard that it expands on Rodion and Sonya's characters and their conflict. My excuse is that I've been playing for three months, and I spent a fourth of that time grinding Mirror Dungeons nonstop to shard certain units, so as to decimate a couple particularly painful early game bosses. I'm currently beginning Canto V, though, so I'm on my way.

I've also not yet read through the novel these characters' existence is in reference of — yes, Rodion and Sonya are named after the protagonist and the love interest from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, and yes, they're gender swapped so that Rodion is a woman and Sonya is a man; keep up. But also I'm not worrying too much about Crime and Punishment because, uh. Well. This game references a lot of classic lit and it does so in pretty liberal ways. It takes its freedoms. (Don't worry about what they did to Don Quixote, just know Cervantes probably would've hated it which is fine...)

Here's my game plan for this post. I want to outline exactly how Rodya and Sonya parallel each other, including a whole bunch of pointing out dickish things Sonya does that I've seen nobody call him out on. Then I'll use the evidence to explain my thesis. I will finally point out a (mostly unrelated) misconception the fandom has, that I think affects their perception of Rodya. If I have the time, I'll comment on a thing or two about Rodion that I've noticed and I enjoy. And finally, I'm gonna post a character tierlist I made at the end of Canto III when I first drafted this post.

If that sounds good, let's proceed!

This is the point where, in other posts I've drafted and never finished, I try to explain what the fuck Limbus Company even is. I have decided not to do this. Look at Wikipedia. I'm not going to bloat this post further. That way lies madness, madness I tell you...

However, I will be gracious. I'll catch everyone up on Rodion's backstory, as explained to us during Canto II. If you'd like to see the full text by yourself, you can find it on the wiki. And if you'd like to skip ahead to my argument: here you go.

In Canto II, the Limbus Company Scooby Gang, including one Rodion "Rodya" Raskolnikov, head to a place to retrieve a McGuffin known as a Golden Bough. The Golden Bough has some level of reality-warping capabilities and a tendency to attune itself to the minds and memories of certain people, creating dungeons that mix the present with the attuned person's traumatic past.

At the Golden McGuffin extraction location for Canto II, the Limbus Company Magic Bus Gang meet a mysterious white-haired guy, who seems to know Rodya. He introduces himself as Sonya; he's a childhood friend of Rodya's, and the leader and founder of an organization known as the Yurodiviye, which aims to uplift the proletariat of the oppressive hypercapitalistic dystopian City they all live in and dethrone its upper class. Sonya is also looking for the Golden Bough, planning on using its magic bullshit to create a beautiful new world where nothing bad has ever happened.

Once Sonya and the Limbus Company gang have both reached the Golden Bough, it's revealed that it has attuned to Rodya, constructing a giant castle of ice with odd shadows inside its walls. This prompts Sonya, and later Rodya, to begin telling the tale of Rodya's backstory.

Some time ago, Rodya had been a member of the Yurodiviye alongside Sonya, and had fought against class-based discrimination in the City. She was always significantly more violent than Sonya, who had always been more of a "theory" type of guy. Rodya, meanwhile, was more of a "joke about grinding the rich into pigsfeed" kinda gal.

One particular figure in their neighbourhood whom Rodya really fixated on was a wickedly greedy tax collector.

It's important here to pause to clarify: the City is a complete corporatocracy. The entirety of the City's government is made up of privately held companies. The whole thing is a Kowloon Walled Company Town. Every District of the City is entirely under corporate control, and it's those businesses who levy taxes on the City's inhabitants. The citizens of the City are paying taxes to Jeff Bezos, is what I'm saying. So you know, no particular hate to public funding, but this is something else.

Anyway, if you've read Crime and Punishment (or its Wikipedia page) you can probably guess what happened. After the taxes were raised and raised and raised, and after approximately four days of District-wide starvation, Rodya said "fuck it" and went to the tax collector's door with an axe. Rodya asked the tax collector to simply share her¹ money first. The tax collector told her thus:

“Poor Rodion, dear, you seem to be under the delusion that you’re some sort of savior… Demanding my money so brazenly to my face won’t change anything.”

And she refused to part with a single cent. So Rodya killed her with the axe. And stole all her money. And used it to buy several weeks' worth of food for her neighbourhood.

However, Rodya didn't think her actions through, and so there were terrible consequences to her actions.

As it turns out, the reason the tax collector was untouchable was because her sibling was a member of the criminal organization known as the Middle Finger². Who is famous within the City for being both hair-trigger and extremely retribution-happy. And so the Middle showed up and murdered quite literally everybody —men, women, elderly, and children— in Rodya's hometown, except herself and Sonya. As, you know. Payback for murdering the tax collector. And to make an example out of them.

So after several days of feasting, Rodya woke up and saw all her neighbours getting hardcore murderized.

Because of these events, Rodya left the Yurodiviye; I don't recall if Sonya was the one to kick her out or if she left of her own volition, but the vibe is very much that they both wanted her out. And then she joined up with the Scooby Gang, and the rest is irrelevant.

Earlier, I said Sonya "prompted" Rodya to share her story. Throughout Rodya's tale, Sonya interjects to keep her on topic, and to make sure she doesn't lie about her involvement or misrepresent it; at least, according to Sonya's perspective on the issue. His interjections can be... pretty mean:

SONYA: So, what did you do?
RODYA: …Gimme a sec. Can’t I pull out of this now?
SONYA: This is a confessional created for you as a result of the Golden Bough resonating with your psyche.
Moreover, a confessional’s purpose is to lead a sinner to the path of penance.

After Rodya's story is done, Sonya draws a certain conclusion about why Rodya acted, accusing her of a certain quality, and Rodya fails to deny it. Sonya asks Rodya to re-join him and the Yurodiviye, and to use the Bough's magic to wish for a world where their neighbours were never killed and also where class divide doesn't exist and everyone is happy.

His specific words are:

“It’s all fine, Rodya. For you see, Rodya. To change the world, I perused hundreds of books and thousands of documents… And I met various people all around the City. Picturing a world where the oppressed can escape from the exploitative dominion of the ruling class and find liberation in the truest sense. [...] …Join hands with me, and I’ll give you that world as a gift. As if nothing up to this point had ever happened at all.”

Rodya rejects Sonya, however. She says:

“How to put it… I don’t wanna bathe in warmth just yet. I feel like I oughta be in this cold a bit longer. Think I’ll stay this way until I find my answer to the question of when it’ll be okay to warm myself.”

"This cold" being, of course, in reference to her guilt and shame over her own rash, impulsive actions. See, Rodya wants to brood for a little longer before she fixes her mistakes. Feel bad for herself instead of acting to change, if you were feeling uncharitable. Sonya certainly would agree with this assessment.

The tale of Rodya's backstory ends here; Sonya concedes the McGuffin and then the story moves on. But I want to examine the exact words said throughout. So let's run it back.

The Good Stuff

Here's the points I'm not arguing. These are things we can all agree on from simply reading the text of the story, I think. Let's revise:

• Murder is bad.
• Even if this particular murder were justified, Rodya acted like a rash dumbass and she shouldn't have pissed off the Middle.
• Rodya 100% went to the tax collector's house with the intent of killing her.
• Rodya's understanding of leftist theory or any kind of economics or politics or sociology is not great; she's into revolutionary stuff more out of revenge (wrath) and material desire (gluttony) than anything.
• And Rodya does, in fact, want to be a special hero; and this indeed was a good part of the reason why she committed murder.

This is what Sonya is accusing Rodya of throughout the flashback: capital chuunibyou-ism³.

“No, you held that axe for your own good. You couldn’t stand the fact that you weren’t anyone special.”

“I’m well aware of how much pain and guilt you’ve been burdened with ever since then. Living with the realization that you really weren’t so different from the foolish cottager after all.”

Sonya argues that Rodya's shame over her actions doesn't derive from, y'know, getting all of her neighbours killed, but rather from having realized just how dumb and foolish her actions were.

Furthermore, Sonya also states his belief that Rodya acted not out of selflessness, but out of a desire to be "anyone special". He says that Rodya "loved yet looked down on" her neighbours, that she didn't actually care. Sonya says that Rodya didn't want her neighbours to not die; or if she wanted it, it was a secondary concern compared to making one, big, splashy move and suddenly resolving everyone's problems.

And this is where I get fucking tilted. Because Sonya is no different.

If Rodya wants to feel like a special heroine, then Sonya wants that but a billion times over. Just like how Rodya wanted to solve her neighbourhood's problems by killing a single person, Sonya wants to strike once and change the entire City, and it's convenient for him if it's for a "good cause", not because he believes in that cause, but because it makes him look good.

Sonya just picked up this whole class war thing and is wearing it for his own selfish purposes, like Rodion, or like how Dongbaek wears the TLA in Canto IV — but worse, because Dongbaek's just doing it to return to a romanticized past and doesn't give a fuck if her name is forgotten afterwards, it's a fulfillment of a base desire.

Meanwhile, Absolute Pride Resonancer Sonya, Destiel shipper extraordinaire, wants to be the architect of a beautiful new world because the idea of being The One To Do It is a huge ego boost for him, and not because he would be made happier by this world by itself, nor because he particularly wants his neighbours to be fed and safe and happy.

Because otherwise, he'd care about their deaths beyond using them to win arguments with the woman he's mad at!

RODYA: Being an armchair revolutionary wasn’t going to feed our starving neighbors!
SONYA: But I told you time and time again, Rodya. That we must wait for the right moment.
RODYA: Sonya, I’m sorry, but that “moment” you kept talking about…
It didn’t come when the Yurodiviye’s youngest… when little Ivan had to sate his hunger with food from the garbage.
Nor did it arrive after he suffocated to death.
SONYA: To achieve a monumental task, well-thought policies and a great power to carry them are required. All to make the redistribution of wealth happen.
And in the process of moving towards progress, such minor troubles on a personal level are inevitable.

Sonya spends the entirety of this conversation throwing the neighbourhood's deaths onto Rodya's face, but when she returns the favour, he's all, "that was a minor trouble, it was a sacrifice for the greater good".

Rodya killed a lot of people because of her selfishness, but she's at least recognized that she's in the wrong, even as she still tries to rationalize her actions, to explain why she's taken them. Sonya, however, doesn't deny a child died because of his inaction; instead, he openly embraces the idea. He directly says: yeah, little Timmy died for my cause, and I don't give a fuck about it. This is your goat? This guy? Rodya at least feels guilty!

Furthermore, look at how and why he's angry at Rodya. I don't think it's wrong to be mad at a member of your political organization for disobeying the party line, and I don't think Sonya would be wrong if he were mad at Rodya for, you know, getting their entire neighbourhood killed.

But that's not what Sonya's upset about. He's mad that Rodya disobeyed him. Even if she'd succeeded, or even if she'd had the purest motivation in the world, he'd still be mad at her; not because he actually believes in the greater good he preaches, but because she was the hero and he wasn't.

And he's mad on a personal level, too. Which is part of why I'm saying these things. He's so extremely petty and mean and self-obsessed throughout the entire exchange that it's difficult to not read him as primarily motivated by Rodya having agency outside Sonya's opinions.

Of course, there's the exchanges I quoted above — “a confessional’s purpose is to lead a sinner to the path of penance”, “you held that axe for your own good”, “you really weren’t so different” and so on. But Sonya's a dick throughout the entire conversation — I'm not just cherry-picking!

Like, first of all: he starts the conversation by saying that he regularly spends time at a giant monument to Rodya's guilt. He says it "helps" him "restore a lucid mind" — like the one Rodya lacked when acting, according to him. And he tells Rodya that he does this "even though there’s no rocking chairs or whisky you like".

Then Rodya brings up an incredibly valid point regarding problematic behaviors of his supposedly for-the-good-of-the-people-type organization. See, the Yurodiviye have been racketeering. They've been threatening poor shopkeepers and extorting money out of them for their continued safety. We see this happen earlier in the Canto.

The exchange goes like this:

RODYA: Thought you’d never leave District 25, but seeing you now—resorting to the tactics gangsters would use—maybe you should’ve stayed a country boy.
Sonya, your lackeys have been taking from shopkeeps who weren’t even rich to begin with.
SONYA: …Did you know, Rodya? This was little more than a somewhat eccentric hollow with frosty walls.
Yet look at this. Now there’s a giant castle and thick columns of ice.
This change happened the instant you walked in.
RODYA: …You sound like you figured this would happen on my arrival. How’d you know?
SONYA: I have many sources… But that’s none of your business, Rodya.
RODYA: What makes you so sure that I made this happen in the first place? I’m not some kinda Backstreets witch or anything.
SONYA: It’s not hard at all to figure out. Observing those faces encased in ice says enough.
Take a peek. They’re ones you loved yet looked down on, are they not?

Rodya goes: "Hey, Sonya, your guys are racketeering, aren't you ashamed?" and Sonya, always the bigger person, natch, replies with "Have you noticed that this place is decorated with the corpses of the people you got killed? Lol".

This isn't the only time Rodya brings up a point and Sonya responds by ignoring her and changing to a topic where he thinks he has the high ground, or in one case even outright insulting her. He does this thrice. The first time is that one.

The second one is this exchange:

RODYA: And also, Sonya…
You knew my temper would get the best of me and get me to kill her, didn’t you?
SONYA: ……
Rodya, this will probably elude you, but you don’t have the Mark.
I came here hoping to see you possess it, but I’m seeing it on a few of your friends instead.
RODYA: The Mark? What do you…
SONYA: Besides, you can’t see the mark, either. In other words… you don’t have what it takes to be a leader.
But I’m different. So, to make a better world—

Which, like, to clarify: Rodya's saying something really stupid in this exchange, in my opinion. Classic Rodya deflection, accusing Sonya of enabling her which he literally did not do.

But instead of responding in any kind of reasonable way —like “no, Rodya, I had no idea you were going to kill someone, are you crazy?”—, Sonya's response is basically, “Well, you're not special, you want to be special and you're not special, you're dumb you're not a leader, and I am, and you don't even have the Mark nor do you know what the Mark is, and one of your ridiculous little coworkers has the Mark and you don't, so you're even less special than them, and I know what the mark is, and I have the mark, so I'm different from you and I can make a better world, and I'm special, unlike you".

And then there's the end of the conversation, immediately after that exchange:

SONYA: But I’m different. So, to make a better world—
RODYA: Yepper, I think I ‘member hearing you say something like that while sat at a desk buried in books.
…That’s why I can’t join you.
I still believe that it’s not big words behind closed doors that feed your neighbors.
And as I’m sure you’ve learned by now…
There’s no way a rowdy rascal like me would fit under some dweeb’s leadership, right? Hahah!
SONYA: ……
The Golden Bough awaits inside the castle, Rodya.
I hope you’ll be able to find what you seek.

So Rodya's response to the whole "I'm special and you're not" thing is to be like, "lol, right, that boring thing you were yapping about, anyway I don't really care because I think it's all talk and no action and that's not what I do". Which is really immature of her, I want to state.

But then she says, “but like, by this point you know you're not gonna convince me, right? Like, you're not addressing any of the complaints or points of contention I have with your whole deal, so you know there's nothing you can say that can convince me, right?”

And I will defend this as an accidental really good point from Rodya, for reasons I'll elaborate on later. But the important thing is Sonya's response: he refuses to engage with what Rodya's actually saying for the third time, and instead he tells Rodya to go away and says that he “[hopes she'll] be able to find what [she seeks]”.

Which, like. This has parallels, I'll talk about the parallels, but it's also crazy passive-aggressive, right?

Sonya has this part where he says this:

“To change the world, I perused hundreds of books and thousands of documents… And I met various people all around the City. Picturing a world where the oppressed can escape from the exploitative dominion of the ruling class and find liberation in the truest sense. To make that world a reality. However, the answer didn’t lie in changing what was already there. Once a page of history is written, there’s no way to go back and revise it.”

And then he creates an illusion of a different world, one where everyone's still alive, and he tells Rodya this:

“Look. This is the world we can reach. A world… that can be created using the Golden Bough with which you resonated. May there be no one upon this earth suffering from starvation. May every individual enjoy the right to pursue psychological and intellectual delights. …Join hands with me, and I’ll give you that world as a gift. As if nothing up to this point had ever happened at all.”

First of all, okay... I don't know if it's me, english is not my first language and Project Moon games are seemingly translated from korean by a mystical rat who only speaks in riddles⁴... But do you, the reader, also think that Sonya's immediately contradicting himself here? He says that “once a page of history is written, there’s no way to go back and revise it”, and then immediately tells Rodya that the bough can rewrite history, “as if nothing up to this point had ever happened at all”. That's an immediate self-contradiction, right?

Also, minor nitpick, originally a huge part of the essay but it got pecked to death by smarter friends — Sonya's kinda saying here that capitalism is undefeatable except by magic. Cool 👍 very socialist of him I'm sure

But. The most important thing I want to glean from this exchange is that it's evidence for my argument: that Sonya's acting just like Rodya did.

Rodya was angry at the tax collector, and she wanted to prove the tax collector was wrong, so she killed her; Rodya enacted her own will upon that tax collector to prove her own intellectual superiority to her. And simultaneously, she used this act to prop herself up as a heroine: to “save lives” not because she actually cares for what they need or their wellbeing, but because being a heroine who sweeps in and saves the day makes her feel good. This was all an exercise in stroking her ego, and it ended in catastrophe.

And, in the exact same way, Sonya is angry at Rodya, and he wants to prove her wrong. So he humiliates her, forcing her to cough up a mistake she still hasn't come to terms with, on Sonya's terms, and not hers. This way, Sonya enacts his own will upon Rodya to prove his intellectual superiority to her. And simultaneously, he uses this act to prop himself up as a hero: to “create a better world” not because he actually cares about the people he's “saving”, but because being a hero who sweeps in and saves the day makes him feel good. This is all an exercise in stroking his ego... and it's absolutely gonna end in catastrophe, too.

And for more evidence: Rodya's really good point, at the end. The moment when Rodya tells Sonya that she still believes “it's not big words behind closed doors that feed your neighbors”, and that as she's “sure [he's] learned by now, there's no way a rowdy rascal like [her] would fit under [his] leadership” .

Because this is an exact parallel to what Sonya told her earlier about the tax collector, when he accused her of first degree.

This is when Rodya's talking about how she spoke with the tax collector, begging her to help the hungry people instead of hoarding her wealth. It's a naked attempt to make herself look better—more merciful, her actions more desperate—, because even if the collector had agreed to share her wealth with the District, it would've been coerced: Rodya broke in in the middle of the night with a fucking axe.

And so, to snap her out of her excuses, Sonya tells her:

“But Rodya… You must have known that a terminal leech upon her neighbors would never turn over a new leaf. You know she wasn’t the kind of person who’d give up that life to turn into a generous philanthropist. You wouldn’t have knocked on her door with an axe in hand otherwise.”

Rodya argued with the tax collector, trying to get her to do what Rodya wanted, but the tax collector told Rodya that she didn't give a fuck, she had not given a fuck before and she would continue not to give a fuck, and did Rodya think she was a hero or something? this isn't a comicbook lol, and this is what drove Rodya, in the end, to murder the tax collector.

And then, the end of this discussion involves Sonya arguing with Rodya, trying to get her to do what Sonya wants, but Rodya tells him that she doesn't give a fuck, has not given a fuck before and will continue not to give a fuck, and does Sonya think he's a hero or something? this isn't a comicbook lol!

And this, I think, is why Sonya was so upset at her response.

The parallels are part of why I think this is all gonna end in catastrophe — Rodya's self-aggrandizing racketeering-for-good enterprise ended in catastrophe, and so, Sonya's own will follow. But I also think tragedy has already struck Sonya's enterprise. Little Ivan fucking died. People are already getting extorted by Sonya's monocled racket. If you want to pursue a grain of truth in Rodya's obviously-bullshit accusation that Sonya enabled her, you could even say that Sonya's inaction is what made Rodya desperate enough to kill.

And this is where they differ, because Rodya and Sonya have completely different reactions to these catastrophes brought about by their selfishness. I think —and I brought this up at the start— that I think that Rodya has the capacity to recognize and grow beyond her selfishness, while Sonya completely lacks the ability to do either. And I base this belief off those reactions.

See, Rodya's reaction isn't good. She simultaneously denies that she did anything wrong, that she acted in a stupid way or for herself, but she also internally acknowledges she fucked up — and she mopes. She doesn't apologize, she doesn't mourn, she just stands there and feels bad for herself.

“I don’t wanna bathe in warmth just yet. I feel like I oughta be in this cold a bit longer. Think I’ll stay this way until I find my answer to the question of when it’ll be okay to warm myself.”

This is even more of that "stroking her own ego" thing from before. She hasn't stopped having protagonist syndrome, she's just switched from "I'm the heroine" to "I'm the tragic lead".

But Sonya's reaction is even worse. Because Rodya, to some extent, does acknowledge that her actions were wrong: she's not being constructive by punishing herself, but she is at least acknowledging a tragedy happened because of her actions.

But Sonya?

“To achieve a monumental task, well-thought policies and a great power to carry them are required. All to make the redistribution of wealth happen. And in the process of moving towards progress, such minor troubles on a personal level are inevitable.”

Sonya is in complete denial. It's not that he doesn't care, it's that he refuses to admit it. This is why it offends him when Rodya accidentally compares him to herself. He's dead set on believing she's inferior and he's superior and he's right and she's wrong, and he belittles and denigrates any evidence or arguments to the contrary. Anything that contradicts his worldview personally angers him, and he replies with bile and venom and underhanded verbal blows.

Rodya has the capacity to acknowledge she did wrong, even if she's going about it the entirely wrong way. Sonya doesn't. And that's why I think Rodya's gonna triumph over Sonya, if she ever gets the character development she needs to do so.

To transition away from full-essay mode, I wanna talk about Cantos I and II as a set again, and some things...

There's a common belief that we'll revisit the focus characters of Cantos I and II in the future, because they very blatantly don't resolve their issues in their initial focus Canto. I think this is pretty likely to happen. Not guaranteed, but pretty likely.

Canto I is very much a prologue, so people are kinder to Gregor for not fulfilling his whole potential in the story's first chapter. The main antagonists of the game crash it basically just to introduce themselves. Canto II gets a worse rap because it pulls the same thing, but without being that much of a prologue — it's just a breather between Cantos I and III, and this is a role that later gets taken by Intervallos, so shouldn't it have been an Intervallo or something? I dunno.

I do agree with this criticism, if only partially. Like, I for sure don't know where the story is going, I'm not game director Kim Jihoon, so maybe there is an amazing reason to have Rodya's Canto be essentially an Intervallo... but so far this hasn't been evident, so, you know.

But there's something else that's common between the two Cantos that a lot of people don't think is true.

See, at the end of each "actually fulfilling their character development"-type Canto (III onwards), the focus character gets what the fandom calls a “Bad End Identity⁵”, also known as a “Seasonal Highlight”.

Usually, Identities for a character are based on another character(s) introduced during the Canto; for example, there's a Faust ID based on Yuri from Canto I, and there are IDs for multiple characters (including Rodion!) based on the generic Inquisitor enemies from Canto III. However, Seasonal Highlight IDs are unique in that they're usually the same character if they'd fallen prey to their own flaws and taken the "throne" that their Canto's antagonist previously held. That is, rather than wholesale replacing the antagonist, they represent a version of the focus character who usurped them, continued with their work, or irreparably lowered themselves to the antagonist's level.

At the very least, that's what the fandom likes to say.

The trend is kind of spotty. The characters from the earlier post-Release Cantos —Yi Sang and Ishmael, and to a certain extent even Heathcliff— are more directly based on major antagonists, rather than providing insight into a "bad timeline" for their characters. Like, we know what Yi Sang's E.G.O.⁶ would look like, and it does not have flowers like Dongbaek's does!

You could, of course, blame the "antagonist cosplay" on their being earlier identities; the studio didn't quite know how to stick with the vibe, etcetera. But Lord Lu, the most recent Seasonal Highlight and an identity I'd definitely consider a "bad end" rather than an "antagonist cosplay", is still wearing Jia Qiu's clothes and commanding Jia Qiu's bunny rabbit bodyguard. Shit, you could even argue Manager Don is based on her dad!

The only one I definitely, for sure can't argue about, however, is Sinclair's Seasonal ID, The One Who Shall Grip. That one's based on no one. And wouldn't you guess it? Sinclair's Seasonal ID was the first one, for the launch season...

Some Limbus fans will be yelling at me right now, though. They've gotta be saying that Sinclair wasn't the first “bad end ID”. I've only counted six “bad ends”, but there's actually seven, isn't there?

The Limbus Company fandom likes to say, "every Canto focus character has a bad end identity, except Rodion." They like to append this with an acknowledgement of the irony: Rodion is the only one who's not special enough to have a bad end, and this paradoxically singles her out, which makes her special. Or, even worse: they say that “Rodion's canon identity is her worst timeline”.

Here's the truth, people. Do you see this man?

This is not a bad end ID. This is a character ID. This is not Gregor's bad end. This is him overlayed on Tomah.

They're in the same pose. Quote the wiki, “Manager Corporal Gregor is given the code ID “11203_Gregor_TommyAppearance””. That's Tomah!

More importantly, neither Canto I nor II end in a bossfight against a person or a Distortion. They both end in a fight against an Abnormality. Canto I ends with Golden Apple, while Canto II ends with Baba Yaga. Gregor, the focus character of Canto I, got an E.G.O. near launch based on Golden Apple, Legerdemain. Rodion, the focus character of Canto II, got an E.G.O. near launch based on Baba Yaga, Rime Shank.

Rodion isn't special for not getting a Seasonal Highlight ID and getting an E.G.O. instead. This also happened to Gregor. They've both got unfinished business!

And you might say, "hey, aren't you a Rodion fan? You should like the idea that she is special in some way. Don't you want her to be special? You know, like she wants to be?" And to that I answer, no, actually, I don't care if Rodion is "special" or not, and I don't care because I am her fan. Rodion's fixation on being special isn't healthy for her and I don't want to feed it. Her worth isn't based on being special or ordinary, I like her because she's Rodion!

Rather, the reason I'm going to such lengths to point out the Tomah thing and the E.G.O. thing is because I fucking hate the sentiment that Rodion is living her worst personal timeline. I really truly do. I hate it. I consider it basically the offspring and culmination of that tendency by the fandom I mentioned hating above, to take Sonya at his word. My girl has problems, sure, but look at the rest of the main cast. Ishmael tried to kill Dante with a harpoon. Living in denial is small potatoes compared to that! Rodion's not even the only one in this bus living in denial! Cough cough, oblivion yellow, cough cough!

My prediction is that, if Rodion's story is ever continued, she's gonna get a Bad End ID, possibly one based on Sonya himself. And also I guess Gregor will get a new one and you'll hop off G Manager Corporal's dick. And you'll also leave me alone about LCB Rodya. god bless

It turns out I don't quite have the time or energy to talk much further about Rodion, so I'll just point out a couple qualities of hers I find endearing...

The first one is a flaw: Rodion is so fucking rude sometimes. Particularly to Gregor. Like, she acts really nice, but... have you replayed Canto I recently? She's very upfront about how much Gregor's mutated arm grosses her out. And in Hell's Chicken she crushes him a little bit just for her own funzies. She's just kind of playfully dickish to him in a way I find both lame and endearing. She's also got her "acting oblivious on purpose" moments with other sinners, but I think with Gregor it's the most prominent. He's uh, very bullyable.

And I also like the moments where she gets really serious. There's one bit I have seen, I think from a future Canto/Intervallo (maybe even TKT itself), where they're all talking about how sad it is that poor people in T Corp don't even get colors and Rodion breaks into Serious Mode talking about how the people left colorless shouldn't be pitied, because they don't know what they're missing out on, and they're happier that way, because if they knew and they were deprived of it knowingly, they'd spend their entire lives pining for color again. And then everyone gets upset so she immediately goes "ANYWAY CHEERY TOPIC NOW LET'S GOSSIP~" I love her. I love that she can't reconcile her façade with her true feelings. I love you turbulent girl.

Finally, I really like her confidence. I like that she has low self esteem but high self confidence. Like, she does genuinely believe she's kickass and capable and awesome and amazing, she just also knows that this kickass and capable and awesome and amazing person fucked up in a way she can never fix and thinks she should suffer guilt about it forever. I love that. You don't get these kinds of characters often—usually it's just a façade and they've actually got crazy imposter syndrome, in my experience, especially if they're women. But Rodion knows that she's great and she's unafraid to express it and I love it. First of all because I also think she's great, but also because it's relatable. She's so real. I love my avoidant attachment girl <3

Okay I'm done. Now, as promised, tierlist⁷.

And as always:

thank you, so much, for reading!

P.S.: I have to put this somewhere so the footnote works: ⁸. there you go.

#2025 #has image #longform #media #✨ #🌕