#and how gregor did

[haveihitanerve]

Day 1 Gregor/ Overlander:

She was running late. She always was. “Hey darling.” she cooed to the newest baby in the building. “He's growing bigger everyday.” Grace smiled. “He is. Shouldn't you be-?” “yep bye!” she called and hurried out. The wind was whipping around wildly, which is what she blamed for what happened next. Coco never saw the hole. She would regret that for eternity.

“Haha man you can't throw for your life!” he called. “Oh shut up and just go long!” Chase hollered back. He shook his head but did as his best friend asked, running faster, until suddenly he tripped and fell into the pit. At least, that's what Mickey thought it was, until he didn't stop falling. 

“Come back!” Sophie whined. “Its getting dark!” “oh hush you big baby.” he shot back. “Please brother.” she whined. “Fine. If you can catch me!” then he took off. He heard her startled shout then the leaves crunch as she gave chase. But she wouldn't catch him. Fred hated that, for one moment he was running, the next he was falling.

As he hurried across the laundry room, Gregor heard a metallic klunk and then a giggle from Boots. "Great, now she's dismantling the dryer," thought Gregor, picking up speed. As he reached the far wall, a strange scene confronted him. The metal grate to an old air duct was wide open, secured by two rusty hinges at the top. Boots was squinting into the darkness, but then a wisp of, what was it? Steam, smoke? The strange vapor surrounded boots, she held out her arms and leaned forward curiously. “No!” gregor yelled and lunged for her, but boots tiny frame seemed to be sucked into the air duct. Without thinking, gregor thrust his head and shoulders into the hole. The metal grate smacked into his back. The next thing he knew, he was falling down, down, down into empty space. 

She hummed as she walked, skipping lightly over a root in the ground. She breathed in deeply. She loved Virginia. Suddenly she spotted a small cave, hidden inside a large boulder at the edge of the field. She cautiously stepped forward, walking inside. It was dark. Very very dark. She stumbled and fell. She landed hard on the ground but when she looked up, she spotted a light. She walked quicker and quicker, until finally she was flat out sprinting towards it. Just as she reached it she tripped, sprawling head first into vines. She looked up to find a man watching her. He was pale, paler than any man she had ever seen, and he had purple eyes. “Hello.” she said quietly. “I'm Hope.” the man blinked. He examined her and after a second answered. “Hamnet.”

[beargregor]

wait i'm curious, what makes you say that gregor doesn't like everyone else (if i read that post right)? just curious since i've never seen anyone else say that

i don't necessarily think gregor dislikes everyone else at lcb but i do think that gregor is an incredibly petty person that isn't nearly as close to the rest of the sinners and even outright dislikes some of them cough cough rodya cough cough which a lot of people just Refuse to see because he's as much of a doormat as he is. there's several examples i could get into to try and prove my point however i'll just focus on what i personally think to be the biggest ones.

additionally, this is going to be kind of long, so i'm adding a read more. read more! read it. sorry for being so wordy. i have several diseases.

Pt1. gregor is the type to try and get along at least decently with everyone, especially if he gets a good first impression from them.

this is less a point in favor of gregor's distance w/ the rest of the sinners and more just a contributing factor to it. once again there's several examples i could point to here but i think the most in your face one happened in canto I with yuri, as several people have pointed out. even before gregor comes clean about growing attached to her as quickly as he did because she reminds him of his sister, we get this interaction.

i'll go ahead and make the disclaimer now that i don't necessarily think gregor is the most reliable of narrators, especially when it comes to his feelings and interactions with most people, but from the way he acts when the topic of yuri comes up (and the way we still see him act even all the way up to c7, nearly a whole year after yuri's death) i don't see reason to question his sentiment here. gregor immediately got that aya and yuri were close, potentially even taking note of their traded belts, and went out of his way to get something nice for yuri despite hardly knowing her.

i feel like a lot of people have forgotten as much, especially since it's been so long since c1, but gregor actually spent a good bit of season 1 doing the exact same thing with the other sinners! gregor reads a connection between him and ishmael pretty quickly despite getting off to a rocky start

mostly because gregor can tell that ishmael is pretty sardonic in a very similar way to him. there's been multiple instances where ishmael and gregor have essentially expressed the same sentiment at different moments, most notably gregor's little argument after ishmael got shot with a decay ampule in c4

and ishmael's response to pilot talking about self-sacrifice in c5

i could go ahead and pull up more examples, but in general pm has gone out of their way to show us that gregor and ishmael are pretty similar, so it makes sense for gregor to assume that they're friends, right?

this will be pushpin 1. keep note of this for Later.

ishmael's only the first sinner we see gregor trying to do this with in s1, we also see him try it out with heathcliff, sinclair, and ryoushuu

he's tried to get along with charon, being one of very few sinners that we've seen actually try to establish a connection with her at all

even rodya, despite my insistence that gregor doesn't like her nearly as much as the fandom thinks he does

all of these seem pretty fine and dandy, right? sure it frequently leans towards self-degradation, micromanaging, and commiseration, but gregor can at least be pretty chummy with most of the sinners, can't he?

Pt2. hell's chicken was more than just comic relief guys please

i'm fully aware that this is quite the hot take, but i think hell's chicken deserves a lot more credit for character writing than the fandom gives it. hell's chicken gave us foreshadowing for several events, such as the donqui bloodfiend reveal

heathcliff's distortion in c6 (as well as hong lu's highly speculated distortion at some point in the future)

and ryoushuu and sinclair's continued connection by making him the odd one out on her team

which, hey! that implies something about gregor's odd one out, don quixote, too, doesn't it? yes. yes it does. that's pushpin 2. keep note of that for later.

speaking of pushpins, hey! that's pushpin 1!

splitting into teams is one of the major events in hell's chicken, and most of the sinner's choices are either motivated by very little, backhanded, or motivated primarily by not wanting to be on the opposite leader's side. i didn't include all of the picks, just because i feel like including most of them already gets this across, but i think gregor took one major thing from this: most of the sinners, when push comes to shove, will only side with gregor when they refuse to or can't take his opponent's side.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm fully aware that this is primarily intended to be comedic relief, but when gregor is being described as having his trust broken by ishmael or nearly crying because no one on his team properly sided with him for him, i feel like it's pretty fair to read into this.

something that i think is pretty important to remember in conjunction with this is that we know that gregor is the type to hold a grudge, both from his general attitude towards the G corp soldiers in c1 as well as his continued distaste for vergilius

even beyond the splitting into teams of hell's chicken, the sinners have given gregor plenty of reasons to feel bitter. i feel like this is something people have noticed but haven't really put a finger on, but it's kind of wild just how often the rest of the sinners make gregor the butt of the joke

and sure, we could argue that a fair few of these aren't really made with any ill intent. quite a bit of it could have been meant as harmless teasing, but with gregor being more sensitive than most, it coming from nearly all sides, and as often as it does? yeah, i think he's prone to taking it a bit personally.

Pt3. yes i do still think gregor was the third most important character in canto VII you guys gotta hear me out okay

of course, all of this leads up to the bit of the story i highlighted, doesn't it? c7? i totally get why people haven't really picked up on all the gregor things i did in it, seeing as they were mostly not *directly* said about him or by him.

personally, i think that gregor's distaste for talking about himself on any serious level and thus leading to him getting sort of "sidelined" narratively (which i take issue with that claim, but still. it's effective for getting what i mean across atm) is supposed to lead players to take a deeper look at the times gregor gets held up to other characters and compare and contrast what's being said about them by the matchup. as i showed earlier with his immediate latching onto ishmael, i think this is something gregor himself is at least partially aware of too.

so, that begs the question, who was gregor compared to in canto VII that makes me think it's one of the most critical pieces in understanding his character?

really, i'd like to avoid getting too lost in the analysis of this canto specifically, since i'd like to do a proper post about this later, but i figure i can bury the lede a little before doing it properly.

c7 features several characters being made to perform in sansón's play, acting out the relevant backstory for this segment of the plot. a lot of these characters have rather direct, degrading reasons for playing the roles they do.

outis, a character with an inflated ego who wants her journey to have a purpose, is made to play an aimlessly wandering villager with a single line.

hong lu and ryoushuu, two characters for whom families and the expectations placed upon them are likely going to play a major role, are made to play bloodfiends.

rodya, a character who resents her lot in life and is constantly shown to be eager to leave her destitution behind her and become someone special, is made to play a helpless villager that's too poor to even offer any money to the hero that saves her.

heathcliff, a character that has spent most of his life getting dehumanized by comparing him to beastly animals, is made to play a literal bear whose sole purpose in the plot is to get beat up and then quickly left by the wayside.

sinclair, a character that has two opposed parties essentially treating him as a macguffin to procure for their side, is made to play the character who was arguably the catalyst for this entire canto, not to mention playing a decently major role in ruina.

our star don quixote is made to play her father, the first kindred, but there's someone by their side the entire time, isn't there? don quixote's dear, steadfastly loyal companion. a character which don quixote has tasked themself with getting to come out of their shell?

hello again, pushpin 2.

gregor has been made to play our unreachable star, sancho. someone had to, of course. you can't really tell a story without it's main character, now can you?

now, i should once again give a disclaimer. i am not trying to say that i think adapting what happens to donqui/sancho in c7 to gregor is the road pm is going to take here, not only would that toe a bit past the line of foreshadowing, but it'd also just amount to rehashing that plotline again, which i don't think would make for a particularly exciting story.

what i DO think is that we can take a lot of the things that are said to either directly be the case for sancho and use them to inform how we see gregor.

and god, does playing sancho have some fucking implications for our favorite ossan archetype.

starting off, the earliest moment we get to see of sancho is quite literally her just waiting for death to take her in a pile of ashes.

which, i should remind everyone, is actually pretty damn close to what happens to gregor's literary counterpart at the end of the metamorphosis. gregor samsa experiences one final breaking point that pushes him over the edge and makes him decide to just wait for starvation to take him.

gregor and sancho both consider themselves to no longer be human, something which sancho goes out of her way to highlight repeatedly throughout the canto and gregor is quick to get defensive on her behalf for when outis starts really tearing into her

sancho spends quite a lot of this story denying herself the joys of community and friendship, despite knowing that, even with the rest of the sinners frequently making jokes at her expense and outright insulting her, they were things that she desperately craved.

and, while this is getting into my "outis is a red herring meant to distract us from gregor's eventual betrayal" theorizing, i also think it's worth noting for this discussion that sancho's fellow kindreds, her family, all seem to be under the impression that she dislikes them and ultimately her departure was an act of betrayal

and that, despite gregor being one of LCB's resident mood makers and attempted conflict de-escalators, one of the sinners that's most prone to making appeals to the bonds they've all forged together, only him and faust remained silent during everyone's speech

so yeah, i think there's quite a lot of little details and hints building up to the reveal that gregor's not quite as fond of everyone as he presents himself to be. i do think a lot of this ultimately comes down to gregor getting in the way of his own happiness, similarly to donqui, particularly because he's been frequently portrayed as something of a self fulfilling prophecy, especially by giving him as many christ allegories as they have by way of priest and garden of thorns. gregor is convinced that the rest of the sinners don't like him because he's not convinced anyone could like him, so he convinces himself that he hates them because why should he care if someone that he hates hates him too?

a lot of this ultimately ties back to my personal interpretation of what happens in the metamorphosis as well as my own theories regarding all the times gregor has made weird callbacks and references to lobcorp and ruina, but yeah. i think about this guy and his deeper characterization a fairly normal amount, i think.

to end this off i'll highlight one of my favorite little "gregor is fucking seething and trying so hard to keep it cool" moments, in the credits CG for c7 we see rodya teasing him by drawing a little horse on his window and actively pointing and laughing at it, which gregor really doesn't seem all too pleased about.

i personally think this ties into the other cruel part of sansón forcing gregor to play rocinante, which is the more literal "he's actually just straight up playing rocinante" side of things. gregor was quite literally made to play something less than human, less than even animal really, as he was reduced to nothing more than the shoes don quixote wore as she got to play the leading role. sansón directly makes jokes about gregor being nothing more than shoes in the play twice, which adds to this reading, i think.

this, imo, really plays into the adaptation of the metamorphosis! i've seen a lot of readings for the book that posit that, despite being the protagonist, gregor samsa can't really be considered the main character due to nearly everything he experiences in it being used to further his family's character development at his expense, which i think fits nicely with limbus gregor seemingly having the most said about him through indirect means by holding him up to other characters. also it's rodya carelessly making fun of His Big Major Insecurities™ again like she did in c1 which i always find fun. rodya i love you but god you're the worst.

[the-pixel-lover-extravagant]

The lack of clone troopers pin ups is a full blown epidemic

[tangents-within-tangents]

Just some things I think deserve a super accurate movie/show adaption in a beautiful 2D animation style:

The How to Train Your Dragon series

Gregor the Overlander

Artemis Fowl

The Adventure Zone

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (fr so much was left out of the 1939 film!)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass

The actual Little Mermaid story (there are a ton of adaptations I haven't seen yet so maybe it exists somewhere but we all know Disney’s didn’t even come close)

[nekoekko-art]

scritch scratch for the Liu besties and a small hc~

anw, tastewise, I think Meursault and Gregor like lighter noodles while Ishy likes the ones with more flavor. Hong Lu is a different breed because he puts too much stuff in and just makes it spicy

also also, Ishy initially ate alone but the other 3 caught her once and then they started hanging out with each other! A group of besties!

[highendsheep]

limbus company x mannequin (+ antibeat)

[lightkrets312]

i need someone more insane than me to figure out how the limbus company wiki (either the proper wiki or the fandom one, i don't care) got their heights originally, because

i am going insane.

[tangentrina]

Twinhook Gregor again but(t) from behind

[hisakirambles]

lament gregor save me…. save me lament gregor…

oyasumi nasai ojou-sama its time to go to bed-

[shitpostingkats]

Ah, the age old experience of looking back on a beloved childhood series and realizing Oh Wow These Books Were Super Messed Up, Actually

[nebulasharkie]

This is one of the earliest Gregor drawings from last year. This is one of my favorites!

[binah-beloved]

despairful day. remember to take comfort in anything that brings you joy. for me, that is Binah. for you, it might also be Binah. that is alright. she has hugs enough for all.

[not-the-red-mist]

Sorry I just looked over at Discord and??

What the fuck??

[haveihitanerve]

Bite Your Tongue Conversation Is Over And Done

What should have happened when Gregor saved the bane

Angry screams came from the crowd. Something shattered at Gregor's feet. It wasn't until a vase, beautifully carved, but still stone, slammed into his head and gregor's hand came back bloody that he realized what was going on. They were being stoned. Stoned to death. For not killing a child. Ares shoved his way in front of him, a bat shield, taking the brunt of the objects. Gregor watched his bond wince, watched his face contort with pain as the stone presents rained down on his injuries, and a roaring filled his head. Drowned out the angry screams. Gregor released one of his own. For a second silence fell, shocked, stunned, silence. Ares blinked in surprise, but lowered his wings, the hailstorm of stone ‘presents’ having stopped. Gregor glowered at the crowd, taking a step forward, until he was standing in front of ares. Protecting his bond. “You dare?” he hissed. The crowd recoiled. “You dare,” he repeated, eyes glowing with fury. “You dare to attack my bond. Dare to draw his blood with your disgusting stone ‘gifts’! Dare to be angry at us??” he laughed, a cold, bitter thing. A vase shattered next to his head. The crowd drew back further and gregor didn't need to turn to feel ares rise at his back, standing taller, his wings spreading threateningly. He hadn't done it before, had been content to get pelted and beaten if it meant protecting gregor and not be marked as even more trouble by the Regalians, but now. Gregor could feel the anger radiating off his bond, like a wave. “Tread very carefully.” Ares warned, his low purr reduced to a rough growl, barely concealed rage simmering under each word. The crowd stepped back even further. “We are the ones going out there. Risking our lives.” Gregor snarled. “We are the children you have chosen to send on these battles. We are the ones who you have nominated to go into battle so you do not have to.” he hissed. Ares stomach brushed against his back and gregor was not afraid as he took a step forward. The crowd winced away from him. From his anger. His wrath. “We are the ones who have to deal with the prophecies. And the enemies. And the battles and war. And we are the ones making the hard choices so you do not have to.” His eyes simmered with rage. “Have any of you even noticed that your Queen is missing from our midsts? That one of your own lies in a hospital bed, his leg mangled?” The crowd flinched. “That is because we are the ones who fight the fight. And make the hard calls. And i will not stand here and let you mock us for it. I will not allow my bond to be stoned for it. Not on my watch.” He lifted a threatening finger when someone in the crowd opened their mouths to object. “Bite your tongue.” Ares snarled, teeth glinting in the torchlight. The Regalian almost swallowed it in his haste to close his mouth. “Conversation is over.” Gregor announced, swinging onto Ares back. “We made our choice. We are done here.” And ares took to the sky. 

[mango-dolphin]

(NOTE: gregor is using "sir" in a military way and not a gender way)

finally remembered to post these rodyas & gregors. was meant to be a primarily rodion sketch dump but i had an infestation

i accidentally made gregor SO much shorter than i intended. i hc g corp gregor to be in his late 20s (and younger than his other IDs) but he wasn't supposed to be THAT small. but it's really funny so i'm keeping him like that

[spark-circuit]

I GOT MY BOY!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

also got Bride Gregor right before it lmfao. bestie. you brought home the BEST gift possible. <3