#if the people are bugs does that mean the bugs are people?

[sonknuxadow]

for the most part i think powerscaling sonic characters is pointless and theres no objective answer to most questions of who is stronger or who would beat who in a fight because the truth is that the answer to those questions will always be determined by what works best for the story being told . however. it does kinda bug me when shadow is portrayed as significantly more powerful than all the other characters and people (whether it be official writers or people in the sonic fandom) act like none of the other characters stand a chance against him in a fight or whatever because thats just demonstrably not true. i mean yeah hes the ultimate lifeform but that doesnt mean everyone else is weak and powerless compared to him

[hannahhook7744]

Hugo Madrigal Prepon Headcanons;

His full name is Hugo Jerónimo Madrigal Prepon.

He is 12 years old by d3.

He is the biological child of Ario Berra Ausentarse—he was abandoned in the donkey pen during a storm as a newborn and adopted by Camilo Madrigal and Yanamaria Earlene Maldonado Amaya (and later, Mina Preppon). 

He was found on Camilo's 30th birthday and now shares a birthday with him—meaning his birthday is considered to be on and celebrated on December 28th. 

He only considers Camilo and Mina his parents. 

Hugo is a student at Auradon Prep and Member of the School Newspaper, where he writes a column about the student pets. 

When he grows up he wants to be a wildlife conservationist or a zoologist when he grows up. Though if he could write books or magazines only about wildlife, he would. 

Hugo has been described as quiet, loyal, kind, socially awkward, cautious, friendly, sensitive, and well-behaved. But he can also be sneaky when needed, playful, hardworking, street smart, wild, cuddly, insecure, timid, occasionally inattentive, and a bit of an animal loving, flower child. 

He has the gift of Zoomorphosis. 

He's single and currently interested in romance. 

Hugo is friends with the were-people of Sherwood and Wonderland, like Bobby Hood and Chester—as well as Bug Boogie. 

He also has a pet toucan that Antonio gave him named ‘Bamboo’. 

Hugo is an avid bird watcher since he has a strange obsession with them. 

He owns a lot of bird themed Hawaiian shirts—the first one was a gag gift given to him by his brother, Carlos. 

Hugo has skin that is a bit darker than his father's with a reddish tint to it, big brown eyes, and short black hair that is curly, wavy, and very messy—as well as two moles above his mouth/around his lips that vaguely resembles a mustache. 

So messy in fact that his parents can't seem to get it straightened out no matter how hard they try. No gel works. Brushing it doesn't help. 

He loves being out and about unlike his younger brother, José, who is more of a homebody than he is. 

Hugo is well-behaved but a terrible student due to his short attention and lack of interest in most subjects. The only classes he is even remotely good at all involve animals in some way (like biology) except for math. 

He and his uncle, Antonio, are quite close with one another, Miranda (Pepa's cousin), and Ryder (Luisa's husband) due to their shared love of animals.

Between his parents, Hugo is closer to his mother, Mina. 

Between his grandparents, Hugo is closer to Félix because of how laid back he can be. 

Out of his siblings, he is the closest to Carlos (because of how close in age they are) and Sofia (who, like him, is quiet). 

He is a vegetarian for the most part.

His favorite food is Arroz con gandules.

His favorite drink is apple juice but he also just likes juice and milk in general.

His favorite snack is sunflower seeds. 

His favorite book is ‘Papagayo: The Mischief Maker’. 

His favorite holiday is Halloween.

His favorite teacher is the biology teacher, Abigail. 

His favorite school event is Spirit Day. 

His favorite business in Auradon is The Merrymen’s cafe.  

His favorite show was ‘Wharf Watch’ before it got cancelled. Now his favorite show is ‘Dog with a Blog’. 

His favorite class is Dragon Anatomy Class.

Hugo is a boy scout. 

He doesn’t have social media but he does have Auratube. His favorite video game would probably be swarm, if he had access to it. 

His favorite dessert is ‘Glowing Carmel with Fresh Cheese’.

His favorite candy is gummi snakes. 

His favorite band is the Donkey-ettes, because he prefers their genre over the other more popular bands in Auradon. 

His favorite song by the Donkey-ettes is ‘Gamble Of The Morning’ but he also rather likes ‘Daydreams For Sale’ and ‘The Donkey's brat’. 

Hugo, like his adoptive father, fully suspects that Giovanni is his half brother but doesn’t acknowledge because they’re already family—what should blood matter?

His favorite colors are salmon pink and canary yellow.

Hugo has autism and is selectively mute. 

Because he mostly gets along with all of his siblings and cousins, he usually has to play mediator between them. 

He knows a lot of animal facts—mostly about birds. 

As of now, he isn’t really interested in boys, girls, or other—-in any way other than platonically, really. He doesn’t really get the appeal. 

He doesn’t like being in large crowds—if they’re strangers. Funnily enough large crowds don’t bother him if it’s his family and their friends. 

His hobbies include bird watching, butterfly catching, feeding the animals, marine biology, zoology, writing, pet sitting, sand sculpting, animal drawing/painting, catch and release  fishing, catch and release hunting, Fútbol, occasional prank pulling, beekeeping, horseback riding, falconry, walking, jogging, flower picking, lock picking, improvised cooking, yoga, pottery, jigsaw puzzles, fruit/berry picking, entomology, knitting, crochet, miniature model making, reading, foraging,  and playing in the mud. 

Hugo considers six to be his lucky number.

Hugo is, funnily enough given his special interest in birds, is afraid of heights. He is also afraid of going to jail because once one of his cousins teased him telling him he would when they caught him trying to pick a lock. He also didn’t really like the dark as a kid but he grew out of it. 

He’s also claustrophobic though no one really knows why. 

The only cousin he doesn’t quite get on with all the time is Ligera, which is mainly due to the fact that she doesn’t like the fact he and Carlos also joined the school newspaper. He and Carlos don’t really mind sharing the hobby but Ligera didn’t like the fact they took ‘her thing’ (Hugo thinks it’s because she’s insecure about standing out only because her gift at school and because she wanted to stand out in the family but he hasn’t said anything because he doesn’t think it’s his business). 

His first word was ‘no’. Pepa had asked him if he wanted to play with the other kids on the playground—his answer threw her for a loop, lol. 

People often mistake him for Antonio's son because of how similar in personality they are and because of their closeness. 

Animals don't really scare him the way they do most people. Even as a baby they didn't. 

They did scare Camilo who would often find his son hugging a dangerous animal or holding an extremely venomous bug after leaving the kid alone for half a second, though.

He has a stuffed sulphur-crested cockatoo named ‘No’ that Mirabel made him shortly after he first joined the family. 

Mirabel also made him a canary yellow and salmon pink patterned quilt with sulphur-crested cockatoos and toucans on it. 

His earliest memory is of when he was about three or four, and it's a bit hazy—but he does know that he was crying in it because his blanket that he used to carry around with him religiously got ripped a bit when a couple of his cousins were roughhousing and accidentally dragged him into it. He doesn't remember much other than that. 

Thankfully Mirabel was avail to repair the blanket but it was never quite the same afterwards and Hugo is still a bit bigger about it because he doesn't think it's fair it got damaged when he rarely ever argues with his cousins or siblings.

Hugo has only uttered the words ‘I hate you!’ once in his life and he doesn't even remember doing it. He said it to his cousins, Rick and Miguel Jr, because they were the ones who got his blanket ripped. 

One time he got a concussion during dodgeball—Carlos still feels bad about it. 

Hugo has questioned his sanity more than once because of how rowdy his family can be. 

He bites his nails, bites his lips, and fidgets with the hem of his shirt when he's nervous.

He secretly thinks crayfish are creepy and doesn't like being around them.

Hugo is usually anxious/nervous to do things he isn't fully sure he's allowed to do without permission. That doesn't stop him from occasionally getting up to mischief.

Carlos and Hugo made a bet when they were five and six that they're STILL both trying to win. However they won't tell anyone what it is. 

He hates it when Carlos steals his food but that doesn't stop his brother.

He's passive while Carlos is more aggressive.

Hugo hates it whenever Carlos, Belinda, Leta,  and José ask him questions because usually when they do it's the weirdest, most impossible thing to answer or something that he won't be able to rest until it's answered.

That's usually how he gets dragged into mischief. 

He's banned from drinking most caffeinated drinks because one time he drank so many energy drinks, sodas, and cups of coffee that he woke up to find that he locked himself in a trunk in the attic. No one knows how he managed that. Except Carlos, who has pictures that he doesn't remember taking.

They've both agreed not to speak of it. 

He didn't learn his lesson the first time: he only learned that he should not drink too much caffeine after his second introduction to it. 

The newspaper club does not talk about it or how they found him asleep in a cage at the zoo. 

Camilo, Mina, and Carlos can always tell when an animal is actually Hugo in disguise. Hugo doesn't know how.

Hugo is rather average when it comes to how tidy he keeps things. He's not overly messy or overly clean. 

Hugo likes puppet shows (think shows like Elmo, the Muppets, and Welcome Home). 

He doesn't swear unless things are very serious. That's not to say that he doesn't know how to. He just thinks that Carlos swears and talks enough for the both of them. 

His door features a toucan with his head on it, his mouth twisted into a frown—eyes staring off into the distance. It always throws people for a loop when they see it. 

The floor in Hugo's room is a yellowish gold color and wooden while the walls are gray with a pattern of pink parrots, white teal winged and pink haired cockatoos, red Anemones, and toucans. 

His ceiling is the typical white popcorn ceiling, but it is also covered in colorful glow-in-the-dark butterflies. Dangling from the ceiling are handmade windchimes that's metal has been shaped into birds. 

There is a salmon pink flamingo shaped rug on the floor. 

His bed rests on the sidewall the entrance to his door is on—with his headboard facing the door. It's a twin bed with a capybara headboard and a pink and yellow pillow and blanket set with a snake pattern. 

Resting on the bed is his stuffed cockatoo, his baby blanket, and a full body flamingo  pillow that he was gifted by Antonio on his tenth birthday.

Beside his bed, near his headboard, is a light wooded nightstand a similar color to his floor with red Anemones & green and blue hummingbirds on it's drawer and sides. 

On top of the nightstand is a cockatoo shaped lamp and a picture of him, Carlos, Belinda, and Leta. 

Above his headboard is a Donkey-ettes poster. 

In another corner of his room is a side door to an enclosure for his pet Toucan, Bamboo. The door is toucan shaped. 

He has a single butterfly shaped window in his room. 

Across from his bed and under the windows is a capybara shaped /decorated desk where his notebooks, art supplies, holiday homework, and laptop are stored. The desk is one of those desks that has a hood. 

On top of his desk in the corners rests one of those toys that dances in the sunlight: it's a pair of four birds dancing together in beachwear.

Below the window and above the desk is a bookshelf holding the few books Hugo has and a snow globe with a jungle inside of it. 

There is an area in his room where he makes his sculptures and pottery (yes, he has a sand waterfall in that area). There's a small pond there too. 

On the wall left of his door is a wooden dresser that matches his floor with a pattern of paw prints, bird feathers, jaguars, and red Anemone flowers. 

On top of the dresser is a (badly made and very colorful) vase shaped like a jaguar with real Anemone flowers, a couple of animal figurines, and a picture frame holding a picture of him, Antonio, Miranda, Dayana, and Giovanni. 

There are a few other wall decorations, ranging from animal paintings he was gifted, a poster he made of Wharf Watch when he was seven, a few awards he's gotten, and some framed papers he's written.

Hugo also has a couple of other stuffed animals and figurines strewn across his room. 

The twelve year old absolutely adores his room and always has. The only room he likes even more than his own is Antonio's. 

When Hugo's gift acts up he finds it difficult to keep to one form (think the scene where Camilo is losing control of his gift but it's Hugo shapeshifting into different animals or some weird Frankenstein of different animal and human parts). 

His sinuses always give him trouble. 

When he's overwhelmed in his room, the birds in his room start making bird noises that get louder and louder until he's comforted.

Most of his Auradon Prep classmates keep forgetting he exists because he's so quiet. It annoys him when they try to get him to talk when he isn't feeling it and usually when that happens he'll hide with one of his siblings or cousins. Though he's also learned that he can hide with one of Dopey's children and the Smee Twins and it has the same affect (meaning people leave him the fuck alone because they'll just get stared down by multiple silent children who will refuse to speak to him).

[chungledown-bimothy]

i've been playing/watching other people play skyrim off and on for over a decade now, and i absolutely love that there are still bugs/glitches i've never seen before.

did y'all know that apparently the door to the dark brotherhood sanctuary can just... not be there? not, like, it's there but you can't interact with it, or the loading zone is there but the visual asset isn't. i mean you walk up to where it should be and there's absolutely nothing. perfectly normal rock.

thanks todd, it really does just work.

[fruityyamenrunner]

as far the wasp example, it just does not occur to me to think that people mean linnean categories when they say their things. people go around with their own personal ontologies, and they really are under no obligation to have them be at all compatible with whatever the entomologists have decided today. they have a picture of a wasp and the wasp matches it.

i can see why this kind of running after someone and saying that they *meant* to be correct about the technicalities is useful if you are, for example, running a church or something and need to pretend that the confused ideas about god people have are orthodox because it is morally important that you are orthodox or you will go to hell, or you are running a political party and you need those people's support, and those people are likely to assent because they want to be good, but wasps are not at all like this. there is no wasp church or wasp party. wasps are neutral. people are free to go around meaning what they mean without you going after them.

POSTSCRIPT: I am one of the billions of people in the world who goes about without a phylogenetic tree of the bugs in my head, so I am myself an example of the person I am describing above and therefore of someone who finds your plausible notion of meaning extremely implausible

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[jellielover]

CORRU OBERBER???

CASTE AND FUNCTION

my main assumption is that the 4 castes originated as specialization for different roles in a hive, such as tir with acid for expansion and kiv for guarding. This does seem to have literal biological implications, those being different abilities that different castes have and the different receptor shapes that they have. More on this later…

if we're really getting into it (sociology major voice) then the closest allegory imo is sex vs gender, where we assign certain physical traits as belonging to a certain sex and then the social roles accompanying those as genders, so caste is probably both a physical thing (tirs with acid and hand-shaped receptors) and a social thing (tirs being kind). I do think there are physical aspects but i wouldn't be surprised if caste implies both a biological and social aspect. Perhaps sex is treated as a medical fact that has no bearing on social gender roles, and so the concept of gender ceases to exist because gender is a social construct, so with no social importance it has no meaning. Translating this to caste, the Obesk are kind of like "yeah we have these 4 castes (sexes) but who give a shit?" except we also assign certain traits to each caste, so in that aspect it is also a social role one can occupy.

As for Obesk, they seem to not give a crap about gender/sex because their main social roles would (theoretically) stem from what one's caste does to maintain the hive/cave-city. my assumption is that Obesk have human-esque sexes but put all the social role baggage on receptor shape instead: we get comments like how Kazki and Bozko are both 'vel-like at heart' and Vekoa being the perfect jut because she's unemotional. I'm also keeping in mind that this is all from Akizet's perspective (and unreliable narrator, but she doesn't have a lot of reasons to hide sociological processes).

From the gameplay end, there's some confusion over which character use what pronouns and why and how and blah blah.I'd like to assert that we don't know if pronouns are on the mindspike end for our benefit or what they symbolize to the obesk. Pronouns in english aren't a hard-ball way to ping gender either: a pronoun simply takes the place of a noun. We don't really know what the pronoun indicates for Obesk in this case, especially because we don't specifically see any sexual dimorphism. Being intersex in humans is as common as a peanut allergy, and technically the drone/queen/worker thing ARE the biological sexes of bees, so we really don't know much because we also don't know anything about Obesk reproduction.

One interesting thing to note is that Akizet refers to people with they/them until proven guilty, seen with Itzil's 'partner' becoming 'she/her' once we talk more about her. If there's so little sexual dimorphism AND this does indicate gender, then how does one tell this information?

PHEREMONES

Obesk is known to be a dark-surfaced moon where most of the sentient life lives in caves together in cave-cities. Obesk also have four different castes with four roles that might come with a functional insect hive: Kiv are larger and guard the nest, Tir have acid and expand the nest, Jut seem to focus on building and structure, and Vel might be messangers and do odd jobs. Over time, Jut became the engineers they are known to be now with the corrucystic revolution, being able to 'teach' corru.

The discussion about pheremones originally came from the fact that obesk are assumed to be insectoid, which has a bunch of evidence from how they speak about themselves. They were 'larval' before ascending, and have things like chitin and carapaces. There's also the plain association of the pets and things they have around them, like their dog is a bug (similar to how humans and dogs are both mammals). Obeski also has a ton of parasitization, its a huge theme in the story (especially with secri, zuzucri, and the whole implication that Obesk are parasites of corru itself). Obesk become infected with secri like a wasp laying its eggs inside of a caterpillar and bringing it back to Terrible Life. In addition to this, Obesk blood is always mentioned to be cyan, just like how hemocyanin and hemolymph in bugs appears.

A lot of the evidence for pheromones specifically also comes from the Zuzucri memhole, where they mention being able to smell out castes by pheromone, namely vel and kiv (and tell that they're dead!) and suspecting something is wrong because the unnamed vel has their scent tainted by the presumably metallic zuzucri. Akizet also mentions something about 'trails being dispersed,' which would make sense if they were going from the relatively-sheltered caves to the windy, stormy surface.

I'd like to also point out that there's a ton of funny stuff you can do with pheromone headcanons.

-One comes from those experiments they did where they put ant death pheromones on alive ants to see if they would be taken to the pile of ant corpses (they were). Zuzucri memhole specifically does say that they can smell dead Obesk. Get the picture?

-My personal thinking is that Bozko might resemble a wasp with a very skinny waist, which then brings to mind the danger pheremones they release: they smell like overripe fruit. We know that when Bozko died he was the survivor of a cave-city being infested, and part of the kiv caveguards that had to kill all the husks. Bozko's cave-city post-secri-infection probably smelled like rotting fruit.

[sheerricetorrent]

Bug au phasmid (?) sighting (WIP)

Finished version up now!

[windkonig]

society has ingrained in all of us that bugs are bad and evil and scary and they Bite You for no reason and Sting You For Fun and I would like to challenge every single person that reads this to try to step back and challenge those thoughts. CHALLENGE that knee-jerk reaction to kill every bug you see. REALIZE that killing it doesn't have to be the answer. it's fine to not want bugs in your home. but I see so many people whose FIRST choice is to kill it, even though it'd be easy to just cup it and toss it outside. why?

one of the greatest things that got me over my extremely intense arachnophobia was knowledge. learning more about the thing I was afraid of made me realize, "oh, they're just little guys trying to get by too" and I stopped killing every spider I saw.

and it's like. no, that wasp didn't sting you for fun. it stung you because it felt scared or defensive. no, the spider in your shower isn't trying to kill you. spiders need water to live too.

you don't deem a scared dog/cat evil for biting you, do you? then why are we demonizing insects and spiders for feeling scared? they are so, so small and we are so large. they don't know anything about us, they're just trying to live life. they didn't know they built their web in a bad spot. they didn't know they built their nest next to your door. please, show some kindness to these tiny creatures. I understand you can't let infestations happen or wasps build in your walls, but whenever possible, try to put bugs in a cup and take them outside. yes, even wasps. even black widows. if you want tips for safely capturing bugs, I'm always around to ask.

also, to those who say things like, "x bug eats other pest bug, so they're okay" why? why does something have to benefit you to deserve to live? shouldn't all creatures have a chance at life, even if they're ugly, even if they don't benefit you, even if they do something you don't like? what gives you the right to decide to take the life of any animal just because ahhh it looked scary? please. all I ask is you try to be kinder. it's okay to be scared, it's not okay to pointlessly kill things.

[spectrum-core]

Fuck

Well, I saw this coming from miles away becaude of course the gacha game will throw any semblance of artistic integrity through the window if they can make cheap fanservice, hence why I made the og post in advance, I didn't want to elaborate more on it when it happened because whatever, people were already dicks about me making the initial post anyway lol

But a guy began bugging me about how the comparison made sense, actually, and I felt the need to elaborate with a final point about why I feel the comparison absolutely misses the point of what full stop is and represents and everything that made them special to me.

Ok, so this guy has been analyzing limbus ids for a while and trying to figure out common themes among them, his conclusion for sinclair ids was, simply put, these are people who are either extremely good at what they do but cant fully see it or arent proud of it (blade lineage, cinq), or people who are slow and trailing behind compared to their peers while also having the potential to be absurdly good at their line of work if they were given the proper support (molar office).

According to him, stephan would be the second case, a guy who is very bad at what he does but could be amazing at it with the proper motivation. The issue is that… if you look at stephan and i mean you really look at him instead of forcing him in a haha funny meme fandom archetype or mold him into whatever can fit the power fantasy of the month that'd be a limbus character, he's really not that.

That's not to say stephan lacks any talent at all, his pessimist and cautious personality makes me imagine he is probably a great planner, coming up with escape plans or alternatives if the team gets cornered or overwhelmed in any non color-fixer-chasing-them-with-killing-intent situation, his physical strength is also there, and i think he'd be at least half decent at unarmed one on one combat because of it, and i feel he appreciates this and the people around him do as well, he has talents and they are in plain sight, and he makes full use of them when the situation requires him to.

But the thing is… everything from his dice ranges to his card names to his passive name are very clear in one thing: he's fucking terrible at aiming and firing a gun, the very thing he's supposed to do and excel at if he doesn't want to lose money. Maybe he's nearsighted, maybe he has astigmatism, maybe he pulls the trigger too fast before being sure he's even aiming at a target, maybe his anxiety is so bad he's shaking and sweating constantly and his fine motor skills are shit because of that, maybe even all of these at the same time.

And it's not just stephan who has this going on either, liwei's keypage wouldn't be talking about "this is what people normally think and what i know i'm supposed to want but i simply can't see the point of all of it" (<- this is autism coding if you're delusional like me but i digress) if he was a "proper fixer", tamaki wouldn't be losing her cool regularly every time stephan begins to complain if she was a "proper fixer", everyone here is notoriously bad at their job one way or another due to things that are quite directly part of who they are so there's no "actually stephan would be a shi section 1 fixer if he wore glasses" or "liwei could become a color if he got rid of his gun and started fighting with a sword instead" for any of them, not without them losing who they are in the way as opposed to the character growth that represents sinclair.

For me these are average people, with average talents which can only take them so far, in a world where most people in their line of work has superhuman skills, and to make matters worse they're focusing their strengths in the wrong things, these aren't the people who will wake up one day and awaken whatever specialest boy ever superpower project moon comes up with next time and become the strongest people who ever lived in the city. Even if they decided to drop everything suddenly and start with something else, there's absolutely nothing they'd excel at.

And that's precisely the thing, they won't just drop everything and suddenly do something they are better at, because the sunk cost fallacy is a fucking bitch when you're risking bankrupcy with every job you take, and that's why the full stop office is to me, the tragedy of people who invested too much and worked for too long in the wrong thing and now they don't have the resources, time or evergy to reinvent themselves anymore even if it'd be better for them in the long run.

I wanted to write a cool conclusion or something but i dont have the energy so just take this instead

STEPHCLAIR IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD

Alternative title: a very angry (and tired) Full Stop fan's thesis.

ok, so me being the stephan/sinclair comparison's strongest hater is a bit i really like to lean into, but for the sake of keeping things semi-serious i will try to keep the actual essay content as free of me ranting my frustrations as humanly possible (which i mean commitement to the bit aside this will be hard bc it is frustrating to see people calling them both the same character, at best it shows a very surface level understanding of either character and at worst it shows just reducing them to cookie cutter meme fandom archetypes neither character actually fits into, so bear with me if i slip up and make unserious comments from time to time)

so before i start the actual essay let me say this: this essay doesnt even scratch the surface of how much i hate this comparison you guys cant even possibly fucking imagine ive been obssessed and i mean OBSSESSED with the full stop office since 2021 and im glad i wasnt in the limbus prerelease fanbase because if i had to see people comparing my beautiful boy and beloved best friend to a guy we had no info about other than "hes based of the guy from demian" i would have turned into the joker this is not even about saving my own mental health this is about sparing the entire pjm fandom of the monster i would have turned into

spoilers for ruina and limbus, universe terminology heavy and surface level references and interpretations of demian by herman hesse because imma keep it real with you guys the first and only time i read that book i was still in high school and i barely remember shit.

Table of contents:

Stephan - a summary

Sinclair - a summary 2.1. Emil Sinclair in Demian (1919) 2.2. Emil Sinclair in Limbus Company (2023)

Addressing common arguments

1.- Stephan - a summary

And of course I will start with Stephan, because I love him very much, just like Liwei he's one of my favorite pjm characters (yeah i like him more than your favorite popular character don't ask) so it's not surprising that i have A Lot to say about him, right?

And of course, I do.

As I said in the serrated duo post, a core part of my perception of the Full Stop office depends on the fact that they are poor. Mentions of money are common all across many factions in the game, yes, but the Full Stops are extremely constant about money, how taking a wrong turn means losing more than they can afford, how they can't afford to drop their weapons because they were too expensive, how even getting the permissions to be able to buy and wield these weapons was ridiculously expensive and so on. Of course, Stephan is the one talking about this the most (something I will elaborate on later), but Liwei and Tamaki also make a few ocassional mentions to it in their dialogue and keypages and considering this is a shared business it just makes sense that this is something that affects all of them.

These are just some few of the callbacks to money that Stephan alone does in his dialogue, without focusing in keypage text or what Liwei and Tamaki have to say about it.

And idk man, at least to me the difference between social classes is an important aspect for their characterization, specially because of how constant the concern with money is for Stephan. From this point alone comparing them feels like erasing a core aspect of Stephan's characterization, a lot about Stephan (and the Full Stop office as a whole, let's be real here) starts making more sense once you read the office as lower-middle class (and I'm saying lower middle class because they can afford some place to live and their weapons, but to me these guys are the types who precisely because of their need to keep bullets at all times can't pay for water or electricity all the time and sometimes they simply can't afford food or if they do they can spend a week straight eating nothing but unsalted pasta).

Now, going back to Stephan being the most outward about his complaints with money, he is in general the most outward about all problems the office is facing, to the point in which he doesn't mind inconveniencing everyone else with his rants, being one of the few guests who interrupt Angela's introductory speech and getting into Tamaki's nerves (something he's well aware he's doing, as these two know each other) at least two times through the course of their pre-battle cutscene, even Roland comments after the reception on how he wishes he would always have been as open about his problems as Stephan was.

However, it's worth nothing that he doesn't spend the entire cutscene crying about his miseries, and he only starts losing hope at three key moments: when they can't kill Eileen inmediately (making them waste more bullets than needed), when Argalia shows up (forcing them to retreat and making them fail their mission, meaning they won't get paid for this after they already lost a ton of money, as well as turning the situation into something much more dangerous than what they had signed up for) and once they enter the Library (an Urban Plague grade threat they have little to no information about, when him and Tamaki are almost out of bullets so Liwei is essentially the only fixer with some chance of putting up a fight and, you know, making it out alive).

Now, while it's true that Stephan is someone who dislikes danger, he isn't someone who isn't used to seeing gruesome events, his instinctive reaction to seeing a guy getting his head put into a meat grinder was cracking jokes and calling the concept of thought gears "a load of horseshit", which is something that falls in line with him being a somewhat experienced Fixer (sure, grade 5 isn't amazing but we can assume it's still either in the higher side of average or barely above average, and for someone specialized in firearms, which are far from the best weapon in the city, getting that high means he must have some experience and skill, right? more so considering he's been at this for 5 years at most) who has seen a fair share of horrid shit and can be unfazed by (most of) it as long as his own safety isn't on the line.

Another point is... he dislikes danger and is always wary about money and expenses, to the point in which he enjoys checking his bank account (or at least he believes so, if we go for the theory of the artbook profiles being more a mix of what the characters perceive themseves as/would describe themselves as to others, which is a theory i go by, I see him as someone who's convinced he does that for fun instead as out of desperation), but this seems to be more a generalized feeling of impending doom at everything rather than something that can be traced back to a particular traumatic event (anything can be dangerous, anything can cost him money), dude's from the backstreets after all, he's seen shit and he's used to assuming the worst. How I see Stephan, he's a guy who already expects bad things to happen but once things go wrong he starts freaking out about how this time They're Screwed For Real, but he never really tricks himself into believing "maybe things will turn out just fine this time?" or who thinks "well, we've done this before, surely we can handle it again."

This is not very related to Stephan as a character in terms of personality but I think it's still an important point to make as it is particularly related to body mods, his physical condition and his body shape.

So we can easily say that Stephan is a strong dude, at least if compared to real world standards without the fancy and insane body mods we see people in the city have access to. He carries that huge rifle around with his bare hands, something that Tamaki doesn't do and that not even Stephan himself in earlier iterations of his dessign did, and his main talent (which based of my theories is something that can be assumed as "something he's proud enough of to consider it the thing he does best") is physical labor.

Pictured, Tamaki's talksprite, carrying a rifle almost as long as she is tall with a strap supporting the weight on her shoulders, like a normal person.

Also pictured, an earlier iteration of Stephan's dessign, carrying the same rifle his current version does, but also holding it with the help of a similar strap supporting the weight on his shoulders.

And finally, Stephan's current dessign, holding that shit with his bare fucking hands in an exhibition of his brute animal strength, what the fuck is wrong with this man (affectionate)

And Stephan's artbook profile, the important part here is his speciality being physical labor, not only he's strong but he aknowledges this.

However, I made a point about the Full Stop office being poor, right? Even Roland says that "giving a whole office augmentation procedures is cheaper than keeping a decent supply of bullets in stock" (not the exact phrasing).

At least personally, I see this as Roland essentially saying "it would be cheaper (and more efficient) to get body mods for everyone in the office and buy another (cheaper) type of weaponry instead", but as things stand, the Full Stops can afford to either buy more ammunition and maintain their weapons, OR to get body mods, and since their whole deal is firearms... well, they can't really Stop investing in them, meaning they have no body mods At All and they got their grades purely out of their own physical strength.

Similarly, Stephan makes a similar point about how body augmentations are required for people to be able to run while carrying their weapons around (specifically talking about the rifles he and Tamaki use).

And... you know, the whole point is that they couldn't run carrying their weapons because they were too heavy, Argalia mocked them for that, Liwei urged them to drop their weapons, something they refused to do because of the prices.

Lastly on this point, while it's true that Ruina talksprites have a very bad case of Long Anime Legs (to the point in which how Roland's legs take about 2/3 of his height is a common joke), if we focus only on his head and torso, Stephan looks pretty Wide, and not only because he's wearing thick, fluffy and multilayered clothing, as other characters wearing similar clothing styles still look thinner than him.

This is all to say: I don't think this guy is a twink, or thin at all. He's a prime example of the strongman build to me and this is yet another hill I'm willing to die on watch project moon turn him into a beanpole once he inevitably shows up in limbus and me turning into the first real world distortion as a consequence.

Finally, Stephan is very notoriously the most informal member of the office, not only being the only one who doesn't wear any sort of formal clothing fully prioritizing comfort and practicality over looks but also completely disregarding formalities with his attitude at work (again, he interrupts Angela's introductory monologue, and again, his first two lines when being introduced are him cracking jokes), being the only member of the office to swear on screen and using several informal expressions and metaphors through both the reception dialogue and his keypage story.

And for good measure, he's a compilation of Stephan being the creature he is.

The literal introduction of the characters, also known as the moment in which Stephan became one of my favorite characters because he's Just Like Me Fr

Very normal behavior for someone who hates blood and violence and isn't used to seeing it. This man is more than capable (and willing, assuming money is involved) to murder kill.

Which, I mean, this attitude is very different from what we see from Sinclair.

2.- Sinclair, a summary

In retrospect I probably should have made this one first because I'm gonna be honest with you, Sinclair is one of the sinners I care about the least (I still like him and think he's pretty cool mind you I just don't vibe too much with most of the tropes making up the character) so what I have to say about him is less me grasping for straws and subtext because I don't care enough about him to be bothered with a super serious and in depth analysis like I did with Stephan and more things we can explicitly see about him in game and things that happen in the novel Demian.

And if I can have a small parenthesis here, people saying that one of my favorite pjm guys Ever is in any way similar to a guy who despite being pretty cool is just Not the type of character I fully vibe with... really, it gets annoying fast. Anyway back to the serious analysis now.

2.1- Emil Sinclair in Demian (1919)

To be able to understand Sinclair as he is depicted in Limbus Company, it is important to first be familiar with the source material of the original iteration of the character, that's it we're doing your high school homework by compiling several literary analysis of a symbolic psychological early 20th century autobiographical novel i hope you guys signed up for this (and if you didn't, though luck! i will do this anyway, I love literary analysis).

In the novel, young Emil finds himself torn between the worlds of light (which can be equated to the Garden of Eden, but it's more tangible meaning for our protagonist is his childhood home and family, a serene and well structure/organized space where he can be innocent, untainted by the evils of the outside world) and darkness (basically all the scary shit that goes on outside, where people do evil things for the sake of it), he finds himself tempted by the violence of the outside world, particularly through the actions of his classmate Franz Kromer, which eventually leads him to consider that due to being exposed to this tainted world of evil he no longer can return to the world of good and innocence.

Here, the character of Demian acts as a guide, someone who helps Sinclair to trascend this binary perception of good vs evil and to see himself as someone worthy of happiness because him witnessing the world of evil didn't taint him as a person but rather merely showed him another face of the world, Demian here mentions the Mark of Cain as a symbol of mental strenght and freedom, considering that bearers of this mark are capable of making their own choices and should be able to go beyond their assigned roles, being able to embody aspects of both worlds. This is to say that Demian's view is less focused on good vs evil, instead taking a more order vs chaos approach (without giving an explicit moral character to either).

In the book, the symbol of a bird breaking out of the egg is frequently used to represent Emil's personal growth, the egg represents safety and innocence, but a bird must eventually leave the egg or it will die, and getting out of the egg is a process than can be seen as violent, as a bird must fight to get out of the egg, and getting out of the egg represents birth but also an irreversible change, it can be seen as breaking out of the world of light and getting permanently in the world of darkness since a broken shell can't be fixed, but it can also mean achieving the enlightment and personal balance to not feel permanently bound to a condition, place or state of being and therefore growing as a person by learning to see himself as a whole human instead of supressing his "evil side" by only forcing the "good side" to surface.

Max Demian is here to show this second meaning of growth/self improvement (while also explaining that Sinclair is permamently growing and must always keep this balance between all the parts conforming the whole being that is himself rather that trying to make parts of himself antagonize each other). This idea of personal growth being one of the core themes of the book.

2.2- Emil Sinclair in Limbus Company (2023)

With Sinclair's source media analyzed (at a very surface level, mind you), we now can start talking about the depiction of Sinclair in Limbus Company, how it parallels the book, why the book symbolism is important for this instance of Sinclair and so on.

When we are first introduced to Sinclair in the game he's clearly nervous, he doesn't know what he's supposed to do as he hasn't worked for a similar company before and he isn't used to the gruesome sight of the bus eating people, this does fit inmediately in the motif of a naive person with limited experience about the world (well, to be fair to him most people won't be seeing man-eating buses at a regular basis, but the average backstreets dweller would be familiar with equally violent situations).

With this said, despite Sinclair's obviously nervous behavior... he isn't really a pessimist like Stephan was, in fact, almost every chapter (counting cantos, intervallos and the short mini chapters such as the Dante's notes update episode) have at least one key moment with him trying to rationalize horrible stuff as something much less violent, or simply going "but I thought this thing didn't work like this..." when confronted with the more horrible realities in the city. He thought the G corp veterans were really going to let them pass without a fight, he thought the people being controlled by headhens were just actors wearing mascot costumes, he thought mermaids were the beautiful half-woman half-fish creatures he heard about in fairy tales, and there's more examples but I don't really feel like looking for The Entire Fucking Plot Because This Guy Is An Actual Protagonist Instead Of A Background Guy Like Stephan Was to make my point clearer than it already is. And it's only when he realizes that the real world doesn't fit his expectations that he panics.

Well, there is one exception to this pattern: his own canto. Here, he panics inmediately as soon as K corp's nest is mentioned and spends the first half of the chapter pleading to turn back while saying that they are going to get killed. So what is different here with the rest of the plot?

Obviously, the fact that is related to his very own very personal very specific trauma. That is to say, unlike Stephan who is wary of anything that can put him on danger or cost him more money than it should, Sinclair has a very specific traumatic event that makes him act Like That (sure, he gets scared and nervous outside that, but these are more normal "I'm unfamiliar with this and I don't fully know how to react, this is normal behavior in a human being" reactions than outright "I am Actually Terrified due to being reminded of an actual traumatic event, this reaction is a textbook definition of post-traumatic stress disorder").

HOWEVER, Sinclair being someone who's deeply traumatized and kind of a scaredy cat when it comes to violence and unfamiliar situations... it doesn't mean that he's incompetent or a bad fighter. Almost all of his identities are terrifyingly good fighters (at least in their lore), Los Mariachis fear jefe Sinclair, Cinq director Sinclair is someone most association members are terrified to duel even during training, Blade Lineage Sinclair is considered a talented killer (it's also worth noting that save maybe for the mariachi one, in none of these mirror worlds Sinclair is precisely happy of being recognized as "the guy who's very scary when he fights people", unlike Stephan who I don't think he particularly likes killing but has a more "as long as I get paid..." mentality about it), the only "not very good at this" Sinclair id I can think of is the molar boatworks id where he's more a mechanic than a fighter so he fears he's lagging behind in that aspect. Hell, even the Canon Timeline so to speak (which is to say: his base identity) has him carrying that huge halberd, going on a frenzy attacking some already mutilated inquisitor's corpse, piercing through Guido's armor and dealing a fatal blow that finally killed him for real. To compare, Stephan is good at physical work, but we don't know about his close combat capacities other than the fact that he dislikes it, for Sinclair however we know he's terrifyingly good at physical combat.

Now, I've seen a lot of people call Sinclair a twink and while it's one of these words that nobody agrees on what it means, let's give it the benefit of doubt and say "alright, for the duration of this analysis let's settle on a twink being a young looking (regardless of actual age), thin man with almost no facial/body hair".

Since Sinclair is a rich guy (not just Any Rich Guy though, we're talking of someone whose family had ties to a Wing, probably not some elite guy like Daniel or Hong Lu, but not a self perceived "mediocre" nest dweller like Samjo either), and pressumably not very experienced in combat in most mirror worlds (we know he has no prior experience in the base one where he joined Limbus, at least), let's say that he has enough body mods for him to be much stronger than he looks like despite being thin, he does look thin and young and much to my dissapointment he also has no facial hair, so yeah, under this very broad definition of the term he is a twink.

However if you start adding personality archetypes to the definition he stops being one almost inmediately, as we've been shown time after time that his "submissive" attitude is mostly a result of him not knowing too well how to impose himself and just going along with what the rest say or do, but he's starting to grow tired of that ever since Hell's Chicken (even if he clearly still isn't great at that), as it should be more than obvious for anyone who even just googled "demian herman hesse literary analysis", Sinclair is undergoing a lot of changes even now, and the game is doing a good job at portraying that.

Honestly I also think he'd be hotter with a sleeper build but really, I don't care enough about him to argue about that.

And for the last point, precisely due to his upbringing as a rich guy AND his traumatic experience with Kromer, Sinclair is not only a very polite and mild mannered guy (again, unlike resident creature Stephan), but also he tries to take as little space as possible, both literally and metaphorically, as Dante notices near the end of canto 3 when they finally comment on how Sinclair never talks about his own problems until it's too late because he doesn't want to bother the others as they probably have it worse (again, unlike Stephan "i don't mind loweing team morale and making everyone in the room uncomfortable as long as i get to vent" Full Stop office).

3.- Adressing common arguments

Alright, now that I talked about each character, let's see some of the most common arguments I've seen people use to compare them.

"They look the same!" No, they don't. The only thing they have in common is being blonde but even their hairstyles are different with Sinclair having a simple bowl-ish cut with slightly wavy hair and Stephan having curlier hair (not to mention the whole point I made about body types because I'm the sort of lunatic who cares about that stuff). I won't even bother with this argument.

"They have the same personalities!" Again, they don't. Stephan is very cynical with a lot of his attitude being clearly derivated from him coming from a poor background and having stayed there his whole life, he also doesn't care about his cynism getting in the way and bothering everyone else. On the other hand, Sinclair is someone who could almost be described as naive due to having lived a sheltered childhood and only having his experiences with Kromer and his time at Limbus as moments of realizing that the rest of the world is Not Like His Childhood House, still believing that the world is a binary of good vs evil and expecting things to turn out fine or be much better than they actually are, just to be hit with the reality of the city Not being a nice place where people are nice and polite and not trying to kill him, this is not to say he doesn't have his own issues but even Dante notices during his Canto that Sinclair makes a point to avoid bothering everyone else with his personal problems, keeping them to himself even if that makes things worse on the long run.

"Both are opposed and harmed by a lunatic!" This is an argument I've seen a lot and is incredibly filmsy at best, half of the city's population are lunatics and the other half are people who got opposed by them some way or another. Will you say that Ishmael and the rest of the Pequod crew can be compared to the Full Stop office (or really, even mention the other Full Stop fixers instead of just focusing on Stephan because he happens to be blonde and can be compared to Sinclair) because of their situations with Ahab? Or the W Corp crew who got their train targetted by Jae-heon and Elena (or, you know, the train passengers who were turned into Love townspeople or puppets)? What about the Vermillion Cross who got killed by the Reverb Ensemble? Or the Cane office fixers? or the Zwei association section 6 who got beaten to death by Gyeong-mi just because he felt like doing so? Or the Liu association section 1 who had to deal with Argalia taking Philip away? Or the Kurokumo clan members when they were attacked by Tanya? You aren't comparing them to either Stephan or Sinclair, right? Not to mention that in her weird and fucked up perception of things, Kromer was less opposed to Sinclair as she was trying to lead him to join her and her cause, even the last things she says before getting killed are her calling him to follow her.

"Both are compared to birds!" Oh, right, because I forgot that a very directed symbolic comparison to a baby bird breaking out of it's shell as a symbol of rebirth, learning about the nuances of the world and self improvement/liberation that is consistently used in the source material Sinclair comes from is exactly the same as one (1) throwaway line the big bad guy uses to mock not only Stephan but the whole Full Stop gang, right. And if you want to say "but Tamaki compares him to a bird once too", yeah she calls him a parrot because he keeps repeating the same complaints over and over, it's still not the same as a consistent metaphor.

"Both are sad blonde twinks! They're essentially the same guy." Sad? Yeah, everyone in the city is sad but their ways to be sad are polar opposites, and neither of them is the pure cinnamon roll uwu crybaby archetype people tend to lump both into, Stephan was merely having a bad day and people decided to make that his whole personality (when honestly we get more insight on his actual personality before Argalia shows up, when he's making sarcastic remarks and getting impatient because they weren't starting killing people fast enough) but he's still perfectly capable (and willing) to murder people, and Sinclair is just... someone who lacks experience about the real world and how it works and has a tendency to get nervous because of this, but he can adapt quickly to situations once he understands them. Blonde? Yeah, but I guess if that's a point to draw a comparison then we should also compare them to Don Quixote, the Tiphereths, Lenny, Yun, Lulu, Olga, every single npc, librarian, and agent who comes with blonde hair from the generator... Twinks? Stephan absolutely isn't one, Sinclair depends on how you define twink as nobody seems to get to an agreement with that, if you define it as merely "young looking thin man with almost no visible body hair" then yeah he is one, but if you go for any more specific definition than that he stops fitting into the definition almost instantly.

In conclusion: if I see anyone else comparing them I'll start blocking people liberally bc I'm sick of seeing that shit (I do that already tbh but just so you know), now scram

[sergle]

i was a chihuahua disliker in a past life but have Grown Up since then, but earlier i saw one that made me clench my fists in agony. i wanted her so bad...

[froggies-bloggies]

I want to put Jax in a box made of sharp edges and glass and shake him around and then make him lick his own wounds

[foxx-queen]

thinking about the way shadowheart, lae'zel and minthara deal with breaking away from a god/god-like figure they've dedicated their lives to. shadowheart immediately latches onto rescuing her parents as her new 'mission'. lae'zel immediately dedicates herself to freeing orpheus with the vigor she served vlaakith. minthara fixates on obtaining the power to make sure she's never controlled again.

its like. breaking away from gods/god-like figures leaves a void to fill. they're trying to fill it, and trying to choose what they fill it with. and they know that's what they're doing, in some ways, maybe to avoid the enormity of what it means to have broken away. maybe to avoid working out what they'll do as individuals. shadowheart doesnt know her parents, and they dont know her anymore, but she has to save them. you can ask lae'zel why she won't focus on herself, and she acknowledges there's no time for that. not yet. minthara wants you to use the power of the brain, but has dialogue/approval when you speak to ravenguard and she realizes hes still in there beneath the tadpoles influence, just like she was.

'my deference to him is a habit that will die hard, i fear'. minthara still calls the elder brain the absolute, even after she knows the truth. lae'zel still calls out to vlaakith in battle. shadowheart still wears the symbol of shar in her hair after dyeing it. indoctrination/ingrained beliefs are hard to break.

they've broken away from what was controlling their lives. they're free. they've lost everything. shadowheart can save her parents and but will always have that mark. lae'zel has been declared a traitor and will be hunted until vlaakith is overthrown. minthara can never go home, and would be executed if she tried.

they've broken away. they've lost everything. they're struggling with what that means. they're free. they wouldn't have it any other way.

[spitblaze]

This is going to sound mean but I mean this in the most sincere and compassionate way I possibly can:

If you see a comment on the internet that is transphobic towards your group and your first assumption is that the person who wrote it is a different kind of transgender and not cis, especially if that comment is completely removed from all context or anonymous, no avatar or username or anything, take that as a sign to log off for a few days or pick up a new hobby.

[retrogradedreaming]

my least favorite thing is when people compliment someone's work by using passive aggressive comments about what they hate about other people's work. like please, just focus on what is actually in front of you

[galactic-glamour-girl-posts]

The Warners' Surprisingly Fitting Concerns

You know, I never gave it much thought (outside of this dumb joke) but each Warner's verse in "We Could Try to Do It, Santa" fits their personality pretty well and is about the thing they'd naturally be the most concerned about in that situation.

Yakko's Verse:

At first his verse is about how they can't deliver the presents without Santa's magic and how they'd have to upgrade Santa's sleigh so it can fly fast enough to travel the world in one night, but then it's revealed his true major concern is how that would result in the reindeer getting hurt:

"Prancer and the others might burn up if we're that fast"

"And a sonic boom would work its way through Dasher, Donner, Dancer,

Soon engulfing Cupid, Comet; Santa, this can't be the answer!

See the last thing that we'd wanna do is make the reindeer yelp!"

As a protective older sibling, naturally Yakko would assume Santa of all people would want to protect the reindeer given that they are under his care, like how Yakko tries to protect his sibs. I think the switch up in the verse's focus also reflects how although Yakko's snarky yet jovial nature means he's not quick to be emotionally open and often hides or undercuts his sincerity with snark or humour; he still clearly deeply cares for his sibs and that will eventually show.

Wakko's Verse:

Well Wakko's verse is unsurprisingly about food, but I also wanna point out how it easily has the most extreme consequences of the three, given that the whole of Earth shatters.

This reflects how Wakko tends to go to extremes the most out of the Warners. Need to do a gag about having eyes at the back your head? Wakko will have nine rather than just two. The Warners are bouncing on springs during an earthquake? Wakko's bouncing on a spring upside down, etc.

The little guy loves being extra.

Dot's Verse:

Dot suggests spying on people in her verse. Dot specifically would be the Warner to sing about this when you remember her whole schtick is acting cute and innocent, but being way tougher, craftier and more violent than she appears.

She more than anyone would know that there's often more to people than meets the eye, and hence would be the one to point out the need for wiretaps, logs of web searches, etc. until they had a "constant feed of every single child on Earth" if they wanted to know what the each child in the world was truly like.

[ratcandy]

EVERYONE SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MONCH SPOTTED IN THE NEW COTL CONTENT 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[overly-distressed-mouse]

Dare I say Blanche DuBois is actually an incredibly complex character and not just some annoying, ditzy, codependent pedophile?

Dare I say that although it doesn't excuse the pedophillia, it does make sense why she went for the paperboy given that she spent the majority of her youth being told how attractive she was and most likely having her value as a person determined only by her looks and youth?

Dare I say that she probably, at least on a subconscious level, believed that if she could pull someone younger and also attractive, that it would prove that she's still young enough and pretty enough to have some kind of inherent worth as a person, especially now that she's lost any worth she might've had financially?

Perchance.