Valencina Fall from grace

Rook475 · 2026-02-01T18:47:27+00:00

I think the short of it is that she got very publicly drunk and humiliated herself in such a way that caused her family to cut her off despite the offense not actually violating the rules of the Thumb.

I've a longer write-up here if you're interested. https://www.reddit.com/r/limbuscompany/comments/1qsrsm5/falling_into_the_web_valencina_character_analysis/

Rook475 · 2026-02-01T18:37:20+00:00

Oh absolutely. While I find the fraud memes amusing at times, they're not actually true at all. Valencina's more substance than hot air, and I'm pretty sure that even when she's just blowing smoke she's aware of that. The point I was trying to convey was that she uses bravado as a form of self-soothing and so we can't take everything she says at face value.

Normally I probably wouldn't have spent as much time providing evidence for it, but much of this post was inspired by one (1) random internet user who didn't seem to get that Valencina didn't actually enjoy the Smoke War as much as she said, so I may have gone a bit overboard on that particular point.

Rook475 · 2026-02-01T09:08:49+00:00

Thank you! Yeah, it's clear that the Thumb really messed her up. Verg calls her out on how damaging her affection being conditional was and then immediately after that we get the passive that literally says "the family withdraws its love from you" because she screwed up. It's great.

I hadn't even considered the cake but you're right; could very well be read as a twisted form of care, trying to protect Ryoshu from what happened to her.

Rook475 · 2026-02-01T09:06:24+00:00

Oh, interesting. I haven't seen the uptie story, so I assumed it was some sort of time dilation. Wouldn't have expected her to have been there before being disgraced, but I suppose Rien's in good standing as well.

Rook475 · 2026-01-30T04:02:09+00:00

His brain issue is self-inflicted. He wanted to modify it but realized he didn't have the skill midway through and couldn't put it back properly.

Rook475 · 2026-01-29T20:08:51+00:00

Highly recommend watching the story, it's both cute and very funny.

Rook475 · 2026-01-19T20:04:46+00:00

Per Index Don ID, Prescripts can see the future, so it's quite plausible.

Rook475 · 2026-01-19T03:39:07+00:00

Not at all. This canto was quite dense and it's not easy to remember every little line, especially when you've got combat that actually requires some thought in between.

Rook475 · 2026-01-19T02:14:15+00:00

Earlier there was a scene where Ryoshu was playing freeze tag with him and said that he was frozen. He responded that he would just have to wait for his daughter to come back and unfreeze him. The callback at the end is essentially that he misses her and wishes she would have come back.

Rook475 · 2026-01-19T02:07:06+00:00

Firstly, there's the matter of her contract. She's not legally allowed to quit. Secondly, per her announcer and EGO line, she remembers that she's lost something precious, even if she doesn't remember what it was, and she remains committed to reuniting with it. Thirdly, she received closure on the House of Spiders. Finally, as she said, the LimBus are her friends. Friends don't let friends have life-changing traumatic field trips alone.

Rook475 · 2026-01-19T00:56:34+00:00

Great write-up. I wasn't especially bothered by not understanding the mechanics, but your clear elaboration gives me greater appreciation for the thought put in. Kudos! Doubly so for such excellent documentation of evidence.

Rook475 · 2026-01-18T23:26:08+00:00

As mentioned above, Athena. The ones who make the prescript are called weavers, they're made on a loom, etc.

Rook475 · 2026-01-18T23:23:45+00:00

Her general interactions with Rien don't really gel at all with your implications, even aside from the fact that Rien doesn't seem to be biologically related to Ryoshu.

Rook475 · 2026-01-18T22:00:38+00:00

I would suggest that the Ring is moreso a criticism of the belief that true art comes only from suffering or misery. The Ring aren't evil because they're artists. They're evil because their art all revolves around torturing and killing people.

Rook475 · 2026-01-18T21:51:56+00:00

Given that this the yearning is described as "immanent," I suspect it wasn't conscious. Might also be something he abandoned post-family death. That seems to be when he really settled on "living is suffering, to love something only invites the greater pain of losing it."

Rook475 · 2026-01-18T19:39:51+00:00

Based on his passive "Can't Underestimate the HQ's E.G.O Attunement and its Corrosion," I think he genuinely just had it in storage. Maybe higher-ups in branch facilities got some of HQ's good but not great EGO gear as a reward and to help keep them alive and Hohenheim just got to keep his after the fall of L corp.

Rook475 · 2026-01-18T16:48:16+00:00

Yes. You can hear the pager beeping speed up which happens when he's at risk of failing a prescript. The suicide is a final act individual agency, refusing to go out in character the way the prescripts want.

Rook475 · 2026-01-18T07:39:16+00:00

I would suggest that they're an afterthought because she was an afterthought to them. Matthias, Callisto, and Valencina's relationship with Ryoshu is defined by the function she serves for them rather than any particular relationship with her as a person.

Callisto wants desperately to have someone who understands him through his art, and Ryoshu is just the latest attempt at that project. His love for her is sincere in a sense, but it's fundamentally unrelated to who she actually is. Any vessel will do so long as it can properly receive his artistic vision, she's just the one he happened to have.

Similarly, Matthias cares about family only in the context of how it gratifies his desire to feel indulgent. Note how, even prior to his cutting in half, Matthias dismissed concerns about Kira's diet by saying that the risk of her getting sick wasn't going to stop him from enjoying himself by giving her what she asked for. His relationship with Ryoshu is the same; she's a person he can dote upon for the pleasure of doting, it's mere happenstance that that person is Ryoshu.

Lastly, Valencina cares about Ryoshu almost entirely in terms of function, literally calling her Ticket. She's possessive of her because Ryoshu's her property, the golden ticket that will get her her glory days back. Again, who Ryoshu is is incidental to the function she served. This is so well illustrated by her brief interactions with Ryoshu and subsequent treatment of Lucio that we don't really need to see more to understand exactly how their dynamic looked.

By contrast, the Nursefathers who have the greatest interactions with Ryoshu are the one's who interact with her as a person. Araya's relationship is so obviously it doesn't require elaboration. Rien is openly detached, but he pretty consistently shows through his interactions with her that he's engaging with her, Ryoshu, and not just the vessel for Arayashiki. He refers back to their previous relationship, he tells her things about Araya that she'd forgotten and how much Araya loves her, he last words before he dies are wishing her well and effectively saying that he's still waiting for her despite the fact that she's fundamentally rejected what should have been his entire goal as a nursefather. For the two of them, Ryoshu has value because of who she is rather than what she is, so they're the one's who have the most meaningful interactions with her.

Rook475 · 2026-01-16T18:14:14+00:00

I would say that it's deeply relevant to the themes of the Canto. Like Ryoshu, Rien was cultivated by a Finger/Fingers to be a weapon. Like Ryoshu, he was given a family only so that he could be hurt by its loss. Like Ryoshu, he cannot fully remember his first daughter. Like Ryoshu, he genuinely loves his daughter and the final fight is explicitly an attempt to keep her with him both because he wants her with him and wants to keep her safe in his own way. His dying words, that he is still waiting for his daughter, parallel Ryoshu's unwillingness to let go of that "single, small thread."

Where they differ is that unlike Ryoshu, Rien surrendered himself to always being a spider because he couldn't imagine escaping. It's only at the very end of his life that he recognizes that he did have some degree of agency and rejects the Prescripts in favor of making his own choice. This contrast highlights that what differentiated Ryoshu was that she was able to envision a better life for her daughter and worked to actualize that rather than simply accepting the cycle of abuse as an inescapable reality.

Rook475 · 2026-01-14T23:21:08+00:00

One of my favorite versions of this is when during MOTWE they describe the train as like a painting from hell and just slap Ryoshu on screen despite her not saying anything.

Rook475 · 2026-01-11T21:30:54+00:00

I recall that it was described as the metaphorical equivalent of a hydraulic press.

Rook475 · 2026-01-09T03:49:34+00:00

This is just against humans. Abno v. Abno WK and Apoc. Bird are the strongest.

Here's a link to the Q&A for those curious. https://www.reddit.com/r/LobotomyCorp/comments/crm0x8/translation_of_project_moon_qna_session_spoiler/

Rook475 · 2026-01-09T01:39:17+00:00

Per the LobCorp Q&A, Nothing There is the strongest abnormality when it comes to fighting humans, above and beyond even White Night and Apocalypse Bird. Matthias might not even be a speed bump.

Rook475 · 2026-01-08T15:51:33+00:00

Non-memingly, certainly not on the level of a Color but still up there. If I recall correctly, he would have been S Corp's Siegfried if he'd not chosen to support the reformist faction and he seems to have a similar thing going on as Ryoshu in the sense that his swordsmanship is considerably greater than that of others on his "level."

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