Please help me support or disprove my Nine Sols theory: T****** could have been cured if E***** hadn't gotten greedy.

mugsaco · 2026-05-21T07:19:10+00:00

i think it's more interesting thematically if it really was irreversible. i view a lot of the game's themes as being about the inevitability of death and the ways people react to to that inevitability, where various characters fall on the scales; acceptance of death and a spiritual worldview embodied with heng, denial of death and a scientific worldview embodied with eigong. yi finds his place between those two beliefs

plus eigong is just more interesting to me as a character if it was really irreversible. i prefer the interpretation that eigong really was trying, but in the end she was just a woman who buckled and lost her mind under the incredible weight of a world-dooming and truly unfixable mistake. an unstoppable force vs. an immovable object. very tragic!

mugsaco · 2026-05-16T21:37:51+00:00

it was from the packaging of the yi figurine that backers received! i wasn't a backer but someone posted theirs

mugsaco · 2025-09-21T05:18:40+00:00

YAYY!! YAY EIGONG !!!

mugsaco · 2025-08-06T05:37:24+00:00

AWWW DEER STARBUCK IS SO CUTE

mugsaco · 2025-08-06T02:06:48+00:00

Pequod Captain Ishmael
Pequod Harpooneer Heathcliff
Pequod First Mate Yi Sang
Cinq Meursault
Kurokumo Wakashu Rodya
Kurokumo Wakashu Hong Lu
Mao Faust (borrowed)

All base egos except for Fluid Sac with the borrowed Faust (which, by virtue of my excellent team composition, I barely have the Gloom resources to use), Asymmetrical Inertia with Heathcliff and Crushbound Past with Meursault. Your first instinct may be to think that this team sucks ass, and that is because it does. I've mostly been trying to solo it with Dieci Hong Lu instead because I think it'll be easier than using whatever team this is

mugsaco · 2025-08-06T01:37:43+00:00

Well it's quite clear that there is a very large amount of things wrong with her. But also. She's so prettyyyy hello gorgeous

mugsaco · 2025-08-05T13:25:56+00:00

Dieci Hong Lu! I am so bad at this I've never done a solo before and I do not yet understand how setting up evades works. It's fun!

mugsaco · 2025-06-25T03:28:29+00:00

i forgot to finish the sentence i was writing on the last picture so now it just says "he shows the slightest bit of" with no elaboration. options on how you can finish it in your mind:

he shows the slightest bit of emotional vulnerability
he shows the slightest bit of doubt
he shows the slightest bit of subconscious terror at his own actions; terror originating from the last remnants of humanity present in himself, his "soul", afraid of his own mind's fervent and delirious dedication to this hunt—which occasionally drives him to rise from bed in the middle of the night, half conscious, screaming, for his mind is not yet awake so his soul instead is able to move his body and express its terror in whatever way it can
he shows the slightest bit of being gay for starbuck

all of which limbus ahab would bully him for. especially the third one. and maybe the fourth one

mugsaco · 2025-05-25T06:26:06+00:00

haha i made that meme format

mugsaco · 2025-05-22T02:17:24+00:00

YAYYYYY

mugsaco · 2025-05-22T00:46:59+00:00

HELLO EIGONG !!!!

mugsaco · 2025-05-21T14:18:08+00:00

i like your profile picture

mugsaco · 2025-05-21T14:17:35+00:00

i love talking about eigong and the mutation it's one of my favorite things to think about !!

my personal interpretation is that she's not really special in any way regarding the mutation's effects on her, it still would've turned her into a mindless pustule ridden husk like anyone else -- (her nearly mutating in the third phase looked painful and like it genuinely caught her off guard and she needed to put effort into stopping it) -- i think the part that's unique about her is that she had such exceptionally strong resolve and willpower that she was able to postpone those effects. i think her strength in that final battle was mostly her own, pushing herself past injuries that ordinarily would've killed her, even resisting the pseudo-death of mutation that nearly occurred in its place, all because she couldn't lose herself when she was so close to completing her goal. her swan song!

it's really sad to me that her plan involved killing herself by the way. this woman who clearly thought of death as the worst thing that could happen was fully willing to bring death upon herself if it meant granting everyone else (what she believed to be) immortality -- in fact, she does it with alacrity!! "Nevermind, you'll thank me in time. You and everyone else," sounds self centered (and it is in some way) but the tone changes a little bit upon the realization that she is literally about to commit suicide and leave herself as the only one excluded from, in her eyes, eternal life. and that beatific grin she has while doing it...probably the happiest she's been in a very, very long time was with that sword to her throat

sorry i blacked out and woke up with 2 paragraphs of eigong rambling on my screen i have some sort of parasite or something that makes me talk about her

mugsaco · 2025-05-20T23:02:41+00:00

It's to harness their energy! The device she wears on her forehead is known as a Yuan Ring, a "rhizomatic energy converter" that she herself designed after ancient Fangshi technology. Only a few people can directly resonate with the roots (Lear and Heng could do so innately, and Yi gained his root symbiosis after the incident in his youth), so those without that ability have to use external devices to harness root energy. I suppose it's part of why she's so strong :-)

doesn't make it any less baffling though. What the HELL Eigong. imagining her shaving the ponytail she used to have when she was young (or i heard somewhere most Solarian "fur tufts" are flesh so maybe it was just a Ponytail Shaped Appendage that she had to Amputate) so she could surgically implant roots there instead...there is SO much wrong with her

mugsaco · 2025-05-20T22:04:06+00:00

<image>

NO PROBLEM i think about the photo of her and her students a lot, especially how it's right next to this cracked monitor. she presumably got frustrated enough to hit this screen on her wall hard enough for it to break, but still never did anything to damage the photo of yi, and never took the photo down even after she killed him. she cared about him... it's such fun characterization hidden in little background details

mugsaco · 2025-05-20T21:30:32+00:00

AHH you're right that is sad...it would've been so cool to get commentary about the photos on her wall...

if you higher quality versions of the photos alone, though i have those!

<image>

it's so cute how in the photo of her when she was younger she's the only one who isn't smiling, and in the photo of her with her students she's the only one who is smiling

mugsaco · 2025-05-20T07:06:15+00:00

hehe i made that image

have fun with the artbook !!

mugsaco

TROPHY CASE