why??

to pathos mathos

more damage if the target is missing hp, on kill conditional, passive that relies on her not getting hit. this all makes sense with what we know about outis so i won't dwell on it overlong.

a lot of this has also been pointed out so i'll be brief, but:

the smoke war seen through the backstory window, though in contrast to gregor's, we can see the buildings here and not just the soldiers fighting. implies a connection to highers-up and the greater purpose of the war.

the shadow of hermes' cacedeus on the wall and outie looking at her watch

also unlike gregor, she's surrounded by the bodes of what i'd say are most likely her own soldiers, given her clear tendency to have been willing to betray those on her own side if it means winning. if you zoom in on the guy on the right, it looks like they have a prosthetic body? canto 11 sinclair prosthetic trauma part 3? probably not but i can hope.

also, while all the sinners' base egos have them wearing the same striped uniform, outis's is much less visible than any of the others; the majority of her outfit is military.

i'll go fer scissors

she made her intentions clear, but she was still mistrusted. i feel like this is pretty clearly related to how everyone in the company (and indeed most of the fanbase) seems to think she'll betray them in the future. i don't think she will, though. it's been established that her ruthless behaviour towards her fellows is something she mainly did during the war, and while she's still in the war in her mind, i think it's evident enough to her that limbus company is her only way of getting home, and she clearly respects dante by now as well. this also ties into her behaviour during nocturnal sweeping: she was clearly trying to trick the guy who was trying to trick them, but dante, whose opinion matters to her, misread the situation and thought she'd fallen for that guy's lies. she was hurt by this, even if she tried to play it off. she's not as unreadable as she might like to think she is.

cheating behaviour. her voiceline for this is crazy btw; her va is insanely good. she plays up the childlike voice here to fit into the abno's themes, and i think the laugh despite her clearly being upset and angry that she "lost" fits with that too. also worth noting that both her awakening and corrosion sprites have her face in shadow, though the corrosion is fully obscured while the awakening just looks like The Face:

while i'm talking about The Face, i'd be remiss not to point out her parallels to binah in that regard. she and binah have the same va, and also nearly identical earrings. it could mean nothing but i don't think it does.

also, her awakening sprite has her heart pinned to her collar, while in the corrosion, it's hidden underneath her cloak. hm.

the skill itself is pretty straightforwardly meant to be used with middletis, and someone pointed out to me that its ideal use is losing a clash on an overclock to inflict more bleed related effects. notably, the passive has similar health conditionals to to pathos mathos, possibly related to how outis knows painless ways of mercy killing people, as seen in canto 3? (though ryoshu is also shown to do this in canto 8, so idk if it's particularly relevant.)

the last thing i'll point out is that WYP is hanged in the art for the ego. considering outis's suicidal tendencies, which i covered here, and the fact that WYP represents neglected children who just want to play (and win) and will bend the rules to keep having fun...

ya sunyata tad rupam

karma mention. i think this has two meanings tbh: one that's pretty clear, about outis's past crimes catching up to her, and the other being about her implied connections to the index, considering where else we've seen the word used and the fact that she refers to the prescripts as gods (and most likely has encountered gods of the city during her journeys prior to the company).

this one is harder for me to articulate, but i think it could be something like her feeling sympathy for the soldiers she had to kill, and again heavy regret for what she did during the war. also probably about herself and her own suffering, however you want to interpret that.

>group of followers who lack common factors >staff with its own sentience hey? the first one is obvious but the staff??? her index clues genuinely make me feel like a feral animal. i need it to be true so badly.

lunges at her

not much to report here, but the passive being called emptying is intriguing, espcially because heathcliff's is just called dhyana. speaking of which, why heathcliff?

oh...

in this case the sharing of the ego seems to be about different themes i think; they reflect different facets of the abnormality entirely, so idt there's much i can glean from this. i think outie's corrosion is interesting though bc of how it completely strips her body away. also the fact that MFE itself is a stone statue with living flesh inside, like how outis presents herself as very stern and capable and unemotive but has hinted a lot at having much more tumultuous emotions under the surface.

sunshower

her quotes for this one are obvious enough that i don't feel the need to cover them; here i'm more interested in the fact that both she and yi sang share this ego. yi sang's is mostly about wanting to protect his friends (hes so sweet...), but also has similar themes of abandonment (given that this is his seasonal ego) and being left in poor material conditions, arguably, given the themes of drifting fox itself. also, both of their corrosions look quite similar and have umbrellas stabbing through their chests, representing the pain of abandonment or losing one's friends. yi sang's ego art shows the fox curled up with its face hidden in its tail, but outis's looks more aggressive-defensive, kind of like how injured animals will lash out at humans trying to help them:

tge skill itself targets the unit with the least hp, again. hey outis is this something. consider also her various teamkillings in the context of her always targeting units with low hp..... something is happening.

as for DF, it looks like it hurt itself with the umbrellas that were given to it by people who didn't help it sufficiently. obvious enough for yi sang, but we haven't really seen any of this kind of vulnerability from outis yet... additionally, the name of the abnormality itself is interesting. drifting fox... it doesn't settle anywhere, it has no home to return to. homelessness seems to be kind of an implied theme with it? i don't think they ever overtly reference it anywhere, but its MD event makes me think of that, as well as its name. which, if we go with the theory that outis can't return home because of the laws prohibiting smoke war veterans from certain nests...

ebony stem

more straightforward because it's a season 1 ego, i think, though it's very impressive for being that imo (quite solid atk weight and inflictions as well as a passive that works really well with heishoutis...). anyway though. it's clearly about greed and gluttony, in this case seizing victory as outis states in her quote. interestingly, despite the glut ego, EQA's suppressed core has an envy gem (lol gem), and outis wears one in the ego as well:

the abnormality is posed quite greedily in the art:

and also imo highlights its creepy nature (which i find easy to overlook because of what a chud it is in combat). its face has nothing but teeth, it can only consume. also, it is literally the evil queen from snow white, and has a similar relationship with snow white's apple from lobcorp, which is quite interesting.

nothing noteworthy about the skill itself, but the passive name is interesting and again hearkens to similar themes as IGFS.

yeah. overall not much i could find about this one, which makes sense as it's a season 1 ego, though interesting to see that the trust motif was somewhat implemented in combat design even that early on.

holiday

im gonna preface this by saying that i have such a hard time taking rudolta seriously for some reason and thats going to extend to this abno most likely.

i can only assume this quote is gonna be one of those ones that becomes a lot more significant after we Know. but there's kind of a thread of a children motif in outis's character and not even one that i'd say necessarily connects to her possibly having a kid. i think she has some issues from her own childhood to be honest. maybe she was neglected as a kid, considering this line and WYP...?

here i'll point out that she loses 10% hp on corrosion (a trait she shares with dimension shredder and which i actually missed in the suicide compilation because of how stupid and unserious the christmas abnos are), and also that her passive is called "fair presents".

(text if it's too blurry: "Sandolph's E.G.O art features the Gnomes from Santata's Gift Factory. This is the only instance of E.G.O art depicting entities other than the relevant Abnormality (and/or entities related to it) and Sinner. Sandolph's E.G.O art appears to show a sequence of events, going from its depiction in Heathcliff's E.G.O to Outis'.")

THIS is really interesting though actually... i never noticed... it goes from gluttony (having lots of presents) to wrath (destroying all the presents). it's definitely a childish action. what could it mean...

dimension shredder

rubs my hands together like a fly. i love wayward passenger and i've already analysed this a bit in the context of outis being suicidal:

IM TELLING YOU, losing hp for a skill means something. this is actually huge news to me bc i've been doing it in my fan ego kit designs for ages. but anyway. the reason she shares this ego with yi sang and hong lu is that 1) they're lost and aimless in life and 2) they want or wanted to kill themselves.

eternal wandering, pretty obvious. the averting your eyes bit is perhaps something related to the odyssey? i haven't read it yet sorry. but this ego pretty clearly goes with her w corp identity, which shares this theme. i must say, w corp is a really good choice for her, since they're all about eternal wandering. i do think it's interesting that outis's ego is envy while the other two are pride, especially considering that pride is her most common sin across all identities?? but she has a lot of surprising envy connections... something else is brewing there.

the passive name, rambling man, is shared with yi sang, and again, with the themes of the ego, seems to hearken back to his post-league days when he was being drugged and manipulated by gubo. which is. scary?? once again, nothing has hinted at outis having anything like this in her past but her yisangisms are undeniable. they show up together in multiple mirror worlds and share multiple egos and were a pair during april fools, which if you look at the other pairs, means Something.

she also has an on kill conditional here and a unique kill animation, something not shared by the other two. that's pretty standard outis fare tho.

of course it would be meursault writing the logs for one of the most interesting abnormalities bro 😑 come onnnn. nothing i could really glean from his conciseness. unfortunately its less overt themes (i.e. the ones unrelated to w corp) seem to most emerge through its egos. but actually, upon consideration, i'm not surprised that it's connected to suicidality-- i'd want to kill myself too if i was trapped endlessly between dimensions with all my skin flayed off.

magic bullet

okay i lied this is the REAL big one. i'm actually not sure at all how to cover this because it feels both very overt and very subtle.

i mean just read it; read the awakening and corrosion quotes separately, they sort of each tell a story. special attention to the last corrosion one, though. she lacks the will to move forward... the fearlessness to keep on living, perhaps? she's so fucking depressed i'm telling you.

also read MB outis's identity story because that's very relevant here as well. like this guy's entire deal is about despair and inevitability.

also notable perhaps that it was decidedly not the kill yourself ego in lobotomy corp at all and this appears to be a special outis feature? not sure how it worked in ruina though because i totally cheesed that phase by sealing angela's speed dice lmao. although i think i remember there being an abnormality page that lets you synchronize with der freischutz and then kill yourself right after...?

binds

I HIT IMAGE LIMIT ARE YOU KIDDING ME. fine i'll type the quotes out myself because i need to show you another, more important image later on here.

"How insipid… Must I deal with it myself?"

this abno and its egos are all about the weight of responsibility. yet another one she shares with heathcliff actually... for him i interpret it as being the only one to carry the memory of catherine, and the responsibility he has to remember her and ultimately bring her back, as the only one (possibly aside from dante) who can. it also ties to his seasonal identity but this isnt about him. for outis, it's obviously about her actions during the war, the soldiers she was responsible for, and the ones she killed for "the greater good". we also see this with how she sometimes uses her bravado as a way to, idk, try to make her fellows feel better about a bad combat situation? i can't remember a specific example off the top but i know there have been times where she'll get boastful about like her combat experience when things are looking bad and hopeless. i don't think she does this in ricardo type situations though?

"You dare… challenge my authority?!"

again pretty obvious. but also oh no. shes a control freak as a coping mechanism oh fuuuuckkk The Character. that's like the one trait that will invariably get me. anyway though. she needs to be in control because otherwise bad things will happen to her and the people she's responsible for. you can see this with how she acts with early dante, before they've gotten the hang of that whole manager thing, and she's obviously so anxious that they're gonna fuck everything up and get everyone killed but tries to mask it with arrogance in typical fashion. she wants to be the one leading everyone because she can do it, she can get them all out alive. idk. i think, based on what i know about the odyssey, she felt a STRONG responsibility to keep her crew alive at least in the beginning, and feels terribly guilty about not being able to do it and even contributing to some of their deaths. that's just speculation though, again, i haven't read it.

in terms of appearances: heathcliff is just sitting on the throne and looks solemn and grim, but outis is standing and looks like she's actively struggling against the binds in hers. Which Could Mean Nothing. embrace of responsibility vs attempt to absolve oneself (canto 7 dungeon), etc. curiously, outis only loses 8 sp at turn end from hers, while heathcliff loses the usual 10.

moving on to the king in binds itself: it's a minion boss, which has clear meaning, but then it also rises to fight you itself when all of its minions are defeated. (though, based on outie's quotes, it clearly doesn't like having to "deal with it [itself]".)

"Yet what those Peccatula lack is the will to make decisions of their own. Like cards to be played with and discarded at the king’s whim. Kings, both of eld and new it seems, enjoy plays of puppets, a musical of manikins. Wielding men as cold tools, brandishing and flourishing them with abandon, breaking them. And upon their inevitable shattering, the king shall fill their spot with another puppet, its absence unnoticed. Yet, this king may be quite fond of his own."

from the observation log... it would make sense for outis to have been a tactician of some kind, as well as having experience in the field, considering how she sees the other sinners as incompetent earlier on in the story and doesn't trust any of them to make decisions. however, i do think that she has obvious signs of ptsd/cptsd and her inability to trust the judgement of others is part of that too. obviously, she doesn't "wield men as cold tools" considering what i said previously, but she clearly views them as somewhat expendable.

"One of the King in Binds' Skill animations ('Present Thyself Before the King') is reminiscent of the Greek parable of the sword of Damocles, where king Dionysius suspended a sword above his throne by the pommel using a single hair of a horse's tail to show Damocles—a courtier whom he allowed to take his place on his throne for a day—his constant worries of being displaced. In the case of this Attack Skill, the Abnormality unleashes the sword onto its enemies from its throne, which likely instead symbolizes the King's authority over its subjects."

not much to add here. this description sounds like her ego skill attack to me. also a greek mythology reference that will surely become important. the subversion of the fear present in the original myth reflects, i think, how outis wants to present herself? but she clearly has fear deep down.

finally, her ego is pride while heathcliff's is gloom. however, she has a wrath gem (linked because im out of images), which the king and its suppressed core do not have:

the king has no gems on its person, but its core has this black and white gem which could be either madness or angst, the two cut sins. i don't remember which is which though unfortunately, and the way the gem is presented, it's not clear to me whether it's black with white lighting or white with black shadows. one of them was about obsessing over yourself(?) and the other was obsessing over other people(?) as far as i can remember... i'll leave it up to those who actually know about those sins to interpret this, if anyone actually reads this far LMAO.

in conclusion sorry for the long ass essay but i need to throw rocks at outis. if i missed anything please point it out!