Witch of Systems

The Witch of Systems, who has lived for twenty-two years. Their powers lie in being able to observe overarching, emergent systems with clear precision. However, in their pursuit of understanding emergent overarching systems, they may forget that individual elements that form an emergent systems do not always follow the rules of the emergent system. - PFP made with ElenA's Windswept OC Maker https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/1855819 - Kassandra, they/them, white, lives in western Europe, lesbian - I needed a new account for my weird little Umineko essays because they are getting out of hand

[kassandra-the-witch]

Introduction

So, hi. My name is Kassandra. @siphonophorus introduced me to Umineko a while ago and uh... uhm. I have so many thoughts about everything so I decided to make a new account for all of this so that my followers on my main will not be flooded by a volley of posts about whatever the fuck is going on in this story. I will likely posts semi-regular updates on my reading/thought process here on this blog. Maybe I will use it for something else at some point. I don't know.

Please don't spoiler me, I am trying to figure this story out on its own terms. I am currently finished with Ep2 (December 2023).

You can ask me about thoughts. I do not know how often I will be on this account, but alas.

I have thus far invested roughly seventy hours of my life into this story. I am finished with an eigth of it. Help.

[kassandra-the-witch]

While mindlessly looping Evanatsu GMVs YouTube suggested a video called "Solution to the Umineko Epitaph" to me and from the outline of things the thumbnail shows the north of the island of Taiwan... Kinzo did you help the American fascists help the Chinese fascists flee when they lost the civil war?

[luminolenthusiast-deactivated20]

they should make a hidden minigame in umineko where u can click on one of the title letters and it unlocks a screen where you can just set kinzo on fire over and over again

[kassandra-the-witch]

In my eternal game of "who is whose alter" when it comes to Umineko I do entertain the Beatrice-Kanon-Sayo connection but that does conflict with the end of Ep2. I could try desperately to make this theory work by saying that every focalizer is going into a trauma-induced state of hallucination at the same time but still it seems so cheap and yet why do I feel like Beatrice and Kanon and Sayo could all be connected

[kassandra-the-witch]

From where you're standing, Ushiromiya Battler, it must seem like an 18 carat run of bad luck. Truth is - the game was rigged from the start

[kassandra-the-witch]

I have never sucked ass at a game as much as I have in Umineko. Sure, I can identify the surface level themes - the intergenerational propagation of imperialism, the inherent patriarchal and classist structure of the nuclear family, the invisibilization of capitalist war-profiteering post-WWII, the absurd toxic dynamics within ultrarich families, the role contact with the west and christianity played in the construction and maintenance of the Japanese empire, the violence of indentured servitude, the near limitless ability of rich men to get away with sexualized violence, the propagation of sexualized violence throughout the western literary canon since the 14th century, the way trauma affects one's ability to remember and reconstruct and the way that influences belief in conflict with reality - but who the fuck committed the murders and how?

No idea. Honestly tiny bombs in the food sounds just as good as any explanation I could come up with.

[kassandra-the-witch]

@sol-stays #real#i feel like that one orc reading Ulysses comic

I have the dubious privilege of informing you that this was the exact comic I had in mind when typing this post

[kassandra-the-witch]

I am still entertaining a "fifth child" theory, where Kinzo had a secret fifth child, and either that child or that child's child is one of the Beatrices. Kinzo's violent possessiveness of (one of the) Beatrice(s) always struck me as weirdly paternal, if not incestuous. But it would make one of the Beatrices ending up with Battler suspect, unless of course the Beatrice ending up with Battler is completely distinct from the Beatrice of Ushiromiya blood.

[kassandra-the-witch]

I have never sucked ass at a game as much as I have in Umineko. Sure, I can identify the surface level themes - the intergenerational propagation of imperialism, the inherent patriarchal and classist structure of the nuclear family, the invisibilization of capitalist war-profiteering post-WWII, the absurd toxic dynamics within ultrarich families, the role contact with the west and christianity played in the construction and maintenance of the Japanese empire, the violence of indentured servitude, the near limitless ability of rich men to get away with sexualized violence, the propagation of sexualized violence throughout the western literary canon since the 14th century, the way trauma affects one's ability to remember and reconstruct and the way that influences belief in conflict with reality - but who the fuck committed the murders and how?

No idea. Honestly tiny bombs in the food sounds just as good as any explanation I could come up with.

[kassandra-the-witch]

Who has at least a motive to murder Kinzo and at least some members of the Ushiromiya family or be an accessory to such murders? Natsuhi, Eva, Maria, Battler's mother, probably George as well

Who has a motive to murder the entire Ushiromiya family or be an accessory to such murders? The entire population of the Koreas and the Philippines and Manchuria, every single victim of the axis powers and their descendants, probably decent chunks of the Japanese proletariat working in the mining and the food service industries, every former servant in Rokkenjima

Who has a motive to murder the entire Ushiromiya family, the servants, and then themselves in a dramatic fashion or be an accessory to such murders? Several of the servants, an uncountable number of Beatrices past and present real and imaginary, a decent number of the aforementioned victims of Kinzo as well I suppose

[kassandra-the-witch]

"oh couldn't you just narrow down the murder weapons and means of accessing the victims because there are so many locked room mys..." NO! There is at least one instance in the story where magic is used as a cover-up story to hide atrocious crimes (Kinzo gaining the gold from fascist sources during WWII but then pretending it is from magic sources) and several instances where the victims of abuse in the story have ample reason to hallucinate witchcraft (Maria being physically abused by Rosa and imagining an evil witch taking over her beloved mother in those instances, Sayo being worked to delirium without rest, food, or water, and seeing the portrait come to live and talk to her). It is impossible to discern if magic is real or imagined or both or neither! We are surrounded by narrators either abused to the point of mental breakdown or being an abuser (in differing stages of awareness), so no narrator is really reliable! It could be magical teleporting buff goatmen with lightsabers doing the murders at this point! It could be tiny bombs! We have no way to discern truth in these instances!

[kassandra-the-witch]

I have never sucked ass at a game as much as I have in Umineko. Sure, I can identify the surface level themes - the intergenerational propagation of imperialism, the inherent patriarchal and classist structure of the nuclear family, the invisibilization of capitalist war-profiteering post-WWII, the absurd toxic dynamics within ultrarich families, the role contact with the west and christianity played in the construction and maintenance of the Japanese empire, the violence of indentured servitude, the near limitless ability of rich men to get away with sexualized violence, the propagation of sexualized violence throughout the western literary canon since the 14th century, the way trauma affects one's ability to remember and reconstruct and the way that influences belief in conflict with reality - but who the fuck committed the murders and how?

No idea. Honestly tiny bombs in the food sounds just as good as any explanation I could come up with.

[kassandra-the-witch]

Who has at least a motive to murder Kinzo and at least some members of the Ushiromiya family or be an accessory to such murders? Natsuhi, Eva, Maria, Battler's mother, probably George as well

Who has a motive to murder the entire Ushiromiya family or be an accessory to such murders? The entire population of the Koreas and the Philippines and Manchuria, every single victim of the axis powers and their descendants, probably decent chunks of the Japanese proletariat working in the mining and the food service industries, every former servant in Rokkenjima

Who has a motive to murder the entire Ushiromiya family, the servants, and then themselves in a dramatic fashion or be an accessory to such murders? Several of the servants, an uncountable number of Beatrices past and present real and imaginary, a decent number of the aforementioned victims of Kinzo as well I suppose

[kassandra-the-witch]

Also I have not posted here in a long while. Having family on different corners of the world go through different but interconnected genocides will do things to your energy levels.

[kassandra-the-witch]

I have never sucked ass at a game as much as I have in Umineko. Sure, I can identify the surface level themes - the intergenerational propagation of imperialism, the inherent patriarchal and classist structure of the nuclear family, the invisibilization of capitalist war-profiteering post-WWII, the absurd toxic dynamics within ultrarich families, the role contact with the west and christianity played in the construction and maintenance of the Japanese empire, the violence of indentured servitude, the near limitless ability of rich men to get away with sexualized violence, the propagation of sexualized violence throughout the western literary canon since the 14th century, the way trauma affects one's ability to remember and reconstruct and the way that influences belief in conflict with reality - but who the fuck committed the murders and how?

No idea. Honestly tiny bombs in the food sounds just as good as any explanation I could come up with.

[kassandra-the-witch]

I am still very interested in Umineko, but unfortunately I have encountered Ace Attorney, and since the intertextual parallels are far too immense to ignore, it is imperative to me I play and read through all of Ace Attorney before writing my Episode 2 essay.

[kassandra-the-witch]

The fact that from my provincial university library database alone I am able to pick up on two academic works on Umineko in English (excluding biologist's works on, you know, the actual seagull species) and that I will not be able to read them for a long time (because avoiding spoilers) bugs me. Like there is certainly a niche academic interest in Umineko but I can't engage with it. * sigh *

[kassandra-the-witch]

If people are interested, one of these works is on adaptions from the (mostly) written word to the fully animated moving image and is available on the Internet Archive:

Anime and the art of adaptation : eight famous works from page to screen : Cavallaro, Dani : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet

vii, 212 p. ; 23 cm

[kassandra-the-witch]

The fact that from my provincial university library database alone I am able to pick up on two academic works on Umineko in English (excluding biologist's works on, you know, the actual seagull species) and that I will not be able to read them for a long time (because avoiding spoilers) bugs me. Like there is certainly a niche academic interest in Umineko but I can't engage with it. * sigh *

[clementine-kesh]

the key to not fanonizing your faves is to simply become academia-brained about it. never make a statement about a character you can’t back up with at least three references to the source material

[kassandra-the-witch]

Beatrice the Golden x Franziska von Karma enemies to lovers 37k words tragicomedy in five acts complete with stage instructions when

[kassandra-the-witch]

I am watching a LetsPlay of the original Ace Attorney trilogy and I am getting some conversation with Umineko from that text

[kassandra-the-witch]

You see, Ushiromiya Battler, it was I, von Karma

[kassandra-the-witch]

Morgan Fey voice: So the channeling room is actually a perfect locked room with a singular key * water droplet sound *

[kassandra-the-witch]

I am a dumbass; it's not just a correlation, looking at the release date of the original AA series, Umineko obviously enters a deliberate conversation with (or rather against) Ace Attorney

[kassandra-the-witch]

Umineko is the tragic yuri to Ace Attorney's comedic yaoi

[kassandra-the-witch]

Nevermind I just saw Franziska for the first time. This, too, is yuri