Okay Maybe She Did *Some* Things Wrong

I always want to hear alternative interpretations on my posts! I will not interpret it as rude, please disagree with me, that’s part of the fun in forming these interpretations! I’ll never be annoyed by others building on my ideas either! Reblogs may contain untagged spoilers

[where-your-eyes-dont-go]

Happy pride

[maxknightley]

"it would be so good if it was good" will haunt you but "it's extremely good, except for the one or two parts which are so bad it's genuinely kind of insulting" will straight up drive you insane

[maxknightley]

one has you making posts like "okay but if the author UNDERSTOOD the POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS of the story they were telling, and leaned into it, it would actually be a really interesting exploration of..."

the other has you pacing your bedroom at one in the morning going "why. why would you ever in a million years do it like that. genuinely what possible thought process was involved. was the writer possessed by a fucking ghost or something."

[notalicorn]

I've been a coward, so I'll say it: I love Irie. He's a fantastic character.

He's morally ambivalent: he's well-intentioned. But he's complicit of the abuse by the Irie institute, and he's got a history of terrible medical acts. He's a deeply sympathetic and multilayered character, I should re-read the start of episode 8.

As for the terrible maid jokes... they don't exist if you look away

[cerayanay]

Babe wake up. Would you still love me if i split myself into two people, one ‘evil’ and one ‘good’. But actually just one who runs from pain and one who faces it. And we thought we lived in two different realities but actually one of us just succeeded in following societal rules and one failed. And it didn’t make us any happier but we’re still jealous. So now I am simultaneously the wolf and dog and the lamb and Caine and Abel and Pollux and Castor. Because this divide simultaneously protected and smothered each other. And we hated and envied and pitied each other and refused to see that we are the same person but we are and things would be better if we just accepted this but we never will and no one else will and if anyone did see all these parts of us and loved us anyways we would push them away. And this will only ever end with both of us dying but we were never really alive anyways. Okay now what if I was a worm

[whensomethingelsecries]

i crunched the numbers and realized mion sonozaki would be just under 60 years old in 2026 and i can't think of anything more beautiful than the fact that she was born at exactly the right time to embarrass the local youths by knowing about 67

[amatres]

beato is so funny bc she made her beloved maternal figure into a fantastical witch in her escapist fantasies and then wrote yuri about her with the metaphorical manifestation of losing stuff

[tgirlmechanicock]

Umineko Episode 1: Grandpappy has gold hidden somewhere, and someone is gonna kill the family to find it :( Can Detective Battler solve this strange mystery and save the day?

Umineko Episode 4: Ange is the world's most powerful 18 year old suicidal multi-billionaire time traveling plural age regressor with a tulpa of her 9 year old cousin who's her older sister who tells her to stop being so suicidal all the fucking time*. Battler hasn't escaped time prison yet, but he's getting close with his new weapon, Blue. Can he get over his obvious, unresolved sexual tension with Beatrice long enough to win the fourth game of multiversal chess? Or will the girl from Higurashi have to bring in another multidimensional chess piece to try to tip the game in this idiot's favor?

[confirmation-roll]

Sayo's message bottles: Here's my OC Beatrice who's evil and loves killing and making people miserable after giving them the faintest shred of hope. Anyways, here is her killing your whole family

Tohya forgeries: Beatrice has a secret cuteness to her if you think about it

[whensomethingelsecries]

Your post about Umineko spoilers made me think about Higurashi.

Like Shion should technically marked as spoiler. I read Watanagashi thinking that she was just a persona of Mion, and I was hit like a truck when she appeared in Angel Mort. If I knew she was an independent character my reading of the chapter would have been massively different. But if you spend 15mn on the internet you can't ignore the existence of the twins.

On the opposite, Hanyū is considered as a spoiler. Yet, I discovered around chapter 6 (when I looked at opening of Kai anime) and it didn't give my any clue. Sure there's an anime girl with horns, so what?

(But yeah I agree with your post. Drawing a line between spoiler and non-spoilers in Umineko is a mess, Higurashi is nothing in comparison.)

oh i feel very similarly about both your points about higurashi...shion's unavoidable but i thankfully had two friends tell me completely opposite things about her existence (they didn't even coordinate, they just had different strategies for talking to me) and that was enough to make watanagashi feel like it might be an open question. playing higurashi after umineko also helped in that regard, lol...two characters being drawn separately in all the fanart doesn't have to mean we're dealing with two different bodies, of course

i try not to refer to shion by name around my friends who are planning on playing higurashi if i can help it, but it's definitely one of those things you just can't truly avoid unless you live under a rock. it's unfortunate

and hanyuu...yeah she's funny because she's such a completely unhelpful spoiler. i'd seen her in the fanart before i even started higurashi and honestly knowing she was somehow gonna show up only added to my questions. like i don't know, the incidence are coincidental but also there's a purple one with horns somewhere in the mix i guess LOL. i guess it's possible to guess she's oyashiro-sama based on her slightly supernatural appearance (i think i had suspicions?) but even that's like. okay so the god is real. now what

her lack of direct involvement in most of the murder-mystery side of the game is awesome in this sense. spoiler character who provides absolutely no information and will probably only confuse you if you try to factor her in

[whensomethingelsecries]

the conversation about what does and doesn't constitute umineko spoilers is tough because i think a spoiler for someone who's never touched umineko is very different from a spoiler for someone who's actively reading it. like the seven stakes don't by themselves ruin any plot points per se but it takes quite a bit of the intended gut punch out of episode 2 if you know while reading episode 1 that 7 flying angel mort waitresses are somehow going to factor in when you're not even supposed to be sure of what genre you're reading yet

seeing a picture of lion isn't much of a spoiler until you've read exactly enough of umineko to know what the one-winged eagle on someone's clothing signifies, at which point lion's existence becomes turbo spoilers. there's a post pointing out that the fact that beatrice appears as a Character in the story at all kind of hurts a lot of the mystique of episode 1 but basically no one can reasonably treat that as a spoiler anymore

it's all very contextual. i spoiler tagged virgilia before my friends encountered her! EVA beatrice's name out of context is a bit of a fake spoiler, but being too cavalier about her might tip someone off to that fact and throw off someone's episode 3

anyway i love that post about people spoiler tagging that art of the stakes smoking weed. like yeah sorry there really is some legitimacy to that. if you knew them you'd get it

[whensomethingelsecries]

EXACTLY THIS TOO

[whensomethingelsecries]

the conversation about what does and doesn't constitute umineko spoilers is tough because i think a spoiler for someone who's never touched umineko is very different from a spoiler for someone who's actively reading it. like the seven stakes don't by themselves ruin any plot points per se but it takes quite a bit of the intended gut punch out of episode 2 if you know while reading episode 1 that 7 flying angel mort waitresses are somehow going to factor in when you're not even supposed to be sure of what genre you're reading yet

seeing a picture of lion isn't much of a spoiler until you've read exactly enough of umineko to know what the one-winged eagle on someone's clothing signifies, at which point lion's existence becomes turbo spoilers. there's a post pointing out that the fact that beatrice appears as a Character in the story at all kind of hurts a lot of the mystique of episode 1 but basically no one can reasonably treat that as a spoiler anymore

it's all very contextual. i spoiler tagged virgilia before my friends encountered her! EVA beatrice's name out of context is a bit of a fake spoiler, but being too cavalier about her might tip someone off to that fact and throw off someone's episode 3

anyway i love that post about people spoiler tagging that art of the stakes smoking weed. like yeah sorry there really is some legitimacy to that. if you knew them you'd get it

[whensomethingelsecries]

i think it's really funny that late ep4 treats it as a bit of a reveal that meta-battler can repeat statements in red too because he literally has already done it once or twice before that point and evidently just didn't notice

[musicfren]

In Umineko, when a character has to close their eyes and take a breath before putting on their "Witch Face"™ That little pause while they have to consciously sublimate all of their trauma down into the carefree mask they use to project strength. Gotta be one of my favorite genders

[whensomethingelsecries]

it's like in some contexts i would say these are more or less the same character

while these are in fact two different characters

[whensomethingelsecries]

"are you featherine? or is featherine you?" being asked of the kinda-fictitious hachijo-tohya-the-author character is one of those things that feels significant and interesting but i don't feel like i have a full grasp on its implications

[whensomethingelsecries]

i guess the question does in some ways emphasize the kind of strange hazy distinction that seems to exist between hachijo ikuko, hachijo-tohya-the-author (ie the madam hachijo we meet in ep6 who speaks on behalf of both forgery authors and fluidly moves between her own appearance and featherine's) and featherine augustus aurora. there's a sort of chicken-or-egg question being asked here about Hachijo Tohya The Author and featherine, and which one is really a fictional character to represent which

which also plays into the wtc larger narrative. within umineko featherine is kind of a witchy avatar for the forgery authors to act in the magical meta-layers (though usually acting above even those) but above umineko within wtc as a whole, hachijo-tohya-the-author is a human avatar for...i don't know i still haven't finished sotsu, but [gestures] all of that, being placed into umineko. so looking at The Various Narratives the answer to that question depends what scale you're thinking of

but i think also there's a question of like. idk featherine is also at times an insert for The Concept of an author more than anything, with a lot of her characterization being wrapped up in her isolating godlike power (which is ultimately, in part, a series of gags about the fact that she represents the writer[s] of this story). and ep6's madam hachijo is functionally indistinguishable from featherine. and maybe that question is in part asking, has the role of This Story's Author swallowed you alive?

which is kind of interesting to ask, considering we know so little about ikuko that i find hints of her much harder to "find" in the forgeries than tohya, despite the fact that she is ultimately the one who puts the words to the page. it's her face we see in ep6, introducing herself with tohya's name and speaking for the both of them. to the point where i don't even know how much of ep6's madam hachijo is, like, "real" and how much of her is something more like a construct of the shared pseudonym

[confirmation-roll]

guy who reads umineko, but only cares about the male characters

[confirmation-roll]

"Reminder: The suit doesn't even fit Battler!"

[neovagina-evangelion]

PERCEPTION (META) - The Red of your aunt's words is *suffocating*, choking you from all directions like a spider entangling its prey.

VOLITION - Don't give in just yet. There must be a rational explanation for this. Flip the chessboard, weigh your options.

- [ Logic - Formidable 13 ] Find the cracks in the red.

- [ Shivers - Impossible 19 ] Beg the island for answers.

- Just let Beatrice deny it for you. (End.)

2. - [Shivers - Impossible 19] Beg the Island for answers.

SHIVERS [ Impossible: Success ] - A few stories below where your piece is standing, in the same room where your aunt died and the monster before you was born, beats the heart of the island.

In less than an hour's time, it will plunge the events of tonight into obscurity for the spirit that haunts its night, and ask you a question in her name.

WHO... AM I..?

OH, I AM ONE YET MANY

- [ Logic - Formidable 13 ] Find the cracks in the red, with a newfound hint.

- [ Rhetoric - Easy 8 ] Find the words to weave this into an argument.

- Just let Beatrice deny it for you. (End.)

2. - [ Rhetoric - Easy 8 ] Find the words to weave this into an argument.

RHETORIC [ Easy: Failure ] -