Was reminded today of Rosatrice. I am actually one of the people who went and watched all nine hours of the theory so that no one else has to, so I might as well share my thoughts.
A lot of the focus of Rosatrice is more in the idea of "someone tried so hard to disprove ShKanon with Rosa = Beatrice that they spent 9 hours on it", focusing on the humor of that and of the implications (for example, Rosa and Battler being romantically involved somehow, or of Rosa hiding under the bed waiting to kill Eva in Episode 1). But having watched the theory, I have a slightly different impression of it.
For example, the theory creator claims that Beatrice and Battler aren't actually romantically involved (despite the... canonical EP6 marriage) and instead have a platonic love (which makes sense for the theorist, given that Rosa is Battler's aunt). Rosa's focus on Battler is because he is an outsider to the family who has returned after six years, and, if I remember correctly, she takes part of Shannon's relationship with him (the promise to return) into her own Yasu mythos (in this theory, Yasu is a persona Rosa creates as part of her guilt about the death of Kuwadorian Beatrice). Yasu and Shannon are related in that Rosa takes from Shannon's relationship with Battler and life experiences to create Yasu.
However, more than the humorous and illogical aspects of Rosatrice, more than even the "fake death drugs" that the theorist purports the culprit's usage of, I was really struck by the theorist's perspective on Umineko and on the fans that believe in ShKanon theory. The theorist calls ShKanon theory stupid, simple, and obvious, and I believe at times directly calls people who believe in it similarly insulting epithets. He genuinely believes and claims that Umineko is far more complex than ShKanon (which he claims is simple and anyone would understand ShKanon after Episode 7, which I know from anecdotal evidence is not the case) and that he is one of the few, if any, people who have truly understood Umineko, going past even Ryukishi's Word of God "lies" about it (yes, he claims Ryukishi lies in interviews to preserve the secret hidden truth). He also claims that the anime holds secret clues about Rosatrice, believing that Ryukishi had a very high level of directorial control over the anime to the point he was using it to give us extra clues about the secret, hidden truth.
But, more than even that, more even than elements like the belief that Ange's entire timeline is not the truth and that the true timeline is Episode 2, wherein Battler dies and in his delirium hallucinates the remaining episodes, I associate Rosatrice with the bigotry of its creator. I associate it with descriptions of Shannon as a "weak little girl", the use of the r-slur, and with the misgendering of Lion/Sayo as "he/him". I associate it with the elitist mindset that his interpretation of Umineko is better and more valid than anyone else's.
I do believe that the Rosatrice creator has a lot of love for Umineko - but I believe that their own bigotry and narrow-minded perspective weakens and destroys their credibility. Theorizing about Umineko in older spaces, from what I gather, was more of a community activity than a competition. It's probably a good thing that people primarily remember the humorous aspects of Rosatrice theory, and how out-there it seems, but I do wish that people would bring up the toxicity of its creator more, at least in passing. If we forget, we may be doomed to have another nine hour theory filled with the r-slurs, misogyny, and insults towards the community appear.
i wrote what's (probably) the first comprehensive analysis of rosatrice
it was originally gonna be a video essay but i'm shelving it cuz i dont wanna learn how to edit videos, so i turned it into a steam guide. yes i know the theory is dead this was just to get the umineko brainworms out of my system
And just like that, my Tumblr is all caught up with my other socials! Here is my Rosatrice cosplay prototype! I still have to make some slight changes on it but I cannot wait to wear it out to the cons and gatherings if there are any within the area. More potential cosplay related stuff is soon to come!
just watched the 9 hour rosatrice video(at 2x speed, I'm not THAT insane) and it was actually really good. in the same way erika's theories are good. in fact, for a large portion of the video, I had deep blue jeer playing in the background because it really felt like another insane theory by erika. but also parts of it were genuinely good! like he makes a very good point near the end about how even if he's wrong, it's good that he made the video because alternate explanations make the story more interesting(I even have a mostly joking alternate explanation of my own which I may make into a fan-forgery at some point). and, especially with the guy who made it no longer believing the theory, and the manga's release confirming sayoshiya(which sounds so much better than shkanon), I feel like it can be seen as a very good piece of umineko fanfiction from the perspective of an erika-like character(the guy was even a youtube atheist from what I can tell, which erika would also be if she existed in 2015). so yeah, if you really liked episode 5, I would highly recommend watching the 9 hour rosatrice video.
anyways some of my favorite bits of the theory are two core points, which are that if sayoshiya were the case, the entire ushiromiya family would have to be unimaginably stupid, and that if sayoshiya were the case, the red truth wouldn't actually be that powerful. and yes, both of these are true. rudolf, krauss, gohda, and rosa are unimaginably stupid, there is no denying that. and kyrie and natsuhi, despite their incredibly competence, are both incredibly loyal to an unimaginably stupid person in their husbands, plus kinzo in the case of natsuhi. and like the red truth is obviously not nearly as powerful as it seems, which is the core point needed to understand nanjo's murder in episode 3, as well as the final red truth of episode 6(though honestly rosatrice guy provides a very interesting counter-explanation to this one, which is also not particularly faithful to the red truth but I think it's cool when stuff has multiple meanings like that). not to mention episode 8, which outright denies red truths.
now as for the theory itself it comes dangerously close to claiming rosa is good actually, and also has a very uncharitable interpretation of george's character, and obviously can't work because it relies on the falsehood of the blatantly true sayoshiya, but otherwise was very cool. like, for a mystery-style solution to umineko, I doubt you could get a better solution, since the canon solution(kyrie and rudolf, thwarted by eva) isn't very satisfying from a mystery perspective, and sayoshiyatrice(once again, sounds way better than shkanontrice) flies in the face of mystery conventions by design, and my alternate theory is a joke on the level of erika's theory for episode 5 and the evidence for it is mainly "there's no evidence against it and it'd be really funny if it was true". and honestly I think it's pretty fun to poke the holes in the counterpoints to sayoshiyatrice, other than the counterpoints to sayoshiya, since the counterpoints to sayoshiya are basically just "I don't think this is very realistic and also look at these red truths".
also the video makes use of the best song in umineko, ALIVE, which automatically makes it the best piece of umineko fan content I've read/watched since neither wanderlust nor purgatory use ALIVE. (this is a joke wanderlust and purgatory are both very very good, I would also recommend them, far more than the rosatrice video because they are good for the reasons they actually intend to be good. wanderlust can be found here and purgatory can be found here. the only reasons I never made posts detailing my opinions on them was that they don't really go beyond "yeah they're good for reasons which are very obvious if you've read them". so I guess this post can serve as a post recommending those two as well.)
...so obviously from prior posts on the topic, I don’t truck with KNM-style rosatrice theory myself. oh, I’m curious about it, but I can’t watch the whole video series, and the written transcripts are missing some really important parts, and from what I’ve seen the necessary logic is much more twisted than the idiosyncratic-but-characteristic take on identity which has traditionally been the main stumbling block to taking Clair at her word.
but I’ve come to conclude, recently, that the existence of such a theory is really valuable and important in Umineko metaphysics, even to Confessional partisans like me. or, to say it another way, it’s valuable and important to a Confessional partisan like me precisely because our perspective will see it as a wrong answer.
this was easy for me to miss until recently. but what changed my mind was revisiting ep5′s inhuman teaparty, and the gambit Battler pulled there after getting gold privileges. because whether you believe in an orthodox 'trice model or a heterodox one, Battler’s countertheory against Erika deliberately avoids actually using that formulation; he instead constructs “the man from 19 years ago” as a separate entity (himself).
why?
simple: because his whole goal, at that point, is reviving Beatrice while preventing Bern and Erika - those vindictive, rando gawkers with no connection to her - from reaching Beato’s heart and treating it cruelly.
so he recreates the superposition - the uncertainty over the truth - without giving anyone who’s just watching a hint for what’s really going on.
isn’t that why he’s so concerned about ep6 - about whether the resurrected Beato’s solution to the logic error is okay to use openly? ep7 follows immediately after ep6 precisely because, if you subscribe to mainline theory, ep6′s final red truth exposed to the goats the ambiguous hiding-place in which Beatrice III ‘exists’ (as post-release fan discourse sadly bore out), and so what could ep7 be but her funeral?
so now we have plenty of people with love for ‘that’ Beatrice, whose devotion has probably kept the Umineko fandom alive ten years on... but also plenty of people with no love for her who can deny her magic regardless based on something they just Googled. this problem has been exacerbated by r07′s... insufficient resolve to keep the catbox firmly locked as time has gone on; although he’s managed to avoid giving an explicit “answer” to anything, he’s still given the Confessions more broad availability (via inclusion in the manga and Umineko Saku), and recent adaptations have spilled certain other beans as well (like the manga making Will’s “last rites” more explicit than they were in the VN).
so what does that mean? if we take anti-magic toxin metaphysics literally, have we re-killed Beatrice by opening the coffin and revealing her true form to the world?
well, not quite. and the reason it’s “not quite” is precisely because, like Battler at the climactic final showdown of ep5, KnownNoMore somehow stepped up and offered a conflicting explanation.
and it doesn’t matter how twisted the logic is. it doesn’t matter how much of a stretch is necessary to accept it. what matters is that it contradicts the Confessional explanation without contradicting the red. what matters is that it once again makes it impossible to declare, with certainty, that the cat in the box is dead. and, as Battler’s ep5 success and takeover of ep6 proved, that’s the uncertainty in which a witch like Beatrice can survive.
what’s more, by being a theory that centers around a denial of ep6′s core revelation - by denying the very moment where many readers finally saw ‘that’ Beatrice and couldn’t accept her - it acts as a magnet for those readers. it prevents them from acknowledging the Confessional Beatrice, and therefore denies them access to her heart... which was always meant, ever since those bottle fragments were written, to be saved for those able to understand and accept her, and remain, to everyone else, the mysterious, unknowable, incomprehensible heart of "exactly a witch”.
was that KnownNoMore’s true aim? not a true argument in favor of Rosa as Beatrice the Golden, but rather an attempt to throw a cloak around a certain person’s form after Umineko’s denouement left her too exposed? with a username like that, it’s certainly possible. and yet, it’s equally possible to read it as the taunt many assumed it to be: a supercilious suggestion that Umineko’s readerbase had stopped thinking, and may be about to find themselves, far from the peak of Mount Purgatory, "waking up, stupefied, in a dark and unfamiliar place”.
...well, there may be no way to know for sure, one way or the other. perhaps that’s the most appropriate answer, anyway. here in the realm of witches, at least, it seems there’s value to not being quite so sure about things.
