#:crying_while_seagull:

[bossbutch]

Ushiromiya Batter

Why won't you pitch to me, Beatrice? I'm the one you want!

Sorry Batter, but that's three outs! George, Shannon and now Kanon! The inning is over! Ahaha!

No! I won't accept it! Looking at the count, Kanon got three balls and three strikes. But if any one of those strikes was really a ball, he walks to first!

What? That's ridiculous. Doubting the umpire is a desperate stalling tactic.

Then say it in red! "Every pitch directed at Kanon this inning was called correctly!"

…I refuse. For no particular reason.

I knew it!

Don't celebrate yet, Batter. Even if you're right, it's on you to argue the nature of the incorrect pitches.

Ahaha! Yes, listen to your coach, Ushiromiya Batter! If you can't identify a miscalled pitch, we move on to the third inning! So which pitch are you going to contest?

Let's go in order then. Starting with the second pitch, it was extremely curved! From where the umpire is sitting, she could have easily judged it as inside when it wasn't!

Kanon swung at the second pitch! Swinging without contact makes it a strike, regardless of if the ball touched the strike zone!

Hmph. That just narrows down my options. The third pitch was right on the bottom corner… and the seventh was so fast, I couldn't tell where it was.

Let's try flipping the chessboard. How would I try to disguise a ball as a strike? I could throw just barely outside the strike zone, but that requires the umpire to call in my favor. Beatrice would want something more certain. What if…

Beatrice! Here's my theory! The seventh pitch was not a baseball at all! You threw something else, some special effect, and had Lucifer palm one of the previous pitches into her glove! This means that no seventh ball ever entered the strike zone!

The nature of the special effect is, of course, a Devil's Proof.

Sounds like you're accusing me of magic, Batterrrrrr…

Not magic! A special effect! You could have made some sort of hologram or reflection, or something! A baseball going over 170 kph is just a blur, you could fake it easily!

There were seven pitches at this at bat. Each of those pitches involved a unique baseball. No substitutions of the balls were made in their travel from the pitcher to home base.

And furthermore, the umpire did not misjudge any pitch on the edge of the strike zone.

Dammit, it's useless! It's all useless!

Ahaha! Foolish Batter! Don't you know there's no crying in baseball?

[bossbutch]

halfway thru chapter 1 of umineko. idk how meaningful it is to speculate this early, The Real Umineko hasnt even properly started. these arent fully thought out and organized it's just scattered thoughts

battler's gender politics are entertainingly weird. he's like "when i meet a woman, even if she's my cousin or my servant, i NEED to make a big show of grabbing her tits so that she can hit me and everyone will laugh at the Classic Gag and it'll lighten the mood" which is just ridiculous enough to be something a rich teenager in the 80s could convince himself is okay. and then he sees the dinner seating and he's like "damn my family's so patriarchal. thought gained: inexplicable feminist agenda". i'm assuming this is a genre deconstruction thing. also lol that he is right next to maria in grandpa's tier list

maria is awesome btw i hope she gets to infodump about magic a lot more. some goon in the SA thread said the umineko author was once a social worker, so like. even if they don't use the word because it's japan in the 80s she's gotta be Intended as autistic

kinzo's room is so telegraphed to be a locked room mystery. he's entertaining too but i kinda zone out when he's talking about how his magic system works. i get the basic of more risk = more magic power but i worry it's the kind of thing that has Important Clues that my brain autofills with [arcane rambling]

battler constantly gasses up how good george is with kids and then george sees a family member repeatedly hitting their 9 year old disabled child and says, out loud, "not my problem"

assuming the epitaph is a puzzle intended to be solved and not the kind of puzzle that frames all the other puzzles and isn't solvable til the end: until the first butterfly i thought all the death and traveling was metaphorical. it still could be. like the six chosen by the key could be objects. the hands of a clock may be involved because that's in all the promo stuff and chapter start art. kinzo acted like the riddle was totally solvable by the doc or kanon or any of his kids. but if it was unsolvable until People Started Dying, it seems kinda pointless to have put the painting up years ago? but beatrice is a Dramatic Bitch.

Who Took The Rose?! no idea, but i'm sure it's important. if there's a 19th person, definitely them. totally possible the wrapper fell off but they'd still recognize the withered rose i reckon

Who Gave Maria The Umbrella?! again, if there's a 19th person, it's them. if not, natsuhi was my prime suspect because her alibi didn't have any witnesses but everyone else's did (if you really count grandpa and the doctor, like doc could easily say "i was with kinzo" and no one would verify that with kinzo). but then there was a scene right after from natsuhi's pov (migraine and can't sleep without meds, literally me) where she speculates who did it. so either the narrative is heavily fucking with me, it's gramps or the doctor, or it's someone with an accomplice

the narration is from battler's pov except when it's not and it's strange. it even isn't from his pov in some scenes that he's in, like the letter reading scene. this is the type of thing that could Mean Something way later but is just a little confusing sometimes right now

kyrie saying there's a contradiction in beatrice showing herself to maria but hiding from everyone else, failing to consider beatrice may be a Dramatic Bitch. i think there's probably a 19th person even if they are not necessarily a witch with magic powers

the furniture being totally able to break promises but can't disobey orders is the kind of exact words semantic sillies that umineko memes made me expect

goes w/o saying that the way the servants are treated is supremely fucked up. going to servant school and then working in the mansion at age six... george proposing to a girl that he has so much power over is lol. it's nice that umineko cares who the servants are and why they're there, and other logistical human things like how kinzo made his money and what they're all doing with it

at midnight, where was the doctor?

they drop some hints that the non-shannon, non-krauss bodies have their faces disfigured and Could be other people but that is pretty ridiculous and there's no reasons to consider that yet

i wish the LP used the doughy original art but that's the price i pay for convenience

[bossbutch]

umineko All of chapter 5

erika is here. Don Quixote Theory gets further development. this chapter is partially to Annoy the reader (not without purpose of course) and it does that really well!

Don Quixote theory update: part 2 of umineko begins with Some Assholes writing an unauthorized sequel that sucks ass which spurs our hero into action. At the end of chapter 4 i was speculating what bernie and lammy represent and then bernie just outright says she is the mystery genre and lammy is fantasy. ok. she also says white is twice as likely to win at chess which is. *so* obviously false that i feel like it's gotta be a coded message??? the infamous Erika is here. she's bernie's humanization/OC. she's annoying that's the point. she's clearly bringing in outside knowledge, she's metagaming, she's even godmodding battler's piece. what an outrage. big payoffs whenever she Eats Shit make it worth it i was spoiled on her "intellectual rapist" title but i'd hope the "real" battler wouldn't have been so ok with it? but yknow battler has his strange track record with women. showing grandpa to battler's piece is making a goddamn mockery out of the game. at least battler gets to use it as a gotcha later oh natsuhi just murdered those people huh. a servant and a baby. i have been anti-magic but also i'm not much of a fan of knox. i think speculation on hidden doors and devices X is Fun. umineko's version of knox's rules are notably different but i think that's not too Meaningful it just helps them be used in their ace attorney courtroom bet battler never thought he'd want to stop watching two women have foreplay but that's what this chapter is. i assume the beato in the Big Courtroom is Piece Beato (controlled by lammy) rather than Meta Beato, who is still catatonic? oh boy can't wait to see how ol battler gets out of this one (i wrote this not long before he gets crucified and dies) then they state the themes of umineko directly for anyone who hasn't been paying attention. and then battler SOLVES IT?! with three more parts to go?! the guy was almost completely wrong at the end of the last part! and he turns to the camera and says "all the clues have been given, reread the previous chapters and you can solve it too" i Trust umineko has given the clues to do that, and now i gotta decide if i should reread the previous chapters before continuing! or maybe just chapters 3 and 4 since i'm more confident in my chapters 1 & 2 theories? but they might have important hints that i missed. maybe i'll read bryn's liveblogs of them or something. the thing about the idea of rereading umineko, even when i'm only 5/8ths through. is that as much as i'm Loving it i think it could've used an editor to trim it down a bit lol. 100% a personal preference thing. where's umineko the condensed version? i guess it's the manga, or the anime that everyone hates

[bossbutch]

umineko chapter 4 (2/2)

the fantasy action sequences have gotten significantly more tolerable because they've gotten significantly funnier. also i've gotten ahead of bryn's more detailed readalong!

the scene where Krauss is fighting a goat man and virgilia is comparing their Numerical Power Levels but there's all these arbitrary multipliers ( and goat's power level goes way down when he talks about his family and being a week away from retirement etc etc) is mwah chef's kiss

the Reveal of kasumi reading the definition of uu-uu in the grimoire is my favorite moment so far. god damn. eva-beatrice being all star wars emperor "let the hate flow through you" was also pretty funny.

so battler isn't asumu's son! and he learns this through his own red truth? which i think removes "perspective" from the red truth, right? because from his point of view he's her son, just like from beato's point of view shannon is nonhuman. whether he's kyrie's kid or there's a *third* wife i'm not sure. it'd be fucked up if it's a/nother beato.

so we end with a big blue vs red sequence where battler says what he thinks has happened, which lambda says is mostly wrong but is a good "check your theories" speed bump.

game 1: • stake deaths being shot and then staked after death seems guaranteed • yeah, no magic for The First Set of Murders • Eva and hideyoshi: killed by kanon, door locked through Device X. when 'he' "discovered" the bodies he had ample time to draw the circle • kanon faked 'his' death, so beato can't say in red it was homicide. then he killed the last 3 and natsuhi. beato says "i guarantee the identity of all unidentified corpses" but if he Wasn't a corpse that wouldn't apply. game 2: • "from the time maria received the key to when rosa unsealed it the next day it passed through no one's hands" = rosa took the key before we saw her taking it? though idk if she actually Killed the first six she was definitely involved • if kanon is A Beatrice then 'him' fighting her goons over jessica can metaphorically be kanon having trouble deciding whether to kill her or not. occam's razor says if there's no body and A Violent Kanon shows up later then fake kanon was real kanon game 3: • the only mystery i think Matters is who killed nanjo. he recognized the killer and begged for his life, maybe he knew what their plan was? but i don't know who did it. beato seems to imply that the killer took the identity of a dead person (other than kinzo, kanon, jessica, battler, or eva). • i guess "how did george leave the guest house" is worth solving but i haven't thought about it much game 4: • "all those present at the family conference acknowledge the presence of kinzo" yeah it's his house. his body is there. he's still metaphorically present and genji and shannon? and associates are carrying out his wishes if shannon and kanon aren't "real humans" it provides space for two Persons X but is also means the cousins can fall in love and make and break promises to objects/ideals/whatever. battler's direct narrative describes kanon as "a slender boy" who can manipulate a wheelbarrow so if kanon isn't present as a person (and not part of an existing member of the 18 or nothing) i'm calling bullshit battler's sin that beato wants an apology for was breaking his promise to come back for shannon. is episode 2 Suit Beato derived from shannon? every beato is derived from trauma, so her breaking the mirror is a metaphor for Some Other Traumatic Event magic metaphors: "beato prime", who was captured and abused by kanon and is almost certainly dead, had a child with him, beato 2. one of the two of them imagine magic genji (ronovo), magic kumasawa (virilia if she isn't beato 1) and gaap, for the same reason maria made sakutaro, To Cope. and the seven sisters and the bunnies are personified weapons. but what are lambda and bernie representing? they might just represent their goals ("battler denies beato/ finding the emotional truth" and "battler tries but is never successful because he lacks love" ) and either way beato doesn't get closure. i think beato will "win" but her real goal is not to kill everybody and take them to heaven but rather to get some catharsis from battler for what his family has done to her/ all the beatos. alternatively the other witches exist for no reason other than adding yuri

[bossbutch]

Umineko ch4 first half

take a look, it's in a book, reading rainbow

i think misinformation about kyrie and rudolf's relationship was revealed to me in a dream last night.

i was a little down on the fantasy action sequences but ange's whole Bit of traveling back from a possible 1999 is Compelling. ange to battler: "umineko is too long please fix the pacing." ok now let me tell you about my school life and have Level 2 Flashbacks with maria yay for maria stories :D "anti-rosa: i can't forgive the me of yesterday" is awesome. "rokkenjimagate" oh boy time to introduce a new family with a million new characters. 90s ange land is Also a fantasy land just a different genre just like a james bond jr sorta fantasy. umineko: true crime is fail ughhhh bernie directly says "you gotta pay attention to the fantasy sequences if you wanna solve the mystery"

[back to battler] yay i was ahead of battler on the replacement person concept BUT i definitely should've considered grandpa. battler's never seen him. if he's dead then doc and shannon and natsuhi are complicit in Something. weird scene with rosa and maria on rokkenjima where apparently dying together last loop made her so much chiller? she'll even uu-uu with maria. [back to ange] maria "autism is my superpower" ushiromiya dear reddit my tulpa is giving me more tulpas please advise lambdadelta says: "you need to stalemate them so we get unlimited umineko" [back to maria] i'm definitely closer to the anje side of the childhood trauma spectrum than maria but i'm Feeling It. was crying a little at work reading the maria segments with the welfare officer showing up.

[back to battler] ugggghhhhhh not the rabbits again. genji dies like gus breaking bad lol on one hand summoning a demon (gaap) who is like "i'm a WOMAN demon and men are from mars lololol" is Incredibly Lame but on the other hand this is Abusive Grandpa's fantasy land. same with the whole furniture house elf "oh we live for serving people" thing. i'm now convinced grandpa died before the loop started and a scene where he summons demons makes me More convinced. but he's still "Responsible" for what happens because of how he abused everyone else. Long as hell book in two parts? Rich old man has unrequited crush, reads some books, makes his fantasies Everyone Else's Problem? fantasy vs. reality genre deconstruction with an idiot protagonist and comically absurd action scenes? sometimes goes on really long tangents? mostly known for the memes but they only scratch the surface? Umineko is the proper successor to Don Quixote :P

[bossbutch]

umineko chapter 3

or, "Umineko: like hell we'll end up like our parents". (mention of sexual assault at the beginning of this one)

[backstory of beato in her side mansion] so A beato was real. and kinzo raped her? (the silver haired beato) and had a kid that he raised to also be named beatrice. what a scumbag. hidden room on the other side of the island is not really surprising. fiction loves its Gilded Cages huh. battler is having So Much fun. "there are no more than 18 humans on this rokkenjima." if i was battler, i'd ask if "this" rokkenjima is different from the rokkenjimas of previous games. also we know she doesn't consider shannon and kanon human, i hope perspective isn't part of the red truth. because then she could be like from my point of view i'm a witch

for the third time we don't see where doctor nanjo is at midnight. [kanon vs. the sisters] now battler does see a magic scene and beato is like "just turn your brain off and enjoy it bro" the sisters of evil are so boring stop giving them so much focus. YOOO KUMASAWA the big beatrice vs virgilia Powerpoint Fight Scene is so silly goofy. i was curious how it looked in the original release and it was basically the same but i did see the original art of ronovo looks like shit i had to skim the back half of the fight. kids playing pretend is Cute but not interesting to read in large quantities. was bringing up schrodinger's cat to explain your magic system rules Cliche in 2007? halfway thru chapter 3 battler realized he can just Deny the magic scenes. i thought i was only a little bit ahead of him in understanding. also he might feel better with more magic allies but they don't help Me any. when faced with the theory that a servant accidentally killed themself in a locked room, beato was Gonna redtext but was stopped. i feel like i'm supposed to intuit what she would've said but i didn't [halfway point, eva-beato]

mannn if the epitath is a language puzzle there's no way i'm solving it. "none of the murders were real" was honestly worth considering until it was denied in red. poor beato ;_; forever alone. battler is me when my friends are enjoying media that's too violent for my tastes. the smell in the basement better not be a fucking gas leak. someone died previously and was replaced so eva-beato can say "x is dead" in red and still have them responsible for murdering nanjo. maybe the real nanjo was previously murdered? ange beato? that's so many beatos to reveal in one chapter there was the whole arc of virgilia says be more persuasive -> beato becomes Nicer in contrast to eva-beato -> this is revealed as a trick to get battler to accept her, but i think her feelings were legit. like the twist in the golden land was so unsubtle that at least on some level she clearly doesn't want to win. she may have a different goal, maybe it's uncertainty, it's probably just arrogance/wanting to play more

[bossbutch]

umineko ch 8

chapter 8 is when umineko formally asks you to solve some gosh darn puzzles and i read it while being beset by chronic migraine. i finished reading back when i posted the previous seagull posts, and meant to organize my notes more but no ones reading these anyway so fuck it, raw notes. i realize only now that i've been providing reactions without much context to what i'm reacting to which surely makes it hard to follow. uu-uu.

so ange Is the pov character now. battlers goal must be more than to show ange that eva didnt do it. bc a version of her learning that was Torture "Ushiromiya Battler, the man who loses strategically to win in the end!" so i expected the Quiz Tournament to be About Umineko, not solving age-appropriate riddles for a 6yo lol. not complaining though [notes written while solving layton riddles are not interesting]. my result was 13/17, which i consider a pathetic showing. kumasawa, nanjo, rosa, and maria beat me. b-but only because i didn't really try some of them.

chap 8 part 2 bernies mystery i started reading this at work and decided to read it at home where i can easily have multiple tabs visible and that sort of thing.

solved bernie's mystery first try B) though my logic was significantly looser than theirs i started with "if battler was the liar, what would that imply" and didn't like the results

"interrupting the red" seems kinda bullshit, but ok

literally "you can't handle the truth"

trying to listen to the music for the "ange beato crashes the party" scene and i get 20 seconds into a song before its time for a new one because i read much faster than the VN would display text

time for GOOFY ACTION YAYYYY

sorry battler but im kind of a goat?

YEAHHHH FUCK THE AUDIENCE!!!! KILL US!!

i disagree w battler about the idea of "things youre better off not knowing". his examples are ticks in seats on a train or crap in tap water. sure some people wouldnt want to know that

i guess there are such thing as "truths someone is unprepared for" and its more like that. but that can be "solved" with the right "supplemental truths"

showing a logic duel without giving the reader anything to theorize on is a Big Intentional Shift

man. i love umineko. i really wish 07 had used a different metaphor than shrodingers cat

beato to ange: "Parents have the right to prevent their children from making unsuitable choices." i mean. true to the extent that youd prevent six year old ange from walking around by herself, not true when she's an adult. but yeah you would think that wouldn't you

i think posing "caring about the truth and being sad and living in the past / dying" and "not knowing the truth and being happy and living in the present/future" as a Dichotomy is pretty slimy, so i just gotta hope ange will Take The Third Option

i still contend that Ange's Future is still a fantasy world. look here's a witch (featherine) using the red text in it!

i've heard the manga reveals secrets at the end with much more clarity than the book… that seems to be against the Themes of ch8 lol

"i didnt have surgery after an accident because that felt like it would kill my identity" shut upppp

ikuko's servants arent narratively People and that sucks

"using a computer in the dark is bad for your eyes" Caught

asumu and kinzo's original wife have both been treated really badly lol

ERIKA GOT A SILLY HAT!!!!!!!

theres a frame where beato stands in front of one of the bunnies and it looks like she has ears lol

beato: im tired of the bullshit after ep4

yayyyy erika gets trolled again

"LAMBDAAAAAAAAAAAAAWG"

fiction loves characters who constantly believe in 1% chances

were all these CGs in the original?

medulla oblongata!!!! truly everyone's favorite characters are here!

im not an Action Fan, i like it for the goofiness mostly, but i would like to see kyrie and rudolf In Action

and what a goof this is. let's have a sword duel on the bow of a pirate ship

i had (mentally) written a full analysis of erika after ep 6. yes she appears in episode 8 but fully as a Piece, theres nothing more to her Character to be revealed or discussed? funny hat though

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

yay more taking the piss out of power scalers and crossovers

the Thrust of anges character is that she wants the company of someone who was impacted in The Rokkenjima Incident so she wants someone to have secretly survived but. nanjo and kumasawa's children are still alive. they were affected in mostly the same way she was. i know i know emotionally not the point from her POV

so in the Magic Ending (which im reading first bc i think bad endings come before good endings), ange gives all her money back to the family instead of charity. booooo

and the "trick ending" is She Becomes Erika. bah.

featherine: "I believe one should write a tale to an appropriate point, then leave the aftertaste and opinions to the minds of the spectators." 'it would be a mistake to, for example, write additional chapters just because people want and would pay for more umineko Content'

"we'll meet again when something else cries" Oh Boy Bernie and Lambda Definitely My Favorite Characters Are In The Sequel

ok lol that sakotarou is the star of in universe One Piece

grrrr ange talking about Gods Will! i fundamentally disagree with your philosophy, umineko, no matter how well you're written!

ok well they're bringing me back with trauma induced dissociation stuff. no but theyre doing it in a "truth thats too hard to handle" way. but he's acknowledging that not contacting ange was a mistake at least.

---- so that's umineko. i ended it in a little of a sour mood because i was missing a crucial part of The Point.

i was pissy about the whole "things you're better off not knowing" theme because i dont think thats true in reality. but i had forgotten that umineko is About storytelling before anything else. and in the context of stories, there's plenty of good reasons to leave something as unknown, ambiguous, or only implied.

yeah i think the answer arcs could've lead to an ending that i, personally, preferred more, while still staying consistent with the themes and puzzles and stuff, and i think that it could've even been edited down to seven shorter chapters without losing anything meaningful. BUT that ending would only satisfy me, and a hypothetical editor could have removed scenes i liked just as easily as they could remove things i found redundant. so if there can only be One Umineko for Everyone, better to have a little too much of it. but- i think it's fun to imagine alternate ways the answer arcs could have gone while still keeping yasu and kinzo's general backstories. in the same way that it is fun to idly imagine "what if star wars was good". not to say umineko is bad of course, i loved it. game of the year. book of the year. both it's both of them. just i mean it's a fun imagination space to play in. which was part of what they were talking about with not revealing everything, that i was missing initially. i'm very curious to see what fanmade Forgeries are like! but that is something to check out Later. misc thoughts at the end..

hey is yasu nonbinary, or only in the reality where they're not thrown off a cliff and abandoned? everyone uses feminine language for yasu in the ep7 flashback, and in a magic understanding they spend most of their time presenting as beatrice, and more of their identities are female, but kanon is always there, there's no moment of like, Disavowal. and with lion theyre more like "my gender is None Of Your Business teehee" than "i am nonbinary". which, i dunno, its consistent with both umineko and a lot of my friends for yasu's gender to not have an easy one word description, right. yeah it was written in 2011 but i think if it was written in 2021 it would probably be handled the same way.

i saw the thread where people found basically every character's outfit in lolita fashion magazines from shortly before umineko released, and like, whatever. could it be less blatant, yeah, but original release umineko was a writer doing character designs anyway, you've seen the wonderfully wonky original art. it's funny more than anything.

[bossbutch]

umineko- between ch7 & 8

tw for sexual assault in this one again. long post. let's get Political! i wasn't aware umineko is 55 dollars on steam. i know its a lot of words and they've got music and voice acting and two sets of art but, thats a lot of fucking money for a fiction book. the steam release doesn't even include the side stories.

umineko has a lot of dubiously canon side content released at conventions and promos and such, and of course bundled in japanese Special Edition rereleases. the LP im reading puts all the side stories at the end (all the question arc ones together and all the answer arc ones together) even when they're set and released between episodes. i think they're all fan translated? in the question arcs, the side stories were pretty superfluous but still fun. there was a little interview with gohda, and a silly story about valentines day and white day so i read some of them now and. man.

there's one, "game master battler", set when he's preparing episode 6. the characters react to an out of universe character popularity poll and they're all asking battler to give them a good part in ep 6 so they become more popular. which is a fine premise, its very muppet show, and the same silly tone the valentines day story had. you can guess the conclusion of course, battler asks everyone for ridiculous favors but then he cant possibly make a story that highlights everyone at once. but like. when he asks for favors, he asks All of his aunts for sex acts. (as payment for both them And Their Families getting better parts.) and the seven sisters have to massage him or they wont be included at all. and six of them hold lucifer down while he assaults her. he doesn't explicitly rape her but the metaphor is clear. and like. what the hell!

when he perved on jessica it was one thing. he wasn't God Of The Setting at the time for starters. and yeah the seven sisters murdered him repeatedly in eroticized ways, but they're evil demons that were acting as extensions of beato. the idea that battler Would be a rapist or coerce people into sex if given the power is. not funny obviously, not matching the lighthearted tone they're going for, and most unfortunately, in character??? he's a rich boy who comes from a family where abuse and punching down are the rule, who grabs women's breasts so much it's a move in the fighting game. they make a lot of parallels between kinzo and battler and i guess Rapist is one of them. which is a Real Bummer! he's the protagonist! i think. they might decide in ep 8 that ange is the protagonist. i Want To Like Him and the titty grabbing previously had his Weird Maladjusted Logic that was so ridiculous it kinda softened the blow, and the erotic violence performed On him has the caveat of, in a non fantasy perspective all that happened in his imagination, and in a fantasy perspective its being done by Bad People

you could say "oh its just a side story its not canon" but like. everyone acts roughly in character, in an exaggerated comical way not unlike the valentine's day story. sure this event can be understood to "not really have happened" but it still says something About battler's character. the very next side story expands on ange's motives, it says that bernie made ange promise not to love or trust eva, and their Beef was entirely because of that. that's tragic and realistic (in an understanding where bernie isnt Real, she can represent a part of ange that blames eva using mystery-logic) and goes together with the ep 7 ending in a really nice way. i haven't had a place to talk about the Politics of umineko. kinzo and bici's connections to fascism aren't really remarked on by anyone else, but kinzo isn't really portrayed sympathetically. like he talks about how the main family didn't really believe in him and he went to war to die, but this is shown after six long chapters of him being pathetic and abusing Every Other Character. and he was already married with kids when he met bici... and the adults follow from him, right. like him abusing his kids is echoed throughout the family, yknow cycles of abuse. and someone like rosa is not /excused/ for abusing her kid, but we are still shown the circumstances that allow her to do it. so umineko is "anti family" if you want to be extremely reductive and that's so rare in Popular Media. umineko isn't really anti capitalist, but you could make an anticapitalist reading of it. like kinzo is a shithead and his treatment of workers is presented as Bad but this isn't shown as a systemic thing. well kyrie's family is also kinda awful. but like worlds where kinzo Isn't a shithead are happy healthy places. theres a lot of show of Ranks and Bureaucracy in Magic Land but its mostly like, flavor, nothing really comes of it. at least from my reading. another one of the side stories shows one of diana's minions being a hardass about The Law when she joins the magic cops. and trying to get the other cops to practice Law And Order by not drinking or smoking or going to the halloween party, and never using vernacular, which all goes poorly for her and its funny. its not deep social commentary or anything its kinda dilbert level. all that said... umineko Is, more than anything else, unambiguously pro autism!

[bossbutch]

umineko ch 7 back half

ok they explain the epitaph and no way i would have gotten it. short post this time. idk if anyone is still reading these but. posterity!

i went back and read their introductions and shannon and kanon are Definitely the same person. i'm ok with that. a whole lot of Children In Love and Gender Essentialism. knowing higurashi mostly focuses on kids has turned me off from it, but i know it's not so romantic... i'll still probably read it one day. anyway rich boy sent his letters and he forgot that servants are people!!!! this is where they explain the epitaph. yknow since realistically i Would Not have ever solved it i'm at least proud that i knew the text on the chapel was key. willard does an overview of every closed room and gives a poetic one line explanation. the kannon/shannon situation by itself breaks most of them. at the tea party already. i remember hearing ch7 party was a Big Deal, but so far all of ch7 has been two flashbacks from unreliable people. they explain people solving the epitaph almost immediately after explaining it the first time

idk what the point of introducing explosives Now is. it's gotta be setting up something later.

is "rudolf and kyrie have it in them to Kill family members" a Big Reveal. kyrie not loving ange and eva being innocent in ange's timeline is a Cute Twist. battler not being asumu's kid hasn't been resolved.

i don't care too much about revelations in ange's timeline unless they end up saying that that's the "real" reality which i don't think i'd be a fan of. [how many times have i said "i wouldn't like it if the story went in this direction" and then it goes in that direction. don't take this to mean i'm not having fun heehee] ep5 & 6 didn't have much Host Beato but they still had plenty of battler, and erika was a fun opponent. but in ep7 both the protagonist (will) and antagonist (bernie as herself) are characters i'm not very interested in and a dump of info i mostly already knew or suspected. made it a quick and easy read though. someone in transfights (a fighting game discord server i'm in despite not playing fighting games) said "Chapter 7 is pretty important for a lot of people as not everyone get to the same conclusions. but the added context is pretty nice or a bit dull if you are already sure of whats going on" and that's fair

[bossbutch]

Umineko Chapter 7 (front half)

i know i said i'd write a post about erika don't @ me

i knew Willard and Lion were coming because they're in the fighting game but i didn't know anything about them. so far Chiru has been less "answers" and more "here's new characters with new perspectives" will's Introduction is he says he's anti-erika, the detective that cares about love. so will he succeed where she failed? he's kinda boring but he moves the story along i suppose. i don't believe for a second that Lion existed in Reality. i guess they're "what if natsuhi didn't kill that kid" [edit: :)] they're fun but i'd like to see them interact with battler and the cousins. like is the family Cool with a nonbinary successor? kinzo and krauss are not exactly progressive. then again if beato the younger is canon trans that would make kinzo a trans-positive misogynist If bernie works for aurora does she work for "the author"? (as a force within the story) she has been Instigating Everything so far in the back half. did she always work for her or is that a post-ange development battler wouldn't approve of us "digging in the guts" of beato's game, it's less of a like, tcrf development post mortem and more like if a magic show showed how they did the trick at the end. but in Modern Era magic tricks are not really secret and it's more about the skill- there's folks who di a trick while explaining how it works, or with the secret compartments fully visible, and it's still impressive

~extended kinzo flashback sequence~ i'm reading an LP so i don't hear the voice acting, wonder if young kinzo has battler's VA. they comment that the voice is similar "...Lion. There is nothing so long and faint as a life you do not live for yourself. And yet, it slides on by in the blink of an eye. Do not forget this." "Living means having your own will. You probably were dead during that time." "Precisely. I wanted to live. No, I wanted to die. How can a puppet die?" "...By cutting... the strings." "Correct. That would be death and it would also be life, since it would mean being free." no escape from existentialism beato the elder was italian?! mama mia! lol at kinzo talking about the Bravery of the italian fascists the gold is gonna be on this sub [edit: :)] i had heard the end chapters of umineko were a little contentious and some people didn't like the explanations but once i saw the italian submarine every Kinzo Mystery fell into place BICE????? i've been using "beato" to refer to every beatrice but it's only properly beato the younger. bice... of course it gets all Dramatic when there's only two japanese soldiers and bice left, the guy who was shooting on sight suddenly wants to talk a lot

~now maria flashback~ lol maria is the messiah. also lol at maria's beato being like "real witches wash their hands and face every day" so if beato daughter of bice died with rosa where does Beato 3 come in. even if she didn't die on the rocks she would be older when she met maria so is it a different beato? though it's maria so she'd see all beatrices as Beato, it's not evidence of anything. i don't think she's a fully imaginary friend because imaginary beato would be able to make rainbows and wouldn't give her New information willard refers to maria's beato as "beato the elder" which has been my name for bice were there previously moments where someone suddenly acts OOC to represent the game master moving a piece? i don't recall any in part 1, was battler's beato mostly Above That will reaching into the story and telling his blorbos he's proud of them is surely wish fulfillment to Some subset of readers

WE CALLED THE GOLDEN WITCH AT 2 AM **SHE ACTUALLY RESPONDED?!?**

jessica goes into the vip room and sees a beatrice fumo on the side table i'm gonna assume will's seating arrangement mystery is just a sign of lion being poorly pasted in so if baby is rejected then maria's beato is born, that must mean the baby doesn't die. i think i said i would be mad if that was true because of how it was presented initially but whatever. maybe i said that about beato 2 (rosa's beato) dying on the spikes so if lion (loved baby) is trans i'd think that implies beato 3 (kanon probably?) is trans too? god i hope bryn picks this back up she called it so early. willard all "are you a boy or a girl" he's not very tactful. but it is magic 1987. well is yoshiya ftm, or mtf boymoding with the kanon identity, or genderfluid depending on role or what. i guess it'll be straightened out from them directly eventually but of course they wouldn't use any modern terminology ~yasu flashback~ it's cute they don't come out and say she's yoshiya despite how obvious it is. i'm gonna use the names and pronouns for yoshia's multiple presentations that they use At The Time for clarity. some trans folks are ok describing it like that, some aren't, but it's how you do the plurals and the genderfluids and there hasn't been anything Definitive said the stakes are not Just the stakes but also girls who went to furniture school with yasu. or their faces are based on them. or they're "playing" them in the Aurora Theater. ultimately doesn't matter but it's fun they do some Slight of Hand with shannon here. either she's rooming with yasu at the school and then Not rooming with her at the mansion OR she's yasu's tulpa. or alter. i wasn't too prudent in my rereading when i last considered the possibility of them sharing a body (to solve the number of people on rokkenjima)

i guess if you weren't paying ANY attention you'd be fooled by kanon speaking separately from yasu but it's a little insulting for 07 to try it on me :P oh hi gaap. story kinda forgot about you for a bit. so gaap is a beato and one of two older beatos for beato 3. gaap beato is not unlike the non-chick beato fragment (i forget if she had a title) [this is where the halfway point of the chapter is but i read a little more because my shift at work wasn't done]

awww kumasawa using magic to teach yasu "you'll lose shit less if you tie it to you or put it where it belongs" is very cute. she's all "this is a spiderweb charm to ward off beatrice" and "mr. knife is happier in his home" and. i don't remember how old yasu is in this scene but she's young it's definitely appropriate. kumasawa rules. she's definitely part of Maria's Beatrice. and she's who got yasu into mystery books! gaap talks about Golden Age mystery novels and that figuring it out before the end means you "win". so idk if i've "won" because it's not like there's a single culprit and crime in umineko, "figuring it out" and "before the end" are both on sliding scales. i figured out who beato is, basically what magic and love are, but i didn't figure out the epitath (which i think requires outside knowledge and japanese wordplay, so i'm not too upset about it), and my record for figuring out the closed rooms is pretty bad. i haven't solved if shannon is a beato tulpa/alter yet but it's certainly looking that way. there's still a full chapter and a half left, what is left to even happen? i guess it'll take a lot of words to wrap it all up from battler's perspective. and there's the little quiz (?) in ch8

[bossbutch]

umineko chapter 6, back half

or, "props to the LPer for giving a sexual assault warning"

ok so i said gaap immediately discusses what i brought up about the chain room but actually before that battler gets called an invalid which, what the hell! battler possesses Another Great Secret that he could use BUT it would kill beato. presumably it's beato's "real" identity. maybe about how kanon isn't kanon so when we say kanon isn't in a room we can be technically right look. if there's a way to do a Tasteful rape scene. idk if it really added anything but at least it was Very Metaphorical about it. so kinzo (rip bozo) could've set it up and been like "shannon, kanon, if you want to be a Real Person you gotta play my Murder Game and reach the golden land" and the rules of the game only let one of them win or something. there's a whole love-motivated Murder War between them this chapter that i haven't really gone into but it may be, on at least one magic level, the reason for the murders in previous chapters. they reiterate that beato-the-host was born out of shannon (or kanon? or both????) loving battler but not thinking it possible to Be with him. you can't kill beato the idea! (beato wearing v for vendetta mask dot jpeg) that beato is dead but our new beato is just as beato. love when kanon is listing off the servants and he's like "gohda? hate that guy". gohda is the most Just A Guy guy in umineko and we love him for it. so IF kanon is plural then he can go into the closet and then another identity can front and so then "kanon" is no longer in the closet. also having the chapter's mystery hinge on how kanon gets in or out of a closet is a hell of a happy accident if a trans reading wasn't intended. like if this chapter released in 2019 and not 2009 i'd be saying there's no way this story isn't intentionally plural and trans lol erika is finally kicked out of the story (possibly for good, but so far no one has Left umineko for very long, have they) ... we get the reveal from battler and beato that excluding her there are sixteen people on rokkenjima, not seventeen. ughhh i really didn't want that to be the case. beatrice is Defined by slight of hand so it's not like unforeseeable, i mean that i had considered the possibility and didn't want it to be true because it would Annoy Me

so. who is it. if the question was "who can you remove from the story without effecting much" the answer is dr. nanjo. or battler, he doesn't directly effect much on the gameboard, but also if i can't trust him i can't trust anything. they've made it clear that shannon and especially kanon have Mysteries about them and connections to beato, but. george and jessica have talked to and about shannon and kanon in front of battler, right? and shannon has been confirmed dead with kanon alive, and kanon has been presumed dead with shannon alive. the adults don't call them by name very often but i'm pretty sure it's happened in reality and i can't be bothered to reread everything to check the exact words are "even if you (erika) join us, there are 17 people". so maybe erika is a part of battler or something like that. i don't think that's true but it'd be a lot easier to swallow than the alternatives.

i hardly talked about the anje framing device. also bernie was originally a cat. ok. in the between-chapter post: my thoughts on anje and erika (mostly erika)

[bossbutch]

umineko chapter 6 (first half)

or door chains and "wait, is umineko actually about being trans and plural"

after thinking about Trans Beato in my last post one of the early things Featherine (hi featherine) says is to describe new beato as An Egg, lol so in anje's reality every chapter is a bottle message and ep 5 (and 3 and 4?) was a Forgery, ok ok umineko the book tells umineko the reader "without you here i don't have the power to think" yeah i get it i get what you're putting down

so i thought battler figured out Everything but he really only knows love and what his sin was? or he figured those out and could derive everything else. i'm 99% sure it was his promise to sayo but also that kanon was the one mad at him, not shannon

ok how much does umineko author understand about DID. i'm not sure what specifically made me write that in my notes? i'll be up front that i am not plural and get all my info about it secondhand from autistic girlies. but like. i'm seeing a lot of what i know about it in umineko, which like the trans reading idk how much is authorial intent versus what i'm bringing to it. but umineko rolls out the red carpet for you to read into it "fun beato won't be revived" :(

sayo giving kanon Permission to Love is a conversation i've had with one of my friends a number of times YOSHIYA-KUN! google translate has kanon writing his name something like "good, question mark", i'm sure if i knew japanese there's a lot of meaning in how he writes it (kanon may be a boymoding girl but "kanon" is An Assumed Identity anyway. i'm going to use he/him until he says otherwise.) but can i trust any new information in episode 6 to be Truth or just battler's interpretation? i guess that's all i've ever had to go on

beato chick being all like "i gotta Live For Father" is incredibly fucked up knowing that that's probably what kinzo asked of beato the younger

so now chick beato is reading umineko, which is awesome. i wanted ch6 to jump right into Battler's Game but chick beato and anje+featherine commentary are fun side stories.

erika once again metagaming and battler using it as bait. we love an "i know you know i know". lol at everyone in battler's story expressing immediate annoyance with her

anje doesn't get why the servants need "magic" to allow themselves to love which means she must be way behind me and battler in understanding. but, with that said, why in top-level-reality would they think that they Have the power to marry into the family, but it can only be used by shannon OR kanon? going under the assumption that they're different people because the alternative is too silly to consider at the moment

eva-bea is back (in metaphor at least), and they reiterate that spiderwebs are bad for beato-prime but part of eva-beato's Thing. dunno what's important about that- eva beato is A beato, not Our beato. as someone with a controlling parent george's Thing with his parents hits hard. i feel bad for kanon because jessica clearly loves him Way Less than george loves shannon

anje says that asumu gave birth to battler when we know that's not true. is the anje that meets with featherine not seeing any of the purgatory stuff?

i know there's still a "lion" and a "williard" to be introduced because of the fighting game but they still aren't here in chapter 6

[while writing my notes i wrote "anje" and forgot what i was gonna say]

big focus on The Chains this chapter. if knox means that the chain couldn't be set from the outside, how do you make it possible. they could've been shot and staked through holes/traps but knox says that's undiscovered evidence. if knox 8 resolves anything not shown then either its hiding in the room (boring) or the room was never really closed because kanon cut the chain before battler arrived. but genji supposedly saw the door locked and with no sigil so he'd have to be lying too.

if knox Is a misdirection- that is, beato has used secret passages or weird devices or other unrevealed clues- then the amount of focus they've put on it is kinda silly. but what counts as a "clue that's shown to the reader" leaves a lot of wiggle room. like umineko isn't under an obligation to show the necessary clue in the same chapter as the puzzle or anything.

remember when rudolf told battler that he was gonna die soon? when was that. that was probably a big deal.

umineko outright says "pay attention to the romance sections" and idk if that's just a hint for The Promise To Sayo or something more

battler to beato: "i understand magic, so i'd be able to carry you off the game board, i think that was your wish". so is host-beato not just a representative of trauma but explicitly A Headmate to battler?

what's the thematic point of making erika Pathetic. [i'll write more about her when the episode is over]

Alright so there's only one Big Mystery in episode 6, and it's How Do You Get Battler Outta The Room. i'm writing about this no later than featherine tells anje to think about it for herself. "love" is the hint to the intended solution. -_- Erika is Not the Detective, so he could just kill her, but he would still have to deal with the standing red truths. could he argue Kinzo Exists This Time? he died before The Game Begins so i dont think he could be part of the setup. either battler doesn't know how eva and hideyoshi's Chained Room was set up (if it was set up at all) or erika made that setup impossible this time.

the two nonmagical explanations are "not a crime" or "not a closed room". he has to Leave The Room without breaking the tape somehow, so it's not a closed room. (on that subject, i love that battler's first idea for a game is "everyone fakes their deaths". of course he wouldn't want to really hurt them.)

if erika isn't held to knox's 7th (she killed those folks) then battler isn't held to knox's 3rd right? he could make a secret passage? or say that "no secret passages impossible for erika to find" just means erika missed it. but that's a weak answer, it's much stronger to create a possibility for someone to escape the Other sealed rooms to come help him. we haven't said no secret doors or search from erika for them. we do say "unbroken seal means no one has entered or exited" but that just means no one used those particular doors, right? if there's another means of escape it's all okay

in the second half of the chapter: gaap immediately goes through everything i just said. umineko is good, ya'll.

[bossbutch]

umineko, post chapter 5

before reading ch6 i went back and half-read chapter 3 (with past bryn) to try to figure out Nanjo's Killer. i did not.

• bryn makes a connection between lambdadelta and eva-b that i didn't see, i see it now but also can't see how it would matter except for Witch Lore • i've been calling sayo shannon bc idk it's her professional name i'm not george • i don't remember commenting about "hempel's raven" the first go around, but i guess because battler is unfamiliar with formal logic they can calvinball it • bryn says kinzo falling in love with beato the younger is evidence she's not his daughter, but yknow. "wouldn't put it past kinzo" • i've seen memes calling beato trans but idk if thats headcanon or canon, either way ronove's description of her being a reborn homunculus is pretty trans • i still don't *really* know what love means, and that's why battler is the game master and i'm not. i tried reading more intention into the magic scene of the servants fighting the stakes in 3-1 (to me ronove killing genji is a pretty clear suicide, but red text says no one suicided) with no dice. beato couldn't say kinzo was murdered of course. • for ch3 Nanjo, the only explanation i can see is one of the servants sharing a name with someone else who is dead, so they can be dead and alive at the same time. shannon and kanon obviously have two names but red text no one else can have the name kanon. so does that leave only shannon? • i'm probably not giving enough weight to kumasawa raising beato the younger • it seems pretty clear to me that beato the younger and natsuhi's servant and baby died over the cliff. But it wasn't seen directly by the detective or said in red so who knows. if they did live i don't think it impacts the closed rooms anyway?, there's no space to hide an 18th person •i didn't really reread george and the guest house window but considering the bullshit erika does in ch5 i don't think it'd be a challenge to find a way for him to do it •i also meant to reread ch2 wrt shannon, kanon, beato, mirror but never did, whoops i feel as though i could read and reread without getting any closer to the truth, because i lack love. maybe if i paid attention to the magic system stuff. i decided to keep on with chapter six and consider doing some looking back after every chapter. maybe keep my Theorizing more in these between-chapter posts and my Reactions in the Reaction posts? (i'm writing this into tumblr after reading ch6 so i know i'll have a lot to say after that)

[bossbutch]

umineko ch2 sidepost 2

while reflecting on the silliness of the action scenes i googled for a "bait used to be believable umineko" meme and came across a little website called canmom.art where bryn rehosts Her umineko liveblog from way back when. past!bryn was projecting hard onto kanon as a trans girl which is sweet. i don't think it's Cheating to read the theories of people who are (time displaced) on the same page as i am. i'm not gonna do it much only because it's slower :P but i think maybe the ideal way to read umineko would be with a friend to talk about it with. and also with a friend who has already read it to be a "witch" that can taunt you and poke holes in your theories. i weakly tried to get viv to read along with me but their response was "i can't stand that blue haired bitch" which is probably just as well.

if you wanted to be a Serious Great Detective you could do it all solo, constantly go back to previous chapters to check theories, and read slowly and carefully with detailed notes. im not about that as i typed this up 90sramen messaged me on discord to ask if my status was a umineko reference. umineko is actually about reading a cool story and talking to friends about it. "without love it cannot be seen."

[bossbutch]

actual umineko chapter 2 liveblog

last post was fanart. you clicked through to see it, right?

if beatrice wants me to believe she has magic she can't be saying "and then i summoned a goatman with a laser sword but kinzo's furniture pulled out HIS laser sword and killed the goatman and then i summoned the stake of lust and" ok beato sure

so what did happen to kanon and jessica? beato staked em both probably. or at least jessica, i'd like to see kanon's body before i call anything

i guess kinzo's fucked up Servant School that teaches them to be furniture is mimicking his idea of beatrice's familiars.

the chapel is a likely location for the gold at the moment? once again, battler didn't find any secrets but he's a dumbass. there's text on the chapel that they don't give us probably because it'd be too much of a hint? george says "i think it went 'm' 'b' 't' 'q'" and we get no info as to what that means. even if his last theory was "happy halloween maria" is referring to the virgin mary (lol) i'd like to know what he's referring to here

i finally got a proper "objection!" moment. the six dead parents *and rosa* met in the chapel at midnight but the text doesn't call attention to it. then the next day rosa is like "gee battler how'd beatrice get into the chapel without the key that you saw me taking from maria? it must've been magic"

battler gets his first proper objection moment right after me which is nice.

finally, red truth. the real umineko begins now

my theory for the kanon & jessica Locked Door is my theory for basically all the locked doors. the door is open, it is locked while open, Crimes happen, the key is placed inside the room, and then it is closed with beato outside the room. i wouldn't call this "locking it from the outside". this isn't possible with every kind of lock but they don't let us inspect the lock. the alternative is a servant's key being stolen and returned without noticing

battler is pretty foolish to be so certain that none of the 18 were involved in the murders. player-battler didn't see kanon and jessica's fight or the adults at the chapel, does he only see what piece-battler sees?

if battler was defeated and believed in beatrice but I, the player, didn't, would that still be game over? i'm seeing scenes he doesn't that are trying to convince me magic is real...

the pieces can't say "we saw (fake?) kanon use magic" in front of piece-battler but the instant he's not in the room they can. of course

piece-battler sees golden butterflies near the end of ch2 but it's after the witch has revived and by then the game is over, right? they really aren't suspicious of kinzo enough

shannon: "george would you still love me if i was a maggot"

WHODUNNIT SPECULATION ehh idk. i dont think kinzos died yet but i dont think he's directly responsible for any murders. his goal (revival of the witch) is furthered by the killings but it wouldn't be gambling if he did it himself. in a similar way maria thinks she benefits from the ritual but she has good alibis and her idea of beato wouldnt need much help from her genji may be doing Crimes for kinzo's sake without his knowledge. if there's multiple killers (and i think there is) he's the only one i think would be Willing to die in the ritual kanon is not on beato's side but if anyone is Interfering it's him i don't believe in a Servant Conspiracy, i don't see any motive for gohda, the doc, shannon or kumasawa yet of the family i don't suspect the kids or krauss+natsuhi. if eva and hideyoshi faked their deaths it was very impressive lol. rosa has the most to gain from the beato-ing, but if i take kanon's magic scenes as evidence he's against beatrice then i gotta assume rosa is against beatrice too even if she may be part of some crimes kyrie and rudolf have both been out-of-focus and (allegedly) die early

is people/the audience accepting magic a Goal in Itself for beato? it def makes her More Powerful in imaginationland. magic scenes could be lies, they could be maria's imagination, or even shannon/someone else's. it'd be really pissed if the truth is "it's not magic BUT multiple people hallucinated or went 'crazy' or whatever" i don't have any cosmological theories or commentary i don't really care how tea party land and the time loop work or fit together and relate to reality. it works because otherwise theres no story it's probably worth knowing what bernie and lambda Represent even if i don't consider them Real Characters. bernie maybe an anti-magic "fairplay whodunnit" perspective to oppose beato, but she is herself a witch. im sure she'll be clearer later she hasn't done much yet

beato is fantasy she's bullshitting she's a writer or gamemaster who doesn't trust the readers. she's playing chess but she controls how many pieces each side gets and what every piece does, but she still wants battler to say how much better and smarter she is. but ALSO she's maria's coping mechanism, so shes not meant to be purely a negative thing. opium of da masses. you could argue that beatrice is like the main thesis of umineko and you don't *really* need to speculate on anything other than her, but that'd be boring :P

i feel like my theories didn't develop/change much reading chapter 2 which is prob a failing on my part. ch3 is supposed to be The Fairest Game Yet so i'm looking forward to it

[bossbutch]

umineko chapter 2 halfway point

i made it through the first half of chapter 2 with No Notes, this is all post hoc

i know from The Memes that george is unpopular for being attracted to shannon, but like, neither one of them has had healthy relationships modeled for them.. no further comments on the Romance. Battler hasn't seen beatrice with his eyes yet. it was kinda ambiguous if he saw her at the end of chapter 1 and simply Rejected seeing her? the people who see her do magic doubt that they saw it. "it's poetic depiction" is hardly a better explanation than "it's magic" but it's what i've got.

so the gold is at least some literal gold, and i now think a 19th person was likely present during game 1. and it's very hard to deny her presence in game 2. this person can be called "beatrice" for now even if there are other beatrices.

still not sure how the epitath could lead to the gold, outside of a boring literal interpretation of the first few lines leading somewhere, but as that's the win condition i don't expect it to be solvable yet.

chapel mystery: surely key duplication was possible in 1985? if there's one key then i don't think it was in the original envelope given to maria. she could be trusted not to open it, beato could switch it out after using the key.

beato's outright stated her motive is to make people believe in witches, so i gotta assume the way she respects charms, asks shannon to break the mirror, etc. is to reinforce that

honestly the most magical thing to me so far is- halloween decorations! doesn't seem like something beato could get on the island, or something that any non-rosa family member would think to bring. battler only verbally acknowledges the candy, so it's possible the rest is a false perception thing... but that can't be my answer to everything. it's just such a situational Aesthetic thing to set up. new very serious theory: the guest house is vacant most of the year,,, and spirit halloween was founded in 1983,,,