#Occult Detectives -Part 1-

[i-heart-hxh]

July 19th Togashi bonus tweet!!

From the short story collection "I'm Not Afraid of Wolves!!", story title is "Occult Detectives -Part 1-"

[torialefay]

🗝️ Sun in Scorpio ♠️

minho as your boyfriend!!! (pt. 1)

(based on astrology) 🔞

✨minho x reader (f); possessive fluff, slightly suggestive at the end

✨take a look into lee know’s natal chart to see what type of boyfriend he would be! in this post, i will be talking about his sun in scorpio. this is a series!!! so follow up later if u want more <3

✨i will give a brief synopsis of what each chart placement means (for all my non-astrology friends out there <3) and how that would affect minho in a relationship :)

✨word count: ~2k

✨ author’s notes:

★★ (1) i do do brief astrological compatibility readings if anyone wants one! if you’re interested, message me your birth date, time, and location OR lmk your placements. i’m gonna limit the reading to include you x 1 skz member only! just specify who you’d like.

(2) i am wanting to get better at using neutral-gendered pronouns so more people can feel included in my posts. i’m really struggling since i use phrases like “my girl” a lot. anyone who has some good alternatives or tips, please message and lmk! i really want to be able to start cranking out more gn options!

(3) the aspects in this reading are based solely on my opinions and interpretations! nothing about a person is set in stone simply because of astrology. please don’t use anything i say as canon :)

(4) i will not be going into ascendant or house placements because lee know’s birth time has not been confirmed for AM or PM

✨warnings: some explicit language

✨ tl/dr: minho as your boyfriend will spoil the shit out of you and charm you until you can’t help but live and breathe him. he’s got to keep a grasp on you at all times- literally AND figuratively.

Sun in Scorpio: Sun signs are all about personality- the face you show the world! It is also the lens through which you usually see yourself and how friends would describe you.

• Scorpio has two planetary rulers- Mars and Pluto. Mars is the ruler of action and aggression, while Pluto is the ruler of transformation and rebirth. Scorpio is an amazing mixture of the two, as it embodies strong desires, innate control, and deep mental and supraphysical understanding.

• Scorpios encapsulate passion. They tend to have a deep understanding of others and can utilize this power to their advantage. They are able to influence others to do as they wish. Scorpios have a deep understanding of beauty and admire things that could be seen as dark, different, or strange to others.

• Scorpios have a tendency to become obsessive, controlling even, if not careful. They get fully engrossed into who other people are and want others to fully engross themselves in them as well.

• Scorpios are known for their creative and expressive nature- something that comes naturally to them. Because of this, they can really shine in areas such as art or drama, historian or detective, intuitive research or psychology, and are amazing for dabbling in the occult.

As your boyfriend:

• He is super protective over you. He’s always watching behind you as you do something to make sure you’re okay and no one is bothering you… And to be honest, I don’t think many people WOULD bother you, knowing you were the person with a psycho boyfriend (in a good way <3).

• He would bring you lunch any chance he got. If you were at work/school and he knew you hadn’t brought lunch or hadn’t had lunch that day, he’d definitely bring you something- whether he picked it up or made it himself. It also gives him an excuse to see you and check on you during the day.

• He knows when you are having a bad day. And he knows exactly how you need him to act in order to help you deal with it. When he senses something is wrong, he will pull you onto his lap in a hug and tell you to talk to him about it.

• Other people think he’s cold, but he’s definitely not with you. He loves you and nurtures you. He takes pride in knowing every part of you. He loves that there is a side of him that is specifically for you and not for the rest of the world. He’d like it if you were the same.

• He loves when the both of you have a chance to get dressed up. To look good for one another and just enjoy the other’s company.

• He loves nice dates, ones where he can make a grand gesture to make you feel loved and special.

• That’s why it was no surprise when he’d texted you earlier to dress up pretty for him and he’d be at your apartment to pick you up at 8.

• This was a monthly occurrence. Him surprising you with a nice date- and when I say nice, I mean NICE.

• Yes, you went on smaller dates a lot too, but he made it a priority to spoil you with something bigger at least once a month.

• So here you were, all dressed up in your favorite dark blue satin dress. It looked absolutely enchanting with it’s spaghetti strap and cowl neck top with a deep slit running up the side.

• You made sure to do your hair his favorite way- loose curls all brought to one side.

• You gave yourself one final look in the mirror, swiping on a glossy coat over your lip stain before heading out the door. Minho was already waiting on you downstairs.

• When he saw you like this, he always smirked.

• ‘Looking so beautiful all for me,’ he thought.

• Once you got to him, he just smiled at you, taking your hand in his.

• “Now, are you going to tell me where we’re off to?” you asked.

• “Shhh, you’ll see,” he kissed your hand, leading you out to the car.

• He always made sure to open the car door for you and make sure you were buckled before you took off.

• And of course he always had to rest one hand in his favorite spot- gripping onto one of your thighs. It was harder when you had a dress on, but he’d never let that stop him. He needed to always have a hold on you.

• Arriving at your destination, it was a quaint building you didn’t recognize. You’d never been here before, but it seemed to be a small restaurant with only a few (very nice) cars in the parking lot.

• The valet rushed to the car to speak with Minho and grab the keys.

• You smiled up at your boyfriend as he walked around to your side of the car, opening the door for you and taking your hand in his to help you stand.

• As you made your way toward the restaurant, he made sure to hold tightly to the one hand, while the other stabilized on your hip, making sure you were safe while ascending the few steps in front of you.

• “Hello, can I get your name please?” the host of the restaurant asked as you stepped inside. It was a beautiful restaurant- dark and sensual. There was very minimal lighting, but what they did have gave a beautiful warm glow. The sleek bar to the right shined bright from the sparkly crystal bottles aligning each of the shelves- luxury liquor only.

• “Lee,” he said, matter of factly, only taking a brief moment to look at the host. Tonight, his eyes were only on you.

• The host presented a big smile before stepping to the side and motioning for you to follow him. “Great, Mr. Lee. Right this way.”

• Minho let you walk just slightly in front of him, always watching your back to make sure he had a full view of you. One hand continued to rest on your hip. It was like it was glued there. He never wanted to lose contact with you.

• The host led you down one of the dimly-lit aisles and to the back of the building. Off to itself, he rounded a corner to lead to a beautiful, private, screened-in room in the back. It sat adjacent to a huge lake, which could be seen through the mesh netting of the “walls” that enclosed you. With the moon shining bright over the water and the stars on full display, it was a captivating view.

• Minho pulled your seat out for you to sit before pushing you in towards the table. You allowed yourself this moment to look around the beautiful secluded room. It was still dark like the interior of the building, with the nice, warm lighting. But there was an even more bewitching feeling to it through the beautiful scenery and soft music that was emanating from afar. It was absolutely breathtaking.

• If there was anything Minho knew how to do, it was how to wine and dine you. He made sure to start the evening with ordering a full bottle of your favorite reserve red wine. He loved the way you looked and smiled at him after a glass or two- how lovey dovey you got for him and how you began to try and charm him, getting all giggly, before the night was over with.

• He encouraged you to get whatever you wanted off the menu- even if it was the most expensive thing by far, he wanted you to have it. He was never going to let you pay anyways.

• Once you decided what you wanted, he always wanted you to tell him so that he could order for you. It wasn’t that he thought you were incapable of ordering for yourself, but he wanted you to know that you would always be taken care of when he was there. He didn’t want you to have to take your attention off of him for one second.

• Your heart always swelled as you watched him order- for some odd reason. And he never ordered just what the two of you wanted. No way. He made sure to always order at least 3 or so dishes so that you could share with each other and sample everything. He would make sure to have something on the table that his baby loved.

• Even if you were absolutely stuffed, if he noticed there was still wine in your glass, he would always order a dessert for the two of you to share. And although he wouldn’t admit it, this was also a way to extend his time out with you.

• He’d make sure to do all the gross romantic stuff with you, like feeding you a bite of the crème brulèe straight from his spoon. He definitely didn’t want to overdo it though and would NOT do it unless you two were in private.

• At the end of the evening, after your head felt light and bubbly from the wine and your stomach was full, he made sure to tip the waiter very generously. You loved that about him. That’s why the restaurant owners and workers always loved to see the two of you back.

• Taking the last sip of your whine, you leaned in with a smile, half-whispering “thank you for dinner, jagi.”

• “Thank you for being here with me, love,” he said back. Slowly, he stood from his chair, so naturally you waited in yours as he always requested, so that he could again pull your chair out before you stood.

• He made his way over as usual, standing behind you, but this time he didn’t put his hands on the chair.

• Instead, he placed one hand on the nape of your neck, bending down to plant a soft kiss to your shoulder and then to the side of you neck.

• You let out a giggle as you started to blush. “Stop itttt, you know we can’t do that here.”

• “I know, but I had to at least get a little bit out,” he smiled smugly.

• Suddenly, you saw his hands both in front of you and a cold sensation on your chest. You looked down to see a beautiful silver pendant resting just between your collar bones.

• “What’s this?” you asked, as you felt his hands secure the latch at the back of your neck.

• He walked to your side so that he could see your face and bent down, resting one knee on the ground.

• “Why don’t you look at it and tell me?”

• You picked the small-ish pendant up to examine it. On the front, in dainty cursive font read “LMH”. Lee Min Ho.

• The back had a single, small diamond implanted in it. Around it’s edges, it had a Latin phrase inscription. You read it aloud. “Aut viam inveniam aut faciam?” You tried to make the words out, looking to your boyfriend for confirmation.

• “That’s right jagi. ‘I will either find a way or make one’. For you.” He smiled up at you, as your looked at him with eyes of endearment. The love you had for this man was unbearable. You could hardly stand the emotions that he made you feel.

• He gently reached out for your hand, planting a gentle kiss to it, before standing up and motioning for you to do the same.

• Once you were upright on your feet, he leaned in next to your ear. “It looks beautiful on you, by the way,” he whispered seductively.

• You smirked, the boldness of the wine starting to manifest out of you. “I’ll keep it on for you later. Everything else is coming off,” you winked.

• His eyes grew large for a split second before turning himself so that he body was right up against yours. He swiftly let his hands wonder to your waist, then hips, then grab lightly at your ass.

• “That sounds perfect,” he planted a small, sweet kiss to your lips. “But that necklace is never coming off of you. Promise me. Promise me you’ll wear it at all times, and I’ll always be with you.” He looked at you, his face full of sincerity and genuine lust.

• “Anything for you,” you gave in to him before leaning in for another slow kiss.

• You knew that’s exactly what he wanted. For you to give yourself fully to him. You’d play around with him later, but for now, you would give yourself up. He knew you were his.

———————————————————————————————————

✨ author’s note: lowkey thinking this man put a tracker in the necklace lol. he just wants to know you’re safe and also wants to be able to know where you are at all times. but it’s up to you what you want to think 🤷‍♀️

✨ if you enjoyed, please consider liking, commenting, or re-blogging <3

[clockwaysadmin]

Salt in the Bones (series) Update Subscription Post

Ship: Dead on Main, Danny Fenton/Jason Todd John Constantine & Danny Fenton CW: (updating as the series continues) Canon-Typical Violence, Self-doubt, Panic Attacks, Major Illness, Hospitalization, Necromancy

Through a series of unfortunately fortunate events, Danny Fenton meets one John Constantine and follows in his footsteps. Occult Detective, Psychopomp, Speaker— the magical community calls Danny many titles, but Necromancer is the one they spit at him. He's not though, right? But he may need to be more than simply human to save the life of Batman's dying son. He may only be able to do it as someone already half dead— as someone who's brought the dead back.

This series is being co-written with @mokulule! She is writing the Constantine focused parts (everything with Salt in the title), and I am writing the Batfam focused parts (everything with Bones in the title).

Currently uncertain if full parts will be posted here or only excerpts.

There will be updates the when any parts of the series are uploaded to Ao3.

All things related to this fic can be found in the 'salt in the bones' tag on @clockwayswrites and also on @mokulule. Major links are below.

A Pinch of Salt Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Little Living Bones Part 1 Part 2

Hollowing Bones Snippet 1 Snippet 2

How to Subscribe:

Website: click on the ... in the upper right and 'Subscribe to Conversation' App: click on 'notes' in the bottom left then the bell icon in the upper right

(For those very few with ability to comment on this post, DO NOT.)

[rita-repulsa-ke]

Ritual of the Rose - Ch 3

"That form you're wearing is a corpse. It should have been in the ground years ago," Rio hissed, and as she said it, her voice a cold mist over his skin, Billy could feel decay setting in, his fingernails loose and prone to falling away, his skin slack on bones, his heart no longer beating in his chest—

Fic Summary: Changes the events of the last episode. Instead, Agatha swears a vow and prepares to go on one final adventure with Death.

For some reason, Billy has decided he's a protagonist as well.

Part 1 Part 2

Chapter 3 - Who is Billy Maximoff?

William Kaplan was a murderer.

No. William Kaplan was dead. He'd died in a carwreck with his parents and someone else had co-opted his body.

That wasn’t his fault! William was already dead and he was dying too, so he'd grabbed on to what he could, like some kind of weird, body-snatching parasite. Only he hadn't gotten just a host, he'd also gotten a life, someone else's life, someone else’s parents, who were currently downstairs thinking loud, worried thoughts about what was going on with their son.

Drugs? Online bullying, maybe? He was so into that weird occult stuff, should they have put a stop to that sooner?

No, he was a good boy. Reliable, kind, got good grades, had never done anything seriously wrong. They should trust him.

And here it was, he braced for it every time, and it still hurt.

It's only, he changed so much after the accident.

I'm sorry, he wanted to tell them. I'm so, so, so sorry, I'm not your son, I'm the leech that took his body. You guys are great parents, and you're my parents, you're the only parents I've ever known, please don't hate me for not being him.

He couldn't tell them that, though. He couldn't tell them their son had died years ago and now there was only him, Billy Maximoff, murderer.

He couldn't tell them the murder part either, couldn't sit downstairs on the couch and sob and let them hug him and tell him it would get better, like they had the first time he'd gotten his heart broken or a bad grade or a mean comment on his Instagram. He couldn't even let them be his parents right now, because there was no way he could confess that he'd killed three women on a Road he created with his mind.

Agatha said she would have killed all of them. And she had, in the most literal sense, killed Alice. Still, it had been his idea to form a coven in the first place, his idea to lure victims to her, even if he hadn't known what he was doing.

He should hate her, but he was too busy hating himself.

He uncurled his hand, locked in a fist since the fight in Agatha's garden. Took out the crumpled piece of stationary and smoothed it out. Noted with mild amusement that it seemed to have silly cartoon cats around the edge of the page. He couldn't imagine anything less Agatha, so probably this had belonged Agnes prior to her time as a hardboiled detective.

Agnes, a woman who'd been kept that way by his ostensible mother, who'd also trapped and tortured a whole town.

Boys, thanks for choosing me to be your mom.

"William! Do you want some dinner?"

He jumped and his hand clamped tight around the stationary again. That was his mother, he reminded himself, the one calling to him with concern in her voice. "No," he said. "I'm not very hungry right now."

"This is why you're such a beanpole!" His dad called, trying for jovial.

"I'm watching my figure," he retorted on automatic, smoothing the paper once more and looking at the address.

An apartment in New York City. No other information, except the hastily scrawled number on the bottom.

He wasn't going to call. He didn't need Agatha's help anymore. He had never needed her help, probably—except for the part where he had and he still didn't know if he was murderer a fourth time over for that, if he'd killed the boy he'd helped put Tommy in.

But that part was done and he didn’t even really regret it. The Road had made his wish come true. Now he needed to find his brother. Tommy, at least, wouldn't go through what he had, waking up with no memory and no understanding of what had happened to him.

Agatha had to told him to go alone. He could do this. He'd made a whole (deadly) reality. He could handle one mysterious stranger.

Resolute, he turned to go and almost screamed, clapped his hands over his mouth to stop the sound at the last moment so he didn't get his parent's attention.

He really didn't want them to come up here, because standing too close, smiling like an open wound, was Rio.

"You know, I think she forgets I can do this?" the woman said. She was wearing her green witch outfit, skintight and kind of cool in a scary way, but all Billy could remember was staring into the skeletal face of Death. "Be everywhere at once, I mean." Then she lunged suddenly, closing the gap between them until their noses almost brushed. "Boo!"

He jumped back and hit his dresser, gave a short, unmanly shriek and she burst into cackles of laughter so loud he worried his parents were about to come rushing up the stairs.

"W-what do you want? Are you here to—" he said, swallowed and didn't finish the sentence, his eyes on the blade in her hand, even though he knew she wasn't going to literally stab him to death.

Well, he really hoped she wasn't going to stab him to death.

"Take you? I should, you know. This…" she shook her head, back and forth, and each time it turned too far, creating the unnerving illusion her head was going to start spinning around like a bad horror movie effect. "This is so wrong, what you're doing here. You're the wrong soul in the wrong body. Very, very gross. But no, not right now, I'm busy letting Agatha drag me along like she always does. Do you know she's really bossy?"

"I know," Billy said, unsure if they were bonding here.

"Right, I bet you do. That whole Road business." She paused, twirled her knife, paced in a circle around his room and watching her now, he couldn't imagine how he'd ever thought she was a normal person, even a normal witch. She moved like a tiger penned into a cage, as though the form she wore didn't quite contain the edges of her, a non-Euclidean—

"She likes you, you know," Rio said, interrupting his mind's desperate attempt to comprehend what was right in front of him. "Agatha, I mean."

"Can she? Like people?" Billy said, which prompted a shorter, sharper cackle.

"I ask myself that All. The. Time," Rio said, sprawling back on his bed and kicking her feet, impatient, restless, almost human except for all the ways she wasn’t. "But apparently she's got a soft spot for little boys."

It took Billy a moment to correctly interpret that statement. "Because of her son."

Rio gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Probably. So maybe I can help."

"What?!"

"You," she pointed her knife at him. "Maybe I can help you."

"With what?"

She wrinkled her nose, jerked the knife up and down to indicate all of him. "Your…condition."

"…And that help isn't killing me?"

"Right," Rio said. "But it would involve you vacating that bod—"

"No!" Billy snapped, his arms wrapping tight around himself, as though he could keep his body held in place.

"That form you're wearing is a corpse. It should have been in the ground years ago," Rio hissed, and as she said it, her voice a cold mist over his skin, Billy could feel decay setting in, his fingernails loose and prone to falling away, his skin slack on bones, his heart no longer beating in his chest

"Stop!" His magic flared and on instinct, he grabbed for her mind, like he'd done to Jen and Lilia and for a brief, overwhelming moment, he was Death, standing side-by-side with a winged shadow bigger than he could grasp and he was—

He was everywhere. He was vast, all-consuming, but deeply personal at the same time.

He stood at a hospital bed, listening to the monitors make a sound he'd only heard in movies. Flatline. "…Sorry," he said to the woman standing in front of him, looking much healthier and more alive than what lay in the bed.

"Damn," the woman said. "I'd really hoped I'd get a bit longer."

"Everyone does," he said, or rather, something else said, speaking through him like he were a ventriloquist's dummy. "How was what you had?"

He barely heard the answer. There were simply too many, all competing for his attention. An undiscovered allergy. A stupid bet about who could drink the most. A car wreck. A heart attack. Kidney failure. Aneurysm.

And then he was scooped up, deposited back into his body on a wave of green magic, and for a moment, he could see himself as she did, an abomination, an outright defiance of the natural order—

"I'm not doing that to them!"

He snapped back to himself, fully himself, no trace of lingering Death. Rio was still on his bed, looking up at him with narrowed eyes, her mouth firmed into a thin, sharp line. "…You are powerful. And dangerous. I can't believe Ags didn't drain you dry. Them who?"

He collapsed onto the floor, pulled his knees to his chest. "My paren—"

"William? Are you okay?" A familiar voice called up the stairs.

"Yes! Everything's fine, mom."

"Their son is dead," Rio pointed out and Billy glared what he hoped were daggers at her, feeling the urge to use his power boil up again, magic dancing across his fingertips. He forced himself to wrestle it back. He didn't know if he would ever sort out everything he'd seen in the few seconds he'd been Death. He was certain he didn't want another go-round and he'd seen how ineffective Agatha had been at fighting her with direct magic, something he didn't even know how to use.

"I'm their son! And I'm not going to let you kill me,” he said, very aware that he had no way of preventing her from doing whatever she wanted.

Rio tossed her head back and cackled, shrieked, and his parents must not have been able to hear her at all, because she was really loud. "You can't stop me. Even Ags can't stop me and she knows that, though she hates it." Something in her expression went distant, sad like mourners at a funeral. "...She knows that,” she repeated and Billy opened his mouth to ask, but Death spoke first. "But fine, have it your way, keep this disgusting charade up a little while longer. Eventually I'll come and collect. I always do. I am the end of all things, baby!" She sprung to her feet, spread her hands too wide and gave him a toothy smile. "Sooner or later, everything is mine."

"…I can see why you and Agatha might have worked once. She's really dramatic too," he said, which got him another cackling laugh as response.

"She is. I've got nothing on Agatha Harkness," Rio agreed, cloying affection lacing her voice.

"…creep," he muttered.

Rio only snickered. "You'll understand one day, when you fall in love," she told him.

"I am in love! I just have a healthy relationship, thank you.”

"Someday, you will meet someone who takes part of you away with them, and you never, ever get it back," Rio said, somehow managing to sound genuinely adoring as she said it. "And then you'll know what love is."

"…I think you should look into counseling."

"Tell your father to get his heart checked," Death replied and then, before he'd even processed the words, she was gone.

“...Thank you?" he whispered to thin air, then staggered to his feet, suddenly desperate for his parent’s company even if he couldn’t tell them a single true thing about his life.

"Hey, dad," he said as he came down the stairs. "I'm going to ask you to do something really weird…"

For more of Rio being everywhere at once, try Death and the Scarlet Witch. Or for something cuter, try the witch who cried wolf.

[crazycatgirl420]

The Fine Print part 3

A dpxdc universe travel fic featuring Grandma Xandau [link], Mama Helena Bertinelli [link], reincarnated Ghost King Danny and Father John Constantine [part 1] and [part 2]

If you try the links please let me know if they don't work.

Danny followed John Constantine through Gotham, a block away and easily blending into the crowd. It was good to be home, after the past few months he spent tracking the elusive occult detective down across the continent.

What would bring him to Gotham in the first place? Danny had no clue in all honesty.

Gotham was his Haunt. While the Batclan dealt with the normal threats to the city, Danny had been dealing with the paranormal threats. Gotham was huge though, and Danny wasn't even fourteen yet. If he had missed something that Batman called Constantine to fix...

Danny pulled a Crypt candy from his pocket, letting the hard sugary ectoplasm sooth his overactive imagination.

He didn't have anything to be ashamed of, at least not recently. If Batman was only now suspecting the Joker's death had Occult orgins, then it might not be a high priority case to solve. And Danny didn't regret what happened to the Joker. It was an accident...mostly.

Danny started trying to untangle Gotham's Cursed Nexus last year. He underestimated how cursed his City was though, and thought it would be like untangling soul curses. He knew a lot about that, as Ghost King he had to be. Souls couldn't move on if their soul was cursed, and it was painful for a ghost to exist if they were only existing in the Realms because of a curse.

But Gotham, while similar, was different. First of all, Gotham was in a living realm. Secondly Gotham was such an Old city, with generations of families that lived and died here, so full of the living and their emotions, so full of culture and personality...Gotham should have a City Spirit. But the Curse was draining the energy that would go towards the City Spirit to nourish itself.

Danny had grabbed a fistful of the Curses and he just overpowered it. The strands fraying and snapping. It cleared just enough to see inside the knotted tangle of curses, a baby City Spirit struggling to form.

He hadn't even known the Joker was part of the Curses that plauged the city, though hindsight made it pretty obvious. The Joker had been murdered, had died, several times according to the Justice League database. But somehow he kept being brought back to life.

Since Danny shattered the Joker's connection to the City Curse, he would not be coming back.

If Batman had an issue with that, Danny would drag his egotistical ass to the City Spirit so he could explain to the soul of his home why she deserved to suffer-

Danny crunches the candy between his teeth. A forcefully calm breath.

Untangling the Curses was going to take longer than he had assumed last year. Yet he was making progress! There was no need to get John Constantine involved.

Danny followed the blond to Wayne Mansion.

Whatever Batman had to say to the Foreigner Constantine, he could say to the Gotham Resident Constantine too.

What's the worst Batman could do anyway? Say no? Call his mom?

Danny wasn't sure Batman knew his mom's Civilian phone number though it would be funny if he did. It was about time mom had the chance to demand child support anyway.

[grendelsmom]

I’m obsessed with how Pentiment truly manages to put the player in a position where no choice feels good and every option is so deeply trenched in doubt. Especially in act 1, also in act 2, but act 1 hits that particular angle so much harder.

And part of that is because the Baron is truly such a piece of shit. You can choose to kill Lucky, but even if he did it (which you are never certain about with any of the characters) the Baron was responsible for his pregnant daughters suicide and therefore disgrace even in death. Who could blame Lucky for hating him? You can choose to kill Ferenc, but the Baron blackmailed him due to Ferenc’s interest in the occult, which would surely get him killed by the church, and the Baron only used it to further his own gain. You can choose to kill Ottilia, but the Baron physically abused her husband and killed him in the long run. Which made Ottilia not only lose her husband, whom she loved by all accounts, but also her entire livelihood, because as a widow, she can’t inheret. You can choose to kill Matilda, but the Baron tried to rape her and physically abused her so heavily that she had to leave for months so that no one would notice. But you still have to condem one of them because otherwise, Piero gets the chop.

It’s different in act 2 because Otto is not directly responsible for the harm that comes to the suspects. But they are all just people trying their best. Hanna is at a bad place in her marriage and has, to be fair, an affair with a truly horrible man. But at the end of the day she’s trying to protect her husband and her son and the life they have build in Tassing. Martin/Jobst saw his chance after years as a bandit on the road to get away from that, to lead a better life, and he took it. He’s trying to be a good husband and a good father all while pretending to be someone he is not, but still being better to literally everyone around him than Martin ever was. And Guy is a piece of shit to quite literally everyone in Kiersau and Tassing, but that’s because he is deeply unhappy and bitter about the life he is forced to live. He can never go back home, never be around his people anymore. He’s forced to live as a monk for the rest of his life, so what he does is he steals to help and save those who can not save themselves.

And Pentiment tricks you into believing that this is a fun medieval murder mystery game where you get to play detective and takes all these hard choices and shoves their consequences in your face. There's no good outcome because it was never fair in the first place.

[multidimensionalguidance]

The Astrology Behind: “The Chronicles of Narnia” Pt.1

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I recently went on a rabbit hole reading all about these books and movies, which honestly started out as boredom and a tad of nostalgia. It had been so long since I watched any of them that I could not recall the rich, mystical and esoteric history behind all of this material.

I'll be breaking down the writer and the characters astrological placements along with some interesting insights as well for entertainment. So, major spoiler alert for those who haven't read or seen the movies. At any case, this will be a long series! Enjoy <3

The Author, C. S. Lewis, has a really interesting chart that screams wizard and esoteric connoisseur. He was often hailed as the ‘Father of Modern Fantasy,’ and has been regarded as one of the most versatile authors in terms of topics and genres.

One of the most noticeable things to me was his Scorpio placements which indicate the depth behind his stories and the occult messages in them as well. Anuradha is a sign that has heavy themes of friendship, alliances, and devotion. As well, the darker side of this nakshatra comes with its Saturn influence where the native must first experience betrayal of trust, broken friendships, isolation in order to attain real long lasting connections. In the series these are all highlighted topics with the Narnians building a strong bond not just with the original queens and kings, but also with all the other humans who wanted to aid. It was all about joining forces towards a common good and being devoted to the magic of faith.

His rich and vivid imagination was most definitely triggered by that Moon conjunct Neptune. I think his moon is most likely in sidereal Gemini rather than Taurus, simply because of his profession as a writer. His intuition and creative abilities were palpable with this conjunction, regardless of sign.

Neptune creates illusions and delusions which can be detrimental if there's no tool to release it, and Lewis obviously knew exactly where to pour it all. There's a good chance that a lot of his writings were channeled since this conjunction gives natural psychic abilities, and many spiritual experiences as well.

His Moon was also conjunct Pluto, which not only brings many deep transformative spiritual lessons, but a tumultuous inner world as well. It's possible that writing was his safe hiding place from all the difficulties he experienced at home and/or with his mother.

In the movie we become familiar with the children who in the middle of war had to be separated from their mother in order to survive. They were left with their innocence and imagination to connect with the new world that was thrown upon them. It was only after they entered Narnia that their inner and external world enmeshed into an almost Alice in Wonderland sort of experience. Bizarre, visceral, colorful, and deeply transcendental. The plot and all of themes match very well with the authors life.

He was also well known for his religious interest and writings as well, which is expected of someone with Mercury in Sagittarius, specifically in a Ketu nakshatra which represents roots, be it of a plant or our own. Mula natives have a strong connection to their past and their ancestors, hence why for Lewis continuing to share/communicate/write about his faith taught by his family was an essential part of him. This nakshatra also loves to act like detectives, searching and digging in the past, like an archaeologist.

It is also note worthy to mention that Mercury was conjunct Rahu and these individuals often have an endless hunger for knowledge. It is almost an obsession to them, which is on theme for Rahu's shenanigans. Aside from this, the physic abilities are also strongly present. So, overall, Lewis was very much connected to the ether and his "imagination" was actually pulling from a deep well of wisdom passed down by his ancestors and spirit guides who wanted to use him as a channel for sharing hidden truths, even if it was under his religious scope.

Now, I'll continue with mentioning that the seven (7) books were each inspired by a planet. As mentioned earlier Lewis interest for magic and the cosmos was as deep as a blackhole. He strongly believed in Astrology despite the opposition that existed in his own religion.

He mentioned in non fiction books how Astrology was never an issue with the church until the Copernicus model came around putting emphasis on the Sun, which has been historically associated with God in many different religions. Due to this and other reasons most theologist deemed prediction or worship of planets as a blasphemy.

Lewis’ inclusion of the Seven Heavens avoided all three of these heretical dangers. As such, Lewis’ use of medieval cosmology falls well outside the scope of what modern-day Christians would condemn as astrology, which allowed him to use it without guilt or shame.

The planet Lewis assigned to each book is as follows:

Jove (Jupiter): The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Mars: Prince Caspian

Sol (the Sun): The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Luna (the Moon): The Silver Chair

Mercury: The Horse and his Boy

Venus: The Magician’s Nephew

Saturn: The Last Battle

I've only seen the first three movies, and I can definitely see each planet reflected into all of them. Jupiter in the first with all of the expansion of the magic, the war, traveling far from home and to another world, etc.

In the second movie, it was very Martian with the invasion of humans aggression and Narnians essentially becoming either extinct or pulled away from their higher consciousness to become like any other animal. It was also the heavy military ideals, the difficulty in both main masculine characters with controlling their dominance, etc.

In the last one the whole plot revolves around the two youngest siblings who still had a connection to "Aslan" (the Sun or Jesus archetype) returning to fight against a dark mist that was haunting Narnians. They had to go on a journey of recovering 7 magical swords and using them to return the light back into the lands. At the end, Aslan gives the characters the option of returning back into his world with them since Narnia didn't need of their protection anymore. The whole plot was centered around bringing light, truth, and stability.

As you can tell this series has a lot of knowledge and spiritual insights hiding behind the cover of a child's story so I will separate it into several parts. In the next one, I will go over the main character's charts and their astrological association, connection to author and books as well. Thank you for reading!

[lesbianalanwake]

Did some Pathfinder builds for Remedy characters, which I've done before, but there's been a PF2e remaster and I wanted to do it for Saga too, so.... Saga as a psychic, Alan as an oracle, and Jesse as a summoner, up to level 5.

Saga Anderson, Psychic 5

Ancestry: Human, Heritage: Aphorite Aphorites were first forged by axiomites, the primary inhabitants of the Eternal City of Axis, the plane of pure law. The original aphorites served as liaisons between their lawful progenitors and frustratingly unpredictable mortal allies. Marrying the logical thought processes of conformity to law and the gift of self-determination, early aphorites spread across the Material Plane to serve as Axis's proxies and enact its will. Over time, their appearances and personalities grew to resemble their mortal comrades as they were increasingly born among mortals. Aphorites still exhibit Axis's touch in their metallic skin coated in crystalline dust, aptitude for logic, strength in artisanship, and propensity for order and cooperation. But despite these links to their purpose-built origins, contemporary aphorites are undoubtedly their own masters. Background: Detective You solved crimes as a police inspector or took jobs for wealthy clients as a private investigator. You might have become an adventurer as part of your next big mystery, but likely it was due to the consequences or aftermath of a prior case.

Attributes: Strength +1, Dexterity +2, Constitution +1, Intelligence +3, Wisdom +2, Charisma +4 Perception: +9; Low-Light Vision, Darkvision Skills: Acrobatics +9, Athletics +8, Deception +11, Diplomacy +11, Intimidation +11, Lore: Underworld +12, Medicine +9, Nature +9, Occultism +10, Society +10, Survival +9

AC: 19 (Unarmored); Fortitude: +8, Reflex: +11, Will: +11 HP: 43; Resistances: Mental 2 Speed: 25 ft. Ranged Weapon: Jezail, Air Repeater, Crossbow

Class: Psychic The mind can perceive truths hidden to fine-tuned instruments, house more secrets than any tome, and move objects and hearts more deftly than any lever. By delving into both the conscious and subconscious aspects of your inner self, you have awoken to the might of psychic magic, allowing you to cast spells not through incantations or gestures but by the power of your will alone. While the thin line between your mind and reality means that a single errant thought could have unintended consequences for yourself and your companions, you know that anything is possible, if you can imagine it. Conscious Mind: The Infinite Eye Conscious Mind Spells: Sure Strike, Augury, Organsight Psi Cantrips: Detect Magic, Guidance, Glimpse Weakness The true strength of the mind lies in the knowledge it contains, with each new observation contributing to the totality of its experiences. To grow your experiences—and with them, your power—you devote yourself to observing as much as possible, casting your senses through space and time with clairvoyance and precognition. Subconscious Mind: Emotional Acceptance Psyche Actions: Restore The Mind The mind's truths come not in learned words or mathematical formulas but in deeper feelings and sensations. Emotions unlock the door to your power—you might consider your heart the source of your strength, or you might find that the infinite complexity felt in a moment expresses your power more efficiently than any string of mystic words ever could. Your thought components are emotions. You might summon the sense of freedom to buoy you through the air or let fear grip your heart even as you plant it in another's mind. Emotion components tend to impart abstract or vivid effects to your visual and auditory spell manifestations as well as more intangible flashes of emotion, such as swirls of joyous color or a sense of growing melancholy.

Other Psychic Features Clarity of Focus, Precognitive Reflexes, Signature Spells, Unleash Psyche, Counter Thought, Mental Buffer

Occult Spells 3rd: Hypercognition 2nd: Clear Mind, Umbral Mindtheft 1st: Object Reading, Runic Weapon Cantrips: Infectious Enthusiasm, Read The Air, Wash Your Luck

Aphorite Feats: Lemma of Vision, Internal Cohesion General Feats: Weapon Proficiency Skill Feats: Cognitive Crossover, Eyes of the City, Streetwise

---

Alan Wake, Oracle 5

Ancestry: Human, Heritage: Versatile Background: Artist Your art is your greatest passion, whatever form it takes. Adventuring might help you find inspiration, or simply be a way to survive until you become a world-famous artist.

Attributes: Strength +1, Dexterity +1, Constitution +2, Intelligence +3, Wisdom +2, Charisma +4 Perception: +9; Low-Light Vision Skills: Acrobatics +1, Arcana +10, Athletics +1, Crafting +12, Intimidation +11, Lore: Art +10, Nature +9, Occultism +12, Religion +9, Society +10, Stealth +8, Survival +9

AC: 18 (Unarmored); Fortitude: +9, Reflex: +8, Will: +11 HP: 58; Resistances: Physical 4 Speed: 25 ft. Ranged Weapon: Dragon Mouth Pistol, Double-Barreled Musket Melee Weapon: Stiletto Pen

Class: Oracle Your conduit to divine power eschews the traditional channels of prayer and servitude—you instead glean divine truths that extend beyond any single deity. You understand the great mysteries of the universe embodied in overarching concepts that transcend good and evil or chaos and law, whether because you perceive the common ground across multiple deities or circumvent their power entirely. You explore one of these mysteries and draw upon its power to cast miraculous spells, but that power comes with a terrible price: a curse that grows stronger the more you draw upon it. Your abilities are a double-edged sword, which you might uphold as an instrument of the divine or view as a curse from the gods. Mystery: Cosmos Celestial bodies great and small exert influence on you, giving you sublime cosmic power. Perhaps you see the glittering stars as a divine blessing, or perhaps you feel drawn to the infinitely dark spaces between. You might uphold deities like Desna, Sarenrae, or the deific lovers Shizuru and Tsukiyo who represent the sun and the moon—or you might draw power from dark entities from beyond the stars, like certain Outer Gods, or destructive gods of the night like Zon-Kuthon or the rat goddess Lao Shu Po. Mystery Benefit: Your body is as much an astronomical one as it is physical. You gain resistance equal to 2 + half your level against all physical damage. Mystery Cantrip: Dancing Lights; Revelation Spell: Spray of Stars Mystery Domain: Darkness; Domain Spell: Cloak of Shadow

Oracular Curse: Curse of the Sky's Call You have your head in the clouds—and not just figuratively. Your body is drawn toward the heavens, making you lighter and less substantial than you should be. Your eyes glow with starry light, and your hair and clothing float and drift around you. Minor Curse: Your unnatural lightness makes it hard to keep your footing and interact with other physical objects. You are enfeebled 1 and take a –2 penalty to saves and DCs against Grapple, Shove, and other forms of forced movement. Moderate Curse: Your body is drawn further skyward. You are enfeebled 2, and the penalty from your minor curse increases to –3. You are treated as one size smaller for wind effects. You gain a +2 status bonus against Trip attempts, you only take half as much damage from falls, and you gain the effects of the Powerful Leap and Quick Jump skill feats. You weigh only half as much, and your Bulk, should someone need to carry you, is also half as much. Major Curse: As your body rises, you float just above the ground beneath you. You become enfeebled 4, and the penalty from your minor curse increases to –4. You can walk on liquids as if they were solid; you gain the effects of the Cloud Jump skill feat; and you don't leave tracks, trigger weight-sensitive pressure plates, or otherwise connect with the ground below you.

Other Oracle Features Domain Acumen (Additional Domain: Moon, Domain Spell: Moonbeam), Glean Lore, Revelation Spells, Signature Spells

Divine Spells 3rd: Holy Light, Scrying Ripples 2nd: Radiant Field, Fear the Sun 1st: Breadcrumbs, Command, Bane Cantrips: Illuminate, Light, Message, Void Warp, Divine Lance

Human Feats: Gloomseer, Haughty Obstinacy General Feats: Fast Recovery, Weapon Proficiency Skill Feats: Arcane Sense, Magical Crafting, Specialty Crafting

---

Jesse Faden, Summoner 5

Ancestry: Human, Heritage: Versatile Background: Otherworldly Mission You're called to serve a specific purpose—your deity told you so, and so it must be true. Maybe you grew up knowing all along, or maybe it came to you one day in a vision, clear as a bell and twice as loud. You have some task that only you can accomplish. You mission might be as dangerous as killing a deadly tyrant or as simple as opening a particular door on a particular day. Once per adventure, you can ask the voice you believe to be a deity for orders and get some kind of instruction—you never get any kind of explanation, simply a command to go somewhere or do something. Following those commands isn't always safe, but it's usually interesting.

Attributes: Strength +1, Dexterity +3, Constitution +1, Intelligence +2, Wisdom +2, Charisma +4 Perception: +11 (+2 initiative) Skills: Acrobatics +10, Arcana +9, Athletics +8, Crafting +9, Intimidation +11, Occultism +11, Religion +9, Society +9, Stealth +10, Survival +9

AC: 20 (Unarmored); Fortitude: +10, Reflex: +10, Will: +11 HP: 63; Speed: 30 ft. Ranged Weapon: Pepperbox

Class: Summoner You can magically beckon a powerful being called an eidolon to your side, serving as the mortal conduit that anchors it to the world. Whether your eidolon is a friend, a servant, or even a personal god, your connection to it marks you as extraordinary, shaping the course of your life dramatically. Focus Spells: Boost Eidolon, Evolution Surge Eidolon Type: Construct; Tradition: Arcane, Home Plane: Astral Plane Evolution Feat: Energy Heart; Energy Type: Sonic Your eidolon is a mental construct based on an astral thoughtform and given physical presence and life by its connection to you, its shape limited only by your imagination. Your eidolon's appearance and physical form vary based on your shared vision for its construction, from clockworks to stuffed dolls and everything between, and it's not uncommon for that appearance to change greatly as your construct gains evolutions. Because it arises from an astral entity, your construct is no mindless servitor, but a fully thinking being with its own ideas, goals, and even emotions. These entities are extremely diverse; while many construct eidolons come from a powerful symbiotic connection with astral denizens, just as many arise from the forgotten memories of ancient empires and craftworks drifting across the Silver Sea of the Astral Plane.

Other Summoner Features Act Together, Link Spells, Manifest Eidolon, Share Senses, Shared Vigilance, Unlimited Signature Spells, Meld Into Eidolon, Defend Summoner

Arcane Spells 3rd: Levitate, Haste 2nd: Telekinetic Maneuver, Dancing Shield, Fleet Step (Heightened +1) Cantrips: Telekinetic Projectile, Phase Bolt, Read Aura, Warp Step, Telekinetic Hand

Human Feats: Clever Improviser, General Training General Feats: Fleet, Incredible Initiative, Untrained Improvisation, Weapon Proficiency Skill Feats: Skill Training (Athletics), Streetwise

---

I didn't do archetypes or multiclasses to keep it simple, but in the absence of 2e mythic adventures and origins (though they will be arriving soon), and since these babies are Very Special, I'd probably use it as a limited secondary leveling-up system with a bit more power (instead of archetype feats replacing class feats or alternating classes one level at at time).

Example:

If I did a multiclass for Saga, it would be Interrogation Investigator, and probably the Psychic Duelist archetype. Also, godlings are from 1e, but if the shoe fits....

If I did a multiclass for Alan, it would be Enigma Bard (less "people person" charisma and more "force of personality" charisma), and maybe with the Shadowdancer archetype as well (less "you choose the shadows" and more "the shadows choose you"). Or maybe even the Curse Maelstrom archetype...

If I did a multiclass for Jesse, it would be Spellshot Gunslinger, and then the Pactbinder or Living Vessel archetype (or both!) for sure.

Also: I need to finish QB for real before I do Jack, but I think he'd be another Oracle, for the Time Mystery, and Chronoskimmer or Time Mage for an archetype. Which means it's Oops All Charisma Classes so far.

[justheretodump]

lore explained: my story doesn't reflect accurate canon so to understand the differences, i suggest using this as a break off point to learn the name of things and researching more. this might? have story spoilers if you actually know all the shows and are reading the story already in-the-know.

characters mentioned so far (important ones, cause i do one-offs too much):

jasmine "jazz" fenton

john constantine

batman / bruce wayne

zatanna zatara

doctor fate

marinette dupain-cheng

adrien agreste

gabriel agreste

spiderman / spiderman

the vulture / adrian toomes

may parker

red robin / tim drake

jim gordon

richard "dick" grayson

jason todd

oracle / barbara gordon

superman / clark kent

tucker foley

sam manson

ironman / tony stark

kingpin / wilson fisk

martian manhunter / j'onn j'onnz

danny fenton

princess dorathea

clockwork

fright knight

arsenal / roy harper

pt 1

constantine isn't australian, i just like him like that. he's an occult detective from the dc universe.

danny phantom characters don't have southern accents, i just like it. jasmine "jazz" fenton is the older sister of danny fenton, protagonist of danny phantom.

gotham university is part of gotham city. gotham city is where batman and other vigilantes reside.

lazarus pits are pools of dark green water in the dc universe that bring people back to life with heavy side effects.

justice league dark is a group of superheroes in the dc universe known for dealing with the magical, the occult or supernatural.

zatanna is a magician in the dc universe. she sometimes has a romantic relationship with constantine.

the infinite realms are the place where ghosts reside in the danny phantom universe. it can also be referred to as the ghost zone.

ra's, or ra's al ghul, is a recurring villain in the dc universe, often going against batman. he frequently is shown to have control of the lazarus pits.

doctor fate is a sorcerer in the dc universe. he's been shown to guide the justice league when dealing with different realms. the justice league is a group of superheroes that include batman, superman, wonder woman, etc.

jazz curses using the word 'ancients', referring to old ghosts in the danny phantom lore. this is a fanon habit.

red robin / tim drake is one of batman's / bruce wayne's sidekicks and adopted children.

one of the known lazarus pits in the dc universe is in arabia.

martian manhunter is a member of the justice league.

the bats refers to batman and his group of vigilantes.

pt 2

marinette dupain-cheng is the protagonist of miraculous ladybug. she carries out the role of paris superhero, ladybug.

chat blanc is a character from an episode by the same name. in it, her superhero partner, cat noir, is turned into a villain by the name of chat blanc. the episode show's a version of ladybug turned to stone by her partner turned rogue. it is caused by a butterfly effect that starts with a gift to adrien.

adrien agreste is a character in miraculous ladybug, acting as marinette's love interest and as cat noir.

gabriel agreste is adrien agreste's father, and the main villain of the show, hawkmoth.

peter parker is marvel's spiderman. in the film spiderman:homecoming, he fights a villain by the name of the vulture on a beach after said man steals a plane's cargo.

may parker is his aunt, and his only remaining family member.

the titans are a superhero group in the dc universe. multiple versions exist.

jim gordon is part of gotham's police force (his title depends on the version) and an ally of the bats.

dick grayson and jason todd are adopted sons of bruce wayne and vigilantes.

oracle is barbara gordon, daughter of jim gordon and a vigilante under batman.

amity park is the town the show danny phantom is set in.

superman / clark kent is from the dc universe. metropolis is the city he protects. he has many powers, i cannot list them all.

tucker foley is best friends with danny fenton in danny phantom.

the baxters are dash baxters' parents, a character from danny phantom.

mr. lancer is a teacher in danny phantom.

sam manson is danny fenton's other best friend.

pt 3

ghosts in the infinite realms can have weird characteristics and not look entirely human.

ghost lairs are what a ghost home is called.

iron man is a marvel superhero. in spiderman:homecoming, he takes on spiderman as a distant protege.

danny phantom being ghost king is fanon but i like it.

kingpin is a villain in a few marvel stories, including spiderman stories.

for the purpose of this story, marvel superheroes mentioned almost always operate out of new york (however, this could be retconned).

lois lane is superman / clark's love interest in the dc universe. for this story, she's his best friend.

danny fenton becomes half ghost by turning on the ghost portal while inside. he dies but revives. sam and tucker were there.

pt 4

ra's al ghul is leader of the league of assasins, a frequent adversary in dc comics. not sure if the league cannonically guards the pits, but that's the story i went with.

clockwork is a highly powerful ghost in charge of time in the danny phantom show.

princess dorathea is a character and ghost in the danny phantom show.

fright knight is second-in-command and the ghost king's minion in danny phantom. he serves under danny in my story.

the observants are all-seeing beings that watch over earth and the infinite realms. they can't get involved in stuff, but they can ask others to do their bidding. in the show, they're not fans of danny.

if you're unsure who jason todd is, he's alluded to in the final part based off of description.

pt 5

the observants cannonically have a different appearance. i've tried to make them creepier here.

i'm not sure if the observants' tribunal was shown in the series, but for this i'm making it a church lol.

from here on out, arsenal / roy harper is a character.

[pochapal]

Umineko Liveblog: Thoughts/Theories [Episode 1 Chapter 10 Edition]

Today in Umineko: people died. Six of them, in a horrible nightmarish way. In between the horror and the terror we also get a lot of set-up and clues for the mystery of “who what how and why” as well as a bunch more delicious thematic meat to chew on.

So, this writeup will discuss the following: What Is Up With The Narration (part 34204: this time I promise I actually have something substantial to say), Natsuhi’s position in telling us how hard it is to be the person you want to be, Kinzo in his shifty little study with his shifty little ooc moment, how all these occult symbols may tie into Rokkenjima’s deeper sin, how Eva and Hideyoshi cannot stop being sus for three seconds, a multi-part analysis/speculation on the first twilight, and a shot in the dark at who’ll be next on the chopping block.

Get comfortable. This will be a big one.

In accordance with my newly-emergent liveblog tradition, let’s think about the narrative again. This time, rather than going on about minute POV shifts and whether or not there’s some deep secret in a single pronoun, I want to talk specifically about who gets to witness which events.

Throughout Umineko, events have been fairly neatly squared into one of two broad categories: things Battler witnesses and things Battler doesn’t witness. Even though I know my methodology keeps being wrong, I am pretty confident that there is some form of narrative discrepancy between Battler moments and non-Battler moments. Be it a shift in POV, a metanarrative narrator, or something, I think that this distinction between the two exists for a purpose. After all, a close first person POV where we don’t leave Battler’s head would be a perfectly serviceable way to tell a mystery VN. We could have gone through all of Umineko only seeing things through Battler’s eyes, but we don’t.

Why is that?

I think until now, I’ve struggled majorly with the “why”, in that it’s been hard to figure out what showing events outside of Battler has to do with the reader accessing the mystery. It could be easy to say that stuff shown through Battler is trustworthy, and stuff not shown through Battler isn’t, but you immediately get contradicted by the fact that events that happen away from Battler get consolidated by his POV without contradiction (the siblings are arguing over the gold, Rosa storms out of the mansion in an emotionally fraught way consistent with what we saw of her during the inheritance fight), so what we are seeing there is obviously truth. But that loops back again to the same question: if both narrative voices are correct in what they are presenting us in the same way, why have the distinction at all? The confirmation of how things went down is nice, but most of it could be very easily inferred through Battler’s viewpoint anyway. And yet. The distinction.

So I had to ask myself “what is it that we can only get through an outside perspective that is impossible to obtain through Battler’s?” and I thought about this question through the lens of the Detective/Romantic dichotomy I’ve been using to interpret the story. And I reached a conclusion that, given the key examples we’ve seen, I think has a good shot of being right.

The third-person POV exists to convey to us the reader the emotional truth, the Romantic’s Truth, while Battler’s POV exists to convey to us the reader the logical truth, the Detective’s Truth.

To convey this, I’ll refer to two scenes that concern themselves with a similar core thesis, and their radical difference in presentation: the scene between Rosa and Maria in the garden, and Natsuhi’s “I am Natsuhi but I am not Ushiromiya Natsuhi” internal monologue. Both of these scenes serve to show the long lasting harm that the cycle of abuse within the Ushiromiya household has inflicted on these women, and the way it’s shaped them into presenting a contradictory conflicted psychology. Natsuhi is uptight and proud and represents the Ushiromiya ideal better than anyone else on Rokkenjima, but is incapable of believing it herself. Rosa is cruel and merciless to Maria because she is tormented in equal parts by the memories of her own abuse and trauma and a pre-emptive fear that Maria is inviting that same tragedy by being herself. Both women are shaped into having contradictory impulses by the years of hardship and torment inflicted upon them by the systems that govern the Ushiromiya family. Both scenes present us with an opportunity to examine the nuances of who they are, however, both scenes are not equal in their presentation.

Rosa’s conflict with Maria occurs within eyeshot of Battler, while Natsuhi’s moment occurs away from the prying eyes of anyone save for the narrative itself. What this means for us is that we get the Natsuhi/Ushiromiya Natsuhi internal dilemma told to us without issue, granting us immediate access to a deeper more sympathetic consideration of Natsuhi as a character, but with Rosa, for the bulk of the scene all we get is Battler’s shock and disgust at what he sees, and outside of a brief flash into Rosa’s mind once Battler departs (where it is discussed how Rosa leaves the garden not because she doesn’t care about Maria but because she doesn’t trust herself not to start beating Maria again), all we have to work off are physical actions and context clues to access that same character depth. As such, Rosa in her pivotal scene becomes a much harder character to understand/access without the reader having to do a lot of detective work to piece together what is up with her, unlike Natsuhi whose heart is bared to us in a fairly uncomplicated manner.

With Rosa we get the factual truth of her abuse of Maria first and foremost, with Natsuhi we get the emotional truth of how the things she has suffered has put a barrier in the way of her accepting herself first and foremost. One narrative slice dedicated to the Detective’s Truth, one to the Romantic’s.

To go further, what I am trying to say is that, by this framework, scenes seen through Battler’s eyes are logically true, but emotionally obfuscated. And scenes not seen through Battler’s eyes are emotionally true, but logically obfuscated.

Outside of the above example of how a Detective/Romantic narrative colours our perception of individual characters, I’ll go deeper and examine how at key moments, Battler’s factual truth sheds itself for a more ambiguous, emotional truth even when there’s no need.

When coming to scenes with Battler, I think there’s a distinct emerging pattern of when he is seemingly kicked out of his own viewpoint, and the trustworthiness of information is thrown into question. In the first half of episode one, pretty much every one of these incidents occurs whenever the topic of the Golden Witch/magic is brought up.

When the cousins discuss the portrait of Beatrice for the first time, Battler’s perspective shifts outside of himself when Maria calls into question his belief in the Golden Witch. When the letter is read out after dinner and “Beatrice”’s challenge issued, we once again step outside of Battler. And then, in chapter ten, certain moments surrounding the discovery of the First Twilight massacre are not given to us through Battler’s eyes when they very easily could be.

In essence, it’s almost as if the witch narrative overpowers the Battler narrative whenever the two come into conflict. Logic cannot stand up in the face of Beatrice’s story permeating every inch of Rokkenjima, and all we are left with is a sense of feeling through which to navigate these scenes.

To use the letter scene as an example, during the reading of the letter we do not get a single thought/observation from Battler, and thus all we have are the words of him and the other characters, and our choice to take them at face value. At various other points in the story, the third person scenes have already proven themselves to be untrustworthy, via lies of omission at the very least (the hard facts of Shannon’s emotional state are not given to us in 1-9 in favour of an ambiguous sensation that only translates to a truth if you actively seek it out). So isn’t it just a little bit curious that when it comes to matters of the Golden Witch, we are blocked from the factual reality in favour of a harder to decipher emotional core?

Battler doesn’t question or doubt where it counts in the letter scene. What we are left with is instead a narrative voice that is interested in presenting the Golden Witch as a formidable and foreboding agent. There is no question as to whether or not the adults in the room will believe in the witch’s challenge. The narration doesn’t permit us anything but belief in Beatrice’s “existence”. This letter will be the catalyst that sets murder in motion. Why would anybody doubt that? Certainly not Battler, who very notably is not thinking in these scenes.

With hindsight, we know that the letter does directly lead on to the murders that occur overnight, but the how and why are hidden from us. The physicality of the scene is obfuscated. Key cues, like body language and gestures, are not given to us. The murder mystery narrative is thoroughly blocked. Nothing that isn’t in service to the notion that the Golden Witch is upon us is permitted.

A witch narrative which is, on a purely material level, almost demonstrably false. Going by Kinzo’s occult ramblings and the sinister interpretation of the epitaph, it makes it clear that Beatrice’s manifestation is the end point of the killings, not the inciting incident. But through the narration’s perspective, the unreal becomes real. The narrative creates the illusion of the real Beatrice, denying any textual room for doubt or debate. All we have to lean on is confusion, fear, and the gut feeling that this will end in bloodshed. Magic over mystery.

In chapter 10, there are two disruptions to Battler that I think are part of this pattern, and thus worth examining. The first concerns the discovery of the iron cross magic circle on the shed’s door and the ensuing response of the adults as they mobilise to discover the bodies. The second concerns what happens when we reach the emotional tipping point of seeing the aftermath of the slaughter of the six chosen by the key.

The iron cross is discovered by Kanon, Genji, Eva, and Hideyoshi as they look for the missing six people. Battler is not present for this, and thus its presentation is naturally told through the third person. This is unremarkable on its own. However, this needs to be considered with future events related to this initial moment.

The four of them open the shutter door and promptly discover the bodies. Then, Genji returns to the mansion to inform Nanjo and Natsuhi of the discovery. Battler is physically present to see this, but this chain of events is not narrated through his POV – that only returns once he actually lays eyes on the bodies himself. Whatever information is conveyed precisely in this instant is lost to us, beyond the emotional sense of mounting dread.

And then, for the third and final time, the magic circle is seen again once the cousins (and Kanon) have left the scene and the shed is locked up. The magic circle is only present when Battler isn’t. The facts of its existence are never validated through Battler’s own eyes.

If you consider that the Battler POV is concerned with the logical truth, and the non-Battler POV is concerned with the emotional truth, it then becomes curious that this magic circle, which you would assume to be a glaringly crucial piece of evidence worth scrutiny, is never examined in the way that the bodies are. The magic circle exists to scare us, not as a mystery to be solved. That is all that the story presents it to us as.

The magic circle, signifier of occult terror, is an aspect of the witch narrative. It is placed in such a way as to facilitate your belief in Beatrice’s “existence”. It is a Romantic object, in the sense that its significance is wholly immaterial. The feelings triumph over the facts. And thus it is antithetical to that which Battler narrates.

Battler doesn’t set eyes on the magic circle because him doing so would call into question the narrative mythology being built up around the First Twilight murders. If you think about the graffiti logically (someone had to have painted this; who had the means and opportunity to paint this; when would it have been painted; etc) it abruptly becomes a puzzle piece to solve, and its occult illusion is dispelled. For some reason, it is very important that Umineko persuades the reader as much as the characters that there is a powerful occult force at play, because why else spend so much time on an unsettling sight that Battler never even directly interacts with anyway?

In this way, the story is playing a game with the reader, trying to bait and persuade them into believing a magic/witch explanation for anything unusual. It already has an advantage in getting its way by leveraging the third person – traditionally seen as the more reliable narrative form – as the staging grounds for these symbols, relying on the reader to be too busy questioning/doubting Battler’s first person perspective – traditionally an obvious tell of an unreliable narrator – to notice that the manipulation is coming from both fronts.

As to why the narrative feels the need to convince us that Beatrice exists? I don’t have an answer yet. But I do think that this is one of the goals of this story, and is at least one reason for the way that the perspectives are split like they are. Of course, this does not preclude the fact that the inverse of both of the prior arguments can also be true – that there are unreliable elements to Battler’s narration just as sometimes the third person offers utmost clarity in some areas – but I think at the very least in moments like this, the story wants our perspective on the mystery to be obfuscated through omens of the Golden Witch, forcing us to ask which side of the story we trust more to be true, if either.

The second instance of this in 1-10 is much more evident, and much more baffling. The discovery of the bodies in the storehouse is shown to us through Battler’s eyes. We get his terrified, disoriented, despairing perspective as he is forced to confront the reality of the slaughter before his eyes. We get descriptions of strewn bodies, of mangled faces, of blood and flesh and gore. We see Battler pushed to the breaking point in the face of the sheer horror.

We don’t get a description of Shannon. By which I mean, we are treated to a description of her body, and extradiegetic confirmation of her deceased status by the character bio screen, but we don’t get it through Battler. Shannon, dead in the back of the room, is not seen by Battler.

Shannon’s body is found when George asks if one of the six dead is Shannon, and Hideyoshi confirms it to him. Hideyoshi and Kanon then confirm to George that Shannon is wearing the ring on her left hand. It is a very heartbreaking and a very wretched scene, perhaps the worst gut punch at the end of a long line of gut punches.

In essence, Shannon’s half-mutilated body bearing the engagement ring sits as the emotional core of the First Twilight. An emotional core told through an emotional truth. This final part of the body discovery is firmly presented through the lens of the Romantic’s truth. Battler never sees Shannon.

This means that the story decided for us that the emotional feelings of discovering Shannon’s body were to be prioritised over physical facts. Like the proposal scene in 1-8 overwhelming you with the romance/cringe of it all to distract you from paying attention to the deeper insights into Sayo’s character, Shannon’s body is such an overwhelmingly sad scene to get you to focus on the way you’re feeling and nothing else.

Which means that there’s potentially something to do with Shannon’s dead body that could unravel some kind of truth about this whole mystery that would be more evident under a calmer detached examination of the fundamental movements of the scene.

From the top of my head, one thing that becomes apparent and worth scrutiny is that Hideyoshi is immediately positioned as the gatekeeper of information concerning Shannon’s corpse. He controls who gets to look upon her and he is the one that definitively states that she is dead. This means that our reliance on what we know about what happened to Shannon entirely depends on how far we can trust Hideyoshi’s word. Hideyoshi as a character is defined by his inability to convincingly conceal an ulterior motive – several times in the buildup to the argument with Krauss he nearly lets slip his and Eva’s gambit and Eva has to step in to take control of the situation. However, almost giving up the truth still means he has a capacity for lying in the first place.

As to what he could be lying about and why, I can’t say. I have some ideas, but that’s something I’ll get into a little later on.

Drilling down beyond Hideyoshi, we have another fact about Shannon’s body to consider that is reliant on our emotional expectations to accept it as truth: the ring being on her finger. We of course are relayed this truth through the third person narration, via Hideyoshi’s words, and Kanon’s actions.

What’s interesting here is that Hideyoshi doesn’t automatically confirm that the ring is here. It’s not until Kanon points it out that he tells George that the ring is there. From a narrative and emotional perspective, Shannon finally deciding to wear the ring instants before her death increases the intensity of the emotional gut punch. That does not necessarily make it true.

So then, a few possibilities. The first is that the ring is in fact on Shannon’s finger, but it was put on her hand posthumously. I’m not sure how likely that is, considering that all in all it seems like an irrelevant gesture to perform. Would Shannon’s killer really care about broadcasting their victim’s heart to the world like that? Perhaps, but for that to be the case it limits the pool of people who could have killed Shannon pretty much to those who would know about the ring’s significance, which at most encompasses two other people, George and maybe Kanon, who would categorically never murder her.

The second possibility is that there never was a ring on Shannon’s finger; Kanon made it up and Hideyoshi went along with it to placate George. As to why that would happen, giving George that emotional truth bomb would satiate his last shred of curiosity and make him more likely to leave Shannon, and the other bodies, without much argument. Having third parties verify this information again controls who actually gets to examine the bodies in scrutinising detail (out of everyone, the cousins never really get to have a good look at the bodies, which is interesting) which may indicate that there is something up with the bodies that needs to be kept a secret. This would, of course, make Kanon and Hideyoshi look suspicious as all hell. For what it’s worth, I think they are both suspicious, so perhaps this theory holds weight.

The third possibility is that Shannon is wearing a ring, but it’s not the engagement ring. It is the headship ring that Kinzo tossed out of the window and was used by the person claiming to be Beatrice (most likely Kanon) in order to seal the letter. The assumption here would be that Kanon, upon finding the bodies, realised he had a prime opportunity to dispose of Kinzo’s ring in a way that wouldn’t raise suspicion – he knew George was likely to propose to Shannon, and would thus be aware that it wouldn’t be surprising for there to be a ring on Shannon’s finger. This would then potentially safeguard him against future suspicion if/when the rest of the family thinks to scrutinise who could have written the letter that kickstarted this whole chain of events in the first place. The stumbling blocks in this theory for me, however, are that it’s mostly just a very inconvenient way to do this? It’s a neat sleight of hand, sure, but Kanon could have equally just tossed the ring out somewhere outside the minute he was done with it. So, unlikely, but not impossible.

One final piece of dubiously true information we have to grapple with concerning Shannon is the actual status of her corpse. We are told that, like Krauss, Shannon has had half of her face torn off, in contrast with the rest of the corpses which sit totally faceless. I’ll get into my thoughts on the how/why of the mutilation later on and instead focus on the “what”.

We know through Battler that Krauss’s face is half-destroyed. We are never outright told that Shannon’s face is half destroyed, only that George asks if she’s “like uncle Krauss” and that Hideyoshi (and the character status screen) confirm that for us. What this means is that we don’t know for an absolute fact whether or not Shannon’s face is genuinely destroyed. We don’t even get dubious confirmation through the narrative, just through objectively unreliable character dialogue.

So, if we assume Shannon’s face to be half-destroyed, we must ask: why? With Krauss, it is very likely his half-mutilation was done either to send a message, or to indicate that he was killed in a different way to the other corpses. If we go with the first theory, then we need to consider if both Shannon and Krauss could be used to convey the same message by the killer. That also means that we need to have an inkling of what the message could be – the highest and the lowest ranked corpses both presented in the same way. Perhaps to convey the narrative that status does not protect you from Beatrice? There are things that Krauss could be used to convey a message for (his knowledge of the gold, his status as second-in-command and deputy abuser in chief) but very little that overlaps between both him and Shannon.

In that case, the second possibility seems more likely: that Shannon and Krauss were killed in the same way. This one is harder to prove, given that it relies on knowledge of what happened overnight that we simply do not have access to, but if it is true, it could offer us some insight on how the killings actually went down. If the other siblings and Gohda were all killed in one way, and Shannon and Krauss in another, this creation of two distinct sets of victims already throws a wrench into the seamless murder narrative. Perhaps Shannon and Krauss were killed in a different place/at a different time to the others, which then leads us to consider how/why that would be the case. For Krauss and Shannon to be in a separate location to the others indicates that Krauss at the very least left the other siblings alone momentarily, which leads us to ask why, and so on. If they were killed at a different time to the others, we then have to ask if they were killed before or after the other four. If it’s before, we have the similar questions of what led to Krauss and Shannon being distinctively grouped off. If it’s after, we then have to ask how did they both survive what the others did not.

I have theories here, but I’m saving that for when I give my full runthrough of what I think happened overnight.

But leaving that, we now have to consider the counter-possibility: Shannon’s face is not in fact half-destroyed like we’ve been led to assume. In that case, it is most likely either fully destroyed like everyone else, or it is actually completely in-tact. If it’s fully destroyed and we’re misled to believe it’s half-destroyed, then that serves as a useful tool to obfuscate any truths surrounding Krauss (since then he becomes the only conspicuous outlier in this whole situation) and makes the mystery more dense by forcing us to grapple with impossible circumstances. If Shannon’s body is actually not mutilated at all, then that opens up even more interesting possibilities – that the mutilation was not an essential part of the killing, that she was killed in a way that left a mostly untouched corpse, and/or that the person who did the mutilating chose not to mutilate Shannon for whatever reason. In the latter case, I think it does a better job of potentially narrowing down the involved parties in this whole affair, and illuminating what they may/may not have done.

And, I think, if you consider the commonalities between all these contradictory scenarios, a specific kind of pattern emerges. One that forms the strong basis for my “what happened in the first twilight” theory, and one that I will detail when the time is right.

But first, let’s continue down the pattern through contradiction path and think about something totally different: Ushiromiya Natsuhi and the dichotomy of self.

One prevalent theme common to almost all characters in Umineko is the dichotomy of self: each individual has essentially two contradictory forms of identity inside them, and they are defined by the tension inherent in trying to appease both halves. This is seen most evidently with the split between Shannon and Sayo, and more subtly with George’s businessman persona versus who he is around the other cousins. The most prevalent example for this chapter, and the one I will be discussing in this writeup, concerns Natsuhi.

Natsuhi has been almost entirely defined by her conflict between who she is and who she strives to be – in her own words, between being Natsuhi and being Ushiromiya Natsuhi. For Natsuhi, the effective manager of the Ushiromiya household, she spends her life striving for an ideal that has always been denied her. This is in spite of the fact that she is leaps and bounds a better individual than Krauss and Kinzo who sit above her hierarchically and who are the ones who systemically denied her status for so long and so cruelly.

On a purely factual level, Natsuhi more than qualifies as an effective and deserving member of the family: she exhibits a deep understanding of how the Ushiromiya family operates, manages the household’s affairs with an efficiency very few could attain, and is, all things considered, probably the best parent out of the bunch. But because the Ushiromiya identity is itself a twisted poison, Natsuhi is stung every time she tries to reach for it.

The better a person Natsuhi becomes, the further she feels she is from being Ushiromiya Natsuhi. Punished and abused beyond belief for something beyond her control, and held at spiteful metaphorical knifepoint by the other siblings, the Ushiromiya family makes sure it rejects her at every turn while equally berating her for not truly being one of them.

Eva dismisses Natsuhi from the argument about the gold for defending her husband’s honour because she does not have the right to bear the family crest and thus does not have the right to an opinion. Unsaid here is that even Kinzo’s personal “furniture” servants have the right to wear the wing – under this hateful system, Natsuhi is on some level regarded as even less than furniture.

And still, despite all this, due to the corrosive nature of the Ushiromiya hierarchy and the nature of her abuse, Natsuhi still believes her worth is reliant on external validation. The dichotomy of self becomes a staging ground for the alienation between the objective value of a person and that which a cruel outside world imposes on them. To refer to an earlier framework, the cruel Romantic’s truth without physical basis overrules the Detective’s truth of a person that speaks plainly of their value.

Natsuhi, so embroiled in this struggle, is powerless to believe in herself or her worth for the majority of the story at this point. Not even when she retires from the rest of the cast and has a moment of reflection and introspection can she break free from the conditioning.

The only thing that works, the only thing that allows Natsuhi to believe in the existence of Ushiromiya Natsuhi, is the approval from the Ushiromiya head patriarch himself. It is only when Kinzo explicitly tells her that she is more competent than Krauss and the other siblings by a solid mile and is therefore worthy of bearing the eagle on her heart if not her clothes, that she is able to undergo that shift in confidence. Beginning to end, Natsuhi’s worth is never defined by herself.

Although, even this moment of character transformation is troublingly complicated. Kinzo himself undergoes a bizarre shift in characterisation in this scene, seemingly warming up to Natsuhi in contradiction to the years of abuse he inflicted upon her for no clear or obvious reason. Mere hours ago, Natsuhi reflected on how Kinzo never really forgave her for not being able to conceive a child with Krauss for so long, only for him to pull a complete 180 after decades of torment and abuse.

Natsuhi rationalises this interaction as Kinzo finally recognising her worth and hard work as a member of the Ushiromiya family, and this bolsters her self-esteem enough that she can interact with Eva without getting riled up. Except, this is almost certainly not the reason behind Kinzo’s sudden and bizarre respect for her. It is likely that the reason why Kinzo even gives Natsuhi the time of day in the study is that she survived the First Twilight, despite almost certainly being chosen by the demon’s roulette to die. Kinzo, notorious cheater of the odds, must therefore begrudgingly acknowledge another who also managed to rig the roulette in their favour.

Of course, Natsuhi isn’t aware of this, so she is inspired by believing that Kinzo has finally changed his mind about her. What actually happens, then, is that Natsuhi herself decides that Kinzo respects her, and so she grants herself permission to be Ushiromiya Natsuhi via a proxy.

However, even if you boil down Kinzo’s reason for the sudden kindness, there is no acknowledgement of Ushiromiya Natsuhi, even through a layer of obfuscation and metaphor. Kinzo respects Natsuhi for having survived where she wasn’t meant to. Natsuhi survived the night due to her ownership of Maria’s protection charm, bestowed to her by Jessica after a mother-daughter heart to heart. She survived by genuinely reaching out as a mother with no spiteful ulterior motive – reaffirming her love for Jessica saved her.

Natsuhi managed to survive the night by not being Ushiromiya Natsuhi where it mattered most. She stepped out of the Ushiromiya constructs to bond with her daughter, and that sincere love rewarded her with survival. If she had been Ushiromiya Natsuhi, she would have remained embroiled in the argument over the gold, and would have almost certainly been discovered mutilated in the storehouse.

Ushiromiya Natsuhi is an identity to be avoided. And yet Natsuhi can only become happy by misinterpreting an already bizarre interaction to grant herself validation in that cursed identity. And so the contradiction goes on.

And all the while, the weirdness of Kinzo in the study goes unremarked upon.

Kinzo is steadfast in his presentation as the harsh, spiteful family patriarch. He has no time or patience for anyone on Rokkenjima who is not one of his personal furniture servants. All attempts to interact with him or to ask him to present himself at the family conference are met with vicious dismissive scorn. Natsuhi is no exception to this rule. She fails to convince Kinzo to show his face just as Krauss did.

However, unlike prior instances, Natsuhi is bafflingly spared the scorn and abuse. For no apparent reason, Kinzo’s whole personality shifts on a dime and he chooses to bestow on Natsuhi the respect she has been owed for years.

The question that needs asking is: why did Kinzo suddenly pull a personality 180? Ostensibly, the answer is that he finally recognised Natsuhi’s worth, but the logic behind that decision is opaque to us. And without evidence, it begins to ring hollow.

If you seek a more subtextually-approved reason for Kinzo’s bizarre shift in mannerisms during the scene in the study, the next most likely candidate for why is due to the fact that Natsuhi survived the night where she shouldn’t have. Every indication in the story points towards the fact that Natsuhi was initially chosen by the demon’s roulette as the sixth sacrifice (if the bloody mess outside her bedroom is any indication) and the rules that govern this sacrificial magic seem to indicate that any decision made by the whims of the roulette is final. Yet Natsuhi, in possession of a charm imbued with protective properties by a true believer in the Beatrice myth, survived.

There is another question that could be asked of these circumstances that concerns how the killer operates and how strictly they must adhere to the rules of Beatrice/magic (the killer could have easily killed Natsuhi anyway, but doing so would have disrupted the witch narrative fairly absolutely) but that is not strictly relevant to Kinzo’s mindframe. What matters is that under the witch narrative Natsuhi was supposed to die, so going by the logic that governs Kinzo, Natsuhi cheated the demon’s roulette and won.

This, of course, puts her on a much more even footing with him. Kinzo has spent countless days and weeks preparing himself to beat the odds and survive the whims of the demon’s roulette and the summoning ritual in order to be the person that bears witness to the resurrected Beatrice. Natsuhi, in comparison, is supposed to be a mundane person at the mercy of magic. The fact that she defied the roulette’s whims would, to Kinzo, be something deeply impressive. She succeeded where all of his children failed. Perhaps that is enough to engender a change of heart, presented to Natsuhi devoid of its true context.

However, there is a further complication to even this logic – this is not the first time Kinzo has undergone such a shift in attitude. Kinzo has often been described as mercurial with an erratic temperament by numerous members of the family, and his mood swings have been clearly documented through his “uoohhh Beatriceee” episodes. But more than that, there are additional instances where Kinzo’s personality shifts are so sharp that it’s as if he’s been replaced by “a different person”.

A few chapters prior, there is a moment where, with Genji, Kinzo suddenly becomes incredibly even-tempered and fond towards his oldest friend despite viciously lashing out/crying for Beatrice moments prior. The switch in outlook happens for no seemingly apparent reason, and even Genji remarks that it is as if a “different Kinzo” had taken over, like there are two people in one body.

The erratic, bitter Kinzo obsessed with the Golden Witch, and the kind, respectful Kinzo. Or, to put it another way, the Kinzo who lives for Beatrice, and the Kinzo that is exactly what the other person wants him to be.

For Genji, Kinzo turns sentimental and placid. For Natsuhi, he becomes the ideal patriarch doling out validation and respect. For both Genji and Natsuhi, their respective versions of Kinzo are precisely the versions of Kinzo they want and need the most. Wish-fulfilment versions of the Ushiromiya head.

Something weird is happening here, something that goes deeper than Umineko’s standard dichotomy of self stuff. Unlike every other person with two personas, Kinzo’s other side only ever emerges around people who specifically want/need a kinder Kinzo at that exact moment – Genji who has had to endure the decline of his friend/master, and Natsuhi who has had her self-worth torn to shreds over the course of the family conference. The second Kinzo does not reflect on Kinzo himself, but only on those who benefit from the other Kinzo’s existence.

Pulling a detective/romantic reading on the scene, and the emotional truth that underpins both scenes is that of exhausted people obtaining the validation from Kinzo that they so desperately need. Outside of any logistics, both Genji and Natsuhi interact with Kinzo who undergoes a personality shift, and he issues profound words that serve to bolster their mood and resolve.

This facet of Kinzo has nothing to do with Kinzo himself and everything to do with the people that need something from Kinzo. But unlike Sayo and her people-pleaser Shannon persona, there is no indication that Kinzo is consciously choosing to become this person, or that these versions of Kinzo even exist outside of the perspective of those who benefit.

Excluding these weird moments, every other part of Kinzo produces a consistent character: a super-wealthy abusive man who dabbles in occultism, likely as a by-product of a murky, fascist past. He is bitter and violent and obsessive and deeply selfish, the patriarch in his rotting ivory tower. You can plot a throughline from the young man who profiteered off of the war to the old man using occult magic rituals to murder his children with suspiciously European names in service of resurrecting the witch he lusts after whose gold is in his possession.

The kindly Kinzo who remarks fondly towards Genji, or the Kinzo who validates Natsuhi’s self-esteem, do not fit with the pattern in any way. They do not even fit in a mirror-self dichotomy way where this represents a buried side of Kinzo. It is, well and truly, as if he is a different person entirely in these moments.

It is narratively incongruent in a way I cannot fully wrap my head around. My first instinct is to consider how Kinzo is never seen through Battler’s eyes, and therefore these accounts of his behaviour could be filled with falsehoods, but even that doesn’t really help or explain why. The emotional truth dictates that these moments Genji and Natsuhi experience exist and did happen, and since there is no kinetic motion to these scenes there is no way or reason to disprove that – because nothing physically happens, it wouldn’t make sense for there to be scenes that are wholly irrelevant.

In short, I am sure that something is happening here, but as yet I am unsure as to what, and how that fits in with anything else. These Kinzo moments do not fit, and it is driving me a little crazy.

So instead of focusing on these slippery emotional beats, let’s consider some more physical extensions of Kinzo’s actions/philosophies: the occult symbols in use around Rokkenjima.

The first major symbol worth considering is the iron cross sigil painted on the storehouse door. Discovered by Eva, Hideyoshi, Kanon, and Genji while searching for the missing six, it is likely some kind of signifier or signpost for the location of the bodies. I’ve spoken before about how the primary purpose of this sigil is to authenticate the witch narrative – a dark magic summoning circle juxtaposed with half a dozen corpses makes it very easy to associate the two elements with each other.

However, I also want to consider an additional interpretation/purpose/meaning for the iron cross specifically being chosen to mark the location of the bodies. The iron cross as a symbol has two commonly-known potential meanings: one is that of a medieval Christian sect, and the other is. Well. A symbol of Nazi Germany on a par with other foul iconography such as the swastika and the imperial eagle.

As an aside, incredibly curious that the Ushiromiya crest is the one-winged eagle, a symbol which bears a passing resemblance to the black imperial eagle if it was vertically bisected and coloured gold. Not sure if this is intentional or me over-reading the fascist subtext, but if it’s deliberate, it fits neatly into the pattern.

What’s important here is that a great slaughter is marked with a sigil drenched in fascism – the iron cross dressed in occult wrappings speaks very keenly to a very specific ideology, one that fits too well when you consider Kinzo’s wartime profiteering, his obsession with the west, and his children with European names. There is a fascist rot at the heart of the Ushiromiya family, and the existence of the iron cross sigil speaks to the idea that somebody is aware of this, and they are calling it out.

Of course, this is a little complicated if you consider the fact that Battler never saw the sigil himself and thus the objectivity of the thing is brought into question, but even from a more Romantic lens, Eva, Hideyoshi, and the servants are confronted with a symbolic representation of the fascism which pervades so much of what it means to be an Ushiromiya – Eva is repulsed and immediately demands it be removed. Perhaps as a double-reach metaphor to how Eva is aware of how rotten this entire family is, and how she chooses again and again to turn a blind eye to this revelation in order to affirm her place in the hierarchy?

I think the case can be made that it speaks to the way that this ideological foulness is a kind of open secret among the family, where they’re all aware on some level that fascist alignment is very much disgusting, but the pressures to conform to the Ushiromiya ideals force them all to wilfully pick denial time and time again. That cognitively dissonant contradiction, another sort of psychological dichotomy, adds another layer to how the Ushiromiya adults operate. They are basically having to hardwire their brains to skip over ninety percent of what is before their eyes just to keep up the illusion that their family isn’t a cesspit of abuse and evil politics. Choosing denial is always easier than choosing change.

So then, the iron cross sigil becomes an open message, a challenge to the Ushiromiya family. It forces them to reckon with the naked truth of what they are and the legacy they inherit and perpetuate. The question then becomes: who would send this message, and why?

By wishing to confront the Ushiromiyas with the extreme end of what they stand for (fascism and murder), this clearly indicates that the person behind this is not an Ushiromiya themselves. Of the surviving Ushiromiya adults, neither Eva nor Natsuhi would ever deliberately toy with something that would threaten the foundation of their Ushiromiya pride. The cousins are likely too ignorant of these darker facts to utilise them (Maria is nine, Jessica and Battler wouldn’t be able to interfere with the crime scene of their dead parents, and George is, to be frank, too absorbed in the Ushiromiya ideological cool-aid to acknowledge such a truth even if he somehow knew about it). So this leaves one distinct group of people capable of producing this graffiti: the servants.

Two servants in particular stand out: the two who are best positioned to know the details of the Ushiromiya family’s bloody history, either out of experience or a desperate loathing. Genji and Kanon.

The likelihood of their involvement rises when you turn your attention to the other occult graffiti in this chapter: the “blood” stains around Natsuhi’s door. Again, if you assume their tangible existence to be unquestionable, the logistics of their discovery is that Natsuhi notices it after Genji wakes her to report that the phones are down and Gohda is missing.

Genji does not remark on the mess until Natsuhi points it out, and only then does he concede that he noticed it shortly before waking her. Either way, Genji waits until Natsuhi notices it before acknowledging it himself.

If you go back to the earlier frameworks of the witch narrative, the audience must convince themselves to some degree of the authenticity of the story before you can truly persuade them of its reality. If Genji comments on it before Natsuhi, he becomes suspicious and the graffiti becomes a whodunnit. If Natsuhi notices it first with shock and disgust, her initial fear and confusion rules the moment, and it is transformed into another piece of the emerging occult puzzle. The audience’s response dictates the story’s genre. Therefore, you must keep your reader receptive to the type of story you wish to tell.

And Genji, allowing Natsuhi to form her own initial opinions towards the graffiti, is greatly positioned to prime the conditions for a more authentic witch narrative.

And again, it is Genji, along with Kanon, who is there at the discovery of the iron cross sigil. A curious commonality. Both times, Genji silently stands by as a surviving Ushiromiya adult is forced to witness a disturbing and occult symbol, only speaking up once the seed of doubt has been planted.

If you consider the function of Beatrice in Umineko, then these incidents become stories, the Ushiromiyas the audience, and the servants the storytellers. The Beatrice narrative becomes that bit more real for Natsuhi, Eva, and Hideyoshi. The occult provides its twofold meaning.

I’ve already considered Natsuhi at length in this writeup, so now let’s think about the other audience members of this narrative performance: Eva and Hideyoshi. The only family branch to survive the first twilight unscathed, schemers and secret-keepers, who couldn’t be more suspicious if they tried.

One thing about Eva and Hideyoshi is that from their first appearance there has been a kind of suspect double-meaning scheme running between them. Circumstantially, it seems most likely that the gambit against Krauss during the conference was Eva’s brain child, and indeed it is Eva that is most committed to this plan. Hideyoshi, as her husband, is equally privy to these plans and suspicions (that they need the money, that Krauss is embezzling, that Kinzo might actually already be dead). The tension that runs between the two of them is that Hideyoshi is embarrassingly terrible at keeping his mouth closed, and Eva always has to be the one to smooth over his mistakes to keep the charade up. Eva only shows her hand when she is convinced with a large degree of certainty that she is right in what she’s doing, compared to Hideyoshi who is constantly almost giving the game away.

Given all this, we need to keep in mind two things: Eva and Hideyoshi are schemers, and they try their utmost to control the flow of information in their favour. Eva very carefully dances around the topic of Kinzo’s mortality for the longest time, never outright stating that this is what she is getting at when she ribs Natsuhi. Even in this chapter when Eva instructs Natsuhi to bring Kinzo down and the subtext is screaming as loud as it can, she never makes explicit her suspicions.

Hideyoshi, meanwhile, fumbles on the official narrative he and Eva are putting up almost immediately at the beginning of Umineko, and continues to waylay his wife’s subtlety at various points. When Eva is getting particularly barbed about the Kinzo issue, he tells her she should stop talking about it so much, thereby drawing everyone’s attention more keenly to the thing she’s saying without saying it. Hideyoshi tries, but he cannot play the doublespeak game like the other Ushiromiyas. For all intents and purposes, he is an open book.

This is important when considering his stance on certain matters related to the witch narrative and the murders. When the letter is first read, Hideyoshi is one of those who outright denies it as anything but a cruel practical joke. He does not believe in “Beatrice”. Then, in 1-10, upon witnessing the iron cross graffiti, Hideyoshi is the one who remarks that it is unnatural and demonic.

It is highly curious that Hideyoshi goes from being an out and out denier of Beatrice to immediately buying into the witch narrative. Just as it is curious that Hideyoshi is the one that takes charge upon the discovery of the bodies, and it is Hideyoshi that insists the cousins do not get a closer look at the bodies. Hideyoshi, who inexplicably survived the slaughter of the other adults along with Eva. Hideyoshi, who now is helping to peddle the witch narrative.

I think, if you consider this bizarre pattern of behaviour, and Eva and Hideyoshi’s respective personalities, it becomes incredibly apparent that the two of them are hiding something to do with the first twilight.

They survive where the other siblings didn’t. They take charge when looking for the missing bodies. They try their hardest to keep others from having a good look at the crime scene. They lean into the witch narrative where necessary.

There is an obvious conclusion here that can be reached when you consider Eva and Hideyoshi’s suspicious actions. And in a vacuum, I’d probably believe it. However, there are too many moving parts to go ahead and outright say that Eva and Hideyoshi are the culprits behind this. They are involved, yes, but just as the Beatrice narrative requires multiple components to manifest, so too does the first twilight.

That said, this is how I think it happened:

The first thing I need to clear up is that I think each component of the crime should be treated as a separate incident with separate parties involved. The six were killed, their bodies were mutilated, and they were locked up inside the storehouse. These are three distinct phases of the crime, and each does not necessarily have the same solution.

So to start, let’s try to answer the most pressing question: who killed the six victims? Off the bat, there are two overwhelmingly suspicious groups of people involved in this incident in some form: Eva and Hideyoshi, and Kanon and Genji. However, I do not think any of them are the ones who set the first domino falling.

Instead, let’s think about the logistics of the murders: everyone died at around the same time, and the way they were killed left no visible injuries. What method of murder could kill a large group of people instantly and without an obvious visible trace? A method that has itself already been foreshadowed right at the start of the sibling bickering by Eva: poison.

So, who could have poisoned everybody, and how? The simplest route is to assume via food or drinks served to the siblings as their argument rages into the night. Food and drink prepared by the only servant that is supposed to be in the mansion that night, whose schedule was altered for this specific purpose. I believe Gohda served the siblings something poisoned at around midnight, and I believe he did it at the behest of Krauss.

Krauss, serial embezzler, who uniquely stands to lose perhaps more than anyone now that the chance of someone snatching his lifeline of the Ushiromiya fortune out from under him is now highly possible. The only power and influence he has over his siblings is his certain knowledge that he will always control the Ushiromiya pursestrings no matter what they say or do. Until a mysterious letter comes along, claiming that anyone who solves a riddle will be granted ten tons of gold and full access to the money that he clings so desperately to.

Of course, for a sly coward like Krauss, this would be catastrophic. And his siblings have already shown once today that they are capable of working to undermine and overthrow his iron will. They failed only because he held all the financial cards. In a situation where one of them solves the epitaph and gets all the Ushiromiya wealth, every shred of power he has in this family is gone. So naturally, he would do anything to prevent this from coming to pass.

Midnight on Rokkenjima in the middle of a typhoon, with every threat to his power and wealth right before him? There could not be more perfect conditions to attempt to take their lives.

In order to do this, because Krauss is self-serving and shrewd as much as he is stupid, he most likely persuaded/bought Gohda off to prepare something poisoned for the siblings during the night. Perhaps he promised Gohda a portion of the gold, or perhaps he threatened Gohda that if he didn’t play along Krauss would blame him for the killings, and since Krauss has more money and status than Gohda could ever hope for, there’s no way Krauss’s version of events wouldn’t be believed.

Either way, I think Krauss got Gohda to serve poisoned refreshments to his siblings in an attempt to neatly take care of this problem. And in a way, I believe it worked: the siblings most afraid of Krauss’s power and abuse likely ingested the poisoned goods so as not to unduly upset their host at such a precarious time. That would be Rosa and Rudolf. Kyrie would, most likely at Rudolf’s behest, also unwittingly eat the poisoned food in order to prevent herself and her husband from losing face. That’s three people dead right there.

However, Eva, who is more paranoid and cautious and less afraid than anyone else, would not fall for it. And in solidarity, neither would Hideyoshi. Perhaps Eva suspected something was up with the refreshments, or perhaps she was simply seeking to make a petty remark about Krauss and the quality of Natsuhi’s servants that inadvertently saved her life, but either way, she does not get poisoned.

What Eva does do, however, is witness every single one of her siblings abruptly drop dead except for Krauss and his personal servant. Regardless of Eva’s personal characteristics, the facts stand that her other siblings have just been murdered, and that Krauss made an attempt on her life. In Krauss’s position, there are now surviving witnesses to his crime that will not easily be paid off. I’d imagine a kind of terse stand-off that can only be broken in one way: violence.

Either Krauss tried to take out Eva and Hideyoshi himself, or Eva attacked in outrage. Whichever it is, I believe that is when some kind of struggle commenced where Eva, the most athletic and fit Ushiromiya sibling, came out on top. Maybe she and Hideyoshi intended to kill Krauss and Gohda, or maybe it was an unfortunate byproduct of a desperate and violent scene. Either way, the end result is that there are now two more people dead, this time by Eva and Hideyoshi’s hands.

The only outlier to this neat series of events is Shannon, who would not be trusted enough by Krauss to be bought off, and would have no incentive to risk herself in something so dangerous. So when considering how she ended up dead with the others, I believe there are two likely scenarios: either she heard the struggle while doing her rounds and got caught up in the crossfire, or Gohda coerced her to come along with him as some kind of insurance for himself. Whichever is the case, the result is the same: Shannon was unfairly dragged into this, and was killed needlessly.

That roughly covers “who killed the six”. The next thing to consider is: who mutilated the bodies, and why?

Every corpse, when discovered, has their face torn off (or in the case of Krauss and Shannon, half their faces). This is gruesome and inexplicable and more than a little occult in nature. Most likely, Eva and Hideyoshi as the sole survivors would not think to mutilate the corpses in such a way.

I think somebody who has a vested interest in the Beatrice narrative saw an opportunity and made the most of it: Kanon and Genji.

The series of events here is, I think, that Kanon and Genji end up heading over to the mansion past midnight. Perhaps to further the next step in Kanon’s “Beatrice” scheme, or perhaps because it’s been hours and Shannon has still not returned. When they head over to the mansion, what they discover is Eva and Hideyoshi standing over six corpses, Shannon among them.

I think for someone like Kanon, whose whole purpose is looking out for and protecting Shannon, seeing her killed would change things significantly. Perhaps he believes some kind of story by Eva and Hideyoshi that they had nothing to do with her death, or maybe he doesn’t. What matters most is that six people have been murdered and the conditions of the first twilight are complete. For Kanon, now that Shannon is dead, all that is left is to continue to see the epitaph be fulfilled and bring about the downfall of the Ushiromiya family.

Most likely, he and Genji would reassure Eva and Hideyoshi that they would take care of the bodies. Eva and Hideyoshi, unwilling to ask more questions, would then most likely depart the scene and go about concocting stories and alibis for themselves. This would leave Kanon and Genji as the ones to mutilate the bodies.

One thing I am sure of is that Kanon would have reservations about desecrating Shannon’s corpse, so it most likely stands that half her face got smashed in the struggle that killed her (if her face is indeed even touched in the first place), as with Krauss. I’m not sure about Gohda here, but it seems reasonable to assume that he wasn’t killed by blunt force face trauma, and I don’t think the specifics of his murder matter too much. What does matter is that there are six bodies on the ground, two of which have gruesome face wounds.

This alone would allow any observer to very easily piece things together, and at least one aim of the witch narrative is to present an unsolvable mystery. So the faces of the others equally get smashed up in order to disguise the crime, and make it seem more impossible and horrific (I believe that at least some of the surprise from Eva and Hideyoshi upon the discovery of the bodies was genuine, indicating that their involvement ended before the mutilation).

I can’t definitively say how the mutilation was achieved, but I believe Battler’s theory of them being plowed through with a gardening tool is a fair enough assumption. Something that might also work is if the faces were blasted point-blank with a gun, but since there’s no indication that there are firearms on Rokkenjima, I think it was most likely done by Genji and Kanon with some gardening tool.

The third and final port of call is transporting the bodies to the storehouse and preparing the crime scene for discovery. The relevant facts needed to understand this is that the perpetrator must a) have enough knowledge of Rokkenjima and access to its keys to set up the scene, and b) have enough knowledge of the occult to produce these convincing sigils and pieces of graffiti. The only people who could possible be in that position are Kinzo’s furniture servants.

Most likely, Genji is the one who takes the bodies from wherever they were killed (the parlor or the dining room?) and brings them to the storehouse. Kanon, then, is the one who most likely sets about adding the occult touches to the scene to reinforce the Beatrice narrative as compellingly as possible. There is a line just before the bodies are discovered that the only fingerprints on the storehouse door would be Kanon and Genji’s. This explains how that assumption works in their favour, and yet equally reveals that since they were the only ones to touch the storehouse, they were likely also the only ones who could have put the bodies there.

The cleanup of the crime scene is likely equally easily explained away by it being Kanon and Genji: Kinzo’s furniture would have full access to whatever cleaning supplies they needed, and not a single Ushiromiya family member knows enough about the workings of the servants to even tell if something like that had happened. The class alienation allows them to further cover their tracks in setting the stage for the witch narrative that will ultimately eat this family alive to unfold.

In summary, the first twilight can be thought of as a daisy chain baton passing of responsibility between numerous actors and parties involved in the crime. First Krauss attempts to poison his siblings via Gohda, then Eva and Hideyoshi emerge as the sole survivors of the carnage, and then Kanon and Genji take over and turn these events from a senseless crime into the opening act for the story of the Golden Witch’s resurrection.

Neat and tidy. A closed case, almost. However, there is still one more thing to consider before we’re done here: this is the first of nine twilights. Given the daisy chain of culpability here that mirrors the same chain of abuser/abused seen in the family dynamics outside of the killings, it is therefore a given that something from the first twilight will lead on directly into the second.

So, what loose threads are there from this first set of murders? On the whole, this series of events is fairly clean and self-contained, except for one thing which disrupts the narrative pattern: there is a single branch of the Ushiromiya family that is wholly untouched by the tragedy that unfolded. Krauss’s death affects Natushi and Jessica, Rudolf and Kyrie’s deaths affect Battler , Rosa’s death affects Maria, Shannon’s death affects Kanon, Gohda.

In this framework, the loss of Shannon belongs to Kanon more than anyone else, which leaves George without a loss to uniquely call his own. Both of his parents are alive and well, the only couple left standing.

To put it another way, Eva and Hideyoshi are two who are close. The only other partnership of individuals left on Rokkenjima is Kanon and Genji (if that even exists outside of my theorising) but in no way can you reasonably call the two of them “close”. Everyone else is adrift and alienated: Natsuhi and Jessica still have a strained relationship, Battler is still very far removed from the rest of his family, Kinzo has nothing to do with anyone, and Maria and George both already lost the person they cared most about.

So, by every measure of the epitaph, Eva and Hideyoshi are the best fit for “the two who are close” who will be torn apart by “those who remain”. Given that we’re now fully in the murder interpretation of the epitaph, who among the survivors is most likely to kill Eva and Hideyoshi, and why?

Someone who sees the pattern for what it is and needs to keep up the resurrection ritual? A jaded, desperate servant who doesn’t fully buy their version of events and who could become hungry for revenge? An unrelated chain of events that just so happens to fall out in the required way? The Golden Witch Beatrice herself?

Who knows. The second twilight is some time off. For now, we still need to pick up the pieces of the first twilight, and see how the aftermath will shape everyone left on Rokkenjima, before the slaughter inevitably resumes.

[sammleys]

Occult Legacy Challenge

Created by Sammleys

I wanted to make an occult legacy challenge because I thought it would be a great way to play around with all the different kinds of Occults in Sims. Another reason is because there isn’t a legacy that I can find which has all the occults. If you know of one please let me know, I would love to check it out myself. The challenge would be updated as more Occults get added to the game. As of right now the Sims Occults we will play with are: Vampire, Spellcaster, Werewolf, Alien, Mermaid. Please let me know if there are any issues, as I am currently playing through this challenge myself.

I didn’t want to go super into details with the backstories of each generation because I want it to be open for any stories that the sims or you guys come up with.

Rules

For each generation complete the designated aspiration, career, and skills.

There are two colors associated with every generation.(clothings and home decor)

Play on any lifespan you wish (normal recommended)

Must complete Occult Class (alien,mermaid do not)

Would be fun but not require, live in world associated with occult

If you are playing this Challenge please @Sammleys, I would love to check out what you guys do with my challenge

Packs for challenge: City living, Get to work, Werewolf, vampires, paranormal, realm of magic, island living, Strangerville, cats and dogs

Gen 1: Human (Gray, Yellow)

This sims grew up loving everything supernatural, learning about them from stories and myths. They wanted to see if all the stories were true, and found themselves right in the middle. Making friends so she can learn from the source.

Traits: Paranoid, Adventures, Insider

Requirement:

Live on a haunted residential and become a paranormal investigator Freelancer

Must complete Strangerville mystery Aspiration

Master the Knitting and Medium skills

Fall in Love with a werewolf

Make Couldry your best friend

Becomes good friends with at least 5 Occults sims

Gen 2: WereWolf (Green, Orange)

Grew up surrounded by ghosts and creatures of the night. Watching how the world treated them, being hunted down and killed. They wanted to protect them from the world. So they helped create the very first Supernatural Police force. In hopes that it would help prevent Occults files from reaching the public.

Traits: Dog lover, Glutton, Hot-headed

Requirement:

Complete Emissary of the Collective werewolf Aspiration

Complete the Detective Career

Complete Werewolf class

Master Fitness and Gardening Skills

Fall in love with a Vampire

Always have a dog in household

Gen 3: Vampire (Red, Purple)

Unlike their parents they wanted to be part of the human world. So they overcome their urges because they can help the humans by becoming a doctor. In hopes of teaching the humans to understand that not all creatures of the night are bad.

Traits: Good, Gloomy, Creative

Requirement:

Complete the Good Vampire Aspiration

Complete the Doctor Career

Complete Vampire Class

Master pipe organ, Charisma skills

Fall in love with a Spellcaster

Live on Haunted Lot trait and have a Ghost be your Best friend

Gen 4: Spellcaster (Pink, Cyan)

Growing up in their family’s farm, watching them make medicine from herbs they grew themselves. Love having dirt under their nails. This sims never find the one to spend their life with like their parents had but still wanted to be a parent themselves.

Traits: Vegetarian, Prefectionist, Loves Outdoors

Requirement:

Compete the Spellcaster & sorcery aspiration

Complete the Floral Designer career

Master Gardening and Flowering Arranging Skills

Lives on Simple-living lot

Complete Spellcaster Class

Have an Alien baby/never married

Has a cat as a familiar

Gen 5: Alien (Neon, White)

They grew up thinking they were just like everyone else, until one day they met an alien while as a teenager and everything changed. They wanted to learn more about their race and where they come from. So they research everything they could find about aliens and explore Sixam for themselves.

Traits: Genius, Geek, Erratic

Requirement:

Complete Nerd Brain Aspiration

Complete sciencelist career

Master Logic and Rocket Science Skills

Live in TLC apartment for young adults lifespan

Stay good friends with childhood alien and visit Sixam

Fall in love with a mermaid

Gen 6: Mermaid (Blue,Pink)

This sim's parents were never really around so they spend a lot of time alone with their music. Once they moved out, they find themself drawn to the ocean where they befriend their BBF the dolphin. They never really understand what it means to fall in love, so they go through many relationships.

Traits: Child of the ocean, Noncommitted, Music lover

Requirement

Complete Serial Romantic Aspiration

Complete the Marine Biologist career

Master fishing, singing, logic skills

Befriend a dolphin

Achieve level 8 instrument of choice

Goes through a divorce and marries another sims

[b-else-writes]

The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 3: Tokyo Babylon

Part 1 (RG Veda) | Part 2 (Man of Many Faces)| Part 4 (Duklyon) | Part 5 (Clamp Detectives)| Part 6 (Shirahime)| Part 7 (X)| Part 8 (Chunhyang) | Part 9 (Miyuki-chan)| Part 10 (Rayearth)| Part 11 (The One I Love

The CLAMP 90s series. Perhaps their greatest work ever. Tokyo Babylon ran from 1990 to 1993, concurrent with RG Veda, the CLAMP School, Shirahime, Chun-hyang, AND X. It makes you wonder how X and Tokyo Babylon shaped each other (but more on that later). Tokyo Babylon (and X) is also set in the same universe as the CLAMP School reflecting CLAMP’s early interest in crossovers. Planned out as 7 volumes, it consists of 11 big stories and 3 annexes. I read the omnibus versions which contain lots of coloured art, but the original print run is a beauty in 80s and early 90s graphic design.

While I'd never read this before, it's famous enough (two OVAs, a drama CD, and a live action movie), that I went in knowing some of the big spoilers, but not details. So while my reading was coloured by the knowledge of its tragic end, it still felt revelatory to me. It is the first CLAMP work where I think they had gotten their storytelling pinned down enough to consciously think of how to write a story that ties together on a thematic level, in every stage, and it's phenomenal. Heavy spoilers.

Synopsis: Onmyoji and thirteenth head of the Sumeragi clan, Subaru Sumeragi is called upon to solve occult mysteries in post-bubble Tokyo. It's a time of glittering lights, a rotten economy, and city populated by lonely people desperate for an answer to their problems as the millennium draws near. Joined by his fashionable twin sister Hokuto and the kindly but strangely sinister vetenarian Seishiro Sakurazuka - who is in love with him - the overly sacrificing and empathetic Subaru must solve these problems and learn how to live - but Tokyo is not a kind place, especially to those with gentle natures.

The Story: On its surface, Tokyo Babylon begins as a "case-of-the-week" style story, where Subaru has to solve an occult case and learns something. Its a deceptively simple premise that allowed for CLAMP to explore pressing social issues of their time (which still feel resonant due to the sensitive way they explored them), while also building upon Subaru's character development through this, and the suspense of Seishiro's true nature. We observe Subaru grow through his failures and learn more about the limitations of his empathy. No case feels pointless in how it develops Subaru as a person, and his relationship to Seishiro. The dread we feel about Seishiro's connection to Subaru grows that we almost believe we might just get out of this. It's just excellently plotted out.

The comedy is well-timed and CLAMP know when to pull back from it to allow the emotional aspect to come through. Every case is incredibly gripping and I even cried reading "Old". I have seen some suggest it would have been more effective to have a massive twist rather than seed Seishiro's psychopathy throughout, but I actually think this works on a thematic level, and finding out Seishiro is a murderer, the bet, and Hokuto's death, still hit like a gut punch. It's a brilliant usage of seeding information without the full context until the end. I have no complaints here. It's a poignant story of Tokyo in the early 1990s and its destructiveness, while never losing its humanity.

The Themes: Do you know why the cherry blossoms are red. Tokyo Babylon is a story about well, Tokyo. It's about how modern city living that pursues only personal gain and conformity leads to human loneliness, and loneliness is a trap that destroys us all. We can never know someone else's pain, which leads to loneliness - but to recognize that is also freeing because it means we cannot judge and be judged for it. Having empathy is good, but too much and for the wrong people and not for yourself, can only lead to death. Subaru forms his self-identity through others, in contrast to his self-actualized twin, remaining aloof and detached from his own self - this is why Seishiro's betrayal breaks him, because Subaru doesn't know how to live as his own person. It is also what causes his loved ones so much harm in how little he loves himself in comparison to others.

Its a fascinating interplay between community and individuality, the reality of modern life of trying to be someone while also needing to generalize, without ever really settling on either side. Hokuto is right that they're not the same person, but Subaru is also right that they are deeply connected, as all people must be. Where it does come down hard is that humans are not the villains but Tokyo is, in what it represents - greed, selfishness, cruelty, and apathy. "Things like this happen in Tokyo everyday". It is intensely tragic and yet, strangely, incredibly life-affirming. Despite everything Subaru suffers, people are not born and made evil and everyone should be taken for who they are, not a faceless mass. Including ourselves.

The Characters: Like the plot, everything in the characters is tied into the story of Tokyo. Seishiro is Tokyo: the slick, cool-cut well to do man in a suit with no empathy and a taste for violence. He's Subaru's mirror - charming AND connected to people, and yet not. Nobody is special in Seishiro's eyes, nobody deserves to be treated as anything but an object. And then we have Subaru, poor sweet Subaru who is so empathetic and yet so detached from the world and himself because he's so focused on only his job, on not being an individual. He is what Tokyo wants him to be, filled with self-loathing and frankly suicidal impulses that he shouldn’t be alive if others are not.

It's so tragic to watch Subaru finally grow into a person, but to do so to the one person who will hurt him. Subaru wants to to love Tokyo so badly, that it kills his sister, the one person he SHOULD have been pouring his love into, the person who could love him back and expect nothing in return, the person who would allow him love while not dissolving himself in it. And Hokuto is just a showstopper, funny, kind, witty and cool. She's Subaru's northstar, the empathy and humanity where he cannot, almost co-dependent. I love characters that reflect one another and the themes.

The Art: The visual storytelling and panelling are fantastic. Tokyo Babylon offers a sparser and more distinctly black and white look than RG Veda, with a stronger emphasis on emotional paneling that breaks into beautiful spreads. It creates an almost wood-block, timeless appeal (despite the fashion) that is neither too busy nor too simplified. Anything to do with the Bet and especially the finale is incredible. Subaru surrounded by cherry blossoms? Haunting. The fashion is impeccable, I love the bold design choices in the covers and spreads. The character designs in and of themselves are quite simple (and I don't love the seme-uke look of Seishiro and Subaru), but the personality-costuming is so well done and tell stories themselves. And the use of Hokuto and Subaru being identical to conceal the twist? Masterful character design. My only complaint is some of the scanned photo backgrounds are jarring against the lovely drawn art.

Questionable Elements: Subaru is 16 and Seishiro is 25. That being said, I do think from their interviews and the actual text, we aren't meant to ship them, and it's not unrealistic to be a teen and fall for an older person only for it to majorly fuck you up because they abuse their greater knowledge to harm you (which hey, might be a theme!). Some of the way issues are handled is dated, but not too badly. Again, I’m not going to comment on whether this is queer representation or not, since I don’t think that has ever been CLAMP’s intention. Despite the stereotypical seme and uke stuff, the relationship feels real and tangible (which is why the payoff works). My real gripe is Hokuto getting fridged, though it's handled better than expected (still. let's stop killing women to make men sad).

Overall: A beautiful tragedy and an ode to human alienation, identity, and empathy. I went into this expecting to like it, and ended it never the same. It is genuinely a fantastic, fully complete thematic work from them that speaks as a reflection of the time it was written, and yet remains resonant. I know some people find it edgy, but I actually don't think edge is its intention, it's dark and it's tragic but never misanthropic. Yes, Subaru enters the adult world broken, but his refusal to become like Seishiro and to continue to count himself amongst humanity despite everything, reaffirms that life and people have value (notwithstanding his behaviour in X).

You can see so much of their ideas crystallize here that they’ll repeat across X, Xxxholic, etc. We're all just lonely people and we hurt each other in our loneliness, and it's important to recognize that in ourselves and take care of ourselves for it. We have value as individuals AND through others. Read it!

[warningsine]

The first crime scene in the new season of “True Detective” isn’t that of the seven gnarled, naked bodies we see piled on top of one another in the snow at the end of Episode 1, but of a more mundane violence. A woman tries to flee her physically abusive boyfriend, and he tracks her down at work. This time, he gets walloped, with a metal bucket, by his girlfriend’s co-worker, an older woman. The blow leaves his face a gory mess. The officer who arrives to escort the man off the premises, Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), asks the girlfriend whether she’ll press charges against her ex; the trooper doesn’t offer him the same choice before putting him in cuffs. The local chief of police, Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster), isn’t exactly complimentary when she later says that Navarro’s “got this thing about women who get hurt.” The arrest feels righteous, but the stench of the man’s menace lingers. Tidy endings are hard to come by, especially once blood has been spilled.

There’s a refusal to separate or elevate sensational brutality from the everyday sort in this latest installment of the HBO anthology drama—a feminist revision of a series best known for its macho poetry and its ogling eye. The show’s creator, Nic Pizzolatto, had his mostly male investigators contend with child murderers and pedophile rings; the QAnon-esque luridness of those crimes haunted the grizzled detectives for decades thereafter. The writer-director Issa López, who has taken over from Pizzolatto as showrunner, moves the action from sunbaked states to the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska, where, as of mid-December, daylight won’t return for several weeks. The uninterrupted Arctic dark lends the season its subtitle, “Night Country,” as well as its wintry, edge-of-civilization atmospherics. Watching the six-part season from under a blanket in California, I couldn’t get warm.

The dead men who form the chilly, Boschian tableau at the pilot’s conclusion are (or were) scientists at a research station on the outskirts of Ennis. With unknown funders and an improbable mission, the facility was shrouded in mystery even before its occupants turned up on the ice with their faces literally frozen in horror. But Navarro is hopeful that their bizarre fate will offer some clues in a homicide case that she and Danvers worked on years earlier—the unsolved murder of a Native woman named Annie Kowtok (Nivi Pedersen), who agitated against the mine that the town relies on for most of its jobs—when Annie’s severed tongue materializes, without explanation, in the scientists’ mess hall.

Here, the “True Detective” formula kicks in: Danvers and Navarro reunite as partners despite their mutual suspicion, and their rocky history eventually threatens their credibility on the new case. Conspiracies, hostile forces, and occult flourishes abound. The universe of the show is one in which the police—even the brilliant ones—are always failing. Danvers has long since reconciled herself to that reality: of the earlier cold case, she says, “This one was never gonna be solved. Ennis killed Annie.” She’s an outsider, unmoved by Navarro’s insistence that a white murder victim wouldn’t have been so readily forgotten. Nor is she particularly sensitive toward her stepdaughter, Leah (Isabella Star LaBlanc), whose newfound embrace of political activism—and of her Native heritage—she considers a needlessly risky attempt at teen-age rebellion. In Danvers’s view, there’s no ridding the world, or even her own squad, of shit-heels and malefactors; there’s only limiting the damage.

Whereas Pizzolatto’s iteration of the show had few female characters of substance, the new season delights in the complexities of its women protagonists. The chief’s no-nonsense veneer allows her to insult her subordinates, including her shiftless deputy Hank (John Hawkes), without it feeling all that personal. But she’s got a maternal side—one that she indulges with Hank’s son, Peter (Finn Bennett), a junior officer—as well as a penchant for affairs with married men that’s made her persona non grata among many women in town.

Foster has spent much of the past decade and a half behind the camera, as a director, but she’s lost none of the cerebral confidence that has underpinned her distinctive sex appeal. It’s no shock that she’s compulsively watchable. It is a pleasant surprise that her nearly unknown co-star is just as compelling, with a refreshingly naturalistic screen presence. Reis, a professional boxer turned actor with cheek piercings where her dimples might be, looks so solid from the neck down that her body is like one long, taut muscle, but her character has a habit of picking fights she’s unlikely to win. Navarro’s volatility masks deep-seated vulnerabilities. Her unstable mother died before sharing Navarro’s Inupiaq name with her, leaving her painfully disconnected from her culture. She lives in fear that her sister, Julia (Aka Niviâna), who’s already been institutionalized once, may slip through the cracks if she continues to resist treatment—and that Julia isn’t the only member of the family who inherited their mother’s hallucinations. Not everyone finds the apparitions the siblings struggle to shake off so unnatural. “Ennis is where the fabric of all things is coming apart at the seams,” Navarro’s friend Rose (Fiona Shaw) says; she routinely sees her deceased lover roaming the tundra. “This is Ennis, man,” another character says simply. “You see people who are gone sometimes. It’s a long fucking night. Even the dead get bored.”

In the prestige-TV era, the police procedural has grasped for cachet through social critique (“The Wire”) or cool vibes (“Fargo”). Some achieve both—“Top of the Lake” is an easy example—but, in less adept hands, the former can feel like homework and the latter a shallow exercise in style. (In the most recent season of “Fargo,” self-serious kitsch and punishing sincerity layered irritation on irritation.) Pizzolatto’s “True Detective,” which last aired five years ago, ran largely on vibes, too, and when sleaze and nihilism couldn’t sustain its overcomplicated plotting, the mysteries sagged.

López has accomplished the uncommon feat of resuscitating a franchise that didn’t deserve saving. She first broke out with “Tigers Are Not Afraid,” a 2017 film that blended human horrors and magical realism, and her season of “True Detective” pulls off the same balancing act. Although Danvers, like the show’s original protagonist (played by Matthew McConaughey), obsesses over “asking the right questions,” López isn’t always interested in furnishing answers, and the series mostly benefits from her willingness to dwell in ambiguity. Are Julia’s visions a by-product of schizophrenia, as her doctors suggest, or rooted in spiritual truth? The matter is never fully litigated. López’s dialogue is more pedestrian than her predecessor’s, but she has an instinct for imagery that’s both genuinely frightening and strangely inviting, amplifying the scripts’ thematic heft. “Night Country” plays with the gendered expectations behind certain TV-cop tropes: it’s Danvers, not Hank, who models self-destructive workaholism for Peter, downing vodka alone and poring over case files before pulling him away from his family on Christmas Eve. The season is similarly probing about the moral authority that can be reflexively assigned to women over men in our fantasies of female vengeance for male aggression. Through it all, meditations on the unknowability of the cosmos are offset by close observations of relationships—however contingent or dysfunctional they may be. By grounding her supernatural whodunnit in more intimate, interpersonal dramas, López transforms “True Detective” from a lot of mystical mumbling into a show with something to say. ♦

[dadscarathon]

Day 23: Oddity

I liked this a lot. A murder mystery with an occult detective and avenger, and some great suspense. it throws you right in from the beginning, too - no slow build or time for reveals, yet prompting questions the whole time.

Scary: 2 out of 3. One shot actually got me, and some of the cuts/brief flashes of things were quite effective.

Gross: 1 out of 3. There are a couple of scenes with gore, but most of it is more "mind's eye" or aftermath.

Disturbing: 1 out of 3. There's room for disturbance here, especially if you have any fear of inanimate objects, but I wasn't terribly impacted by them.

Funny: 1 out of 3. Not a lot of humor here, the story takes itself very seriously and none of the characters lend themselves to gallows humor.

Thoughtful: 2 out of 3. There's the mystery of what happened, instantly overshadowed by the mystery of what's going to happen, alongside a very interesting world in which the movie takes place. This was my favorite part of the movie, and there was more than one thing to appreciate.

Total score: 7 out of 15. If you like a little mystery with your monster, you might like this one.

[thegayhimbo]

Stranger Things Darkness on the Edge of Town Review (Part 1 of 3)

Warning: The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS from both the book and from Season 4 of Stranger Things!

If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out my other Stranger Things Reviews. Like, Reblog, and let me know what your thoughts are regarding the show or the upcoming season! :)

Stranger Things Comics/Graphic Novels:

Stranger Things Six

Stranger Things Halloween Special

Stranger Things The Other Side

Stranger Things Zombie Boys

Stranger Things The Bully

Stranger Things Winter Special

Stranger Things Tomb of Ybwen

Stranger Things Into The Fire

Stranger Things Science Camp

Stranger Things “The Game Master” and “Erica’s Quest”

Stranger Things and Dungeons and Dragons

Stranger Things Kamchatka

Stranger Things Erica The Great

Stranger Things “Creature Feature” and “Summer Special”

Stranger Things Tie-In Books:

Stranger Things Suspicious Minds

Stranger Things Runaway Max (Part 1 of 3)

Stranger Things Runaway Max (Part 2 of 3)

Stranger Things Runaway Max (Part 3 of 3)

Synopsis: When El discovers a box containing information about a 1977 case from Hopper's time with the NYPD, Hopper is forced to confront his past as he recalls his hunt for a dangerous serial killer with connections to the Occult......

Observations:

When I was in middle school, I remember writing a story that had a similar structure to this book: It started out as a normal case-of-the-week mystery usually found on Police Procedurals or even in detective novels like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Later on, said mystery would turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg to a far more insidious conspiracy that threatened the protagonists lives and everything they cared about.

Looking back years later, I have enough writing experience now to recognize my story was juvenile and riddled with plot-holes and other elements that didn't make sense. Still, I was a fan of escalating things in a story to make the villains threatening, and I still get a thrill whenever I see that element in movies, or read about it in books. In a way, Stranger Things is like that: What once was a mystery regarding the disappearance of Will Byers has now evolved into a battle between the main characters and a deranged psychopath who's leading his army of monsters to destroy the world.

Darkness on the Edge of Town is similar: It starts out as a case about an unhinged serial killer, only to take a hard left turn about a fourth of the way in and reveal that the threat posed is greater than Hopper could have imagined. The pacing for this book is brisk, the suspense is tight, and I managed to re-read the entire book in two days.

Like my previous reviews, this will be split into several parts regarding characters and social issues covered in the book. There's also a potential gold-mine here for theories about Season 5 (particularly in relation to the main antagonist and his possible connection to the Upside Down), and I plan to discuss those in-depth.

Part 1: El and Hopper

The narrative structure for this book is similar to the movie The Princess Bride in that the main story (Hopper's time with the NYPD in 1977) is within another story (Hopper celebrating Christmas with Eleven in 1984). Like the Grandfather from the movie who reads to his grandson, Hopper tells El about living in New York City, and a case he worked on back then. However, unlike the Grandfather, Hopper is initially reluctant to talk about it because of how violent it was, and it's only from El's prodding that he finally does.

Multiple times, the books cuts between Hopper's memories of the case in 1977 and his conversations with El in the present. El usually inquires about certain events that happened during the case, and tries to learn more about Hopper himself. There's even a scene where (at El's insistence) Hopper spoils a part of his tale to inform her that someone he personally knew from the story survived. It's a lot like when the Grandfather from The Princess Bride reveals to his grandson that Buttercup doesn't get eaten by the shrieking eels before the audience gets to see that scene for themselves. Cheeky! 😂

The passages between El and Hopper work because they help give insight into how Hopper views El, and they also allow El to get to know Hopper a bit better. Take for instance when El questions Hopper about Vietnam and Hopper's reasons for not wanting to talk about it:

Or the reasons why Hopper became a cop, and El piecing together what that entails:

El knew about Hopper's job as a cop (as evidenced by what she tells Kali in season 2), but I don't think she ever truly thought about what that meant for Hopper and the danger he subjected himself to on multiple occasions. In this story, she's getting a better picture of what Hopper's experienced in his lifetime. She's also beginning to realize how much Hopper sacrificed when he took her in despite knowing it could cost him everything.

On top of this, El demonstrates an emotional intelligence about certain situations Hopper talks about. One example is when Hopper discusses his partner, Rosario Delgado, and the sexism/racism she faced initially when she joined Brooklyn's 65th Precinct. El initially doesn't know the words, but she understands immediately that they way some of the men treated Delgado was wrong:

I remember a few years ago receiving a profoundly stupid comment from a Billy stan trying to justify Billy's bigotry by claiming the reason El didn't grow up bigoted is because she didn't know words like racism, sexism, abuse, and so on. Putting aside the brain-dead logic behind that statement, just because El didn't know those words doesn't mean she was incapable of understanding on an emotional level when people were being mean and prejudicial to others. El's greatest trait is that she's empathetic (even towards people like Vecna who don't deserve it) and she can pick up quickly when others are being mistreated and recognize that it's wrong. She did it with Mike in season 1 when Mike tells her about how he's been bullied, and she even had empathy for the kids at the lab who were slaughtered by Vecna despite the cruel way they treated her. That is not something Brenner or anyone else had to teach her. She already knew on an intrinsic level what bigotry was, and implying that El is too stupid to understand that because she doesn't automatically know certain words is insulting beyond belief.

Same principle applies for the fans who make asinine excuses for all the bullying Angela and her friends engaged in by claiming they're children who don't better and need adults to supervise them:

Unlike Hopper's daughter Sara, Angela is NOT a 6 year old who needs mommy and daddy to hold her hand and explain to her the difference between right and wrong. She knew perfectly well that her treatment of El in season 4 was vicious, and she chose to do it anyway because she could get away with it and felt justified in doing so. She is absolutely responsible for what she does, and claiming that she isn't is not only an idiotic take devoid of reason, it's that kind of mentality that leads to people enabling the worst of someone's behavior to the point they becomes narcissistic, self-righteous bullies. Angela lacks empathy. Same with Billy. They know their behavior is hurtful and wrong, and they don't care.

If someone like El, who was raised as a laboratory experiment with the intention of being molded into a weapon against the Soviets, was brutally bullied most of her life, and got manipulated by two different psychopaths who were using her for their own ends, is still capable of being empathetic towards others after all of that, then there aren't any excuses for how Angela and Billy behave. They are terrible people who deserve to be held accountable for their actions, and I have no patience for those who choose to make apologies for them.

Adding on to this, I know there's a perception that because El got bad grades in school when she was in Lenora, it meant she wasn't as intelligent as her peers. There's even a scene on the show where El's math teacher is dismissive of her after she gets another F in class and condescendingly tells her they'll talk after break while offering no means to help her. I also see fans apply this logic to characters like Eddie (who also got bad grades) and Steve (who wasn't able to get into college).

I could do an entire separate post about how the U.S. Education system is a poor measurement for intelligence in an individual, but I will say that just because the three of them struggled in school doesn't mean they weren't smart. Eddie simply didn't care about grades, and put more energy into learning D&D lore and playing guitar because that's what interested him (look at how quickly he learned "Master of Puppets" by Metallica on his guitar between the time the album came out and the night of his concert in the Upside Down). Steve isn't brushed up on certain topics, but he does make connections that other people miss (like the music he hears in the Russian recording in S3, or him questioning why Vecna stopped killing after 1959 and only started again recently). El by comparison is capable of learning, but because of her upbringing in the lab, it takes a little longer since she's stunted. Hopper acknowledges this in the book, and privately expresses his disgust for what Brenner did to her:

This is why, for all of his flaws, I like how Hopper teaches El: He works with her in the ways she needs to be able to develop. She learns at her own pace, and Hopper never makes her feel dumb for doing so. Regardless of whether this was unintentional, the book (and the show to some extent) make an inadvertent argument in favor of homeschooling as a better means of teaching someone compared to the school system's method of expecting everyone to be on the same level and punishing those who aren't.

Getting back to Hopper and El, at this point in the story, following the events of season 2, they have a better understanding of one another. Hopper trusts that El will be able to handle how graphic his backstory was, and El trusts Hopper to be honest with her and support her.

I also like how they referenced the game of Hungry Hungry Hippos that Hopper got El for Christmas, as well as the walkie-talkie her friends bought her. It's something that's depicted in the Winter Special, and I'm glad they kept track of that continuity nugget.

I also appreciate the acknowledgement in-universe from Hopper that, as much as he misses Sara, he recognizes El is a different person from her. She reminds him of his daughter, but he's trying not to project his idea of Sara onto El while he raises her.

I know in past reviews I've talked about characters who may die in season 5, but I doubt Hopper and El are on that list. They've already done two fake-out deaths for them (once for El in S1 and once for Hopper in S3), which gives the impression that if the writers wanted either of these characters dead, they would have killed them off already. They will likely survive to the end.

El's story in season 5 will likely be about stopping Vecna, but I'm curious if they're going to bring back the Russians again and Hopper will be stuck dealing with them at the same time as Vecna's invasion. There's a lot of unresolved questions surrounding this arc (like how the Russians found out about the Gate in the first place, how they were planning to weaponize the UD monsters, etc), and it's likely the KGB aren't going to let the damage at Kamchatka go unpunished. They'll either come after Hopper and his loved ones for retribution, or they'll try to restart their operation in Hawkins now that Vecna's gate is wide open for the time being.

On top of that, I'm curious what El's future looks like post-Vecna and the UD. Now that Hopper is back in her life, will she go back to being home-schooled by him? I can't imagine she's in a rush to return to Lenora with how viciously she was treated by her peers there, and she arguably might develop better without having to attend public school. There's also the question about her powers: Will she still keep them by the end of the show, or will something happen that will cause her to become ordinary again? I know they've already played that arc out in season 4, and they might avoid going there again for the sake of repetition. Still, if my theory is correct about the UD being connected to the powers El and Vecna have, and that the death of Vecna means the death of everything in the UD because of how he's used the Mind Flayer to intertwine himself into the hive mind, it could end up having an effect on El's powers going forward.

But this is all speculation. Whether they'll go that direction remains unknown as of now.

Part 2: Hopper's Case

When Hopper's case occurs, it's been 5 years since he moved away from Hawkins to New York City. This happens after Hopper came back from serving two tours in Vietnam, and was looking for a new purpose in his life. Quiet suburban Hawkins didn't sit right with him at the time, and he ended up convincing his then-wife Diane to move their family to the Big Apple.

In many ways, this is reflective of Hopper's character on the show: When he doesn't have some kind of purpose driving him forward, it's like he doesn't know what to do with himself. When I first saw Stranger Things, I thought that the less appealing aspects of Hopper's character (sleeping around with multiple women, constantly drinking, gaining weight from eating junk food in S3, etc) were just personality quirks of being a jaded washout. Having rewatched the show again (and read this book), I'm starting to see how those elements are symptomatic of PTSD and depression on his part. It's like he has to have something (or in the case of his family and friends, someone) to anchor to in order to have stability in his life. He even discusses this with Enzo/Dmitri when they're being held at Kamchatka:

From "The Nina Project" (Season 4, Episode 5):

Hopper: After that, I was just...I just hid myself in drugs and alcohol. And then people started coming into my life. This girl, El, and Joyce just happened, and I told myself they needed me. But that wasn't true. That's a lie. They didn't need me.............I needed them.

NYC is where he wanted to be at the time, and this case ended up being his big break.

The case itself begins as a simple hunt for a serial killer: Three victims (Jonathan Schnetzer, Sam Barrett, and Jacob Hoeler) who are stabbed in a way to form a five-pointed star on their chests while the killer leaves a calling-card behind:

Each of the murders are done in a ritualistic way, and the cards are later revealed to be Zener cards, which were created for use in experiments related to clairvoyance:

Things get complicated when the FBI (led by Agent Gallup, whom Hopper has a contentious relationship with) take over the investigation. Upset over this, and believing there's more they can learn from the case, Hopper and Delgado go behind their superior's back to find out more about the circumstances regarding the deaths of these men.

However, everything takes a sharp left turn when a gang-member named Leroy Washington comes to Hopper and promises to give him information about a cult leader in exchange for protection and getting his sister, Martha, safely out. He then gives Hopper a Zener card, similar to the ones found at the crime scenes, causing Hopper to realize that said cult leader (named Saint John) is behind the killings, and is planning something terrible:

I'm not spoiling much here by revealing who the killer is since the book unveils it within the first 110 pages. The remaining 300+ deal with Hopper working to stop Saint John before he enacts a plan that threatens the safety of NYC and its citizens.

When I discussed escalation in a story at the beginning of this review, this is what I was talking about.

Saint John acts as a cross between Charles Manson and Jim Jones. I wouldn't even be shocked if the author, Adam Christopher, drew inspiration for Saint John from these real-life cult leaders. Saint John prophecies an apocalypse, where Satan will come to New York City, sweeping darkness over the land, to claim his throne. To this end, he begins to build an army of followers by assimilating the various gangs of New York City into one organization called the Vipers, and having his acolytes poach various support groups (AA meetings, Veterans groups, etc) to recruit more followers.

At one point, Hopper is forced to go undercover as a cop on the run to infiltrate Saint John's organization to find out what his master plan is so the FBI knows how to stop it. When he actually meets Saint John for the first time, it becomes apparent to Hopper how both of them are uncannily similar:

Both men served in Vietnam, and both came back looking for a purpose in their lives. Hopper found his as a cop. Saint John found his as the leader of a cult.

The creepiest part is that, for all of Saint John's planning, his organization, his recruitment, his stockpiling of weapons and rations, his coordinated attack, his ideology.......................he actually believes what he's preaching. Hopper eventually realizes something happened to Saint John in Vietnam that made him this way. He is correct, but not in the way he thinks.

Part 3: Saint John's connections to the Upside Down

Towards the end of the novel, Saint John drops a bombshell about his time in Vietnam and what he was doing there:

While the book doesn't ever mention Dr. Brenner by name, it's possible the experiments done to Saint John in Vietnam were similar to the ones he did at Hawkins Lab, from the psychedelics he gave Terry Ives and other test subjects, to orchestrating El's birth and the creation of the other special children who were bred as weapons against the Soviets. Brenner may not have even had to be in Vietnam at the time. This could have been another branch of the U.S. government conducting similar experiments on soldiers to make them more efficient in the Cold War.

In any case, the insidious implication is that whatever they did to Saint John, it gave him a glimpse of the Upside Down and may have put him in contact with a malevolent force from the other side:

I've proposed a theory several times in my reviews of Six and Suspicious Minds that, in addition to the Upside Down being linked to the powers that El and Vecna have, the psychedelics given to the test subjects in the experiments may act as a telekinetic gateway between this world and the Upside Down. If Saint John was being experimented on in a similar way to the test subjects at Hawkins Lab, he could have seen the Upside Down in its original form (similar to how Vecna saw it when he was first sent there) and believed the place was Hell. It would explain why his entire cult is centered around the idea of Satan coming and darkness spreading across the world. There's also the bit he tells Hopper about hearing a voice that he attributes to Satan, but may have been some otherworldly force from the UD.

I know this book was written and published in 2019, two months before season 3 premiered, and that this book takes place 2 years before El would banish Vecna to the UD, but it should be noted that this book was overseen by Paul Dichter, who has been a writer for the show since season 1. If he's willingly giving information to the authors who pen these tie-in books about the mythology of the show and its characters, then it's likely these are ideas that have been discussed in length in the writers room. One of those ideas might have been a malicious force that powers and operates in the Upside Down which can influence people.

It makes me wonder if that same force reached out to Henry/One/Vecna as a child at the Creel House, did something that activated his powers, and acted as an influence on him (I say this not as a way to excuse all the terrible things Vecna has done, but to give one possible explanation as to how he became as psychologically messed up as he is).

On top of that, Saint John's killings and ideology is eerily similar to Vecna's: Both of them gruesomely murder selected people as part of a grander ritual. Vecna kills four teens (Chrissy, Fred, Patrick, and Max) to open a huge gate in Hawkins and invade with his army of monsters. All four teens are referred to as "sacrifices" by Vecna, and there's even been theories drawn by other fans (such as @itsanotheridiot and @dis-a-ppointment) that the victims chosen by Vecna each represented one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. By comparison, Saint John goes after 5 different victims to "summon the veil of shadow over the earth" and tells Hopper that Satan (or whomever was speaking to Saint John) showed him how to prepare the rituals:

Unlike with Vecna, it's ambiguous if Saint John's ritual would have worked, or if this was a part of his psychosis. If it's the latter, it still doesn't deter from how he had enough of a grip on reality to organize an army under his command, cause a city-wide blackout, and unleash destruction that cost lives. If it's the former, it makes me question if Vecna has a similar voice in his head, directing him like a puppet in part of a greater conspiracy, with that voice coming from somewhere the Upside Down. And unlike with Saint John, this voice succeeded with Vecna, and now has the means to unleash destruction upon Hawkins and beyond.

I'm sure Vecna will continue to act as the main antagonist in season 5 because of how integral he is to all the terrible things that have happened to the main characters, but there's still more about the Upside Down (and Vecna himself) that needs explanation, and there are probably far worse monsters in there than Demogorgons or Demodogs.

To Be Continued In Part 2............

[bossa-61240]

Idk how to really word this but I'm out here working on like magic* system for a sort of urban-ish fantasy setting (like parts of the world are hyper urban mega cities but other parts are closer to traditional fantasy). I call it a Magic* system because it's actually 4 different powersets with each having at least 3 subtypes. Going down the list in terms of rarity there's (throwing in a read more so people can more easily scroll by):

Aura, which is physically outputting spiritual energy into the world to complete a desired effect. This has a variant focused on attacking, defending, and healing. Everyone is capable of using aura abilities, you just have to either teach yourself or find someone to teach you.

Magic, which draws in energy from the caster's surroundings which are then channeled through the body into spells. I went with the traditional magic schools for the subtypes here (Abjuration, Evocation, so on and so forth). Magic is a bit strange with it's rarity, technically everyone is capable of minor magical feats but very few are born with the resilience of body to actually weaponize it.

Psionics, which are a result of an extra energy running through the user's neurons. There are actually 8 variants here due to the 8 different kinds of energy that can be coursing through the psychic, each one of these changes the color of a psychic's powers among other effects. As of the modern day within the setting only 6 have been found to occur naturally, the remaining two have been recreated in a lab setting and the powers associated with them are beginning to be explored. Unlike Magic and Aura, psionics are something you have to be born with.

So the last set of powers are a little strange but stay with me here. There was a large war, and after its conclusion a mysterious illness settled into the land infesting the way that peoples powers would manifest making them wild and unstable. In order to combat this the people developed a new set of abilities under the blanket name Occultism due to their shared origin. So the way Occultism works is that its like the main 3, but they have to be done through a medium. And through the path that has branched off the Occultists have developed new powers that their original counterparts can't do. Magical Occultists are the ultimate detectives, wielding the ability to magically read objects. Psychic Occultists use what remains of their psychic powers to manipulate the elements, generally they prefer to be called kinetics. Lastly you have the Aura Occultists, which have drawn in spiritual energies from beyond becoming able to commune with the dead and sometimes even grant them access into our world. Occultists are extremely rare, with only a few families remaining as such throughout the ages.

Inheritance works like this:

2*Any = the same (Ex. Psychic + Psychic = Psychic)

Any Standard + Any Other Standard = 50/50 for parent 1 or 2 (Ex. Aura + Magic = 50/50 Aura or Magic)

Any Standard + Occult = Any Standard (Ex. Aura + Occult = Aura)