#akatokuro vs askbox

[akatokuro]

In EP 4, when Lambda says meta-Ange is not the real Ange, but just a witch's pawn, you suggest this is Ange learning that she's a fictional character. I know you chalk a lot of the meta up to being very fluid, but could you elaborate more on how it works and what the characters inhabitating it are really? Souls in the afterlife, fictional constructs, or something else?

"what the characters inhabitating it are really?"

i actually really truly can't! as soon as you say "what are they really" the question becomes self-defeating and basically unanswerable.

i think i've elaborated on how i basically regard the meta before, ten million years ago and beyond, as being largely intuitive and impossible (and undesirable) to truly concretely pin down, though it has its own space and its own emotional continuity, but if you put five shotguns to my head, i'd say - they're figures of narrative, which i would distinguish from simply being "fictional constructs."

it doesn't feel right to me to say they're "souls of the afterlife" because there's an underpinning of umineko about a person's genuine soul, a genuine personhood, being impossible to capture in a single narrative or linear perspective, and this informs how their roles vary according to the needs of the gameboard, even down to the golden land itself, an obviously idealized space for everyone involved. but "fictional constructs" also feels too dismissive and belies the emotional weight and struggle we see even "piece-Ange" wrestle with. narrative shapes reality and all that - i think it's almost impossible for most humans to not filter reality through a narrative lens on some level, and in the case of ange, much of her struggle with lambda's temptation was about the option of sort of. the word escapes me. taking over beatrice's gameboard to center herself, or accepting her role in the "narrative" as a sacrifice to emotional spur assigned-protagonist battler onward.

the genuine internal life and sometimes agency of the pieces as such, struggling with their places within narrative, is what allows rika who is described as originally being a piece under the control of a game-master to ascend as a witch. but, that's still different from suggesting they're literally the souls of the real breathing human beings who died in the rokkenjima explosion, somehow actually literally put under the control of yasuda sayo in a magic purgatorial space.

even struggling to describe it as such feels insufficient and reductive, though. very deep and complicated, i tell you. lights pipe, kicks back in chair. falls over in chair and gets concussion, never speaks again.

[akatokuro]

do you mind explaining exactly what's going on in episode 6 of umineko irt chick beato? reading it felt kind of icky bc of all the kinzo metaphors but im not sure if im reading it correctly? and when beatrice is talking to herself how does this relate to yasu? im stupid

no, the ick is the correct reading

chick beato is functioning in two primary ways: she herself, in a vacuum, is simply a compartmentalized, isolated personification of yasu's feelings of love for battler that happened in reality (so, this 'aspect' of beatrice that was born when yasu made the decision to shift the love for battler from shannon to beatrice to separate it from her daily human existence). however, on the level of the meta narrative in the 'present', what yasu 'created' in this way, so to speak, is also utilized to create a parallel to kuwadorian beatrice and kinzo with battler.

i get what ryukishi was trying to do, and there are elements of it that might have seemed clever on paper, but yeah, not a super big fan of that choice either in several ways. i get it, and i appreciate the temptation of seeing kinzo through a romanticized lens being a part of yasu trying to process everything and how agonizing it all was, but i also don't really need or want to see an obvious wink-wink parallel of a father-daughter abuse/denial of personhood situation that culminated in rape and death result narratively in celebration and happy marriage play out in the "real-time" story, either.

i'm totally willing to say that i think ryukishi goes too sympathetic with kinzo overall, especially in regards to this, unfortunately, and it's a scar upon the fabric of umineko as a whole.

[akatokuro]

A... terrible question (sorry!): Between Hanyuu, Featherine and Eua, who do you think is the most compelling between the three. That being said, I'm willing to say that Hanyuu is probably the least compelling out of the three due to... how WTF her mentality is. I mean, "I want Rika to be saved from June 1983" but then says "why so sad about dying? you'll live in another loop" but when she finally lives through it, then basically says "the looping power is a mistake", for one thing.

hanyuu is a bad person and, i think, a pretty badly written character, but at least there's something there to sink your teeth into in terms of her personal selfishness and passivity, her true priorities versus her stated ones, and how truly toxic that wound up being for rika. hanyuu's flaws were not handled with the gravity and nuance i would have liked, but at least they are there and they can be discussed. she's still a character.

are... are featherine and eua characters? what am i looking at. what are their thought processes. what are they dealing with. b-boredom as a witch. well, ok.

featherine and eua aren't characters so much as they're demonstrations for us to better understand the power of authorship and the boredom of witches, respectively, i think.

so i guess it'd still have to be hanyuu!

[akatokuro]

Can you talk about Beatrice's character development? I feel like that often gets overshadowed by Yasu, even though how she changes throughout her games with Battler is super fascinating as well.

beatrice's development through the meta arc is golden but i'm not sure i'd really separate it from yasu, per se, since i at least see meta-beatrice proper as basically a relatively straightforward continuation of yasu. it's pretty clear that she's basically Just Yasu On A Higher Plane (however you want to translate that for yourself: fiction, purgatory, meta, what have you) who has immersed herself into the power and persona of the beatrice role for battler's benefit, still trying to reach him.

but yes, the roller coaster she goes through in her approaches to battler and her temptations to abandon her goals in favor of a shallow, fantasy-based relationship with him, and then struggling with the reality of her defeat, are wrenching and fascinating and deeply human. it's just that when we get a sense of her internal struggle and genuine emotional processes behind the bluster, i usually associate it/assign it mentally to 'yasu' as opposed to a separate category for beatrice. but that's just my mindset!

[akatokuro]

What are your thoughts on Onikakushi-hen?

really genuinely excellent self-contained horror experience

[akatokuro]

What do you think the very last CG of the game, the "I dedicate this tale to my beloved witch, Beatrice" is about? Toyha to Yasu? Battler to Yasu, but not the EP 8 game then? Is it referencing EP 6?

i mean, i think it's obviously meant to be a wide net that encapsulates a deep, encompassing feeling scattered amongst all of those things and more (there's a trace of ryukishi himself there, a trace of the readership, a trace of the 'golden rose tossed onto the catbox in the sea' from the ending of ep8...) but i believe textually it's from battler's dedication to beatrice's coffin in the form of dawn of the golden witch.

i could be wrong, though. i'm time-traveling back like fifteen years in my memory and not bothering to get up to actually verify. my Sources, are bad

[akatokuro]

I wish we were told what happened to Rudolf to cause him to be the way he is. When they finally start killing in EP7, Kyrie mentioned converting the gold "will be difficult"; but Rudolf downright dismisses it as "pile of shit", as if the family and their achievements are all worthless (how Kinzo-like in the worst way possible). We know about Kyrie's grievances. EP2TP Rosa mentioned Rudolf was bullied by Krauss and Eva but I wonder what exactly is it that pushed him to such cold, nihilistic view.

i don't think it's hard to infer and this may be my personal viewpoint and experiences talking, but rudolf was very recognizable to me. he was raised in the same toxic, abusive environment as the others, but i guess you could say he was in a position as the third sibling where he could "fade into the background" and get by with putting on that sort of "lovable scoundrel" persona he does most of the time. what i mean by that is that eva and krauss are obviously having high-stakes yugioh duels over the successorship in the foreground, and rosa is the punching bag by being the youngest by a considerable age gap, so someone like rudolf is going to learn survival skills by, well, going with the flow. keeping his nose to the ground in terms of self-interest, understanding he's basically a scavenger in the midst of the upfront explosive family drama happening otherwise. which is precisely the behavior he demonstrates with kyrie.

so yeah, the pattern we see in the tea party with rudolf obviously being capable of human emotions and regrets, but also being conditioned to "turn them off" with a casual shrug and just go with the atrocity makes total sense in terms of his offscreen upbringing in the environment we see through other perspectives. it's, yeah, a sense of nihilism and pathologic irresponsibility that ended up with him in the kyrie-asumu position to begin with.

rudolf is a bad person in that horrifying way real people often are. umineko.png

[akatokuro]

Umineko thoughts: after thinking about it too much, I consider Kyrie to be a dark reflection of Yasu in like, so many ways. Both are smart people, but Yasu is the far more empathic one for example. Big difference especially when remembering Yasus very painful and sad 'this body cannot love' and Kyries 'yeah i just casually made sure rudolf would marry me by baby trapping him lol'

i think there's definitely something to consider in umineko centering the idea of love (usually specifically romantic love) and kyrie's particularly poisonous, self-centered take on it. there's also something to the way how as events play out in "real life," yasu's faint hope for a romanticized outcome is so easily steamrolled by kyrie's vulgar ruthlessness - but it's not as though kyrie "wins," either, as eva's magic is the only triumph that ends up emerging from rokkenjima from the heap of bodies.

i'm not particularly interested in excessively demonizing kyrie or saying "see here's all the ways she's the Evil Counterpart," (i think that's reductive) but she the way she casually invoked bern and lambda's domains in her battle with jessica - and her own spin on viewing love as a Battlefield of life and death where one has to overcome one's Enemies - was Very Something.

[akatokuro]

So, this whole bit about Beato needing to be acknowledged as a witch in these games, do you think when the pieces go against Beato on the gameboard that she's written them to act like that, or does she genuinely have to convince them to acknowledge her before she can control them?

the acknowledgment rule is less about the pieces directly all acknowledging her and more, how to put it, about the general rule of her existence she's trying to make battler understand. the pieces themselves don't actually matter to beatrice anymore, they're all dead, and whatever happens to them and whatever they decide, the laid rule is that everything gets reset after two days anyway. however, beatrice's existence depends on the wider world acknowledging the possibility of her as a witch causing the wider rokkenjima incident.

so i think it's better to think of the acknowledgment rule as less about a concrete goal in regards to the gameboard on rokkenjima and more understanding yasu's mindset about her desperation to be validated and cover up what she sees as her ugly, unacceptable truth with a preferable fantasy.

[akatokuro]

Higurashi characterization that I honestly missed aside from Tatarigoroshi Keiichi is Meakashi Shion, Watanagashi/Meakashi and Tsumihoroboshi Rena. They were the absolute best, but hardly around in later eps. GouSotsu reduced Rena to being the "crazy killer" or the screaming innocent helpless girl. Shion... well, anyone seen her these days? Also the Mion killing Shion by choking scene was extremely in Wataakashi was so out of place to me given the sheer rage Meakashi Shion had towards Sonozakis.

wataakashi was the absolute funniest shit in terms of a golden chance to properly develop mion's character and mindset (which have always been ripe with incredible potential) falling into the writers' lap and then that is what they come up with. yeah, could have missed the incomprehensible "shion crying and shaking so hard she somehow drops her weapon and trips straight into mion's chokehold" though.

sonozaki mion, not even once

[akatokuro]

What are your thoughts on Watanagashi-hen?

shion rules, mion drools

[akatokuro]

Barring the Final Fantasy Online Games (11, 14, Brave Exvius, etc); which Final Fantasy games do you consider, "Ah yeah, these ones. Would go through it again sometime when I'm older."?

probably tactics, vii, ix, and x

i have a lot of affection for the memory of vi but i also vividly remember my prominent thought every time i replay it being "wow hm this does not hold up huh. the tech and writing were not at the level they needed to be to tell that story"

that being said terra branford hnnnggggg.

[akatokuro]

An aspect of EP8 manga that I didn't really like aside from the Cage of Obligations moment is probably the battle scenes turned into "Erika now knows all the answers to the previous mysteries and uses it to destroy the Golden Land and as answer sheet". I'm not a big fan of Erika in general since EP6, but the idea that she being the one to reveal the answers is just destroying all the development in EP5 and EP6 so she could be another "~badass unfeeling dignified~ smugbitch troll villain".

i'm not even a fan of erika but ep8 basically sealed me into disliking her largely because it felt that it annihilated any sense of organic character development, continuation, or actual growth from her good and compelling bits from ep5 and ep6, in favor of fanservicery, memery and plot devicery/expositionery. what you described certainly falls under that umbrella. it's a shame.

[akatokuro]

What did you and yume think about the YuGiOh Dark Side of Dimensions movie?

we laughed

[akatokuro]

If Yasu and Battler survived, and got romantically involved, how comfortable do you think Yasu would be with intimacy? Where do you think her limits would be and how long would it take for her to cross some of them? Would she be emotionally open but maybe not physically intimate? How far do you think she'd go on either end?

i feel like this is a question i can't really comfortably answer in terms of "this is what i think," but rather in terms of "this is what i hope," and obviously my hope is that yasu would be able to, with battler's support, reach whatever level she needs to to embrace herself and find satisfaction and happiness.

as far as textually pinning something down on her goes, all i can say is that i truly appreciate how much physical intimacy and sexuality was obviously incredibly prominent on yasu's mind on all times, and she's obviously extremely eager for it in a vacuum, but is deeply held back by her fear and shame. she's horny as hell and good for her.

[akatokuro]

What was the point of Tohya's forgeries 3-6?

demonstrating tohya processing his memories and thoughts about the real rokkenjima incident seeping into the lore from the starting point of yasu's bottles and widening the thematic net of the power fiction has to guide and, ideally, heal, i think.

i mean, if what you meant was "what was the point of assigning those arcs as being tohya's forgeries in the meta" and not something broader like "why do those episodes exist" or "why does tohya's presence in the narrative exist." the vagaries of language. yasu's struggles are wide and vast...