#and ended up scrapping it because i was afraid these detective fiction rules were taken seriously and everyone would trash my story lol

[pochapal]

I don’t know if you’ve been asked this before, but what was your experience with detective mystery novels before umineko?

i've always gravitated towards stories with mysteries or something obtuse to puzzle over and figure out but i'm not actually that versed in detective fiction at all haha. the genres i'm normally into lean more towards horror and speculative/literary and also everything that homestuck is so while a lot of stuff i read does have central mysteries guiding their plots, the specific construction of detective mystery isn't something i am incredibly familiar with on the whole.

my closest experience to detective mystery fiction was actually when i was super into danganronpa as a teen and i ended up trying to write my own original killing game fan story. i never finished it and it's kind of cringe looking back at it but i did spend several years of my life trying to construct solid "hard but fair" murder mystery cases (i still have a bunch of files on my hard drive from when i planned it all out lol) that i think taught me a lot about the experience of a murder mystery from both the perspective of the writer and the reader. a lot of that was making up a guy in my head and imagining them trying to catch me out based on where their thinking would likely be at each stage. so then i was also thinking of my mystery but also how to throw this hypothetical guy off the scent while still making something solvable. the writing process was very much like chessboard spinning but if you put the chessboard in a 1 million rpm washing machine and turned into a weird psychological game of cat and mouse between me and a person that didn't necessarily exist.

the mysteries i published were kind of not that great (their conceits were "how can you find *the* culprit when the culprit is actually two people in tandem" and "an incredibly obvious case that becomes complicated by everybody else's assumptions and overthinking") since i wrote and planned them out when i was like 17 but the later cases i never got around to doing when i hit my stride and sketched out the rest of this story would have been way cooler (one murder was going to hinge around a really nasty wordplay trick to do with the time of death that technically wasn't a lie but was incredibly misleading and deceptive and another was an elaborate cause-effect chain involving a publicly witnessed indisputable suicide as the trigger) if i'd gotten around to completing the story. i will forever be haunted by this one particular locked double locked room murder i spent six months of my life sketching out down to the minute by minute positioning of the characters. it would have had the 2018 fanganronpa community trembling in their boots if i had ever realized my vision lmao.

anyway i guess my experience with detective mystery fiction is coming more from the position of a writer than a reader which i think comes through a little when you examine some of my thought processes (my approach at times is very much "if i was writing this story right now what would i do here" and then i search for evidence to try and back that up) even if i'm not super well-read or familiar with the genre outside of like one vn series lol. i know about making fiction and i know about keeping people guessing via revealing and concealing information and past a certain point most fiction operates under similar principles so that's how i got into understanding and approaching mystery. i think it's a fun genre, both to produce and to read now that i'm reading something that is more seriously presenting itself as a piece of detective mystery fiction! umineko is good because it really is scratching a specific kind of itch i never really address in my own writing these days because there's a specific time and occasion to produce these kinds of mysteries. hope this illuminates my understanding of/relationship to this genre a little more!

[crystalninjaphoenix]

Legacy Torch

More Branded AU cause this drawing happened and I immediately knew there was a story behind it that needed to be told. It is the beginning. I mean, not the *very* beginning but where it all started nonetheless. Remember, the Branded AU is made by Jay, @blade-of-memeora! Go check it out on their blog!

Jamie knew he should be in bed by now. His parents had a very strict rule: bedtime is ten o’clock, no later. But it was now nearly eleven, and they hadn’t appeared in the living room doorway to tell him to put the book away and go get his pajamas on. That could mean only one thing: they were in the attic again.

He wasn’t sure what they kept up there. Whenever he asked, Mom always changed the subject and Dad said it was too dangerous for a thirteen-year-old to get involved in. Whatever that meant. His imagination had traveled the road from illegal activity to government agents to aliens. But most likely none of those were the case. It was probably something boring for adults.

Though he hated to admit it, JJ was actually starting to get tired. His eyelids were drooping too often to concentrate on the words of his science fiction novel. Maybe he actually should go to bed. He slid a bookmark in between the pages and closed the book, setting it on the end table and stretching.

There was a noise. JJ froze. That didn’t sound like the normal night time creaking of their old wooden house. It sounded...deliberate. And he couldn’t quite identify it. “Hello?” he called out. “Mom? Dad? I promise I’m going to sleep now.” He listened for their reply, but got nothing. Just when he was wondering if he was imagining things, he heard it again. Like knocking. Uneasily, he crept in the direction he thought it came from, the stockings on his feet muffling his footsteps.

He ended up poking his head down the hallway. The door to Dad’s study was open, though there was no light coming through the crack in the doorway. Even still, he was sure that was where the noise was coming from. In fact, there was another noise, like something sliding. Had he been mistaken about where his parents were? JJ hesitated, then figured he should check to see if it really was them or if something had just fallen...repeatedly.

He pulled the study door open a bit, but didn’t go inside. The lights were off, and it was pretty dark, but the light of the moon was coming in the open window, enough for his eyes to see a moving figure. He instantly picked up on three things that were wrong. One, the window shouldn’t be open. Not only had it been closed last time he went in here, but Mom was obsessed with keeping all the windows and doors locked after sundown. Two, the moving figure was not either of his parents. It was obviously a guy, so it clearly wasn’t Mom, and it was too slim and short to be Dad. Three, the guy had an animal head. Obviously it couldn’t be an actual animal head, but that’s what it looked like. He could see the curved triangles for the upright ears, and when the guy turned sideways he could make out what looked like a snout, like for a fox or wolf of some kind.

This guy wasn’t supposed to be here. Jamie could feel his breath quickening, but his feet were glued to the spot. He just watched as the guy fussed with the papers on Dad’s desk, opening the drawers too. When the guy turned his attention to the filing cabinets around the room, JJ suddenly found his feet could work, and he scurried away.

There was an intruder! A burglar of some kind, maybe? Did burglars wear masks? As soon as the thought occurred to him, Jamie remembered. Wasn’t there something going on with people in masks right now? He remembered watching things on the news about masked people robbing stores and houses. His parents always went quiet when stories like that came on.

His parents! He should tell them. They’d know what to do. He’d check the attic, see if they were really there. He took a deep breath and started walking down the hallway, listening very carefully for any creaks in the floorboards. When he reached the staircase and started climbing up, he kept to the edges and away from the center. He read in one of his books that there was less chance of making a noise there.

Once he reached the second story, he scurried forward towards the trapdoor in the ceiling, pulling down on the rope to open it. The ladder fell down with a rattle, but more importantly there was light up there. That meant that his parents were up in the attic. With another deep breath to calm his pounding heart, he climbed up the ladder.

“Jameson Daniel Jackson! What did we tell you about coming up here?”

“Dad!” he cried, pulling himself up onto the attic floor and standing up. “This—this is important.”

His dad was a big man, though not a large one, with blonde hair pulled back in a mini ponytail and an impressive mustache/beard combination. JJ didn’t resemble him much, except in the eyes and ears. He looked more like his mom, a slender woman with rich brown hair and brown eyes behind glasses. Currently, those eyes were giving him the Mom Stare of Death. “Is it important enough to break our first rule?” she asked sternly.

JJ nodded. “Yes! Yes it is! There’s someone in the house.”

The shift was immediate. His parents went from disapproval to alert in a millisecond. “Are you sure?” Dad rumbled.

He nodded even more urgently. “I’m sure! I saw him. Well, I didn’t get a good look because it was dark, but he was in your study, and—and I think he was wearing a mask, it looked like a dog or something…”

The tension immediately cranked up the moment the word “mask” left his mouth. His parents exchanged looks. They...they were afraid. The realization sent a jolt through Jamie’s stomach. Parents weren’t supposed to get scared.

“Charles, what do we do?” Mom whisper-shouted, panic evident in her voice.

“I’m not sure,” Dad answered, running a hand across his mustache in thought. “They’re strong. We might not be able to fight him off. We...we might have to run.”

“And leave all this? When we’re so close?” Mom gestured to the room. JJ took that as a sign to look around. The attic wasn’t quite as big as the rest of the house, but every inch of it had been packed full of stuff. Hanging lamps in the ceiling shed light on stacks of boxes, newspaper clippings with bold headlines and photographs of masked people pinned on corkboards, maps on tables, and sticky notes across every surface. Lines of thread connected the scraps of paper. It looked...like something you might see in a crime show, for when the detective character goes crazy chasing down their criminal nemesis. Was this what they were working on? Some sort of conspiracy?

“I know, Martha,” Dad said wearily. “But we can always rebuild it. This is our lives we’re talking about. And...Jamie.” He looked down at JJ.

Mom paled, seemingly guilty for forgetting about her son. She nodded. “Alright. But should he stay here? I don’t think he knows about him, just us. If something were to happen…”

“No!” Jamie burst out. He squeezed past Dad and flung himself at Mom, wrapping his arms around her. “I want to come too! Don’t leave me!”

Mom patted his head. “It wouldn’t be forever. We’d only need to get out of the house and shake off the masked. We wouldn’t leave you here, Jamie.”

“It—your mother’s right.” Dad stepped forward. “It’ll be safer up here. And we’ll come back. We promise.”

“Dad, I’m not a moron. I know you might not. You...you always said whatever this was is dangerous. W-well! Now I know why. And I know it’s not fair to promise that.”

“We’re going to come back,” Mom said insistently. She tilted JJ’s head up so he was looking her in her tear-rimmed eyes. “But we can’t risk you coming with us. Jameson, I...I don’t think either of us could stand to see something happen to you. Your safety is our priority. So please...just stay here. At least until morning.”

He’d never seen Mom cry before. The sight cracked his stubborn resolve. “Okay, Mom,” he said quietly. “I promise.”

Mom pulled him close and hugged him tightly. It was too short; time was of the essence. When she let go, Dad swooped in to take her place with a squeeze. “We love you, Jamie,” he whispered.

“I—I love you too,” he said. His eyes were watering, but he blinked them away. He had to show he was okay with this.

His parents slowly headed back toward the attic trapdoor. Before they climbed down, each one of them blew a kiss at him. After a moment, the ladder folded back into place, and the trapdoor swung closed.

Jameson didn’t know what to do. He didn’t feel sleepy anymore. On the contrary, he was full of nervous energy, listening for any sign of something going wrong. To take his mind off things, he started examining the room in closer detail. The largest table in the center of the room was taken up by a large and very detailed map of their city and some of the surrounding area. Little flags were set in strategic locations. The other tables held maps of other cities, maps of remote towns, and one had a map of the whole country, cities marked with X’s in black marker.

Before he could take a look at anything else, though, he heard it. A crash, coming from downstairs. His heart twisted. He made it halfway toward the trapdoor before he remembered how he’d promised to stay here. But he kept staring at the trapdoor as more crashes echoed up. And then Mom screamed.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t stand by and listen. They were his parents, for god’s sake. They had to be alright. The trapdoor opened, ladder clattering to the floor. He climbed down, not bothering to look where he was putting his feet.

A problem became clear immediately. There was a hole in the floor of the hallway, as wide as the hall itself. A hellish red glow was coming up from beneath. Jameson looked down. He could see the first floor hallway below. It was empty, the red glow coming from somewhere else. He swallowed nervously, then took a running start and leaped across the hole, stumbling on the other side but still making the landing. Next stop, stairs. He ran down them two at a time.

The first floor hall was a mess. There were deep gouges in the walls. Like something had scraped along it, scooping out plaster. There were parts where the wiring was exposed. And there were still more crashes, coming from the kitchen. The glow was coming from there too. Jameson ran forward, darting inside.

He was met with a scene so terrible he couldn’t believe it. Mom had fallen, leaning against the fridge and pressing a hand to a spreading patch of red on her shirt, while Dad was standing over her, a large knife in one hand and what looked like one of the floor lamps from the front room in his other. He was glaring at a man in a copper mask, shaped like some sort of dog with upward ears. The man had red hair that was glowing, and his eyes were glowing the same. Scribbles of red light were dancing around his hands and fingers, darting out seemingly on their own and hitting random spots nearby. Every time the bolts connected with something, they left a small, smoking crater behind.

This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t possible. He—he had to do something. He looked around. On total impulse, he ran over to the nearest counter and grabbed the toaster, pulling its plug out of its socket. He threw it at the red man.

The chaotic red blasts suddenly jumped into organization, forming bands that wrapped around the back of the man, protecting him. The toaster was caught in the bands, which latched onto it and fizzled and sparked, growing too bright to look at before dropping the shocked and blackened husk of the appliance to the ground.

The man’s head whipped around. Jameson froze the moment those glowing red eyes locked onto him, but luckily it seemed the man was frozen as well. Maybe surprised by the presence of a child?

“Leave him alone!” Dad threw the knife. It was a good throw, blade first and aimed right at the red man’s head, but it was no use. The bands of red electric chaos swiveled around, catching it and burning it just like with the toaster. And in the movement, Jameson noticed something. Like...strings? Attached to the red man’s neck and wrists. He hadn’t noticed them before because they were the same color as the energy, but once he did notice...they seemed odd. He watched as one twitched, seeming to pull, and all of a sudden the man had turned back around to face his parents. The bands of red disbanded, once again becoming nothing but energy. The red man raised his open hand, and the energy gathered.

“No!” Jameson shrieked, rushing forward. Dad did the same on the other side, lamp raised in one final hurrah. It wasn’t enough. The energy exploded, a concentrated blast of chaos like someone had harnessed the power of dynamite to go in only one direction. Jameson instinctively stopped in his tracks, throwing his hands up and closing his eyes. When he opened them again, he wished he hadn’t. “No no  no no!”

He didn’t even care about the red man anymore. He ran right past him, kneeling next to his parents, landing in a warm puddle. “Mom! Dad!” He grabbed them, shaking their fragmented bodies. It was clear from before he even tried that it wasn’t any good. They couldn’t get up in this state. There was so much blood. It was on his hands, his arms, even his face. When did it get on his face? A splash from the initial blast that had made it past his arms when he’d flung them up in defense? There were no tears. Because there was no grief yet, just shock and disbelief and sheer, utter pain. He looked up. The red man was still there. He couldn’t move. He wasn’t sure he could.

The man wasn’t doing anything. Just staring.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. There wasn’t supposed to be a kid here. Why was there a kid here? What did he do about that? And now the kid was just looking at him with—with fear and anguish. He looked—he looked like him. Like him as a child.

He’d been a kid once. Before—before there was a mask. He’s wearing the mask now. But it hadn’t always been that was. What—what happened? He remembered seeing someone in a mask, going after someone else, he’d tried to step in, and another one had swooped down like an owl going after a mouse, and then—and then—

He gasped, stumbling backward. His eyes flickered from their red glow to plain blue. No, no, no this wasn’t—he wasn’t—he was looking around, fully taking in his surroundings for the first time in what felt like years. Everything was red. There were bodies—oh god, you couldn’t exactly call those bodies, could you? And the heat. It was suffocating, scorching. It was coming from him, from whatever this energy was. Couldn’t the kid feel it? As he watched, the energy started roiling, writhing. No no no, this belonged to him, didn’t it? He could’ve sworn it did. But it wasn’t acting like it belonged to him, it wasn’t listening to his desperate commands to stop. It was just getting wilder, becoming a whirlwind.

His hands flew to the mask. It was burning red-hot, and he instinctively jerked away, letting out a shriek as he stumbled backwards. But he had to get it off, so he reached up again and tried to pull it away. But it was too hot to touch. His back hit a wall and he slumped downward. It was burning, burning, burning, too much to even scream, just whimper.

The red man was backing away, but that didn’t mean much when this—this red chaos was bouncing off the walls, whirling crazily. It was doing more than gouging through walls, it was tearing right through them in places, picking up every object in the kitchen and throwing it across the room, where they crashed into the walls and made even more gaps.

Jameson was screaming. He didn’t know if it was words, pleas to stop, or if it was just a reaction to the blades of heat that were running across his skin. There was no damage, but it hurt worse than hell. He had to get out. He had to—his parents—too late, he had to get out. Stay safe like they wanted him to. But it hurt. It hurt so much.

He started crawling. The red man had fallen against the wall, head bowed. Jameson tried to edge around him, so that his right side was to him. He couldn’t go all the way. Every so often, when the energy decided to surge at random points, he collapsed, curling up into a ball and wailing until he could move again. Inch by painful inch, he crept forward on hands and knees.

This was bad. Jackie—his name was Jackie, that was his name—couldn’t contain whatever this was. He was trying, but the blazing, biting heat—the heat on his fucking face—the searing, melting metal, it was too much. He felt it, felt the heat building up inside. The kid had managed to make his way to the nearest door, right next to Jackie himself. He needed to get out, before—

Another red explosion. This one, undirected. It flung out in all directions, absolutely destroying the wall Jackie was leaning against, leaving him laying on the ground. He couldn’t see the kid anymore, just red gusts of seething energy. Jackie closed his eyes. It wouldn’t let him pass out until this energy had been expelled in this chaotic way. So he lay there, with no energy but somehow still twitching and jerking, and let everything burn around him.

When the blast came, Jameson was picked up and hurled far away, going right through one of the gaping holes in the kitchen walls and flying until he hit a more intact one. He landed hard on his left side, but he was more concerned with the right. And he kept screaming. His arm—his arm was torture, agony slicing up his nerves. His eye felt like it had a thousand knives shoved inside. The tears were coming now, tears of pure pain. He couldn’t move it right arm. Why couldn’t he—why couldn’t he feel it? Why had half his vision gone dark?

It was still here. The energy. Grabbing at the walls, ripping out plaster and electrical systems, reducing furniture to matchsticks, demolishing everything. He was wailing, but the red was in his throat, ripping it up and shredding it. The harder he screeched, the more he let in, the less he could breathe as he choked on red pain.

He didn’t remember the moment he lost consciousness.

Jameson opened his eye to white, and he immediately closed it again. Everything hurt. Not the intense, slicing, burning pain of before, just a constant, dull ache. But that didn’t mean it was comfortable, especially after the relief that was unconsciousness. But once he got used to the aching, he noticed that he was lying in a bed. An unfamiliar one. There were bandages around his right eye, and around his right arm—no, the place where his right arm used to be. It was torn off in that electric storm of energy. Same thing probably happened to his eye.

After a moment, he cracked open his eye again. He immediately recognized that he was in a hospital. Soft light was shining through a nearby window, bouncing off the white walls. There was a bag of clear liquid and a bag of red liquid—blood, each feeding into his left arm through a tube and needle. He tried to sit up, but found he couldn’t. Too much effort.

“Oh! Here, hon, let me help you with that.” Jameson let out a soft gasp as he realized there was a nurse in the room. She’d been on his blind side, and he had to turn to look at her. She picked up a small remote, connected to the bed with a cable. “See, here you can make the bed move up and down. I’ll do it for you right now, but if you feel up to it in the future go ahead. If not, this red button will call a nurse to help you out. Okay?” She waited for Jameson’s confirming nod. “Okay, hon, just indicate when.”

When the bed reached the appropriate angle, Jameson tried to tell her to stop, but what came out was a small start of a word that immediately cut off. His throat didn’t hurt. He could still talk. But when he tried it just—it felt like he was back there, seeing and tasting nothing but red.

Luckily, she seemed to get the point. “Alright, here we are.” She put the remote on the bed, near Jameson’s left hand. “D’you remember what happened, hon?”

Jameson slowly nodded.

The nurse smiled. “Well, that’s good. That means you probably don’t have a concussion or damage to the brain. Do you feel up to talking about it?”

He hurriedly shook his head, crying out a bit when it shot pain down his neck.

“Don’t move if it hurts, hon. It’s okay, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.” She smiled reassuringly. “But the police are pretty stumped. They said it looked like a bomb went off, at the same time someone started a fire and a lightning bolt hit the house. I...I’m sorry, dear, but there’s nothing left. And…” she hesitated, clearly reluctant to say this next part. “...and...you were the only one they found.”

Jameson nodded, showing that he knew that. He closed his eyes against the sudden onslaught of tears. His parents were dead...Mom and Dad were dead. Trying to get out so he could stay safe. Well, he’d certainly stayed safe, hadn’t he, running in to find them and ending up missing some body parts? The tears managed to escape.

“I’ll leave you for a bit, dear,” the nurse said softly. “I’ll get the doctor. If you feel like talking then, she’d be happy to listen.” Her footsteps retreated. A door opened and closed, and then there was nothing.

He wouldn’t feel like talking then. He doubted he ever would again. Opening his eyes, he stared at nothing. Why had this happened? His parents had been investigating something, hadn’t they? Something to do with all these masked people...he’d seen the photographs and newspaper clippings in the attic, they were all related to the masked. So...did they send one of them after them because they found, or were about to find, something important? And when this guy had seen Jameson, the guy...freaked out? Maybe he had orders to destroy the evidence too, and went a little bit overboard.

Jameson reached up and wiped his tears away with his left hand. Well, he’d have to get used to that. Maybe he’d get a prosthetic. Or maybe he could make one? If he could even figure out how to do that. And what about the eye? God, he’d have to get used to a lot, wouldn’t he.

He sighed deeply, resuming his staring contest with the opposite wall. Mom and Dad had been onto something, and they’d died for it. That meant one thing.

He’d have to finish what they started.