#beatrice is also western

[kushanna]

what gets me about the ushiromiya western names is that they're christmas themed. kinzo sir you do understand you named your sons after santa klaus and rudolph the reindeer right. you cannot have the names klaus and rudolph together and not evoke christmas. i hope you're aware of that cause if my father had named me santa klaus i would also not hesitate in keeping his dead body a secret from the rest of the family

[nyaagolor]

Thinking about a Natsuhi-Beatrice concept. Some assorted notes under the cut

One of my hcs is that all the witches are the age when their irl counterparts "gave up". Beatrice is 19 because that's when Sayo decided for sure to commit the massacre, Eva-Beatrice is in middle school because that's when Eva gave up on becoming the family head, and so Natsutrice is 15, mentally stuck in her wedding day when she realized she would not longer be Natsuhi, but a borrowed womb and wife for the Ushiromiya family's successor and not much else

Her outfit is based off 1950s Italian wedding dresses with elements of Lolita fashion (the layers and roses, mostly) but also tinged with red both to show her sins as well as her Shinto background (red features on many shinto wedding kimonos underneath the white). I specifically wanted to have the darkest red on her hands (representing the whole baby cliff thing), her innermost layer of clothing around her legs (fertility issues / womanhood related trauma) and the trail of her dress (always dragging the past forward). Because blood is used as a representation for sin, I wanted to use the red to show both Natsuhi's own actions / philosophies as well as mix it through the western and eastern influences on this design to call back to the ideas of forced assimilation and conquest that Natsuhi represents within the broader narrative. Also bc it looks cool

As for how she would actually act within the narrative I have not thought about that much, but I think because of her obsession with cleanliness and her constantly requesting to cover the deceased's faces during the Episodes there would be at least some aspect of Shinto funeral customs involved. I like to think all the bodies would be laying down + facing north, their faces covered and with piles of salt by the door instead of the magic circles. It's less gory, but deeply unsettling either way

[aurianavaloria]

The final result of the genealogy project I mentioned previously.

*faints*

For personal research purposes, I've compiled the immediate relations of the royal family of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem at about the year 1181AD. I'm posting it here in case anyone else finds it useful for their own research.

Do take note of a few things, however:

I wasn't able to put absolutely everyone on it - the tree is difficult enough to read as it is, so I only included those I considered relevant to the local politics; for example, the vast majority of the Komnenos Dynasty is left out, but those listed are all related in some form or fashion.

Likewise, most relations extending to Western Europe are also excluded (IE: Aimery and Guy's other siblings).

I've provided a key to help read it as well as color-coded annotations where appropriate regarding state relations/major houses. Do note that the persons labeled as "deceased" are deceased by 1181. Several dates are unknown, however - no death date was provided for Countess Beatrice de Saone, so I didn't mark her as deceased, even though it is probable that she is by that date.

Be sure to follow the marriage lines closely. There are several cases of second and even third marriages. The marriage ties are especially intriguing in regards to the controversial Ibelins...

Andronikos I is highlighted differently because... he's Andronikos. Seriously, read up on him sometime if you haven't yet. He's... something.

Finally, I've also included the dynastic coats of arms when available (mostly from wikipedia). Some of these arms are different between the European and Levantine family branches, as well as different from attributed arms given in later centuries. An example of this is the arms of de Lusignan, which appeared as shown on the chart until Richard the Lionheart granted a red rampant lion charge on top of it later on. The arms of the Jerusalem cadet branch of the House of Anjou (d'Anjou-Jerusalem) are debated at this point, so I've just given the ruling family the later-known arms of the kingdom. Makes it easier to follow the path of the crown.

Obviously, you'll need to view it in a new tab/window to get all the details. Some of the words/names also bleed over into other lines here and there, but that's just the way the tree generator smashed them together.

[gveret-fic]

💗 Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. spread the self-love! 💗

Hm I'm gonna go with Sucked In cuz it was probably the most fun to write and it turned out nice and tight, Made of Stars cuz it was pretty out there but I put a lot of heart in it and it ended up connecting with people, Andrey's Laundromat cuz it was such a silly premise but it worked out, LDR cuz there's not an unnecessary word in there and I like the atmosphere, and I'll throw in Forgotten Right Hand cuz it's my first 1st person pov and it said all I needed it to say.

I'm not gonna miss an opportunity to rec shit I like so let's also do 5 more by other people that I recently read and loved:

The Shape of Soup by the brilliant ekingston (supercorp), the first sc story I've read in years and a tour de force of the best kind of miscommunication, featuring a superpowered child menace, an inexplicably happy Lena, and erotic cello playing.

the gifted and the damned by the fantastic karalovesallthegirls (gretson), a funky little story about superpowers that make you monstrous and the isolation of only being able to connect with people in the worst possible moments of their lives.

Network Connectivity Issues by the poignant Acre_of_wheat (Kit/Jade), a college camgirl au with insight and feeling and autistic rep that knocked my socks right off. Also biomedical engineering rep as a fun bonus.

the book of occasional services by the immortal seabiscuit (avatrice), a flawlessly executed western/horror/heist/romance that starts with cheeky outlaw Ava kidnapping nun-with-something-to-hide Beatrice and spins out wildly from there.

Strings by the iconic aliceinwonderbra (Faith/Buffy) for heart-aching, hot and intimate friends with benefits yearning for more, featuring a Faith who's trying her best but doesn't quite think she's worth it.

[xiyouyanyi]

Welcome!

@ryin-silverfish here, also known as "That person who talks a lot about FSYY and fox spirits".

This is my little LMK AU sideblog, which started off as a bunch of disjointed background notes for my fanfics, but developed into its own gigantic thing over time.

I've said elsewhere that, despite LMK (and many other JTTW adjacent works) lifting certain tidbits wholesale from FSYY——like Nezha's backstory or the Golden Dragon Shears, neither the show nor the fanworks really go into the implications of a FSYY/JTTW combined universe.

(For one, Zhao Gongming's three sisters, the Sanxiao, showing up to kick Jin and Yin's butts for stealing and breaking their treasure would be very satisfying, and also hella badass.)

Well, be the change you want, they said. 

So here it is: Journey of the Gods, aka "LMK, but FSYY is also canon and an extremely influential historical event".

Inspired by @digitaldoeslmk 's By the Book AU.

What even is FSYY?

"Ancient China's bloodiest bureaucracy recruitment program, kickstarted by a king who simped too hard for the creator goddess of humanity and the fox girl she sent to end his dynasty."

"I'll write my own God-Demon novel, with blackjacks and fox hookers and no Buddhist allegories!" ——Xu Zhonglin/Lu Xixing/Li Yunxiang

Okay, jokes aside: Investiture of the Gods(Fengshen Yanyi) is the other big "God-Demon Novel" of the Ming dynasty, written after JTTW. It's about the toppling of the Shang dynasty and its tyrannical King Zhou by King Wu of Zhou——but with more Daoism, immortals and demons helping out both sides, and ten billion magical formations and treasures. 

At the end of the story, almost everyone who died in battle were deified and became the 365 gods of the Celestial Bureaucracy, thus "Investiture of the Gods". 

Here is a link to the only full English translation of FSYY, by Gui Zhizhong.

Here is my overview of FSYY's grand overarching conflict, a.k.a. "Why are all the Daoist immortals fighting?" 

Compared to JTTW, it's a lot more formulaic and suffers from a massive character count inflation problem, but also extremely influential in Chinese folk religion, to the point of some modern temples, like Qingyang Palace, basically worshiping characters from the novel! Like, the western equivalent would be a church worshiping Dante and Beatrice from the Divine Comedy.

(Similarly, it is to orthodox Daoism what the Divine Comedy is to medieval Christian theology, and should not be treated as actual religious scriptures.)

Okay, FSYY happened in the LMK universe. So What?

Well, first, it will really do wonders to fill up that eerily empty Celestial Realm we see in the Spider Queen special, and the Celestial Bureaucracy will no longer consist of a grand total of five people.

Secondly, it can solve some major show-not-tell problems and actually give legitimacy to the grievances of the LMK Brotherhood + Havoc in Heaven, as well as fleshing out the Celestial Realm.

Third, so many cool magical treasures.

Fourth, LBD gets an origin story, with a twist.

Fifth, I delight in quality angst and horror, and FSYY had some seriously messed-up stuff and implications.

Sixth, Celestial Bureaucracy office politics.

Seventh, Nezha kicking asses and winning fights like he should.

Eighth, crazy Xianxia shit, as you’d expect from the great-granddaddy of modern Xianxia genre.

Ninth, infodumps about Chinese mythos and history trivias.

Tenth, Underworld lore.

...As you can probably tell, this is mostly just me nerding out and writing walls of texts. I'm not a very good artist and can't do Lego style, but will probably doodle some symbol/character designs for funsies.

I also derive most of my enjoyment from writing fix-its and worldbuilding, not shipping characters. Like, I love exploring individual characters through relationships, but just ain't a fan of romance.

There will be a lot of OCs, but unless otherwise specified, all of them will be based on actual characters from FSYY and JTTW, with a few folk gods sprinkled in for funsies.

With that taken care of: good luck and happy reading!

[evanatsuhi]

"hideyoshi would be perfectly ok with his wife cheating on him with another woman and would also support it because he is such an ally"

1.hideyoshi is established multiple times to be someone who is only ‘nice’ for appearances. the most prominent example being the scene where he tries to snatch beatrice’s letter away from maria in episode 1, leading to kyrie having to scold him for being so vicious towards an 8 year old child. hideyoshi, who has been built up to have a ‘fun uncle’ persona since the beginning of the episode, shows that this persona is nothing more than a front. you can also see his passivity in the way he ‘scolds’ eva when she oversteps her boundaries with the other family members, particularly natsuhi. comparing this to battler, who always tries to step in even if he witnesses a family member mistreating another (eg rosa with maria), the difference is night and day. not to say he’s actually a cold hearted monster or anything; these characters have more depth than simply being one note like that. but he really isn’t as nice of a person as he initially seems.

2. in episode 3, in an attempt to ‘bring eva back to her senses’, tries to remind her about what a good housewife she is. this is strange, considering pretty much the entire prologue of episode 3 has been about eva’s struggles with fighting against what kinzo wants her to become (a housewife who is subservient to her husband). if he truly understood what his wife is going through, why would he bring up how good she is at cooking and being in the kitchen in an attempt to ‘remind her of who she is’? this is the second point: hideyoshi may be sympathetic towards the fact that his wife is struggling with something bigger than himself, but he does not truly understand what that something is. this is because he too is a participant in the misogyny enacted against eva, even if they do honestly love each other.

3. in episode 1, it is established that hideyoshi's company is not doing so well. due to him lacking a backbone, his company's investors are trampling all over him and his hard work. eva is shown to be the one who is relentlessly helping and supporting him from behind the scenes, with her primary goals and motivations no longer being for herself but to support her husband. however, despite all of eva's work in fighting for her husband's company and trying to help him get out of his sticky situation, he still sees her as nothing more than his housewife (see number 2). this idea that hideyoshi is some kind of chad legend malewife ally all because he's not outright disrespectful to his wife the same way krauss is is strange to me, because if he really saw her for her true worth then why is he letting her do all this work for him for free. despite all of her fighting and support, she does not have any sort of position within his company. hideyoshi is not kinzo, he clearly respects eva and her tenacity. he acknowledges that she is capable and hardworking. so why is she still his housewife who is supposedly only known for cooking and cleaning for him.

4. hideyoshi and eva both lived through the meiji era, when japan would've been busy trying to align themselves more with 'western values'. one of these 'western values' is the concept of criminalizing homosexuality. hideyoshi is established as someone who does not actually stray very far from the status quo, and as someone who is 'nice' but not 'kind'. umineko is also a story where the time period has a pretty big bearing on the characters. surely this means nothing.

5. i take this shit very seriously.

tldr: he would not do that

[notsofriendlyfriendlyreminder]

Movies you should watch °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

non-spoilery reccomendations, actors bolded, three movies incoming :>

Dead poets society (1989)

dark academia, coming of age, how I wish I was born a boy

Who is surprised that I'm mentioning this movie first? Not people who have seen my account. Especially if you watch House and like Wilson, Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard) is the main character and trust, you will fall in love with him and all of his friends. Who doesn't want to see Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke), the new student, come out of his shell thanks to the new friends he found? And see young minds stir thanks to the new english teacher John Keating (Robin Williams)? There are many scenes which will make you laugh, cry, and scream.

My personal rating: 5/5⭐, all time favourite in my household

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Much ado about nothing (1993)

Shakespeare drama, romance, period piece

The two literary teachers I had in my life didn't agree on much, but one thing was certain, "You can read dramas, but it's always better to watch it." This, in my opinion, is the most important aspect if you want to enjoy any act. This play in particular is one of Shakespeare's comedy, centering around two couples, Benedick (Kenneth Baragh) and Beatrice (Emma Thompson), bickering, arguing, and on the other hand Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard) and Hero (Kate Beckinsale). But the stacked cast doesn't end there! There's also the prince, Don Pedro (Denzel Washington) and Don John (Keanu Reeves). Watch to see if Benedick and Beatrice ever stop arguing, if Claudio and Hero do end together, and how much can the angry Don John cause just to find revenge.

My personal rating: 5/5⭐

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Brokeback Mountain (2005)

neo-western, romance, lgbt+

It wouldn't be possible for me to do a movie reccomendation list without Brokeback mountain. The best way to watch movies is to know nothing about them, and this is true with this movie also. The monologue (you will know which one I mean), is never escaping my soul. The beautiful scenery, the main duo Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), the women caught in it Alma (Michelle Williams) and Lureen (Anne Hathaway) and whatever happened on the mountain. While Much ado about nothing can be watched with any of your friends, I'd say this is a movie to watch alone or with someone you know you trust.

My personal rating: 5/5⭐ (Rewatched too many times)

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[inspofromancientworld]

The Divine Comedy and its Ancient Origins

By Sandro Botticelli - telegraphhttp://www.pileface.com/sollers/article.php3?id_article=312, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122900

Dante Alighieri, commonly know just as Dante, was an Italian poet and philosopher who was most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri who lived from 1265-1321. He is one of the first people who have written in the common language rather than Latin since the dominance of the Catholic Church in Western Europe. He is considered one of Italy's national poets and a poetry icon in the Western world. He influenced many authors and poets that followed him. With Petrach and Boccaccio, he is one of the three crowns of Italian literature.

By I, Sailko, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5069860

He was born in Florence, though the exact date is uncertain, thought to be 1265 because of a line from the Divine Comedy, where he says he was '[m]idway upon the journey of our life' with the assumption he meant the Biblical average of 70 years from Psalms 89:10, and that part was written in about 1300. His mother, Bella, died when he was about ten and his father, Alighiero di Bellincione, remarried quickly (probably, there were social limitations) Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffl, who gave birth to two children. During much of Dante's life, Northern Italy was divided between a group that supported the pope, the Guelphs, and one that supported the Holy Roman Empire, the Ghibellines. His family was on the side of the Guelphs and were forced out in 1260, but due to the family's relatively low station, they didn't suffer and were able to return after 1266, when the Guelphs retook Florence.

By Dante Gabriel Rossetti - https://sites.google.com/view/startpagina-onderwerpen/startpagina/startpagina-script, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6078047

He met Beatrice Portinari, who would influence the Divine Comedy, when he was nine and she was eight and said he fell in love 'at first sight' without exchanging a word. At the age of 12, he was promised to Gemma di Manetto Donati, who was the daughter of a prominent family. He apparently met Beatrice often, though never knew her well. He did marry Gemma, though exactly when is not sure, though it was before 1301, when he was sent into exile, and they had three children. His relationship with Beatrice is characteristic of 'courtly love', which came into fashion in France in the centuries prior to Dante, the poetry of which he studied in his schooling. He studied the writings of classical antiquity as well as philosophy.

By Giovanni Sercambi - Le Croniche di Giovanni Sercambi lucchese, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12752823

In 1289, Dante fought in one of the ongoing conflicts between the Guelphs and the Ghibelline factions of Florence. He joined the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries in 1295 as there was a close association between philosophy and medicine at that time, as well as apothecaries and booksellers. Being a guild member allowed him to hold a public office and he held a variety of offices. Once the Ghibellines were defeated in 1301, the Guelphs split between the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs with the Black Guelphs supporting the pope and the White Guelphs seeking freedom from Rome, and thus the pope. The white group won and expelled the black group, leading Pope Boniface VIII to plan an invasion and occupation, though he was also planning to send Charles of Valois, brother of France's King Philip IV, as an ambassador. With the poor treatment of previous ambassadors, a delegation, including Dante, was sent to the pope to persuade him to not send Charles. Pope Boniface kept Dante in Rome, though he sent the rest of the delegates back, as well as sending Charles. The Black Guelphs used that as tacit approval, destroyed a lot of Florence and killed quite a few of their enemies. As Dante was a White Guelph supporter, he was condemned to two years exile due to being corrupt and financial wrongdoing. He was also fined which he did not pay as he felt he was innocent of the crimes and all his property had be seized. Because of these beliefs, he was contemned to perpetual exile, which was lifted in 2008.

Even through the exile, Dante tried to aid the White Guelphs to regain power, which failed because of treason. The backbiting of the former allies disgusted Dante. He spent the rest of his life traveling around Italy and possibly into France and, less likely, even Oxford. In 1310, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg impressed Dante as a potential second Charlemagne and wrote to him, asking him to destroy the Black Guelphs.

By Petar Milošević - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56077296

In 1318, Dante was invited to stay in Ravenna and stayed there until his death in 1321, likely of quartan malaria he contracted while acing as ambassador to Venice. In 1329, Dante's Monarchia, which reflects on the division of secular and sacred authority, was determined to be 'heretical' by the nephew of Pope John XXII, who happened to be a Cardinal. He wanted to burn Dante's bones at the stake because of this, but the Lord of Polenta, Ostasio, interceded to prevent this. In 1829, Florence built a tomb for Dante, but Dante's remains continue to be in Ravenna.

By Henry Cary(Life time: 1804-1870) - Original publication: Edward Moxon, Dover St, LondonImmediate source: Memoir of Rev Henry Francis Cary, M.A. Translator of Dante, by his son, Rev Henry Cary, M.A., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34949926

Henry F Cary was one of the first translators of the Divine Comedy in 1808. When he translated it, he translated it as blank verse, using a regular meter, but not a regular rhyming pattern. He was born in Gibraltar in 1772 and was a British author and reverend. He died in 1844. He was ordained in 1797 after studying French and Italian at Christ Church, Oxford.

By Domenico di Michelino/ After Alesso Baldovinetti - https://twitter.com/museofirenze/status/1075345296048181248This is a retouched picture, which means that it has been digitally altered from its original version. Modifications: brightened image., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=133465311

The Divine Comedy, with the word 'comedy' meaning it reflects an orderly universe with the ending guided by the ultimate good planned out by some Providential will. It was written from about 1308 through 1321, just before Dante died. It is divided into three parts, Inferno (or Hell), Purgatory, Paradise, and the levels therein, reflecting the journey of the human soul from sin through penance, and finally, the ascent to God. In this journey of 14,233 lines divided into three cantiche, each of which is further subdivided into 33 canti with an additional canto serving as an introduction. It also used rhyme scheme 'ABA, BCB, CDC, DED…' in eleven syllable long lines, further embedding the numbers 3 and 11 into the poem. Each of the three locations is divided into 9+1 levels, Hell being 9 rings plus Lucifer in the middle, Purgatory being 9 rings around Mount Purgatory with the Garden of Eden at the top, then Paradise being nine celestial bodies plus Empyrean, where God resides. Each of the three main parts also end with the same word 'stelle' or 'stars'.

By Anonymous - http://www.buzzle.com/articles/virgil-publius-vergilius-maro-roman-poet.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17237420 and By Anonymous French engraver - This file has been extracted from another file, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=133626104 and By After Lysippos - Jastrow (2006), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1359807

In the poem, Dante is guided by Virgil, a Roman poet who wrote the Aeneid, among other poems, who is also a mentor to Dante, with the Aeneid praised alongside the Bible, using the same language for the two, setting them as equals. Ovid, another poet who wrote the Metamorphoses and lived at almost the same time as Virgil, Lucan, and Statius are also held up as role models for their writing styles and mythology. Aristotle makes an appearance in the poem as well, building the foundation of the way the world is presented in the Divine Comedy, just as Aristotle was held as the foundation of thought at the time. Virgil in the poem also cites Cicero by explaining why 'sins of intellect are worse than sins of violence' as explored in canto XVIII of the Inferno. Dante's language also reflects a reliance on the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, which was commissioned in 382. There are about 500 direct quotes or references to the Vulgate.

You can read the whole poem translated by Henry F Cary here.

You can watch Overly Sarcastic Productions' summaries here: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradisio and on Dante.

[revindicatedbyhistory]

so kinzo is originally a japanese settler in taiwan, in what he considers a happy time in his life). then he goes out of his way to buy an inhabitated island to populate

the island has an already existing legend that then becomes altered to be about beatrice, who is you know an aryan european woman. beatrice then becomes associated with the "wild" uninhabitated sections of rokkenjima

kinzo has a fixation on cowboy films (you know. the film genre about colonialism) and also just western stuff in general, to the point of theming everything in the family around the west. despite this he doesn´t like subscribe to christian belief

(ok im not saying the ushiromiyas are literally colonialists but i do think kinzo keeps around the colonialism state of mind if it makes sense)

[pochapal]

about rendering oneself in a most symbolic manner (immediately): do you think it's significant that Shannon and Eva's golden eagles go without comment, as contrasted with Natsuhi's notable absence of one on her clothes? Or in the other direction, that Beatrice's blonde hair and western appearance are pointed out by the Ushiromiyas, as is the westernisation of their own names (at great length) while Jessica's blonde hair isn't brought up? Do you think this is a case of dissonance to suggest selective normalisation - the Kinzopium not having been fully inhaled, if you will, however internalised among the adults and George's mask - or is it possible that character design elements may be extradiagetic, EG, Jessica's blonde hair as symbol of her arranged headship-to-come? Or is there no functional difference between these, from a reader experiential point of view?

the visual presentation of umineko is something i've been thinking about on and off without much of a solid conclusion yet other than "I think something is happening here". i have been told that there's sometimes a discrepancy in intent/meaning between the actual text of the story and the sprites/cgs but i also don't necessarily trust that the people that told me that have been entirely reliable with their information.

i think there are a few options with the presentation of characters here depending on whether or not what's happening is literal or symbolic. in the case of eva she is the only person to directly mention the "honor of wearing the one winged eagle" which can be taken to mean that for eva this status symbol holds more weight than it would necessarily the other members of the family - having it tattooed on her skin is a useful visual shorthand for this level of devotion, but it also is something that eva as a person could believably do (aside: if eva does have a literal eagle tattooed on her there's a lot of interesting questions re: gender politics. the image of a tattooed women in 1980s higher society japan runs counter to common misogynist convention of how women in that sphere were expected to be presented which could relate to eva's troubled relationship with the ushiromiya heir/beatrice identity dichotomy i was thinking about earlier).

similarly it's interesting that in shannon's case the tattoo is only "revealed" to the reader via extradiegetic means - we only see her thigh insignia through the full body sprites in the character index and nowhere else, and the only mentions of servants wearing the eagle are contained within the unreliable narration and never outright discussed by anyone iirc. there's something to this i think to do with the nature of shame and secrecy - whatever the thigh imprint means to shannon is something concealed from all other material individuals in her vicinity and the scrutiny of such is to unveil something possibly indecent (the inner thigh behind a slit in the skirt is an incredibly conspicuous placement choice).

i think in both cases whether or not the eagles are literally there possibly comes secondary to the fact that the symbolic associations of these eagle placements (eva's counter-patriarchal desire and shannon's concealed veiled shame of being a possession of the ushiromiya cycle of violence) are readily apparent enough in other expressions of these characters. eva fights with every breath to become as valued as a first son and shannon's every move revolves around whatever elephant in the room has kept her chained in servitude to kinzo since infancy - for shannon in particular there are numerous concerning connotations surrounding the notion of sexual agency. it's all very much a map vs territory question here i think.

switching tracks to think about jessica, her appearance likely follows a similar logic to the previous two examples. jessica's role in the family is not that of the ushiromiya successor, but actually that of being the sexual incubator for the ushiromiya successor, as hinted by jessica herself and as outlined in kumasawa's regaling of natsuhi's own abuses and suffering. under this framework jessica's blonde hair then becomes a signifier of her destined transformation into the next generation's beatrice. this would also track with krauss himself having lighter hair than the rest of the family - position to blondeness = position to inherited power. however, if you go more down the track that there's just a blonde gene in the ushiromiya family then i think this discussion becomes more explicitly racialized: jessica despite having the hair and the social position is still explicity japanese and thus will always be an incongruent mirror to beatrice's manifestation of whiteness.

i guess then this could be used as a wedge reading into kinzo's own fascism and his hatred towards his family coming from the fact that the one thing they can never emulate no matter what they do to themselves and others is whiteness - they can affect the western "style" but they cannot be western. there's deeper stuff here as well with the conflation of beatrice's violence with whiteness and the inherent wealth/power she represents (could there be concealed political metaphors in the beatrice myth internalized by those on rokkenjima? something to think about more some other time) as a deliberate surrender into western dominion, and under this reading jessica (and krauss to an extent) represent that proximity to western/whiteness is no substitution for actually being western/white when push comes to shove. in this case jessica can be as blonde as she likes, but this visual signifer is ultimately worthless in the eyes of those who surround her compared to that which beatrice represents.

to the reader all this stuff is on an equal footing as everything in umineko is consciously crafted with conscious meanings you are meant to figure out and understand be that material or symbolic content, but in the case of some of these visual signifiers i do think there's merit to the possibility that they literally exist within the text too. that said, if there is a dissonance between the two despite the thematic congruity, it's worth asking whether or not this is for the benefit of the literal audience of the visual novel or the hypothetical audience of the metafiction - this is something i can't answer in any meaningful or useful capacity until whatever is happening with umineko in this department comes into better focus.

[shittycartoonmomshowdown]

The Shitty Cartoon Moms Showdown!

Hey y'all! Have you been following @shittycartoondadshowdown and wondering whether there's a mom version? Well, there is now, and it's run by the same person!

Rules:

The character MUST be animated. This includes anime, Western cartoons, and animated movies. It does not include video games or Homestuck.

Submit as many characters as you want, but don't submit the same character multiple times.

I will cap it at 32 moms. Each poll will last 24 hours and will be tagged under #shitty mom showdown.

The character doesn't have to LITERALLY be a mom, but must function primarily as some sort of mother figure. For example, Shadow Weaver (from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power) would count because she raised Adora and Catra, and many of the things she taught them are described in canon as "mom stuff." She is already included, so you don't need to submit her.

Beatrice Horseman (from BoJack Horseman) is also already included.

There can be only one character per media (so Beatrice's inclusion automatically disqualifies Princess Carolyn's mom, Todd's mom, Diane's mom, etc).

Submit a mom here!

Submissions will close on Sunday, March 12.

[kushanna]

"scares even me, beatrice" "leave it to me, beatrice"...as in YOU are beatrice or are you referring to HER as beatrice? you ARE beatrice and she is ALSO beatrice, i just sjdjsksk is she already called beatrice at this point? i assume yes since she's in kuwadorian, and at kuwadorian she knew herself as beatrice, it's just skdkmdkd a lot to process

i have many doubts and very few answers (beware the long wall of text)

it goes something like this:

beatrice and kinzo met, she was a grown person when they met and she gave him the gold -> he was obsessed with her and she tried to get away -> he put her spirit into the body of a baby, who grew inside kuwadorian unaware of their real identity

as i understand it: a child lived in kuwadorian, beato, who refers to someone, kinzo, as "grandfather" (why GRANDfather? that's two degrees of separation and i only expected one. later on she says she thinks of him as a father. ??) and to virgilia as "beatrice". we also know that the family mansion finished being constructed in 1952 and there's people (genji, namely) who say beatrice is rumored to have died before that time. he can be lying (infamous little liar), but let's take it that's the truth. it contradicts rosa's story of how beatrice died in 1967, but we do know for a fact that beatrice did die in 1967. so if we split the timeline into two:

kinzo met beatrice, a grown woman who gave him the gold -> he was obsessed with her and she tried to get away -> leading to what battler calls a "suicide"

he put beatrice's spirit into the body of a baby -> the child grew inside kuwadorian as "beatrice" unaware of her real identity -> until her death in 1967

there's something like a crack between the two timelines, and that crack can be exactly beatrice's first death before 1952 (let's put a random date to it, let's say 1950 or 1948). if we jump all the way to 1967 and do the math, the child who grew as beatrice in kuwadorian would be close to 20 years old when she died, which checks out with what rosa saw.

i could come up with a crazy theory about how the "first" beatrice, the one who gave kinzo the gold, never existed in the first place. kinzo managed to get the gold and raise the family status through some sketchy, unknown means and then created the legend of gold to cover it up. then as a way to "personify" his vision of beatrice, he got a baby, let's say from fukuin house, his furniture factory, and raised her as the beatrice he wanted in kuwadorian. that would explain why she is called beatrice, a western name for a western witch and the person who started this western fixation was kinzo himself, why she wears a witch costume in the 1960s, and it doesn't seem completely implausible since kinzo got a whole baby from his furniture factory and gave it to natsuhi right after the kuwadorian beatrice died (i assume it was after and not before). the reason i can't fully believe this is because they do make a whole lot of noise about beatrice's "suicide", "tying down a dead soul", that has to mean something. and i also don't believe kinzo's beatrice can't be some unrelated people, for example, the "first" one be virgilia, who would later give her place to beato, since the baby "grew to be completely identical" to the first beatrice, the woman in the portrait. as i understand it, she has to be the same one. but i can't reconcile that ���

[rose-reads-visualnovels]

how do you get so good at analysis? ;_; i'm really dumb and take things at surface value, which i've been fine with up until now but seeing you read umineko so deeply makes me kinda like.... jealous isn't the right word? that sounds too spiteful. it just makes me feel like i'm missing out on a more fun way to experience things. but it seems so daunting i don't even know how to start. to me it seems like picking out every detail and exaggerating it as far as possible but it's obviously more refined than that because you're able to keep things together thematically and make some good theories. do you have any advice for it?

Hi, anon!

Don’t worry, I don’t think you’re being jealous/spiteful with this ask. I also used to want to write analysis on things because they seem fun, and actually this is my first proper try at it! I think I’ve said it before but if I’m not careful I’ll binge everything on first watch/read and miss details. (This is why I rewatch Utena every other month). So yes, I know sometimes I’m grasping at straws but that’s because I’m actively squeezing everything I can out of a page/scene.

I think what sets this liveblog apart and the reason I can pick up threads/themes is that Umineko seems very upfront about what it wants to say.

「MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, EVERYONE WANTED A LOT OF MONEY RIGHT NOW…!」

Utena is the same in that - even though people say it’s too symbolic - I think the fact that it bares its inner mechanisms for all to see is a huge kindness. If everything means something else, or represents both itself and a larger concept, then a show where everything is allegorical is actually discarding layers of obfuscation.

I think a good place to start to Notice Themes is at the very beginning.

The Golden Witch invites you to take things easy and accept them as they come, but The Revolutionary Witch tells you that - in any story - the first introductions matter the most.

Up until now, Umineko has drilled inside our heads again and again, repetition after repetition, that the Ushiromiya’s Western schtick is a product of Kinzo’s reverse weeb affectations. He started many of the “traditions” that seem so inescapable, he invented the name for the fucking chair he sits at the breakfast table and the order of the seats according to his own patriarchal standards.

His Western obsession is tied very obviously with his “black magic” obsession and he even gets angry when you don’t call them “grimoires” because part of the charm of magic is that it’s foreign and cool. He speaks of black magic when ranting about his urges to sexually abuse a dead Beatrice, all his children speak of Western things when recalling their own childhood and abuse.

The only exception to this is Kinzo’s Japanese sword - both a true object and a phallic symbol that doesn’t deny itself its origins - that he uses to spank Jessica’s naked butt.

I feel like, in Umineko, you just need to sit and listen to the characters and wonder at their motivations. But you also need to wonder about the choice of presentation.

For example, Kanon alone in the garden after he left the conversation, being dismissed by Gohda. All he says is “…even me” or something among those lines, very mysterious! But the way this is presented, the camera not caring about the Cousins + Adults but following an actor after he’s being kicked out of the stage? Unusual! Curious! Very interesting! The way the narrative describes it, (paraphrasing here) “you needed to get closer if you wanted to hear the words whispered to his heart”? Why would it be written like that? Who is the narrator speaking to?

So I think - to make an analysis close in methodology to what I’m doing - you need to question what’s onscreen, not in a “this isn’t real” way (it may not be real but that’s not the focus!), but in a “why is this being shown the way it is” way. This is a novel after all. Choices of words, choices of POV, what is described and what’s left unsaid!

Those are the tips from the Revolutionary Witch!

— Rose, the Revolutionary Witch

[armoricaroyalty]

what's something you'd like to see more of on royal simblr?

Great question, me! There's a number of things I'd love to see more often in the royal simblr community, such as:

More non-western influences and royals. European monarchies are the most accessible to English-speaking westerners, but in the modern day, most monarchical systems exist in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. I can only think of a few royal Simblrs that are meant to have non-Western settings--I'm sure there are more that I'm not aware of, so I'd love recommendations on that front!

More stylistic diversity. @warwickroyals touched on this in her answer to this question, but there is a prevailing style for women on royal simblr, which is very classically feminine with a lot of dainty features and soft pastels. I'd love to see more people try to differentiate their characters a bit more in terms of silhouette and personal style. I think there were some royal simblr fashion police a few years ago who sent rude messages to people who broke "the rules" of royal dress, and I think that's had a bit of a stifling effect on the community. Even if you give your royals strict dress codes, I think there's a lot of room to play around and experiment within those parameters. For example, I was actually watching that Prince Philip doc produced by the royal family after his death, and I was struck by how distinctly all the women dressed. Princess Anne was in jeans and a blazer, Zara Tindall was wearing a sleek skirt suit, Beatrice and Eugenie were wearing flowy floral dresses...there's a lot of ways to be polished and stylish while still expressing individual style, so I'd love to see some of that on simblr.

More diversity, just in general. I'm not going to pretend I'm not also guilty of this, but royal simblr is very white, very able-bodied, very cisgender and heterosexual, very thin, and very conventionally beautiful by western standards. There's no reason why made-up countries with made-up histories should follow all the patterns and prejudices of the real world, so it'd be nice to see more of a range of types. I love my beautiful, icy brunettes as much as the next person (you will pry Rosalind from my cold, dead hands) but it'd be great to see more representation of different types of people.

More interesting men. This is one that's a lot more subjective, but I feel like there is a general tendency toward blandness when it comes to male characters on royal simblr. Speaking very broadly, the menfolk tend to be either irredeemable dumpster creatures OR perfect husbands and fathers who wait patiently for their "messy" love interests to realize that he's the man of their dreams. I don't think there's anything wrong with either of these things in a vacuum (and there's tons of stories that I really enjoy that make use of those archetypes), but I feel like there are some missed opportunities for more interesting and dynamic male characters, especially as love interests. For me personally, it's hard to get invested in a romance where one or both parties is certifiably Nice (tm) without any other defining character traits.

Anyway, all this to say that these are really broad trends, and I'm sure you could cite strong counterexamples for each OR point out places where I've fallen into the same patterns. But in general, those are the community-wide tropes that I think could use the most refreshing.

[beardedmrbean]

The former boyfriend of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who killed her by setting her on fire, has himself died from burns sustained in the attack, a Kenyan hospital official has said.

Dickson Ndiema ambushed the marathon runner as she returned home from church more than a week ago. He then doused her with petrol and set her ablaze.

Local administrators said the two had been in conflict over a small piece of land in north-west Kenya, where Cheptegei lived and trained.

Ndiema died on Monday night at the intensive care unit, where according to the hospital, he had been admitted with burns on more than 40% of his body.

"He developed respiratory failure as a result of the severe airway burns and sepsis that led to his eventual death on Monday evening at 18:30 hours [15:30 GMT] despite life-saving measures," a press release from Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital said.

Cheptegei died last Thursday - four days after she was attacked. She suffered burns to more than 80% of her body.

I saw athlete on fire running towards me after attack, neighbour tells BBC

'Running for her family' - Olympian mourned after vicious attack

Neighbours said that on the day of the attack,they heard screams before Cheptegei came running towards them shouting for help.

Local media reported that Ndiema had sneaked into Cheptegei's home in western Kenya’s Trans Nzoia county with a five-litre jerry can full of petrol.

Some of the fuel he poured on Cheptegei splashed onto his own body, according to reports. As a result, Ndiema got caught in the fire after he set his former partner alight.

Ndiema was to face charges as police said they were treating Cheptegei's death as murder, with the former boyfriend named as the main suspect.

But now that Ndiema has died, the criminal case has been dropped and an inquest into the two deaths will be opened instead.

Both Ndiema and Cheptegei were admitted to Moi Hospital before their deaths.

Cheptegei's death shocked people across the world, with fellow Ugandans saying she was an inspiration to them.

The 33-year-old Olympian was the third female athlete to be killed in Kenya over the last three years. In each case, current or former romantic partners were named as the main suspects by police.

In 2021, world-record holder Agnes Tirop was stabbed to death and six months later Damaris Mutua was strangled.

"I don't wish bad things on anyone, but of course I would have loved for him to face the law as an example for others so that these attacks on women can stop," Beatrice Ayikoru, secretary-general of the Uganda Olympic Committee, told the Reuters news agency.

Some observers are saying that female athletes are becoming increasingly vulnerable.

"[This is] because they go against traditional gender norms where the woman is just in the kitchen and just cooking and taking care of kids. But now female athletes are becoming more independent, financially independent," Joan Chelimo, who co-founded Tirop’s Angels to help highlight the issue of violence against women.

Cheptegei was born on the Kenyan side of the Kenya-Uganda border, but chose to cross over and represent Uganda to chase her athletics dream when she did not get a breakthrough in Kenya.

When she first gotinto running, she joined the Uganda People’s Defence Forces in 2008 and rose to sergeant rank.

Her career included competing in this year's Paris Olympics. Although she came 44th in the marathon, people in her home area called her "champion".

She also won gold at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2022.

Cheptegei is set to be buried on Saturday at her ancestral home in Bukwo, Uganda.

Attacks on women have become a major concern in Kenya. In 2022 at least 34% of women said they had experienced physical violence, according to a national survey.

"We don't want this to happen to any other woman, whether an athlete or from the village, or a young girl," Rachel Kamweru, a spokesperson the the government's department for gender and affirmative action, told the BBC.

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

The one thing that I want to know after reading about Nobby’s NRM friends is his relationship with the LNWR and midland engines.

Also I’m just imagining a funny what-if if he was shunting alongside Cornwall, Hardwicke, and 49395, and everyone prays that world war 3 doesn’t start lol.

I hate to disappoint, but ‘boringly realistic’ is as you know my brand I don’t see those relationships as being that spicy.

I can definitely see the NRM having a recurring theme where some kindly, enthusiastic, naive soul is like “hey! let’s put all the reeeally old engines next to each other for a while and they can reminisce about Victoria and Albert getting hitched, or whatever! :)” and despite warnings they do it and then all the Reeeeally Old Engines are just staring icily at each other in a sort of eight-way armed standoff, each knowing that the first one to speak is going to set off a relitigation of stale old politics and grievances (from both their working and preservation careers) they all know should be buried sixty years ago, except here they are, all kinda itching to fight ‘em again, but also There Are People Around, and, more importantly, There Are Young Engines Around. Wouldn’t want to set a bad example for impressionable young things like Gazelle and Truro.

But the atmosphere? It’s chilly.

That, however, is the reeeeeally old crowd. It doesn't even include the good-natured M.R. lot.

There is no feud between the Furness and Midland survivors. It was never that severe between them, anyway. In fact, back in their working days F.R. No. 4, Coppernob’s brother, would ramble about his admiration of the glamorous Midland 1757 ‘Beatrice’. Remembering his twin’s old fanboy crush, Nobby sank into a deep funk for two days when he heard Beatrice had been dismantled. (This was right before Grouping, and Nobby had no idea just how scrap-happy life was about to get.)

Back in Coppernob’s working days there was just the usual neighborly rivalry when you have two railways full of puffed-up steam engines. The M.R. loved when it finally had a rival company that they could look down upon for underpowered engines—it made such a nice change from their situation at all the other junctions ('The M is for Midland, with engines galore/Two on each train, and begging for more!'). The F.R. rolling stock resented the existential threat that the Midlanders represented, and resented some of their snubs and titters at their rather sorry ‘boat trains’ even more. But the whole thing largely simmered down sometime in the 1880s when the Furness directors firmly told the M.R. that they could pay them roughly six bajillion dollars for their company or they could fuck off, and the M.R. chose the latter option.

Coppernob and 158 are the only two still alive who even remember the thing. There is no grudge. 158 never even worked those regions, and even if she had it’s unlikely Nobby would hold it against her. He can be petty—but he’s not that petty. And 158 couldn’t hurt a fly, let alone stir up century-old bad blood. Among other things, it would be unsporting. There are a good few pre-Grouping Midlanders in the National Collection, and then there’s Nobby all by himself. That would just be mean.

So Nobby is on good terms with all the surviving Midlanders that he's met, and positively cozy with their composite six-wheeler. If he and 158 haven’t become friends, it’s largely down to the fact that, while they have a lot in common, it’s the sort of life experiences that are very painful and they just haven’t gotten round to opening up to each other in that way yet. Maybe give them another fifty years and we’ll see.

But then there’s the L.N.W.R., haha. The Midland just wanted to buy them out and take over their entire outfit, pah! You can fight that. What the L.N.W.R. did hurt way worse. The F.R. had to make a huge noise and fuss to get the 'old' North-Western to even notice them.

The keynote of the F.R.’s rivalry with them in the old days was that the London and North Western was one of the greatest railways in the world and the truth is that the Furnessians admired them very much. The F.R. took a lot of cues on how to do things from their great neighbors to the south (except—unfortunately, from the engines’ point of view—they never bothered to try to imitate the Crewe Works. But, for example, even Nobby’s preservation was itself a very ‘big North-Western’ move on their part). The scrappy, spirited Furnessians were hate-‘em-‘cause-they-ain’t-‘em. They aspired to be them, they never would be them, and whenever the L.N.W.R. noticed their existence they found the F.R.’s little attempts to compete with them entertaining. (You can maybe see why Nobby has a soft spot for James.) Nobby spent much of his first forty years running on pure spite of the ‘North-Western.’ He was always enormously (and not unjustly) proud of his life’s work in helping the F.R. expand and succeed—but that pride was always shattered bitterly whenever he ran into boastful L.N.W.R. stock, who never failed to remind him, with great heartiness, how poor and tardy and out-of-date their whole outfit was. It would throw his whole system out of order for days. He and the rest of his lot hated them—and they simply thought of the Copper-Nobs (when they thought of them at all) as quaint, funny, mildly annoying little things.

This sort of rivalry is just the worst.

The power imbalance has straightened out since 1900, though. Coppernob himself (against all expectations back in the 1840s, when the F.R. had like twelve miles of track and not quite as many coaches) was newsworthy by the time he was withdrawn, if from nothing but the sheer stubbornness of working what was at the time the longest career on British rails.

A quarter-century later, he and Columbine turned over a new leaf when they were put on display next to each other at the Wembley Exhibition—it was really nice for both of them to put away all the old nonsense and actually get to know each other, and they are penpals to this day. (They were also insufferably haughty about their good sense and deportment. The only reason it wasn’t on sight for the two of them was because Flying Scotsman and at least one of the Castles were there, already making a “scene.” Coppernob and Columbine bonded immediately as they basically pretended that they had never been so silly as that, and why were the new Big Four so eager to produce engines with more tractive effort than sense, and yes indeed, back in their day they knew how to express their differences with grace, and—)

It was at the Exhibition of ’25 that the world got to see Nobby’s “guest manner” in action. His whole crotchedy-grandpa-with-a-heart-of-gold shtick that he’d developed while stuck at Barrow Central proved a huge success. (The L.N.W.R. emeriti had mostly been departmental engines once withdrawn—they'd had to develop some public relations game too, but 'talking to visitors' hadn’t been literally their only duty they’d had to practice 24/7 for the past eighteen years.) It sure impressed the hell out of Columbine, and it inspired her to up her game—and to go home and make sure the rest of her railway elders did too. So yeah, ironically enough we did wind up in a situation where (for once! a-men) it was the proud Crewe engines who were scrambling to keep up with a Copper-Nob.

(It’s lucky that Nobby didn’t really grasp the scale of his success at Wembley and indeed the influence he had on the entire British preservation circuit until much later. By the time he did it was well after the Barrow Blitz and he was so famous that it didn’t really matter that his dome grew three sizes that day. Getting bombed? That wasn’t heroic, he didn’t bloody do anything. Becoming as popular as the entire L.N.W.R. lot put together? Now, that. That’s a proper ego boost!)

Most of Nobby’s London and North Western contemporaries—the ones with whom he ever had any real enmity, the ones who used to humiliate him and his—are scrapped. But there are significant strains on their modern truce. He and Cornwall, even though they Conduct Themselves Appropriately, have such a foul enmity poisoning the air between them that they are always housed in different museums. Hardwicke is a generation after all these grand old ‘C’s and perhaps would have been on neutral terms with Coppernob, especially due to their mutual friendships (including with Columbine) and to the sense, shared by all the M.R. engines, that it would be just vulgar to gang up on Coppernob when he’s a party of one… except Nobby once gossiped in Hardwicke’s hearing about the long-dismantled Lady of the Lake (“ ‘Lady of the Lake,’ pah. ‘Witch of the Lagoon,’ more like!” — h/t @houseboatisland) Understandably Hardwicke found this pretty disrespectful and came to the conclusion that Coppernob’s double-edged tongue makes two-or-three on one a perfectly fair match, in his case! While Hardwicke is not as deep in the feud as Cornwall, he does of course back up his old fleetmate and mentor whenever conflict breaks out.

Nobby had no grudge against the old Crewe saddletank on principle—he’d never even heard of her until the 1950s—it’s her personality that led to him rejecting her. (He’s not alone; she’s pretty widely disliked. 1439 has seen and participated in far more scrappings than any living being should and she is, to put it mildly, a little too quick to share a morbid memory.) ‘Pet,’ however—the other old Crewe shunter, the narrow-gauge one—is a much more personable engine and popular with just about everybody; she reminds Nobby in particular of Poppet.

Unlike Nobby’s great success with the M.R. coaches, the old Wolverton carriages maintain the old snobbery in full measure and do not deign to speak to any engines they consider inferior to the L.N.W.R. engines who used to handle them. They've even snubbed the Rocket (yes, the real one), so we can expect that quaint little Coppernob will be in that scorned category forever. (He hasn’t exactly lost sleep over it. I’m not 100% sure he’s even noticed the silent treatment—it took him decades to strike up a conversation with his friend the Midland composite. Engine classism ftw!)