#chick beato

[peachducy]

Umitober Day 19 - Magic (spoilers)

"D-does this count... as magic...?"

"*cackle* *cackle* *cackle*... Yes, it does. You used magic to create a golden flower petal inside an overturned cup. It was a splendid bit of magic."

[eevee-hime]

Being a game master isn’t easy when it involves being privy to your whole family’s trauma huh

Also I SWEAR I started drawing that ‘sicko’ meme as soon as I saw that scene in the novel and before I started listening to ‘The Golden Truths’ podcast it’s just what the lovers’ duel made me think of

[lunatic-harness]

beatrice 🤝 church

"actually the character died fr and now this is an alternate version who has all their memories. functionally the same character anyways"

[cershiv]

I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS HAPPY LISTENING TO A LAUGH BEFORE

[kraniumet]

“what if beato was a [real] witch?” that, my friend, is called yu gi oh

[nyaagolor]

Now that you’ve played through all the episodes, how would you rank them?

Oooo this is tough, in part bc I like all of them a LOT. The designations between a few of them, especially in the middle category, are gonna be kinda arbitrary, but I'll do my best :)

Also this got stupid long so I put it under a readmore! Spoilers abound, as one might expect

8. Dawn of the Golden Witch (Episode 6)

I have some... mixed feelings on this one. I understand what Ryukishi was going for in using chick-Beato and Battler's interactions to parallel Battler with Kinzo and show Kinzo's dynamic with Kuwadorian Beatrice via analogy, but I also think it kinda fumbles a bit. There are points (cookie scene being a big one) where I feel like the characters take a backseat to the themes and the whole narrative feels off. Chapters 5 and 6 are supposed to be a perversion of the original story that Beatrice has lost control over, but there are points during 6 especially where I think it kinda loses itself. The rest of it is great (Erika's VA is a goddamn champion) but the very beginning of this chapter is easily my least favorite part of the series

7. Requiem of the Golden Witch (Episode 7)

I don't really have strong feelings on this episode. It would have been the high point in just about any other VN, but Umineko is so consistently fantastic that Episode 7 didn't really hit me as hard as the others. It did make me wish we got more Kyrie though, even if I know exactly why she wasn't as prominent as many of the others. Kind of insane that my second least-favorite arc is something I would rank like an 8 or 9 out of 10, Umineko is just that goated (get it???)

6. Turn of the Golden Witch (Episode 2)

While I do love watching the worst woman ever conceived have a 48 hour progressive mental breakdown, Alliance hits every point I like about the Rosa / Maria dynamic but does it better. It's still an arc I absolutely adore, so it feels weird to rank it so low, but I think about it a lot less than the other arcs so down here it goes. Shoutout to this arc for making me laugh to the point I could no longer speak not once, but twice. Kanon chuuni jacket and leashed Battler you will always be famous

5. Twilight of the Golden Witch (Episode 8)

I know that ranking episode 8 in the bottom half sounds like sacrilege but this arc had so much Kinzo and while I understand his narrative importance I Do Not Like Him. The fact that Kinzo is in the Golden Land but Kuwadorian Beatrice isn't makes me want to throw bricks at things. Other than that though, absolutely stellar. I bawled at the ending. The next day I thought about it more, misinterpreted it, and cried more, then I thought about it more deeply and talked with friends, really started to understand the core messages, and sobbed even harder. As these things tend to go. This episode ruined my life. Would recommend.

4. Legend of the Golden Witch (Episode 1)

note: 4 and 3 are interchangeable I like them both a lot for different reasons

The first time I read this episode, I thought it was great. The further I got into Umineko, the better it got. Now, with a full understanding of the plot and knowing how this chapter serves as self-reflection through the other (Sayo via Natsuhi) it serves as probably the most raw glimpse into Sayo's mindset we get. This episode ruins me and I'm pretty sure when I inevitably reread it I am going to dissolve into a puddle of goo. Also Natsuhi is there and she's my favorite of the matriarchs so I'm a little bit biased :)

3. Banquet of the Golden Witch (Episode 3)

This is one of the funniest pieces of literature I have ever read in my life. EVA-Beatrice, the entire sob story (that I, like Battler, fell for completely), the two towers fight scene... 10/10 no notes. I don't even have the words for how much I adored this one. I wish I could read it again for the first time.

2. Alliance of the Golden Witch (Episode 4)

Ok so fun fact I thought this arc was kinda boring at first, and was a little miffed I had to constantly go through Ange's little side quests when I just wanted to see Beatrice and Battler again. Fortunately, Ryukishi has a beautiful way of changing my mind very very quickly and the more I think about this Episode the more I love it. It has some of the most powerful emotional moments, a really good rehashing of the themes, and is a lot tighter and more condensed than I gave it credit for. There's a LOT that happens in this chapter, and it's been growing on me a lot-- while it doesn't take the number one spot in terms of my favorites, I do think it's the best written of the 8 episodes. As a bonus it focuses a lot on Maria who is one of the best characters ever and my darling baby angel.

End of the Golden Witch (Episode 5)

This is the platonic ideal of Umineko to me. The layers of metanarrative, the perversion of a formula to reiterate its structure, the use of genre conventions as a dual-use in-universe and metanarrative element, Erika. End of the Golden Witch is when I changed from someone who loved Umineko to someone who was obsessed with Umineko. The ending is one of the most visceral parts of the VN and I will fully admit I cried. There is so much happening in this episode I could talk about it all day. Also Natsuhi is there. Hey girlie <3

[anawkwardlady]

Low key how it felt to see Battler aggressively refuse Chick!Beato cookies... And a happy holiday!

(og video)

[timeskip]

I looked up people's Umineko episode rankings and skimming through some of them I'm realizing my opinions are........... pretty uncommon. That's crazy to me bc I usually have opinions that line up with the majority? for the most part?????? Obviously there's a lot of things different between people's rankings but episode 7 is pretty high up for a lot of people which... It's probably second least favorite for me (over episode 2 only) Not that either of those are bad ofc, they're both enjoyable. I felt like ep2 was a bit tedious and didn't make me believe in the romance that much, though in retrospect I feel like I'd feel very differently about it if I played it again. For obvious "culprit" related reasons. Episode 7 wasn't presented in a way I liked even if I liked the content within, though I DID like Lion, and the tea party was really good.

I'd rank 8 and 4 about the same, and above them I loved all of 3, 5, 6, the latter two I just really like Erika and everything that comes with her T-T Also Chick Beato is a really interesting concept and I loved the exploration of her journey to become someone, though it seems that episode 6 is unpopular at least for the lists I looked at??? Though people still liked it, of course. OH YEAH also the logic error. Loved the logic error. But I DO understand why people prefer 5 over 6, because it's all the fun of Erika with ALSO all the fun of Natsuhi, which was amazing. There's a lot to like about all 5 of the listed episodes in this paragraph

As for episode 1, it kind of takes third least fave just by virtue of liking the other episodes better. It was a good intro to the family and everything though and I DID like it a lot. I bet I'd like it more if I replayed that but I won't for a looooong time

[kushanna]

chick beato is furniture, but is regular beato also furniture? she said so in episode 4, didn't she? if two people are enough to create a universe but furniture doesn't have a complete enough soul to count as a person, and beato is furniture, then how is it possible for mariage sorcière to happen?

[lizardrosen]

the really awful thing about the Episode 6 parallels between chick beato and battler vs kuwadorian beato and kinzo is that battler is actively trying to avoid that controlling behavior and it makes him uncomfortable to be called Father, but the only way he can think to combat that dynamic is to... order beato to stop.

he wants her to become the beatrice he remembers and loves, but the thing he loved was her (apparent) independence and superiority over everyone else, and he has an entire conversation with her piece on the board that this is an interaction he's scripting and voicing himself. and what he only partially understands is that to become what he wants, she has to go through the same thousand years that made her in the first place. would he want her to suffer just so he can recreate the past, if he knew that was the choice?

[revindicatedbyhistory-moved]

god tier detail that at the end of ep 6 beatrice sometimes switches to chick beato´s tone of voice

[swallowtail-ageha]

Hey do you think that one of the reasons why battler "the one who resembles kinzo the most" treated chick beato so badly was because after learning about what kinzo did to beatrice ushiromiya and noticing that chick beato almost perfectly resembles her in personality he didn't want to repeat the story. Yeah i think about it a lot

[bossbutch]

umineko chapter 6 (first half)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[snailmailmp3]

but like actually i do think it's interesting that Canonical Umineko Reader john gaius pretty much treats alecto the same way that battler treats chick beato in ep6. and when battler does that it's very clearly supposed to mirror how kinzo treated kuwadorian beatrice. hmmmm

[whenthechickencry]

Umineko EP6. Replay Part 3

Kanon talks about how leaving Jessica behind was his sin, and this is why furniture isn't supposed to love, and how Beato and Kanon aren't part of their world anymore but they still exist. Battler begins to remember the role of a Witch and her usage of locked rooms with some prompting from Kanon. The different uses of I for the Sayos must have been a pretty big hint in Japanese.... I hope to read Umineko once more once I learn Japanese but I am getting years ahead of myself here, haaha.

We have a lengthy fantasy action sequence which actually gets a couple of animations on Console and is overall pretty cool, don't have a lot to say about it though. Lambdadelta throws popcorn at Dlanor in order to force a Beatrice Erika confrontation, lmfao. Erika accepts the duel because Erika can't help but want to be the protagonist, as Lambda points out. She switches between both normal and chick-beato voice when speaking to Battler... which is a nice way to affirm us that this is not chick-beato being overwritten from existence, but also her developed form. All Beatrices are Beato.

Kanon/Sayo go through their opinions on everyone... they say that all their conflicted feelings on Genji kind of cancelled out as neutral, and that they hate Gohda lol. Some of these are more Kanon than Sayo but you can see a strong Sayo-voice on a lot of these which is nice to see.

Get him Kanon!!

Ahhh, this so sad.... Erika is really pitiable I do want what is best for her in spite of it all. Erika and Dlanor accept each other as partners and it's kind of sad to think Erika had a shot at a healthy relationship but it was impossible for it to continue...

Erika realizes the question is not how did Kanon escape but how was he not at the cousins' room - she's pretty close actually. She gets that it's a name trick but goes wildly off base from there. Erika loses but Beatrice decides to give her another chance, blocks out that names can be used by people that aren't that person. Erika understands the value of multiple truths.... and gets owned anyway because all she can see is a trick game and not Sayo's soul that would have allowed her to solve this mystery. Kanon does not exist in the bed room.

Dlanor starts freaking out about Bernkastel not being there for Erika and Dlanor feels bad about not being able to help her during her last duel... Erika is happy Bernkastel won't berate her during her last moments.

[knoxs2nd]

having fun thinking about the kanon/shannon and elder/chick!beatrice divide as different facets of the same person

the passive, palatable shannon is the more openly presented human "face" whos' more concerned with finding love like chick!beatrice, while for beatrice it's all about the powerful troll witch elder!beatrice "persona." thinking about how between shannon/kanon as facets of yasu, shannon is much more sociable and interacts more with others, while with beatrice, it's elder!beatrice who is far more "visible"

shannon is about being loved and acceptable to others and welcomed into the in-group, while beatrice is a lot about yasu being able to act however she wants and proving she doesn't need others to like her to be happy (rather, she just needs people to acknowledge she exists. which is easier to do if she torments them/plays pranks on them)

so of course for the human world yasu is more reticent about her ugly pessimistic side (kanon) while for the witch side yasu rejects the idea of expressing that she...does want to please the person she loves and craves their approval (chick!beatrice) when she's supposed to be AN INDEPENDENT STRONG WOMAN.

just!! thinking in ep6 how ange sees chick!beatrice and even she cares for her... chick!beatrice is so sweet & likable and that's the part of beatrice that is so squarely hidden away until the very end of ep4 and ep5 when she's on the verge of death and can't hide it away anymore

yasu being granted some measure of peace by creating kanon and being allowed to express herself through him instead of hiding him away like beatrice hides away her chick!beato self, but then getting pained because this separation means no one knows her full "true, whole" self

tohya "resolves" beatrice's storyline by writing her as two separate personas. by doing this, tohya granted them both their own expression, importance, and agency, like yasu did for shannon and kanon

but instead of framing the different selves in a battle where they have to kill each other and only one of them can win, ultimately tohya writes beatrice choosing to "reunite" her two selves into one whole person who gets to express themselves fully and doesn't have to hide any part of themselves away, and who isn't afraid of the world's judgment anymore as long as she has her loved ones' support. a;slkfdjas; tohya 😭