#fem! kinzo

[queenoffishingandcookies]

Umineko AU Ramblings - Genderbent Ushiromiya Family

If You Do Not Like Genderbending, Please Look Away. I'll Try My Best To Avoid Spoilers, But Please Read At Your Own Risk.

Sometimes I think about genderbending Umineko and how fucked up the dynamics would be. For the sake of simplicity and avoiding spoilers for anything during/post Alliance, I'm just looking at the Ushiromiya Family, here.

This is just me rambling here, not a true deep analysis of the characters. There'll probably be lines of thought that go nowhere.

For reasons, Kinzo would remain the same sex. However, everyone from the main family down, wouldn’t be. (Gender, on the other hand, is potentially a different story and an AU of a genderbent AU).

Krauss, Eva, Rudolf, and Rosa would be the opposite sex they are in canon. As would George, Battler, Jessica, Maria, and Ange.

This alone would massively change the family’s dynamics. Considering Kinzo’s misogynistic outlook and the fact that Japan is a primarily patriarchal society - the upbringing of the adult generation as kids, their adolescence and young adulthood, to their marriages and the birth of the cousin’s generation is all made different.

Krauss, as a girl, wouldn’t have the same sense of superiority over the rest of Kinzo’s children as he does in canon. As eldest, sure she’d have some power - but as a girl, in Kinzo’s eyes - and depending on the circumstances, even the family elders who named Kinzo as a puppet head - what use was she as an heiress?

She’d marry out of the family - or in normal cases, should have - to supply the Ushiromiya family with further connection in the upper class’s world of riches and politics.

You know who would actually, in their youth, have the most ‘power’?

Eva.

As a boy, even if Kinzo didn’t care much or pay much attention to his kids, again depending on how involved the elders were - influencing or alternatively abusing their mother with high expectations, because Kinzo had to have learned some prejudices and bias from somewhere, in turn leading to the mother’s strict expectations - Eva would have been raised as heir, not Krauss.

Whereas both Fem! Krauss and Fem! Rudolf would be expected to learn domestic skills and the basics of academics, focus on thought of child rearing and homemaking household management, becoming deft hostesses able to keep keen eyes on connections and silent lips for others but their husbands when requested -

Out of them all, it would be Eva who was expected to carry on the illustrious name of the Ushiromiya’s after Kinzo, have it soar to heights which surpassed that of its former wealth lost to the quakes. For some time, he’d be the only son in a household of three children, a single boy between two daughters.

If not by Kinzo, Eva would have been raised by his mothers - by the elders, potentially - that he was going to be the heir over his sisters, that he would continue the family name and was expected to bring them greatness through his intelligence, something that his sisters could only do in marrying well to wealthy, well-connected men.

While his sisters would be allowed to attend high school, it was Eva who would be afforded a higher education - a proper gentleman’s education. The girls wouldn’t be, had no need to be given such a thing.

Krauss, as a girl, would marry out of the family. So would Rudolf. Eva was going to be the heir, as his mother and the elders said - in this way, they would make the family - make their father - proud.

He was going to the heir.

(Which would really burn when he wasn’t, when Krauss didn’t marry out of the register, when Kinzo, for whatever damned reason, had her spouse marry into the Ushiromiya family rather than his eldest daughter out of it).

(By all means, legally he never even declared a direct heir. It’s assumed at first that it goes to Eva, and then, after Krauss’ marriage and remaining on the register, to the oldest child - strange, but not unheard of).

(I haven’t though much on it, except, perhaps, to say that Kinzo’s reason would be pure spite towards the elders - and then, simply, a lack of caring. What did it matter to him, any of it? The family, the wealth, the prestige…it was his only in name, his body forced to sow the crops the elders got to reap for their own profit).

Like their canon counterparts, though:

It’s not just Eva who is extremely prideful. Both Krauss and Rudolf are prideful, stubborn, as well.

All of the haughty superiority that Krauss throws into being the eldest, being the heir? This gets burned down into a need to prove herself as the perfect young lady, the most desirable, proper bachelorette of the upper echelons of society. The inner economy of running a household, rearing children, being a hostess - that is what she would strive for. But, similar to Eva in canon, I don't think Fem! Krauss would settle for, on several accounts, being deemed lesser than her younger brother.

She'd fight in becoming the most perfect, lovely lady - so that Kinzo and the elders could hold nothing against her, if she wished to achieve further education. What she would look into learning, I'm not sure - but it's still something to at the very least consider, whether she would strive for higher education or not.

(lowkey thinking of Eva and Krauss attending the same university or college, just to potentially get on the other's nerves and show how they are 'that much more' superior to the other).

It wouldn't give much leverage over Eva, no - why would he even deign to give the thought of a girl's know-how time out of his day? an attitude that later bites him in the ass because his only child is a girl - but leverage over Rudolf? Potentially. There, there we have things to look at.

Rudolf, as a lady, is still an incorrigible flirt. Still able to charm the pants off of literally most people - a lady by her sex, and a cougar, a carnivore, otherwise. A smoky mafia lady vibe. Flirtatious and brusque, almost. Her etiquette and the snubbing of it (examples being smoking, a bit rough and lackadaisical in regards to housekeeping and being a hostess).

Different from Krauss and Eva, Rudolf would just barely toe the line of societal propriety of an upper class lady - quite the modern woman. She'd know it all, embroidery and all that - but she'd utilize it like a spider building a web, snakes coiling around prey and paralyzing them with venom. Charming, skilled if a bit lazy at it - and deceptively clever, but deadly.

Something Krauss had reason to chide her on, at least.

A cunning flirt, to make up for Krauss' cutting etiquette and Eva's blindingly superior holier-than-thou everything. Lusting to make up for a lack of love, or affection - which, while I can't say it wasn't there, there likely wasn't much of it in the Ushiromiya Household. Just, pride and expectations and cold limitations put down as law.

That behavior they grew into is comprised of their upbringing, and attempts to - at least in part - fill voids left in them by fair lack of warmth from certain people (elders, parents, you know), and filled only with harsh and high expectations and strict limitations. Which isn't to say that at least their mother didn't care, but I still have to think on that since we get zero information of the Ushiromiya Matriarch.

Rosa would get the short end of the stick, born with a pretty decent age difference between Rudolf, who is the 'baby' of the older siblings - and all of his siblings would have their own issues by this point, learned to weaponize haughtiness and a sharp tongue and intellect and charm and lust as shields and tools.

This poor kid would be so soft, so defenseless, compared to them. Up until the circumstances involving a stuffed animal, the forest, and Maria's mom (in this case). This is me trying to avoid spoilers, because I've been there and it sucked.

I can't really say much about Rosa, here, because I just don't have a good grasp on her character. Like I said, I was spoiled for Umineko just after finishing watching Banquet - and that was some time ago, it's only recently I've begun rewatching a no-commentary playthrough (and it's primarily through the fanfiction on A03. That, more than anything else, it what inspired me to pick Umineko up again).

The siblings alone, the ways they were raised along with the expectations for them, how they coped with it - all of it is very complex in canon, and it changes with their sex, in some ways minutely and in other ways, majorly.

Then we get to look at their marriages. Which occurs after Kinzo's miraculous revival of the Ushiromiya Family's wealth - after slowly loosening and severing the puppet strings of the elders (those alive, at least?) wrapped around his limbs - and the dynamics of the family change.

Kinzo remains silent, as to the matter of naming the heir - and while Eva holds tight to the belief, and even taunts his elder sister for not yet having married...there's a sort of unstability in the air, only furthered by worsening tensions between Kinzo and his wife - and Kinzo, often, disappearing on business trips from their home.

Then comes the acquisition of Rokkenjima by Kinzo, the construction of the mansion....for reference, the Ushiromiya Mansion is built in the 1950's - '52?

The Ushiromiya family is elite, having a personal island and the head of them all is a man infamous for his sheer luck in investing and gaining great wealth in a fairly short amount of time post-war. Still, Kinzo is silent about a heir - silent about his eldest marrying outside the family....

Usually, usually, woman in japan marry outside of the family register. So first and foremost, looking at a genderbent AU, why wouldn't Krauss and Rudolf marry into the spouses' family register?

Starting with Krauss:

Canonically, Krauss marries Natsuhi because he needs a wife to have a child. Natsuhi is essentially forced into this marriage, because her family is in dire financial straits. The marriage is an arranged one, essentially meant to solve two issues. The money issue for Natsuhi's family, and the heir issue for the Ushiromiya's.

In a genderbent AU, things would work...considerably differently.

Natsuhi's family would, quite likely, be in a similar situation - but this is a demerit on their end, because it holds no benefit to Kinzo or the Ushiromiya family. By marrying Krauss off to a member of Natsu's family, a line of shinto priests (and, if I'm not wrong, once-nobles?), there's no connections in other circles of society, no wealth awaiting his daughter or a boon to the family. From a utilitarian viewpoint, it would be a worthless match...

Considering Kinzo had already thrown off the elders by now, unless he was still in the process of trying to do so, it wouldn't be even enough to spite them (unless he was going down the whole 'spite their memory' route).

So, why Krauss and Natsuhi in this au? Why would they still be Ushiromiya's? Unless, even branch family's who no longer carry the name would be there - as in Eva = heir - but I'm aiming for somewhat close to canon here, working off the assumption that Krauss + Natsuhi are still the main household - not Eva + Hideyoshi.

Then again, it could be that Kinzo compares both Natsuhi and Eva. Eva having been groomed by the elders, but Natsuhi...Natsuhi, possibly, untouched by them. Perhaps throwing a bone to an old business partner, or even just lack of really caring...that bares a lot of thinking on, trying to get more insight as to Kinzo's point of view.

That would imply a projection of disdain, of hate or anger, upon his kids though. I'm...pretty sure Kinzo just, didn't care about them much, canonically? I'm aware he was physically abusive, and the effects that had on the siblings lasted their whole lifetimes - but for Kinzo, the abuser himself? Would you remember stepping on an ant, if it was just another pest to deal with, a minor worry in a sea of major ones?

Other then stating in the episodes that they failed to live up to expectations, being vultures...not mentioning Everything Else regarding the episodes that I know the bare minimum of, so I can't give a more in-depth look into the matter.

Anyway, Krauss would be the first to marry. Krauss should have left the family register -

and it's a blow to the system, to Eva personally, when she does not. When a man comes to the mansion as his sister's husband, unable to bear the family crest, and yet it's him who will be the next family head, for all that it is Krauss who is the actual heiress.

(Really wonder what Natsuhi would find work as, though...has more common sense than Krauss though, so the disatrous application of the Ushiromiya Money by Krauss in canon wouldn't come up...)

Oh, feeling particularly evil. Eva, going to Kinzo and wondering why Kristine is still there, bring up that it was him who was the heir - and Kinzo just musing if he, himself, had ever called Eva the heir.

It was always the elders, always mother -

But never father.

Goddamn, that's crushing.

That would also possibly be a major power trip on Krauss' end, one massive 'who is superior to whom now?' type situation. And poor Natsu would get caught in the brunt of the fallout.

Two extremely prideful, extremely intelligent men. The family crest worn by one, forbidden to the other - and it was the other, and the sister, who had been chosen by the father.

...I'm picturing some pretty achillean showdowns between Natsuhi and Eva, not going to lie. Eva being angry and wondering what made Kinzo deem him worthy over his own blood son (not even factoring in his sister here), this man he didn't permit to wear the one-winged eagle. Imagine the (toxic) kabedon to be had here...

Imagine the tension, possibly causing Eva to leave the mansion - or Kinzo or his wife to arrange a marriage for him because of the growing aggression and antagonistic attitude he began to take - worse than the past. If he was fixated on being a good 'heir', why didn't he take a wife and sire a child himself, too?

Which, then leads to the consideration of Hideyoshi's character. Canonically, I believe he started making money by rolling cigars and selling them - even if his business later was a restaurant chain. This post goes into the implications that he started this around the second world war, and was an orphan or old enough to be on his own at that time. Though I think I have slightly different headcanons pertaining to age, that doesn't have much bearing on the likelihood that, canonically, he was older than Eva and decently well-off at the time of their marriage.

Eva would likely already be running his own business, in a genderbent au. I can potentially see Hideyoshi still running a business here, but...man, oh man, wouldn't a pairing like that be a smack to Eva's sensibilities and belief system. His father, pairing him up with a woman just a bit older than him - a woman who works like a businessman, too? Imagine the sheer amount of times he'd put his foot in his mouth.

Assuming, of course, Kinzo would deem a woman 'like that' who was staunchly different from how he expected women to behave, as a good match. Another possibility was that, although not officially a big part of some company or other's success, Hideyoshi was the brains behind the operation - and that's what made her a fitting wife. We don't get much of Hideyoshi's backstory, in canon. We don't get much of any spouse's backstory, really - except in specific circumstances.

...Eva and Hideyoshi, I need more time to think about.

But, in a turn of events, it's ultimately not Krauss who leaves Rokkenjima. It's Eva.

and then there's Rudolf and Rosa.

Rudolf is complicated because there are two marriages. Asumu, and Kyrie. Mentioned in the post I linked above, it's likely that they all met around college and are close in age - Kyrie knew Rudolf first, I believe. Rudolf ended up marrying Asumu though, after he unintentionally got her pregnant - though he carried on an affair with her, and likely other woman throughout it all.

In a genderbent au, Rudolf's flirtatious nature and infidelity bites back on the ass. hard. namely in the form of a pregnancy. Considering she'd be sleeping with (at least) two men, Asumu and Kyrie, either one could be the baby daddy - meaning her father would either force her to marry one of them, or Rudolf could abort the child and cover it up so no one has to know it happened at all.

Rudolf is a selfish person, who thrives off gambling to fill endless vices - namely, lust in place of love and affection, though she gets that too. A child would get in the way of that, her bed frolicking when put bluntly - not to mention Krauss and her mother scoldings and haughty attitude and Rudolf's blatant snubbery of ladylike things - no one, least of all herself, believed her fit to be a mother. abortion would come to mind, no doubt.

shit like this could get her disowned. Unlike rosa in canon, she wasn't tricked or abandoned - doesn't really have a good excuse. Rudolf literally fucked around, and found out.

In canon, this led to a blitz wedding binding him and Asumu. In a Genderbent verse, assuming an abortion couldn't be done - either because the pregnancy wasn't noticed until it was too late or for some other reason, a similar event could occur.

If Kinzo got wind of it, it would be a matter of Kyrie's family vs Asumu's - and we know more about Kyrie than Asumu's. Guess who'd possibly win out, in Kinzo's eyes? A low-middle class family, or an upperclass household with shady potential yakuza connections? I say this, because I'm pretty sure Kyrie's summary screen mentions that she and Rudolf have shady dealings or connections or something and that's how they make bank.

And she doesn't know who the baby's daddy is, had to make a choice between men she was pulling along on a string. She works with one on a regular basis, and possibly the other. Hell of a proposal, that she was pregnant.

Considering even Rudolf in canon thought that Asumu knew about the affair, there's probably always the wonder of 'is this my child?' Which is fucked up all around, because not even Rudolf would know, unless she had a little black book where she wrote down when she slept with who - but especially for Kyrie and Asumu.

If Rudolf hid it, no doubt Kinzo would suspect the truth behind the sudden wedding - if he didn't find out, during preparations or just after.

Put simply, it's a total clusterfuck of drama.

Rosa - she didn't even have the chance to get married in canon. Her boyfriend got her pregnant, and then fucking left her with debt after she took out a loan for him.

In a GB AU, this gives me several ideas. Rosa gets a girlfriend pregnant, and she leaves him with the baby. Rosa does get married, or they're forced to, but they have a divorce somewhere along the line. Darkest of all, Rosa's girlfriend/wife dies.

The lives of the Ushiromiya siblings are like a soap opera.

It's one in morning, so I'll give just a quick rundown of the cousins. Going in order of age: George, Battler, Jessica, Maria, Ange.

George is Eva's only child, and a daughter. In his younger years, what he'd deem useless as a heir - useful only in marriages. His daughter is also the most precious thing he'd ever seen or held, while also being a nail in his coffin. He might have had a child before Krauss, but it wasn't a boy - useless to Kinzo, useless to securing Eva as heir.

George is raised strictly. Very strictly, to be the perfect lady - while also educated far beyond the standards of what he'd once thought a young lady should be held to. Eva, in a genderbent world, would be a bit like Natsuhi...he'd want his daughter to be capable of standing as a powerful heiress in her own right, even if it would have been better for them both if she'd been born a boy. She'd also be held accountable for achieving impossible standards - appearances, grades... not a material want in the world, but a deep need for space to breathe.

Battler, or in this case Valor, is Rudolf and Asumu's daughter. Quite a ways down the line of succession, isn't quite raised like Eva raises George. She gets raised a bit closer to a normal child, behave in school, try to get at least a B in classes...she is cosseted by her father. Kyrie would be a little less cool to her, I think, a little warmer - namely because she could very probably be his daughter and they just didn't know - DNA testing emerged in the 80's and Valor was born in '68 or '69 I think. Heightened tensions in the Rudolf Love Triangle, though.

Would still be raised with higher expectations, though. Good etiquette, good handwriting, maybe dancing...? (these are, admittedly, more stereotypes than what I actually know of a member of the upper crust's education and extracurriculars).

I can't tell if Rudolf would be fiercely protective of Valor, a bit uncomfortable with her, or something else entirely. Fiercely protective because - possibly - Kinzo wanted her to get an abortion, uncomfortable because she had planned to get an abortion herself - and also, what Valor meant between Asumu and Kyrie and herself.

But at the same time, I feel like she'd be done to commit fraud to ruin the father of a kid who teased her daughter on the playground. Maybe because I have a broken sense of humor.

Rudolf is a selfish man, would be a selfish woman - but cares for their kids. They might not be willing to be their neck on the line for them, maybe, but also have the potential to go ballistic for them.

Jessica would be raised strictly - not as intense as 'the world will end' schooling like with George, but pretty damn close. As the next head of the family, one allowed to wear the one-winged-eagle, he has to be above and beyond reproach. Natsuhi is the strict one of his parents, more often than not dealing with the worst of Eva being Eva, but...both of them are prone to wanting to spoil him.

It took so long to conceive Jessica, for Krauss. So, so, so very long. Considering a woman's worth in the family amounted to the connections she could bring and her womb's ability to carry a child - preferably a son - it was...hard for her, especially with Eva.

Though, he did shut up for a bit after George was born.

Maria...there's a lot for Maria, and I don't actually I could analyze his upbringing and how it changes in a GB verse right now. A big aspect is Rosa's abuse and neglect, and I think a large bit of it would remain the same but....I want to read more Umineko, especially turn and banquet, to get a better grasp on it.

It's about 1:20 in the morning, and the way she's raised touches kind of close to home. Not in terms of physical abuse, or the fact that it's very very very heavily implied that Maria is neurodivergent - just some parts of it.

anyway, yeah, this is my rambling on how genderbending stuff would change a lot of things in umineko - not getting heavily into the cousin's upbringing and mental state because my laptop is about to die and I'm not well-rested enough fpr this, nor are my ideas quite as fleshed out.

Please don’t flame me if you don’t agree with this or don’t like it, but if anyone has ideas they’d like to add, I’m all ears.

[batbeato]

I have two questions born from your post regarding Masc-Beatrice.

1) Would Sayo have been dressed in clothes made for Lion then, same-style as Masc Beatrice - or would they still wear the same dress that had belonged to their mother, Kuwadorian Beatrice, when meeting Kinzo post-epitaph?

Thinking on it at first, considering the epitaph was written in homage to both versions of Beatrice (I think?), and Kinzo wanting to see her smile again, I feel like Sayo would be dressed therefore as a woman - which kind of would maybe tie into being pressured to present as a woman. A “revival” of sorts, just like in the epitaph - the fulfillment of Kinzo’s wishes and resolving of his regrets - which coincides with the magical lore viewpoint of Beatrice being able to manifest a different form for Kinzo, pertaining to his (their) whims.

On the other hand, Sayo was heavily implied to be born as Kinzo’s son who he literally thought was dead, killed in the exact same way his mother had died no less - which could again facilitate the concept of resurrection (and probably really screw Sayo over, considering they were raised as a girl and woman, going down the route of canon).

There’s probably some (or a lot) of symbolism there to think over, the difference between being brought to Kinzo presenting as either Beatrice, the woman - both lover and child through the grandchild - or Lion, the young man who was lost, and doesn’t view themselves as Lion, indelibly imprinted by the concept of Beatrice nonetheless, the motifs used that could have mirrored Beatrice (Kuwadorian’s) style of dress and how and why it differs - but I feel like I’m talking myself in circles considering it.

2) I’m now curious if you have any ideas of Fem! Battler and how her dynamic would change compared to Canon Battler, with any version of Beatrice.

For 1: On the one hand, the idea of Sayo being resurrected as Lion for Kinzo is appealing. It ties together both this Beatrice's masculinity as well as their origin as Lion, and leads to some complex things for Sayo and how 'Lion' and 'Beatrice' tie together. But on the other, Sayo being made to dress as Beatrice further reflects Sayo's coercive sex assignment and how Beatrice is made to conform to Kinzo's wishes, regardless of who/what Beatrice actually wants to be. I think I prefer the latter, at least for a masc-Beatrice that focuses on the intersex-analogous trauma of their sex assignment as well as on how Sayo's life has been shaped by what others want them to be.

As for 2: Oh dear.

I don't think masc-Beatrice would be constantly making misogynistic comments, but just consider how fem-Beatrice acts with regards to Shannon's femininity. It comes from a place of deep hurt and a trauma-based understanding of femininity and womanhood and patriarchy. It slips in here and there in casual conversation, and then during emotional high points, it comes out in full force.

I do think that any version of Battler would probably be willing to sling insults around and banter/bicker, so she wouldn't let Beato get her down ordinarily, but during those points where Beato is crushing Battler's spirits, his words might slip in and actually affect Battler.

Also I still like the idea of fem-Battler being a knight/prince, even to masc-Beatrice. I think she'd still be very headstrong and stubborn and not willing to let bullshit get her down. Their dynamic kind of does the inverse of canon-beabato's, where instead of going from a very femdom dynamic to a more equal one / Battler being the 'Territory Lord', they start out with a very maledom dynamic and move to a more equal one / fem-Battler being the 'Territory Lord'.

With fem-Battler and fem-Beatrice, I do think that Beatrice might still make misogynistic comments but less so compared to masc-Beatrice. I don't think as much is different in broad narrative strokes except that this Battler also has to have a bi awakening while she's at it with the riddle-solving.

[ms0milk]

Hey! Could I please requests an ANE oneshot

Could it be a kinzo shima x fem reader oneshot where reader is one of uwabami hojos daughters (nishikis twin sister) but dyed their hair red. Could the reader also get along with her family but (like her sisters) don’t really get along with the shima a so her and Kinzo are always arguing. Essentially an enemies to lovers oneshot. For the genre would fluff be okay??

Thank you so much if you are able to. Kinzo is a hugee comfort character.

If you aren’t able to write it thank you anyways!

you came to the right place baby 💛 juzo is actually one of my favs so by extension i love this family to DEATH! have you read the manga? ch 90/91 are shima-fam-antics and i'm a sucker for the big family trope :,) i have some ane stuff in the works (+ i got a shura req a few months ago i'm still hammering out), but i'd love to write for ane characters more! thanks for inspiring me 🥰

a beleaguered raggedy ann

| kinzo x fem reader

a/n: thank you for the request my darling! the details were really helpful, I hope my interpretation is what you were looking for!

Your sisters were only able to hide you for so long before the hotly anticipated, dreaded-- and unfortunately for you, mostly forgotten-- monthly family meeting was called at central Myodha temple.

"It'll be fine, you said," snapping at Nishiki on your right, "You'll look cute, you said!" hissing at Ao on your left. They sandwiched you between them on the way through halls of elaborate decoration. You practically slid through the house on your socks as they tugged you along.

"You don't look bad."

"Why'd you say it like that?!"

"And dad won't even be that mad."

"You think he's gonna be mad?!" Your head shot from one sister to the next, and then hung limply. Defeated.

Hours and hours of anxiety all because you chose last night to be a dumbass.

To dye your hair bright red.

Not even a sexy smoldering red like Shura, it was an out-of-the-box-one-tone kind of red that made you look like an amateur AND a clown.

"Are those Hojos I hear?" A voice chuckled behind the door your sisters struggled to get you inside of. Answering their prayers, it flew open to reveal a welcoming smile (one of many) from Juzo. Of the members of Myodha already gathered in the meeting room, it didn't look like a single one was able to hide their surprise at your..well-- you.

You didn't even bother fixing your messy ponytail from your hallway spat with the girls.

Juzo's smile stuck awkwardly to his face as his eyes scanned the three girls in the doorway. Master Tatsuma waved you inside warmly without much thought, but the previously bustling meeting room had fallen silent. Dozens of members of the order sat in pause around a meeting table and glanced from the back door, to the front of the room, and back again. Summer Obon vacation meant the younger boys were home as well so you had Renzo and Koneko's stunned silence to keep you company too. Young Master Ryuuji, ever impatient to focus attention back to the meeting at hand, attempted to clear his throat for focus' sake. But the only thing that anyone heard was a single melancholy murmur.

"What am I doing wrong?"

There was a half moment of pause before the room exploded into laughter. Your father was the murmurer and continued quietly to himself. He had pressed his head into the table in defeat the second the door opened in front of you.

"Alright alright! Get it out of your systems!" You heaved and finally took a step inside. The Shimas were have the worst time holding it together out of the lot, and your poor sister Mamushi narrowly resisted strangling her husband to death.

"You look--look lovely!" Juzo attempted and steadied himself on the wall to keep from wheezing.

Nishiki and Mamushi took a swing at him.

"You think that's funny you goddamn monkey?!" Ao hollered across the room and made a leap for Renzo who could barely keep her a k'rik's length away.

"Everyone's laughing!"

"I hate you the most!"

The only person in the entire room not laughing was also the one sitting farthest from the door. Kinzo, hidden from your view at his seat beside his father. He thought about getting up and making a scene with his brothers, but some mysterious weight kept him down. All he wanted to do was watch you the second that door slid open. Quietly, in the sea of manic laughter. Ms Hojo going through a rebellious phase eh? He thought, and realized, as you approached your seat across from him, that he was spilling his glass of water into his lap.

He scrambled to mop up the wet with his robes before you--

"Speak now or forever hold you peace, Goldielocs."

Kinzo startled and looked up as cooly as he could manage when he saw you were already standing above him on your way to your reassure your deflated father and apologize to a giggling Master Tatsuma.

He smirked, "There's other ways to get attention you know."

"Just get it over with."

"A quarter life crisis looks good on you."

And you continued to your seat, quietly thankful the blond seemed off his game today. You tucked a loose red strand back into your ponytail and sank next to your father. Kinzo pretended not to watch you out of the corner of his eye.

"Alright alright, jesus, be honest. How bad is it?"

Mamushi thumbed her lip in fake concentration.

"Mamu!"

"I'm thinking!"

"Oh my god." You shriveled into your futon and under the safety of the thick comforter.

"Y/n, come out, it's not that bad."

"You said you wouldn't lie!"

"I'm not lying! It's also not that good."

Mamushi smiled and gave your hand a little squeeze under the blanket, "Come out. C'mon, we're gonna fix it."

"You and what army?"

Your older sister squeezed your hand again but it was quiet in the world above your sheets.

You peeked your head out, "Mamushi, you and what army?"

She hadn't looking this guilty since her goddamned trial. "Don't be mad."

You threw your blankets away in a panic.

"Renzo's been dying his hair for years! I know he'll be able to help you."

"Renzo?! He's like,, ten years old Mamushi!" You staggered up and out of bed but your sister was much too pregnant to follow you.

"He's sixteen."

"That's the worst age to be!"

As you scrambled to throw on your robe and head for the bedroom door your sister sat in thought a moment and nodded her head in agreement. You pulled on a pair of socks, hopping from one foot to the other, ready to make a clean escape before Renzo Shima could even dream of showing up.

Though, throwing open the sliding door, another Shima neatly blocked your path. You barreled into Kinzo's chest but he didn't miss a beat.

"Evenin' Mamushi!" He waved into the room with one hand and with the other he tugged at the back of your robe like kitten held at the scruff. "D'ja need me to get Juzo on my way out?"

"Don't you dare," She grunted, trying to get her legs underneath of her.

Kinzo saluted and with a sudden promptness bolted down the hallway in the direction he came from-- half-carrying mostly wrestling you in tow. Your goddamn socks kept you from putting up any sort of a fight with their serious lack of traction so you resorted to hissed protest and furious smacks.

"I'm-- ow! I'm trying-- fucking chill! Help you! I'm trying to help you!" Kinzo hissed back and you two rounded the final corner in the hallway of the guest house where your families were staying for the night. The pair of you narrowly avoided a total collision with Juzo and Renzo (who were presumably on their way to find you, at Mamushi's request) and before any questions could be asked, Kinzo hollered a:

"Mamushi's stuck again!" Just urgently enough to send Juzo tearing down the hall, dragging Renzo much like Kinzo was dragging you.

One last turn, into a room at the easternmost corner of the house, and Kinzo released you like he was freeing a wild animal that had gotten stuck in his garage.

"What are you doi--!"

But Kinzo held up a hand to silence you, "Shh, shh, hold up Pippi Longstocking." He kept his ear close to the door for a second and turned back around once he felt the coast was clear enough. The two of you stood in a long white bathroom, toilet on one end, sink on the other.

"I really am trying to help you."

"Right, because kidnapping is such a great trust building exercise."

Kinzo rolled his eyes and flipped the latch on the door to lock it, "You you want my help or what? Wanna look like the Little Mermaid forever?

"I-! I..what?"

He trudged past you in exasperation and pointed to a mess of supplies beside the sink. He'd propped an office chair up in front of the mirror and made a show of gesturing vaguely to the whole scene. Jazz hands and all. His silly shaggy hair fell into his eyes like this when he wasn't wearing clips, and his too-big T-shirt wrinkled in a million places after hauling you all the way here.

You'd seen him out of his uniform before. Of course you had. But now he looked comfortable, and if anything, like an actual human person. Did that even make sense? When you grew up in the True Cross and everyone wore long coats, dark robes, and layer after layer of talismans all day long, seeing someone in their pajamas was rather startling.

"Y/n?" He pulled out the seat for you and tapped the back a few times when you seemed hesitant. He bit back the dig he had prepped about you not knowing how to work a chair.

God he really did look human, even under unflattering bathroom lights. The warmth of his skin, the flex of muscle and veins in his hands-- even the silly tan line at his neck and wrists where is uniform robes didn't quite reach during the day. You thought about whether Kinzo thought it was weird too, seeing you in a fluffy bathrobe instead of your father's uniform. If he did, it wasn't showing.

"Y/n c'mon-- I already got everything prepped."

"What, you want me to congratulate you on having a skincare routine?"

"Do you have any mode other than mean as fuck?"

"Not for you," You grumbled into your shoulder and finally took a few begrudging steps towards his invitation. As you sat yourself down in front of the mirror, you eyed the products-- creams and tubes and long plastic sheets. Purple bottles, shower caps, hair clips, a comb.

You watched the mirror some more and Kinzo busied himself behind you, "I heard Mamushi talking to Juzo," he pulled on a pair of little black gloves, "And then I heard Juzo talking to Renzo, and I just couldn't let them go through with it." He tossed a long apron over your lap with a flourish and tied it behind your back.

"What's wrong w--"

"Pink hair, Y/n! Pink's cute and all but Renzo is not the man to ask for color advice."

Kinzo danced around behind you, pouring things, mixing liquid, juggling bowls, never making eye contact long enough to pick up on the anxious sweat collecting on your brow. You gripped the arms of your seat under the apron to steady yourself when Kinzo jerked your chair around. It spun once before he stopped you with his foot, reveling in your general dishevel.

He leaned down close and grinned, "Head back."

Close enough for you to smell the mint of his toothpaste, and much too close for you to truly process what he said.

"C'mon, put your head back for me."

It took you nearly five seconds to figure out that the water in the sink was already running and it took you even less time to lean back into it, at least to get away from Kinzo's dumbfuck smug face.

He tugged one glove off with his teeth and leaned his chest over your's to adjust the water. It was only in this moment that you actually realized that Kinzo Shima was trying to help you with your hair. What did you think he was doing all this time? You reassured yourself that you weren't so stupid as to follow a man you hate into a bathroom just to keep fighting with him. Of course not.

"I can't believe Y/n Hojo is such a rebel," he teased at the same time as he started to work.

You'd shut your eyes the second he got too close to you, so you startled when you felt his fingers in your hair. If you ever had the chance to get close enough to run your hands through his hair god only knows what you'd do. He'd probably walk around half-bald for months-- have to wear half a hat come winter-- but Kinzo didn't seem to have any horrible pranks up his sleeve. Actually, his fingers felt nice under the hot water. Gentle, even.

You very professionally resisted the urge to sigh with content, but you couldn't stop your eyebrows scrunching every time he massaged your scalp just right.

"It feels nice to get your hair washed, right?"

You huffed.

"It feels nice to be nice too, 'should give it a try sometime."

You opened your eyes to see exactly what direction to throw your next retort, but Kinzo splashed water across your face in time to dodge the worst of it. You sputtered in anger and snatched the towel at his hip to dry off with. "You ever get sick of pranks you goddamn monkey?"

"That was self defense! I'm on my best behavior." Kinzo's voice was lighthearted as he held the back of your head, gently guiding you back up to sitting. A towel appeared behind your back and with one more twist you were around facing the mirror again.

He ran his hand up the shell of your ear to catch any drops of water before they trickled down your neck, "If Juzo and Mamushi can get along Y/n, so can we."

"My big sister married your raggedy ass brother and just like that we're expected to get along."

Kinzo began to part your head into sections and ran his hands through your hair a few more times. Maybe to measure something or maybe just to get under your skin. Worst of all, you let him.

"What are you even trying to do?"

"I'm lifting the color out, it wont be perfect but it'll better than this."

Under any normal circumstances, your shame would have you raging at that comment, but, he was right. You either needed to let one Shima help you or have all seven of them choke back laughter until the color grew out.

He scooped up the bleach mixture in his newly gloved hand and smoothed it along the sections of hair he created. Piece by piece he moved up your head, smoothing, wrapping, and clipping out of the way. Kinzo was nothing if not methodical, a characteristic you'd hardly ever seen him employ. His eyebrows laced themselves up, down, and knit in concentration behind you.

"Why are you helping me?"

"My brother loves your sister."

"That's not what I mean."

"I couldn't fall asleep knowing Renzo was your last line of defense."

You looked at yourself in the mirror for the first time, realizing you'd spent every second in here with your eyes either shut tight or glaring at the snarky blond, "I would hardly say we're close enough for you to lose sleep over me."

"We trained together all our lives Y/n, our graduating class had six people."

"Six people wasn't enough to keep me from drowning in your stupidity. I was completely surrounded."

"You and your sisters made up more than half the cram school! If anyone was surrounded it was me."

Kinzo might have caught your chuckle if you weren't so adept at hiding them from him. He was goddamn funny and you hated any chance he took to make you laugh.

"We were partners for every project ever assigned, every mission-- you can't just pretend not to remember that we had fun sometimes," Kinzo continued.

"There's an idea.." You grinned and closed your eyes to keep them from watering at the strong smell of bleach, "And!" you added, throwing up the apron a bit as you raised your finger to make a point, "It was only because Professor Todo said family couldn't pair off."

"And still you picked me over the other two kids."

"Nish and Ao always snapped them up too quick!"

"Picking me last is still picking me!" Kinzo hollered and when you looked back into the mirror to protest again you realized you were both laughing with big, wide smiles.

Kinzo realized too, and his smile grew even bigger for a second. Toothy. Although, he didn't say anything. Nothing sarcastic, nothing rude. His face seemed to settle into a grin and he went about his business humming into the last few sections of your hair.

"You know," he murmured, still smiling ever so softly, "we're allowed to get along."

If you'd been looking at him you might've melted into your seat a bit, but a well-timed yawn on your part drowned out any of his soft whispers. You wiped your eyes with the back of your hand and cocked a head at him, "Wha'ya say?"

He shook and and slipped back into his usually irritating smirk, "We're almost halfway finished."

"Half way! Jesus, Shima it's 11."

"You gotta let bleach do its thing."

"Is its thing keeping me up all night?"

"No, that's my-" Kinzo caught himself before innuendo caught up to the rest of the room, "never--just-- you have half an hour to kill before you can rinse this out."

"Half an hour!"

"Purple shampoo," he pointed to one bottle, "purple conditioner," and to the other, "and then we're all finished."

"'We' nothing! Go on, out with you, I have too much hair to wash all this out in the sink and I have NO need for your help in the shower."

Kinzo didn't expect anything too much different and was genuinely grateful to finally be sent off to bed, but you weren't as loud as you should have been. You kicked at him and shoved him out the door, sure, but not even a single Monkey left your lips.

"Just go to bed!" You whispered as loudly as you possibly could into the quiet hallway where Kinzo was standing a bit shocked. He had his bleachy-gloved hands hands hovering beside either side of his head as he started on the way back to his room, formulating a plan to get them off without ruining anything in this ancient mansion of absolutely incalculable value.

The fumes from your hair must've agitated that tiny common sense section of your brain because before he could fully turn the corner and disappear you had one more hiss to hiss, "Thank..thank you! Kinzo."

He waved in response but that last bit made his head turn. He ogled for a sec, at the thanks partly, but mostly at how cute it sounded when you tried not to say his name too loud.

"S-sure thing, Y/n."

Oh, no.

You slipped back into the bathroom silently and sat down on the floor behind the door.

It was Kinzo's turn to be late today. Final meeting of the weekend and he'd stayed up just slightly too late to hear his alarm. Down the hall, careful not to trip or bump any precious artifacts of the wall with his k'rik, he soared to the meeting room. He heard Master Hojo before he even got close enough to step inside, Master Tatsuma too. The door was already wide open.

Kinzo, framed by the doorway, slid into the meeting hot on his socks in what would have been a particularly funny entrance had you not already stolen the limelight again. The last breath he took before stepping inside escaped his lungs in a wheeze that came out only as,

"Oh."

You turned around sharply from your spot at the front of the room (once again apologizing in front of Master Tatsuma) and locked eyes with the Shima trying to glide into the meeting unnoticed. Kinzo had definitely seen you angrier than this.. right? Maybe not since..well no, maybe not.

Pink. That's all he could think of.

Your hair was so unbelievably pink.

And so fucking cute.

Oh, no.

"Kinzo! This is not better!" Juzo tried to be serious in front of Mamushi but any Myodha could see that he was attempting the impossible by holding back his amusement.

Kinzo turned back to you "Y/n I'm--" and before he could apologize, raised an eyebrow.

It wasn't anger furrowing your brows together. You were nearly in tears trying not to laugh.

He was right, he'd never seen you like this before. Did anyone else in the room even notice?

You bit your lip to force the corners of your mouth back down before you turned back to your father, who just quietly begged you to take your seat.

In your spot across the room from his, with the meeting finally distracting everyone else, Kinzo stared at you until he had your attention.

I'm sorry, he mouthed.

But you didn't say anything back. Only looked from him, to Renzo and back again. The two of you had to turn away from each other to stifle the laughter and spent the better half of the meeting, unable to even make eye contact.

"Y/n," Ao prodded you under the table after one too many noisy exhales.

Sorry, so sorry. You tried to mouth to your sister but her focus was strictly on the cheery Master Tatsuma, "Nish, I'm sorry." You grumbled out of the corner of your mouth to your other sister.

"Excuse yourself if you can't be quiet," Nishiki suggested.

"Yes Y/n, no one will be offended if you need a moment."

This time it was Master Tatsuma who spoke. That very stunned second, Kinzo rose and as politely as anyone in a hurry could manage, stepped out, and closed the door behind him. It felt obvious to you that he was losing the fight against his laughter, but murmurs of upset stomach?s and, bad seafood? drifted through the crowd.

"And while you're out there, do check on young Shima for us." Tatsuma smiled generously and you knew somehow he must have been amused.

You stood before the room of, honestly at this point, absolutely exhausted and sick-of-you-Myodhas, and apologized with a shallow bow, "Please excuse me sir." And then you too, slipped behind the large meeting table and out the back door with a click of the closing screen.

The laughter you could barely suppress before waned easily when it was replaced by this rising embarrassment. But before you could truly despair, Kinzo Shima rounded a corner and snatched your wrist in his grasp.

"Y/n, how in the world! Did. You. Do this."

"Shh!" You seethed and snatched him right back. Snatched him so hard he followed your grip without protest, far down the back hallway and into an empty bedroom.

"The bleach gave me a headache," you groaned, "I had to rinse it out!"

"I don't know how but I think this must be my fault."

There was a pause as you two hovered in a doorway, and Kinzo covered his mouth to choke the smile he had for his own joke. He still wasn't sure what exactly made you angry. Or what made you laugh.

But it was him.

You huffed first, and then covered your eyes as a full blown rack of laughter took over. Your shoulders twitched and then wiggled under the weight of staying quiet, and soon your whole body was trembling. Kinzo almost didn't know what to do, but watching you struggle to hold back a laugh made it harder for him to even stand up straight and soon the two of you were gasping silently for air on the floor of someone else's bedroom.

Mamushi walked towards the garden from the kitchen where she'd spent the morning and watched as your silly scene unfolded in the doorway at the end of a hall on her way outside. She smiled and watched you and Kinzo try to support each other enough to stand. Shush each other and look both ways before quickly falling back into fits of giggles. All in all doing a terrible job of stay quiet. She thought about calling out to you and asking just what was so funny, but quietly turned the corner instead when you and Kinzo tumbled awkwardly into each other instead. Breathless.

It was nice to see one of her sisters so happy for a change.

[moonhawk147]

Name: Grace Goukyuu (Crying) Age: 15 Gender: Female Orientation: Straight Personality: Nice, Naïve, is willing to do anything to be liked by her peers Likes: Dogs, Stars, Senpai Zak noticing her Dislikes: Being hated, Monobear, Zak hating her Favorite color: Violet Appearance: long soft brown hair she keeps in a braid, golden brown eyes, freckles Outfit: A long sleeved blue sweater with a white star, knee length skirt, blue flats, white bow Super high school level: Astronomer Name: Zak Akuma (Devil) Age: 16 Gender: Male Orientation: Polyromantic Personality: Foulmouthed, spots hidden objects, persuasive, laid back Likes: Death, his camera, making Grace smile, Dislikes: people calling him a fake, Rebecca Favorite color: blood pink Appearance: Black hair, green eyes, a red lip piercing Outfit: a black t-shirt with a king of hearts design on the front, jeans, black sneakers Super high school level: Paranormal Investigator Name: Legend Hamusutā (Hamster) Age: 14 Gender: Male Orientation: Gay Personality: Outgoing, level headed, logical Likes: Games, Hanging out with friends Dislikes: Haters, Rage games, Dating sims except hatoful boyfriend Favorite color: Rainbow Bitch! Appearance: Black hair with green tips, hazel eyes Outfit: C.O.D shirt, jeans, black headphones around his neck, blue sneakers, gold dog tags Super high school level: Let’s Player Name: Mitsu Saito Age: 15 Gender: female Orientation: aromantic Personality: Courteous: Typically Risk-Taking: Usually Ambitious: Generally Curious: Generally Self-Controlled: Never Nurturing: Occasionally Trusting: Occasionally Honest: Never Loyal: Never Affectionate: Never Romantic: Occasionally Flirty: Rarely Sympathetic: Usually Altruistic: Rarely Optimistic: Rarely Observant: Typically Logical: Typically Social: Fairly solitary Emotions: Very unstable Likes: bugs, the dark Dislikes: kids, bears Favorite color: blue Outfit: Super high school level: Doctor Name: Michi Imai Age: 18 Gender: Female Orientation: straight Personality: shy, anxious, foolish, cruel, judgemental, forceful, Likes: her sewing kit, water, being alone Dislikes: people, small places, cats Favorite color: pink Outfit: light turquoise medium-length dress with a scalloped skirt, a loose waist, and long flared sleeves, vivid blue slipper shoes, a white medium-length cloak, light pink a knit scarf puffy hat Super high school level: Seamstress Name: Rebecca Ijimekko (bully) Age: 15 Gender: female Orientation: Asexual Personality: Strict, Serious, Hater, thinks she is better than everyone else Likes: making Grace cry, Monobear, making anyone cry, Classical Music Dislikes: Everyone Favorite color: Pink Appearance: long black hair, green-brown eyes Outfit:  a black tank top with a white music note on it, jeans, white flats Super high school level: Violinist Name: Takeshi Ibu Age: 17 Gender: netural Orientation: bi Personality: stubborn, kindly, rebellious, ambitious, optimistic, flirty Likes: having fun, food, drinks Dislikes: rules, fire, getting told what to do Favorite color: yellow Outfit: This mandarin-collar suit ensemble is done in turquoise and light gray fabrics. Super high school level: Party Name: Sam Ken (Sword) Age: 18 Gender: Male Orientation: straight Personality: Courteous: Typically Risk-Taking: Generally Ambitious: Occasionally Curious: Generally Self-Controlled: Occasionally Nurturing: Typically Trusting: Rarely Honest: Occasionally Loyal: Usually Affectionate: Generally Romantic: Typically Flirty: Sometimes Sympathetic: Occasionally Altruistic: Sometimes Optimistic: Generally Observant: Usually Logical: Sometimes Social: Very shy Emotions: Fairly unstable Likes: being alone, reading Dislikes: people, technology Favorite color: red Outfit: Super high school level: Sharpshooter Name: Katsumi Kahaya Age: 15 Gender: male Orientation: aromantic Personality: easy-going, fun-loving, independent, mysterious, sensitive, carefree Likes: art supplies, museaums, monuments Dislikes: storms, caffine, most kids Favorite color: blue Outfit/appearance: eyes the color of dying embers. His fine, curly, black hair is worn in a style that reminds you of the petals of a flower. He is short and has an elegant build. His skin is white. He has a low forehead and nearly-nonexistent eyebrows. His wardrobe is strange, with a lot of blue Super high school level: Artist Name: Tsuya Yoshikawa Age: 18 Gender: agender Orientation: straight Personality: cruel, stubborn, bold, helpful, unkind, sly Likes: weapons, crime shows Dislikes: Ethan, her boss Favorite color: pinkish purple Outfit/appearance: This lady makes you think of a sturdy tree. She has large purple eyes that are like two drops of wine. Her silky, curly, white hair is worn in a style that reminds you of a burning fire. She has a slender build. Her skin is light-colored. She has prominent cheekbones. She wears a police uniform Super high school level: Police Officer Name: Kinzo Tsuga Age: 16 Gender: fluid Orientation: straight Personality: sly, lonely, ambitious, coarse, cowardly, sensitive Likes: black cats, coffee Dislikes: dogs, haters Favorite color: dark Outfit/appearance: This man puts you in mind of an industrious beaver. He has narrow silver eyes. His luxurious, straight, yellow hair is worn in a style that reminds you of a dragon’s scales. He is short and has a feminine build. His skin is pale. He has hollow cheeks and prominent ears. His wardrobe is mysterious and dignified, with a lot of black. Super high school level: Magician Name: Ethan Age: 17 Gender: Male Orientation: Asexual Personality: Nice, Comic relief, clumsy Likes: Clovers, Being near people, luck Dislikes: Mirrors, bats Favorite color: dark green Appearance: Dirty blonde hair, blue eyes Outfit: a white shirt with superman on the front, jeans, black and green sneakers, a gold four leaf clover necklace Super high school level: Criminal Name: Kei Usagi Age: 17 Gender: Female Orientation: Demi Personality: Pros- friendly, cautious, somewhat good at debating Cons- tsundere, naive at times, nervous Likes: Sweets, going to the beach, and watching the sunset Dislikes: Large crowds/groups of people, sudden loud noises, and bad luck Favorite color: Red Outfit: *is too lazy to describe* *slides ref towards you* http://lunatheoutcast.deviantart.com/art/Danganronpa-OC-Kei-Usagi-Ref-555477341 Strengths: Hardworking and encouraging Talent: None in particular Super high school level: Bad Luck Name: Shino Hike Age: 15 Gender: male Orientation: straight Personality: forceful, overbearing, sensitive, helpful, reckless, adventurous Likes: tools, anime, sports Dislikes: dogs, Moon Favorite color: midnight blue Outfit: This gentleman reminds you of a deep ocean. He has droopy night-black eyes. His silky, straight, brown hair is neck-length and is worn in an exotic style. He is tall and has a masculine build. His skin is light-colored. He has bushy eyebrows. His wardrobe is complicated and mysterious, with a mostly white and black color scheme Super high school level: Builder Name: Moon Taka Age: 16 Gender: Female Orientation: Bi Personality: Shy, Loyal, Sticks to Kei because she trusts her, a bit crazy and treats life like a game Likes: Video Games, chocolate, Dislikes: Monobear, The Dark, Blood Favorite color: Silver Appearance: medium brown hair with white tips, blue-gray eyes Outfit: Jeans with a camo belt, a white shirt, a gray hoddie with a black dragon on the back, white socks, blue and black sneakers, a silver amulet with purple gems, blue + orange + tan cloth covering her left eye Strengths: her memory and puzzles Talent: Puzzles Super high school level: Puzzle Solver Name: Mina Isaka Age: 17 Gender: female Orientation: gay Personality: depressed, cheerful, coarse, fun-loving, helpful, arrogant Likes: food, flowers Dislikes: blood, hights Favorite color: blue Outfit/apprence: This lady puts you in mind of a cobra waiting to strike. She has hooded orange eyes that are like two setting suns. Her thick, wavy, lavender hair is worn in a style that reminds you of a puffy dandelion. She has a slender build. Her skin is white. She has a strong chin and stubby-fingered hands. Her wardrobe is bizarre, with a lot of black and blue. Super high school level: Scientist Name: Senzo Nakajima Age: 16 Gender: male Orientation: asexual Personality: fearless, domineering, reckless, kindly, carefree, sly Likes: flowers, the outside Dislikes: anime, memes Favorite color: Outfit: This witty gentleman has deep-set brown eyes that are like two splotches of mud. His silky, curly, chestnut hair is worn in a style that reminds you of a horse’s mane. He has an overmuscled build. His skin is ruddy. He has a wide chin and wide feet. His wardrobe is simple. Super high school level: Trapper8 fem 8 male Moon’s OCs

Name: Moon Taka Age: 16 Gender: Female Orientation: Bi Personality: Shy, Loyal, hot headed, easily overwhelmed, fears knifes and needles, anxiety, normally very calm and never gets angry unless you eff up badddddd, can’t tie her shoes to save her life Likes: Video Games, chocolate, walks, the night Dislikes: Monobear, The Dark, Blood, work that takes more then five minutes unless it’s helping someone Favorite color: Silver Appearance: medium brown hair with white tips and red bangs, blue-gray eyes Outfit: Jeans with a camo belt, a white shirt, a gray hoddie with a black dragon on the back, white socks, blue and black sneakers, a silver amulet with purple gems, blue + orange + tan cloth covering her left eye Strengths: her memory and puzzles Talent: Puzzles Super high school level: Puzzle solver Past: Growing up in low income, Moon never had the nicest things. However, this didn’t stop her from getting the best education. From a young age she had always had a knack for puzzles. Whether it be computer based or traditional she could always solve it in record time. When she was ten her and her parents got into a train wreck. They all got out with minor injuries but Moon got a narly scar over her left eye. She got very self conscious about it and bought a cloth to cover it up. No one but Ristu, Rai, her parents and the doctors know what is under it. When she was fifteen she had already won 13 world records for her ability to solve puzzles. The day she was admitted to hopes peck was an amazing time for her. She did not inter the ‘despair games’ because no matter how hard they tried they could not erase her memories. Instead, they made her watch the games through the cameras (which was probably more despair inducing because she knew she could do nothing). It wasn’t until the final class trial until Junko revealed her. She could do nothing but watch all her friends fall into despair until Makoto swooped in helped them all see the hopeful future (She didn’t get to vote because it wouldn’t have been “despairing” enough). Upon leaving the academy, she became Future Foundation’s leading code breaker. She discovered the locations of the despair students and helped capture them (her first real mission, yay!). Her dedication and determination earned her a lot of respect. She was one of the chosen three to help with the WoH counseling.

Name: Rai Kano Age: 17 Gender: male Orientation: straight Personality: A bit of a hot head, kind, will sacrafice himself for anyone, studying is for nerdsssssssssss, soccer nerd Likes: sports, sleeping Dislikes: studying, cigars Favorite color: green Appearance: bright green eyes, jet black hair that covers a cigar burn his older brother gave him Outfit: neon green headephones with a black skull on the side, jeans, red jacket, white t-shirt, black and green sneakers Strengths: calming people Talent: wepons Super high school level: soccer player Past:

Kana’s OC

Name: Ritsu ???? Age: 18 Gender: female Orientation: bi Personality: Very nice, good at listening, kind of quiet Likes: cute things, computers, coffee Dislikes: triger word “game”, gross things, water Favorite color: light blue Appearance: long orange hair w/ bangs in a ponytail, talish, pale with freackles on face eyes Outfit: glasses, flannel, t-shirt, jeans, brown boots Strengths: pretty stable (now), understands people, Talent: memes Super high school level: pyromaniac Past:

Name: Grace Goukyuu (Crying) Age: 15 Gender: Female Orientation: Straight Personality: Nice, Naïve, is willing to do anything to be liked by her peers Likes: Dogs, Stars, Senpai Zak noticing her Dislikes: Being hated, Monobear, Zak hating her Favorite color: Violet Appearance: long soft brown hair she keeps in a braid, golden brown eyes, freckles Outfit: A long sleeved blue sweater with a white star, knee length skirt, blue flats, white bow Super high school level: Astronomer

Name: Zak Akuma (Devil) Age: 16 Gender: Male Orientation: Polyromantic Personality: Foulmouthed, spots hidden objects, persuasive, laid back Likes: Death, his camera, making Grace smile, Dislikes: people calling him a fake, Rebecca Favorite color: blood pink Appearance: Black hair, green eyes, a red lip piercing Outfit: a black t-shirt with a king of hearts design on the front, jeans, black sneakers Super high school level: Paranormal Investigator

Name: Legend Hamusutā (Hamster) Age: 14 Gender: Male Orientation: Gay Personality: Outgoing, level headed, logical Likes: Games, Hanging out with friends Dislikes: Haters, Rage games, Dating sims except hatoful boyfriend Favorite color: Rainbow Bitch! Appearance: Black hair with green tips, hazel eyes Outfit: C.O.D shirt, jeans, black headphones around his neck, blue sneakers, gold dog tags Super high school level: Let’s Player

Name: Mitsu Saito Age: 15 Gender: female Orientation: aromantic Personality: Courteous: Typically Risk-Taking: Usually Ambitious: Generally Curious: Generally Self-Controlled: Never Nurturing: Occasionally Trusting: Occasionally Honest: Never Loyal: Never Affectionate: Never Romantic: Occasionally Flirty: Rarely Sympathetic: Usually Altruistic: Rarely Optimistic: Rarely Observant: Typically Logical: Typically Social: Fairly solitary Emotions: Very unstable Likes: bugs, the dark Dislikes: kids, bears Favorite color: blue Outfit: Super high school level: Doctor

Name: Michi Imai Age: 18 Gender: Female Orientation: straight Personality: shy, anxious, foolish, cruel, judgemental, forceful, Likes: her sewing kit, water, being alone Dislikes: people, small places, cats Favorite color: pink Outfit: light turquoise medium-length dress with a scalloped skirt, a loose waist, and long flared sleeves, vivid blue slipper shoes, a white medium-length cloak, light pink a knit scarf puffy hat Super high school level: Seamstress

Name: Rebecca Ijimekko (bully) Age: 15 Gender: female Orientation: Asexual Personality: Strict, Serious, Hater, thinks she is better than everyone else Likes: making Grace cry, Monobear, making anyone cry, Classical Music Dislikes: Everyone Favorite color: Pink Appearance: long black hair, green-brown eyes Outfit:  a black tank top with a white music note on it, jeans, white flats Super high school level: Violinist

Name: Takeshi Ibu Age: 17 Gender: netural Orientation: bi Personality: stubborn, kindly, rebellious, ambitious, optimistic, flirty Likes: having fun, food, drinks Dislikes: rules, fire, getting told what to do Favorite color: yellow Outfit: This mandarin-collar suit ensemble is done in turquoise and light gray fabrics. Super high school level: Party

Name: Sam Ken (Sword) Age: 18 Gender: Male Orientation: straight Personality: Courteous: Typically Risk-Taking: Generally Ambitious: Occasionally Curious: Generally Self-Controlled: Occasionally Nurturing: Typically Trusting: Rarely Honest: Occasionally Loyal: Usually Affectionate: Generally Romantic: Typically Flirty: Sometimes Sympathetic: Occasionally Altruistic: Sometimes Optimistic: Generally Observant: Usually Logical: Sometimes Social: Very shy Emotions: Fairly unstable Likes: being alone, reading Dislikes: people, technology Favorite color: red Outfit: Super high school level: Sharpshooter

Name: Katsumi Kahaya Age: 15 Gender: male Orientation: aromantic Personality: easy-going, fun-loving, independent, mysterious, sensitive, carefree Likes: art supplies, museaums, monuments Dislikes: storms, caffine, most kids Favorite color: blue Outfit/appearance: eyes the color of dying embers. His fine, curly, black hair is worn in a style that reminds you of the petals of a flower. He is short and has an elegant build. His skin is white. He has a low forehead and nearly-nonexistent eyebrows. His wardrobe is strange, with a lot of blue Super high school level: Artist

Name: Tsuya Yoshikawa Age: 18 Gender: agender Orientation: straight Personality: cruel, stubborn, bold, helpful, unkind, sly Likes: weapons, crime shows Dislikes: Ethan, her boss Favorite color: pinkish purple Outfit/appearance: This lady makes you think of a sturdy tree. She has large purple eyes that are like two drops of wine. Her silky, curly, white hair is worn in a style that reminds you of a burning fire. She has a slender build. Her skin is light-colored. She has prominent cheekbones. She wears a police uniform Super high school level: Police Officer

Name: Kinzo Tsuga Age: 16 Gender: fluid Orientation: straight Personality: sly, lonely, ambitious, coarse, cowardly, sensitive Likes: black cats, coffee Dislikes: dogs, haters Favorite color: dark Outfit/appearance: This man puts you in mind of an industrious beaver. He has narrow silver eyes. His luxurious, straight, yellow hair is worn in a style that reminds you of a dragon’s scales. He is short and has a feminine build. His skin is pale. He has hollow cheeks and prominent ears. His wardrobe is mysterious and dignified, with a lot of black. Super high school level: Magician

Name: Ethan Age: 17 Gender: Male Orientation: Asexual Personality: Nice, Comic relief, clumsy Likes: Clovers, Being near people, luck Dislikes: Mirrors, bats Favorite color: dark green Appearance: Dirty blonde hair, blue eyes Outfit: a white shirt with superman on the front, jeans, black and green sneakers, a gold four leaf clover necklace Super high school level: Criminal

Name: Kei Usagi Age: 17 Gender: Female Orientation: Demi Personality: Pros- friendly, cautious, somewhat good at debating Cons- tsundere, naive at times, nervous Likes: Sweets, going to the beach, and watching the sunset Dislikes: Large crowds/groups of people, sudden loud noises, and bad luck Favorite color: Red Outfit: *is too lazy to describe* *slides ref towards you* http://lunatheoutcast.deviantart.com/art/Danganronpa-OC-Kei-Usagi-Ref-555477341 Strengths: Hardworking and encouraging Talent: None in particular Super high school level: Bad Luck

Name: Shino Hike Age: 15 Gender: male Orientation: straight Personality: forceful, overbearing, sensitive, helpful, reckless, adventurous Likes: tools, anime, sports Dislikes: dogs, Moon Favorite color: midnight blue Outfit: This gentleman reminds you of a deep ocean. He has droopy night-black eyes. His silky, straight, brown hair is neck-length and is worn in an exotic style. He is tall and has a masculine build. His skin is light-colored. He has bushy eyebrows. His wardrobe is complicated and mysterious, with a mostly white and black color scheme Super high school level: Builder

Name: Moon Taka Age: 16 Gender: Female Orientation: Bi Personality: Shy, Loyal, Sticks to Kei because she trusts her, a bit crazy and treats life like a game Likes: Video Games, chocolate, Dislikes: Monobear, The Dark, Blood Favorite color: Silver Appearance: medium brown hair with white tips, blue-gray eyes Outfit: Jeans with a camo belt, a white shirt, a gray hoddie with a black dragon on the back, white socks, blue and black sneakers, a silver amulet with purple gems, blue + orange + tan cloth covering her left eye Strengths: her memory and puzzles Talent: Puzzles Super high school level: Puzzle Solver

Name: Mina Isaka Age: 17 Gender: female Orientation: gay Personality: depressed, cheerful, coarse, fun-loving, helpful, arrogant Likes: food, flowers Dislikes: blood, hights Favorite color: blue Outfit/apprence: This lady puts you in mind of a cobra waiting to strike. She has hooded orange eyes that are like two setting suns. Her thick, wavy, lavender hair is worn in a style that reminds you of a puffy dandelion. She has a slender build. Her skin is white. She has a strong chin and stubby-fingered hands. Her wardrobe is bizarre, with a lot of black and blue. Super high school level: Scientist

Name: Senzo Nakajima Age: 16 Gender: male Orientation: asexual Personality: fearless, domineering, reckless, kindly, carefree, sly Likes: flowers, the outside Dislikes: anime, memes Favorite color: Outfit: This witty gentleman has deep-set brown eyes that are like two splotches of mud. His silky, curly, chestnut hair is worn in a style that reminds you of a horse’s mane. He has an overmuscled build. His skin is ruddy. He has a wide chin and wide feet. His wardrobe is simple. Super high school level: Trapper

8 fem 8 male

Survivors: 1) Kei 2) Grace 3) Kinzo 4) Ethan 5) Moon 6) Katsumi 7) Legend 8) Takeshi

Dead/killers ½) Mitsu/Rebecca Choking/impailed by bow for violin ¾) Shino/Mina Stabing in multiple places with a wand in multiple places/forced to drink poisonious chemicals 5/6) Senzo/Tsuya Hung/shooting run 7/8) Michi/Zak Drowned/Possition-suicide 9) Sam Suicided-guilt

[queenoffishingandcookies]

Back on my genderbent umineko bullshit, and started thinking about what would change if Kinzo was born as a woman. Or if it were even feasibly possible.

Because if I'm looking how how the rest of the family's characters and dynamics would change based on being born the opposite gender compared to canon, why not Kinzo?

I have never seen a single piece of art depicting Kinzo as a woman, which further made me think about this - and for obvious reasons of Kinzo being genderbent, so much of the plot would change.

Full Spoilers below, you have been warned. This is alos just incoherent ramblings and got pretty long, feel free to poke holes in all things if you suffered through reading this entire post.

First things first, the name:

I've tentatively given Fem! Kinzo the name Kina. That way, her name can still be spelled with the kanji for gold/money, [金].

So, Fem! Kinzo's name would be something like 「右代宮 金那」,

When her given name is spelled in katakana, it'd be 「キナ」. In Hiragana, it's written as 「きな」.

I've read that the second kanji (那) can be read as either 'that' or 'beautiful', but take my words with a grain of salt.

If I have got the kanji right, Kina's name is something along the lines of 'beautiful gold' or, alternatively, 'gold / golden beauty'?

What would stay the same to canon?

This will be a superficial account of what I think wouldn't change, because we only have so much information (read: so little) on Kinzo's upbringing in canon.

Kina would still be brought up in Taiwan, as member of a branch family (or the branch of a branch family) off the Ushiromiya Head House. With the same very toxic, misogynistic societal expectations of gender roles.

Kina and Genji would still become friends during the time Kina was growing up in Taiwan, but the level of education they'd receive would be inherently different based on their genders (again, societal expectation).

During the 1923 Kanto Earthquake, and in the aftermath of the quake, the majority of the Ushiromiya Family Head House that resided in Odawara - and potentially a few of the other branch families - dies out.

This likely includes the original family head, his sons, and any children they might of had, as in canon, Kinzo wasn't designated the next-head-in-waiting. He was Head of the Ushiromiya Family outright, even as a puppet.

Alongside the loss of many family members, the Ushiromiya Family also loses the spinning mills from which their fortune originally stemmed from, leading to a great loss of money on their end.

And right here is where Fem! Kinzo hits the first storyline snag.

From what I understand, according to Japanese Civil Code at the time, Kina would not have been able to inherit the position of Head of the Ushiromiya Family, nor the business venture of restoring the spinning mills.

Kina could not legally inherit those duties because she was a woman.

In Japan, according to the Civil Code at this time, family businesses and wealth could only be passed down through the male bloodlines - to male relatives alone. A woman, regardless of her blood connection, could not inherit.

Additionally, we also see this mentioned in Jessica's TIPS screen. Though she is Krauss' daughter, it would actually be her husband who becomes the Head of the Ushiromiya Head House - not Jessica herself. So I'm going out on a limb and assuming the headship was a similar case.

For Kina to feasibly be selected as a wife to the future (puppet) head of the family, that would have to mean at least two things:

All male relatives are either dead or unfit to inherit the Ushiromiya headship and business ventures, so the elders have no choice but to look to living daughters eligible for marriage.

They'd have to find a man of marriageable age willing to become an adopted husband - taking Kina's family name and sacrificing their own to preserve the Ushiromiya ie, as well as become the family's puppet head (I'm assuming this is what would happen in Jessica's case, too).

A quick run down on the ie, duties of the Head, and Mukoyoshi, adopted husbands comes from below.

I found a really interesting pdf on it here, which is where I got my information, so go and check it out.

The ie is literally defined to be a family household, bloodline, or the literal physical home - but it means more than just that. The ie encompasses the history and honor of the family and its name, the deceased ancestors, its traditions and mores, and the important duty of preventing the family from dying out.

The research paper linked above even describes it as revered.

The most important thing to many people was to ensure was that the ie did not die out (which throws Natsuhi and Eva's insistence on family pride and honor in a whole new light, for me - )

The ie is made up of the Head/Main House, the branch houses sired by sons of the head (or branches of said branch house), dead ancestors, recently deceased, and even the unborn.

The Family Head manage all affairs in the ie. From what I understand, he held ownership of all family property, family businesses, was responsible for the wellfare of all family members, the protection of his property, arranging marriages, and so on.

As I mentioned before, woman couldn't inherit the position or the duties it entailed at that time.

So if the Head of House had no eligible male relative to succeed him, in order to preserve the family name and keep family businesses in the family - they'd instead adopt a man of skill, good character, etc, into the family as the eldest daughter's husband.

Which kind of skews normal marriage dynamics in the ie.

Typically, a woman who marries into another ie, bringing with her a dowry, is expected to not only sacrifice her last name, but her own wishes and desires - to place the rest of ie's desires and needs above her own. There is the expectation of total subordination to the traditions of the ie.

Traditionally, women who marry into the ie are the least highest ranking in the family hierarchy. (*Natsuhi*)

As mukoyoshi are seen as 'entering the ie through marriage', even though they are men, they are in a similar position of being 'inferior' to those born in the family - expected to sacrifice their wants for the rest of the ie. They are the ones who bring a dowry of some sort. Gender roles are somewhat reversed.

The adopted husband would be of lower ranking to other members in the family, and in some cases mukoyoshi were derided for their position (more on that in the post i linked above, but also - *NATSUHI*).

Same as a wife can be divorced on the grounds of potential infertility, lack of fitness, or even illness that renders them incapable of performing expected duties - adopted husbands could easily be divorced and sent away if they didn't stand up to expectations, due to a probationary period where they weren't registered in the family Koseki.

From what I understand, traditionally the men adopted into their wives' families were not in line to inherit headship through their own (being second or third sons, etc), and therefore privileges associated with it. Traditional arranged dynamics (we get money, you get social standing, you carry on our family name, we get you an education, and so on).

All this to say, trying to keep to canon as close as reasonably possible with Kina, she'd be placed into an arranged marriage with an adopted husband, remaining Ushiromiya Kina while her husband became the puppet head.

I'm going to go and say that Kina's husband - as in canon, his wife was an aristocratic family - bought a dowry of a large sum of money with him that the Ushiromiya family used to try and rebuild their fortune. In return, he received higher social status as I believe the Ushiromiya Family was old money?

I claim the family, at least the original head house, was old money because of this.

It says until the Meiji and Taishou era, that the Ushiromiya family was prosperous. Meaning they were already wealthy prior to 1868, and that money was passed down several generations. According to Google, being old money means inherited for three+ generations, so that's what I'm going with.

Kina's aristocratic 'new money' spouse, who was out of the line of inheritance in his birth family, gives the Ushiromiya's a nice bit of start-up capital in exchange for higher social status and a better household position.

Kind of.

Canonically, Kinzo was looked down on by the upper class.

It's never confirmed why outright so it could run from the fact that he utilized aggressive business tactics that bordered on insane or was technically 'new' money due to trying to rebuild what was lost in the quake, but my personal headcanon is that his mother was a foreign woman who moved to japan after marriage (hence his deep-rooted like of western literature and styles and names).

While the Original Ushiromiya Head House had a good reputation and social standing on account of their wealth and business acumen, Kinzo - and therefore Kina - were from a branch house. Foreign blood, and their potentially less affluent though still-rich standings, told against her, as well as her husband having been new-money.

That, added onto the fact that on occasion, adopted husbands were looked down on? And this is the Ushiromiya Family we're talking about?

Better status on both accounts is debatable.

Additionally, if Genji were still a man in verses where Kinzo was born a girl, he'd...maybe be a potential option for marriage?

I have no clue whether that'd be feasible though, since we only know he came from a wealthy family, Kinzo tried to save his and his family's lives, only Genji lived (?) and Genji remained indebted to him due to that. His family might not have had anyone to inherit, if he did get adopted into the Ushiromiya Family.

So in the long run, this sets up the Ushiromiya Family (the kids and cousins), in a genderbent-world, still remaining the Ushiromiya Family. Because Kina's husband gets adopted into the family and, in her place, becomes the official head while Kina keeps her surname.

This further shakes up the storyline, because now it isn't Kina who is controlling the family business and money as Kinzo does in canon - at least not officially. It's the family elders, through her husband. Since it isn't specified how they controlled Kinzo in canon, I'm assuming that prior to marriage, they were the ones with ownership over what was left of the Head House's assets.

So the elders pressure Kina's husband on what ways to invest his dowry money, how best to invest it - or even asking for loans to themselves, how about he lets them continue to handle the rest of the family money in the early days of the marriage...?

Which is really just them holding the purse strings over both Kina and her husband's heads, and it probably stays like this for a while. Kina's duty is to carry children for him, work on the household budgets and kitchen, manage the staff, and so on.

This isn't even touching on either Kina's personality, how it would change compared to Kinzo's, or her spouse's, how it would clash against the marriage, their positions in the household, plus the gender roles.

Here, I'm going to sidetrack a little, because the discussion below - on personality and mentality and education - is important. Because again, this is some potentially big changes to canon.

We don't know much of Kinzo's early life, what his education was like, what his personality was like prior to his marriage - though, piecing together his appearances through the vn, we have a good idea of the after and the expectations of a person, derived from their gender, that were instilled in him.

In Kinzo's eyes, the duty of a man lies in business, building connections and improving their family name + reputation, generating income for the household, in furthering their education and so on.

A woman's job is to tend to the household. She is obedient and submissive to her spouse, her duty is occupying herself with domestic matters - cooking dinners and birthing/raising children, etc. The good-wife and wise mother mentality, which effected even educational status, except even more intense because - to the Ushiromiya House - a woman's most important job is having children.

Kina would be raised with this mentality too. As a daughter of the Ushiromiya Family, even from a branch house, that was what was expected of her. Marry for the sake of the family and it's connections, have children that will continue the line of her husband's ie.

Considering she'd from a branch family with a foreign mother, I see Kina still being heavily influenced by this line of thought - but adhering to it less. Brash, bold, and unapologetic about her attitude - like Jessica, like Battler in canon - a bit of a tomboy over a lady. Very...western.

I keep thinking this because Genji mentions Battler and Kinzo are alike - and I'm assuming he's referring to pre-kanto Kinzo's personality, considering that last time he saw Battler, the kid was twelve.

Kina likes sewing, likes tea, knows that's what a woman should - but also likes studying economics at her father's knee, and also from her mother (a bit like Mitsui Shuho, who ran the Mitsui family's merchant business in Edo era).

But it would affect the standard of her education, compared to Kinzo's.

I'm not sure if, in Taiwan, the schooling system on the mainland carried over - but at that time, schooling in Japan was like this:

It was compulsory for boys and girls both to attend school, and around 1906-1908, this period of time was extended from three years to six. Compulsory schooling (elementary) was co-educational. Students were given lesses on morals, mathmatics, reading/writing, composition, calligraphy, history, geography, science, drawing, singing, and P.E.

My headcanon is that Kinzo was born in 1899, so Kina would have attended some point in 1906, while she was attending compulsory schooling would have been extended, so she'd continue elementary until graduating in 1912.

After this, boys would be sent to middle school (chugakkou) for five years, followed by high school (koto gakkou), which I believe spanned a year or two(?), that would prepare them for university.

Girls were sent to high school (kotojogakkou / jogakkou), which was the equivalent of the boy's middle school - with emphasis on different subjects. Both would continue the lessons started in elementary school, but at different standards.

A girl's high school placed higher emphasis on domestic sciences (which I understand to be Home Economics?) - sewing and needlework, managing the household, painting, music, tea ceremony, and morals. Things like English were occasionally optional, both sciences and maths were taught at lower standards (by this, I'm assuming matters like calculus and trig were only men this, but don't take my word for it. This is just a sample of things woman were taught).

Kina would have graduated high school around March 1917, I think. As a woman, her higher form of education could have been Normal School, or Higher Normal Schools, meant to educate women on becoming teachers (or, if they didn't plan to become teachers, they'd pay a tuition fee like with the Tokyo Women's Higher Normal School).

As the first world war was going on, she could also have been given the option to receive three-year training with the Japanese Red Cross as a nurse, or various specialized semmongakkou schools (Like Tsuda Umeko's Women's English College or the Tokyo Women's Medical School founded by Yoshioka Yayoi).

On a few rare occasions, women were enrolled in the all-male imperial universities, though I don't have much information on that, regrettably. But that could also be an option. The duration of higher learning depended on the institution, I'm pretty sure.

Depending on how wealthy Kina's family was, I can see them taking a loan for her education tuition, maybe?

That would be the extent Fem! Kinzo's legal education - I can't see her being sent abroad for 'better' educational standards while the world war was raging, though I can imagine Kina doing self-study. I still need to research the effects of the war on Taiwan especially, as well as the school system in Japan.

So, Kina is a fairly independent, well educated woman, as independent as a woman could be at that time.

Then, presumably, her father dies - because, again, in canon Kinzo was declared head of the family, not head in waiting, and the Kanto Earthquake happens, and the elders forcibly uproot her life.

The freedom that Kina is accustomed to, her studies and so on, is taken from her because the Ushiromiya family needs a head, all the men are dead, and she's one of the eligible woman born into the family who can adopt-in a husband for the position.

To the elders, she is a woman. Meant to sire children and tend to the household. Nothing more.

I'm pretty sure that after the earthquake, Kinzo had to move to Odawara in canon? That's where the (previous) head house had lived, where the bodies of the extended family were, it was on the mainland where their business ventures were, etc. Also, after getting Bice off of Rokkenjima following the shootout between the soldiers of the gold, she lived in a mansion in Odawara - probably nearby?

So Kina is taken away from Taiwan, and her prideful, loud and brash personality is forcibly beaten down into a shape that the elders found suitable (possibly on a physical level?). She may have even been requested to go there, if she found work as a JRC Nurse, and then forcd to stay by her relatives.

Everything is scrutinized about her, from her unusual height as a woman (because she’s still tall, she has reddish hair on her mother’s side before it goes white), to her western tastes, and insubordinate behavior.

So Kina loses the brash cheer and softness she might have had in the past, and starts getting cold and bitter - especially towards the elders.

She is told, not asked, that she will marry a man for money meant to revive the family. Kina is stripped of all agency, if she does not want to be disowned and out of house and home - and be forced to repay the tuiton costs that the Head House might have paid for her.

She has no real estate, (potentially) no experience holding a job which would make it difficult to get one - here her upper-class standing would be against a woman holding a job, maybe? Though nursing was an honorable profession by the time she began schooling - and many people were hesitant to hire women who graduated from higher learning, because the older they are, the more likely they are to soon be married and then retire to raise a family.

Generally, it would be a struggle for her to earn that money - and the disownment would definitely tell against her.

In Japan, arranged marriages stem from arranged meetings (omiai). One family - often the spouse/bride-to-be's parents, meets with a go-between to look through portfolios of potential candidates also looking for a match. Their class standing, wealth, lineage, education, income, appearance - it's all scrutinized.

When a potential spouse is selected, then the families - and potential couple to be - meet at a place designated by the go-between. The couple gets some time alone to get to know the other person by the end of the first meeting, and subsequent dates are set up until the choice on whether or not to marry is made.

Kina, on the account of being not entirely japanese, would be discriminated against despite the Ushiromiya 'Old Money' standing. Also, at risk of being disowned, she could not speak out against the marriage if she did not agree with whoever the elders managed to get who'd be willing to give up their family name for a 'half-blood'.

So, there is that to consider.

I'm figuring that, through the Ushiromiya name, her husband's family believed - even with Kina being 'half' japanese - his marriage would therefore lead to better business connections for them. Or maybe he was attracted to Kina, or was under the misconception that she did agree with the marriage.

He could be half-Korean, and due to rumors that Korea was poisoning water after the earthquake and a plethora of other reasons, people in Japan began rioting, attacking, imprisoning, and killing people of Korean-descent, or even those suspected to be of korean descent. The wedding could be a matter of ensuring safety.

Again, we don't have nearly enough information on Kinzo's wife in canon, so I'm not sure what, in a genderbent au, his situation would be like.

Considering the Kanto Earthquake happened September 1923, I'm leaning towards Kinzo (therefore Kina) getting married in 1924 or '25, once homes were rebuilt, things were getting back on their feet, etc.

Continuing On | Parenthood / Bearing The Adults:

The strain in Kina's marital life is just as bad as in canon.

She is in a marriage to a person she doesn't know, and he doesn't know her. Again, considering her foreign parentage, and her like of western styles (which can be seen as a lack of patriotism?), he may even look down on her (or she perceives it that way).

Though she does have the skillset to hold a job (such as being a JRC nurse, needlepoint, etc), she might be expected and pressured to stay home.

Like Kinzo does in canon, Kina retreats into her western books, running the household, the budget of the head house, paying wages for staff, and drinking. Possibly to a lesser extent than Kinzo in canon, at least publicly (I'm not sure how appropriate ladies drinking in Japan was at the time, or if its something not so important to appearances), but she still drinks.

So, she is extremely distant from her husband, cold towards him, and I'm not sure how he would feel towards her? Again, lack of canon reference material.

Is he just as distant towards her, the marriage nothing more than business as long as she does what she's meant to? Is he frustrated with her lack of empathy or softness? Is he derisive of her, or does he try to reach out to her - at least at first? Or, does he rage against her coldness with fire, lashing out?

After all, he's only the head in name through his marriage. The elders hold all the power, all the money, essentially rendering his hand in his duties unnecessary, and as he married into the family, he'd automatically of the lowest rank in the ie -

Not to mention that the Ushiromiya Family isn't kind to birth-members of the house, forget by marriage.

Even if Kina were a woman, maybe just to make her spouse irritated, maybe they’d involve her over him in financial matters - or put them on equal standing. Kina is blood family, but a woman - her husband is a man, but married into the family.

That is to say, neither of them have any, in regards to what’s left of the original fortune or the investment of the dowry. That may change as years pass, some elders move or pass away, and Kina’s spouse at least achieves more freedom…but at the beginning, there’s none to be had.

If sticking close to canon, which means the future Ushiromiya Family is still heavily influenced by western fashions, he would have at least adopted foreign clothing styles. Maybe Kina refused to comply with the elders, so they pass it off as an eccentricity of hers.

So, based on that, by the elders - not just Kina - he isn't treated well. And in Umineko, hurt engenders hurt.

There's also the whole issue with consummating the marriage, the consent of either of them sleeping together, taking into additional account that Kina becomes a heavy drinker and what that could mean each time they share a bed, and the importance of having children, too - because plausible barrenness/infertility is a reasonable clause for divorce.

And then there’s the subsequent abuse heaped upon both of them, but especially Kina, for the lack of children being born (thinking on it, perhaps the Ushiromiya family puts such importance of a woman’s worth in giving birth because they can not inherit any other assets, other than perhaps money after the death of a father?? I don’t know all the intricacy of the law at that point).

There’s not even a bitter sense of a business-like relationship between them.

Kina, in regards to her children, wouldn’t change very much - even if some things changed a lot. Rather than being apathetic outright, as Kinzo is in canon, Kina would be forced to acknowledge her kids, at least in their early years.

She’d carry them for generally nine months each time she was pregnant, deal with the woes that come from a stretching stomach and aching joints, the recuperation after childbirth, and then be needing to nurse them (or hire a wet nurse).

Children she didn’t want.

Kinzo’s apathy takes on a whole new light, in a world where he’d be a woman. Kina did not want this marriage, did not want to share a bed, and yet had to for her own security - it’s a twisted form a consent that isn’t truly there).

Rather than apathy outright, maybe Kina would even feel resentment towards her kids, if they weren’t promptly handed off to the care of nursemaids while she retreated to her books and drink (which, actually, is concerning when she is the one pregnant. If a woman doesn’t breastfeed or get rid of the milk, sometimes it can harden into lumps in her breast, and likewise their are studies that a mother’s breast milk is best for babies…)

They are parasites eating her life away, vultures that peck away at her corpse to make a living for themselves. I say corpse because Kina isn’t actually living, she’s just doing the bare minimum of keeping herself alive, and in canon Kinzo mentions his life during this time had no meaning - and also, Kinzo and his ‘what is a will’ speech at the start of Legend will always stick with me.

This could also further worsen a relationship with her husband, because Kina - by not caring for her children, even if it’s best to avoid doting overmuch on them - isn’t doing her expected duty as a mother.

Kina is physically abusive still, as well. There is a common lack of belief that women aren’t violent abusers, or maybe most people are just afraid/ashamed to be hurt by women (because gender roles/expectations), but it doesn't change the fact that the abuse happens.

Women can be physically abusive.

I can’t say she’d be viciously abusive towards her husband at first, so much as she’d prefer to ignore his existence entirely or be extremely sharp-tongues, but if they got into arguments - I can imagine Kina’s hands flying if she lost control of emotions (such as lack of maternal behavior?). Slaps, scratches that can jump to punches, kicks…

Depending on the situation, she could escalate - and again, consent about sharing the wedding bed and so on is a concern. Especially with the drinking. It is a woman’s duty to share her bed with her spouse, but for Kina - who hadn’t wanted this spouse, this duty - I’m not sure she would as externally apathetic as Kinzo (and Kinzo just might have refused to feel or acknowledge feeling anything as a coping mechanism, I don’t know), though both were pushed into it.

More than Kina raises the kids, it would…probably end up being her spouse more than her, alongside a team of nursemaids and so on. Which would possibly result in more mocking for him from the family elders, even worse tension between him and Kina.

Kina would, after a point in time I think, just grow as apathetic (at least on the outside) as Kinzo was.

If they get married in 24/25, my headcanon is that Krauss (or, If going full GB, Kristine) wouldn’t be born until 1931. That’s five or six years. Five to six years of repetitive abuse on the lack of children, poor personal financial state for all that they live in relative splendor (a large mansion, staff to care for it, etc), and potentially her husband's family petitioning him for aid on account of blood ties...

Then there’s the poor marital relations + consent issues on both end (if both were pressured into the marriage, the expectation to have kids, it’s could feel like violation on both ends, on top of Kina’s drinking habits), discrimination against both their positions in the household, as well as her ‘eccentricity’ regarding western things and ‘half-Japanese’ status.

Treatment of the Adults (As Kids):

There’s many angles to try and perceive how Kina would resent her kids, if she did not treat them with outright apathy and give the bare minimum of keeping them alive that is expected of her as Kinzo does canonically (If even that, considering his wife ran the household).

If her first born was a boy (Krauss), it would get the elders off her back about having a child to inherit the family headship after her husband’s death (again, I don’t know if she could have operated as head herself if he were to die pre-WWII).

However, Kina would have to deal with the fact that her son has more of a right to freedom than she does, more of a right to have any ownership of the family assets and so on -

Due to a lack of raising her kids herself, Krauss would then be raised in accordance to the elders and her husband’s viewpoint (so. much. misogyny). Which would then probably escalate her dislike of her son as he gets older, his presumed ascendancy over women because he was a man, and therefore better educated in certain matters outside of domestics - even if Krauss doesn’t pull such hierarchy over her as a child.

(Or an adult, because Kina is scary just like Kinzo and twisted into a far cry from her brash and boisterous younger self, and also still his mother - and later, she takes her freedom and creates her own influence.)

If born a woman, Kristine’s birth would do nothing to alleviate the pressure of the elders on either of her parents, the small boon of having a first-born son would be non-existent.

Disappointment all around because a girl can’t inherit (though that would strengthen the elder’s power over a household), which would then disappoint her spouse - who’s still under the elder’s thumb.

Whether he’s happy or not about a child, a daughter, it’s still also a disappointment, and Kina would definitely not be pleased.

Feminine things that she may have still liked - music, sewing, embroidery, and other needlework, managing a house in the future, how to raise children themselves in the future - those were things she was absolutely expected to teach her daughters.

It wasn’t something she could merely indulge in. As a woman, those things were her right to know, what she could involve herself with…

Again, losing bits of herself to the vultures.

With Eva, she fights for her freedom - for the right to do things otherwise unattainable to her. Eva is rough and tumble, she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty, and strives for attention - she’s as bold as Kina was in the past, just as brash when she was young - even if that brashness turns to cutting quips as she gets older.

The comparison is displeasing, especially when Eva’s unladylike behavior is automatically reflected back upon her parents, and Kina specifically.

If she were born a boy instead (Evan? Real creative, I know), their dynamics would be so similar and yet so different. Evan has far more value, to the elders and to their father, based on his gender alone - he is a boy, he can inherit the Ushiromiya name, headship, and assets.

Like Krauss, he stands for everything Kina can’t have and everything that was taken from her by the elders - freedom. With how Kinzo was so apathetic to his kids, again my general thought process is that they were raised with influence from the family elders.

Evan would lord above his siblings, as he was the next head of house. He would inherit everything they left (which, arguably, wouldn’t actually be much?).

But he wouldn’t have his mother’s attention, or appreciation.

Evan would just have her apathy, her revulsion - and depending on how much the elders overlook Kina’s spouse, because the marriage really was just for the sake of money and continuing the ie, he might place his mother on the scale as ‘higher value’ than his father, for all that he is technically head.

Which does still brew resentment between he and Kristine, who can’t even inherit (though he fails to also link this to his mother), because Kristine still has some semblance of interaction with Kina while she doesn’t even seem to bear being in the same room as Evan.

The fights between the two kids get vicious, and that makes Kina even more frustrated with having them in the first place - especially when she’s hung over, when it’s over who gets her attention most.

Their grades in classes, their behavior at home, and even Evan’s attempt at domestic crafts to also gain her attention (but really gets a bit of mockery from everyone, instead), do nothing to endear them to Kina.

Giving birth to Rudolf (or Rochelle) nearly kills her, because Kina would be in her forties by that point. The older a woman is, the more difficult it is for her to get pregnant on account of the loss of eggs over the years during her periods - and the more difficult a pregnancy becomes.

Considering Natsuhi struggled to get pregnant, and I’ve seen a few thoughts float around that it was actually Krauss who struggled with fertility (which, GB AU, isn’t good), so I keep thinking that women in the Ushiromiya Family often have difficult pregnancies if not fertility issues.

Another daughter or son. At this point, Kina is reaching her middle age - and there is also the war going on (Japan actually was part of the war from 1939, because the empire was trying to expand at this time - the invasion of china, I think trying to make moves on British India…?).

She might then be stuck alone, in the mansion, if her husband was fit to be drafted into the war. With a newborn. Though there’s always the chance he wasn’t.

Rudolf/Rochelle are raised already knowing they will receive no affection from Kina, and possibly none from their father, and so they look elsewhere.

Rosa (or…Roland, maybe?) wouldn’t be born for another ten years, an even more dangerous and impossible pregnancy as Kina is around 52 by that point….even less inclined for more reasons (like, perchance, a falsified miscarriage - )

Also, working off the assumption that the Adults’ hair colors are their natural hair colors (they no doubt dyed it black to fit in, because that’s still part of some school dress codes to this day), she could be accused of infidelity, despite her often self-isolation- which would then be assuaged by looking back through her family history (through miniature portraits, maybe?), and seeing if other hair colors were passed down, etc.

The War & Everything Associated With It:

We now come to the Biggest Effect that Fem! Kinzo would have in regards to Umineko.

Rokkenjima, The Legend of the Gold, and Beatrice.

In canon, Kinzo enlisted in the army at somepoint around 1944 or so on. The elders, previously, were able to keep him from getting drafted earlier on - and maybe his depression hadn’t been so bad as to have him wishing to die outright.

However, by 1944, Kinzo wanted to die. He enlisted in the army, perhaps hoping to be sent to the front lines or so on. Instead, he ended up stationed at the military base on Rokkenjima.

While he was stationed at Rokkenjima, 1944-1945, a badly damaged submarine from Italy sought sanctuary, there. On board had been a nobleman, Castiglioni (given name is never mentioned), a close confidant of Mussolini given an important task - to ship a certain bit of ‘cargo’ to safety.

He dies over the voyage, along with some thirty other men - because by the time the submarine reaches Rokkenjima, only ten people aboard it are left alive, including Castiglioni’s daughter, Beatrice.

It eventually comes out that Castiglioni had been transporting some ten tons of gold (ranging anywhere from 800 to 1000 pure golden ingots).

After a certain point, Kinzo is heavily implied to have incited a massacre among the Italian soldiers who’d brought the gold, and his own fellow soldiers. Everyone except Kinzo and Beatrice die in the ensuing firefight, leaving the gold to be either hidden or divided by the two of them, but Beatrice is badly injured.

Kinzo, after the gunfight, brings Beatrice to the nearby island of Nijima to have her injuries treated, and at some point collects a golden ingot - he uses this to take a massive amount of collateral, as the ingot functions as proof he can pay it back, in order to make a series of investments and purchases to make the Ushiromiya name incredibly wealthy.

Perhaps with this money, he covers up the massacre on Rokkenjima, he purchases the island, and this sets the stage for the rest of the tragedy to play out upon.

I’m leaving out and simplifying the aftermath for the sake of focusing on the immediate changes to the story of 1944-45, and Rokkenjima.

Kina, unlike Kinzo, is a woman. From what I understand, during World War II, most women in the military consisted of nurses (or Red Cross nurses). So if she were to attempt to get to the front lines, she would do so as a nurse.

They weren’t typically formed into units though, during the US invasion of Japan, many took part in civilian resistance, such as students and faculty of the Okinawa Daiichi Women’s High School and the Shihan Women’s School being mobilized as nursing units by the army.

I’ve mentioned before that maybe Kina nursing training of some sort in regards to higher learning, so that education would make her available for such a position. So that’s a potential way for her to be sent to Rokkenjima, as a nurse.

However, what would be a concern is the fact that she was also the mother of three children. Most likely, she would have been expected to tend to her children.

Not including whether or not her husband was drafted into the war.

Similar to how Kinzo was prevented from having to enlist in the army, I can see the elders working to keep their puppet head off the front lines, at least while his son is so young.

Or, maybe he was drafted earlier on, and then discharged after being severely wounded and unable to continue working on the frontline as a soldier - or was killed in the line of fire, or still alive and fighting.

Leaving the possibility of the kids being left without either parents, or just one of them, if Kina did manage to enlist as a nurse.

Though Kina isn’t likely to raise them herself, instead having nursemaids to do so for her - so her absence wouldn’t much be remarked upon in regards to that, since it was really the staff of the household raising the children.

So, working off the line of thought that Kina wants to enlist as a nurse, in a bid to get sent to the frontlines and die, we also have to look at whether the elders would let her (depending on who is still alive, living with them in the mansion, etc), as well as her husband and the government itself…

(Or she could disguise herself as a man, because Kina is tall, but I'm not sure how that would pan out.)

That would be a complex situation I don’t even know where to begin with, but it would also plausibly set the stage for Kina being deployed with other nurses, to Rokkenjima, at least at some point.

It’s never mentioned in canon that a nursing unit was stationed there, but it could be possible. When soldiers would got sick or injured, they’d need to be treated - as would the Italian soldiers, once the submarine arrives.

Either Kina’s nursing unit would already be stationed there by the time the submarine arrived, or they’d be sent there by the mainland somehow.

I’m inclined to think the former, because it’s mentioned (at least in the manga) that due to weather conditions, it’s hard for the mainland to get a boat to Rokkenjima for the Italians.

All of that, getting sent to Rokkenjima, leads to Kina and the gold, and how she gets it.

Which, considering Kinzo’s affair with Beatrice, the entire life of Beatrice II, and then the birth of ‘Lion’, the assumed death in a manner identical to their mother, and their subsequent life as Yasuda Sayo…changes a lot about Umineko.

Beatrice / The Gold:

If Beatrice were a girl, at least physically, in a world where Kinzo is a woman, right then and there, it would derail part of the story of Umineko.

The massacre in 1986, later down the line, could still occur of course, with the brewing tension and anger and hate the sibiling have for each other - as it happens in Lion’s miracle fragment, but so much would be different - one fact being that Lion never comes to exist at all.

The epitaph might still exist, as homage to Bice after her passing, the gold would still exist, but there would be no true inheritor - there'd be no true person that the epitaph was meant for.

Beatrice II would never be conceived, not as a daughter of Ushiromiya Kinzo. Therefore, Ushiromiya Lion - Yasuda Sayo - would also never be born at all, as the child of Beatrice II and and Kinzo. The meaning behind the epitaph is different. There will never be any message bottles detailing the massacre, no promises of white horses - the person in they belonged to wouldn't exist at all.

The equipment needed to have a baby with Beatrice I (Bice), Kina doesn’t have.

Rule of the three No’s: No balls, no sperm, no baby.

There's also the fact that, both being women, there'd be internalized homophobia, possibly between the both of them (and it sucks that we know so little about Bice, because there's so much to be explored between her and Kinzo in canon and we only get biased viewpoints on the relationship), Kina is a married woman for all that she doesn't care/resents her family. Also, the potential age gap between them, since I don't think Bice's age is ever discussed in relation to Kinzo's own.

In this case, striving to remain as canon, Kina may still incite (or, as it may be consigned to 'a man's business and the massacre breaks out even without her hand in it, much how the adults later kill even in Lion's miracle fragement over the gold) take advantage of the shootout between the soldiers for the gold.

As what I assume to be the sole translator for japanese to english, while Bice translates that back into italian, it would be in her power to either worsen or assuage rising tension - it also would have a higher increase of death, because of other nurses on the island.

As to why... greed.

With that much money, even as a woman, she could be free, free from the shackles placed on her by the elders, if she managed to find some way to liquidate it. With that much money, she could go anywhere in the world - become anyone, anything besides property of the Ushiromiya family, a womb that had lost its use as age caught up to it.

And...Bice would be, too. Beyond being the daughter of Castiglioni, a noble woman even if the title was mere courtesy in the republic. With that money, money that by virtue of being entrusted to Bice's father belonged to the italian woman (or man, despite physical sex, depending on gender identity-) , the two of them together - because how could she leave behind the dear friend that had made her world into something living again? - would be free.

That gold...paved the path towards peace, happiness, fulfillment.

Kina, like Kinzo, escapes Rokkenjima in the aftermath of the massacre with Bice, brings her to Nijima to get treated. Both she and Bice are the only ones who know about the gold, but as Bice is an illegal presence in japan, Kina's the only one who can potentially utilize that gold.

Following Japan's surrender and the GHQ taking primary control of japan, the ie system was eventually abolished - though the position of head of the family, the koseki, still remained.

I don't know much information from this time on, but I'm taking this to mean that, at some point, a woman could inherit family assets that would have before then fallen into the hands of her spouse or male relative. So, it wouldn't belong to her husband alone.

It belonged to Kina, just as all the family assets should have - and would.

Kina, possibly by using her husband's name (they perhaps came to some form of armistice, the elder's power weakening over the course of the war and their old age, or she forcefully finds a way to take power above him in the family), would make connections with the GHQ and american forces - at the same time, using gold to take massive collateral money.

A woman in business, even if she was using her husband's name. The elders had overlooked her spouse for long enough, and by virtue of being an Ushiromiya by blood, Kina took up the power vacuum they left behind.

It's an interesting twist on the perceived power of their roles, wife and husband, from then on.

Kina's business decisions, the investment of her money, by 1950, makes the Ushiromiya Family one of the wealthiest in the world, taking advantage of the industrial boom post-war, and in preparation for the Korean war.

If Kina were a woman, I could see her - derived from the kanji in her name - being called a Golden Witch, when rumors of the golden ingot she showed to President Marusoo spread, and the way that - through impossible successes after successes - she reaches unheard of levels of wealth.

To become so successful, as a woman, no less, was nothing short of impressive - to the point of being impossible.

What would be especially interesting, to me...

Was if Bice was a man.

The son of one of Mussolini's confidants. At least physically, still not taking into account gender identities for the time being (because that would be interesting, with gender roles hammered so heavily into their skulls, and it is the 1940's).

Due to the Divine Comedy parallels within Umineko, in the manga Kinzo brings up The Divine Comedy outright when speaking to Bice, he'd be named Dante.

He does not treat her as lesser, is overjoyed at having a companion who does not look at him and see just nobility or money. Dante doesn't mind discussing foreign literature with her, of bantering and debating rather than outright overruling...simple things like that, when Kina had been stripped of that level of acceptance, and even engagement from others twenty years prior, plants seed of affection, if not attraction.

Though, I have to wonder, as a woman who has already been forced into a relationship, if Kina would be more aware of whether or not Dante was romantically interested in her in return, or if he only saw her as a friend.

Because in regards to canon, again, we…don’t know how Bice herself felt towards Kinzo, though he loved her enough to go mad and have her daughter, for a time, take her place (not to mention the whole imprisonment on Rokkenjima. Like, damn it Kinzo, if you had people delivering food and so on to Kuwadorian, why not have tutors, or send her to school? But, oh wait, that would mean being separated from Beatrice - )

Bice was in a foreign country, unable to return home, only one person she could speak to (in her second language, no less), who she was also financially dependent on….the power dynamics are decidedly one-sided, here. Add in the fact that her family is dead, and she just survived a traumatic massacre, it’s…not an equal relationship, even if it is love on both ends. Not a healthy one.

It would have been cool, to have more of that fleshed out - but unfortunately, we only see Bice through biased second-person lenses (Kinzo, Nanjo, and Genji).

I feel like maybe Kina would, however, be very aware of the potentially sizeable age gap between them (I’ve always had the sense that Beatrice was younger than Kinzo in canon, but I don’t know for sure). She was raised with the belief that her beauty, that submissive and dedicated behavior to the family, that childbearing was important.

That, and in Japan, passion and love matches were less popular because love could fade over time with looks…things that, maybe, Kinzo in canon didn’t think about. She is in her forties, had several children - might have been a beauty in her youth, but now…who knew?

More awareness, maybe, of what she lost over the past twenty years, being tied to the Ushiromiya name and her marriage?

(Then again, Beatrice / Dante really…couldn’t leave her? Still don’t know the language, have no connections to get out, and Japan is under control of their ‘enemy’ - apparently Bice’s mom died in a American bombing of Italy…? So there’s the risk of being handed over to them, or sent back to Italy…So there’s that).

Though, Dante…I’m presuming that he’d be far more in the line of fire compared to Bice, because he is a man, and therefore more of an immediate threat? Maybe he gets hurt trying to help the innocent (nurses, like Kina to safety?) and it’s a slaughter of the women in the crossfire.

(Considering I’ve seen a few theories float around that Kinzo didn’t intend for the massacre to blow up as massively as it did, and took merely advantage of the aftermath, that’s…pretty traumatic for Kina, seeing these other women she’s worked with get shot down for saving these men’s lives).

They both escape Rokkenjima, same as before, Kina still wrenches control of household affairs from her husband in some way…the rapid fire investment of collateral money (received by proof of the gold)…

It would also set the stage of their child's birth, and if they're born a boy - potentially even Sayo's, as well.

Though, both births would be difficult ones. Kina is in her forties by the time she meets Dante, so forty-something by the time the child is born, and then sixty something around the time Sayo would be born (which isn't impossible, but still extremely difficult because of a decrease in fertility and the natural degradation of a person’s body, not to mention the drinking).

Also, in the 50’s, which is around the time Kuwabeato would be born in canon, if she’s somewhere around her late teens/early twenties, if Kina quits sleeping with her husband after meeting Dante (or Bice), the parentage of the child is immediately called into question, plus that also switches up the Kuwadorian situation.

No paternity tests exist at that time, so her child could be passed off as her husband’s (especially since Krauss/Kristine already had blonde hair).

But, if Dante is still alive at that time (wouldn’t die in childbirth as Bice possibly did in canon), that would be stealing the child that was actually born of love between them from him. Unless he does die in some way, prior to Kuwadorian being built. Illness, following the massacre and submarine?

Kina could attempt to divorce her husband, if Dante were still alive, but that would damage her reputation and future business ventures, not to mention that Dante/Bice don’t have any legal documentation and so on…

There’s also the option of potentially feigning illness and being sent away (doctor’s *Nanjo’s made-up* orders), during the duration of her period, and spending that time/the birth there (with Dante).

If Kina weren’t planning on raising her and Dante’s child with the Ushiromiya family, whether Dante is alive or dead (in the catbox - ), I can see her giving birth in the Odawara mansion Dante’s reside(d) at, and maybe falsifying a miscarriage?

Or she’d give birth at the Ushiromiya family mansion, have Nanjo falsify a miscarriage, and have the child sent to the Odawara (Dante/Bice’s) marriage?

Fem! Kinzo complicates these matters. In real life, I can see her giving birth, and passing child off as her and her legal husband…but then, like her, he will be chained to the Ushiromiya name, a false father, never getting a chance to know the real one, and is tied to everything that Kina resents.

…out of curiosity, I did look up “mom had secret child” on Google, and found this Reddit post, it’s also the first story in a video on YouTube, so maybe it’s not as impossible a scenario as I first thought, for her to leave again due to ‘health’ issues. I don’t know if it is real though, so take the post with a grain of salt.

(It’s also still fairly creepy, real or not, considering the OP in the story is twenty, and the person their mom (40’s?) had an affair with was 24 at the time of the pregnancy, and also the child of a family friend.).

Rokkenjima & Kuwadorian:

I can see things, unfortunately, playing out pretty similarly to canon. In 1952, the Ushiromiya Family Mansion, and likely Kuwadorian, are built upon Rokkenjima once Kina acquired the island.

Kina regularly disappears off to Kuwadorian, and possibly has a way of keeping her husband from looking into matters (perhaps threats, or perhaps the simple fact that she is now the head of house - she is the one who controls the assets, the money. He has no power and - of his own family is indebted to the Ushiromiya family if they ever borrowed money or so on - he would certainly be forced to repay that amount, and knowing Kina, with interest, If pursing divorce or scandal). Or maybe, he takes his anger out just as violent as she does...

As her and Dante’s child grows, in a world where Lion / Sayo is born (the child of Kinzo and his own daughter with Bice, in canon), they’d have to be born as a boy.

In this world, Sayo/Lion would be born as Ushiromiya Kina’s child with her own son.

Eventually, Kina’s mental state - which is likely unstable after having lost Dante, not to mention…her life, in general, post-1923 and then massacre in 1945 - begins to slip as he gets older.

More and more, the child looks like his father - like Dante.

To the point where Kina either can’t - or tries not to - differentiate between father and son, which might further destabilize what mental stability she does have (I’ve also seen it postulated that Kinzo began to develop some form of dementia or other memory disorders, and his heavy drinking definitely wouldn’t have helped matters).

This post (Ushiromiya Family Apologist, here on tumblr) goes into Bice and Kinzo's relationship, and there's a bit of a look into Kinzo's obsession and attachment with Kuwabeato as well. It’s in response to post by Ramblings of the Golden Witch, already linked there. You can scroll down into the comments, to see the look into his mental health at the time.

There's also another post (by Batbeato) regarding Kinzo's trauma, his relationship with Bice, and his abuse, and their really interesting to read. Definitely influences my thoughts on the man.

As par for the course in Umineko, it's a fucked up situation all-around.

Eventually, just like Kinzo in canon, Kina is unable to see her son Dante, so named in honor of his father. Instead, as she sees in the man she loved, the man who had risen from the seas and given her new life, the gold which enabled her to receive a measure of freedom. She sees her lover, Dante.

I'm assuming there have to be brief moments of clarity for Kinzo, in canon - his back and forth between saying he'd give everyhting to Beatrice, before claiming she can't leave him, that dangerous level of dependency and obsession over her.

Kina has those same moments of clarity, but it's ultimately obscured by the desire to see Dante, who in a reverse of roles compared to the Divine Comedy, led Kina from the inferno of hell into paradise. Kina can't let go of her lover, and superimposes that image upon her son, because it was Dante who kept her alive. She could not save his life, not from what killed him (because I don't think she would obsess over her own son if his father was alive), and now...it's like he returned to her again, after another interval of twenty years...

I can't say if Dante II would be kept so isolated, so naive and unknowing of the outer world, as Beatrice II would have been. As Kina's son (initially), he'd - by virtue of being born a man - would not struggle nearly so much in making it in the world, and that's the expectations that stem from being a man.

But I don't think he'd ever leave Rokkenjima, or Kuwadorian itself. He's educated in academics, in languages and countries and economics (as her beloved son, he is her heir - even if she has to have papers forged - ), perhaps more so that Kuwabeato was in canon, with tutors perhaps silenced by money (or threats, who knows), but Kina can't risk losing him (again) by sending him off to school in the mainland - and he is still a person who doesn't (legally) exist.

Books in English, in his father's native italian, and as she slowly loses grasp of her son over his father, Dante (I) clothes are given to him, 'his' favorite meals are brought before him as she tries to make him remember, delving into old occult books she'd once only picked up as curious, superstitious oddities....

A steady decline in her mindset, up until the point that the stroke of his mother's fingers in his hair isn't so innocent anymore, and the precious nicknames she'd given him in the past take on a new, deeper, serious meaning...no longer her beloved heir, but the man that, had things been different, she wanted to take as her spouse.

Kina, like Kinzo with Beatrice II, rapes her son.

It's veiled in the mystique of magic she so heavily to believes in by now, she's so desperate to have 'him' remember his first life, that this will help him - but Dante, her son, remembers nothing. Not when she so slowly, so gently, took him to bed and swore to him that this magic would help him remember, and began to remove his clothes when his own fingers refused to co-operate.

Because no matter how Kina claims he is a sorcerer who has parted the sea and was born from the flames of inferno he rescued her from (the submarine, the explosion which damaged it), who led her through purgatory, the sorcerer who bestowed upon her a pile of magic gold from which she built their home, and even recreated a new form for him after his mortal form died from wound he'd saved her from (the massacre of the base below them) , the sorcerer that gave her the magic power to create paradise above hell and purgatory -

The Golden Sorcerer paired with the Golden Witch, able to create impossible fortune from impossible chances, an empress (over a business empire) over an island she created (the mansions, the chapel) -

Dante, her son, is not that sorcerer.

He is not the man who must have been his father, from what manages to grasp from the servants who state his face has not changed from his last life - because if he is not a sorcerer, does not feel like one, he is a human. One with a mother, and then a father - that's how the stories always go.

A man and a woman - together they bear a child. Dante was likely raised to know that much of how a child was brought into the world, beyond Kuwabeato, if not the specifics as to how (i.e, sex). Very incredibly intelligent, and also sheltered, left ignorant - without a real chance to form his own sense of self, for all that he may be more aware of it than canon Beatrice II (seriously, depending on how old she was when Kinzo started directly treating he like her mother reborn, Beatrice II might not even be aware she had a mom).

I don't know if he would understand that what Kina did to him constituted as rape, because he is still - for all the education he'd been given - sheltered, isolated, in his palace of a mansion (a bit...like..the odawara mansion the elders stuck her in). He may be more well-informed compared to canon Beatrice II, but how far that stretches...it depends on what Kina deems necessary for him to know, and that would be wholly different from canon Kinzo and Beatrice II because of their genders.

Besides that, he still sees Kina as his mother - it's a 'mother knows best' situation. She believes this will help him, or who she sees him as...how can he refuse her, upset her?

Even if it feels horribly wrong, terribly wrong.

Dante II is still, just like Beatrice II for all that their education may have been different, effectively groomed for submission, for obedience to his mother - he stands always in deference to Kina, to the name and persona she'd given to him in her head, to the mansion that cocooned him - a bird in a gilded egg he wasn't allowed to hatch from.

Which isn't good because Kina isn't mentally healthy, at all. Her every action is marred by her instability, her traumas, and expereicences.

However, he wouldn't understand this, other than his discomfort at being seen as his father, if he does truly have a father (again, up for debate, considering in canon Kinzo doesn't allow Beatrice II to call him that, so it is potentially an observation pieced together), because everything he is taught, again, is tied to Kina herself.

Is that not normal in his books, in history, for one son to be said to take after his father? For it to be something to take pride in?

Yet to his mother, Dante doesn't look like his father - like that mythical sorcerer that saved her life. He becomes that person.

Kina doesn't, can not, see that in the moment. She doesn't see her son, who resembles his father. Kina sees the father, himself, alive again.

Dante is not his own person, sometimes.

For all that his mother didn't hurt him, that first night...Dante didn't hate her, didn't fear her, because he didn't understand what was done to him...but perhaps could not ever trust her again.

(Ncfan on ao3 has some fics on Kuwadorian Beatrice, of Kinzo's rape of her, and the effect her abuse and imprisonment in Kuwadorian...highly suggest reading them).

When clarity does strike Kina, I imagine it strikes her very hard. Especially according to both Nanjo and Genji in canon: Kinzo did not set out from Beatrice II's birth to have her replace her mother, and when he came to realize he was beginning to see her as her mother, it 'pained him greatly'.

Nanjo mentions that Kinzo mentioned Beatrice II being her mother reborn and thinking of it as a joke when they were drinking, and maybe it began that way to Kinzo...but then he latches on to that idea, day in and day out of sneaking back and forth between Kuwadorian and the family mansion...

That freedom he associated with Beatrice, that renewel of life, is tied to Kuwadorian and their daughter, who shares her mother's face and name.

This could, of course, be seen as their personal biases in regards to Kinzo - Clair mentions that if Kinzo loved Beatrice II as his daughter, why pass down her mother's name to her? The situation could be as she states, that Kinzo already begun to see his daughter as Beatrice reborn from the day she'd been born, or the truth could lay in the middle somewhere between the two biases.

Jumping way back up the post, where the consent of the marriage bed she shares with her husband is looked at, Kina is, in her eyes...no better than the husband she resented. He saw an obedient bride in the place of a prisoner, a sacrifice -

Kina saw Dante, in place of their son.

She knows what she's doing is wrong, even if in the moment, in her delusions of seeing on person in place of another, she doesn't register why, perhaps does her best to avoid Kuwadorian leading up to the moment where she rapes her son, but her mind still latched on to that desperate idea and doesn't relinquish it.

When clarity hits, it's awful. Kina knows the difference between how her son Dante feels (Kinzo says as much, when Sayo is brought to him dressed as Beatrice, that he knew she hadn't felt the same way even if he denied it with delusions), and the love she felt for his father, which slowly latched onto him like a strangling weed.

It's fucked up. A cycle of abuse.

Kina, and Kinzo, were not mentally stable.

It would have been best to keep him away from Kuwadorian Beatrice, to find some way to mental health evaluations or aid - but this was the sixties, so these things weren't heavily researched - especially in Japan - he was a very rich man, and everyone who knew about Beatrice II was on his payroll...so their livelihood was in his hand.

No one stops him, tries to stop him, maybe don't even see the very real danger, until the deed's already been done.

And it impossibly leads to a pregnancy (or perhaps, if her mental state begins to worsen, chances are raised because Kina rapes Dante again. Kinzo in his later life isn't stable, wasn't stable back when Beatrice II was alive when he took her for her mother - and we don't know if he raped Beatrice II more than once. He could have. That is possible).

Kina, at sixty-six (if Sayo's actual date of birth is in may, and they were carried for a full nine months, they would have been conceived some point in September 1966), is carrying a baby. The baby of her own son.

A pregnancy at such an age, I don't think I've ever heard of one. If it's dangerous when a woman is in her forties, it can be downright deadly once she's at that age.

And this is all just lightly touching on an overview of 1/2 of Kina's life, not looking at the Ushiromiya side of things, because at the same time Dante II is an infant, the Ushiromiya's move to Rokkenjima as well, Kina gives birth to Roland in her fifties...her children's marriages, the birth of her first grandchild - so much happened, yet also so little we know about on Rokkenjima.

There's Kina saving Genji, reaching out to him/her in a bid to save their family from the war, renewing their friendship after some odd twenty years and reconciling with how they both changed, Krauss & Natsuhi's wedding in the early 50's (or, Kristine & Natsu's and that would be something Evan would have issues with, because his sister should have married out - ), Eva and Hideyoshi's marriage (Evan/Hina?), the elder pair's infertility issues, George's birth (I honestly can't tell if George's name would change that much in a GB verse. Georgia? Either that or it stays the same), Rudolf being Rudolf (and I went on a whole rant to Batbeato about how that would work in a genderbent verse, oops - ), and Rosa/Roland's entire early childhood, on top of dealing with her own spouse -

The dynamics would change so much.

Which all spins into Dante II's eventual accidental death, some point possibly after Lion/Sayo is born in 1967 (and I have no clue how Kina would up and hide that pregnancy, unless it was claimed she was sent to a mental institute which - wouldn't be good for the family reputation, though probably not unexpected? But also means that she'd be at Kuwadorian, regularly near Dante II, at least until after the birth...), when he leaves the fence of Kuwadorian for the first time.

There’s so much to look at here - so much.

And Kina…

Kina only gets worse, when Genji breaks the news that Dante is dead to her. The pregnancy and birth was a difficult one at her age, and now -

Just like she feared, he left her - and she lost him. Her lover reborn - no, the poor baby she’d had with him, and forced her own love upon.

Kina lost her son, and depending on the timing, baby Lion, in quick succession (we don’t know the circumstances of Lion’s birth in general, whether Beatrice II knew about the baby/the absence of it, how quickly they were actually brought to the family mansion).

In canon, I don't know if Kinzo was remorseful over the way he raised Beatrice II (ignorant of the world, sheltered to the point of naivety in most matters) compared to his rape itself, or her death. (If Genji never mentions Rosa's involvement, and I don't think he would, it could either be an accident or a suicide in his eyes).

Because I don’t think it’s ever mentioned what happened to Beatrice II’s body, I’m going to assume they were either cremated (which means sending the body to the mainland, paying for the cremation, the urn, having it sent back to Rokkenjima), or given a private burial somewhere on the island once the body was recovered.

(It’s not ever mentioned that a grave was found near Kuwadorian, which is most likely where it would be, but it might have gotten destroyed in the blast radius of explosion of far enough away, or alternatively, was hushed up by Eva, or something - maybe it doesn’t even have a marker to denote that it is a grave, at least not a noticeable one).

In a genderbent au, it would be Dante II’s portrait later hung up in the entrance hall (and every time I think of the portrait I now think of the songs Leia and Reon).

BABY LION / THE CLIFF INCIDENT:

So, Baby Lion is born at some point in 1967 while Dante (II) is still alive (because in canon, Kuwadorian Beatrice had to have been alive to give birth to them in the first place).

Presumably, Kina gives birth at Kuwadorian (under the guise of being elsewhere for treatment of her health), spends some time there recuperating from the birth, and then returns to the Ushiromiya family mansion.

In canon, Kinzo was apparently at the mansion around the time Beatrice died, as Rosa nervously expected him to grow angry with her and glanced at his study (?) door - so, Kina would not be at Kuwadorian, perhaps, prior to Dante II’s death.

Furthermore, baby Lion wouldn’t be with her at this point, as Natsuhi mentions in canon that when she was introduced to the baby, Krauss was away on business, and Rosa with her friends (On a trip? Don’t remember for sure). The others had already moved off island, and maybe his wife had already passed (Battler mentions her in Legend, all of once when he ses the portrait I think, but may have only known her through pictures or something).

I’m pinning Dante’s death at some point in late May or June, which I think is around the time schools would have testing? When Rosa (canon) goes to Kuwadorian, it’s after she’s gotten scolded by her mother for poor grades or something a tutor had brought up. Bad test grades would be one such reason for a scolding, maybe?

The baby is still at Kuwadorian, likely being cared for by the staff and maybe a wet nurse? (and there's a lot to look at her, from Kina's changed relationship to her son, her relationship with baby Lion, and then Dante II's relationship to his son - if he has any, at all).

Rosa/Roland finds Kuwadorian, Dante II leaves with them, and while wandering around Rokkenjima, he falls from one of the island's cliffs and dies. Genji finds out about it that night, likely immediately goes to search for him with the staff of Kuwadorian (which would have noticed him missing, come evening), or the next morning if it is too dark.

Actually how close was Beatrice II's body to the water, if the cliff she fell from overlooked the sea (i don't remember if it's mentioned in the vn/how its depicted in the manga)? Could it have been dragged into the ocean, so that not even her body was left behind?

We don't see Kinzo's immediate reaction to Beatrice II's death, because he doesn't leave his study (at least in the manga, and I don't remember if Beatrice II's death is looked at from his perspective except as 'his golden witch' escaping again, not his daughter - at least, not when when see him most of the time?). He self-isolates, and I think that's as much as we know as his grief / resuming madness in that moment of time.

After Dante II's death, Kina wants baby Lion close to her - wants them to be part of her household in the way their father and grandfather could not have been. Under her eyes, too - maybe they'd be safer (and depending how you interpret Lion's birth sex, AMAB or AFAB, or if Kina would care, they'd unable to leave her/die if she begins to delude herself with 'reincarnation' again).

In a world where the adults are still the canon gender, baby Lion would be given to Natsuhi. Natsuhi then could make a choice, to accept Lion and raise the baby as her own - or what happens in canon.

One day, on a walk with a servant who is carrying baby Lion, the resentment and upset Natsuhi feels for being unable to bear children, and then being handed a child not her own, leads to her pushing both baby Lion and the servant off a cliff.

The servant dies, and unknown to everyone but Genji, Nanjo, and Kumasawa - baby Lion survives, on account of emergency surgery done by Nanjo, which badly messes with hormone production, and renders them unable to have children.

They are then, by Genji, taken away from Rokkenjima, and brought to fukuin house so they are protected, in canon from Kinzo from repeating his sin - but also, HEY, NATSUHI PROBABLY PUSHED THEM OFF THIS CLIFF?

Natsuhi doesn't mention this fact to anyone, that she specifically pushed the servant and baby. According to the manga, she went and told Kinzo that she'd lost track of both baby and servant, and that led to a search for them.

Despite this, when Sayo finds the ten tons of gold, she is told by Nanjo and Genji that Natsuhi was the one who pushed them noff the cliff - Nanjo states this outright, in the manga.

if they weren't there, and Natsuhi was the only other person with the servant at that time, it's probably based on the fact that at least Genji and Kumaswa knew Natsuhi was going on a walk, and that the servant woman planned to bring the baby with them.

They don't have real proof Natsuhi pushed them, but they do know it could have been possible.

I don't know if Kina and Baby Lion in a GB AU would be at risk for a repeat, again based on what their birth gender would be. It's implied in canon that Lion was born as a male (the man from 19 years ago, for example), was surgically assigned female genitalia due to the damage their body suffered from the cliff, and raised that way as Yasuda Sayo.

Because Lion's body was now that of a woman's - even if they could not bare children, or so on - they (the servants, Genji, Kumasawa, and Nanjo) were worried of Kinzo repeating their sin - raping 'Beatrice'. That's why they were brought to Fukuin House, why Kinzo was not told they had lived.

To protect Lion, now Sayo.

If switching that, even keeping Lion's sex at birth ambiguous, they'd be possibly female at birth - and as Dante was a boy compared to Lion being (born) as a girl, I don't think they'd be so much concerned in regards to Kina repeating the sin of rape as in comparison to the fact they'd been thrown off a cliff when Kina tried to bring them into the Ushiromiya family. After her son, their father, died from falling - or, in worse thoughts, jumping - from a cliff.

After all, they're both girls, in a AFAB Lion's case in this AU - at least physically. She's (Kina) also in her sixties, near seventies. Such a thing didn't happen between two woman (at least not publicly).

I also can't see them performing phalloplasty on an infant with damage to their genitalia, as they would likely have done a vaginoplasty to Sayo if Lion was AMAB in canon, so they'd likely still be raised as a girl.

(Then again, reincarnation doesn't necessarily mean having a body of the same sex as in a past life, so if Lion grew to resemble their father and grandfather, it would be a maybe it still would be concern? So regardless of baby Lion’s physical sex, Kina would be a hazard unto them? I've alsoseen a few times, people wondering if Kinzo and Genji were in a closeted relationship, or if Genji - even onesidedly - had an attraction to Kinzo...in a genderbent au, this implies Kina possibly would be bisexual, maybe, before going straight Bice/Dante-sexual, though Genji might not mention this as a reason why to the others, which would at least have Genji concerned about it, on top of the fact that reincarnation means different body, different physical sex, even if the soul/person is the same, and actually that turns Kina's separation from Taiwan and Genji and the arranged marriage on it's head again - ).

They'd maybe be more concerned with the near murder, of Kina possibly locking the baby up in Kuwadorian again and raising them, so isolated there.

It had been wrong for her to do that to Dante II, there could have been forged papers, an adoption done to bring his into the family house - though, had that happened, he may have suffered as Kina's clearly favorite child, add that to infidelity suspicions, the children fighting of Kina's attention and later the inheritance...the selfish desire to keep her pride and joy free from her chains, her resentment, her apathy.

(Not that they'd be raised much better in Fukuin House. Isolated from others to disguise their age, sickly/simply due to their injuries, and then dragged to work at the family mansion as a servant far too young -)

Meanwhile, all this time, Kina doesn't know said Lion is alive.

If the adults (at least Natsuhi and Krauss) were also genderbent, though the aftermath of the cliff incident with Lion would possibly turn out the same as above, the cliff incident itself might be different?

Unless Kristine (Fem! Krauss) were off island, without Natsu, undergoing a doctor's examination and it's Natsu who the baby is still handed off to, how the servant and baby fall from the cliff is entirely different (because Natsuhi didn't push them).

It's a possible scenario, but I don't know if it's in Natsuhi's character - even as a man - to leave his wife alone, at a doctor's examnination. Or, maybe it would be him on a business trip?

So Kristine/Krauss is the one who baby Lion is handed to. Honestly, each time I've thought about this scenario, for whatever reason, I keep seeing her just actually falling with the baby. Or maybe she's the one who gets pushed with the baby in her hands, but by who....I have no clue.

She'd fall halfway down the cliff, but not all the way, and maybe lose consciousness or something? Baby Lion falls further, because she drops them after losing consciousness? I've pondered on a GB adults au before, and I've kind of always seen her having a lame arm as a result of the incident (and that ties into Kanon (if her persona is the one genderbent, not including aus where they are separate people, because that'd be even messier, impossible in a full GB au-) or Shannon being her personal maid, maybe? That helps her sometimes, or is learning under a previous maid planning to retire -)

I can see Kina...being deathly furious with her or in general (and maybe even the tiniest bit concerned, who knows?).

'What mother outlives her child?' and its not just her eldest daughter she's talking to and there's that connection between the two of them, regardless of Kristine being unaware of it - (she's holding her niece/nephew, and also a sister/brother and it's so fucked up, because she doesn't even know-)

Not mentioning that Kinzo's grief and repentance, in canon? It's a self-absorbed sort of repentance, for all that he might genuinely mean it. He isn't apologetic for caging Beatrice II, might not even understand that because he gave her everything she wanted/needed (he thinks) - except for freedom, for a sense of self apart from her mother, from his Golden witch, and he doesn't ever get the chance to truly apologize for even that-

Beatrice II doesn't have the understanding to know what he did to her was wrong, that her upbringing itself was wrong, it was grooming, and she's dead. Kinzo, instead, uses Sayo - dressed in her mother's clothes - to apologize.

Sayo gives what he thinks is absolution, without even knowing yet what Kinzo did. It's a fake repentance, false absolution, that Kinzo receives. He thinks the gold, the inheritance that he leaves Lion, will be enough - enough to make up for the fact that their father is also their grandfather, that he raped their mother, that when he tried to bring them into the family, they were instead so violently rejected that it nearly killed them - and did get an innocent servant killed.

I think, maybe Kina would be the slightest bit more aware - forced to be more aware, in the wake of Dante II's death, the potential suicide (it may have been an accident, but no one except Rosa/Roland would know), because she had been in those shoes twenty years prior, and that maybe makes her crazier than Kinzo ever was.

Or maybe she's just as self-absorped as Kinzo in that regard, not comprehending - or not considering - the full extent of her sins, slipping into madness. Kinzo seems to have moments of clarity, when finding Sayo, so here...here is where Kina just up and trhows herself down the slippery slope of acting as Kinzo does in canon.

I'm pretty sure it's around Lion's death in canon that Kinzo legitimately starts outright investing in magic...

Also, Kristine would get pregnant later that year, or the next one, because Jessica (or Jessie) is born in August 1968. So, baby Jessie is concieved December 1967 at the earliest, if carried for a full nine months.

It's like by Lion's 'death', a magical sacrifice was offered up to demons in hell somewhere, because how else would Kina's barren daughter be given the power to have a child of her own after so long...?

(There's also the shenanigans going on with Rudolf/Rochelle at this time, rushed wedding and adoption of her/his partner into the family, followed by the birth of Battler/Valor who is a dead ringer for Kina in her youth - )

Considering how Jessica is blonde (again, personal headcanon), and potentially a boy if going full genderbent for the family (Sayo's personas notwithstanding), Kina might be at risk of developing either obsession or hatred - Jessie was born with Lion's death, blood for blood, but with blonde hair and blue eyes and Kina's blood...

At least as an infant, there might be an odd resemblance. Perhaps, he would be Dante, be her son not the lover, be Lion, reborn anew without her sin -

But Jessie grows up, and begins to resemble Natsu and Kristine, only faint vestiges of Dante (II) seen in him - closer to Kina herself over Dante (I & II), and that dangerous obsession doesn't bare anything except Kina being...very strict, at the least, on him. She can differentiate them.

The whole situation. Is. Fucked Up.

This, again, isn't revolving around whatever else is happening with the rest of the family members, or the ordeal with Fukuin House (seriously, where did Kinzo even get the idea, in canon? Those kids are raised in an orphanage, but they're also groomed into believing that serving the ushiromiya family is good for them. I get that ost are around middle or high school age when working, but that's still..iffy, at best???) or Genji or Kumasawa or Nanjo around her.

Then, nine years later, Genji - for whatever reason? - has Yasuda Sayo hired to work on Rokkenjima, as Shannon, despite being six (nine), in 1976.

Kina Realizes:

So much happens, in that time, and I..don't know much about what Kinzo was doing at that time? As distant, as isolated, as harshly abusive as she was back before meeting Beatrice.

Jessica and Battler are born, the children are squabbling over th family money and standing, and their own issues (and the dynamics in a genderbent au are wild, especially with Kristine's fertility issues, though maybe the cliff incident would still be covered up, Evan and scrapping for the head house position from Natsu and pointing this out, who can't even wear the eagle, but George is a girl and they have Jessie who is a boy, Rochelle's blitz wedding and the questionable parentage of baby Valor - not to mention whatever is going on with Roland, up until his own son's birth and the situation with the mother. There Is So Much.)

Lion is dead, Dante is dead - both of them, father and son, though she swears she sees them in the corners of the rooms she enters.

She doesn't care of business, or anything else, anymore - though, her grandchildren do their best to make her, it feels like. It's like the twenty years that just passed by prior to Rokkenjima...bland, mostly lifeless.

Then, in 1980, Valor leaves the family register because her father is dead and Rochelle is carrying another man's baby, sham of shames (and maybe Kina does care the littlest bit about her grandchildren, if only because she sees herself in that one who liked mysteries, and spat in the family name and could leave when she couldn't -)

The world blurs and time passes without meaning, until 1984 when a servant girl (or boy) spills soup on their self, and Kina looks at an odd scar on their foot and the way they scrunch up their face as their ushered into her bathroom and an extra uniform is brought up, and she -

Kina sees the ghostly resemblance between a dead lover, and a dead son, a baby lost years ago on the cliff side, on that face.

She suspects.

She watches Genji praise the servant, who is sometimes a maid by the name Shannon, or a boy named Kanon (or perhaps the genders are in reverse, a Lady Oscar type scenario where they front at the mansion as a boy, sayo and genders are a complex topic - or differently, if looking at au's where the yasusona's are separate...), Kumasawa's cheerfully familiar attitude to them.

She gives them the candy that Dante (II) favored, brings them to her shooting range and shows them to take aim with the gun's muzzle, how to fire and stand against the recoil as their grandfather had taught her forty long years prior -

Kina knows. Even with her age, her own mind, her ailing body working against her - she knows.

Her precious child had lived, where their father and grandfather did not. So she tries to get closer to them, which surprises no one as Kina has always been at least slightly more open to anyone other than her own family. Except maybe her grandkids, and that's a rarity since two of them come by all of once a year, one is everything Dante and Lion was not, and another is a toddler and she's still strict as hell on them.

(there is that on manga panel where Kinzo freaks baby Ange out with that creepy occult hand, and freaking Battler out with the stakes but laughing. If Kinzo felt anything for his grandkids over his kids, it'd be a faint amusement, maybe? compared to the love/obsession for Lion/Dante).

An epitaph is drawn up, meant to lead them to their inheritance. They, above the rest of Kina's foolish children, who fought and scraped for approval and love that she had not carried in the first place to give out and now only wanted money, are the inheritor of all she owns - the root of everything she had built the Ushiromiya name with. The gold of their grandfather, the estate of their father -

Even the reputation of the Ushiromiya House was passed over to their hands.

1984. In a world where Beatrice is one person, with many personas, prior to the meta, Sayo solves the epitaph with a hint from Genji. They are dressed in their father's clothes, the clothes of Kina's presumed lover -

Kina waits for them, maybe (though I think in canon Kinzo arrives after?). Things unfold, very similarly to canon. Though, maybe Kina is slightly less "I've atoned, fuck it, I'm out and bound for hell" compared to Kinzo, who, from what it sounds like in Confession, which I think is the only time we see what happens in the gold room (Unless it shows up in Requiem and I'm not remembering?) on November 29, 1984, just up and drops dead in front of Sayo once she's brought to his study.

If going as canon as possible, Kina still actually dies that day, just as in canon. Maybe she's just laid up in the bed instead of crouched on the ground, waiting for Sayo (dressed already as Dante) to come in. She's dying and apologizing to Sayo on her death bed, and giving the ten tons of gold and headship to them just like that, and Sayo understands none of what's happening except maybe the Madam is dying/deliriously mistaking them for another person.

Meanwhile, Kumasawa, Genji, and Nanjo are just watching.

Genji watches his childhood friend die, clasping her child/grandchild's hand and trying / hoping that the gold will be enough to appease their suffering, and Kumasawa mentions that she'd died long ago but it was magic and willpower that kept Kina alive for so long.

Kina, the Kina that only resurfaced in private conversations, back with Dante II was just a young child and obsession hadn't choked her mind, had probably been dead for quite some time before that.

The jist of it:

Kinzo, even as a woman, is still a horrible abuser and someone who needed help,and it's oddly plausible at least on paper for the story of Umineko to pan out if she were a woman. She's also incredibly mentally sick, and needs help - a lot of it.

There's probably a lot of issues and holes in my line of thoughts, or stuff that contradicts other things I mentioned because I tend to hop between aus and lines of thoughts pretty wildly, and wrote this in a straight shot over two days, but it was fun to look and see what tings could happen - and touch on them, if only briefly and lightly.

Also, listed below are the sources I remember looking at, for some of thing matters on woman's education, the ie, arranged marriage, and so on.

https://dh.japanese-history.org/2020-spring-women-in-japanese-history/female-education-in-early-meiji-japan/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41930686

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1188196 (November 9, 1985 - recent by Umineko time)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42772154

https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/japanese-childhood/home/home-en/topics-2/selective-secondary-education-1900-1945/for-girls/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Empire_of_Japan

https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/japanese-childhood/home/home-en/topics-2/elementary-education/

https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=102914

https://culturalatlas.sbs.com.au/japanese-culture/japanese-culture-family

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ie_(Japanese_family_system)

https://faculty.washington.edu/sangok/JSISA405/Yuko%20-%20Ch%2013%20The%20Modern%20Japanese%20Family%20System.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miai#History

[queenoffishingandcookies]

I'm currently reading your genderswapped kinzo post and i keep clenching my fists and going "girl...Girl!!" so yeah its good

Aw, thank you! That’s very sweet of you to say.

[queenoffishingandcookies]

Something that made me feel like an idiot was not getting how the written form of Battler’s name was actually read (in Kanji).

I knew it was weird because it was foreign, and the way that the kanji was read was strange and different from normal readings.

However, I did not get that the jist of why Battler’s name is so weird is because the kanji isn’t read the same way that it is pronounced.

As in, the actual reading of the kanji doesn’t matter - it’s the meaning of the two together where Battler gets his name from).

(I spent way too long trying to figure out why 戦人 = Battler, when none of the different readings had the sound of ‘ba’ or ‘tora’. I was literally looking at the reading of them. This is what screwed me over when trying to make a name for Fem! Battler a while back until I figured it out).

戦人 is two kanji, which have several readings.

Kun’yomi is the Japanese reading usually used for singular words. On’yomi is the original Chinese reading usually used for compounds (and that also differs depending on what period of time they come from), and lastly Nanori - readings of the kanji that are usually only used for names.

戦:

- ikusa, tatakau (いくさ、たたかう) = Kun’yomi

- sen (セン) = On’yomi

- se (せ) = Nanori

人:

hito, ri, to (ひと、〜り、〜と) = Kun’yomi

jin, nin (ジン、ニン) = On’yomi

ji, ne, hiko, fumi (じ、ね、ひこ、ふみ) = Nanori

Neither of the kanji are read as syllables for Batora, or, anglicized, Battler (though in the valor post I needed to break them down that way for her kanji or I’d lose my mind). In the VN, Battler himself mentions that most people misread his name as Sento.

However, the translated meaning of the two kanji together can mean Battler.

戦 means war, or battle, or fight.

人 means person.

So - taken literally - his name is Fighting Person, War Person, Fight Person, etc. Transliterated, it could be either Soldier or Battler.

In English, Battler literally means a person who fights, a soldier, etc.

Battler’s name isn’t meant to be read with any sort of native kanji reading, On’yomi or Kun’yomi, at all.

It’s pronounced as a foreign word that the meaning of the Kanji translates into - Fight + Person = Battler.

The reading doesn’t matter, the meaning does.

Which I find interesting, considering the rest of his families names.

Example: Jessica.

Different from Battler, whose name is read not from Kanji pronunciation but their translated meaning, the kanji in Jessica’s name seems to have been selected for the sounds they made - not their meaning.

In Kanji, Jessica’s name is written as 朱志香.

朱 means red, scarlet, vermillion, cinnabar, bloody, etc. From what I can tell, there’s only an on’yomi reading - シュ (shu). In Nanori, it can be read as a, aka, aki, and su (あ、あか、あき、す).

志 means intention, plan, resolve, motive, hopes, etc. It’s Kun’yomi reading is こころざす or こころざし - romanized as kokoroza(su) or kokorozashi. In On’yomi, it’s read as shi (シ).

The Nanori for it is: じん、べ、べし、ゆき - jin, be, beshi, or Yuki.

香 means incense, fragrance, perfume, smell, etc. In Kun’yomi, it’s read as か、かおり (ka, kaori). In On’yomi, it is either コウ or キョウ (kou, kyou).

The Nanori readings are こ、こお、ひゃん、and よし (Ko, kō/ko-o, hyan, yoshi).

In Jessica’s case, the kanji reads On’yomi for the first two characters and Kun’yomi for the last one - romanized as shushika, though it is pronounced as Jeshika, or, Jessica.

In English, the name Jessica means foresight, to behold, to see something (oh the irony). This doesn’t align with the kanji used to spell her name, though the sound does.

Jessica’s name, in Kanji, can be read as the crimson fragrance of purpose or perfume of crimson purpose - or something along those lines, I think. They were chosen not for their meaning, but for the sounds they read as which were closest to the pronunciation of the name elsewhere.

I’m…pretty sure the rest of the family born into the Ushiromiya Blood (Kinzo notwithstanding) follows Jessica’s naming tradition, where the kanji is based in the sound they make and not the meaning.

So Battler is the only Ushiromiya whose name isn’t meant to be read by the kanji, but by the translated meaning, whereas everyone’s else’s names are read with either On’yomi or Kun’yomi or both.

(I can not remember for the life of me where it is mentioned, but I think it’s implied that Kinzo either named or had a hand in naming his grandchildren? Rosa mentions in a conversation regarding the epitaph I think, he was very upset when she named Maria without his input.

So Battler’s complaints about their parents giving them their weird names can actually be pinned on Kinzo, depending on how involved he was).

[queenoffishingandcookies]

No thoughts, just fem Battler at the moment.

Battler was born in 1968. It is currently 1986, and out of every family she could have been born to - it’s to the Ushiromiya Family, for all that she would be a generation removed from the worst of it (Kinzo), and then spend six years out of all the family drama with her maternal grandparents.

Not even taking into account the society she lives in:

The Ushiromiya Family has extremely strict standards that confirm to gender roles. In other words, extreme gender discrimination -> women are lesser than men, looking through the eyes of the elder generations that came before:

We think Kinzo is bad (and he is), from his extreme misogyny - but he had to have learnt that from somewhere. By somewhere, I mean his family. Maybe his parents, or grandparents, or the family elders once they got their hands on him).

We see it depicted most blatantly in Banquet, through Eva’s memory of speaking with Krauss about College (and Kinzo’s subsequent rage and threats of disinheriting her).

Paraphrasing both Krauss and Kinzo:

A woman’s job is solely to support the men in her life. There is nothing else but for a woman to be the support of a man -> that is their sole purpose. For a woman to pursue higher education, work in a man’s field - sciences, literature - is to be extremely conceited. She is selfish, unwomanlike.

In return, the duty of men was to provide for the needs of women. A women is to obey her parents (father) in her early life, later on, her spouse, and later still, her sons.

(In Battler’s case, she’s already been hit with strike one).

A woman is to be humble, gentle, and understanding of her spouse - to have a firm grasp on housekeeping, on more ladylike pursuits such as sewing, needlepoint, and so on. A good education in literature and so on is favorable, but they should aim no higher than their station as a woman.

She is to find a good husband who can build connections with and for her father, and carry and raise that man’s children so that someday, they too can build connections of their own for their father.

And then we have Battler, years down the line.

Battler, who is unapologetically herself and arguably not the traditional young lady. She no doubt dresses like one, especially when she is younger her mother picks out her clothes, beautiful dresses and cute skirts - but ‘ladylike’ clothes isn’t the only thing that makes a woman, at least in the eyes of society.

She is loud and brash when a young woman should be demure, as ready to kick a ball through the mud and wrestle in the dirty as any other boy on the playground. She’ll read bloody murder mystery books beyond her grade level and enjoy a variety of manga and western superhero comics just as much as any boy sitting next to her.

Battler’s a girl who won’t hesitate to punch a boy if she gets told that she can’t do something because she’s a girl, that boys won’t like her because she acts like a boy. Alternatively, that it makes her different from other girls to enjoy things meant for boys, that she’s one of them and someone to confide in and make crude jokes with - and hell, Battler might even find some of them funny.

She doesn’t act exceptionally ladylike in public, though she is polite, and gives absolutely zero fucks about it (an icon, basically).

Which would get her (really, Rudolf, from Eva especially) a lot of shit at the Ushiromiya Family Conference. Not to mention how that alters dynamics with Jessica, with George.

There’s so much different with the scenario of fem Battler, and yet Battler herself is still, Battler. Like, I want to chew on the concept of the misogyny and then homophobia regarding GB Umineko characters.

There’s so much to chew on here.

Appearance wise, Battler is…Battler. Still.

I already mentioned above and went on a whole tangent about his wardrobe how I don’t think a change in gender would effect it that much. Because I don’t think it would.

It’s not like changing Battler’s gender would change who they are as a person -> just their experiences, and how they got there.

She would still wear jeans and her bomber jackets as she pleased. If anything, she’d have more of a selection to chose from between skirts and blouses and dresses.

She knows how to wear dresses, makeup, even if she doesn’t always choose to - and when she dresses up, like for a fancy party, she goes from a chill zero to an atomic 100.

Jaws will drop and hearts will stop.

It’s like you think you’ve been staring at the radiance of the sun with your naked eye this whole time, and then suddenly realize you’ve been wearing sunglasses. Then, when they’re ripped off, you’ve discovered an entirely new spectrum of light and it’s burning itself so deeply into your retina that you’ll go blind, and then forever after be left with the afterimage of that dazzling glory.

That’s Battler.

And she can still kick your ass in heels. Possibly even more so, because heels are dangerous. Literally spikes that you walk on.

Battler just strolls in, owns the room (possibly kills a few people unintentionally while she’s at it), and minds her own business.

I’m kind of on the wire if Battler, similar to Jessica, would be concerned about romantic interests not finding appeal in her because of her masculine behavior… OR just not caring, because if they don’t like her because of who she is, they aren’t worth it.

It could go either way for Battler, really. Canonwise, he is just - a soft, squishy boy who loves the people he cares about so much that it burns him up inside sometimes. Even if he denies it at times. (Rudolf.) It’s why Beatrice was able to trample him in Turn of the Golden Witch.

Beatrice isn’t going to know what hits her (literally, if we’re looking at Banquet. That scene, just…that scene). You’ve got a near six foot tall, gorgeous young woman with crimson hair coming your way.

(Unfortunately, Battler won’t expect the cackling witch coming her way, either. Beatrice is such a Character, and I love her. Just - Beato and Battler. These two are just a give-and-take, and they are neck-in-neck in my eyes for just being…outside the standards of normal. Battler is going to unconsciously pine so hard for this lady).

R.I.P.

The internalized homophobia this girl (Battler) would have (and subsequently slowly crush beneath her heel in and over the course of a few episodes for her wife)….

The limit does not exist. Battler is having gay panic for a few episodes on the down low.

On the other hand of Fem Battler and Beatrice ->

Masc Beabato.

Two men, five feet apart over a chess game (murder mystery), so very gay for each other with one of them in denial.

Hint: It wouldn’t be Beato.

Battler’s gay panic would be vicious. It is living, breathing, thriving form of pining made into a mobile creature with claws and teeth to gouge a space in his chest for Beato to sit, for all that he tries to build an iron gate to keep him out.

Beato, being dangerously Beato, would not help matters. At all. In the slightest. The entire goal of the game board is to get Battler to see and understand his heart -> and Beato is a witch (sorcerer in this case). He doesn’t have to conform to homophobia (though he’d still feel it, because trauma doesn’t just leave), he doesn’t have to care about ‘human’ ideals of men loving men being wrong - so he can slyly flirt and make subtle advances towards Battler.

Battler, being Battler, would probably assume it’s a trick - and it isn’t, but he wouldn’t know that at the time.

(And man, now that makes me think of Genderbent cousins, but only the cousins - George, Battler, Jessie, Maria, Ange - are Genderbent. Male! Jessica and Kanon, Shannon and Fem! George. The potential of Beato handing them the golden butterfly for magical blessing takes on brand new meaning-)

I wish I could go into this super deep exposition on the dynamics of masc Beabato, but I’m honestly not super good at understanding Beato’s character - and I want to do Beato right, now matter how she is portrayed in various AU’s in my head. She is more feeling, that rational thought behind what leads to that feeling for me, if that makes sense?

But these two. Just. THESE TWO.