#i hope you all nonetheless enjoy my attempts at trying to sketch out an umineko mystery that complies with pre-chapter 14 logic

[pochapal]

happy october 5, 1986 (+37)!

i do not have a full writeup done yet because i have been busy with starting my phd and contracting diseases and surviving horrors and rotating abstract concepts in my mind etc etc etc but what i do have is a hot off the press raw and rough preview of the chapter 14 writeup to share with you all in order to celebrate umineko day in some form regardless.

so, on this day of slaughter i am sharing with you a small slice of my writeup: the 3rd and 4th twilights that could have been had chapter 14 decided not to go crazy go stupid with it. i hope this is a tasty appetizer to satiate everybody as i continue to work on bringing the full writeup to completion.

happy umineko day and thanks to everyone for supporting the liveblog so far! <3

[...] This leads you to an immediate conclusion: Kanon dying in the basement boiler room was not part of the plan. Or, not part of the Witch Narrative at least. His death marks a point where this scheme has totally gone off the rails, and Genji’s script has been rendered worthless. The presentation of the death is obfuscated, but the truth beneath it is that something went deeply wrong that shouldn’t have.

This is a bold claim I’m making, but I also think I have enough proof in the story to substantiate it. I think, going by everything, the next incident following the deaths of Eva and Hideyoshi was to involve the basement in one form or another. I also think that this was being prepared in parallel with the Second Twilight – Genji and Nanjo leave the kitchen at the same time as Kanon and Kumasawa, but the two men don’t reach the scene until after Kanon has already unlocked the room and Eva and Hideyoshi have been found dead with the stakes in their skulls. Enough time to, say, take a trip down to the basement and set some dominoes in motion.

As to what I think was part of the Witch Narrative, I think everything was on track right up until the moment Kanon set foot in the basement. The foul smell filling the hallway was almost certainly set in motion by Genji and/or Nanjo (perhaps by turning on the boiler while Eva and Hideyoshi were being found in order to time it to make the smell the strongest at the perfect time – this may also have precluded moving Kinzo’s body there depending on where he was before now). Kanon acting bizarrely freaked out was part of the plan. As was Kumasawa screaming about hearing a noise, and the two of them breaking off from the group to rush ahead to investigate. Everything falls apart when Kanon sets foot in the basement and Beatrice shows up and he dies.

So what was the intended plan in the basement involving Kinzo? I think, if I were to hazard a guess based off pre-existing patterns, the boiler room in the basement was going to be used as another locked room, this time featuring Kinzo. I think this would have been a play in two acts. The first act would have Kanon and Kumasawa chase the noise to the basement and “find” the head’s ring on the ground. The family would search the boiler room and find the back door exit locked up, and no sign of Kinzo anywhere in sight (there would be efforts taken to keep anyone from investigating the boiler). The ring alone on the ground in an empty room would stand in for the Third Twilight – Kinzo is without his headship and authority, so it must therefore fall to everyone to praise Beatrice’s noble name in his stead. Dissatisfied and creeped out, everyone leaves the basement – the back door is locked from the inside, and the front door locked with a key placed in Natsuhi’s possession.

From here, this would likely have led to another discussion chapter about how the ring got there. The setup of the scene would be enough that Battler would question whether or not a nineteenth person placed the ring there, or if Kinzo himself actually dropped it there as part of some other ploy. The servants would be questioned and swear up and down there was nobody else in the basement when they entered. The sound would be discussed, as would the impossibility that anybody known to be alive could make that noise. The conversation would then turn to Kinzo as the likely suspect and Natsuhi, who’s been complicit in covering up Kinzo’s death for some time already, would start sweating as this truth grows closer to being uncovered. It’s up in the air as to whether or not the servants would help or hinder Natsuhi here, but I think it’s likely Battler would have started to think on Eva’s words from earlier. More fuel on the Natsuhi culprit fire that she can’t fight because she can’t admit to knowing what he knows. Maria would then laugh and go witchmode and say to everyone that this is obviously Beatrice manipulating things with her magic, and boom, scene.

Something would then happen in the next chapter to turn attention back to the boiler room. Perhaps the smell grows stronger. Perhaps the conversation about Kinzo grows to a fever pitch. Perhaps a servant fakes hearing another noise from the basement. Whatever the case, we would return to the boiler room a second time. There would be a point made of showing Natsuhi pulling out the only key to the boiler room and everyone stepping inside to find Kinzo’s body on the floor, burned up with an icepick stake in his forehead. The inner lock for the back door would still be set. Genji and Nanjo would confirm the body’s identity via the polydactyly. Somehow, Kinzo’s dead body appeared in the middle of a perfectly locked room.

Likely there would then be discussions of who could have killed Kinzo, given that at the time of his “death” everyone was yet again together (minus Kanon/Genji slipping in and out of the parlor to get food and drinks). The assumption would be that Kinzo was alive in there all along, and then killed himself for some reason – contradicted by the fact that if he launched himself into the boiler, how did he drag himself back out into the middle of the floor? The mystery would stump Battler, because the only major solution would be to assume a nineteenth person was also already hiding in the locked basement, and killed Kinzo and displayed the corpse, but Battler would chessboard himself out of leaning on that option. Out of options and stumped, we would stay at another stalemate where there’s no proof that Beatrice exists, but no way that the surviving humans could have set up this scene (there are of course ways, such as a back door that wasn’t really locked or a second key/master key with which to return to the boiler room and set things up, but nobody will think of them). The horrors would escalate. The Witch Narrative would persist. And so on. And so on.

This scenario, believable as it is, never came to happen. Instead we got what we got, and we need to figure out why. Why did Kinzo show up like this? Why did Kanon die, despite all known logic and reasoning stating that the contrary would be ideal? Why are things speeding up at such an exponential rate? What on earth is actually going on?