#liveblog viewing of the finale

[heretherebedork]

Curious to know your feels about the 1000 Years Old finale. You didn't post much about it. Maybe that's a commentary in and of itself LOL.

Part of the answer is that I struggle with watching things out of my usual schedule and had a very busy weekend so I'm just getting around to actually watching the finale episode after knowing all kinds of spoilers. I am actively writing this response as I watch the episode. So enjoy my live thoughts on your ask.

And, so far, my entire reaction is that they crammed way too much here in the end. They needed to spread this out more than they did and I get parts of it, I like having the soulmates reveal only at the very end...

But there's a lot of plot and seriousness that they just didn't touch on enough and that I think including in the rest of the show would have improved it greatly as well as helping with the pacing struggling most people had.

If more of the Janja plot had been genuinely spread through the show and more of these serious moments and the understanding of their agreement and relationship had started earlier I might care more about this. But I don't care about Janja at all! I just don't! I wasn't given reasons to care until the very end and that's not enough for me.

Also, having Yoh not fight for any of it really did disappoint me but the director of this show, as seen in multiple other shows they've done, seems to have a thing for one very passive character in the main relationship who will just Allow Things To Happen To Them without ever fighting back. And I never like that, frankly.

Yes, they dropped a few hints here and there but it just isn't enough to tie it all together in this show itself.

It's not a bad finale, it's not the worst, but the end of the show feels so rushed compared to the rest and us not getting all the fluffy times together only to be shown a single scene at the end of a long happy life instead of the time together that I want to see.

I like domesticity, not the end of domesticity.

I get why people liked this ending. I see how people who rewatch things, especially, will enjoy the recontextualization of the show.

But for me? It made everything feel rushed and the rest of the show feel almost empty and slightly worse in comparison. Either we needed more plot or less episodes for this to work.

(Every time I see Somchai I am sad we did not get Somchai and Shin. Every single time. Come on. You crammed this much into the final episode, you could have given me more of them somewhere else!)

Also, I love his random bodyguards, whoever they are. Love them.

Also, this year long time skip is stupid.

Seriously, I am deeply frustrated by Yoh literally finding out they're soulmates and then just... completely abandoning Pun and leaving entirely. It's not interesting to see him just give up and it makes him the most passive character ever. Which we also had in I Will Knock You and, frankly, in 2gether. That's just The Style.

JANJA LITERALLY TOLD YOH SHE WAS GIVING HIM PUN BECAUSE PUN WILL NEVER LOVE ANYONE ELSE. Whatever, at least the confession and whole thing is done and now they can be soulmates together.

9 minutes of happy ending is not enough. Absolutely not enough. Yes, it was cute. Yes, it was a happy ending. But it's just not enough and it leaves me wanting more and wishing that the show were paced differently.

(Still sad we couldn't get any more Somchai and Shin, we deserved more.)

Edit Okay, I didn't mention this originally but I actually hate that the soulmate/reincarnation line takes away the power of Yoh's gift to Pun being his first birthday present. It really bothers me because that moment was one of the my favorite moments and the finale just made it not matter at all and turned it into something much less important and takes away a lot of the importance away of Pun wearing the cross and it BOTHERS ME A LOT.

[queenerdloser]

idk if people genuinely do panic about leaving comments on old fics, but tbh as someone who has older fics that are still somewhat popular, one of my favorite comments to get is from someone who says that they are coming back to reread or that they're "finally" leaving a comment after rereading so often. i always reread my favorite fics over and over, so it fills me w/joy when i get those comments even - or especially - for fics that were written years ago.

[aparticularbandit]

Toko: I HAVE A BESTIE RIGHT NOW WHAT IF THAT MAKES ALL MY BOOKS SUCK

me: Having a bestie usually makes your writing better. Especially if your bestie is also a writer. Not that you'll get that with Komaru, but—

Komaru: Hey!

me: You should have made besties with Hifumi instead of being on your high horse about how fanfic can never compare to actual literature.

[quietwingsinthesky]

I hope we don't see you anymore too Cole <3

[anakinh]

alright, cr crew talked to someone who actually likes the gods. i’m good now.

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: Musing on Ages, & Dragon Prep

"Desire" mention - how much does Tensu know of the details of the origin of dungeons? (More than I do, probably...but I know this is thematically important.)

"Us"? Aren't gnomes another long-lived species? Ok this is going to be continuously relevant to the geopolitics so I need to break it down. From the wiki:

Elves: lifespan: 400; adult at 80

Gnomes: lifespan: 240; adult at 40

Dwarves: lifespan: 200; adult at 40

Tallmen: lifespan: 60; adult at 16

Orcs: lifespan: 55; adult at 14

Kobolds: lifespan: 55; adult at 13

Halffoots: lifespan: 50; adult at 14

I see - so really we're dealing with 3 factions: Elves, Gnomes & Dwarves, and Everyone Else. I find it interesting that the longer-lived races reach maturity at 17-20% of their average lifespan, while the younger-lived races all do so at around 25% of their average lifespan. I feel a little like this is a cop-out on the writer's part in trying to keep the ages of maturity a little closer to one another - though of course it's a cultural thing by each race (and, I'm sure, each culture within each race - idk how monolithic the whole comic will treat them, but it would track with the thematic worldbuilding for their to be multiple distinct social groups within each race, even if they do tent to band together against the other races!)

Based on the categories of "long-lived" and "short-lived", the latter seem to view all of the former as much the same - but I'm SURE the Elves have a different view of it, and I'm sure the Dwarves and, as we see here, Gnomes, are very aware of and irritated by the Elves' view.

...and as we see here, and earlier with Chilchuck admitting to being 29 (solidly middle-aged!) and Marcille going, "Aw, so you are a kid!", people rarely make any effort to understand each others relative ages, instead just coasting on their own life-based assumptions.

With reference to above, we can see that Namari at 61 is pretty exactly equivalent to Kaka and Kiki at 20.

Also: this little scene wasn't in the show at all and I love it! Namari in mentor mode!

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ALRIGHT RED DRAGON TIME!! Hey look, literally the 2nd panel in this ghost city is 2/3 winged lions by volume. Hmmm...

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I love how it's explicitly Shuro's job to get the final killshot, presumably because he has Feats for this (ie, cool-looking moments) as a "real" anime character (Easterner). This literally bears up with what we see of him in the future.

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Chilchuck: I will NOT fight!

Chilchuck: I'll totally be dragon bait with you, though.

Chilchuck: Not that I care if you succeed or survive or anything! I'm only here because you paid up front.

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Laios using the Inspiring Leader speech feat! They're all having a Heroes' Feast before fighting the dragon, a classic pre-dragon act for bonus HP and immunity to being Frightened! I know this isn't actually D&D but that post that I think came through my queue earlier today is right: it DOES have the same bones. It's like reading the Locked Tomb and being aware that this author was deep in Homestuck, or Scholomance vis a vis Harry Potter canon and fandom. I know where this writer has been, because I have been there too.

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THE BOY IS HERE! THE MAN THE MYTH THE OVERWORKED* LEGEND!

THIS SISTER-EATING MOTHERFUCKER!!

*Crack AU where the whole dragon fight is averted because it talks and somehow the conversation leads to Chilchuck going, "And the Mage isn't even letting you sleep? Tsk. You've got to start a union." And then Laios gets all starry-eyed, "A Monster Union?!" And then the Mage is eventually defeated by all the monsters of the dungeon, and also the poor sane ghosts as well, unionizing against him, and "king" becomes just the title for the Union Rep, whose main job is to honk an airhorn at presumptuous Elves and tell them to fuck off like a Canadian goose.

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I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

[losyash]

SHIMON ARC: Hibari to Tsuna

Recently I've been liveblogging my Shimon arc reread to my friends.

On chapter 323 one of them said they always wondered if the headband being there meant something. And yes, curtains might be blue because it's a nice color. But no. No, curtains being blue is incredibly goddamn important.

HEAR ME OUT

First, to recap what is happening: Shimon arc, pre Adelheid vs Hibari battle they briefly argue about Tsuna and Enma and decide on their pride and the rules of the battle: to seize each other's handband. Adelheid creates an ice prison that is impossible to penetrate from outside and 500 ice clones to fight Hibari. He fights them all, tells Adelheid she is wrong about Enma and small animals (which i will talk about later) and uses minirolls to crush the ice fort from the inside. After this he gets her handband, they talk about Tsuna again and Hibari drops his "it is because of the sky the cloud can float freely" thing.

Before I delve into it, however, I feel like I should take a quick dive in Tsuna-Hibari relationship from Hibari's perspective.

To put it simply, at first Hibari does not give a single fuck about Tsuna personally. Even after this glorious scene happens

All Hibari thinks about that day is that he wants to meet Reborn again. During the course of Daily life arc however Hibari messes with him plenty. Ny the time 43rd chapter (sakura viewing) rolls around, Hibari's opinion on Tsuna is summarized by this:

And this is actually the key. Hibari does not understand Tsuna. To him Tsuna is some weird ass alien creature who does not fit his rigid worldview. At first Hibari tries to make him make sense again by asserting himself over Tsuna and putting him back to the role of herbivore which he does follow every time except when he doesn't?? For some reason?????

Kokuyo arc is the arc that changed the manga tone in general but it's also the arc that changed Hibari himself. He is brutally shown that he as he is does not have the power to do whatever he wants. Something has to change. And Hibari seeks that change in Tsuna, who somehow managed to defeat Mukuro when Hibari himself failed.

chapter 123, cloud battle aftermath

He stops trying to still Tsuna. Instead he wants now to understand what the fuck is up about him and what can he do. The answer is Tsuna can burn a man alive in a fit of rage btw.

BUT THE THING IS. THE THING IS EVENTUALLY HE DOES UNDERSTAND TSUNA. AND THIS LEADS US TO TAKE A LIL BREAK FOR THE PRIDE TALK

Now, the obvious thing: headband symbolizes Hibari's pride.

Here is what he says, when first asked about it:

But also Hibari vs Adelheid battle is the one that finally clears up what the hell does "pride" mean.

The thing is. What Hibari is saying (and what he tried to make Tsuna understand, because the whole battle here his two goals are to win (duh) and to help Tsuna find his conviction again) is that the actual meaning of "What is your pride?" is "What makes you yourself?". You, as a person, should be proud of who you are. And he tells Tsuna, that it is whatever he cannot give up, whatever makes the very core of Tsuna's self is what he should fight for (And then Tsuna tells Enma "You are my pride" which is very juicy but deserves its own post).

Okay, now with this out of the way, let's get to the next thing:

Hibari vs Adelheid (but not the violent edition)

Hibari and Adelheid are not only fighting, they are also talking to each other. And by talking I mean arguing. About Tsuna and Enma and little animals.

Here is important thing to note first: asking around some people who know some people who know japanese gave me information that actually "small animal" is. Not different from herbivore at all. They are apparently used intechangingly based on how much space speechbubble has.

This does affect things: when it is usually thought that Tsuna in Hibari's eyes carves a new category for himself, not worth calling by name nor insulting nickname, nor he can be classified as a simple herbivore, he is just his own thing. Instead it seems like Tsuna changed Hibari's opinion on entire population of herbivores-small animals. (and if those people just got me confused ill die of shame (;-;)b)

ANYWAY, THEIR DEBATE

yes i had to put it all here. it's good. read it.

Do you see it guys? Do you see how far he came from daily life? He now really does understand Tsuna. He cracked the code. And he does now acknowledge that yeah Tsuna (and by extention other ppl like him. Like Enma) has his own way to live life and it does work for him. Tsuna is not weak. Being a herbivore does not automatically mean being weak.

Another interesting thing here is this:

"Why is a man like you with the likes of Sawada Tsunayoshi?"

"I'm not with him"

And I think it's important to remember here that Adelheid does see Tsuna=Vongola boss thing. To Tsuna it's Him and His Friends against Enma and His Friends. To her? It's Vongola vs Shimon

And when she talks to Hibari about Tsuna, she is saying "Why are you with Sawada Tsunayoshi?" but what she means is "Why are you with Vongola?" and this difference does impact Hibari's answer. Case in point:

I DON'T LIKE THE WAY YOU SAID THAT... WELL... TRUE ENOUGH.

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE CLOUD GUARDIAN OF THE VONGOLA'S SKY? ACCORDING TO WIKI, THIS:

A drifting Cloud, whom cannot be bound. Protecting the famiglia from an independent standpoint.

AND SO

I am sorry, I am very normal about this, promise.

And so Hibari basically admits that he will not be bound to Tsuna, but he will be around, involving himself when he feels like it. They're friends your honor.

BUT THERE IS MORE.

The attribute of the cloud flames is propagation. Why is it relevant?

this is the hype up text at the end of chapter 322.

and this is the last page of chapter 323.

Remember i briefly mentioned Hibari stagnating in daily life arc and realizing that there must be something more during Kokuyo arc? He found it. Tsuna is the one who gave him this opportunity. Just being around Tsuna allowed Hibari to grow. To propaga- Okay, that does sound silly. But I think the point still stands. Tsuna gave Hibari space to grow, and frankly, Hibari is grateful for that.

now we are entering the deranged territory

Hibari watched Tsuna grow all during the course of the manga and at some point Tsuna DID outgrow him. Not psychologically, but powerwise? Def. And Hibari cannot be not aware of that.

You might ask, how is he okay with that, but the thing is, Hibari is actually very chill with not being the strongest person in the room. What he actually needs is people to respect him and his authority as Disciplinary Committee chairman and Namimori protector. Reborn respects it and is stronger than him. Does Hibari want to fight him? Yes. But he is not actually going out of his way to attack him.

Tsuna has a great deal of respect for Hibari, and in turn Hibari does not feel the same hostility to him he does towards Mukuro despite Tsuna being totally able to win against him in a fight. Once again, rip Byakuran.

BUT. HIBARI IS NOT GOING TO STOP GROWING ANYMORE. HE LEARNED HIS LESSON, HE IS NOW ENDLESSLY EVOLVING OR SOME SHIT.

AND

WHAT I AM SAYING IS

HE IS NOT ONLY NOT GOING TO STOP HELPING TSUNA TO BE BETTER BUT HE ALSO IS GOING TO USE TSUNA AS BENCHMARK

NOT AS SOMEONE TO BE LIKE. BUT SOMEONE TO BE BETTER THAN

THE PRIDE AS SYMBOL OF SELF AND AND THE BAND AS SYMBOL OF PRIDE

AND DISCIPLINE BEING THE KEY TO BETTERMENT OF SELF

HE DECLARES TSUNA BOTH HIS FRIEND AND HIS RIVAL THATS WHAT THE BLUE CURTAINS MEAN I REST MY CASE

[thewertsearch]

Ask Comp 17/7

@shelbybunny asked: a note most people havent noticed from my observations: kanaya tied eridans cape around her stomach wound

Kanaya absorbs the fashion sense of anyone she slays. She's basically a goth Kirby.

@deshah asked: I have caught up on reading your live blog just as you reach one of my favorite action sequences! Kanaya is brilliant and I am so excited that you are reaching this point in her story. On an Aradia note: I think that you should listen to '(kind of) still alive' and 'Almost There' Aradia version (in that order) because feels. You have motivated me to listen to homestuck parodies again. Not to mention revisit my (many, many) homestuck crossovers… Thanks for the liveblog, it is so much fun! Also i saw your recommendation list was missing hemostuck which is just such a shame. I think it constitutes spoilers? Although it is very AU. That one is by roachpatrol and urbanAnchorite on ao3. Also! Space Bro by JumpingJackFlash, also on ao3 (definitely spoilers) there's even a song about that one! I hope these are okay to send? I'm not 100% on the etiquette. Anonymous asked: howdy wert! dunno if you answer stuff on this blog still but I figured it wasn't fit for the main one -- in your long break, did you check out any of the various media recommended to you? :0 (<- totally didn't recommend something and definitely isn't now wondering if you read/liked it, unlikely as it may be with the long list of recs)

I've added them all to the list! Feel free to recommend anything else, too - but I probably won't get to any Homestuck fics for a long time, since they're a bit of a spoiler minefield.

So far, the only recommendation I've followed up on was Hollow Knight - and I'm glad I did. I've played it, like, three times now. If your own recommendation isn't a Homestuck fic, let me know!

@segfaultvicta asked: i just found your liveblog and I've been doing nothing but reading it since. i have no idea if it's complete, if it's stalled out somewhere, or if it's ongoing, or when it started; i have deliberately kept all of this information from myself, i just hope that regardless of anything else your asks are still on so i can tell you how absolutely fucking MAGNIFICENT your analysis is and how much of a joy it's been to read. bravo. <3 @segfaultvicta asked: there are so many things that you're correctly understanding, or at least digging into at the right level and with the correct approach vector, that it took me MONTHS of puzzling out and later information to grok, and i'm good at this kind of nonsense. it's WILDLY impressive even if/when you are barking up the wrong cosmic apple tree. this liveblog continues to be an utter delight.

Hell yeah. Welcome to the show!

It's a great motivator, knowing that there are people having this much fun with the blog. Sometimes, on quiet days, I'll notice my notification counter is ticking up by a couple of notes a minute or so - and 90% of the time, that means someone's just discovered the blog, and they're binging the whole thing.

That's so cool, I don't even have the words! I look up to binge-worthy livebloggers!

Anonymous asked: Vriska really do be the kinda person who's like "I love a woman who can kick my ass." She probably only saw Kanaya as a potential matesprit after she proved herself powerful. Before that, she likely didn't view her as one because she saw her more like a harmless 'mcfussy fangs'.

You could have had it all, Vriska - if you'd only turned to look at her.

Truly, you are your own worst enemy.

Anonymous asked: I'd like to just adress the fact that Eridan, the troll who had 'aspirations' of killing every troll below him on the hemospectrum, only permanently killed the SINGLE troll that was above him on the hemospectrum. Good job, Ampora! ~DJ @manorinthewoods asked: It's comical how pathetic Eridan was. He seems to have power but it's always immensely fragile. Pathetic in life, pathetic in death, pathetic in ancestry. It's no surprise that his final step in the dance is to be sawed in two to prove Kanaya means business. ~LOSS (20/6/24)

Dude took more Ls than a Countdown contestant. Seeing Feferi confront him in the Bubbles is sure to be cathartic, and I, for one, cannot wait.

@manorinthewoods asked: Who the hek coded Trollian. ~LOSS (2/7/24)

That's Sahlee's endgame, naturally. My fic will be as self-fulfilling as Homestuck proper.

@bladekindeyewear asked: Quote you: "You Want An Auspistice? Then I’ll Give Your Legs Some Space From Your FUCKING TORSO" Funnily enough, on Andrew Hussie's ask blog back then, he ALSO jokingly described this well-justified murder as Kanaya auspisticizing between Eridan's upper and lower torso, after forcibly auspisticizing her way through the rest of the showdown members. "Putting Space between them" is a nice added pun of you though!

Hehe. I didn't originally intend to make an Aspect pun, but I noticed after I'd written it, and decided to leave it in.

Anonymous asked: "If the Bubbles do preserve doomed souls, then we might also run into […] the Jade he couldn’t save. That’s a pair of ghosts I’d be very interested to meet." Are we sure a doomed Incipisphere would have resulted in a doomed timeline on Earth for Jade to die in? Dave and Rose said as soon as John went off to die, they never heard from Jade OR THE TROLLS again. Karkat told John during ectobiology that Earth was a divorced temporal context from the kids' game outside of chat/timing convenience.

Yeah, I think there's a decent chance of that. It was weird that the stranded Future Jade never tried to contact her co-players, and one of the simplest answers was that she'd simply stopped existing. I live in hope, though!

@elkian asked: A really interesting thing I've noticed about Homestuck (lampshaded by Hussie's commentary) is how often the perspective switches away from fights, usually so smoothly or jokingly it's not obvious. I've heard the Hobbit/LotR books do something similar. We don't see Bro die, his opponent becomes unkillable by him and he's dead a few pages later. The Trolls' Black King, the Guardians' deaths, etc. It's a very interesting narrative choice. @elkian asked: belated followup to last ask ig - not sure what the given reason was but I think Hussie avoids showing us fights with foregone conclusions unless there's a good story reason. We know the trolls beat their BK before we even met all the trolls (and obscuring that fight lets Hussie pull fun things like the Bard of Rage reveal). Vriska vs Tavros was never in his favor, but it meant something for their character development so we saw it, etc.

Yeah, I really liked how this was done with Bro, specifically.

Cutting away from this confrontation highlighted how completely pointless it would be to depict it. We all know what happened here, and seeing it happen would give us no new information. Bro, like any mortal, was instantly one-tapped.

Besides - we saw the end of that fight.

It ended right here.

Anonymous asked: its funny how dd, the character associated with diamonds, is textually implied to be jack’s moirail ‘lousy dignitary, keeping your murderous tendencies in check’ Anonymous asked: I feel like you probably noticed this and just didn't say anything, but it's still so hilarious to me how clear it is that Andrew Hussie knew exactly what he was doing showing us the walkie-talkie scene just now with DD and his diamond card suit symbol "keeping [Jack's] murderous impulses in check"!

Damn, I actually didn't pick up on that. It's consistent with the rest of the Crew, though - Hearts is a romantic shipper, and Slick is all about hate. It seems CD is destined to become a mediator.

@mhafanlol2000 asked: What do you think LE looks like?

Occam's Razor would suggest he's a Felt creature - but since Jade would be 'terrified' by his true name, I suspect he's actually someone we've already heard of. After all, Jade would have no reason to be terrified of a name she doesn't recognize.

Anonymous asked: what if sburb is modded minecraft

tired: joining the wertsearch gigasession wired: joining the wertsearch minecraft server

Anonymous asked: Oh yeah we've all be there, I remember one time I got really obsessed with tinkercraft, not cause of the actual crafting system, but because of the furnace, and decided I Must build a furnace from bedroom to build height and fill it up

Update: I've built two nuclear reactors so far, for fusion and fission respectively. Between them, they produce a gargantuan amount of power, but that's only secondary to their main function - namely, antimatter production. Once I get that sorted out, we'll be, like, 5% of the way to the AllTheMods Star, which will finally allow me to make Creative Mode items.

Then we're starting on the Gregstar. If you don't know about the Gregstar, you don't want to know about the Gregstar.

[lemon-natalia]

The Locked Tomb Reaction - The Unwanted Guest

it’s taken a while, but finally I’ve been able to get around to liveblogging this! my understanding is that The Unwanted Guest takes place in that period of time where Palamedes is ousting Ianthe from Naberius’s body? so i’m intrigued to see what actually happens, as well as how Muir writes in a new theatre-play format

‘kissing or feeding; we can’t be sure’ haha what the fuck. we’re really going in right off the bat with the surrealist horror here. i had a feeling that Ianthe’s mindscape might be a disturbing place, and apparently i was right

ok so i’m willing to suspend my disbelief that this is just a description for the reader to understand the concept but … does either Palamedes or Ianthe’s subconscious know what a 20th century English butler is?

ohhh my god Ianthe’s in a French maid costume, is this because Palamedes considers it sexy. this is so cursed. once again suspension of disbelief, but do either of these characters know what France is?

i am very much enjoying the dynamic between the two of them here, especially how unimpressed Palamedes is with, well, everything Ianthe 

oooh okay thats intriguing, there’s another person’s voice here. my first instinct is that it’s Camilla, given Palamedes is currently in her body

wow Palamedes’ immediate response to a game of essentially 20 questions is to immediately get philosophical and start a debate about whether the soul can be changed. he sounds like the kind of person who would be absolute hell to play Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit against 

what they’re talking about here is very interesting though. i like the little glimpses we get, primarily through the Sixth and the Fifth, about what academia and science looks like in a world with necromancy. whether the soul can be changed is kind of a big hypothetical in the real world, but in TLT where you can literally summon or ‘consume’ a person’s soul it would be much more directly relevant 

also a very interesting point (at least what I think he’s saying?) from Palamedes here that just because the Lyctors lived for 10,000 years doesn’t necessarily mean that the thanergy powering them is perpetual, it could just be declining very very slowly

okay so the Voice just started talking about ‘Camilla’s idea’, so presumably not her unless she’s talking about herself in third person? it could theoretically just be Palamedes debating with himself? 

Palamedes briefly trying to play bad cop/Ace Attorney and intimidate Ianthe is hilarious 

Ianthe’s insistence that she didn’t murder Naberius because it was his job to die for her anyway is an … interesting perspective

‘she and I both understand that the goal is always worth the cost’ ngl i think Harrow herself would have something to say about that, given she literally gave herself a Claire’s lobotomy in the hope of saving Gideon. it wasn’t so much Harrow who decided that Lyctorhood was worth defeating Cytherea, but Gideon deciding for her 

once again i feel horribly bad for Naberius Tern, whose worst crime was pretty much just being an asshole

hah has Palamedes picked up a cigarette habit from Pyrrha. i’m enjoying the insight into his thought process here given that he generally comes off as knowing more than other people all the time, so it’s nice to see him actually in the process of figuring stuff out 

‘She wandered around like she was the protagonist’ HAH Ianthe i have bad news for you 

aww it’s sweet to get Pal’s view on Gideon here, namely that he thinks she’s smarter than even she gives herself credit for and that he was initially jealous of her dynamic with ‘Dulcinea’ but came to like her anyways

‘My problem was reminding myself you were a child’ ohhh my god the mysterious voice is Dulcinea! i can’t believe this is literally the only time we’ve seen Pal and Dulcinea actually interact. and isn't this possibly the first time that they've had an 'in person' (so to speak) interaction since most of their relationship was sending letters to each other?? oh i am not okay

okayy i’m interested in what Dulcinea’s saying here about how she seems to have died again and ‘something awful’ happened to her soul … it doesn’t seem to totally line up with what happened at the end of HtN, especially with her mention that there are two shores on the River. again everything seems to point to the nature of the River playing a big part in AtN 

woooh Magnus Quinn reference, my beloved 

oooh i love the contrast between Ianthe’s descriptions of her relationships with Corona and Babs - despite Babs being the one who was actually the cavalier, the kind of co-dependent relationship she has with Corona is much closer to the relationship between the other cavaliers and their necromancers. which is why the fact that she’s apparently the only Lyctor to outright murder their cavalier vs her admission that she wouldn’t have used Corona is very interesting to me

‘Coronabeth herself is part of your goal’ i’m very interested in the long-term goal of Ianthe in general. obviously one part was becoming a Lyctor, but i do wonder if she has something else planned, i doubt she’s content to just sort of do what John wants her to do forever

‘Jeannemary Chatur regaled me with the story at breakfast’ woooh Jeannemary reference. also this is such a cute detail

ooooh Palamedes's newfound cigarette habit is from Ianthe not Pyrrha, that's very fun

and Palamedes’ final point here that the soul is permeable is not just very satisfying against Ianthe’s general smugness, but has very interesting implications for all of the Lyctor characters, especially the fact that their titles are named after their cavaliers. for example, how much of Mercy’s devotion originally came from her versus the fact that Christabel pre-Res was a literal nun. and what does it mean for John and Alecto exactly - how much of the same person, or even human, is he after literally eating the soul of a planet

ok this isn’t to do with the Unwanted Guest exactly but i am very concerned by the notice at the very end that ‘Hell Will Break Loose’ in AtN. it already sounds ominous enough without considering that the previous notice, ‘Gideon will return’ at the end of HtN was done in the most painful way possible 

overall i really enjoyed this! what i really like about the additional short stories Muir writes for TLT is that you get to see little character moments and explore bits of the lore that would have dragged the main story down a bit, so it was very fun to see Palamedes and Ianthe interact one-on-one and debate a bit

and now i really have run out of stuff to liveblog about these books rip my sanity

[divineerdrick]

Homestuck Beyond Canon Upd8 for September 29, 2024

This is honestly a great time for an upd8.

I'm not doing so hot right now. Both my migraines and my fatigue have decided to start kicking my ass even harder. And I'm a little frustrated with that, since I've been trying to participate in the Path of Exile Runic Strife Gauntlet. But that's going to be hard if my body is going to be fighting me. I'm not making very good time as is, and I can't afford to lose a character due to lack of focus.

At times like this, Homestuck is often a comfortable blanket I'll wrap myself in. This comic has gotten me through hard times in the past, especially with amazing wealth of talent and compassion that's in the community. Even now, with probably a pretty hard chapter coming, I'm very much looking forward to it. I'm hoping we can get some more catharsis for Vriska's arc, and maybe finally give her another much needed breakthrough.

Here we are. Finally behind the 8 ball.

Hah! Also, apparently this is just "Later" so we don't have a definitive time frame. At least that probably means another year hasn't gone by.

That . . . that is a much more upbeat Serket than I was expecting. Hopefully she's not playing strong after her encounter with Scratch. She really does need to take some time to process that and move past it.

Nice boss pick there, in more ways than one.

Okay good! Looks like she did take some time reflect and recover. I'm hoping she actually spent some time addressing things though. Would have been nice to see some of that, but Homestuck has a habit of leaving some things to the imagination.

Looks like some opening up might have happened there. That's good! That means progress has definitely taken place!

Fefeta! Chewing everyone's ear off as usual! It's actually a cute contrast to Davepeta going on one of their usual tangents.

Vriska's never been shy about getting in on the RP action. Much less menacing than a Mindfang RP, but also still very much Vriska.

Hah! Vriska's trying to wrap her head around the sprite shenanigans.

Fefeta! No!!!

Nope. Not gonna explain anything.

No glomping without consent!

Consent and glomp achieved!

Looks like they're literally calling them hells. Also awesome art.

I'm still going with (Vriska), but that leaves the opportunity for Terezi to show up too, just as Aradia showed up with Tavros.

Kinda reminds me of the faint image of the stage at the center of the black hole.

Hey! I got one!

Wow! Really pushing the age difference here. This Vriska is still 6 after all.

It's one thing to apologize. But this is still a valid Vriska. Can you accept her.

And apparently she can't do it.

Wow! She really just peace'd the fuck out!

And that's it for the chapter. Vriska has hit another wall. Despite the fact she knows she should, she can't accept the part of her she views as having given up - as choosing happiness over the mission. She's probably telling herself that this version of her left everyone behind when they still needed her, and she can't accept that. But the simple fact is that version of her is still a valid her. It's still a path she took. We don't see any other versions of Vriska in the bubbles, because but for one well placed punch this was Vriska's fate. Sally "thewertsearch" just got to Vriska's death in her liveblog. Scratch makes it clear that Vriska always chose to fix the coin, always chose to go fight jack, and Terezi always stabs her in the back because she knows what the consequences will be. It's a constant across all timelines. And that Vriska always fights to stay relevant until everyone but Meenah leaves her. And then she chooses happiness instead.

And apparently, Vriska just can't deal with that.

[pixiecaps]

qslime lore recap (the ending bit of his 08/12/23 stream)

so slime was in his basement.. turned around and saw that chest. it was was not there previously when he entered the basement. then the lights in the room began to all turn off. inside the chest there was an unnamed book….. so as the book says he follows the light. he ends up outside. this light led down his mine which had an area covered up (which is usually not) after breaking through the stone…

he finds a railroad and a train.. none of which is built by him. he rides the train down passing a mesmerizing view of a glow berry lush cave! what a beautiful moment that won’t be ruined! surely!

after reaching the end of the track he sees this small cottage. inside theres a cake and a chest. the chest had this book inside (as well as 3 dirt & 4 toast) and as charlie turns the corner he sees something.

its. juanaflippa. she appears to be cracked. interesting. now immediately this cracked juanaflippa begins telling qslime how much she loves and misses him.

so important to note the signs seem to not be written normally and very similar to the code entity’s attempt of speaking but simply more evolved. hm. the cracked flippa then says to keep her reappearance a secret. qslime agrees.

then the cracked flippa places the final sign telling qslime that she’ll see him soon and she promptly runs off leaving a severely distressed qslime. as he finally got what appears to be his daughter back and she is immediately leaving. wonderful!

now the next 5 minutes that follow is only qslimes reaction to this version of flippa leaving and words cannot describe how heart wrenching it is so if you’re reading this liveblog to catch up on what happened i really recommend watching the last 5 minutes of charlie’s vod to get an idea of what state his character is currently in. as i think we’re in for a long long disastrous and emotionally charged journey. i also don’t think a silly tumblr post can do that level of voice acting and talent justice.

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2024-08-15 continued #2

(Previous post - current page 631)

I should keep it at three liveblog posts at most per day for pacing purposes, so however long this post ends up being (which could still be pretty long, image limit forgiving!), this'll be where I stop it for the day whatever happens so I don't push my mental energy reserves too hard. Now let's see exactly what the fuck Jane was referring to here.

(==>)

JANE: I'm referring to his death. DIRK: (Oh, what the fuck.) JANE: Not saying it's all your fault. DIRK: (Wow.)

Oh that's all SORTS of messed up for her to think.

JANE: Dirk just never *got* you. JANE: He thought he could figure you out, make all the right moves, and you'd be happy. JANE: But people have to want themselves to be happy. JANE: And the only thing you've ever consistently wanted was to be absolved. JANE: I understand that now.

She's not ENTIRELY wrong about Jake's insecurities here, but there were people constantly KNOCKING HIM DOWN by BLAMING HIM FOR THINGS that he then helplessly thought DESERVED his absolution when they were NEVER HIS FAULT, and this couldn't be a more obvious example. Which Jake might fucking recognize and snap the fuck at.

JAKE: ... And? JANE: And I accept you, Jake! JANE: That's why I have confidence our union will endure forever. JANE: You release me of all my doubts. And I can't be disappointed by you. JAKE: Huh... DIRK: (Hm.)

I think Jake isn't coming around to Jane here, really, but actually coming around to HOW FUCKED UP she is, and more importantly, HOW SHE FUCKED HIM UP. The idea that Jane Crocker, never once, actually BELIEVED in him other than believing that he would be OBLIGATED to come back to her, even if she wasn't offering really anything in return in their relationship. He finally got it through his thick head that she was always taking him for granted, isn't he? That even her deepest, most "caring" feelings left for him are pity for someone she's viewed for the longest time as incorrigibly pathetic and not useful for anything except coming back to her?

JANE: I... JANE: Oh, fucking... pixie sticks. JANE: I have to leave for the bridge. JANE: The enemy is moving into position as we speak. JAKE: Do you... JAKE: Do you still need that water tested? JANE: Haha, no. JANE: I drank it all in my hysterics without even noticing. JAKE: And youre okay? JANE: Completely fine! It really was just... water. JAKE: I had hoped! JANE: Hoo hoo, thank you. :B JANE: ...

I don't know if Jake is really feeling sympathy or negative revelation about her, here... or possibly a combination of the two.

JANE: Listen, Jake. JANE: I won't be able to really talk for some time once this whole final battle shebang kicks off, but I need you to know. JANE: I am sorry. JANE: For a lot of things. JANE: I promise. JANE: I just need you to believe in me a little while longer. JAKE: Of course janey... of course. JAKE: I... love you. JANE: I know, J. JANE: I know.

No... you finally proved to him that you're not WORTH BELIEVING IN.

That's what I think he's about to discuss with himself (and BGD).

(Jake: Calmly assess the situation.)

PFFFFF OMG AFTER THAT LINK TITLE XD

JAKE: Fuck!!! JAKE: Why did she have to go and build a moon laser!!! JAKE: Why did she have to go and JAKE: And SAY all that!!!

Hearing her open up with heartfelt feelings, towards HIM, for the first time in what feels like forever, likely has him so conflicted now even though he KNOWS what has to happen.

DIRK: It's not over. DIRK: That moon laser doesn't mean shit. JAKE: ...if theres no one to press the button? DIRK: Boom. DIRK: Or, you know. DIRK: No boom. JAKE: Her guard is down... DIRK: And you have a gun. JAKE: I have TWO guns. DIRK: Let's be real, this wouldn't even be the first time you've thought of it. JAKE: Its... an option.

He hasn't thought of going after the laser ITSELF yet, but he needs to remember he's a God-Tier Hero of Hope and that destroying a moon laser is a whole lot easier than destroying the woman he still feels something for. He'll come around in this conversation, likely.

DIRK: Or. DIRK: You help her win the battle. DIRK: Avoid baptizing the Earth with laser-fire. DIRK: And she uses The Point, and the world doesn't end. DIRK: Probably. DIRK: Who the fuck knows. JAKE: What should i do? DIRK: I'm not gonna tell you.

Even though he's talking to Dirk, he's also still in a sense only talking to himself.

JAKE: I already know youll want me to do whats heroic. JAKE: But you wouldnt want me to kill jane either. JAKE: Would you? DIRK: Stop staring at me like I'm gonna tongue-kiss the answer into you, dude. DIRK: You know what you need to do. JAKE: But jane was right about me! JAKE: I cant be trusted. JAKE: I dont even like 99% of people. DIRK: Then do it for one person. DIRK: Aren't you tired of spreading yourself thin trying to believe in everything? DIRK: Because it's looking pretty fuckin' likely that the future where Tavvy is happy and the future where Jane is alive don't coincide. DIRK: You have to kill one for the other to survive.

Now THIS is Rage talk from Dirk here. This isn't HOPE talk. Jake is going to realize that there's hope for BOTH people he cares about to survive... and all he has to do is think of flying into space and destroying a freakin' moon laser. The Page of Hope come into his role is going to be someone who can find a path of possibility that saves what they care about without Dirk's brand of brutal compromise.

JAKE: It sounds like youre gunning for her. DIRK: It sounds like *you're* gunning for her. DIRK: Say what you will about Dirk, but he always wanted you to be your best self. DIRK: He pushed you hoping if he did it hard enough, you'd push back. DIRK: That's a far cry from whatever neutered domestic purgatory Jane's offering you. DIRK: Wasn't it nice to be believed in, man? JAKE: Ugh.

Dirk was never good for him either, and didn't know the right way TO help Jake become his best self other than inflicting cuts to his soul that only delayed and decreased his capacity to believe in himself.

JAKE: Can i make an honest query? JAKE: Did i really kill him? DIRK: Hm. JAKE: I did, didnt i? DIRK: Common sense says no. JAKE: Cant you swing that one by your esoteric telepathic dirk connection? DIRK: That's a tricky fuckin' wicket, man. JAKE: Its "sticky wicket". DIRK: It's nothing, because that's a stupid fucking phrase cooked up by fake people about a fake sport from a dead planet. DIRK: Anyway, it's tricky because there's not really all that much of anything left of the big man. DIRK: Not here, anyway. JAKE: Oh, baloney! JAKE: Thats not how this works. Youre the supernatural tsaheylu of our combined "steezes". JAKE: This isnt my first ride in the rodeo, mister, I KNOW THE RHYTHM OF THIS BUCKING BRONCO. JAKE: HES STILL HERE, DAMMIT! DIRK: I'm sorry.

Given what we saw with alt!Calliope / AL splitting and reforming, it's indeed likely that he ISN'T still here, that he's practically fully consolidated himself into Ultimate Dirk aside from this leftover memory Jake is keeping just barely alive. But we also know that thanks to his narrative powers, and his immediate response in the bonus material to Yiffy's sudden existence in the (Candy) plot, that part of him is at least AWARE of that plotline and some of what's happening outside of Canon, even if he's too far away to influence it.

This is also likely about Jake accepting Dirk's death and moving on, though. Because Dirk's eliminationist "one or the other, but not both" advice and insistence on sacrifice isn't what he needs right now.

Maybe it's time for Brain Ghost Dirk to disappear?

(==>)

DIRK: He's gone, dude.

Oh damn, the eyes. It's exactly as he said: This Candy timeline's Brain Ghost Dirk was always just a part of Jake. Just the memory of his friend alive within him, him talking to himself.

Jake has to accept his friend's death to move past his brand of advice, the advice he counted on of a friend who was in ways toxic to him and couldn't lead him to true Hope.

JAKE: OH FUCK OFF. JAKE: YOU CHARLATAN. DIRK: Yeah. JAKE: HORSES ASS. DIRK: Get it all out, man. JAKE: YOU MALEVOLENT MASCULINE MALFEASANT. DIRK: I know a crisp glass of personal culpability isn't what you ordered, but hey. DIRK: It's better than relapsing.

You did pick a hell of a time to show him this, but you probably picked the right time, at least.

DIRK: It'd be the only reasonable excuse you'd have for nipping this uncomfortable epiphany in the bud so you could slink back to following orders from Dirk. JAKE: ... JAKE: Gods hooks, i backflipped right into my old ways! DIRK: Don't beat yourself up about it. It's a running theme with literally everybody we know. DIRK: You all get caught up in these feeling jams, hugging it out in self-realizational bliss. DIRK: Then, bam. DIRK: Premature ejaculation. DIRK: That passionate growth grind ends before it builds to anything actually satisfying. JAKE: :(

Jake needs to stop imagining there's someone telling him what to do anymore, and decide for himself, saying goodbye to his ghostly imaginary guide he made for himself with his powers. (Also Dirk's metaphors are always gonna Dirk, even when Jake's just imitating them.)

DIRK: You're fully dressed Jake now. DIRK: Sitting on the sticky floor of a custodial closet, hidden away from anything certain and good in this world. DIRK: Alone. JAKE: This is scary! I dont like this. DIRK: Fuck yeah it is. This is sweaty, achey, burning transformation, brother. JAKE: I want to go back! I want to be the other guy again. DIRK: You can't be the other guy anymore, Jake. DIRK: We're sending him upstate to live on a beautiful farm, where they're gonna immediately drag him out back and put him out of his fucking misery. DIRK: Remember when you told Egbert you wanted someone to hold you accountable? JAKE: No. DIRK: Well. JAKE: Nooooooo. DIRK: "Here's Johnny!" JAKE: AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! JAKE: Oh... JAKE: *sniff* JAKE: Oh, dirk...

Finally accepting his friend's death AND his need to act for himself instead of being told what to do isn't an easy thing to do all at once.

JAKE: Cripes, if there really is no magical component to all of this, JAKE: if youre really gone, JAKE: then i am simply a forty year old man... being led by the nose... by an imaginary friend. JAKE: That is not cute. DIRK: It's kind of cute. JAKE: No! JAKE: Its mental illness! DIRK: It can be both.

And you DO have literal godly magic powers helping you do it, if you've forgotten, Jake.

DIRK: Look. DIRK: What you need to do is stop sobbing into your own fucking arms and make a decision. DIRK: Spying for the rebellion, running away... these were steps in the right direction, but they also had, y'know. JAKE: Plausible deniability. DIRK: They were deflections. DIRK: And at the end of the day, that's what choosing Jane would be, too. JAKE: Its odd, but... JAKE: Shucks, i dont want to cut her down right before she makes this big turnaround. JAKE: If shed decided to keep her promise... JAKE: thatd be bitter fucking berries to live with. DIRK: But? JAKE: But she probably wont change, will she? DIRK: Why in the fuck would she? DIRK: She'll have won.

But that also doesn't mean you NEED to kill her. There's a path to Hope that you haven't seen yet and that Dirk can't help you see. (Destroy the space laser destroy the space laser destroy the space laser. FIGURE IT OUT)

(==>)

JAKE: But... i dont think she was meant to be this way. Do you? DIRK: Like, was she born to be a wildly racist dictatorial cake boss? JAKE: Ok, when you put it that way it sounds a bit bonkers. JAKE: What i mean is... JAKE: Take me, for example. JAKE: I know its not my fault janey got a bit rough and tumble with our relationship. That fundamentally, i didnt deserve it. JAKE: But that doesnt exactly make me a mensch by default, does it? JAKE: In fact i worry there might be more of me thats, well... inherently bad than not. JAKE: And thats why everything tends to get so furiously fucked all the time! JAKE: Everyone is waiting around for this better version of me to pop up, but thats never going to happen. JAKE: Because if it did, it wouldn't be me anymore. DIRK: So, are you trapped being Mr. Pissy Pantyloos Loser Man no matter what? JAKE: Sort of. JAKE: What do you think? DIRK: I don't know. DIRK: Maybe? JAKE: Oh...

You have a bit too much trauma that you haven't had any opportunity to heal from to TRULY come into your FULL potential as a Page of Hope, but that doesn't mean you still don't have a lot of power and potential you're still sitting on, only trapped by yourself and your past. All you need to think of is that one key hopeful idea and have the will to use your power for something serious, right now.

DIRK: Here's what we do know: when you face our friends tomorrow, they're gonna be none-the-wiser about the insane masturbatory matrix bullet time battles you've been having with yourself in your own head. DIRK: What will be real to them is what you DID. DIRK: That's it. DIRK: Show them you're trying. DIRK: Or don't, and get left behind. JAKE: Good god... JAKE: This is the worst pep talk... ever. DIRK: It's you, dude, what did you expect? JAKE: True.

It's not all that bad a pep talk, to be honest.

DIRK: Do you want to be left behind? JAKE: No! JAKE: I want to see tavvy grow up! JAKE: I want to choose him! JAKE: But i want to believe in jane too... DIRK: Sigh. JAKE: Listen. JAKE: I never really understood all that much of the "doomed timeline" hoopla you cerebral types tend to gab on about. JAKE: But... its nice to think that there might be countless janes somewhere out there who never stopped being happy. JAKE: Baking, getting up to all manner of lighthearted mischiefs... true blue all around. JAKE: When i think of her, thats whats real to me. JAKE: What she is now, what these rotten unenviable circumstances have made of her, its all just... DIRK: Happenstance. JAKE: Is that stupid? DIRK: Probably, but you're a god of Hope. DIRK: You're a poster-child for making stupid shit feasible. DIRK: And no one has the power to say what's true for every Jane. DIRK: I'm sure if you asked a couple of them how they feel about labor camps and domestic violences, they'd hit you with a "Woah there, buster jones." JAKE: "Thats not for me!" DIRK: "No siree!" JAKE: Hehehe. JAKE: Exactly.

I'm so glad that in some of the bonus material, Jasprosesprite^2 is playing the capricious fantasy psychologist and was on the path last i left off to helping Jane realize that there was a better answer than ruling over the planet herself-- leaving the Agency of Earth C in the hands of the children they'd raised to take it over, because Earth C is something they helped make together but not something they OWN or should command, or would be the best suited to govern.

JAKE: If i can believe in those janes, JAKE: i think i can let this one go. DIRK: Extravagant hoops to stumble through just to keep believing, man. DIRK: It's sneaky. I like it.

Oh, COME ON, can't you just fly into space and kill the Moon Laser instead? It's obvious!!! Still, big move of you (and I agree that this Jane is almost certainly too far gone).

(==>)

JAKE: Its decided then? DIRK: Seems so. DIRK: You can finally leave the closet. JAKE: Har, har.

OH COME ON DON'T JUST FLASH OVER THERE I WANT TO SEE WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH YIFFY!!!!!!!!!

Also it looks like Yiffy might NOT have been setting things on fire, and that the red flashing may just have been the battle alert they received, plus Vrissy's reaction at seeing Yiffy for the first time.

JAKE: Goofs aside, old buddy... JAKE: I get the strange sense i wont be speaking with you again. DIRK: You won't. Why would you? DIRK: You're normal now. JAKE: But- DIRK: You don't need him. JAKE: It feels good to pretend, though. JAKE: To hold on a little while longer. DIRK: Don't. JAKE: Fine! Fine... JAKE: Hope is the crummiest aspect of the lot, huh. JAKE: I swear the only time its worth a lick more than delusions and hot air JAKE: is if it really fucking hurts. DIRK: Welcome to being a person, Jake English.

Hope is incredibly important if you can find a path through that nobody else can, instead of letting the breadth of possibility paralyze you with indecision. (STOP THE MOON LASER INSTEAD OF ATTACKING JANE YOU WON'T WIN THAT WAY)

(Page of Hope: Rise up.)

What a hilariously yet perfectly understated panel for that title!

(John and Vriska: Touch down.)

JOHN: whew! JOHN: that was quite the race. VRISKA: Race? VRISKA: C'mon. VRISKA: That was 8arely a warm-up! JOHN: jeez. JOHN: i guess i'm out of shape. JOHN: i didn't even know you could BE out of shape with magical floating powers... VRISKA: Well, that's what sitting around like a depressing 8oring loser for sweeps gets you! VRISKA: You'll just have to get 8ack IN shape. JOHN: man, i guess so.

If he really turned on the Windy Thing powers he probably could have blown through them and outraced her, but he'd need to believe in himself a little harder and be a bit more confident for that, and he's not QUITE there yet-- not as far gone as Jake was though.

JOHN: hey, now that i've got you here, why did you lead us directly to the meteor? JOHN: we did both kind of mutually mention that there was a transportalizer pretty much directly to the lab in roxy's house, right? VRISKA: Sure. And? JOHN: well i just think maybe it might've been a little less risky to go that way, instead of weaving through battle ships and cross fire and all that war junk. VRISKA: Less risky, may8e, 8ut also wayyyyyyyy less fun. VRISKA: C'mon, wasn't it a pretty sweet joyride? VRISKA: It's nice to give the ol' wings a stretch! JOHN: hehe, that's true.

Being like an action movie star really DOES feel fun to John, doesn't it? Makes him feel like a useful hero.

JOHN: but i think now that we're here, we should probably get inside before someone notices us. JOHN: roxy taught me a secret knock to use in times like these, she'll reco-

Wait who's going to interrupt?

(==>)

VRISKA: *KNOCK* *KNOCK* *KNOCK* *KNOCK* *KNOCK* *KNOCK* *KNOCK* *KNOCK* VRISKA: OPEN UP!!!!!!!!

SNERK

Ah, and also they're back to being displayed like the once-children THEY viewed themselves to be, because we aren't looking up at them from one of the children's perspective.

(==>)

SOLLUX: damn dude, to0k you l0ng enough, i'm hungry as hell. SOLLUX: what'd y0u br-

SOLLUX YOU ARE BREAKING SECURITY PROTOCOL YOU ARE A HACKER YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER YOU LAZY ASS XD

(==>)

...You can't even see her, can you? Are those glasses like techno-sight thingies?

(==>)

Him too. How do you know where to look? I half swear you're hiding robot eyes.

(==>)

SOLLUX: nah.

HAHAHAHAAHAHAH

he doesn't wanna deal with Vriska and John's shit XD

(HOW IS HE SEEING THEM)

Okay time for Vriska to kick down the door (or John to Turn To Wind thing them straight through it, few doors are barriers to him if he has his God-Tier powers in mind).

(==>)

*Shared look of questioning exasperation.*

(==>)

GOSH ROXY IS THE BEST NO MATTER WHAT EXPRESSION SHE'S DRAWN WITH

ROXY: hey you 2! ROXY: sorry abt him his manners are fuckin atroche JOHN: for real. ROXY: anyway hustle up and get in before someone sees ya ROXY: also john wtf happened to the secret knock VRISKA: Yeah, John! VRISKA: What the hell! JOHN: i- ROXY: move it buster!!

Hahahahahah.

Wait, this next link-- that's right we saw THE SHIP above the meteor in an earlier frame I didn't post, this all means that the kids are ALREADY HERE!@!! (Edit from below: nope I looked again it wasn't, why did I imagine it up in the sky)

(John and Roxy: Co-parent.)

This frame isn't important and I still love it in so many different ways.

ROXY: oh the kids are safe btw JOHN: that's good! JOHN: wait, they were in danger? ROXY: yeah numbnuts in case u forgor theres a whole ass conflict goin on with kids gettin kidnapped n houses gettin targeted n shit! ROXY: our house bein one of those hice! JOHN: you never told me our house was one of those hice!

What the FUCK is a "hice"?! \*looks up...\*

"Noun. hice. (chiefly humorous, nonstandard) plural of house."

Are you fuckin serious XD

JOHN: you told me to go get vriska, which i did. VRISKA: Actually, I pretty much got myself. JOHN: fair. JOHN: but i collected her! JOHN: you didn't really say anything about harry or the other kids at all. ROXY: oh man ROXY: i guess i kinda didnt huh ROXY: ... ROXY: aw jeez JOHN: hey! JOHN: i'm sorry roxy, don't worry about it, you've got em now. ROXY: what ROXY: no i dont got em JOHN: wait, what? JOHN: then who has them!!! ROXY: rosenaya and jade picked em up while they were ROXY: um ROXY: runnin around outside unsupervised JOHN: oh. JOHN: well... that's good! ROXY: ... JOHN: ... VRISKA: Haha! You guys are terri8le guardians. ROXY: hey stfu

Okay, so (*checks*) the ship WASN'T here yet, my bad. I guess Vriska is going to engage the Plot Point device before they even get here, potentially.

JOHN: yeah, you're one to talk! JOHN: you left your own clone on her own in a dungeon! VRISKA: It wasn't a "dungeon" John, it was a high-security 8lack site! JOHN: that's basically the same thing. JOHN: if anything it sounds a lot worse! VRISKA: She could handle it. VRISKA: Unlike your lame-ass offspring who need to 8e gru8sat by an entourage of armed guards, I can tell that she's got that patented Serket panache. JOHN: technically she's a maryam-lalonde. VRISKA: Sure, whatever. VRISKA: The point is, she's a Vriska. ROXY: whatever is right VRISKA: Hurry up and walk faster!

Vriska heard the Plot Point was a superweapon and she can't wait to get some shit done with it.

(==>)

You can practically SMELL Vriska drooling at the shrouded appearance of the most plot-significant thing she's seen in this entire timeline, and she think it's a "superweapon" designed just for HER.

CALLIOPE: hello! CALLIOPE: i'm so glad yoU all made it back alright. ROXY: oh it werent no thang baby i was just answerin the door CALLIOPE: not yoU, silly! ROXY: hehe VRISKA: Ew. JOHN: (a little, right?)

SHUT THE FUCK UP they're adorable together!!! Let them be sweet on each other! D:

CALLIOPE: salUtations, vriska! CALLIOPE: i mUst say it's a pleasUre to finally make yoUr acqUaintance! VRISKA: What the hell is that thing? CALLIOPE: hee hee, gracioUs. CALLIOPE: yoU're as rUde as i imagined yoU'd be. VRISKA: Not you. I know who you are. VRISKA: *That* thing! CALLIOPE: oh! CALLIOPE: yes, that'd make sense.

Pfff.

OKAY IT'S TIME TO SEE THE DEVICE, I'M EXCITED

(==>)

SHE'S fucking adorable too! GOSH I LOVE HS^2'S ART SO MUCH.

CALLIOPE: that, my narratively significant friend, is the reason we've called yoU here!

Time for the reveal--!

(==>)

CALLIOPE: allow me to introdUce...

PULL IT BACK

The Plot Point.

THAT'S SO FUCKING COOL LOOKING

CALLIOPE: The Plot Point.

What's with the colors on the left and right though? The spirals on the dragons? It's...

OH! The left spiral is in Roxy Lalonde's God-Tier Void outfit colors and the right spiral is in Calliope style. The combination of their talents and engineering. An infinity-like sideways hourglass up top. The Rogue of Void and the Muse of Space once again combining their talents to create a miracle. I love this.

(==>)

CALLIOPE: er, technically, the machine stabilizing The Plot Point. CALLIOPE: the actUal Point is that ominoUs looking bit in the middle! VRISKA: That's it? CALLIOPE: that's it! VRISKA: It looks sort of small and shitty. CALLIOPE: it's actUally anything but! CALLIOPE: it is paradoxically massive, and incomprehensibly powerfUl! CALLIOPE: so mUch so that the fact that anybody was able to contain it at all is a miracle in and of itself. CALLIOPE: bUt as mUch as i'd like to sit here and congratUlate myself on the achievement of its stabilization, more miracUloUs still is what we intend to achieve with it.

Is it the remnants of the hole alt!Calliope / AL tore open to escape the Black Hole, is it the center OF the singularity itself, or is it an encapsulation of Paradox Space? Or multiple of the above?

CALLIOPE: and yoU, vriska, are going to be instrUmental to the sUccess of this endeavor! VRISKA: No shit! VRISKA: That's kind of my whole thing. CALLIOPE: yoU're more correct than yoU know! ^u^ CALLIOPE: as we've already explained to john, this world is cUrrently mired in a state of, well... let's call it dUbious pertinence. CALLIOPE: a- VRISKA: I fucking KNEW it!!!!!!!! VRISKA: John, didn't I tell you? VRISKA: I totally did tell him. VRISKA: I've 8een saying that this world is complete 8ogus for ages now, and no8ody's 8een listening! VRISKA: Yet here I am, right again. VRISKA: Shocker! VRISKA: You should listen to Calliope, John. VRISKA: They may have pretty weird taste in fashion, 8ut they o8viously know what they're talking about where the shitty fake shitness of this joke of a timeline is concerned. VRISKA: Clearly we need to do something. CALLIOPE: Um. CALLIOPE: that was perhaps a tad redUctive, and sort of rUde, bUt yoU're certainly correct in yoUr assessment that something has to be done aboUt this!

Pretty much!

CALLIOPE: i'll keep this short. CALLIOPE: i know john's already heard a good deal of this explanation previoUsly, and yoU seem to be catching on quick! CALLIOPE: so! CALLIOPE: earlier, yoU mentioned that yoU've had a keen sense from the beginning that something was amiss here. CALLIOPE: althoUgh oUr world isn't necessarily "bogUs" and it certainly isn't "fake", per se, we are in effect completely cUt off from the wider canon of reality, to borrow a phrase from a slightly earlier me. CALLIOPE: we're kept qUarantined here by means of existing within a massive black hole, from which escape seems essentially impossible. CALLIOPE: that's where yoU come in! CALLIOPE: yoU see, we're hoping to leverage yoUr Unique hyperrelevancy here to- CALLIOPE: oops, let me back Up.

Back up to what?

CALLIOPE: the reason we broUght yoU *here*, specifically, is becaUse The Plot Point over there corresponds to the singUlarity at the exact center of oUr aforementioned plot prison! CALLIOPE: important bit of info, that! CALLIOPE: now, to reiterate, we want to escape that prison. CALLIOPE: and not jUst as individUals, either; no, the hope is that we'll be able to emancipate oUr entire world from this narrative pUrgatory and retake oUr place in the limelight!

Oh it was the SECOND THING-- the singularity itself, the normally-inescapable mass concentrating this entire timeline and all other fan-timelines in a prison nothing can normally escape, but that a Thief of Light as incessantly relevant as Vriska -- possibly with the help of an Heir of Breath, the aspect of freedom and escape -- to help them escape the black hole, and perhaps live outside Paradox Space still but still RELEVANT outside its influence, because Paradox Space itself is an entirely different sort of prison, of plot and canon that they would only want to tie themselves to enough to maintain coherence and escape the black hole garbage bin of irrelevance, I imagine.

CALLIOPE: to do this, we aim to become Uncontainable, and to do *that* we're going to Use yoU, a potent plot player if ever there was one, to crack the black hole wide open by, well... CALLIOPE: by interacting with the singUlarity! CALLIOPE: by reaching The Plot Point. CALLIOPE: now there are qUite a few ways this coUld practically shake oUt, and more than a few methodologies we coUld have yoU try. VRISKA: (...) CALLIOPE: the first thoUght was just to have yoU "make something happen" here, something significant, mind. CALLIOPE: bUt what woUld that really entail? CALLIOPE: contriving an entire scenario for yoU to play a pivotal role in, here at the center of all things? CALLIOPE: i did consider it, bUt it felt... CALLIOPE: well, inorganic. inaUthentic. CALLIOPE: and if we're going to make it oUt of here, inaUthenticity is the exact opposite of what we need to achieve! VRISKA: (........) CALLIOPE: which broUght me to wondering how someone like yoU might Utilize The Point itself, as a tool rather than a locale. CALLIOPE: how yoU might wield it!

I guess Roxy and Calliope (or at least, THIS Roxy and Calliope) haven't quite worked out the plan for exactly what they should do now that they've gotten to this point. But the way Vriska is acting, I think she's thinking of something. No matter who may or may not agree with her.

CALLIOPE: perhaps it's a portal, and we'd send yoU throUgh it? CALLIOPE: or maybe we'd have yoU ferry Us all throUgh it? CALLIOPE: thoUgh how woUld that work? CALLIOPE: alternatively, maybe it'd be as simple as having yoU attempt to destroy it! CALLIOPE: and-

I have a feeling that Vriska wants to do something that might let her PERSONALLY escape this timeline and return to the "real" canon one, to a realm of relevance herself... possibly forcibly dragging John along with her if she feels like it, but likely all on her own. And I'm not sure, but I think she wants to see Terezi again. And there's only one place she can find her.

I have a feeling whatever is about to happen isn't exactly what I or anyone else expects, though.

How is she going to steal enough relevance back from Canon to infuse this place with promise? *IS* she going to, or will she try to do her own thing and only accidentally do so, or end up fucking up and needing to be freed by John, or even have John himself be responsible for allowing them to escape the prison instead of Vriska?

(==>)

VRISKA: ALR8GHTY! VRISKA: Just... shoosh, lemme stop you right there. CALLIOPE: :u VRISKA: I don't have all day to sit around listening to a frumpy exposition creature.

*snert* exposition creature

JOHN: but you said t- VRISKA: 8up 8up 8up! VRISKA: You too. VRISKA: Here's the story. VRISKA: It's o8vious to anyone with half a pan that this whole shindig is pretty much cosmically clusterfucked, top to 8ottom. VRISKA: Equally o8vious is that I'm gonna 8e the one to fix it, 8ecause when am I not? VRISKA: And what's 8ecoming even MORE o8vious to me is that none of you actually have any REAL idea of what it is I need to 8e doing here! VRISKA: Theories, may8e. VRISKA: 8ut nothing solid.

That much is true.

VRISKA: So while I'd love to sit around listening to more academic conjecture on the ifs ands or 8uts of what EXACTLY this thing's deal is and what we should or shouldn't may8e do with it, I actually wouldn't love that at all, and am not going to do it, 8ecause it'd be a waste of my time. VRISKA: And no offense to this whole plane of existence, 8ut I've had just a8out as much as I can handle of wasting my time in here. VRISKA: It's time to kick off the training wheels and do what I do 8est: VRISKA: Figure shit out myself. VRISKA: So sit tight and leave the rest of this to me! VRISKA: You can thank me when I get 8ack.

I guess even though she's going it alone for herself, this all might work out after all? Vriska's gonna Vriska, but maybe that's not so bad here.

OH AN [S] PAGE OOOOOO

[S] (Vriska: Figure shit out yourself.)

Whoa that animation was cool as SHIT. And what was with the spinning hourglass...

VRISKA: You're welcooooOOOOH SHIIIIIIIIT-

PFFF

(==>)

That hourglass do be doing a REAL SPINNY STILL.

ROXY: wow JOHN: yeah, she's... JOHN: well, just as much of a card as i remember! ROXY: just as much of a jerk maybe CALLIOPE: she definitely was not very polite. CALLIOPE: bUt... CALLIOPE: i guess she did more or less end Up doing something! CALLIOPE: so i sUppose we shoUld chalk that Up as a win and a job well done? JOHN: i don't know... JOHN: i was kind of expecting something a bit more... JOHN: more plot significant? JOHN: i guess?

You don't quite know what she's going to DO in there though... or how important it's going to end up having made Vriska's experiences in this timeline, because whatever she ends up pulling off has to make (Candy) more important than a doomed timeline in sealing its need ineffably in the course of events of the future, present, or past of all Canon.

ROXY: callie CALLIOPE: yes dear? ROXY: is vriska right CALLIOPE: right aboUt what, dear? ROXY: about the fact that u dont actually know wtf we were supposed to be gettin up to here CALLIOPE: well... CALLIOPE: Um, more or less, yes. ROXY: bb are you srs CALLIOPE: oh dear. CALLIOPE: did i neglect to mention that i only really had a solid grasp on the inaUgural steps of this whole Undertaking? ROXY: um ROXY: YEAH CALLIOPE: oops! ^u^; ROXY: shit yeah callie that is kind of a fuckin oops!

Again... especially with the PRECISION with which this machine is made, I believe Roxy and Calliope are perhaps unknowingly collaborating with the OTHER Roxy and Calliope who are helping write the (Candy) storyline altogether.

ROXY: you said you were being compelled by like hella visions n premonishes n mysterious psychic spatiotemporal intuitions n i kinda figured that meant you had this shit all ttly comprehended! CALLIOPE: i'm sorry, roxy! CALLIOPE: it absolUtely wasn't my intention to mislead yoU or to overrepresent my level of Understanding of the process. CALLIOPE: it's jUst that, well... CALLIOPE: yoU remember how we got so wrapped Up in the initial excitement of finding the singUlarity and the rUined jUjU arch, and sUbseqUently stabilizing it with oUr sUper cool cherUbic-lalondian tech... ROXY: its true our tech really is so fkn cool...

EX-FUCKING-SCUSE ME DID YOU SAY RUINED JUJU ARCH!?!?!?? Who the fuck was responsible for THAT?!? For ALL of these devices!? I still have to play Hiveswap Chapter 2 but I feel like that won't give me answers yet either if I had to guess!!!

CALLIOPE: and then, well... it felt like we were on sUch a roll when we came to the conclUsion that we needed to leverage vriska's hyperrelevance to scUrry oUt of here... ROXY: we did have a whole bunch of high fives about that... CALLIOPE: it was an exhilarating breakthroUgh! CALLIOPE: and an eqUally exhilarating high-five session! CALLIOPE: bUt then the conflict began to ramp Up, and yoUr son got into all those shenanigans, and i wanted yoU to feel like i had everything Under control down here so yoU could attend to it! CALLIOPE: and all that notwithstanding, we really DID need to hUrry Up and do SOMETHING. CALLIOPE: i worried that perhaps yoU'd be a bit relUctant to pUll the trigger on this if it felt like all the details weren't lined Up. CALLIOPE: and so i... CALLIOPE: well, i sUppose i might have implied a more complete knowledge of the a to zed of all this then i actUally... possessed. CALLIOPE: and continUe to possess. JOHN: well, but you don't possess it. CALLIOPE: no, i'm afraid not. CALLIOPE: u_u ROXY: urgh callie i gotta say this feels sorta less than ideal ROXY: but i guess wcyd

Yeah, it was only a slightly dick move and the Rogue of Void is going to forgive this sort of white lie easily enough in their relationship. It makes sense.

JOHN: wow. JOHN: feels kinda nice not being the one getting chastised, for a change! ROXY: john shut ur insensitive blabhole or im gonna chastise the shit out of u JOHN: jeez!

Yeah butt out Egbert!

JOHN: just trying to think solution here, but is there something *we* should do? JOHN: should we maybe, i don't know... follow her? CALLIOPE: oh, i woUldn't recommend that. CALLIOPE: whatever's going on in there is likely to be extremely dangeroUs, and scarily... CALLIOPE: specific. JOHN: it's dangerous and you let her jump right into it? CALLIOPE: well she didn't exactly give me mUch of a golden window of opportUnity to try and talk her oUt of it, now did she! CALLIOPE: besides, what exactly was i sUpposed to say? CALLIOPE: "hello vriska, lovely to make yoUr acqUaintance, so glad yoU coUld make it to oUr little soiree, woUld yoU mind doing something of particUlar significance next to, bUt not within, that crackling narrative nexUs of swirling spacetime? by the by, i'm not actUally sUre as to what, and in addition to that the forces at play here coUld qUite easily rip yoU or perhaps even all of Us along with oUr entire plane of existence to pieces if yoU're not exceedingly carefUl so do take a second or two to think aboUt it?" ROXY: i mean mb that woulda helped ROXY: but rly it sorta seems like she woulda just jumped right tf in anyway JOHN: yeah.

Is John going to have to save Vriska from a Black Hole with his powers like I long falsely theory-foretold back in the original run of Homestuck? Once she's done her thing? John is pretty much the only possible person who could pull her back out of there. It'd be the complete embodiment of his God-Tier Heir of Breath role.

JOHN: ... JOHN: well, it doesn't *feel* like we're all being ripped to pieces. ROXY: ya im feelin pretty structurally intact, hbu callie CALLIOPE: whole and one! SOLLUX: yeah i'm all go0d. ROXY: oh damn dude, when did u get in here- ROXY: wait tf ROXY: are those my chips SOLLUX: i guess they were.

Pfff

banter banter banter...

SOLLUX: anyway what's going 0n in here? JOHN: hmmmmmmmm. JOHN: i wonder what IS going on in there.

Oh I love the next link title (but why is she grumpy though, is this AL/alt!Calliope we're cutting to?)--

Grumpy Exposition Creature: Exposit.

let’s have a look, then. as ever, faced with the desperate scrabbling of those who would overstep their bounds, it falls to me to clear things up. unfortunately, what’s been started here is now beyond my ability to curtail. what i can do, however, is show you all the consequences of the actions of those who would leap before they looked, and at the very least offer you a reprieve from tiresome conjecture in favor of equally tiresome deus ex machina.

Oh god, that's ominous as fuck. Alt!Calliope / AL is definitely pissed that the (Candy) folks besides the chosen few she brought along had the cheek to interfere and make the Canon timeline even more sprawlingly complicated without the ability to loop to a neat close.

Oh look at those brackets to represent the inside of the Plot Point, those are new? Have I finally almost caught up? ((NOO I WANTED TO SEE MORE YIFFY!)) I sniffed a glimpse of a 3D-or-game-like-looking something somewhere on tumblr or twitter or Patreon or the like in the midst of my efforts to immediately look away from anything close to a spoiler, so I sort of am expecting that I might be about to be shown something that would otherwise be surprisingly interactive and three dimensional soon...

[S] {Vriska: Come to.}

That was an ORANGE Sburb house like Dirk's color in the loading, or perhaps orange for Light colored?!

It's her old home... but in a white void with black clouds... ominously surrounded by horses...

{==>}

Home again, like the so distant past. Complete with the shitty "doomsday device" Eridan helped her build that never worked.

{==>}

She walks up her old stairs. Alt!Calliope/AL narrates...

they sent the thief here in search of power; the power to escape the containment i so painstakingly set up for them. she may well find it, though once again at no small cost to the integrity of this narrative, to say nothing of their tragically crumbling world. in fact, they’re quite lucky their meddling hasn’t immediately engendered the exact sort of catastrophic collapse my vibrant counterpart so flippantly theorized could occur. they must have friends in high places.

Friends in high places? Like the readers, or Andrew Hussie, or perhaps (Meat) Callie, who likely helped write this outcome?

If I had to guess, Alt!Callie thought this prison, this CONTAINMENT, would be a blessing... that perhaps the influence of non-Canon on Canon should be minimized even if non-Canon were to decompose into chaos and irrelevance. She believes this to hold nothing but danger and regret for them all. I think she's going to be proven wrong... but why is she so certain she's right about it? Quite ominous indeed...

Is it the remains of the collapsed Green Sun? Something Vriska would have the power to steal, something that might be powering the very existence of the (Candy) timeline though not sufficiently enough to keep it going for much longer without "crumbling" anyway?

{==>}

Whoaaaa.

when all is said and done, however, they’ll find the reward for their transgressions ill recompense for the price they paid to receive it. the black hole could only ever shelter them for so long, and in their haste to shrug off my protection they have opened the door to something far, far hungrier.

What... fandom demands? :?

{==>}

Vriska's old room...

this is not the salvation they are hoping for.

{==>}

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < meow! VRISKA: AAAAAAAAH! VRISKA: What the fuck are you doing here, Nepeta!

AhahAHAHAH!!! HAHAH! They live! :D

They couldn't be what AL was alluding to, could they? Time powers and fanfiction-love condensed into an oddly gender-euphoric-seeming fusion that loves themselves and knows the meaning and importance of Heart just as well or better than the Prince of Heart?

Vriska didn't meet this one for long, right, or ever? Hence confusing them for Nepeta?

{==>}

THAT'S WHERE ALL YOU OTHER MISSING SPRITES HAVE BEEN BESIDES JASPROSE

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < davepeta actually DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but i gotta say its pretty refurreshing getting hit with nepeta instead of dave fur once! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < everynyans always dave dave daving me and its like um YEAH maybe i AM half walker texas rapper with a sick pair of shades and some pretty funky ideas about what is or isnt funny and for what reasons DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but i am also half straight up mewjoshi with a super clean trenchcoat and very obvious kitty ear horn things! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < so thank you fur that DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < its very validating

Multigendered plural fusions need their validation just as much or more than everyone else, really. :D

VRISKA: Okay, well. VRISKA: What the fuck are you doing here, *Davepeta*. VRISKA: What the fuck am *I* doing here! VRISKA: What in the FUCK are you, me, and all the rest of these multichromatic circus freak rejects doing in my hive?! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < just kinda hangin out!

Is this like... a prison for everyone deemed too inconvenient to serve in the plot of even (Candy)?

{==>}

ERISOLSPRITE: wwe'vve been here for liike a miilliion fuckiin 2wweep2. DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < actually we just got here DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < this place didnt even exist until she popped in ERISOLSPRITE: gue22 ii'll fuck my2elf. DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < sprites go where guidance is essential!

Hmmmmm.

Friends in high places... Perhaps all of Skaia and/or the Horrorterrors combined wills also sanctioned this plan in the end? Because when they were created, or WILL BE created in Meat's timeline potentially, they'll eventually see and know something very important about what's possible here and how essential it is?

VRISKA: Ooooooooh, are you going to lead me to the weapon? VRISKA: Is it one of my doomsday devices? VRISKA: It totally is, isn't it. ERISOLSPRITE: 2et iit off, free u2.

Oh, hahah, Erisolsprite! You're so hilarious, wanting to unalive yourself all the time. Hahahah! Hah. :x

VRISKA: God, causality is so o8sessed with irony, even though it's such a useless joke for o8scene tools. DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < the only weapon in here is curled up snoozing all dormant and cute in your bloodpusher! VRISKA: Really? That's stupid.

It's not! Vriska is the Thief of Light.

If she really understood what that meant, then redistributing relevance is the exact and ultimate weapon needed for this situation. Even Callie and Roxy guessed THAT much, though Vriska perhaps still doesn't know enough about her potential to understand what she can actually do.

Also "in your bloodpusher" could indicate in your Heart, the ability for Vriska to interact with her broader Soul back in Paradox Space...

...Hopefully we don't need her to become an Ultimate Self version of herself? Because creating Ultimate Vriska would ABSOLUTELY open the door to "something far, far hungrier" in a way that might be dangerous to absolutely everyone.

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < *vriska stalks menacingly but ill informedly all up in here like "ummmmmmmm where am i what are you doing in my hive is the jank ass rube goldberg machine i built as a six sw33p old gonna fix everything?" because apparently thats so much less stupid* DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < just spaying DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < actually yuck i dont like that

Yeah that's a step too far a pun, and also probably not how Davepeta wants to roll.

VRISKA: If it's just me, then why the hell are all you guys here? DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < we rolled through so we could shepurrd our little eight legged sh33p to some helpfur self reflection

Yep... the biggest weapon is potentially Vriska performing some self-discovery and learning more about her title and aspect than she was willing to before-- learning about the real power she commands, which is so SO much more than just "luck".

VRISKA: I came here to save the world! VRISKA: In case you haven't noticed, the only thing showing up in MY reflection is a perfectly adjusted 8adass. DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < s33 that f33ls to me like an insane thing to say DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < does that not sound insane to you fefeta? FEFETASPRITE: 3833 < 383 DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < not very adjusted at all VRISKA: I need to adjust my way out of here. DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < tough kitties! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < s33 you just bapped the nail on the head DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < this is exactly why youre here DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < you gotta work on your shit vriska serket!

I really like this. I really like seeing ALL of these characters sorting out the worst of some of their unresolved issues. And this childhood room and Vriska's childhood fantasies are at the heart (Heart!!!) of a lot of her desperation and neediness, and inability to look past HERSELF to find who and what she can truly be if she tries. These sprites are together to help speedrun her through a whole successful Sburb session's worth of growing up.

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < *gears up to lay the fuckin smackdown on you all wrestler style but maybe also rapper style but the rapper is also a therapist who doesnt take shit from anybody and beats their clients the fuck up EMEOWTIONALLY but i guess in a productive way!!!* DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < you meow a big game about doing shit that matters and saving the world and being right all the time and making tough calls or whatever the fuck DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but more often than not youre just tearing through life taking a big dump in its litter box and kicking your collitteral all ofur the place! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < fluff that! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < you wanna save the world so bad? DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < youre gonna have to save yourself first

Let's gooooo! :D

(I wonder if any of the transfem Vriska toblerone stuff is going to play into this incidentally, while we're this far in her past, or if as i hear that was only possibly hinted at mainly in Pesterquest or something else I haven't played.)

{==>}

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < and were all gonna help you! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < whether you like it or not

Are those ghosts from the Ghost Rain back in (Candy) that I haven't heard about since, when all the dream bubbles fell into the black hole?

{==>}

the fuck am i looking at XD

Okay, THIS is the 3D page I think I saw hinted at coming up, deliberately misleading link title and all:

{S} Begin Session.

Oh, "welcome to hell" and it's page 666, too, hah.

There was a prompt for a CHAPTER SELECT at the beginning so there's likely to be too much content here for me to screenshot much of, nor text I can highlight and paste properly, so I'm just going to comment on what I'm seeing when it's relevant as I play through this little game thing and paraphrase instead of using whole quotes unless something's so important I can't convey it with a screenshot alone.

We're first revisiting the cliff that Vriska threw Tavros off of. Vriska needs to confront why she fucking did that and that she ought not to have, but what exactly pushed her into it besides Doc Scratch. All the pressures she grew up with, and why she gave into them, and that she was... well, raised wrong and made wrong decisions that she needs to psychologically unpack to find herself. Her real self beneath all the bluster and arrogance and wrecking of shit.

--Ooh wait, the menu has a "Download Log" function, I'll use that if I need to to copy-paste text if needed (but I'll mostly focus on getting through this and commenting)!

*click*

Weird music. Egyptian out of nowhere. Have we crossed Charon's river?-- no wait that's greek. Oh jazz too.

VRISKA: wow, hell was right.

Again I'll try not to quote everything and just allude or paraphrase. I wonder if this beat is implied to be something Davepetasprite^2 would have mixed together.

Vriska thinks she's faced with the "ghosts of her past" and needs to "sort it out", hm. A shallow approach but we'll get to her depths soon enough.

Wait I tried the Download Log option to try and get the transcript to quote Vriska's "speedrun enlightenment" (lol good luck) line, but instead it was just the game's debug log. And the other menu... SKIP UNSEEN TEXT AND AFTER-CHOICES?

Oh man, this is an adventure potentially with CHOICES where we keep skipping back to figure out how to best get through a situation isn't it and see her go through each of the options??? :D (Or is at least built on an engine that does that?) Fucking sick! It even SAVES AND LOADS. Is it big enough to NEED that?!

I'm just gonna dive into this and comment lightly so I can get through it myself if you don't mind.

Continuing Tavros's segment...

We're replaying a point in her past where Tavros is near that cliff, and Vriska hasn't killed OR disabled him yet...

I feel fine about killing Tavros, and he's certainly ok with it now. The situation's sorted!

BULLSHIT IT IS. Let's see you being forced to introspect here, I can't wait.

It could have 8een any number of things. I did a lot of things wrong.

Yeah, BUT WHY? You haven't fucking confronted it yet.

Oh now she's pulling out the thing Rose just did with "It all worked out in the end so it was the right thing to do", fuck that. Fuck that. Learn.

{Hours Later, but not many.}

WHAT IS THAT ANIMATED LIP QUIVER SHE'S GOT TO BE FAKING IT

VRISKA: ...I'm sorry I said your lusus "smelled like tears".

So she's thinking that apologizing for everything she ever did is going to help, here... she might even be working herself up about it, making herself genuinely emotional if I don't get psyched out on the next click. But apology isn't enough here... she needs to learn about HERSELF, and why she did what she did, and what she would RATHER HAVE DONE if it came down to it, rather have done FOR HERSELF and not just for everyone else's.

And perhaps, words aren't at all what matters here. It's hard for a Light player to figure out, but words don't mean much. Only actions.

Clicking forward... yep, it's not progressing. And she's being "sincere a8out at least 80% of these", hahahah.

((Also I forgot that the infinity symbol on her eyepatch lines up with the sideways hourglass on the plot point machine and would be the perfect accoutrement to her becoming her Ultimate Self, too.))

Whoa.

Hold on.

I know it's a common phrase in Homestuck. SO common a phrase that I never... fuck... how could I be... the fucking person who wrote that Ultimate Riddle post and not make this connection?

The game keeps asking her, keeps asking and asking her the exact same question:

"What will you do?"

A phrase repeated dozens and dozens and dozens of times throughout all of Homestuck. And idiot that I am I never ONCE thought to REARRANGE THE WORDS.

Because the answer to the Ultimate Riddle is theoretically:

Do What You Will

THE ULTIMATE RIDDLE POST IS LITERALLY ELEVEN YEARS OLD HOW DID I NOT ONCE MAKE THIS FUCKING CONNECTION

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

(Okay calm the fuck down, focus. Back to the game.)

Is that the lesson she's finally going to learn, here???

Let's keep going and see.

...(more clicking)

"What will you do?"

Huh... Vriska thinks Tavros ought to want revenge against her for what she did to him. That's one of the biggest things she has to unlearn.

VRISKA: It's like I'm always saying, words are meaningless. VRISKA: What we need is action.

Nice callback but no you don't always say that asshole! I mean, you've been saying it lately... but also running from your problems with it.

VRISKA: The reason I'm stuck here is 8ecause I don't owe you plac8ing apologies VRISKA: I owe you revenge. It's just that easy!

None of this is EASY. That's been your issue. You haven't even admitted when it's been hard except for fleeting moments of pure anger and frustration.

VRISKA: You have to throw me off this cliff.

Pffffff

TAVROS: vRISKA I DON'T WANT TO DO A REVENGE ON YOU

Thank you, Tavros, but it's not going to be that easy to get it through her thick skull.

VRISKA: [live out the rest of your life] Here on Alternia. VRISKA: Before everything goes wrong. VRISKA: You can kill me now. VRISKA: 8efore I screw your life up.

Tavros didn't want Vriska to just disappear. Not back then, and not for a long time now.

Oh and now she's literally REPEATING the crime of trying to FORCE HIM TO KILL HER that she did on the quest bed. She has to reckon with THAT too.

Hm-- it's only giving me one choice, huh? I wonder if more will open up if/when we come back to this scene?

{Thief: Do the right thing.}

Manipulating him, stealing his will to FORCE him to kill her. Just another crime for the pile, really, not a solution.

{It's really for the 8est.}

VRISKA: Good luck.

Wishing luck to someone ELSE instead of herself, huh.

{Adios, Toreador.}

The music fading off...

SHING

She's literally GRINNING to be dead.

{==>}

Only to wind back up on that same beach she started the Plot Point in.

YEAR 2

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

OKAY MAYBE THIS IS GOING TO TAKE HER A WHILE!!!!

I guess that while the other folks in the Candy timeilne grew up around her, she's still younger... still has LITERAL growing up to do to match up with them. So that hourglass wasn't a joke, this is almost like a TEMPORAL SINGULARITY, a hyperbolic feelings jam time chamber.

Fascinating. (Click.)

Davepeta roleplaying, heheh. Always happy to see it.

Oh, Vriska has a tank top and her hair tied back. She's going to grow up, steadily and slowly, through all this.

"the breaking of cycles, dissolution of the self, whatever other philosophical rhetoric bill murray said in that one meowvie", huh? I do feel more like we're aiming for her to reach her Ultimate Self here, perhaps...

Yeah no shit Vriska's going to be depressed after two years trapped here with her past problems, unable to even die to escape them.

Asking Davepeta to please tell her, HER, what to do, and not in a flighty spritey roundabout way. Hmm. Let's see if they answer, and let's see if she's finally ready to listen.

You think "sweeps of my life are 8eing w8sted here", huh? Your immortal life, you mean? And you don't know that there's time compression going on in here yet, perhaps.

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < trust me i'm trying!!

D'aww, they look so bashful about failing to help, here.

Hahahhaah, that IS an issue isn't it! ...Huh. I wonder who WOULD be able to relate to her enough for her to listen to, that she would actually be able to take the advice of. Aradia? But is any version of her or ghostly imitation even here?

I know I'm wasting the image limit a little here but THAT'S WAY TOO CUTE, seriously I love how happy Davepetasprite^2 is with BEING themselves all the time.

Ooh, if you don't watch the groundhog movie you're gonna have an even harder time of this. Two whole years and you didn't watch Groundhog Day for a hint to get out and solve your psychological problems?

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: *the fearsome gender neutral lionesster pins down its prey but instead of getting down to business growls out how the prey deserves this for being a big disappointing pussy*

Fuck I love that, "gender neutral lionesster" complete with that portmanteau at the end, that's valid as heck. Validation of ANY sort breathes life into my lungs.

Whoa... five choices, three of them grayed out, and "Check back later!" at the bottom. No wonder there's save slots, so this is going to be periodically updated?!?

Flarp manuals will bring us back to Tavros for sure... Let's see if that's something new and doesn't bring us back. (Click!)

VRISKA (angry): "I've apologized, I've killed you, you've killed me, you've paralyzed me, disfigured me, we traveled the world together." VRISKA: "We 8uilt you an army, had several revolutions, you got to do your little dance a thousand times over."

Oh she even replayed her LATER adventures with ghost Tavros?

Sure, but what did she LEARN from any of this, about HERSELF? What is she WILLING to learn about herself?

Oh.

Oh my god.

Oh my god this whole time she's never asked him to "participate in activity of his own choosing". SHE'S NEVER ASKED HIM WHAT HE WANTED TO DO THIS ENTIRE TIME.

SHE'S FINALLY LEARNING ABOUT WILL! ABOUT THE BALANCE TO FIND WITH ALLOWING OTHERS AGENCY!!!!?!

Let's see... yep, he wants to play a game.

Because he used to play games all the time with the likes of Vriska... and he enjoyed himself, until she betrayed him and threw him off a cliff. For the first time EVER in her life, Vriska is trying to see what Tavros actually wants without deciding it for him.

{Play game.}

Vriska is baffled that even though she won, Tavros is still happy to have played the game. Even when Tavros was losing, he was STILL ENJOYING playing games with her. He always had.

He doesn't CARE that much about losing. She's never understood, been able to relate, to that. To her, losing was like death.

To him, losing in a new and different way is an adventure.

I'm loving all of this so much.

VRISKA: Damn. VRISKA: That is quite possibly the gayest thing I have ever heard someone say, Nitram.

PFFF I DID A SPITTAKE ALMOST

TAVROS: wHAT DOES THAT WORD, EVEN MEAN VRISKA: I don't know! It's a human word Dave would repeat all the time 8efore I started using it against him.

OUCH, on the meteor trip? Ouch ouch ouch! XD

VRISKA: It's 8asically what you tell people when you think they're 8eing inane and need them to shut up. TAVROS :wELL THEN, vRISKA, i THINK YOU, aRE gAY TOO,

BAAHAHAHAAHAH PREACH

TAVROS: yOU AND I, aRE BOTH STUPID GAY, TAVROS: nOW BASED OFF THE RULES OF GAY, wE HAVE TO SHUT UP AND GAME, VRISKA: I'm not gay, stop saying I'm gaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!!

I'M FUCKIN DYING XD

Tavros is right: If someone didn't lose, following all these game rules wouldn't be fun. If you can't love losing at least a little, you can't truly love playing games.

PFFFHAHAHAH he remembered something for a split second to make a point and then went back to not and Vriska is losing her shit.

She's remembering why she hated him so much... how she HAD to hate this attitude of his. I'm guessing in part it's because thanks to her lusus, SHE NEVER HAD THE LUXURY OF LOSING, THAT WAS DEATH TO HER. Possibly LITERALLY death, to not win and feed others to her mother.

OHOHO SHE ACCIDENTALLY REVEALED HER OWN FEELINGS!!!

VRISKA: I think if a certain uppity human was here, she'd call it "projecting."

SHE'S FINALLY FUCKING LEARNING

Tavros laying it down that he always REMINDED HER OF ALL OF HER FEARS. THAT'S why she always hated him.

TAVROS (eyebrowsing): i LOVE NOW KNOWING, tHAT YOU HAVE PROBLEMS,

Oh that's gonna get to her. XD

They could both be projects for each other. Oh gosh it's actually showing how they could have had a HEALTHY rivalry or relationship in some other quadrant where they improved each OTHER, and Tavros showed her how to be comfortable losing and not always having to concern herself with survival.

Aw he's feeling "inspired" (Breath)!

...whoa. Tavros laying out some alternative gender fantasies here? The nice and soft bronze fairy, and she will be super nice and awesome because everyone likes her?

VRISKA: Let's play some games for girls.

Yeah!!!!!!!!

Oh my god Tavros really DID have a character sheet for a female Bronze Fairy character that was a Tavros-like mirror to Vriska's Blue Fairy and he's embarrassed to say it. This is pretty incredible, I love how much Gender they are stuffing into all of these updates.

And yeah Vriska, it's the first time you've really listened to him. Really, ACTUALLY been not terrified to listen to him, and tried to understand how he feels without your defenses all the way up to just drive over him whenever he made you uncomfortable, or literally ever.

VRISKA: This whole time I thought I was supposed to 8e pushing you. VRISKA: It's soooooooo o8vious now, that was pretty fucking stupid of me. There was nothing I could have done to change your mind, huh? ARADIABOT: exactly

AAAAA aradiabot jumpscare! Right at her important psychological revelation! D:

ARADIABOT: y0ure finally starting t0 get it

And I'm so glad of it.

{==>}

Vriska's finally taken a step forward after all these years trapped here, and she's flabbergasted.

LoMaT and Aradiabot, now.

VRISKA: Are you... aware of the situation? Does this mean I finally cleared Tavros and you're the next level of helltier?

Well, yeah I think so pretty much.

ARADIABOT: i w0uldnt say that ARADIABOT: m0re acurately this is the b0ss fight t0 drive the p0int h0me

Oh?

Yeah, Vriska still thinks this purgatory is about punishment, or atonement, instead of LEARNING. About herself, about her friends, about GROWING as a person.

VRISKA: It's not........?

Two years slow on the pickup! WOW that's a thick layer of problems for Vriska to work through all at once.

Oh what a callout... good point Aradiabot, telling it straight to her that VRISKA was the only one satisfied by Aradiabot giving her the smackdown and killing her. That she wanted to be hated, judged, and that was the thing that she couldn't stand about Aradiabot the most.

ARADIABOT: what i meant was that y0u got what y0u always wanted ARADIABOT: y0u were ex0nerated vriska thats what its always been ab0ut

Yeah, she's always wanted someone to make her pay.

VRISKA: I never once asked to 8e f8rgiven for free, I always paid the price!

No, you believed in the false power of redemptive violence. You never confronted why you did what you did in the first place, you just used exoneration as an excuse to not work on the problem at all in yourself.

ARADIABOT: wh0 can aff0rd t0 care when they kn0w y0ure g0ing t0 hurt them again?

FUCKING PREACH.

No, Vriska, getting beaten and bruised and mutil8ed and h8ing yourself doesn't fix the problem. Redemptive violence is a myth. You have to confront why you did what you did inside YOURSELF and cure yourself of the root cause.

Oh wow, "What will you do" growing on the screen like this...

Yeah, Vriska's not going to manipul8 aradiabot into caring. That wouldn't accomplish anything, and she's moved past really, truly, being willing to try that anyway.

ARADIABOT: y0ure n0t here t0 be redeemed vriska y0ure here t0 grow up

Exactly. ...And kind of fun that Pupa Pan Tavros was her first and hardest test, in that light.

--Vriska doesn't even understand what that MEANS yet, being asked to grow up! She doesn't know what growing up REALLY MEANS having only interpreted it in the cruel Alternian context she internalized while being raised!

ARADIABOT: d0 y0u even want t0 be that b0ssy br0ad?

YES CUT TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER. That Vriska doesn't actually enjoy BEING this thing she thinks she has to be. That the badass bossy broad she's convinced she SHOULD be, and plays the part of, was never what would truly make her happy and was NEVER going to avoid hurting everyone else. And deep down, she hates that she hurts people. But she's convinced herself she never had a choice.

...Yeah, Aradiabot, preach it. Paraphrasing her, even at her "most useless self", there's a place for Vriska in the world and people in it that want to share a life with her if she'd let them.

Pfff, Aradiabot's "0o0" face at her asking "am I the problem?"

ARADIABOT: i am g0ing t0 expl0de again

LOL

People have been telling you that your entire life, Vriska. You've just never listened. <3

ARADIABOT: 0f course! ARADIABOT: y0u already have

EXACTLY-- both before and even in this very sequence, ESPECIALLY in this sequence with Tavros, quite significantly!

--pff she's shocked and confused that Aradiabot thinks so

Yeah, she's grown steadily throughout all this, she's not the same as she was as a kid-- and she still has MUCH more to grow to TRULY grow up, and has taken an enormous step just now with Tavros's memory whether she realizes it or not.

ARADIABOT: "that aligns with y0ur aspect" ARADIABOT: "light players define themselves by their direct acti0ns and understanding"

Agency and Information, yeah! (Though that sort of goes somewhat against how I was saying earlier to Sollux's ominous portent how the Life/Doom axis was better about defining oneself by their actions; perhaps not by their actions but by... hm. Light players concern themselves more about agency (the ability to act) and then the MEANING of those actions, whereas Life players just DO and don't consider the meaning behind what they do as closely, don't LET IT DEFINE themselves as much, perhaps. Is that close to how I've described it before? I need to remember I'm learning from what the story is telling me, not JUST trying to fit it into my preconceived notions, as tempting as that is.

And yeah, a Time player gets to understand how these cycles of growth and then stagnation loops keep happening, the picture of Vriska as a person growing a bit but getting complacent and comfortable and slipping back into bad habits.

Vriska is barely but still willing to accept that there is "some8ody out there still w8ing for me, even after all my fum8ling". (SPOILERS VRISKA, IT'S TEREZI, YOU DUNKASS!)

Vriska says she's wondering whether she and Aradia, despite everything that happened, could have ever been friends.

ARADIABOT: y0u mean if y0u had put in the time and w0rked 0n wh0 y0u are and bec0me ultimately the best versi0n of y0urself? ARADIABOT: hmm ARADIABOT: n0 VRISKA: !!!!!!!! VRISKA: C-can I 8sk why???????? VRISKA: D8 you h8 me that much? ARADIABOT: i d0nt hate you ARADIABOT: but i d0nt want to spend my time 0n y0u either VRISKA: 8ut!!!!!!!! ARADIABOT: v.v VRISKA: ........ VRISKA: ........ ok. VRISKA: Ok.

Vriska was always SO DESPERATE for Aradia to feel SOMETHING towards her. Even hatred. And she was always denied. But not everything is meant to be. And even if she can become a better person, you're not always going to gel with everyone.

This is all so wonderful.

{Vriska: Take Aradia's hand.}

The quest recuperacoon where she ascended...

This is the last image I can put in this post and it made me teary-eyed the instant I saw it and it's still making me teary-eyed. Wow. Fucking... wow, this... this entire trapped-in-a-time-singularity psychological confrontation and growth experience Vriska is undergoing... this is better than anything I could have asked for, for her and from this story. I love this all so much. So fucking much.

VRISKA: 8ut I am actually sorry. For everything. TAVROS: yOURE RIGHT, iT'S DEFINITELY POINTLESS TO SAY, bUT, iT IS AN APPRECI8TED GESTURE };)

{==>}

VRISKA: And, it's not going to 8e the same again. VRISKA: I'll stick with it this time. I promise. ARADIA: we kn0w ARADIA: y0u have t0 ARADIA: n0 0ne else is g0ing t0 save y0u n0w VRISKA: 8ecause it's just me left? ARADIA: yes ARADIA: its just y0u ARADIA: g00d luck vriska ARADIA: i h0pe y0u get better s00n

Even the infinity symbol on her eyepatch has broken just a little bit, like a broken cycle. That got a couple actual tears out of me. This is incredible.

{Level Complete!}

...She's reached the "8OUNDARY RESPECTER" level on her weird new hell/perdition-themed solitary-candle-in-the-darkness echeladder.

Wow. That was just... incredible.

Mindfang's journal is next, but I've hit the image limit, and it's a miracle I've had the energy to push through and liveblog morning to night like this today... but it was all so amazing I couldn't stop, and for now I HAVE to take that image limit excuse to pace myself and not complete that final sequence that's currently out, just yet. I'll probably liveblog that tomorrow... and if I have energy, maybe even check out some of the commentary, unless that's pushing it. Gosh I love this webcomic so much, everyone. This is better than anything I could have possibly expected to happen when she used the Plot Point.

Oh my god... it's called {S} Begin Session because it's an extended THERAPY SESSION. :DDD

Thanks for being on this journey with you guys later, and I'll be caught up soon! There's no way I'm going to be able to get through ALL of the Patreon/bonus commentary I've missed since HS2 resumed in one day, and I can't guarantee I'll even start on it, but by sometime tomorrow I'll be caught up on Homestuck^2, posted, finally and waiting for the next part of this game on Page 666 with bated breath like everyone else, ready to liveblog it within a day or two of each new upd8 while I gradually crawl through whatever bonus material I haven't covered. :D

[danishprince]

👻 gotnospleengene

Guys help i think my hbo stopped working...does anyone have an episode link/torrent?? Thank uuuuuu

2 notes

🧑‍🦯 corradoslittlemeowmeow 🔁 itsthree-o-cock Follow

pictured: david chase when you ask him what the FUCK that was supposed to mean

#WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENINGGGGGGGG

15 notes

👰‍♀️ chrisdriananation

ok AJ kind of slayed this ep. i'll say it

#[forcibly distracting myself from the ending] haha my baby is growing up :') #the sopranos

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⚰️ soprano-home-movies 🔁 adrianaaaaaaa

This post contains filtered tags. #sopranos spoilers, #sopranos series finale

[View post]

🗣 journeythebandhater

WHAT. WHAT NO THAT

THAT CAN'T BE IT

WHAT

1 note

🧸 gabaghouls35

just got back from dinner with my stupid fucking FAMILY...time to watch the sopranos finale yay :)

#ough so fucking annoying. nothing i hate more than family dinner

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🎆 cunninglinguistpsychiatrist 🔁 thebesttisoverr

Meadow walking inside after successfully parallel parking

30 notes

🕺🏼 silviocunte

david chase i am IN YOUR WALLS!!!

5 notes

👺 penisarycontactvalvos 🔁 imperiolimicheal Follow

#ALIVEGANG WE RISE!!!

42 notes

🐱 beeonyoufurio

This post contains filtered tags. #sopranos spoilers, #the sopranos spoilers, #sopranos lb

[View post]

🕴varstittyathlete

No that was sooooo perfect though. Regardless of "what happened" right there he's on edge and he's going to be on edge for the rest of his life and——bam. Girl the themes and motifs

#the sopranos

2 notes

👾sixteeeendeadczechs

my tv just?? turned black???? well i hope everyone who actually got to see the ending enjoyed it.

#sopranos liveblog temporarily paused until i figure this shit out LMAO #if my roommate forgot to pay for wifi again it is ON SIGHT

3 notes

[not-too-many-eyes]

For some reason I decided that, despite having wrist pain and my right hand currently being in a Brace, it was a good idea to type analysis in my Umineko Liveblog Document (I am at the end of EP 3 no spoilers please)

Oh well, I just think it's interesting how much projection the moms do, and how they Say their motives out loud.

This is ultimately an example of what Battler notices about Chessboard Theory in Ep 2

Umineko Ep 2 Part 56: Fleeting Resistance

In the end, chessboard theory is a technique of thinking where you project yourself on your opponent. So greedy people see their greedy selves inside their opponents...

While most of the characters don’t explicitly use Kyrie’s chessboard thinking, most of them do try to play detective, and project themselves onto the “culprit” in their own ways. Revealing more about themselves in the process.

Which is something Battler thinks about in regards to Rosa in Ep 2.

Aunt Rosa had proclaimed that she couldn't trust anyone who had not been killed. Aunt Rosa's chessboard thinking... saw herself inside her opponent. In other words, Aunt Rosa might have been an isolated woman, unable to trust anyone and unable to let her guard down.

We can apply this to the motive she assigns the servants.

Umineko Ep 2 Part 55: Devil's Proof II

Rosa: “You! And you!! I’ll bet you were all bought by that witch, that your eyes were blinded by gold!! Do you really want money that much?! That’s right, isn’t it?! You want to live the easy life for as long as you live?! What value could a life like that possibly have?!”

(Used the Mangamer tl here since that’s the one I’m actually reading, and since this line was in a picture I thought I might as well transcribe my existing screenshot.)

Umineko Ep 2 Part 60: Banquet of the Witch

I can't let go of the gun that protects my body. I can't let go of the gold that protects my future. But even so, I let go of the hand of my daughter, the person who is my future...?! —-------- Aaaaaaaaaaaaah, what am I doing... I'd had the gold, which would have been worth several million yen. I might have been able to start over with that!! And yet I fell, lost it, and that's not all, my own life is in danger, even Maria's life is in danger?! What has my life been?!!!

This applies to Eva as well, as we can observe that the things she says about others in Ep 1, reflect her/Evatrice’s motives in Ep 3. (Thanks to my friend for pointing this one out.)

Umineko Ep 1 Part 15: The Curtain Rises on Tragedy:

Eva: "I'm the one who would gain the most from these murders. Since I'm going to be suspected anyways, I might as well get it out in the open myself." I had tried to trick her by joking around, but it looked like it hadn't worked. Eva: "The inheritance will be divided between the siblings. But right now, the four siblings are just me. All of the assets of the Ushiromiya family will become mine. Eheheheheh." Battler:  "If uncle Hideyoshi heard you, he'd say 'Could you give it a rest, it's not a joke'..." Eva:  "I'm sorry? No matter how I try to smooth it over, I'll just be suspected anyways, so I was just fooling around. So I've been thinking, from my point of view, this murder might have been planned to cast suspicion on me. Unfortunately, my alibi for last night is weak."

Umineko Ep 3 Part 84: Coronation II

Eva: "...You idiot, isn't it obvious? This is that haughty Krauss nii-san and that sly Rudolf we're talking about. Even if we do announce it eventually, it's certainly too early now." Eva:  "Unless we carefully investigate how to make our next move, it's possible that all of the gold we've finally found will be snatched away by Nii-san." Eva thought she was saying something extremely natural. So when she saw Rosa's expression suddenly cloud over, she was a little surprised.

Umineko Ep 2 Tea Party

Eva nee-san is a real adult, so she's very smart. So she hated the stupid kid, Rosa. She was always a very sly person, and she often lied to me, tricked me, bullied me all the time.

Umineko Ep 3 Part 93: Real Magic

Eva: "...I thought that if I could gain the position of the Ushiromiya Family Head, that alone would be enough. But then, as soon as I saw that mountain of gold, my greed grew. I was struck by a desire to have that mountain all to myself..." Evatrice:  "That's nothing to be ashamed of. After all, it's your natural right as the Ushiromiya Family Head. How could you give up even a bit of it to anyone else?"

While Eva and Rosa share similar motives and reasoning for being the culprit. Natsuhi actually stands out quite a bit, as when she starts accusing the servants and also the 9 year old in episode 1 she doesn’t really bring up the gold.

She assumes them to be the Subordinates of a Ringleader (Genji) like Eva does in Episode 1 since she thinks Natsuhi did it, but assumes the motive is due to Devotion and Obligation to Kinzo.

Umineko Ep 1 Part 25: Besieged III

Natsuhi: "Doctor Nanjo, it truly pains me to say that you are suspicious...! But as Father's head physician, as his only peerless friend, you've been together with Father for a long time. You might even know about Beatrice. Are there any old obligations that you're hiding?!" Nanjo:  "How could there be...!! Calm yourself...!" It was pitiful to watch Doctor Nanjo frantically pleading his innocence. It was probably a normal reaction that anyone would give if they were suspected. Kumasawa was the same. Since Jessica had started suspecting her in the murder of Kanon, she had been totally flustered. That was why Genji's still calm appearance looked so bold. Aunt Natsuhi pointed the barrel of the gun. Natsuhi:  "...Genji. You were Grandfather's number one subordinate. Was Beatrice an illusion you showed to Father, with you as the performer?!" Genji:  "...If by suspecting me, you recognize me as the Master's greatest servant... then it is a great honor to me, regardless of the circumstances. However, I am not the one who put the letter there."

Though her reasoning for Maria is couched in this idea that Maria is a pest that just wants to cause conflict and nothing else:

Natsuhi: "Silence!!! I don't want to label you as the culprit, but there is no longer any doubt that you enjoy making this situation unpleasant and are providing assistance to the enemy!!"

Since this family hates autistic people, and Natsuhi as a character values keeping the sanctity of the family and its image above all else. Nanjo and Genji are loyal servants. Maria is not. They are allowed the “honor” of their motive being an ultimately sympathetic one in service to a greater person, while Maria gets ascribed the unsympathetic motive of someone who only wants to “cause trouble” and nothing else. 

(Though, arguably this could also be a reflection of Natsuhi’s inner fears of just being a “borrowed womb” and how Natsuhi is ultimately a Very Loud and Very Passionate person who is unable to be the “perfect quiet wife” of Krauss, and is commonly told to stay silent, or cool off, or to “know her place.” After all, this family hates autistic people.)

So that’s all really fun and all, but then, as I always do when I think about chessboard theory. I have to ask what that means for Kyrie. She's the one who first brought this up after all! And I’ve been having a blast rereading previous Kyrie dialogue with what I learned about her in ep 3 and ep 2 in mind.

So, I went to look, and the motive she assigns Beatrice is:

Umineko Ep 3 Part 68: The Witch's Written Challenge II

Kyrie: "Yes, that's right. When people have an overwhelming advantage, they tend to get arrogant. And when they do, they want to show off that advantage to the losers, so they sometimes take on small risks. A moderate amount of risk adds a little spice to the joy of victory. It'd be boring to win without any risk." Eva:  "...I understand. I like that kind of thing too... Yeah, I understand it well." Kyrie:  "I thought of a few plausible explanations for the true motive behind Beatrice's letter, but I think this really might be the truth. The emotion hidden behind that letter was... arrogance." Eva:  "...Arrogance." Kyrie:  "She's trying to throw her weight around, looking down on us, as if there's no way we could figure out such a difficult epitaph. It might even be possible, if surprising, that the epitaph wasn't written by Father, but by her."

Considering Kyrie’s favorite hobby is Psychological Manipulation, and has been on the good side of basically everyone while playing all of them. 

Umineko Ep 2 Part 37: Guest of Honor

Rosa: "I must join in as well. If I don't assert myself, those people will quickly forget that there are four siblings." Kyrie:  "...It's pretty tough for you too. Maybe I didn't choose my words well. My apologies." Rosa:  "No, I don't mind. I'm the one who should be apologizing. As a pair of mothers with daughters, we must interact more often. Every time we meet, we talk about something strange..." Kyrie:  "...That's the fault of the atmosphere in this mansion. Once we breathe in this air, everyone gets so strained. Just once, I want to drink a nice, long cup of tea with you, Rosa-san, when you aren't attending a family conference. There's a wonderful coffee shop in Ginza which is a favorite of mine. Please let me invite you sometime soon." —-------- Rosa: "I, I'm sorry, I'm going outside for a second. I'll be right back!" Rudolf: "...What the, what's going on with her, really..." Kyrie:  "It's fine, right? She'll be right back. More importantly, should we begin? Our main topic." Eva:  "That's right. We can keep talking about that without Rosa. Let's return to our discussion." Kyrie:  "..."

I think you can call that an Overwhelming Advantage. So I'm very curious as to where this will lead.

[pochapal]

Umineko Liveblog: Thoughts/Theories [Episode 1 Chapter 14 Edition]

Umineko Chapter 14’s thesis statement was “let’s take these patterns and conventions we’re establishing and blow them all up with gleeful abandon”. Less than an hour from the Second Twilight, we’re forced to bear witness to twilights four and five, and not necessarily in that order. The Witch Narrative is off the rails. The most important character in Umineko to me died, and Beatrice may actually well and truly be real for once. Whatever’s going on here is one hell of a mess.

So let’s try and untangle whatever the hell went down here. The Chapter 14 writeup tour includes the following stops: the hot mess formerly known as the Witch Narrative, Kinzo finally being totally super dead for real, the world’s nastiest most evil twink death in human history (Kanon), identity and furniture and roulettes, Beatrice the Golden Witch’s understated grand entrance into the story, the 19th person conundrum (part 7123748296), and some downright funky stuff happening beneath the story’s surface.

Let’s get this going.

To start, we need to talk about the Witch Narrative. So far, the Witch Narrative has been the term I’ve given to a very clearly established phenomenon and set of actions. When there are characters who have some kind of vested interest in encouraging you to view Rokkenjima as a supernatural incident rather than a crime, then that’s the Witch Narrative. The person painting the magic circles is perpetuating the Witch Narrative. Characters such as Eva and Hideyoshi talking about how frightful and demonic things are is also the Witch Narrative. If you’re thinking “maybe this is Beatrice after all” or if things are aligning a little too well with the worst interpretation of the epitaph riddle, then that is without a shadow of a doubt the Witch Narrative.

So what happened? Kanon being gouged in the chest and also killed mere minutes after the discovery of the torn-apart pair who are close is not right. Skipping to twilight five (for the trolls) straight after number two is not good Witch Narrative etiquette. The sequence of murders and horrors is crucial to authenticating this slaughter as folded within the ritual to revive the Golden Witch and/or reach the Golden Land. Everything so far has dictated that in order for the witch to revive and none to be left alive certain steps must be carried out in a certain order. If this performance is thrown out of sequence for its audience, the song goes funky. Suddenly you’re aware you’re watching people playing pretend on a stage and this world you’re buying into is only ephemeral. If the sequence of deaths doesn’t matter, then this isn’t an occult ritual at all. It is in fact a disguised butchering.

Showing your hand like this this early makes things very difficult for those peddling this narrative. Deaths happening out of sequence takes this from a supernatural force happening beyond everyone’s control to something that could easily done by a human desperate to make everybody believe. If my theories about how this performance is happening ring true, then it becomes infinitely harder for Genji to make any further moves with the simultaneous blow of his most useful pawn kicking it early and the order of events getting all scrambled. How can the stomach, leg, and knee get gouged in a way that still works in service for this narrative now?

Given what I’m thinking, Genji is likely moving on his own now. Kumasawa and maybe Nanjo are complicit in the spreading of the story, but they are almost certainly unable to be as useful to any kind of scheme as Kanon was. They are older, less mobile, less physically able. Kumasawa can scream about magic circles all she likes, but does she have the strength to move and mutilate corpses? Very unlikely. The options to carry things out have been severely limited to an almost unsalvageable degree. Every crime so far has been a type of locked room that works via tricks that could only be carried out by two active parties. Being on your own can only get you so far.

Which 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 of 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 cackle 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? I think we can get a good shape of what was supposed to be with Kinzo, but understanding what happened with Kanon is almost certainly the linchpin driving this deviation from the Witch Narrative.

So, let’s review: Kanon and Kumasawa head to the basement after “hearing a noise” that nobody could have possibly made. Kanon speeds off ahead of Kumasawa and encounters… something in the boiler room. He has a conversation with this something and comes to a revelation about his status as a human being, and then he gets gouged in the chest and killed. The presentation is straightforward: Kanon sees butterflies in the boiler room, he identifies it as Beatrice, he stands in defiance of her, and dies as a result. Except, of course, that it really isn’t that simple at all.

The tonal shift is introduced through the phrase “a fantastical scene”. Fantasy has been a phrase thrown about a few times in the story so far by characters in reference to very specific things, people, and concepts. The siblings call Kinzo’s story of the gold ingots “fantasy”. Beatrice is “fantasy”. The occult symbols around Rokkenjima are “fantasy”. Maria’s behaviour is “fantasy”. Straight away, we can draw parallels between the use of the word “fantasy” and the term “existence”. To be fantasy is to “exist”, is to be something that is propped up by narrative and belief irrespective of the material reality.

In that case, what does it mean for a scene to be fantasy? In a story about storytelling and about fantasy and about “existence”, there is surely nothing accidental about the prose describing a series of events as “a fantastical scene”. Two things are immediately happening here. The first is that we are stepping into the framework of fantasy, of belief without proof and immateriality fuelled more by ghosts than flesh. The second is that we are entering into a self-conscious scene capable of describing itself as such. This is a narrative unit that knows what it is, a story told by a teller with an agenda.

I think to explain what’s happening here, it’s worth circling all the way back to some of the metafictional stuff I was entertaining back before people started dying. More specifically, the notion that there are narrators with agendas involved in the construction and presentation of Umineko. This is most passively seen in the less-reliable third person scenes where we can be shown metaphor and falsehood to convey a deeper emotional truth – Kinzo has most likely been dead all along, and yet he has also made numerous appearances in his study over the weekend of the family conference. However, the “fantasy” of these moments is never explicitly highlighted. These scenes are a type of “fantasy”, but not a fantasy that you need to be told is the case. You can understand Natsuhi and Genji’s hearts and feelings towards Kinzo regardless of whether or not you think the family head is alive or dead.

Here, though, to be directly told you are witnessing a fantasy is tipping the scales. The arbitrator of this fantasy, of whatever might be going on in the narrative beyond the framing confines of Rokkenjima, is much more actively and directly introducing the concept to Kanon’s final moments. On their own, they would be in the same vein as whatever was happening with the Kinzo scenes if a little more heavy handed and obtuse, but we are not left to puzzle out whether or not we can trust what we are seeing. We are told outright this is fantasy. We are forced to acknowledge from the outset that there is something untrustworthy and unreliable about this chunk of the story.

Why?

I think that this is glaring evidence of some kind of discrepancy between the narrator(s) and the actors in Umineko. Something happens in the boiler room which the narrative feels the need to paint over with a depiction of swarms of butterflies and cackling murderwitches – the need to plaster fantasy over this scene matters more than upholding the story’s rule that Beatrice remains a possibility in shadow. Just as I argued that the Witch Narrative went off the rails here, I think the same thing applies to the Umineko Narrative as well. If there’s a metafictional “game” going on here, then Kanon in the boiler room knocked that off kilter, too. The zero on the roulette threatened to ruin not only “Beatrice”, but also Beatrice and also the fabric of the text itself. Whatever Kanon did or almost did rattled a lot of people all at once.

But what is this thing, actually? What we’re shown is Kanon having enough of being bound to the whims of Kinzo and Beatrice and their bastardised excuse for “magic”, and him deciding as a result to abandon his position and furniture and ruin the demon’s roulette in motion. In real terms, this is hard to parse as meaningful outside of its fantasy context. Kinzo, as we know, is not the one setting the roulette in motion in the way we’re led to believe. Beatrice is a dubiously-extant entity represented by so many different people wearing her name instead of a concrete person. Magic is anything belonging to the realm of metaphor or anything that happens on a non-material level. And the Demon’s Roulette is the catch-all term for the epitaph ritual, the Witch Narrative, and maybe also the layers of abuse going on on Rokkenjima.

The only term that has a direct material representation is “furniture”. Luckily, this is probably the most important part of Kanon’s moment of defiance, so it is extremely fortuitous that we can more easily define furniture in a way that makes sense in order to more deeply understand what’s actually going on here.

To recap, “furniture” is the label applied to servants on Rokkenjima within Kinzo’s inner circle. Three servants in the story use this label – Shannon, Kanon, and Genji. From Shannon’s backstory that we got in chapter 8 during the proposal, it is very likely that “furniture” is a term foisted upon the teenage orphan servants that come and go on Rokkenjima as a kind of degrading, abusive brand. We see this most keenly through Shannon, who submits to Battler’s sexual harassment because she is furniture and thus lacks the will to deny anything. These vulnerable abused kids are forced into a new name and a new role where they are little more than living objects for people more powerful than them to use and abuse as they see fit. To be furniture is to be totally under the thumb of Kinzo’s abuse, serving those needs even when it goes against all morality and all that you are.

Genji’s positioning with the label is less clear, given that he was, at some point at least, on more equal footing with Kinzo. It is likely that Genji adopted the “furniture” label for himself as a kind of expression of his feelings – he is nothing more than an extension of Kinzo’s will, and all he does is in service of his master. He does not have a life outside of servitude. However, the difference here is that Genji willingly stepped into the label versus Shannon and Kanon who had it forced upon them. To an outside perspective, this creates an unfair impression of equality between the three of them, when Genji absolutely has more material autonomy and personal rights than either Shannon or Kanon. Genji feels bad about Kinzo and about how all he can be to the man is his butler. Shannon and Kanon are cruelly abused and dehumanised every second of their lives. It is a false equivalency. The only commonality here is that to be “furniture” is to occupy an undesirable position within hierarchy.

Under this light, Kanon’s declaration that he is no longer furniture can immediately be read as Kanon deciding in that moment to cease existing as an object to be used by people with more power than him – power “exists”, and in a closed environment ruled by fantasy, power can be denied with more ease than would normally be available. Kanon decides he is no longer an extension of another’s will, but instead his own person. He decides this because Shannon is dead, and the least he can do is take revenge against the systems that killed her.

That said, such an explanation is deceptively simple. If denying your status as furniture comes when you cease to adhere to the whims of power, the boiler room scene carries with it the implication that this is the very first time Kanon has done anything of his own will. Kanon has been deeply involved with the Witch Narrative thus far, and if this scene is to be trusted then this is an admission that he has had zero autonomy in the prior events. Or, to expand this further, Kanon is not where he wishes to be and is only now realising this desire. He steps out of his role as a pawn in the augmented fiction around him, and Beatrice kills him for it.

You can view this as happening on multiple layers, each one perfectly able to feed into the “fantasy” hanging over everything. On the level of the Witch Narrative, this is Kanon partaking in an act of defiance and getting killed for it. On a more abstract level, this is Kanon threatening to ruin Umineko and being taken out of the story as a result. To be killed by Beatrice so explicitly comes with much deeper ramifications given the state of Beatrice's presence in the story thus far. If a ghost-myth-metaphor appears in the flesh to kill you and turn you into a prop for the next part of the story, what does that mean?

It was not enough for Kanon to just die. He had to be gouged and killed and transformed into the victim of the next twilight – you can easily make the argument that under the terms of the story being turned into a gouged/killed victim is yet another, more severe form, of being rendered furniture. With the Ushiromiya siblings, this concept can easily exist as a form of poetic irony – these powerful abusive individuals are all left as butchered pieces of furniture to be used and deployed however Beatrice sees fit. You are never as powerless as you are when you're a mangled corpse being manipulated by your own killer.

Except Kanon was already furniture – in his own words, even, this is a servitude that applies to Beatrice as much as it does Kinzo. The reversal of fortune works less well on Kanon; his death is an act of rebellion that is transformed into a reinforcement of his inescapable position. He tries to become human and fails at the first hurdle, and thus goes from being furniture to once again being furniture.

I think this situation is worth examining through the lens of the dichotomy of self framework to yield more information. To recap, almost everybody in Umineko struggles with the gap between who they want to be and who they're forced to be. This is a near-universal constant, seen with Natsuhi as much as it is with Shannon. Everyone desperately desires to be somebody else, and hardly anybody can reach this dream.

Kanon is a curious wrinkle in this pattern in several regards. Up until now, as a servant Kanon has been markedly less furniture-like than Shannon. At every turn he has been prickly and begrudging and making no secret of his own feelings to himself, unlike Shannon who leaned so far into the mask she ended up cutting herself off from herself. With Shannon, Sayo almost certainly feels more complicated and unpleasant emotions, but this is completely partitioned off from her servant self. With Kanon, there is an emotional authenticity to his character, but unlike Shannon, Kanon's “Sayo” is nowhere to be seen.

Kanon is not trying to become his desirable self. He is attempting to transform his undesirable self. Where Shannon/Sayo was looking for an exit from being furniture through George, Kanon's actions promise no such escape. He never discards his furniture name, only the label. Kanon does not multiply himself. Kanon reduces himself into a singular concentrated point within the story.

To Beatrice, an entity that thrives on multiplicity and iterative selfhood, an individual who not only defies her rule of power but also eschews his own identity complex in the face of self-actualisation would be something to be loathed. In Chapter 14, Kanon stands for everything Beatrice is not: painfully human, and painfully material.

By rejecting the status of furniture, by holding true to the only name he’s gone by in the story, Kanon is fraying the edges of the hard rules of the fiction governing Umineko. Everyone in this story is duplicitously in tension between their perceived and ideal selves. This tension allows for a rife breeding ground for secrets and uncertainty. This grey area turns everyone on Rokkenjima from human beings into murder mystery characters. This nebulous state of being is the genesis for “existence”. This is how Beatrice asserts dominion.

Kanon chooses a position that is neither, essentially queering the witch-human dichotomy. He is not Kanon the performer in Beatrice’s narrative of magic and murder, but nor is he Kanon the servant in Kinzo’s narrative of power and abuse. His moment of empowerment coming as it does throws all this off the rails, just as this sequence of events throws the epitaph ritual off the rails.

Kanon, in real terms, deals a potentially fatal blow to the Witch Narrative through his “zero on the roulette” gambit, and Beatrice’s only recourse is to clumsily plaster over this act of rebellion with fantasy before any Detective-oriented observer can bear witness to what could be this entire pantomime’s undoing.

However, what happens in the boiler room is not a simple act of metafictional housekeeping. There is a strong and prevalent sense that whatever Beatrice does, she does it spitefully. Shortly before Kanon’s death, there is a bizarrely=presented exchange between himself and the witch, curious for myriad reasons.

Two things which immediately stand about the moment in question are firstly that this serves as our introduction (allegedly) to Beatrice’s presence in the story, and that it tips us off to the fact that there may be an element of hypocrisy to the impartiality of the so-called indiscriminate murderwitch. Kanon’s reward for his defiance is subjecting the Golden Witch Beatrice to the mortifying ordeal of being known, and so we owe it to him to see what we see when the curtain is tugged at even just a little bit.

The immediate thing which jumps out is that Beatrice addresses Kanon not with annoyance, but with loathing. There is something personal and vindictive about the retribution she inflicts upon him. It’s not enough to simply kill him with the stake and set up another Twilight; there is a mockery and a derision. Before Kanon is killed by Beatrice, Kanon is made aware of how much Beatrice hates him. The why in the moment is mostly clear - Kanon threatens to undermine Beatrice’s narrative, which applies simultaneously to all Beatrices and all narratives in play - but we are told in as many words that this rage is specific and personal.

Earlier, we have a comment from Kanon that he refuses to be led astray “again” by either Beatrice or Kinzo which is. Interesting and revealing wording to say the least. Especially when we try to consider who the person behind Beatrice may be in this scene.

If, somehow, we had confirmation that the Beatrice in the boiler room was a metaphor for Genji, then this exchange would make more sense. Kanon the begrudging accomplice making one act of rebellion too many, and Genji’s facade of professionalism slipping to show a hint of what may be true emotions below the surface. Except Genji is not in the basement with Kanon very much on purpose, so whatever materially happened to Kanon did not directly involve Genji, the most likely living target for these emotions.

It’s not even worth pretending Kinzo is alive enough in this moment to not only hear Kanon’s words, but also respond. Even in my initial hypothetical “narrative-compliant Third and Fourth Twilights” outline, for any of it to work Kinzo has to be dead at this moment. And more than that, Kanon specifically makes sure to distinguish between Kinzo and Beatrice in his speech. He has not only been led astray by Kinzo, but also by Beatrice. In this interaction, to Kanon, Kinzo and Beatrice are separate entities.

So the question becomes, as it has been from literally the start: who is Beatrice?

I don’t think it’s possible to answer this question in the direct sense of “what is the identity of the person behind the witch that killed Kanon”, but I think we can explore “what this figure we are calling Beatrice like as an individual?”. The Detective’s truth on the matter remains obscured to the point where any guesses at this point would be meaningless, but the Romantic’s truth remains a valid option. We don’t need to unmask Beatrice to get a sense of her character.

What we know about Beatrice in this chapter is thus: she appears via a cloud of butterflies, she is associated with the fantastical, and she makes the active choice to kill Kanon and wrap his death into another Twilight. From this, we can extrapolate a few things: this Beatrice operates at least in part in adherence to her own mythos, even if she doesn’t necessarily strictly uphold the Witch Narratives in the terms that the culprits have set out. She is not in total alignment with whatever scheme is going on with the Witch Narrative, and she has on some level a personal, spiteful disdain towards Kanon.

When Beatrice kills Kanon, she puts him down as the “furniture” he is. When he attempts his self-actualisation, there is a moment where the narrative insight we get into Beatrice condemns him as foolish and futile and vulgar. It is not simply annoying that Kanon is stepping out of his role. It actively repulses Beatrice on some level. From what we get of Beatrice, there is the impression that Kanon’s decision deeply violates some kind of taboo to the point where Beatrice’s mode of operation leaves the fantastical and dips into the visceral, even if only momentarily.

So what we can claim to learn is that there is something irreparably offensive to Beatrice about people stepping out of the confines of their pre-ordained roles, which is something incredibly interesting to consider. She holds a deep loathing towards Kanon for daring to defy his fate, more so than someone like Genji would if this were a mere case of Kanon messing up the Witch Narrative. Beatrice takes Kanon’s transgression personally, not in the sense that this is a specific attack on her, but in the sense that it upsets her sensibilities more than anything else could.

So why would that be? What about some small little servant choosing to throw off his symbol of abuse and oppression is so offensive to a mighty witch such as Beatrice? She’s centuries old, an accomplished alchemist, and brimming with supernatural power. According to all we know of the Beatrice mythos, she should be able to toss Kanon aside with a snap of her fingers. But there is a mockery towards him, a taunting and a toying coming from a personal degree of loathing.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Kanon got under Beatrice’s skin, but it’s something close. She takes something out on him for his transgression towards her - in his speech, Kanon marks out both Kinzo and Beatrice as individuals he is defying, and that has to be important. It’s clear to see why a furniture servant abandoning the degradation would upset fascist abuser supreme Kinzo, but what about this would be so upsetting to Beatrice? Why would she care at all?

I have some idea, but to elaborate on that I first need to talk about one other curious feature of Beatrice’s presentation in this chapter. She has as tangible a presence as you can get in this chapter, except for one detail: in her “conversation” with Kanon, Beatrice never actually speaks. Her “dialogue” is relayed through the narration and through Kanon’s own responses, but Beatrice herself remains voiceless.

The immediate effect of this is that Beatrice remains in obscurity even as she shuffles around the spotlight. We know in this chapter that she gets mad at Kanon and kills him, but we don’t get anything concrete about Beatrice. No face, no voice. In other words, Beatrice is not given an active presence in the story. She is relayed to us second-hand, even though she plays a crucial role in the events in the boiler room.

There is something to this beyond the benefits to the mystery narrative that keeping Beatrice obscured entails. Of course this presentation keeps us guessing about several elements of Beatrice’s existence - we can’t say either way what Beatrice’s physical form looks like or what it could mean. Revealing Beatrice definitively as either a human or a witch would run counter to Umineko’s narrative worse than anything Kanon could ever dream of.

However, that does not necessarily mean that the only way Beatrice could have appeared in this chapter was in this way. It’s not enough that she’s a hidden presence. She’s also a passive one. She performs no direct action. She never directly tells us anything. Beatrice is kept in check by the narrative as a spectral entity. The only “active” thing we see of Beatrice happens to be her own feelings towards Kanon’s desperate stance.

Beatrice is held in fantasy and only fantasy. The one exception to this is still little more than a gesture at Romantic examination. Beatrice has no tangible, material, Detective’s presence to her. Even in death, Kanon’s murder is not described as someone plunging the stake into him. The stake appears and he is impaled by it - passive voice for emphasis. The only “active” step taken in the death sequence is when Kanon pulls the stake out of his chest. Nothing is directly manipulated by Beatrice’s hands.

Technically, we can’t actually say Beatrice does anything in this chapter. This is something that in truth ties into the broader presentation of Beatrice as a figure in Umineko. Going by the stories told by the servants about Beatrice beyond the Witch Narrative, there is a common thread in all these tales: Beatrice shows up and then something happens. Even in Shannon’s story of the injured servant, her tale is not “Beatrice pushed the servant down the stairs”. It is “a servant disrespected Beatrice and then fell down the stairs”.

There is a very understated and very curious denial of agency seen with Beatrice, on reflection. All she’s really allowed to do is sit there as a cloud of butterflies and be an emblem for misfortune happening that is later accredited to her. I’ve referred to Beatrice as a murderwitch throughout this liveblog, but what’s interesting is that while this reputation is there, we aren’t ever shown more than the reputation itself.

The excuse so far has been that the literal witch Beatrice has been unable to do anything on account of needing to be resurrected in order to return to the material plane first. But even that narrative is something contradicted to the point where it can’t be trusted. Kinzo’s scenes make it clear this is all an attempt to summon Beatrice from a place nobody can normally reach, yet he is also convinced in some scenes that Beatrice is already there, watching him with amusement from the sidelines.

This could be explained away with the whole “Beatrice lacks a physical form and thus she isn’t really there” line of reasoning, except that in chapter 14 she appears to quite literally orchestrate Kanon’s death, and prior to that she allegedly had the means of injuring a servant who disrespected her. How can Beatrice cause harm to servants and yet also be so far removed from the physical world that a violent occult ritual is needed to ensure her presence?

Beatrice is not there, and yet Beatrice is there. In other words, Beatrice “exists”. It’s not just that Beatrice “exists” but that the act of being Beatrice is to inherently inhabit a position of “existence”. Beatrice is a passive entity, strictly defined by indirect non-involvement.

In other words, from a certain angle, Beatrice The Golden Witch is just as restrictive a role as “furniture”. To be Beatrice is to be unseen, voiceless, inactive. No matter how much you may feel or hate or rage you are not given the cathartic release of wrapping your hands around someone’s throat. For all her loathing of Kanon, the only tool at Beatrice’s disposal is to continue to perpetuate her own myth-narrative, merely folding Kanon into the pattern. And at this stage, the Witch Narrative is more akin to a process than a personal action. There is something very distanced and abstracted about killing for the Twilights; it is about continuing to engage with the horror-mystery and not about yourself and your own feelings.

Even through the metaphorical allegories of Beatrice this mode is seen. Genji is bound to the role of Beatrice, defined as his tragic and terrible devotion to Kinzo. Genji couldn’t have escaped this fate if he’d tried. Kanon is coerced into upholding the Witch Narrative through his position as furniture, thus conflating both states of being into one and the same thing. Even further back, whoever is behind the story of the alchemist that gave Kinzo the gold is reduced to a portrait of a white woman in the mansion’s hallway, stripped of everything but a confining ideal. To be Beatrice is to be contained by other people’s demands and expectations.

When it’s laid out like this, it is no surprise that Beatrice reacts to Kanon’s rebellion with outrage. This choice is the one thing she can never do because her whole existence as Beatrice is predicated on that not being an option. Beatrice, no matter the form she takes, is trapped in her role. To cease being trapped by the role of Beatrice is also to lose the power granted by being Beatrice. She is the demon’s roulette. Anyone who risks becoming something more than their assigned category is anathema to her entire nature.

Kanon rebels against Kinzo’s will where Beatrice never could. No wonder she kills him for it.

But, of course, now we need to think about how Beatrice actually managed to kill Kanon in the first place. And to do that we need to revisit the next most obvious from the start question: how many people are on Rokkenjima?

The 19th person issue is one that at times feels too blatant to give more than a cursory amount of attention to: there are nineteen people “existing” on Rokkenjima because Beatrice is an immaterially real shared identity construct. There only being eighteen physical bodies is irrelevant to this count - the number of “people” increases further if you start thinking about people’s multiplicitous selves as their own entities. Witch Maria and Human Maria, adultsona George and kidsona George, Shannon and Sayo, Natsuhi and Ushiromiya Natsuhi, et cetera. Beatrice being an additional facet of the peddlers of the Witch Narrative is merely this mechanism brought to an extreme point.

Except, cutting past all the fantasy and obfuscation, Kanon does still in fact get killed in the boiler room. At the time of this murder, either eight or nine people are already dead by this point. And of the eight other survivors, seven of them very conspicuously are not in a position to murder him at all.

So this dilemma boils down to a singular issue: either Kumasawa killed Kanon, or a nineteenth individual did. The story goes to great lengths to ensure that this is the setup we’re working with here. Where Eva and Hideyoshi were allegedly killed in a way only a witch could have done, Kanon could have only been logistically killed by a witch and nobody else.

There is of course a third angle here, and that’s that Kanon killed himself. It’s technically an option on the table, but one I am not sure has much, if any, basis. The entire scene hinges around Kanon choosing to act out in defiance in a space devoid of observers. There is nobody save for the reader for Kanon to convince of the authenticity of his words and motives. For this premise to work, it would almost certainly necessitate a level of metatextual awareness from Kanon that we have not seen at all.

Kanon acts and reacts to a threat in the room. Kanon makes it clear that his goal is to take this person down with him if he can’t save himself. Everything points to there being a second person in the room with Kanon capable of inflicting harm on him. A person that would, then, hypothetically, flee out of the back door and into the night before being found.

At this point in the story, even Battler is fairly on board with there being a 19th person moving around on the island. After all, nobody among the group of survivors could have been responsible for killing Kanon, save for maybe the incredibly frail Kumasawa. The options are pared down to Kumasawa, suicide, or a 19th person. This person’s identity is unknown, but the fact of their existence is, on the surface of things, pretty undeniable.

This, however, feels like a trap. The existence of a 19th person is part and parcel of the Witch Narrative. To readily agree that there is a 19th person on the island is to buy into the same immaterial theatre spawning the magic circles and the demonic stakes and letters speaking of alchemy. You either accept all of it, or you accept none of it. It’s already been established that the occult artifacts at the murder scene are little more than decoration placed by somebody doctoring the bodies. If this fact is true, then the existence of a nineteenth person must therefore be false.

But if Kanon was murdered by somebody, that somebody was not among the eight survivors. Thus the contradiction making this yet another “impossible” mystery. The only two points of data we have are totally irreconcilable.

Save for one read on the situation: Kanon was killed by somebody outside of the group of survivors, and this individual is also not a 19th person. There is exactly one way in which this can be true, and that’s to consider the possibility that the person that killed Kanon is among those presumed dead.

This is something that’s not impossible. The obvious objection is that for a person who we think is dead not being dead is that that would invalidate the epitaph murder ritual, but we’ve already established that the sequence of events only has value as far as convincing the survivors of something inescapably occult. If twilights can happen out of order, then there’s no reason why we need to assume that a victim has to actually be dead. It’s all about the affect.

If this were true, it would allow somebody outside of the group to move around and kill without disrupting the premise of the eighteen on Rokkenjima. This would mean that Kanon’s killer is one of the victims of either the first or second twilights.

From the outset, both pools of suspects are problematic. Eva and Hideyoshi, even if they weren’t dead somehow, were both physically in the guest room at the time of the murder - there’d be no way for either of them to sneak by the others down into the basement to kill Kanon. The six on the first twilight, beyond being mangled past recognition, are stuck within a locked room to which only Natsuhi has the key.

I still think that if we’re to entertain this possibility, the culprit must be one of those assumed to be inside the garden storehouse. Which means we’ll need to interrogate the function and construction of this reverse locked room.

It’s an established fact that the shed is locked from the outside. It is also an established fact that there is only one key, and this key is held by Natsuhi who has not had a single meaningful opportunity to sneak off and unlock the storehouse.

The only way to interrogate this setup without contradicting the physical facts of the story is through a Detective/Romantic examination of chapter 10’s narration. What we know are the above datapoints. Everything else is extrapolation and assumption, especially if we abide by the non-Battler POV = Romantic obfuscation logic.

So, extending that line of thinking leads us to distrust anything that can’t be immediately verified by the scenes in the parlor. The most crucial fact, and the one that the argument I am making hinges on, is that everybody that was killed still being in the storehouse when it was locked up cannot be trusted with absolute certainty. The only people on the scene during the locking of the storehouse were those involved in the Witch Narrative to some degree, and Natsuhi, who by her own admission could not stomach to look upon the scene for longer than necessary.

Who is to say that, during this period of uncertainty and unreliable perspective, somebody playing dead inside the storehouse slipped out while Natsuhi was looking away in disgust? This would facilitate the existence of an individual who is not part of the group of survivors, yet who also does not contravene the 18 person premise.

There are holes in this, of course. It’s a huge leap to assume that Natsuhi somehow missed a whole person getting up and leaving the storehouse, and there are numerous questions as to how the narrative-peddling servants would permit someone to roam free who would then later betray the occult illusion and murder Kanon. But the basis of this theory is not impossible, so perhaps there are ways to work around this.

We already know Natsuhi’s perspective is highly unreliable, as proven earlier in that exact chapter. She so desperately wants to hide the fact of Kinzo’s death that she starts to buy her own lies, having imagined hallucination conversations in a most likely empty study to verify her own beliefs. If brain ghost grandpa can “exist” through Natsuhi, then it is much less of a stretch for her to willingly or unknowingly let something like this slip. Maybe she was in her own head. Maybe she tuned it out in an act of extreme denial. Either way, it is theoretically possible for Natsuhi to overlook something that big.

As to the servants permitting this, the obvious answer is that this person was allowed to let go as a contingency by Genji in the event of a Witch Narrative stalemate. An additional body roaming around that the audience of this theatre has already written off would be a huge boon in authenticating his own crimes. This person killing Kanon, then, would not necessarily be the end of the world for Genji - as per maybe-Kinzo’s words regurgitated through a hallucinatory phantom, total annihilation is as valid an option on the table as any other outcome. A roulette can land on many outcomes, and an “impossible” killer taking Kanon out transforms this individual into Beatrice in the consciousness of the survivors, furthering the plan either way.

Given that, the question then becomes: which of the dead six could theoretically do this? Who here would pretend to be dead, skulk around the island for a time, and then end up killing Kanon?

I think there are a few suspects we can eliminate off the bat. Krauss and Shannon, the half-face corpses, most likely don’t fit here. As individuals, it does not track with who they are to imagine them acting this way - going by my theory, this would place Krauss as someone who played possum to survive his own assassination attempt backfiring on him. There is absolutely no way that someone like that wouldn’t have immediately come out of the shadows to expose Eva and Hideyoshi; Krauss didn’t even have it in him to keep his embezzlement bragging on the downlow. As for Shannon, the victim in this situation is Kanon. There is absolutely not a single scenario in which Shannon would kill Kanon for any possible reason - he is probably the only person in her life towards whom she feels unconditional love and trust. We’ll never know for a fact how Shannon/Sayo felt towards Kanon’s desperation to save her, but even in the most emotionally complicated interpretation, it still makes no sense for Kanon to be killed by her in retaliation, and it makes no sense for Kanon to have done anything he did in the intervening twilights had Shannon actually survived somehow.

More than that, I have always thought that Krauss and Shannon’s faces being half-destroyed is as close to cast iron proof as you can get that they are definitely, totally, for real dead, for the simple fact that a mystery story’s base assumption is that anybody with injuries that buck the trend are suspicious. Instead, I think this is more likely a case of a tree hiding itself in a forest.

Which turns our attention to the three failsiblings and Gohda. It’s not Gohda, because narratively it makes sense for Gohda to be as much of a victim of circumstance as Shannon in the end despite his bullying of her - middle manager and minimum wage worker alike are insects before the CEO. His abuse of a shred of worthless power cannot save him, therefore he must be dead. Rosa, likewise, would not work narrative-wise to survive. She had a complete character trajectory highlighting the revolving wheel of abuse within the introductory chapters. Her character was never destined for anything more than being doomed by the systems she never managed to do more than perpetuate - surviving the First Twilight would give her licence to try to escape the cycle, which would undermine the whole point of everything that came before.

So we’re left now with two candidates: Rudolf and Kyrie. Both of whom are understated characters with ulterior motives that were never fully elaborated on before they met their ends. Kyrie’s conversations with Battler hinted at the existence of a strategist’s mind with a scheme of her own separate from the gambit Eva strongarmed everyone into going along with. Rudolf, meanwhile, has the lone dangling thread of his “tonight I think I will be killed” comment, the sole thing that, as of this point in the story, we have no clue as to what he could have really meant by that. All we can glean is that the “murder” comment was most likely not a literal portent, but a fear of his that whatever secret he carried would see many people turn against him - either way, there is a Big Thing with Rudolf that never got elaborated on at any point ever.

For this reason, and a couple more, I am inclined to think that if there is a person playing dead, then that person is Rudolf. It would give us room to explore this abandoned plot thread, and it would create a full circle parallel with the comments earlier in the story about how much Rudolf acts like Kinzo - the dead father pretending to be alive, the alive son pretending to be dead. And more than any of that, more than any narrative or thematic reason for this working, is the fact that there is something associated with Rudolf that has otherwise only come up with the discussion of dead bodies.

I am, of course, talking about makeup.

There is a point made of highlighting that Rudolf wears makeup in the earlier chapters as a means of highlighting his superficiality and vanity. He is the pervert covered in glamour. He is, quite literally, bringing a false face to the family conference. Rudolf’s face, his true self and his secrets, have been concealed from the start. Makeup as an image is tied to Rudolf and used as a reinforcement of the fact that this man is not to be trusted.

The word “makeup” is also used in exactly one other context: the mutilated bodies. First we are told that all this gore has ruined the immaculate makeup on Rudolf’s face, and then further down the line we are treated to the description of blood described as "makeup” plastering the corpses. It’s a very curious word to throw into Battler’s panicked monologue, incongruent enough to stick in your mind more than most details.

Given that, it is not much of a stretch to assume we are seeing the literal masquerading as the figurative - this is the whole MO of the Witch Narrative, after all. In a sea of real blood and guts, who would notice that one person in the group was instead pained with makeup? We already know that there is an artificial substance in abundance on Rokkenjima that can be used to mimic the appearance of blood - if it can be painted on doors to create the illusion of a magic circle, then surely it can also be painted on a human face to create the illusion of a corpse.

So in this scenario, Rudolf sits pretty and painted in a sea of bodies, and slips out at the last possible moment. He then hangs around somewhere unseen for a while, before being the one to murder Kanon.

On several levels, this makes sense - whatever schemes Rudolf and/or Kyrie had cooking were derailed by the Witch Narrative, and as someone firmly cemented in the Ushiromiya hierarchy his first instinct would be to take it out on Kanon. This would serve as an explanation for the loathing and disgust conveyed by Beatrice in the boiler room scene, but it does still leave several elements unanswered.

If we assume the Beatrice stuff to be a fantastical plastering over a mundane killing, then we need to ask why Kanon would think and say the things he does if the person before him was Rudolf. Rudolf is emblematic of several kinds of power and abuse, but he is not directly a literal or metaphorical figurehead for Kanon’s oppression. Rudolf is most Kinzo-like when his face is full of makeup - it is an insincere mask with no substance to it. Rudolf is someone Kanon only sees once a year. It makes no sense for Rudolf to be someone Kanon feels the need to take a stand against like this. Rudolf doesn’t really have it in him to be a satisfying Beatrice.

Unless, of course, something changed during the time the surviving Rudolf was off-screen. There are eight whole hours he is unaccounted for. Enough time, perhaps, for someone dedicated enough to solve the epitaph and learn of whatever grim truths lie alongside the gold vault? Perhaps something that relates to his final unspoken secret? There’s still a lot of ground to cover in that area. There’s every possibility the answer lies there, that somewhere down the line we’ll find out how someone could so easily embody a Beatrice position.

That said, this is not the only option for explaining things. Beyond the idea of bodies not being dead and blood makeup and failsons turning into witches, there is something else very weird that goes on in this chapter that absolutely needs looking at, and might even take us to a stranger place than that.

Structurally, chapter 14 is strange. It is a chapter with several oddities - the appearance of the otherwise ephemeral and totally unseen Beatrice, and it is a chapter without a defined timestamp. Every other chapter in Umineko tells us when it happens and goes out of its way to make sure it doesn’t tip its hand too soon with the Beatrice enigma. So for Kanon’s death chapter to feature a lack of time and an abundance of butterflies and other witch-related happenings is more than a little suspect.

Namely because this is not even the first time this has happened in this story. There is one other chapter in the story which deprives us of a timestamp and shows us a golden butterfly, and that’s chapter 9. Which is also, curiously and alarmingly, Shannon’s final chapter.

I spent a lot of time going over chapter 9, highlighting the strangeness of its structure and what that could mean. My conclusion at the time was that we were witnessing something doctored and unreal - to borrow terminology I’ve learned since, my conclusion was that chapter 9 was a “fantastical scene”. I also spoke about how Shannon and Kanon have the curious quirk of being the only ones to ever actually see with their own eyes evidence of Beatrice’s existence, a fact which continues to hold true even in chapter 14.

Now, you could argue that this “disruption” is evidence of the metatextual ripple effect Beatrice’s manifestation is having on Umineko’s reality, but even that wouldn’t be a satisfying answer, because there is also one other time Shannon and Kanon have had structurally identical scenes, and that example was completely devoid of any hints of Beatrice or magic.

Way back at the start of the story, Shannon and Kanon have basically the same introduction scene: they awkwardly present themselves before the family, they fumble their duties and drop something, one adult berates them while another adult berates the first for being too harsh on them, Battler makes the same comparison to a waitress dropping a fork for both of them, and then they have a debrief scene afterwards that hints at deeper, more complicated feelings towards the situation.

Shannon and Kanon enter the story using the same narrative beats with a slightly different retexture. Shannon and Kanon also leave the story using the same narrative shape with a slightly different retexture.

Both walk off on their own going directly against their assigned duties - Shannon heads to the mansion instead of the guesthouse, and Kanon runs off on his own instead of sticking with Kumasawa. Both have a conflict between their “furniture” and real selves - Shannon calms the Sayo inside her to prevent causing a scene, and Kanon attempts to cast aside his furniture role in order to directly cause a scene. Both witness glowing butterflies on their own in a dark corner, and both are heavily implied to have been directly murdered by Beatrice more than any other person in the story. The only difference is that for Kanon, we see it happen, and I can’t help but wonder that had chapter 9 been a full length chapter that we wouldn’t have seen something very similar unfold with Shannon.

This is yet another heap of stuff to add to the pile of “weird parallels and symmetries between Shannon and Kanon” that keeps growing throughout the story. This still isn’t even really touching the bizarre relationship they have to Beatrice and all the ways that that’s played out - both having the ghost story in common, both occupying an odd proximity to the role of “Beatrice”, Shannon as vessel and Kanon as performer. There is a lot of this kind of stuff swirling around the two of them, and I think it really comes to a head with Kanon’s death.

After all, one way of reading this chapter is that both Shannon and Kanon end up suffering the exact same destiny. Neither escapes being furniture, and Beatrice kills them for it. Shannon buried Sayo where she shouldn’t have, and Kanon’s casting aside of being furniture came too little too late. Different textures, but the same shape. This, combined with the fact that both are notorious Witch Narrative spinners in their own ways, paints a very bizarre picture full of question marks with no clear answer.

Nobody else in Umineko shares this level of direct parallel, so it has to mean something deeply significant that Shannon and Kanon are entwined like this. I don’t have the answer yet, but I do think that this is not the end of it. I think that as soon as the metafiction stuff really comes into focus that all of this will become extremely relevant. These two are wrapped around Umineko’s core story structure in a way nobody else is, narratively weird in a way that is only otherwise seen with entities that “exist” in the story. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but there very much is something going on that cannot and should not be ignored.

And one final thing, one final deranged detail that’s worth pointing out that threatens to possibly undermine several thousand words of this very writeup, is that the word “makeup” appears in the description of Kanon’s death. He lies there, hole in his chest, blood makeup dribbling down his body. I previously asserted that this was indicative of a surviving Rudolf taking up the mantle of being a threatening individual acting outside the group, but Kanon also has this word applied to him. A hint towards his killer, or something else?

If Kanon’s death is tainted with the word “makeup”, this means we should suspect something about it. Perhaps it is merely drawing attention to the fact that the stake to the chest is just decoration and affect - to get really tinfoil with it, Kanon managed to pull the stake from his chest before collapsing. If everything is fantastical, perhaps so too is the assertion that the stake was ever in his chest in the first place - perhaps for whatever reason his assailant did not have the time/means to set this up exactly like an epitaph murder. Or perhaps something more is going on. After all, Kanon leaves the chapter mortally wounded, but he is not actually confirmed dead. There’s wriggle room here for something else to happen.

Maybe, just maybe, what we saw here was merely another farce. Kanon taking the chance to fake his death and take himself out of the story while he still can - killing “Kanon” the furniture so the human beneath the mask can survive. Notions of Beatrice and a 19th person and an impossible murder as theatrics to cover up the fact that the tragedy at the heart of the scene is without substance. If so, the question would be whether or not this was intended by The Plan or if this is indeed Kanon acting out on his own. Has Kanon gone behind the scenes to be Genji’s “ghost” because there is no miraculously-surviving Rudolf? Are there two people in this position now? Is there any true substance to any of these theories at all?

I don’t know. I think the truth lies somewhere among all this noise, but I do think it’s starting to come into focus.

[bi-hop]

my thoughts on rgu ep 3

we're baaaack! my previous posts are all now under my rgu liveblog tag

lord, here we go with the extended recaps even though it's only episode 3-

it's interesting how memory is being played with here with Utena. such a formative moment is reduced to a strange fairy tale, a piece of gossip with faceless characters. the only proof of it is vague recollections paired with a single physical piece of evidence: the ring. but said ring is also associated with other elements of the world that she is still not fully privy to... just hm

the running gag of Utena being like "you need a friend" and Chu Chu being like "?" and Anthy being like "?" amuses me but also doesn't... can't put my finger on why though so I'm just gonna note it down and circle back to it

the Utena-sama stuff is funny. like, oh, okay, it's fine when girls are admiring you from a distance because you can write it off as a joke, but a girl insisting she's engaged to you and referring to you reverently is when you're finally like "actually I desire men, I totally want to date a boy, the masculinity has nothing to do with being gay, I want a NORMAL BOY" OADJODSJODS OKAY SURE UTENA

Girl, you claim to want to date a guy and then a guy flirts with you and you're immediately like "let's keep it platonic, dude". alright-

^ NOT AT ALL IMPLYING ATTRACTION TO DUDES MEANS YOU'RE RECEPTIVE TO ALL ADVANCES. just kinda funny immediately following a scene where she's like "erm actually I'm totally straight! I am a heterosexual!!!"

"is the prince bi too. did he kiss all of the duelists orrrr..." - riveting commentary from the girlfriend. I have no stance on this, I just think he seems like a creep

communication? in MY anime? it's far less likely than you'd think. (Touga is annoying but what else is new)

the council finally clueing in to the fact that Utena is not in fact in contact with End of the World (whoever THAT is). Saionji is also hiding or something? good fucking riddance

Anyway, I think the use of a prince as the model Utena bases her appearance on and also simultaneously the vague object of her desire is compelling in a compulsory heterosexuality narrative because it's a perfect analogue to how some lesbians I know would simply invent an idealized guy to project feelings onto due to the insistence of heterosexuality as a regime that a girl MUST desire a man. the easiest man to desire is the one you only vaguely remember from your childhood and have no real chance of meeting-

can everyone just leave Anthy alone????

Nanami looks nice, but I've watched too many shows with blonde mean girls to trust that she really has Anthy's best interests at heart...

circling back to the girls and how they treat Anthy (which includes Wakaba of course because Wakaba is meant to be a window into what the other girls are thinking IMO), there's this continual theme of everyone viewing Anthy as like... this seductress almost who is ruining the lives of boys like Saionji over nothing. She's 'shameless', she's a 'creep', whole time she's being abused and treated as an object. the relatable brown woman of color experience, I fear

Touga: I don't care about Utena. I care about a feminized fantasy of her I have in my head, even though my attraction to her started with how she regularly dresses. This is because I can fix her aesthetic-

Anthy and her social anxiety... man... just let her sit in the dorm and play cards with Chu Chu

and sure enough, Nanami sabotages her out of misdirected jealousy. girl, you need to be freed of the idea that girls are competition for your brother's affection. also, you need to kill your brother. you will do this for me and become a feminist-

I'm not surprised that the retaliation against Anthy is called a prank that maaaybe went too far. I'm especially not surprised this commentary is directed towards a moment of sexual violence. ty to Utena for intervening

gay people be dancing on loop... that is all

fun episode! much to chew on! on to the next