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batbeato · 3 days

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What is the relationship between witches and their human selves in Umineko? Thinking about that today. (Also has Higurashi spoilers.)

The first thing to look at should be the simplest: Bernkastel. Bernkastel is only associated with one human self, Furude Rika. In Higurashi, Rika is shown to sometimes act as her "witch self": this is her "self" which holds the trauma and knowledge of all of her loops. In Saikoroshi, Rika feels entirely divorced from the human Rika she was meant to be, 'the Rika of this fragment', and feels like she is no longer Rika, but the witch, Bernkastel. Contrast this with the end of Matsuribayashi, where Bernkastel seems like an entirely separate entity to Rika, speaking as though Rika is someone else and going on in the world of Fragments.

We know that Rika is on the "gameboard" in Hinamizawa celebrating her victory with her friends, but the witch-Rika, Bernkastel, is still trapped in the loops/scenario, toying with possibilities - the traumatized part of Rika that was left behind.

Rika embodied and was Bernkastel, and Bernkastel originally was Rika, but ultimately, Rika and Bernkastel have become separate existences. We can see callbacks to Rika in Umineko, like when Bernkastel names her piece "Furudo Erika" (a riff on Furude Rika), and we can see that Bernkastel is still affected by what happened to her as Rika from her response to Erika mentioning it in EP6.

Since I've brought up Bernkastel, I should also discuss Lambdadelta. Thanks to SotsuGou, people primarily associate her with Satoko nowadays, but she actually bears resemblance to two Higurashi characters: Takano and Satoko. For example, her eyes were originally yellow, and she also has a side story showing her interactions with a child who wanted to become a god - Takano. It's also mentioned that she lost a game against Bernkastel in the past (which Takano did, though as of SotsuGou, Satoko has as well). She lays a trap for Bernkastel in another side story, which links her to Satoko, and she has red eyes in other versions of her sprite, which link her again to Satoko.

However, Lambdadelta is never confirmed to have been born from Satoko or Takano, despite her connections to them. I can't really speak further on her relationship with them as human-to-witch-self without assuming one or the other or both.

Then there's Featherine, who seems to be a mixture of Hachijo Tohya and Ikuko. She has Ikuko's appearance, but also uses Tohya's name. As the witch-author of the story, she likely comes from both of them. Her primarily being based off of Ikuko in terms of appearance and personality may arise from Ikuko doing most of the writing, or from something in their relationship (interpersonal or as writers).

However, she often seems to show feelings that may come from Tohya, such as her kindness towards Ange in EP8. And yet, this contrasts her cruelty at the end of EP6/in EP7. This likely comes from her existence being based off of two different people: she is the witch born from the author 'Hachijo Tohya', who is in truth both Tohya and Ikuko. She is a single entity disguising two people.

Featherine's given backstory is that she sleeps for long periods of time, only to be revived by a new story. She is Bernkastel's master who taught her how to "eat meat" (likely, to cannibalize stories for entertainment, rather than being part of a story), and Bernkastel also revived Featherine at one point. Featherine is also connected to Hanyuu by Eua in SotsuGou, who appears to be similar to her. However, there is no known connection between the humans here, only the witches.

This can have various reasons:

The simplest is that Higurashi and Umineko have the same actors in different roles. In Higurashi, Bernkastel may have been born from Rika, but in Umineko, Bernkastel is born from Ikuko's cat, Bern. The links between the two Bernkastels are fun easter eggs without much consequence, and the same goes for any other cross-VN relations or connections. This is also the most boring answer, in my opinion.

Another is that, even if Higurashi and Umineko have both taken place in the same universe, that does not mean that the Hinamizawa and Rokkenjima gameboards exist in the same universe. Higurashi in the world of Umineko might be a story that Ikuko wrote. It is possible that Hanyuu was a character she projected a lot onto, as a woman who was rejected by her community, killed by her husband, and now clinging to the companionship of her descendant, Rika. Ikuko herself was exiled from her family, removed from the outside world, and was very lonely. The story was abandoned, but somehow Bern, her cat, gave her inspiration to finish it: thus Bernkastel the witch, a mixture of her cat and her character, Rika, was born and had saved Featherine. Some other explanation of events may also serve to connect the characters together.

Overall, however, regardless of reasoning, Featherine seems very disconnected from Ikuko and Tohya. Part of this may be due to the additional layer that Featherine is in the story, while Ikuko and Tohya are alive, human writers that exist outside of it.

This is very different to the close, interwoven relationship that Eva and Evatrice have. Evatrice is separate from Eva, but in the sense that Evatrice is Eva's childhood trauma and discarded dreams personified as a witch. They share a body on the gameboard, and are only fully separate in EP8. For them, there is no full separation or denouncing of them as Eva: they are both Eva, just with a focus on different parts of their lives.

I also want to mention Ange: her final transformation into the "witch of the future" at the end of the story coincides with the 'death' of Ange, and her rebirth into Yukari. Ange was a witch, but in order to live on, she is reborn into Yukari who is a 'white witch' and an author that brings happiness to children. She leaves behind her old identity while still carrying the memories of that time (as evidenced by her emotional reunion with Tohya). However, up until this point, Ange as a witch had no separation from Ange as a human. Maria and Battler are similar: they become their witch-selves, with no separate human self remaining (except, in Battler's case as a higher-level witch, for his gameboard/piece self).

...Technically Virgilia is a witch, but she is one made by a fantasy conception of her, rather than Kumasawa's own decision to become a witch. There isn't much of a relationship to be had.

I saved Beatrice for last for a reason.

Some people consider Sayo to have become Beatrice, given the events of the Confession chapters of the manga. However, there is also room to interpret them as similar to Bernkastel and Rika's relationship, where the witch and human were once one, but have since separated.

For example, Beatrice's red truth that the sin Battler committed wasn't against her, as well as her discussion with her piece-self (Sayo) in EP4, promising her that she will take care of everything, may indicate that Beatrice does not feel that she is 1:1 with Yasuda Sayo.

Another thing to consider is Sayo's conception of herself: she speaks of the world as though she is like a director or god, distinct from it. "I'm modifying the world so that Beato is me." "I'm done acting the part of the servant." Sayo herself doesn't appear on the stage: only Beatrice does. Her personas (Beatrice, Kanon, Shannon) are the only versions of herself allowed to appear. She also narrates separately from the trio in EP7 - "Then, Beatrice. From now on, you will carry the bud of love. In other words, the role of being infatuated with Battler and waiting for his return will go to you."

Much like Rika, Sayo embodied Beatrice, considering her to be a secret "witch-self" separate from her "daily-self". However, Sayo did not even consider her "witch-self" to be herself completely, instead speaking of Beatrice in the third person. In that case, where is Sayo, if she is not Beatrice (and certainly not Shannon or Kanon, who are also explicitly created by her)? She refers to "us" (all three personas and herself), indicating that her "true self" is none of the three, but separate.

In that case, with Sayo holding themself to be separate from Beatrice, Shannon, and Kanon, can Beatrice really be said to be Sayo, and Sayo to be Beatrice, rather than the relationship of "Beatrice was once Sayo" that Bernkastel seems to hold with Rika? Is it more of the enmeshed relationship that Eva has with Evatrice? Or is it the disconnected relationship that Featherine, as the author-avatar, has with Ikuko and Tohya?

If we go by Confession's depiction, Sayo's truest self is Beatrice, as she becomes her within the catbox and acts out the role of Beatrice. But if we go by EP7, Sayo doesn't seem to align with any of her personas as a truest self, even Beatrice. All three of them are acknowledged as separate from Sayo, which fits with all three of them existing separately within the catbox. Sayo did not directly or fully "become" any of the three, so all three hold equal status as 'furniture' that need a soul to become real and to be loved (see: the EP6 love duel).

Since the two depictions appear to conflict, I would say that both of them (and all others on this spectrum) should be permitted in the catbox.

Witches seem to have varying relationships with their human forms. Are they cocoons they were nurtured in and they left, or are their human selves still an important of them, witch and human interlinked? Or do they distinguish themselves so much from their human forms that the connection is difficult to see? However, their human selves always shape their past and who they are now. There is no fully severing the connection between reality and fantasy.

#umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #umineko spoilers #higurashi spoilers #sayo yasuda #rika furude #this could use more polish but fuck it we ball #a lot of people feel like witch/human is very 1:1 but there's a lot of times where that isn't the case

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batbeato · 5 days

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You mentioned a while back that one of your estimates for the gold was around 1000 ingots, and now my brain has made the unintentional connection between Beatrice living a thousand years and Sayo inheriting one thousand golden ingots from Kinzo.

Oof. If Ryukishi had done that I think my heart would have exploded (gold as repentance for her suffering... but it can't make her happy, it only burdens her...)

#umineko spoilers #anon ask

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batbeato · 7 days

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I've talked briefly before about intersex Sayo, but... There's a lot you can read into regarding her relationship with her intersex status and with the perisex expectations she grows up with.

(This post reads Sayo using an intersex lens, as their experiences are analogous to real-life intersex people and can be seen as a metaphor for them, even if Sayo is never confirmed to have been born intersex.)

Sayo grows up with all sorts of expectations centered around the perisex 'AFAB' body: she will have a feminizing puberty, she will develop hips and feminine fat distribution, she will grow breasts, she will have periods, she will be capable of having children. But it goes beyond that - these are not only expectations Sayo has for herself, but expectations that society has for them, as well. People raised as girls are told that breasts and hips and fertility and vaginas will make them attractive to men, defines them as women, and makes them valuable - and thus the inverse is also the case: that without these things, they are not attractive to men, they are not women, and they are not valuable.

This equivalization of sex to gender means that Sayo, as they grow older and do not experience the perisex puberty promised to them, begins to feel unattractive, de-gendered, and worthless. This feeling only grows, and culminates in their self-definition as 'furniture', once they realize that they not only will never experience perisex puberty, but also will never be capable of reproducing. They say that "this body... isn't even capable of love" - "love" as is defined by the capacity to perform (heterosexual) sexual acts that can result in procreation. This can also indicate that Sayo wasn't physically capable of receiving vaginal penetrative sex. If Sayo was born perisex and AMAB (my personal preference), their vagina was surgically created. It may not be capable of pleasurable intercourse, or may not be able to fit a penis at all (or at least, without further procedures, such as dilation). If Sayo was born perisex and AFAB, their injuries and subsequent surgery may have resulted in a similar state for their vagina: one where vaginal penetration is painful or impossible.

(I personally believe Sayo to be AMAB, owing not only to the "man from 19 years ago" but also to Lion's status as the heir and more masculine-leaning presentation, something that would likely have been discouraged or looked down upon if Lion had been AFAB. I also lean towards it because of how AFAB Sayo/Lion has been used in the past to deny and discredit Sayo's trans identity and to enforce cishet norms onto Beatrice/Battler's and Will/Lion's relationships.)

Regardless of Sayo's assigned gender at birth, Sayo, both before and even moreso after the reveal of their past, felt unattractive, degendered, and desexed. In their attempts to claim identities that conformed to the allopericishet patriachy they grew up in, they lived their life as Shannon, Kanon, and Beatrice.

Shannon represents the ideal femininity: she has large breasts, she is submissive, and she is kind and emotionally mature. Beatrice's body, much like Shannon's is sexualized - blonde, blue eyes, large chest, all for the sake of feeling attractive - though she is allowed to express non-feminine behaviors so long as she is not made visible to anyone. Through Shannon and Beatrice, who are both imagined to be perisex ideals, the intersex Sayo is able to reclaim her sexuality, though fear of being sexless remains.

In EP2, Beatrice taunts Shannon with how animalistic the desires of men are - "the black-as-tar lust of that glasses man behind you", "men are flies and maggots that get caught in your scent and gather around you". I believe this is a combination of things: fear of sexual assault, as her mother and potentially grandmother were assaulted; shaming of her own sexuality and desire to be seen sexually; and an affirmation that she is, in fact, sexually desirable. Beatrice, in saying that Shannon is an object of sexual desire, no matter how negatively framed, is affirming that if Sayo presents as a cis perisex woman, she is able to become attractive. She is able to escape being the sexless, genderless 'thing' she feels that her intersex status makes her.

In contrast, Kanon, who is masculine, is not ideal: he does not have large muscles, he is not emotionally mature, and he is effeminate. He is a man, but he is also not one who would be valued in the patriarchal society due to his lack of 'proof' of manhood (in strength, in sexual conquest, in appearance, in partaking in toxic masculinity). He is the closest Sayo comes to acknowledging their status as intersex and gender non-conforming - as someone who does not neatly fit into the biological sex binary or the constructed cisgender binary. And he is the persona who does the "dirty work" that stained his soul long ago, the persona who takes no active action and instead denies Jessica's affection, the persona who does not present himself as a sexual being at all.

The most we have is when Kanon takes out his blade in front of Jessica in EP2: the innuendo there is that he is exposing his status as furniture - his (intersex) body, and (intersex) genitalia - to her. He is displayed as a heroic knight who protects Jessica, thus reinforcing his masculinity (men and the masculine as the protecting force for the frailer, feminine idols). Only in Sayo's fantasies can their intersex body "pass" and fit into the cissexual ideal.

So Sayo finds their sexuality in presenting as perisex: their 'true' intersex self, disabled and degendered and desexed, is hidden away and removed from the perfect Golden Land.

I believe many intersex people can resonate with Sayo's feelings: sometimes to be intersex is to be hypersexualized, to be seen as "having both". But to be intersex can also mean to be degendered, desexed, and othered. It can mean that you are not seen as, or do not feel like, someone capable of being an object of sexual or romantic desire. Our genitals and non-conforming sexual characteristics are "freak shows" that need to be "fixed" for us to be "normal" and to engage in heterosexual relationships, and those efforts to "fix" us may only increase those feelings of being degendered, desexed, and othered.

For me there is something that I deeply relate to in Sayo's perception of their (analogous to) intersex body, and in their attempts to present as perisex in order to "fix" what is "wrong". But in the end, even Kanon, the most unlovable, intersex persona of them all, is loved in the Golden Land.

#umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #umineko spoilers #yasuda sayo #sayo yasuda

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batbeato · 7 days

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Ange Ushiromiya's Recontextualized Memory and Unprocessed Trauma in Umineko No Naku Kori Ni

CW: Full spoilers for Umineko, a mystery visual novel game which is best enjoyed without knowing spoilers in advance. The game and thus this essay will feature discussion of child abuse and suicide.

For those unfamiliar with my blog I have a tag called Media, Myself and I where I talk about positive/accurate representation of dissociative disorders in media.

Today I want to talk about Umineko No Naku Kori Ni the third and fourth titles in 07th Expansion's "When They Cry" franchise. The game is a multi-layered fiction that starts off as an Agatha Christie inspired closed circle murder mystery taking place during the weekend of October 4th 1986. The murder mystery displayed has no more than 18 humans stranded on an island in the middle of a storm and the audience is invited to try to work out the mystery of what happened.

As the story progresses the audience are presented with a number of different possibilities, each an in-universe attempt to rationalize the tragedy that took place and killed all but two members of the Ushiromiya family.

It is eventually revealed that to the eyes of the world, no more than 18 humans were on the island that weekend and only one returned to their life afterwards. Some in the world have been quite focused on working out what happened during that weekend.

It's a complicated narrative that has multiple layers and each layer communicates not only with the audience reading the game but an audience of people in-universe trying to solve the mystery as well. When we first experienced the game we had joked that it was sold to us as Anime Homestuck but it ended up being Anime House of Leaves.

The easiest way to describe the narrative structure is that the first 7 episodes of the game, each containing about 20 hours of narrative, have within them a fictionalized version of events written in-universe by people who may or may not have been present at the event with episode 8 is mostly its own thing. To explain in further detail would distract. The point is Umineko is a complicated narrative and there is too much to cover a play-by-play.

The narrative is intentionally convoluted and contradictory with part of the fun of playing the game being to work out what events are true and what the rules are for discerning "magic" from "truth".

Even with a concept as seemingly opaque as Truth, there is the often quoted "Without love it cannot be seen" motif, that our emotional connection to events will always color how we interpret events.

The story is remarkably long. How Long To Beat puts each half of the game up at about 60 hours. So that's 120 hours of pure reading with very little gameplay.

There are multiple plural characters ("Oh, I am one yet many", indeed) and we shall discuss them in due course, but for clarity I wish to focus my discussion today upon the relationship between a survivor and their histories. The novel has much to say on the topic.

The above image discussing the nature of truth is from Episode 4, the chapter where the protagonist is Ange Ushiromiya. Younger sister of the protagonist of the first Episodes, Battler Ushiromiya.

Ange, 6 years old at the time, was sick on the weekend of October 4th 1986 and was not present on the island for the massacre. One weekend she had a full and lively family and then in the span of a single week everyone she had a connection to was killed in unknowable circumstances, she was whisked away to live with her aunt, the sole survivor of the tragedy, and would live the life of a cursed child, forever haunted by the tragedy that stole away her life.

Ange's story takes place in "The World of 1998" where she seeks The Truth. She states multiple times how she is incapable of going on with her life until she knows The Truth.

The events of 1986 are presented via "forgeries", published stories which tell the story of the 1986 tragedy utilizing facts that are known about the family. Ange pours through them, attempting to uncover the truth. She suspects her aunt may be responsible. Why wouldn't she harbor suspicions? Aunt Eva was the only one of the no more than 18 humans to leave the island and became the sole inheritor of the Ushiromiya family fortune.

Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is formed when an individual endures long-lasting and repeated bouts of ongoing trauma, typically in childhood. Survivors often find themselves caught in an inescapable cycle of grieving that lasts months and years beyond the loss and remains fresh and raw in spite of the time and changes that have occurred since the event. The individual is tethered to the past by an inability to move on from their loss. In psychology this is referred to as Complicated Grief and though it is most commonly discussed with death, it can present itself for grieving lost time, stolen youth and lives unlived.

Ange is riddled with Complicated Grief. Her story takes place 12 years after the events on the island of Rokkenjima and yet she constantly tells those around her that she is unable to live without knowing the truth. Ange's unprocessed grief is unearthed when her aunt, the only survivor of the massacre, passes away while maliciously refusing to give Ange any insight into the truth that she alone knew, twisting the knife as she turned over the family fortune to a child that was not her own beloved George.

Ange's sole reason for existing is to make peace with the tragedy of her past and Eva's final act was to tell her she would never have it and would instead live a cursed life of a victim in the public's eye. Eternally scrutinized and criticized.

Ange, now knowing that the only chance she had to be given the truth and still feeling that she needs it in order to live her life, runs away and starts a journey to either make peace with her tortured past or end her own life.

Ange's suicidal tendencies are played up dramatically and much of the final episode is the conflict between Ange's inability to live with her grief being played out in hyperbolic fiction. The stakes of the story amounting to "will she be able to live after learning The Truth."

But what is Truth? Would learning who is responsible for her family's death truly give her peace or would it only serve to trap her further in her endless cycle of grief?

Trauma therapy tends not to focus on Talk Therapy for the most part as such therapy indulges a survivor to dwell on their unprocessed traumas and will only serve to retraumatize the client. In many cases it is detrimental to perform Motivational Interviewing (reflective statements designed to display to a client that the clinician is listening and interpreting their words without offering direct guidance or intervention) or Rogerian "person centered" (a similar tactic designed to keep a client talking without engaging in a back-and-forth, every reply should be a prompt that inspires the client to continue sharing without boundaries and reach their own conclusions) techniques.

The reason why is that these forms of therapy have a belief that "the client holds all of the answers" and the clinician's job is to let the client get out of their own way and walk towards the answer. It is a solutions based therapy where the client is trusted to clear cognitive distortions and navigate around mental blocks between themselves and what they need.

Ange's stated goals are far from healthy.

In survivors their Core Beliefs are informed by their trauma. Those who were raised in a house of neglect may have an unresolved core belief that they are unworthy of love, those who feel shame and guilt for what happened/how they were treated may have a belief that "I should have..." - A helpful list of common negative core beliefs and positive beliefs that can be instilled, click here.

Trauma therapy contains an element of identifying these beliefs and where they originated and working to overcome them. There are many different therapies in the world that attempt to do this but they all include some element of processing trauma, accepting trauma and committing to the future.

In Ange's case she does not need to know what happened in order to live. She has to accept what happened and live.

To make this clear, should Ange learn what is presented to be The Truth it will break her and she will be unable to accept it and in doing so ends up unable to live.

All of this is a prologue to talk about acceptance and our emotional connection to memory.

Prior to Eva's death, Ange was raised in a boarding school where she was ruthlessly bullied by the other students. Both Ange and her aunt are in the public eye for the scandal associated with the Rokkenjima massacre and Eva actively despises Ange and refuses to give her the care, nurture and privilege that the other students of the rich academy enjoy.

She lives a lonely and cursed life. Her one solace is getting to find time alone to sit and read her cousin Maria's "Grimoire", her journal. When she reads the journal she can clearly picture her cousin in her mind and interact with her. A form of "magic" that Maria taught Ange back when the two of them were friends, prior to the massacre in which Maria lost her life. In the past Maria had created a magical society called Mariage Sorciere and Ange was one of the members before being excommunicated.

We'll discuss it further in a while however while introducing Maria I wish to note that she was most likely forming a dissociative disorder prior to the massacre. The series writer Ryukishi07 was a social worker prior to his career in visual novels. He does a remarkably good job of displaying how abusive and neglectful family dynamics can impact a young mind. Maria, despite being 9 years old, has speech patterns linked to an infant's maturity, she often switches into a "witch" persona and she will hold up her stuffed animals and voice out their speech, treating them like separate individuals. She is bullied at school and her mother hits her when she does this but she is incapable of acting any other way. It's who she is.

A small portion of the second chapter even having some of the cousins stop to discuss the possibility that her overactive imagination and play-acting may contain elements of dissociative identity disorder. It's never fully confirmed and she dies at age 9, but Ryukishi07 displays a convincing depiction of extreme childhood neglect that would lead to a severe dissociative disorder had she have grown up.

We learn throughout the story that her journal contains sketches of many magical entities impressed upon the servants of the island and toys that Maria has. These entities becoming the magical cast of the "Gameboard".

Though not the focus of this particular essay, each episode of the game is depicted as a chess match between a game master (representing the author of a murder mystery) and an opponent (representing the reader trying to solve the mystery) and these matches take place in a world of purgatory. This world is populated by a magical cast of characters each of whom is paired with a member of the mundane cast on the island.

The game often repeats that it takes "two to create a universe". There needs to be one to imagine it and one to perceive it and mark it as real. This is displayed on the gameboard but it is also displayed with the way that for every imagined character who exists as part of the magical cast, there is the one who imagines and then there is one who their imagination is displayed onto.

Maria is a child of extreme neglect, as we will discuss soon, she had no one to displace her imagination upon (spare for her mother who she imagined as being possessed by an evil witch when she became violently abusive) and so she imbued life into her toys. Bringing Sakutarou, her stuffed lion doll, and her band of toy rabbits to life. This earned her the title "Witch of origins".

The magic in the game's universe operates on a rule that "it takes two to create a universe" logic. The concepts of Magic and Love being intertwined. "Without love it cannot be seen" has many meanings but in terms of creation it means that anyone can apply "the anti-magic toxin" of mistrust/disbelief by simply rejecting another person's reality.

So much of the magic and love in this world is built on trust and being able to believe in that which is shared. The concept is explored from many angles throughout the game, Episode 6 focusing on love in the form of trust between a writer and a reader and the contract between them requiring a murder mystery to be solvable and for a reader to earnestly engage with the fiction and accept it as it is written.

Within Mariage Sorciere, this love is to accept that the characters and imaginings of its members. To be a member is to accept all as it is presented. Sakutarou is a magical lion boy who speaks. To doubt this is to be excommunicated from the order, which is why Ange was kicked out of the witches alliance. To say Sakutarou wasn't real was tantamount to trying to kill him.

Maria's love is without doubt. In Episode 7 we learn that she is not capable of viewing people as anything more than how they present to the world. Her imagination paints how she perceives the world. When her mother's behavior drastically shifts when she enters a violent and abusive rage she firmly believes that her mother has been possessed by a cruel witch.

When a familiar adult approaches her speaking as the Golden Witch Beatrice, she does not see the adult. She only sees Beato. This is vital to her testimony throughout the game regarding the murder mysteries.

One last thing I wish to go over during this analysis of Ange and Maria and their relationship to their traumatic childhoods. That is the title of witch.

By now I hope it's been made clear that magic is imagination and love is trust. Whether it be testimony being believed, the contract between author and reader or the inner reality of one being seen and regarded and acknowledged by another.

As someone with DID, I like this concept a lot. It would be so easy to simply dismiss our condition and the presentations. But with love it can be seen.

The game shows a number of different types of witch. From the witch of origins who can make new imaginings that do not require another person to validate them to the Golden witch who has enough money to make reality via sheer financial coercion or the witch of truth who can make reality by asserting it to be so or witch of resurrection who can keep those who died alive in their memory.

Each witch is using their magical ability to "create" by taking their imagination and moving it out into the world. The Witch of Truth is a detective whose deductions are believed to be fact even if the accused disagrees. The Golden Witch can take any scheme or desire and pay people to make it a reality.

And Ange, the Witch of Resurrections, can bring back the dead by remembering them and keeping their voices in her heart. They live on in her writing. In her words. In her memory. So when she reads Maria's journal she can bring the Maria of 1986 into the world of 1998. When she reads of Maria's magical companions they can accompany her.

With this context, we return to Ange in her teen years.

Lonely and consumed by grief she is only able to find solace in imagining Maria with her, imagining Maria having forgiven her for saying Sakutarou wasn't real.

As she accepts the role of apprentice witch she is allowed to perceive Maria and her menagerie of imaginary friends.

Though there's a certain amount of strain and physical discomfort in maintaining the thought process of so many at once. Maria is able to do it remarkably easy but Ange has to struggle.

It's okay, Ange, dissociation headaches are an absolute bitch. They get better after a certain amount of stabilizing and communication work.

All the while she reads about Maria's home life.

To break the essay structure and be real for a moment. This segment hit me hard. I choked up crying and needed to take a break from the game for a while. The depiction of child neglect and abuse was too real and I feel it serves the fiction to depict it as such but it is a hard read. Please be kind to yourself as you read on.

Rosa Ushiromiya is the youngest of the Ushiromiya children, furthest from the inheritance and least respected of Kinzo's progeny. She likely suffered a large amount of abuse and neglect in her own childhood both physical from the eldest sibling, Kraus, emotional/psychological from her sister Eva and a combination of both from her other brother Rudolf.

Children raised in abusive households are more likely to develop personality disorders born from attachment trauma. A typical display of this is dichotomous thinking, praising and devaluing the same subject in waves based on stimulus. Within Borderline Personality Disorder, for instance, this is where the concept of Splitting and Black and White Thinking come from.

For Rosa, this manifests with her mood swings that have her violently scream and hit her daughter before lavishing her with apologies, affection and attention.

Every character in Umineko is burdened with a painful past. Each character feels the need to displace that pain outwards and project it onto other people. For instance Rosa displaces her pain onto Maria. Both of Ange's aunts displace theirs onto her. Kyrie displaces hers onto Battler.

Generational trauma is a heavy theme of this game.

Rosa makes her way as the head of a small fashion design label though she does not see a lot of success in her role. Early in adulthood she had a relationship that ended with her pregnant with Maria. Maria's father, upon learning of the pregnancy, left.

Rosa is young, lonely and feels that having a child makes it difficult for her to find love; in the time and culture of 1980s Japan being a single mother was seen as shameful. She finds that the best way she is able to date is to act like she does not have a daughter and take extended vacations across the country on weekends with her dates.

Leaving her daughter home alone.

Rosa has a number of hang-ups about the optics of leaving Maria in someone else's care, she is shown on multiple occasions in the story to fly into a rage when her ability to be a parent is put into question and she has massive cognitive dissonance in that she cannot bare to be seen as a bad mother and so she acts like a horrible mother to avoid looking bad.

I have seen a lot of debate on the logic here and first off, anyone who approaches this story with a view of "it does not make sense that a character acted this way" lacks the Love required to enjoy this story in full. The author enters a firm agreement with the audience to work within the confines of the fiction and not to disrespect the fiction by rejecting that which is offered. He will deceive us but never lie. In that we have to believe in the story.

But it's also a sign of those who have grown up with a proud optics obsessed parent and those who did not. Sad to say, I have experienced a few of the things which happen in this chapter and I have no doubt that Ryukishi07 saw some of it in his social worker career.

When Rosa leaves Maria alone at home, for days at a time, she orders her to never make anyone aware of her situation. More important than anything else never speak to the police about what goes on in this house.

That. I have lived that one.

What Ange reads and what Maria shows us in this episode is a weekend where Maria is home alone, her mother having forgotten a promise that was made to her and Maria is locked out of her house. She spends an entire evening searching for the lost key and eventually needs to seek a friendly store worker who recognizes her to get help.

This leads to police intervention, a social worker showing up at Rosa's house and...

I glossed over a lot. This is a dense book and this story takes up much of Episode 4. Suffice to say, Maria's friend Sakutarou was murdered in retaliation for Maria summoning attention of Rosa's bad parenting. Rosa abandoned her daughter for a full weekend after breaking a promise and when she was locked out and defenseless she asked for help and was violently punished for doing so.

Another function of the witch of origins is the ability to break the cycle of generational abuse. She does not take her pain and push it into someone else, she creates an imagined evil mother to hate and fear while continuing to love her 'real' mother. This way she never has to doubt the love she has for the mother who she has happy memories of and who custom crafted a lovely plush lion just for her.

Which leads to the discussion of trauma, memory and processing.

Ange, upon reading this story is crestfallen. She views Maria as a pitiable child, only to be confronted by MARIA who defends Rosa. Arguing that she legitimately forgot her promise, rather than deciding that her daughter was not worth the time or effort.

She claims constantly that Rosa is a good mother and that she is happy.

Maria, a being who can only view the world with love, despite being abused and hurt; chose to be happy and so through her magic it was so. She was happy.

There's a misconception I have seen and I will admit I held for myself upon reading Episode 4 that Maria was preaching to deceive ones own self in order to be happy. That it was enabling and accepting of her own abuse.

But this is actually one of the deepest things Umineko has to say about generational trauma...

Chapter 8 revisits the idea with a version of the gameboard where the Ange of 1986 is allowed to be on the island, something which was impossible because in truth she was not. Not even the witch of miracles could change that which is certain.

In this game, set by Ange's older brother BATTLER, the 6 year old Ange is treated to a fun halloween party with her aunt Eva run by her loving family. Throughout the entire story Grandfather Kinzo was made out to be the source of all evil and in this episode he is displayed as a kind and loving grandfather.

The entire reason I wanted to write this post and include it in my Media, Myself and I series (in lieu of discussing the overt plurality in the game, even) was due to a conversation Ange has with Battler about this deception.

Source: LP Archives - The full conversation can be found on this page for anyone who wants the full breakdown.

The entire story of Umineko is a struggle for those who experienced horrors to be able to come to terms with their memories and process them. This is true for Ange, it is true for Maria and it is true for the other members of the cast also.

Memory is malleable and uncertain and can and does become distorted due to understandings and contexts gained at a later stage, particularly when bias is in play.

For a graphic of how this works please look at this:

Source

The more a memory is reactivated the more it is eroded of its initial context and additional contexts bleed in. For Ange's circumstance she remembers her parents through the lens of knowing that her father was embroiled in legal troubles from his womanizing behavior. It is unlikely a 6 year old Ange remembers Rudolf in this light but her view of her father is painted through this lens and thus when she retrieves these memories the present context forces itself into the past.

This is just how the human mind works.

EMDR and other trauma treatments are focused on hijacking this system. When a traumatic memory plays out the amygdala processes the emotions and sense of danger which activates the nervous system. This process does not even require a conscious recollection; should a trauma memory be associated with a certain scent the nervous system will activate upon smelling it even if the survivor does not recall the event attached to the stimulus, the amygdala most certainly does.

I have spent too much of my life considering which of our memories had lavender scenting… though I have a conclusion I'll share shortly.

For EMDR the process involves retrieving the traumatic memory without allowing the client to reexperience it while ensuring they do so within the context of the present while highlighting safety and security. This allows the memory to be filtered through without the activating the nervous system. In some therapies this can be a process of re-parenting in which the emotional absence is provided either by the self or via a proxy. The idea is to allow the memory to break association with the trauma and be decontextualize until the memory no longer has negative associations.

Where I had assumed Maria's choice to be happy and think the best of her abuser was an act of enabling and self-deception, I now see was an attempt to stop dwelling on the negatives of the situation and allowing the past trauma to become a defining point within the present.

Maria cannot choose what happened to her. She can choose how she intends to live with what happened with her. She cannot know for certain what Rosa's motivation was in her actions. In fact as we go through the game the audience comes to be given some sympathetic information which though can never redeem Rosa's terrible parenting, can allow one inclined to feel sympathy for her. Like everyone else in the game, she's a victim too. Quite literally in 1986.

There's no way of knowing if she maliciously lied to her child and went off on vacation abandoning her or if she legitimately forgot her promise. No one is arguing that what Rosa did was forgivable. But it helps Maria continue living a happy existence knowing that she was loved and that the good memories she has of her mother are true, even if the bad ones are also true.

Maria, filled with love as she is, elected to see The Good Mommy and The Bad Mommy. Is this right or wrong? It's unimportant. What matters is if Maria can be happy.

Sakutarou was a stuffed lion said to be handcrafted by Rosa. Given as a gift and beloved above all things for Maria. When Rosa destroyed the Sakutarou doll the lion cub boy died and could not be resurrected by Beatrice because it was a unique item created by Rosa.

In Chapter 4's conclusion, Ange does the impossible and resurrects Sakutarou. She does this because Sakutarou was never a custom made doll crafed with love. He was a mass produced toy sold in travel gift stores that Rosa happened to pick up on her way home. She lied. Ange never tells Maria this. The miracle of Sakutarou's rebirth is enough. Knowing that the beloved handmade toy was not hand-crafted would not make Maria's life any better. Sometimes believing in magic is the best thing for someone living in a world painted by despair.

Funny that Ange understood that much for Maria and yet still sought after the One Truth up until the very end.

The finale of the game comes down to presenting this option to the player and by proxy Ange herself.

In a world where you cannot change the past and you cannot fully accept what happened, is it better to continue digging up the past and re-experiencing the trauma in hopes that there lays a truth that will make it all finally make sense or to try to make peace with the past and find moments of peace to hold onto. Holding to hate and pain only serves to bring the pain of the past into the present.

Ange, the witch of resurrection, has the ability to keep her family with her long after their death. Should she be haunted by the family that she was deprived or be happy for the limited memories she had and not be tethered to a world of the past she could never have possibly been part of.

Healing in Umineko is accepting love and making peace with loss. It is learning to live unburdened by tragedy and do the best with what was done to us.

If we cannot let go then we'll continue living in the world of the past turning over the events over and over trying to make sense of it and even if we are somehow granted the magical context, the one and only shining truth... it will only serve to make things worse. You can keep the past alive without letting the past control your future.

And Umineko does a remarkably good job of showing that.

Gosh... that took far longer than I'd hoped. Umineko is a difficult piece of fiction to type about because so much of it is subjective and hard to present to a broad audience without providing ample context.

I'd hoped to talk about Yasu's DID but I suppose that shall have to await another update. My original draft for this discussion was to discuss the different forms of dissociative amnesia with Ange's story serving as an example of how recontextualizing memory works. I may yet go back and do a full amnesia based ramble in the coming months. I just needed to get at least one aspect of Umineko drafted as it's been living rent free in my brain since December.

If you enjoyed this breakdown and found it interesting, please check out some of my other Media, Myself and I essays.

Derealization in Night in the Woods and Metal gear Solid 2 - Describing the sensation of derealization where the brain stops connecting associations between the self and the things one perceives in their surroundings. One example displaying how this impacts a person living with DPDR and the other showing an example of a game attempting to make a player share the experience with the player character.

DID and the healing process in Mr. Robot - A run down of the experiences of discovery, exploration, rejection and healing within DID as displayed in each season of Mr. Robot, along with a disappointed rundown of why the final episode fumbled the ball.

Bruce Banner and the roles of his alters - A breakdown of the formation of The Incredible Hulk's DID and what roles his many alters play.

Romantic relationships with systems - A look at the marriage between Bruce Banner and Betty Talbot-Ross Banner in Hulk comics and a frank discussion between Betty and one of Bruce's alters about how relationships function in a system.

Personality Play in Penlight - A review of one of the routes for a hypnokink visual novel called Penlight in which the protagonist hypnotizes a woman to have an alter personality, along with some descriptions of how dangerous play like that works in real life and what the consequences could be.

#umineko #ange ushiromiya #umineko spoilers #this is a good overview for people wjo haven't read in a while and need to refresh on ange/maria too #also a high level overview of CPTSD and DID for Ange and Maria #two birds one traumatized little stone

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batbeato · 8 days

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Phenomenon not unique to Umineko but starkly showcased because of it: the difficulty with separating discomfort of a character from analysis, and from judgement of others.

There are so many characters in Umineko that make people uncomfortable - Rosa is one of the first that comes to mind, but Kinzo does as well. They are such well-written, human characters - and also terrible abusers. They are uncomfortable to watch, they are uncomfortable to analyze, because it feels uncomfortable to remember and acknowledge that, yes, the abusers are human too even though they are terrible.

And there are people who will love characters like Rosa because of how well-written she is, just as there are people who will dislike or even hate her because she is uncomfortable, she is abusive. Some people will then go on, as they hate Rosa, to also hate people who enjoy her character, equating their enjoyment of her character to condoning or ignoring her actions.

I've also seen the opposite, wherein people who love a character will be upset that there are people who heavily dislike or hate a character who, while well-written, is abusive and uncomfortable. They may even equate this dislike to a lack of understanding of Umineko (a common way people are attacked for their opinions, and one I'm trying to move away from using).

People should respect that people may enjoy a character they do not, and that does not always reflect on their views regarding real-life treatment of others. They should also respect that people may not enjoy a character they do, and that does not reflect on their understanding of the text. Again, not a problem unique to Umineko fans, but I've noticed it amongst us.

#umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #for once its not spoilers #fandom musings #not sure this is as solid as i wanted it to be but #i've seen both of these reactions to people enjoying or disliking certain chars and its sad #if rosa reminds someone of their own abuse i think its fair if they dont like her #or the opposite as well #you dont need to love a character to understand them #without love it cannot be seen but if you have love the whole world #is different and the ocean is blue. does kanon love the ocean? no #but he loves jessica and it means the world has color and nuance he didn't see before #if you love the text or the author you can see even if you hate Rosa

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batbeato · 9 days

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in the Post-1986 series, I'm assuming that the cousins got curious and tried to work out the epitaph again and ended up stumbling upon their parents and the gold room before things happened to go all...murdery. What are your thoughts if they stumbled upon the room at any point from Natsuhi getting shot, to Kyrie shooting Sayo in the shoulder?

It's been a while since I touched that one... I think my intention with it was that Sayo couldn't go through with it and ended up confessing everything. But my memory is often spotty with these things...

Honestly I think the cousins would completely lose their shit. George would probably start throwing hands with Kyrie if he saw her about to shoot Sayo, Jessica would be having a breakdown over her mom getting shot (or be tussling with Eva over pointing a gun anywhere near her mom), Battler would be attempting to calm everyone down in the worst way possible... Maria would probably just start laughing hysterically and spouting witch narrative stuff, or else be perfectly silent and awed. The cousins are all really emotional and don't want people getting shot or murdered, whereas the adults... Don't care quite as much.

The cousins coming in means that Kyrie wouldn't have enough bullets, I think. Whole plan needs to be scrapped. If it was just Jessica (and Maria) she could manage it but Battler and George too? No. If Natsuhi died I can imagine a lot of fights ensuing about what to do with Eva, and whether it was really an accident. Either way the cousins are just horrified that their parents were so eager to kill each other. It might even take precedence over the whole Sayo situation (which would also take a while for all of them to process).

#umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #umineko spoilers #anon ask

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batbeato · 9 days

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Do you know how many times George's age was mentioned in Umineko? As far as remember, it was only mentioned once in legend, at the airport.

I think I saw somewhere that someone theorized the age difference between George and Shannon was so drastic because Ryukishi 07 forgot what age he actually was, at times, since it never really comes up - and since he doesn't hesitate touching on matters such as rape and incest, if he had remembered the fact it probably would have been factored in on top of the servant/master imbalance, and George's own strides for personal growth.

Yeah, Battler mentions that George is turning 23 that year (or, well, has turned 23) in the airport, and besides that, I don't think it really comes up. The focus is way more on how the romance is forbidden for class reasons than anything about age.

...Considering how much (little) Ryukishi pays attention to some foibles, I can imagine he made George older than Battler to show how he was between being one of the 'kids' and one of the 'adults' and so on, and also more mature than Battler. And then... promptly forgot about the part where, to George and 99% of Rokkenjima, George/Shannon would look like a 23 year old and a 16 year old.

George even says "A human's life is not as monotonous or short as we thought when we were kids" - as though Shannon isn't 16 (in his eyes) and meant to be in school still, not getting married. I really do honestly get the impression that Ryukishi intended for Shannon to seem/be a bit younger than George, maybe a bit naive - but not... quite as much as it can come off given the on-paper ages. The big age gap is never really shown as a weird and terrible part of their relationship or even gets any focus. At all. Considering that it seems like George is meant to come off as somewhat condescending, abusing their servant-master dynamic a bit, but is ultimately in love with Shannon and wants to improve for her... the age thing sort of goes against that. A lot.

I feel like Ryukishi also forgot, for EP7, how it would look for George and Battler to be screwing around talking about Shannon's boobs when George could have been 17 to Shannon's 10. Also, a 12 year old and a 17 year old... on the same level. Oh, and a 17 year old being jealous of a 12 year old. How the whole thing is written and how the ages would make it come off are completely different.

The thing is that just making George 20 would improve this entire mess by a lot. 20 and 23 are pretty different. 20 is, like... old enough to drink, still a bit older than Battler, but also still in college. Still baking into adulthood. Literally fudging one number would tone this whole thing down by a lot and make it seem way less of an incredibly fucked up age gap. Still fucked up. But... less.

#umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #umineko spoilers #anon ask #seriously if ryukishi can forget erika's entire character arc #he can forget how old george is actually meant to be #it makes sense of a lot tbh

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batbeato · 10 days

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Hii i just finished umineko (manga only, unfortunately for rn) and now peering into the fandom for more composed thoughts than i can make and question: maybe im missing smth bc i'm manga only but is there a reason everyone hates george so much? Like of the characters why does he get the worst faith reads, esp in a work where it practically bashes you on the head with "without love it cannot be seen" and showing all the best and worst of these characters without judgement

Welcome to the "I finished umineko" club!!! Enjoy your stay. The manga is good, I always recommend and prefer the VN but it's also a great way to experience the story.

A big part of it is that George and Sayo's relationship has a lot of issues - the age gap (George is in his early 20s while Sayo is, on paper, 16), the power dynamic (servant and master/rich boy), and how George has a lot of misogynistic and classist attitudes (leading many to compare him to an incel, especially for how his desire for Shannon started because he was jealous that she spent more time with Battler). So a lot of people sort of boil George down to a (child) predator, a groomer, an incel, a pedophile, etc.

The other part of it is that George isn't super attractive - or at least, most people in the fandom don't perceive him to be. A lot of times, if a character is perceived as attractive, it motivates people to look deeper into their writing... and, admittedly, sometimes to ignore flaws in their character and/or writing... Either way, if a character is perceived as attractive they get more positive analysis/attention. George often isn't, so he gets less.

Personally I feel like George is a complex character who sucks in a lot of ways, but he's also interesting. I think it's heartwarming that he does want to improve and be better and work through all of the stuff ingrained in him from his upbringing. But he can also be a really uncomfortable character to take a look at, or even just to watch sometimes.

#umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #umineko spoilers #anon ask #george ushiromiya

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batbeato · 11 days

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Commission informations!

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batbeato · 11 days

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Have you ever listened to Rafscrap’s English cover of Jekyll & Hyde?

In equal measures, at some points within the song it reminds me of Sayo, and also of Black Battler and Tohya (especially with the dissociative identity fic you wrote). And also the Fem! Black Battler fic.

Just- a lot of Black Battler and Sayo feels.

Never to this cover in particular, but the song? Yes. I love it~

I think it's very Sayocore, and a bit Black Battler. I'm very picky with him, my Black Battler playlist is like... only 24 songs. A lot of the songs I pick out for him are like... hmm. SOMETHING WICKED by STARSET, killer by fortune, and Outer Science by Jin are the first three songs. Also A Tale of Six Trillion Years and a Night is on there. ...Thanks past me. Took me a second to understand that one.

#umineko spoilers #thinking i might only tag that for less involved posts #though people put liveblogs in the main umineko tag? so maybe it's fine? hm #much to consider

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batbeato · 11 days

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Tohya and Black Battler fic made me scream. In a very good way. Mind blown, 10/10. Black Battler is horrible, and somehow I love him and the way you write his character. Tohya is suffering and the progression and how he reacts/his initial lack of reaction to Black Battler is so good, it makes so much sense -

Now I’m going to go reread it and scream into my pillow some more.

Thank you~ I think a lot about Black Battler and his relationship with Tohya, but I don't properly play with it often. Black Battler is just fun, honestly. I like unhinged characters for that reason - they have internal struggles that aren't really visible, but are fun to heavily imply, and they make these really grand, dramatic moves. And then Tohya is just... chronically stressed out trying to cope with everything and is abruptly forced to go from willful ignorance to... a lot more.

#umineko spoilers #Tohya is just. he is very much in need of therapy #so is black battler tbh #they aren't getting it but they can maladaptively cope together

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batbeato · 12 days

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good evening everyone. time for black battler/tohya AKA (hot) 'evil' alter summer - for legal reasons this is a joke

#umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #umineko spoilers #nsft #minors dni #smut #tohya hachijo #fanfic

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batbeato · 12 days

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I have a lot of headcanons/theories/thoughts about Black Battler but I... usually put a lot of them into my fics and don't really talk about them. Maybe a bit too much "show, don't tell". So here we go.

First thing is: who created Black Battler? Since he was meant to be in Land, he was originally created by Sayo (which is sort of supported by how Beatrice mentions Black Battler being her "piece" and asking him to entertain her in a Golden Fantasia story). But, in forgery no. XX, Black Battler isn't being written by Sayo - he's being written by some unknown forgery author, and it's implied that there are a lot of authors/witches who write him.

There's also Tohya to consider - Black Battler explicitly addresses Tohya in forgery no. XX, and Tohya also seems to worry about Black Battler - or at least, about the possibility that Battler was the culprit. Since Black Battler is an "Ushiromiya Battler who can be the culprit", there's a connection there from Tohya's end too.

In forgery no. XX, Ryukishi invokes the idea of the eternal catbox of Rokkenjima as a cyclical nightmare, where Black Battler lives and continues to act out bloody forgeries ("After all, the eternal catbox truly was in his hands. After all, the recurring nightmare was how he imagined it."). He talks about how Black Battler is given his power by the witches/spectators who want to see a culprit Battler ("Who even called someone like you here?" / "It was the unstoppably huge number of spectators who expect to see me as the culprit, and those nameless conductors who bestow that dream upon me", and "With every forgery that is written, ...and with each story that is spun around Ushiromiya Battler being the culprit, ...the entity called 'me' is growing in power"). We also have other lines in forgery no. xx, like "I will repeat this mad night for eternity... just the way you like it" followed by "Let's fall together to the bottom of that eternal darkness, while we tightly embrace one another" which seem to be directed at Sayo (framing this repetition as a 'romantic' and twisted act) and affirm the idea of Black Battler existing in a catbox of eternal suffering, just as Battler and Beatrice exist in a catbox of eternal happiness. And, just as Black Battler's existence is supported by more and more authors/witches writing about him, Battler and Beatrice's existences and happiness are supported by no one touching their sacred and final tale - a small golden catbox at the bottom of the sea, meant to rest undisturbed for all eternity. In this way, Black Battler is made out to be a lovely foil for Battler, one that I would have loved to see more of in Umineko.

Black Battler expresses concern about whether or not he is 'properly written' (an interesting idea to explore - if you are aware that you are a character, and you have many authors, how do you know if you're really you?), but in the context of "can I commit and take pleasure in violence and murder?". He defines himself by his violence, rather than any other trait, and seems to take enjoyment and pride in it, and its capacity to entertain the witches of the future. However, he also asks people to try and stop him, as he does in forgery no. XX with Tohya, and in his Ougon story with Kanon.

For me, that request - "please stop me" - is reminiscent of Sayo and also implies, to me, that he, in some part, is uncomfortable with his role. If he stopped performing his role, he would stop existing - he is only a separate entity from Battler and has an identity at all as an "Ushiromiya Battler who can be the culprit". He doesn't have a choice as to whether or not he wants to perform his role - and though he does seem to enjoy his role of enacting endless violence for entertainment, he may have more complex feelings about it than he visibly lets on.

My personal interpretation of Black Battler is someone who revels in his violence, whether it's physical or sexual, but also has a capacity for gentleness and kindness that he doesn't often exercise. It may come out veiled with that violence, or "behind the curtains" when he is not in a forgery setting, but never directly and 'publicly'.

I also see him as having a history with Sayo, imagining that they created him to cope with their feelings for Battler and to be an accomplice for them, to bear the burden of the murder. Since the Battler they knew would have been pained by committing such crimes, no matter the reason, Black Battler was made to enjoy them. His cruelty towards Sayo (towards Shannon in Ougon, and Kanon in forgery no. XX) is because Sayo doesn't feel comfortable with creating a self-indulgent kind, loving Battler, or accepting that love. It's easier if Black Battler is abusive and shows his affection in that sort of twisted, toxic way (...not very healthy, Sayo). However, since Land was lost, Black Battler was 'abandoned' by meta-Beatrice, and only has the Sayo who exists alongside him in the catbox/forgeries. While the 'real' Battler is in the Golden Land, Black Battler can never be invited there and has been forgotten about, building resentment.

I also have an AU where Tohya is a system and Black Battler is an alter, to focus more on the idea of Black Battler as Tohya's survivor's guilt and fears of Ushiromiya Battler/identity loss. It's fun to play with Black Battler in different contexts.

If Umineko ever starts receiving more new writing from Ryukishi, I hope Black Battler gets to have a role in it.

#umineko no naku koro ni #umineko #umineko spoilers #he's like my little pet #>says this about wild snarling animal that would tear my arm off #i love bbattler regardless

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batbeato · 12 days

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I was pondering on what I know of Rudolf's character and what that would mean in a world where was born as a girl.

This is me rambling so it might get long, sorry.

Starting with their parents, we know for a fact that Kinzo was extremely abusive, both physically and verbally, with his kids. He'd beat them with wooden swords and fists and I'm honestly surprised none of them got physical scars from it at some point.

He was neglectful on an emotional level, too. Considering his wife would have generally run the household while he ran the business aspect of things, it would be more on her to see to their meals and allowances and all that, after all that was the duty of a woman to him. Kinzo never cared how hard they worked, or how they tried to get his attention (even by putting down one another). There's a lack of everything from him.

We know literally nothing about his wife (I gave her the name Mizuki). I think the only really in-depth mention we get is when Rosa mentions she was scolded for poor grades and ran off into the forest afterwards and that she hated the thought of Kinzo having a mistress, and would turn the known areas of the island/home upside down. Not her age, not how she was raised (other than aristocratic? Not noble though, I don't think), nothing at all.

I can see her being verbally abusive and sharp with them, very strict with her expectations, at least in response to Kinzo's neglect of her (even if he publicly seemed at least a little sad at her funeral, that doesn't mean that if she tried to approach him or question him on an affair, he wouldn't push her away or something like that, and Kinzo was very strong at least in his youth -). Perhaps raising proper children will make him gain interest? After all, they would need their father -

Also possibly abuse from the elders, telling her to hurry up and sire children so the family can grow more, recover faster (the whole 'borrowed womb' mentality had to have been part of the family before Kinzo if he was raised with that belief).

Considering the children don't miss her, she could have been abusive in her own turns, neglectful and/or absent when Kinzo struck and chewed them out. Considering none of the siblings have anywhere near balanced or healthy expectations of gender roles - she was probably raised or forced to fall in line with the extremely toxic femininity/masculinity expectations (not to mention education for young ladies in japan at the time was only to prepare them for marriage and raising children - or to become teachers before they married and had children, I went on a reading binge about it).

How this factors into Rudolf, I think - it's clear most heavily in his infidelity?

He's a charismatic flirt who charms girls into his bed and pampers them in pursuit of affection - if not on an emotional level, than at least a physical level, because it was mostly - if not entirely - absent in his youth, at least on a surface level. It's a loop, an emotionless one, because Rudolf doesn't go into relationships with the thought of reciprocating that affection - merely gaining it for himself. Because he doesn't have that, and as much as he knows how to bestow material items upon others, how to say things to make them fall for him - Rudolf himself never got those things, there's no feeling on his end behind those words.

Similarly with the lack of respect Kinzo showed his mother, Rudolf...doesn't respect the women who fall for him or his pocket. I kind of see him as a bit cynical in regards to relationships, considering the fact that his mother was always trying to get Kinzo's attention and figure out who his lover was - spent more time doing that than actually caring about her kids (at least from the kid's point of view?)

Maybe bitterness born from that made him find entertainment in intentionally making others fight over his attention. An unconscious sort of retaliation? Maybe because it leads to more attention, acknowledgement that he is wanted at least on the basest level? Again, just me rambling here, lol.

There's also his married life, and his role as a father. At least, how he raised Battler. I don't think we see much of Ange's childhood with him.

He wasn't physically abusive towards Battler, avoiding replicating his father in that way. He didn't completely neglect him either, because we know at least after Ange was born they went to amusement parks - and before that, watched movies which, in part, is where Battler's fear of vehicles comes from.

But I've always gotten the feeling that Rudolf could be neglectful, a bit of a bully at times? Especially since Battler was his first kid. His parents, at least Kinzo, didn't really raise him. What did he know about showing affection, whereas before he only tormented those younger than him as a release from the stress and abuse he himself was under (Rosa)? In battler's case, a lot of the childrearing

Rudolf loves his kids. He might not have cared enough not to shoot Battler on Rokkenjima during the massacre (unless he planned to try and threaten his son into compliance?), but we know he loves them. After killing George, he expresses regret at making Battler come back. We see him walking with Ange, and I think shock/upset at Kyrie being so willing to kill Battler? I haven't checked that part of the manga.

I can see him making the snide comments (example: Battler being a blockhead, a brat, hating the fact they share the same nose), and softening them from the actual taunts used against his siblings. Roughhousing, but softening actions so they don't actually hurt. Because that's how he knows how to act.

I also see Rudolf as being more of a material person, when it comes to his kids (or, again, Battler). Because that's how he got affection in the past, and probably, material gifts were the only sign of affection from his parents (or mother? Did Kinzo celebrate his kids birthday? I kind of just picturing him getting drunk in a room/his study, honestly). Also, bribes got him out of trouble when he was in hotspots before, so maybe it would work now? That means hefty allowances, or books or something. Whatever they want.

(Though that's also probably his guilt on swapping a live and dead baby, lying about it for years (never tells the truth while alive), and then Asumu dying while Kyrie is pregnant with another of his children, and unknowing of said son who then leaves -)

As to how that all ties into Rudolf as a women...

Rudolf would be a femme fatale. Lies and tricks, deceptively slothful as much as they were scheming, but makes no pretty promises to her flings (Did I say that, or did you think I said that type of situation. Can be real cruel). I have moodboards and feelings about this.

Rudolf, as a woman, would probably be zeroed in on by their mother (all of the girls would be, really). I can see Mizuki being a bit like Natsuhi, except possibly a bit worse in her tactics (especially since it is wartime). Very strict in regards to a person's weight (from what I understand, that's a very big thing regardless of sex in Japan), the understanding of domestic sciences and etiquette, music, needlepoint and tea and child-rearing.

Which could raise hell for a person's self-esteem, especially if unlike Natsuhi, there was nothing said about this being done for their child's sake, no indication that love was present (and even if they didn't get along, Natsuhi showed that she loved Jessica). Struggling with weight, with their face.

Not mentioning that even with all her proper know how, Mizuki still couldn't be a good wife to Kinzo, if the man's behavior towards her in favor of a faceless lover was anything to go by (Rudolf's pov). Which would again, make Rudolf cynical in regards to being an obedient wife, or having a husband (and later perpetuate the behavior later. Can't get betrayed if you do it first, after all).

Considering the family probably had money prior to Kinzo's post-45 gold schemes (just not a lot?), I don't see them having much jewelry or anything - good, quality western clothes maybe, but not much else. I personally think Rudolf was born around 1941/1940, so he would have been young too - too young to flirt, possibly not even in school, yet.

Afterwards, though...by 1952, they'd be about eleven or twelve. Around the age kids start getting crushes and things, and this is after the educational system was reformed by the U.S and was co-educational. Higher learning for girls... Around the age of puberty, where their mother's nitpicking about education and being a proper young lady would get worse...

They'd be tormented by the elder two siblings, and probably start lashing out towards the younger (Rosa) as she got older, since Rosa would have been born some point in the early 50's I think. I think her age is generally estimated to be in the 30's by 1986, and I stick with that idea.

To blow off steam about the abuse from Kinzo and the older pair, Rudolf hurts Rosa. To fill the lack of affection they have, they flirt with the staff on Rokkenjima - with their classmates. When they get old enough to wear jewelry (sixteen/seventeen, maybe), that might be what they spend their allowance on?

(I alternatively see the kids with no allowance, or with Kinzo giving them - at least the boys? - allowances just so they leave him alone. It's all a drop in the bucket with the gold as his backup, after all). Or alternatively, Genji tries to urge Kinzo to buy the children gifts and in Rudolf's case, they get fine clothing and jewellry and tea sets and needlepoint things via Mizuki's supervision because they're ladylike things.

Essentially, material things and physical action (flirting, flings) make up for love and affection. Wolves are sometimes seen as sly and cunning creatures that hunt ruthlessly to survive, and at some point, i can see Rudolf adopting that mentality? Considering this is the Ushiromiya family. (This honestly just stems from the line that he wanted to pet the wolves in the woods, before Kinzo started warning them off about the witch instead).

Do not give love to a person, because they'll betray you. Take what you need, and want, but be clever about it. Don't be an exactly 'perfect' lady because that gets you nowhere.

So, Rudolf also takes an extremely rough, lackadaisical attitude towards needlpoint and other feminine things - though they are good at those things, Mizuki would accept nothing less - but not so much that it's publicly appalling. It becomes something charming, intriguing. Similarly to the way Rudolf in canon is charming in his own, crass way? I don't know if I'm wording this well. Similarly to the way a femme fatal is casual about the seductive 'nature' of their beauty and utilizes it as a weapon, Rudolf is also refreshing unladylike while remaining ladylike.

This mentality probably gets them in trouble, especially if they get caught flirting? Confined to their room, or no dinner, or a beating from Kinzo. Which then only reinforces said behavior, and has them become sneakier about it (and arguably less likely to be disowned, or stigmatized because cheating comes with fines in japan, not to mention the blow to reputation...).

Rudolf is similar to Eva in that they want/are capable of being independent, though Rudolf is probably not interested in the heir-ship, would probably fight tooth and nail for that right to education otherwise deemed unnecessary - but only because being a good wife and wise mother led to a dead end lifetime, in their eyes. Besides that, in america and England, plenty of women were wealthy in their own right, inherited or earned - or the true reason behind their husband's wealth. Why not Rudolf, as well?

(I wish we had more details on Eva going to university/college, getting Kinzo to let her. I'm pretty sure it's canon that she did and was married to Hideyoshi by Kinzo after that, but I'm not sure? Did Kinzo give an ultimatum of sorts? What are the details???)

Considering Rudolf's attachment to luxury items, I've kind of being considering that they'd approach studying either cosmetology or gemology (makeup or jeweling). Something to do with business, at least. If Rudolf began sleeping around at this point, they'd probably be fiercely defensive of their body - very cautious, whereas Rudolf in canon really...wasn't.

If they got pregnant, they'd definitely either be disowned or forced into a marriage that Kinzo found 'suitable'. Put into a dead-end. A pregnancy would inhibit any schooling, any chance at a future other than just being someone's little wife to be left behind...

(Considering their own upbringing, and again their attitude being a 'proper' lady who would also be a good mother by their mother's standards, Rudolf also had doubts they'd even make a good mother. Whatever it was, the concept would elude them as it had clearly eluded Mizuki).

...I guess in this au Asumu and Kyrie would be guys, which I can't say I haven't thought of before but.... it is kind of...grim, especially in Kyrie's case considering her family is Very Heavily Implied to either be yakuza or have some very strong ties to it. I can picture Rudolf having parties which are really just thin facades for backroom gamblings or getting a fling, or going to a bar or something that's an underground casino and infringing on some at the least semi-legal Sumadera territory.

Rudolf is a sneaky, charming flirt, so while there are rumors that they 'get around', the money she 'has' (by means of their name and the various parties thrown, at least in the early years), their reputation is...good.

Kyrie is intrigued. And also probably holds back less, compared to canon Kyrie because gender roles. Still terrifyingly (seemingly) composed and discreet though, because that's probably been burned into her brain since birth.

There's a one night fling that probably low-key started with Kyrie intending/threatening to possibly 'deal' with an upcoming rival (considering she mentioned having practice bashing women's faces in canon, yeaaaaah, probably has blood on her hands a while before Rokkenjima Incident occurs), which later eventually ends up with them becoming the hidden terrors of gambling in the area (Rudolf probably uses some money in investing, which means somewhat of an income?). The connection, on paper, is all legal, perfectly fine, they're colleagues at a bar or something -

(which...possibly means that Rudolf ends up staining their hands earlier in time, less shady and closer to outright criminal, or possibly would have unless there was an intervention via Asumu? Again, femme fatale).

Asumu would be a fellow classmate or a regular at the bar or something then, maybe. Or both. Either way, I keep thinking that Asumu and Kyrie would end up roomates somehow. (half-murderous enemies to lovers type deal, they are unapologetically an ot3 for me ever since I read a few of ncfan's fics on ao3. There was one where the two of them, while pregnant, planned to confront Rudolf).

(Which would probably make Asumu tangentially aware of shady yakuza things, and probably threatened if he ever let anything slip....? Maybe being roomates wouldn't actually be feasible, but the thought never leaves me sooo...oops.)

Considering Kinzo never let his (legitimate) kids touch his guns, I'm running off the assumption that this is around the age Rudolf learns to shoot.

Which...doesn't bode well, because now I'm thinking that the on night fling with Rudolf starts with the threatening turning to negotiation and Kyrie wondering what sort of connection Rudolf could bring that would let them off free and the offer of helping with the casino, which comes with an initiation of sorts, because all sorts of shady/illegal trades happen there - ooooh.

Considering Rudolf would possibly be more aware of Kyrie's lethality here, that would make the ongoing affair with Asumu more dangerous because Kyrie...has a growing love/infatuation/obsession and they are/were roomates.

Also, considering Kyrie might be in a similar (but far darker) place as Kinzo, being puppeted by his elders as heir/head, creating a co-owned business (chain or bars with hidden casinos, or something else entirely, or multiple chains of businesses in separate areas??) with Rudolf would give him more breathing room, a bit? Because it's separated from the family's semi-underground dealings.

Rudolf remains unattached and pretty successful, Kyrie gets breathing room, and Asumu...probably has the short end of the stick here, a little bit? Unless he's working with them too? On the less shady, more legal side of things?

(Given that the businesses would be shut down in police found out about the casino and couldn't be bribed, maybe the lawsuit was a matter of premises liability or something, thinking about it...)

Kinzo keeps somewhat quiet on the matter of marriage, though Mizuki is displeased. Then the Battler situation happens. Rudolf, against careful caution, is pregnant.

Which is bad.

They'd be expected to stop working, at least for a time. The social stigma of being a single mother, regardless of money speaking for itself, would certainly drag her reputation down - not to mention, she couldn't function as an effective honeypot at the casino's, luring gamblers to their downfall. No upper society parties to form connections by, either...any talk of business would be directed toward the child - and who the father is. (also, again, parenting).

And Rudolf might not even know, though considering Kyrie's attachment to them, I can't see them actually having a fling with anyone but Asumu around this point (especially if they were men from the bars. Probably suffer a series of intensifying unfortunate to outright deadly events if they even tried-and again, the slight attraction to Asumu probably is what keeps Kyrie from killing him right away, even if between Rudolf and Asumu, Kyrie would probably still kill Asumu first-)

So it's either of theirs. Rudolf knows for a fact that if he knew about it, even without knowing the baby's biological father, Kinzo would likely force them into taking Kyrie's hand. Asumu arguably had no wealth, no valuable connection that would further spread Ushiromiya influence - but Kyrie did.

Ruthless Kyrie, that pushed and formulated plans and was always intense and logical and shrewd and sharp and cold even when smiling warmly. Who had a family built on bones of cruelty and had blood that didn't belong to them coating their hands.

Asumu would be left behind, possibly pushed out forever. Asumu, who was gentler than Kyrie and always smiling, wondering over others well-being and just as sharp as Kyrie, except kinder - even if he had a ridiculous fear of vehicles and a somewhat scary temper that did not blow over quickly, even when he hid it. Poorer in material wealth than either Kyrie or Rudolf, but no less capable or intelligent for it.

Both men they had, at some point, come to care for. Maybe even love. And one of them was the father of the child Rudolf carried, one would be chosen - and the other...

If Rudolf married Kyrie, who knew what would happen to Asumu. Perhaps sooner or later he'd change jobs, or return home to help his aging parents with their own small shop.....Rudolf might not see him again. He might not want to see them, knowing they'd continued to sleep with Kyrie after they began dating...

There was also the matter of leaving the Ushiromiya register. Rudolf didn't care for their parents, not by this point (at least not much) - but they had no interest in becoming a Sumadera heiress, if it meant being a puppet on strings as Kyrie had been, putting them both back under that total influence. At least as an Ushiromiya, they were untethered by any strings except the one's wrapped around Kinzo's fingers.

The child in their stomach, too late to be aborted, would be raised as...someone terrifyingly ruthless, almost (read: seemingly) detached from emotion, as Kyrie was. Another puppet, just a tool....like Rudolf would have merely been a tool to spread their own family's influence, instead of forging it themselves.

Which was where Asumu's lack of connections would be...a blessing. As co-owner and business partner, Kyrie wouldn't leave Rudolf. He'd stay at their side, and somewhat free from his own family. Asumu would stay as well. Rudolf knew Asumu loved his parents, that their financial situation could be better. If they married, she would be able to help them, in that case... no strings attached...

Arguably, Asumu would likely be the better parent between either Rudolf or Kyrie as well.

I know that a man of lower socio-economic standing would sometimes be adopted into his wife's family (you see it with Eva and Hideyoshi in canon), and in a fully genderbent verse at least regarding the family (in other words, George a girl, Jessica not born yet, and Eva probably not the heir for various reasons - one reason being Kinzo only has one heir in mind-), no son would have been born to the others yet. On the chance that Rudolf was carrying a son, that would definitely be grounds for an adoption into the family for Asumu...an increase in social standing....

It's a blitz wedding and adoption into the family. Rudolf chooses Asumu. There's a lot that happens here, because the semi-cordial relationship between Kyrie and Asumu begins to grow a bit sour and antagonist, Rudolf continues to sleep with Kyrie and Kyrie subtly attempts to upset Asumu with that news (and all three are aware the baby could be the other man's because Asumu isn't stupid, he knows)

Rudolf surprisingly catches baby fever, but not in the doting, oh that's so cute way. Not how they were raised.

Material things = affection. (and later, also guilt).

Purchasing spree of very high quality baby furniture and clothing, looking into high quality nannies to watch when they inevitably returned to work (and they would do so after the birth, plus, again, parenting).

Kyrie, also, sometimes rarely offers practical items to Rudolf that are actually meant for the baby - and even to Asumu himself. You know. Because. That could also be his child baking in the oven. (There's some very real passive-aggressiveness in the air, also can be read as killer intent ).

I already rambled a bit about the way I think Rudolf parents, in being somewhat (unintentionally) neglectful, very material in showing affection, verbally it comes out as jokes and teasing and occasional slight bullying. Actions and things, not actually a straight confession in words.

I've been writing this over the course of a few hours, so there's probably stuff I'm missing or haven't thought out yet or didn't explain in full, and it's all a bit wishy-washy because I'm still not exactly sure on Rudolf's character in canon itself anyway but I was wondering on what you thought. So i'll stop rambling here and actually send this ask in. Thank you for reading this very long-winded ramble, haha.

You've really thought a lot about Rudolf, huh? I really respect that - for me, I think Rudolf's interesting, but he's not a character that I'm personally interested in dissecting much. His relationships with Battler, Kyrie, Asumu, Ange, and his siblings are interesting, but I end up exploring him because of my interest in Battler/Asumu/Kyrie/Ange more than interest in Rudolf himself.

I think a genderbent Umineko would be interesting for a lot of reasons - I think one thing that sticks out is how the sibling dynamics would change. Krauss is the oldest sibling, but in this world Krauss wouldn't be the arrogant, Kinzo-imitating "bully" but instead someone more like Eva, who may feel denied a birthright (becoming Head) and takes that out on their younger siblings. Eva, being the second oldest (still resentful of Krauss for that) but also being a man, would have more support from Kinzo due to Kinzo's support of patriarchal gender norms, and may be labeled the "next Head" (and then how that interacts with George being a girl, when Eva would love having a daughter but also needs a son to claim power...) And then Rudolf abusing Rosa, their younger brother who still has more power in the family than Rudolf simply by merit of being born a man. Whole fucked up cycle just got more fucked, or at least fucked up in a different way.

The idea of Rudolf as a young woman dealing with their mother putting a lot of these gendered expectations on them, and not following them, is interesting. Also how Rudolf would interact with sex, due to the expectations for a woman's purity, the stigma about a woman "sleeping around", and the risk of pregnancy. It's easy for a man to have affair/bastard children and deal with them using money, or even to cheat on their girlfriend/wife - it's still seen as scummy by some, but is also more generally accepted so long as that man has wealth/power. But it's far more difficult for a woman to do so, and she would be perceived very differently.

I actually went and checked, and apparently paternity testing wasn't really available until 1988. Very convenient for this AU, since if it was available I can imagine the Sumaderas demanding it (and Rudolf would need to somehow fudge the results with bribery, I presume).

Also the idea of Asumu and Kyrie as young men competing for Rudolf's affections is cute. I know it's not really a shoujo, what with Kyrie's blood-soaked past and all, but... It would be a cute shoujo... Cheerful pretty boy Asumu and cold handsome boy Kyrie...

#umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #umineko spoilers #genderbend

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