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#part 1: the legend's prelude

the-lumiose-goodies · 3 months

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(@ask-sarah-and-co) poseidon @ joëlle

The inteleon smiles, politely greeting the meowstic. “You mentioned you were as tray, I believe? That is quite hard to believe with your current appearance. Might I ask how you became so… glamorous?”

While Joëlle is trying to say the story behind that, she suddenly stops talking. She starts to have tears in her eyes. Her paws and ears start to shake

WARNING: The following contains glitched image and some mentions of abuse.

She hear the woman screaming and angry male voice.

JOËLLEEEEEEEEE!

MAAAAAAAAAAAA!

She's trying to cleaning her head of that thought. However, her tears hasn't wiped out yet.

P-pardon... I-I refuse to talk about this yet...

Joëlle doesn't want to talk about it yet. Ask her about what bothers her first?

[ @ask-sarah-and-co ]

#answered #joëllemeowstic #poseidoninteleon #???meowstic #???houndoom #pokemon #pokeask #tw glitch #tw abuse #/ another character with trauma #/ that means shiny mons doesn't have a traumatic event in past..yet #part 1: the legend's prelude

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burstfoot · 15 days

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Hello! Here's an update on all of Arknights' currently accessible auxiliary material as of May 2024! There's plenty to check out, so I hope this is helpful for some!

Animation

Arknights Prelude To Dawn (S1) and Perish in Frost (S2): [Crunchyroll]

An adaptation of the main story, up through Chapter 0 to Chapter 6! It's much more fast-paced than the in-game story, so I wouldn't use it to replace actually reading it, but it's very cool to see some of these scenes in full animation. Season 3, Arknights: Rise from Ember, has been announced! Lee's Detective Agency: [Youtube]

A mini-series animated in a chibi style with a comedic tone. Focused on the adventures of the Kuroblood-illustrated Lee's Detective Agency! Distributed by Crunchyroll globally, but entirely free to watch.

Closure's Secret Files: [Youtube]

A cut-out styled series of shorts hosted by Closure which outlines a lot of the game's basic mechanics!

Holy Knight Light: [Youtube]

A short OVA focusing around Penguin Logistics delivering a package, celebrating Arknights' first anniversary. Officially posted to Youtube!

Kay's Daily Doodles: [Youtube]

Another free, comedic Youtube mini-series, posted to the offical Arknights Youtube account and focused around Ceobe! Here's some additional animations! Each event usually also has a 15 second 2D animated preview of the event, but there's so many of those that I can't list them all. Anniversary Event 3D Animations: Zwillingstürme im Herbst So Long, Adele Lone Trail Where Vernal Winds Will Never Blow Il Siracusano Ideal City Stultifera Navis Invitation To Wine Near Light Dossoles Holiday Under Tides Bonus 3D Animated Shorts: Legend of Chongyue Arknights Special - IL Siracusano Lo Scontro Youtube Shorts: Ch'en and Lin's Watermelon Splitting Game Part 1 Ch'en and Lin's Watermelon Splitting Game Part 2 Amiya's Siracusan Food Guide Part 1 Amiya's Siracusano Food Guide Part 2 Amiya's Special Gift Doctor's Gifts in Return 1 Doctor's Gifts in Return 2

Comics, Manga, Manhua

Officially Translated:

Rhodes Island's Records of Originium: Rhine Lab: [Offical Source]

A canon manhua centered around the circumstances that lead to Silence falling out with Saria and joining Rhodes Island with Ifrit, as well as Ifrit's attempt to save a dying infected stowaway on the landship. Essential reading for understanding the Rhine Lab storyline and characters - read it right after Mansfield for when it was chronologically released! One of the characters, Darya, is mentioned in both Ifrit's module and briefly in Lone Trail.

Rhodes Island's Records of Originium: Blacksteel: [Official Source]

A short story focusing on the lives of the Blacksteel operators aboard the landship. While it often gets overshadowed by the Rhine Lab manga which is bigger in scope, this is a great read especially if you're interested in Franka or Liskarm.

Rhodes Kitchen -TIDBITS-: [Official Source]

An anthology story related to the cuisine that's important to a variety of operators. While it might seem unassuming, the art is gorgeous and it's really well-written! The Blacksteel, Rhine Lab, and Rhodes Kitchen manga have all been sold in physical copies, if you're interested in having them in print!

Prelude Suite: Cadenza Virtuosa: [Official Source]

An epilogue to Hortus De Escapismo focusing on Arturia's background, with the second chapter serving as a prelude for Zwillingstrume im Herbst! An excellent read to get better insight into Arturia's character.

Angelina: Sketches of this Messenger's Journey: [Official Source]

A more comedically focused manwha, centered on the adventures of Angelina travelling across Terra as a Messenger! Currently updating, with recent chapters focusing on Sami and Siesta!

Unofficially Translated

The Dagger's Inheritors: [Youtube]

A 15-minute short 3D animated film about W's past and relationship with Theresa, released for the 5th Arknights anniversary. Arknights Comic Anthology: [Mangadex]

As the title says, a series of non-canon anthology stories regarding the cast of Rhodes' Island! Some of the chapters on Mangadex for the later volumes of the Comic Anthology specifically have been machine translated, but the same is not true for the other manga shared here. Chapters are hit-and-miss, but the whole series is generally a fun read! See the original post for specific chapter suggestions.

123 Rhodes Island: [Mangadex]

A series of non-canon gag comics for the CN server, usually updated when new operators or events release!

Arknights: Operators!: [Mangadex]

A compilation of shortform manga posted on the official ArknightsJP twitter account! Thank you to @sleepywoodscans for their work on personally translating these!

Arknights: A1 Operations Preparation Detachment: [Mangadex]

Part of the Terra Historicus website and not yet officially translated, focusing on Fang, Kroos and Beagle before they join Rhodes Island, and a catastrophe striking the Columbian city of Tkaronto. Thank you to @pooce-art for their translation work!

Other:

Arknights Ambience Synesthesia: [Youtube]

A series of concerts (4 so far), focused around Arknights' music! A live performance has been done every year, with skins released in-game for the concert's theme & 3D animations produced featuring the skin's cast in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Monster Siren Records: [Spotify] [Official Website]

Arknights' official (and-in-universe) record label publishing game OSTs, themes for almost every 6 star operator that releases, and occasional bonus songs.

Arknights: Endfield: [Twitter]

An upcoming 3D action gacha game from Hypergryph, set in the far future of Arknights' universe on another planet. Currently in closed beta testing for both EN and CN servers!

UNOFFICIAL:

Some fandom-developed tools that might be of use to you are: The Arknights Terra Wiki. While it is a very accurate source for in-game data, take the explanation of in-game story and some specific claims with a grain of salt. The FANDOM version of this wiki is currently no longer mantained and subject to vandalism! Given you can translate or read Chinese, PRTS.wiki is the current best resource for game assets!

As well, the Arknights Story Reader can help you catch up on stuff you don't want to or can't read in game! Jacob Moreau on Youtube provides voiceover readings of many in-game stories as well.

Finally, Aceship's Toolbox provides access to a variety of tools, including a levelling calculator, a calculator to ensure the best recruitments, and all the CGs, backgrounds and character sprites that are available in-game as of So Long, Adele (as far as I'm aware, the sprite/cg gallery is no longer being updated.)

Conclusion:

Thank you for reading! I hope this provided some new information to you or is an easy reference source in the future. Some things, such as merch (i.e. board games) or the official lore book have not been included due to not being accessible or translated for EN players. I'm happy to continue to provide more information like this to make the art surrounding this series more accessible! If you have any questions, feel free to send me an ask.

#arknights #i thought about just editing the original post but i felt like an update was in order! hope this is helpful to some people as the first one #was #:D #if there's anything i missed #let me know! and i'll edit it in #not as comprehensive but a little more concise than the previous version

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punkeropercyjackson · 3 months

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It's finally here!!!

Graphic design is my passion LMFAO but as i said i would do a while back,i've created a masterpost of all the Jason Todd content that's worth your time!This is rather long but he's existed since 1983 so!!

Base edit is my little sister @mayameanderings and tagging @coffeemilkcatz and @nanaonmars since they said yes when i asked if they wanted me to!Let's dive in then!

Batman 408-426,Detective comics 568-582,Superman annual 11,New Teen Titans 18-31,Blue Devil 19,Action comics 556 and 594,Batman Annuals 10-12 and Batman(The cult)for pre-reboot Robin!Jason my beloved

Nightwing Year One 101-106,New Teen Titans 55,Nightwing 10(1997)and Legends of the Dark Knight 100 for Dick and Jason siblinghood,Gotham Knights 34 for the short story of him and Alfred and Detective comics 790 for Bruce telling Cass about him as it takes place on Jason's birthday

Lost Days aka the Red Hood prologue

Under The Red Hood(2010)-The original comic is good in it's own right but the movie is leagues better written(Rare comic book adaption exception lmao)

Robin 177 and 182-183 for the actual Tim and Jason beef instead of 'replacement' and 'enemy to caretaker' bs

Azreal:Death's Dark Knight 3(Can't give commentary on this one since i don't know Azreal like that,sorry)

Red Hood and The Outlaws(2016).Unlike the Utrh comic vs the Utrh movie,the original Rhato has nothing positive like the reboot

Not TECHNICALLY Jason BUT Duke is his favorite brother and Stephanie's the only Batfam girl he's truly close to so you should also stan them since he'd want you to /lh

Red Hood:Outlaw for the confirmation that Red Hood loves black women from infinity to infinityyyyy(meaning his love interest Dana Harlowe is introduced and featured as an mc in this run)

Urban Legends 1-6 for his return to the Batfam-Messy tbh but i do enjoy parts of it!

Task Force Z for him and Stephanie being a vigilante team and it has a prelude,that being Detective comics 1041-1043

Unkillables and Joker:The Man Who Stopped Laughing for Jayrose goodies and more of the above

Gotham War if you feel like turning off your brain to look at good art and laugh at dogshit writing

Red Hood:The Hill is his current run and when our queen Dana comes home from comics limbo!!!

The following is a misc list that's not required to include in your Jason knowledge but HIGHLY recommended you do just for fun!

Tiny Titans 23,29,33,39,45 and 47,Bombshells 46,60 and 62,Bombshells United 18-24,Lego Batman:Family Matters,A Death In The Family 2020,Batman:The Adventures Continue,Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 5-6,The Doom That Came to Gotham 2023 and The Teen Titans Go episode 'The Best Robin'(Pre-Reboot Robin Jason rights!!!).Also look up 'Nobody cares about Tim Drake' if you don't know what that is,you'll love it

Jason also appears in the Lego DC Super Villains games that i highly recommend as well especially because my girlfriend is a mega fan of it and i don't know much about Lego Batman 3:Beyond Gotham but please avoid the aformentioned original Rhato,Red Hood:Outlaws and the Gotham Knights game as they feature extremely problematic writing not limited to but including racialized misogyny and ableism and do disservice to Jason himself anyway so you wouldn't want to consume them to begin with if you want to like him.I have mixed feelings on the Arkham Knight and Injustice games series' but they are objectively fairly good so i wouldn't say no to giving them a shot to see if you like them

And for the finale we have Wayne Family Adventures-Definitely a good read but to be totally honest it does Duke DIRTY and it sucks so much of DC to have marketed as his series to not only not follow through at all and make it an ensemble cast instead but ALSO deprive him of his actual characterization and story to make him a demure weak black boy stereotype.I won't judge you at all for liking it if you decided to read it or have already but kindly keep this in mind and consider joining me and my mutuals in our rewrite of it to give our Signal of Hope and Chaos the writing he deserves or at least support us through likes and reblogs!Happy Jason readings and have a good day💕

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doromoni · 9 months

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Masterlist.

✨📖 The compilation of my works

✨🏁 Currently writing for Formula 1 drivers

✨ Legend:🕰️;completed ⏳;work in progress

Driver Playlist 🏁

Formula 1 : The Fast Life

Max Verstappen : Emilian

Charles Leclerc : Marc Herve

George Russell : William

Oscar Piastri : Jack

Lando Norris : Lando Norris; a villain arc

Carlos Sainz Jr. | CS55

To be written

Charles Leclerc | CL16

🕰️ Burnt pan shenanigans

🕰️ Hunting Affections (with MV1)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Epilogue

🕰️ Initial Start

Daniel Ricciardo | DR3

To be written

George Russell | GR63

🕰️ I hate you, right?

🕰️ Caffeine of Choice

Logan Sergeant | LS2

To be written

Lando Norris | LN4

🕰️ A Rivalry Misunderstood

🕰️ Lunch Preferences

🕰️ Part 2: After Lunch Snacks

🕰️ Are you my Sugar Mommy?

🕰️ Caffein of Choice

🕰️Off Track Pace (with MV1)

🕰️ Part 2: Gear Shift Failure

⏳Business Politics

Lewis Hamilton | LH44

⏳Clash of Champions (with MV1)

Prelude

Act 1

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Act 2

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Max Verstappen | MV1

🕰️ Hunting Affections (with CL16)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Epilogue

⏳ Clash of Champions (with LH44)

Prelude

Act 1

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Act 2

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

🕰️ Off Track Pace (with LN4)

🕰️ Part 2 : Gear Shift Failure

Oscar Piastri | OP81

🕰️ Choking on Eclairs

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not-freyja · 3 months

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There’s a moment where Shadow wonders if that feeling itself was dying, that the cold nothingness that he was in before was merely prelude. And then it hits him. He wonders. If he can think about things, then that means… Shadow opens his eyes. He isn’t sure, exactly, what the afterlife was supposed to look like, or if there even was one for creatures like him. But he would bet an entire cellar of evil root beer that this is not it.

The Beginning - Part 1

#freyja writes fic #this is an adjuration #fic update #lu shadow

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kassandra-the-witch · 11 months

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Trying to make sense of Umineko while playing it for the first time, essay post-Ep1: The Beatrice lies in the details

0. On games, interactivity, roulette, and chess, or: how to lose at Umineko

Umineko no Naku Koro ni, commonly translated as Umineko: When they cry, also translated as Umineko: When the seagulls cry, also abbreviated as Umineko, also subtitled (I think?) Rondo of the Witch and Reasoning, is a visual novel series originally released between 2007 and 2010 by the group 07th Expansion, under the influential authorship of Ryukishi07, also abbreviated Ryukishi in fandom discussions. Umineko might best be classified as a story[i]. As far as the medium goes, Umineko has, as far as I understand, existed in form of an online visual novel, a PS3 game, a manga, a downloadable visual novel, and an anime, if not more. And yet, as I experience Umineko, I have paid for it and downloaded it from Steam, as well as having installed a massive and wonderful total conversion mod on top of it. The question of “what is a game” is an esoteric one, one that renders “is Umineko a game” absurdly unanswerable. But while categorizing Umineko as a game or not a game is difficult, it is easy to see that Umineko has a loaded allegorical relationship to game(s).

In Episode 1 of Umineko, Legend of the Golden Witch (to be called Ep1 from now on), two different games are brought to the table regularly, both as metaphors and games characters play: chess and roulette. Chess and roulette are very different games, almost diametrically opposite. Chess is a game in which every move can be calculated, at least in theory. While such computers are yet to be created, a computer with sufficient capacity of calculating could simulate every possible chess game, always know a certain path to victory. Humans are incapable of knowing every single possible chess game at once. Humans playing chess at a high level memorize and execute cyclical patterns and try to guide their opponent(s) into patterns and cycles they are unfamiliar with. Despite having no randomness involved, despite seeming predetermined every time, chess is a fascinating and very human game to play. And, indeed, a lot of the humans (and witches) in Umineko Ep1 play chess. When Ushiromiya Kinzo asks his resident doctor and old friend how long he still has to live in the prelude, the doctor points to a chess game they are playing to establish a metaphor. When trying to solve the death of his parents as a crime, Ushiromiya Battler turns to chess and the repeating idea of “spinning around the chessboard” to find the culprit. Who plays chess against whom and with what level of skill is a motive and allegorical theme repeated over and over and over again in Umineko Ep1.

While no character in Umineko Ep1 plays an actual game of roulette, roulette is also a repeated motive in this story. Roulette is random or not random depending on a complex philosophical debate around determinism – but on a well-designed roulette table, no human or computer is able to tell the outcome of a spin of the wheel. To many minor factors, like air flow, friction of minute surfaces, gravitational pulls, and rotational momentum make roulette highly random. In Umineko Ep1, the so-called demon’s roulette is a repeated motive pertaining to the potentially supernatural violence that characters are subjected to as the deaths and murders commence, as well as an allegory for capitalism. One character in Umineko Ep1, a child servant by the name of Kanon, wants to withdraw from this seemingly randomized violence of the demon’s roulette by explaining that he will become the unforeseen variable in this roulette game, the Zero, neither red nor black on the roulette wheel, and therefore a gamble to bet on. I do not know a lot about roulette, but if I recall correctly, the Zero is part of roulette not as a game-breaking but game-enabling mechanism; through the Zero, the house has a statistical edge on a longer and longer series of roulette games.

Be that is it may, both games are referenced and loaded with meaning in Umineko Ep1. Chess, not random and a clash of human minds, versus roulette, totally random, a game of chance without reason; this opens a spectrum through which to categorize any other game. Some characters as well as some of the menus in Umineko Ep1, particularly Lady Bernkastel in the second-order frame narrative, urge the players/readers/player-readers to treat Umineko as a game of chess, one with pieces, invalid and valid, better and worse moves. This framing of Umineko as a chess-like game implies that Umineko could be solved. The question is what it means to solve Umineko. Umineko happens. It happens to the player-reader. The player-reader cannot change the story on any level of the story. Sure, in the first-order and second-order frame narratives, the player-reader can choose to turn the descriptions of characters in the menu that functions as a dramatis personae to their respective dead or alive states, which reflects what happens when the dramatis personae updates during the happenings of the embedded narrative. But toggling states in the dramatis personae doesn’t change anything; the player-reader but sees different text describing characters. Beatrice’s entry into the dramatis personae in the first-order and second-order frame narratives even taunts the player-reader with their powerlessness, the inability to interact, when you try to set Beatrice’s entry to dead. If Umineko is a game, it is not played within the mechanics of the software. Umineko is, if even playable in the first place, played metatextually. Presenting itself on the outset as a murder mystery, solving Umineko means unravelling its mysteries as it progresses. There is no apparent win-or-lose condition to Umineko.

And yet, one does not simply commit to a story as massive and complex as Umineko without prior knowledge of it. I got into Umineko because of @siphonophorus/Ozaawa’s obsession with it. Ozaawa is a cherished discord friend, who has had Beatrice as their profile picture ever since I can remember. I had started Umineko Ep1 with multiple spoilers in mind, such as: “There is a long time loop”, “Beatrice is really queer”, “people die and get resurrected over and over again”, “magic somehow is and isn’t real at the same time”, and “the narrative structure is a mess”. But the most intriguing piece of knowledge is as follows: “you can solve a lot Umineko from very early on”. Apparently someone in the fandom named pochapal had solved large pieces of the puzzle very very early on in the course of the story. Now, since Umineko urges you to treat it as chess, there is an analogy that immediately sprung to my mind: There are ways to checkmate someone in chess in the least possible amount of moves, a common one of these strategies being called a scholar’s mate. Four moves by the player controlling the white pieces lead, under ideal circumstances, to a checkmate and victory. Without knowing the solution to Umineko, you can meaningfully solve Umineko in a (relatively) short amount of story. I call this idea Umineko’s scholar’s mate. I want to explore this possibility, one of the primary reasons why I am writing this essay and plan on writing more of them in the future; to solve as much as I think I can after every episode. Writing this essay is me playing Umineko (I think). There is however a massive problem to me being obsessed with Umineko’s scholar’s mate; namely, that I suck absolute ass at chess and detective/murder mysteries. I am also rather mediocre at literary analysis, and cannot call myself a literary scholar in a great capacity. Congratulations to pochapal for doing Umineko’s scholar’s mate or at least coming close to that, I will not be able to reproduce that achievement. I have invested roughly 31 hours into Ep1 and I still do not know where to start solving the epitaph or who was killed how by whom. I am a historian, and that is about the range of my expertise. I almost did not write this essay and had been moving into Ep2 for roughly thirty minutes before a dumb joke I made on Discord lead to a lot of pieces clicking into place and me being able to synthesize a stable, if a bit tangential reading of Ep1 (more on that serendipitous accident in section 3 of this essay).

All in all, I am obsessed with this story to an extreme level and my brain is constantly trying to crack its mysteries. I invite you to join me on this journey, a delayed live-commentary of my first play-readthrough of Umineko. That being said, given the nature of my approach to play-reading Umineko, I’d like to avoid spoilers for Episodes I have yet to read as much as possible, and I’d hope anyone reading this will respect that wish.

Content warning: Umineko is a horror story that deals with a lot of systems of violence in gruesome detail. So much violence in fact that I fear the content warning in itself could be triggering. The full content warning will be found under the Read More.

Umineko Ep1 contains in varying degrees of alluding, mentioning, and describing: extreme gore, murder, suicide, sexual assault, patriarchal violence, class violence, child labour, grooming, familial violence, intergenerational violence and intergenerational trauma, child abuse, misogyny, psychological horror, colonialism, imperialism, and fascism.

1. On Umineko Ep1, or: Synopsis

The story of Umineko Ep1 unfolds in stages. The first stage to unlock is the embedded narrative of Ep1. It opens with a prelude on the island of Rokkenjima, a fictional, circular island with a circumference of roughly ten kilometres that is part of the real-life volcanic Izu Archipelago of Japan[ii], a short amount of time before Saturday, the 4th of October 1986. A conversation between Ushiromiya Kinzo, patriarch over the ultrawealthy Ushiromiya family and man who bought himself into the title of “owner of Rokkenjima”, and Doctor Nanjo, his attending physician and long-term friend, unfolds in Kinzo’s study in his mansion. Nanjo reveals to Kinzo that the latter is dying and has not much time left, explaining to Kinzo that he might want to settle his affairs. Kinzo reacts, in the presence of a disturbed Nanjo and the much more calm and collected head servant Genji, with at outburst of anger, revealing an obsession with a woman named Beatrice.

On the morning of Saturday, the 4th of October 1986, members of the Ushiromiya family assemble on a nearby airport. Among those assembled are Kinzo’s second oldest child, Eva, her husband, Hideyoshi, and their child, George, as well Rudolf, Kinzo’s third child, Rudolf’s second wife Kyrie, and Rudolf’s son out of his first marriage, Battler, and lastly, Kinzo’s fourth and youngest child, Rosa, as well as Rosa’s daughter, Maria. These seven travel per airplane to nearby Niijima, where they meet up with Jessica, the daughter of Kinzo’s oldest son, and Kumasawa, one of the servants at Rokkenjima. They take a boat to Rokkenjima, arriving around 10:30 AM.

On Rokkenjima, the weather starts to show signs of getting worse. Traversing through the Ushiromiya family estate, the only part of the island that is inhabited by humans, they meet Godha, the ambitious and renowned private cook, and Kanon, a teenager and servant at the household, currently struggling to do heavy labour in the elaborate rose garden. The new arrivals settle into the guesthouse, separated from the main mansion by the rose garden. In the mansion, the final set of characters of importance to the story get introduced. Sayo, working under the servant name of Shannon, another young servant of the household, Krauss, Kinzo’s first child and heir-apparent to the Ushiromiya head family, and Natsuhi, Krauss’ wife and Jessica’s mother.[iii]

The children, i. e. the cousins, staying at the guesthouse, do some catching-up on their lives, while the parents, i. e. the siblings, discuss at the mansion. Between 12:00 PM and 1:30PM, the family and Nanjo assemble in the dining room of the mansion for lunch. Waiting in vain for Kinzo’s attendance, they proceed to eat without him. At around 1:30 PM, the parents withdraw to discuss finances and inheritance politics. Knowing that Kinzo is close to death, the question of who gets which part of the vast family fortune takes centre stage in their discussion. Accusing Krauss of embezzling some of Kinzo’s private fortune, namely the vast amount of it stored in a supposed ten tons of gold, Eva, Hideyoshi, Kyrie, and Rudolf (and Rosa to some degree) open with an offensive, demanding immediate compensation by Krauss. Denying the existence of the gold and shutting Natsuhi out of the conversation, Krauss counters, revealing that Rudolf is in desperate need of money because he is embroiled in legal battles in the United States, Hideyoshi and Eva are in need of money to support the shaky expansion of their business, and Rosa needs money for her fledgling business. Their talks ultimately end in a draw. Krauss later reveals to a distressed Natsuhi that the gold actually exists, showing a bar as proof.[iv]

Meanwhile, the children roam the mansion and later head down to the beach. They discuss a portrait hanging in the main staircase area, one that Battler had not seen since the last time he had been at Rokkenjima many years ago. The portrait supposedly shows the mystery woman, Beatrice, and has an epitaph underneath. Beatrice is known as the witch of the island, a myth Battler denounces as a fairy tale. The epitaph takes the form of a riddle, forecasting much death and tasking the readers with finding the hidden gold. On the beach, the children try to solve the riddle, also reminiscing on Kinzo’s biography and the history of the family fortune. While the Ushiromiya family had lost most of its wealth, means of production, and members in the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923, Kinzo rose to inherit the title of head of the family. By 1950, Kinzo had (re)established the family as one of the wealthiest of the country, having successfully gambled a lot of capital of mysterious origin on the Korean War. The children wonder if this mysterious starter capital might have been the gold, and if Beatrice might have been a mysterious financier that gave Kinzo this money. Maria, autistic child hyperfocused on the occult and dark magic, insists that Beatrice is a witch and had produced the gold using a “philosopher’s stone”.[v]

In the meantime, a massive storm that had been brewing for a while turns into first rainfall. At around 6:00 PM, Maria is still missing after having been hit in the face multiple times by Rosa a couple of hours earlier as a supposed disciplinary measure. The family goes searching for Maria. She is found in the rose garden, holding an umbrella, still looking for a singular rose plant she had taken a liking to when they first arrived at the island, scared that something might happen to the plant in the storm. Going on to look for whoever had handed Maria the umbrella to properly thank them, Maria insists that the umbrella had been handed to her by Beatrice. Furthermore, Beatrice, according to Maria’s description, had handed her a letter, to be read to the family. The letter, supposedly written by Beatrice herself, reminds them to solve the riddle of the epitaph, lest Beatrice collect what is owed to her according to a mysterious contract between Kinzo and her. Distressing over the letter, the adults continue to fight each other with words, up until midnight for some of them. In the meantime, George and Sayo, secretly involved with each other, meet up in the rose garden. George proposes to Sayo.

On the next day, at around 6:00 AM on the 5th of October, the machinery of the household springs to life again, while the storm still rages on. Preparing the breakfast is impossible, however, due to Godha being missing. As more of the guests and residents of the mansion and guesthouse wake up, it turns out that not only Godha is missing, but Sayo, Krauss, Rudolf, Kyrie, and Rosa as well. After Kanon discovers occult symbols written out in blood on the shutter of the rose garden storehouse, several characters rush to open it. Inside the storehouse are the corpses of all six that are missing, mutilated, especially in their faces.[vi] The family attempts to contact the police, but the telephones have failed in the storm, similarly, boats are no option.

Retreating to the mansion, they find the dining room covered in blood. Fearing for their lives, the survivors hole up in the parlor of the mansion at around 9 AM. Afterwards, they find Kinzo missing from his study. Everyone soon falls into suspicion of each other, suspecting a murderer in their midst, but also unable to rule out other parties, namely Beatrice, being involved. Especially Eva and Natsuhi begin fighting, while Natsuhi carries Kinzo’s rifle, the only known firearm on the island. In the meantime, the children, with the help of Maria, try to discuss the occult implications of the murders, and a new letter that had been found. At some point, despite Natsuhi’s reservations, Eva and Hideyoshi retreat to their guest rooms in the mansion.

At 7 PM, the servants discover the door to Eva and Hideyoshi’s room to be painted in blood. Prying the door open, they find the corpses of Eva and Hideyoshi, with strange spikes lodged into their foreheads.[vii] Smelling a strange smell coming from the boiler room in the basement, Kanon runs there. Challenging Beatrice, which he assigns to the darkness in the corner of the room, he tries to harm her, leading only to him being mortally wounded.[viii] It is difficult to decipher his final words, I personally do not understand if he had anticipated or at least accepted the potential of his death in that action. When everyone else catches up with him, it quickly becomes apparent that the smell is coming from the boiler, in which Kinzo’s charred corpse is found.[ix] The survivors retreat to Kinzo’s study, judging it to be the safest room in the mansion.

At around 8 PM, George, Battler, Jessica, and Natsuhi look at the smaller portrait of Beatrice on the wall of the study, when suddenly, another letter by Beatrice appears, in which Beatrice gleefully celebrates her victory. Suspecting those who had not looked at the portrait to contain Beatrice or at least a collaborator, Natsuhi sends out Nanjo, Genji, Maria, and Kumasawa.

At around 11:30 PM, the phone in the study rings, revealing a singing Maria. Sensing that she might have send the four others to their doom, Natsuhi goes looking for them. Their corpses are found in the parlor, safe for Maria, who stands to a wall, singing.[x] Natsuhi runs out to the main hall, when the clock strikes midnight. She challenges the darkness, Beatrice, to a duel, which leads to her being shot with the rifle she is carrying.[xi] The children arrive in the main hall to see a woman standing, half-shrouded in the dark, who Maria identifies as Beatrice, running towards her.

The next bit of story unfolds in the epilogue, written in the style of a historiographical account. The police arrive the next day, finding everyone dead, except the children, whose corpses could not be fully identified in the gore.[xii] An urban legend spawns from these two days at Rokkenjima. Some years later, a notebook fragment lodged inside a wine bottle washes ashore at a beach. It is a fragment of Maria’s diary, reporting on the events of the days, concluding in a cry not for help, but for the someone to solve the mystery at hand.

Concluding this embedded narrative, a new chapter called the Tea Party unlocks in the game’s menu. In the Tea Party, the first-order frame narrative unfolds, in a domain only labelled Purgatorio in the opening slide.[xiii] Kanon, Sayo, George, Jessica, Maria, and Battler converse about the events of the first Episode, fully aware that they are characters in a story. Most of them either believed in magic previously or now concede that magic must have been the murder weapon. Battler, however, resists this reading of events. Beatrice appears, superficially amused by Battler’s antics. Transporting them to the scene of Hideyoshi’s and Eva’s murder, she demonstrates supposedly magic mastery over so-called demonic stakes, with which she murders Hideyoshi and Eva again. Battler still does not concede, vowing to uncover what practical tricks Beatrice uses for her murders. The other children and young adults begin violently unravelling into piles of gore[xiv], as Beatrice magic keeping them alive supposedly fails as Battler is unable to believe in that magic. In her dying words, Jessica urges Battler to resist believing in magic.

Concluding the Tea Party, another chapter unlocks in the game’s menu. In this second-order frame narrative, in some ill-defined realm of witches, Beatrice hosts a witch named Bernkastel in her domain, inviting her to watch another game. While Beatrice is absent for a short while, Bernkastel turns her eyes and attention to the play-reader, giving, out of a self-reported pity for the play-reader, cryptic clues to playing/reading/observing Umineko. This concludes Ep1.

2. On apples falling from family trees, or: cyclical systems of violence

2.1 What the actual fuck, Battler: Rudolf, Rosa, parental violence, masculinity, and the patriarchy

The first thing that one can easily observe when reading Umineko Ep1 is that violence happens cyclically, on multiple levels. The violence Umineko examines is incredibly complex, with multiple threads interwoven into a singular system of power. A very fitting way to try to unravel these threads from one another (at least to some degree) is looking at the branches of the family tree placing allegorical emphasis on different aspects of that violence.

Much sooner than when the shutter is raised on the rose garden storehouse, Umineko Ep1 reaffirms that it is a horror game; more precisely, every third time[xv] Battler opens his mouth. For play-readers who get lulled into a false sense of security by the mundane family conversations at the airport, the harbour at Niijima reminds them of its horror when Battler makes jokes about sexually assaulting his cousin, Jessica. Later, he makes a joke about making Maria, his nine-year old cousin, promise that he can touch her breasts once he has grown up. This joke causes concern by George and Jessica. When Battler only shortly after sets out to touch Sayo’s breasts, Sayo does not resist, until she is directly ordered to do so. The characters around him barely acknowledge Battler’s insistence on semi-seriously performing symbolic acts of sexualized violence, only the joke with Maria leads to Jessica slapping Battler in the face, and the dynamic returns to friendly as quickly as it escalated. This absence of consequences for his violence stands for two things: How fundamental and normalized misogyny and the patriarchy are in the family, and that Battler is his father’s son. Indeed, that Battler mirrors in speech what his father enacts in material reality also stands as a pars pro toto for the fact that children in Umineko perpetuate the violence of their parents, with only minor variation per generation.

The extent of Rudolf’s patriarchal and sexualized violence is cloaked in hushes and whispers in Ep1, but the outline of his actions clings to his character. In his introduction at the airport, Kyrie and Battler joke about Kyrie being the only woman capable of holding Rudolf in his reigns; a metaphor of taming wild horses that seems to be close to common social narratives around particularly sexually violent men. Battler had left the family behind for about six years, angry at Rudolf for what Rudolf did to Battler’s mother, a mystery as of now. After the death of Battler’s mother, it took Rudolf not long to marry his former advisor-secretary Kyrie. Kinzo laments about his children and mentions Rudolf’s inability to control his lust. With a father like that, Battler’s sticking to mostly spoken jokes about misogynistic violence measures the distance the apple ultimately managed to fall from the tree.

That violence is an inheritance in the Ushiromiya family is very evident. This includes physical abuse. Rosa’s beating of Maria, for Maria speaking in a way perfectly normal for an autistic nine-year old, is one example of this. Indeed, this very overt act of parental violence also happens in the context of Maria searching for a singular, slightly wilting rose in the rose garden that she had taken a liking to. Engaging in improper speech patterns (read: making noises instead of using a sophisticated, class-appropriated lexicon) and showing compassion, things that all children engage in in some degree because (I cannot stress this enough) humans are born ultimately compassionate and playful, are met with extreme violence to be eradicated. The kind of adult growing up from such a childhood has to invest a lot of emotional energy in unravelling that violence and the trauma it causes. Those used to violence have a choice to either counter this violence by difficult means and heal, or perpetuate the same kind of violence. It is evident Rosa picked up her parenting methods from Kinzo, who is noted to have hit Krauss often and loudly as a child.

As violence is carried mostly undisturbed from generation to generation, misogyny becomes an integral aspect of the mechanism of violence. Battler notes that the Ushiromiya family places a special emphasis on blood relations, perhaps more than other families, but that focus on blood still includes the patriarchy to a large degree, just in an uncommon variation. Indeed, in parts of Ep1 focusing on Natsuhi, it becomes clear that especially women marrying into this family structure are seen as little more than means to produce heirs.

2.2 Class dismissed: Eva versus Natsuhi, the mansion, Gothic horror, and servants

Upon marrying into the Ushiromiya family, Natsuhi was expected to give birth to an heir to the head family as soon as possible. Indeed, she becomes reduced to her womb, in an incredibly dehumanizing fashion. Still, within the rigid social structure of the mansion, she is the host, the one every servant first turns to. When a servant is unable to perform their labour and present a perfect household, Natsuhi pays in social capital. As the connecting tissue between the servant class and the ultrarich family, as the outsider womb that failed for the longest time, as the silenced and excluded player in the parents’ game of inheritance splitting, Natsuhi takes a fringe position. She is a fulcrum of violence, both recipient and exacter of it. Nominally member of the uppermost class, and a woman, she should find herself on similar station to Eva.

And yet, in the incredibly weird and fully obscene tension between Eva and Natsuhi, Eva manages to mobilize class and blood relations to gain an advantage over Natsuhi. Eva managed to place Hideyoshi into the family registry, maintaining her family name despite that not being common, and upstages Natsuhi in fulfilling the role and purpose of a woman in this family structure, by birthing an heir faster than Natsuhi. Eva envies Krauss and wants to gain his level of power. George is Eva’s ambition grown into flesh, not a son but a pawn and argument, her project to produce a human more fit to the title of heir to the head family than Jessica. Indeed, Eva fully modelled George into that role, and most of the family agrees that he would make a better heir than Jessica. Natsuhi, maintaining a modicum of humanity and compassion despite the family around her, does not manage to exert the same level of violent force upon her daughter Jessica, leading to Jessica being labelled a failure, and Natsuhi in turn as well. Eva goes as far as calling Natsuhi a “lowly maidservant”. Natsuhi’s ambiguous state in the family comes also to be expressed in her not being allowed to bear the family crest, a one-winged eagle. While the servants and all (blood) family members are allowed to carry it on their clothes, Natsuhi is not afforded that status. Belittled over decades, torn from her old family and forced to cut all ties, reduced to a womb, called a failure time and time again, Natsuhi jumps at the opportunity when Kinzo tells her she is allowed to carry the one-winged eagle in her heart. Her desperation to become a full-fledged member of the family comes to a close when she, as the only surviving parent, calls herself heir to the family in her duel with Beatrice. This quest, to become full participant in the violent machinery of the family structure, fails, and she dies by the firearm so closely linked with the head of the family. And yet, the situation of the servants is markedly worse than Natsuhi’s.

While Natsuhi is dehumanized by being reduced to a walking womb, the servants are not even afforded a distant connection to flesh and blood, being reduced to furniture. It is a mantra beaten into them, one they repeat again and again to deny their own agency, to be “nothing but furniture”. The way the servants navigate this lack of agency varies. Genji consigns himself to collected and veiled pride; being most trusted by Kinzo, moreso than Kinzo even trusts his own children. Godha, not unlike Natsuhi, tries to integrate himself into this power structure, but unlike Natsuhi, he is not tied down by regret, pain, and a modicum of humanity. He steals what little social capital is afforded to the servants for himself, assigning them much less prestigious tasks. And yet, he ends up destroyed in the same machinery of power he tried to kiss up to, being one of the first to die. Kumasawa withdraws herself from difficult labour, and tells stories and lies and uses a semblance of a jester’s freedom to protect the young servants as best as she can. Sayo freezes in inaction and despair. And Kanon, the youngest, reacts ultimately in an outburst of righteous anger. One must note the degree of violence of class that is enacted upon mere children. In an act veiled in the narrative of philanthropy, Kinzo recruits little children from orphanages to work at the household. This is praised as a chance for them to make money, and to raise in social status. In reality, Kanon’s introduction, in which he fails at performing incredibly hard labour in the garden, shows that Kinzo employs child labour to upkeep his machinery of family as enshrined by the building of the mansion. Once again, violence is exerted upon children to force them into a new generation of this cycle.

The mansion itself is a symbol that can be read in multiple ways, two of which are yet to follow; but it is a very evident expression of power. The ability to buy the rights to an entire island and build a massive mansion complex on it, one large enough to fit a miniature version of itself – Kinzo’s study being called a mansion inside a mansion at some point – is of course an expression of class. Elaborate rooms in the upper floors assigned to be only walked by the high and mighty, and the utilities assigned down below to be only visited by the servants – the structure of the mansion uses its walls to create and reinforce borders and delineations between the classes. These borders only fall, servants walking main rooms and the rich seeing the utilities up close, when Rokkenjima’s violence becomes unable to be narrated away as actual blood and gore runs through its halls.

A potentially supernatural murder series inside a western style mansion could be read as a marker of genre, even – but Umineko Ep1 resists strict allegiance to a singular genre. It toys with the elements of Gothic horror – of which the mansion as a stage and ordering device is a central one – but also transcends it. The origins of Gothic horror in the late 19th century, from what little I know about literary history, do treat their servants as actually nothing more than furniture, barely mentioned if all, not counted as human. Umineko’s supposed furniture cries, curses, bleeds, resists, gives in, dreams of love, stands together and aside. Umineko’s servants navigate class and agency, and that navigation takes centre stage multiple times, their inability to throw their own humanity and compassion away underlining and inverting the parents’ demand to ignore notions of compassion and humanity. But the mansion, particularly its position on an island otherwise uninhabited by humans, takes on multiple roles at once.

2.3 Pecunia non olet: Krauss, resource extraction, ecology, and the storm

The mansion and its surrounding area are an exception to the typical structure of Rokkenjima. Rokkenjima is densely inhabited and brimming with life, but not of the human variety. It is marked by a dense forest, and its cliffs are home to the black-tailed gulls who mark the text’s title – they are the Umineko, a common seabird found across many Pacific coasts, particularly in East Asia. The absence of their distinctive cry upon the visitor’s arrival on the island is remarked upon in the text, and it is one of the many early indicators of the impending tempest that entraps the island for two days. As the gulls notice changes to the wind patterns, humidity, and air pressure, they instinctually withdraw to safer locations to sit out the storm. Once they cry again, the storm has passed.

The mundane black-tailed gulls are in several ways a counterpart and mirror to the seemingly majestic one-winged eagle. Whereas the gulls have (probably) existed on Rokkenjima since its distinct geo-ecological formation as an island, the one-winged eagle specifically as the symbol of the Ushiromiya family has rested on Rokkenjima only since Kinzo manoeuvred himself into de-facto legal possession of the island. As Battler remarks at some point:

“Buying an entire island is not something that you can ordinarily do today. However, Grandfather was clever. He contacted the GHQ and applied for the establishment of a marine resource base. He acquired this island as a business property, then tossed that project aside and claimed it as his own plot of land. [...] Later, Tokyo made difficulties by telling Kinzo to return the land, but the pushy GHQ intervened. Grandfather, with considerable skill and good luck, managed to weather the stormy seas of that period, obtaining a vast fortune and his own island. [...] A mansion was built on the island soon after. [...] Grandfather, with his love of the Western style, made this once uninhabited island a canvas upon which he could realize his dreams to his heart’s content. He now had the Western mansion of his dreams, overflowing with emotion and atmosphere, and a beautiful garden featuring all sorts of roses. And he had a private beach where nobody other than himself would ever be permitted to leave a footprint.”

There is a lot – a lot – going on this passage, and I will come back to it in section 2.4, but for now, there is one focus point: The island is described by Battler as having been previously uninhabited. This draws, at minimum, a line in which a distinct human presence is conflated with the state of being uninhabited. Rokkenjima, before Kinzo’s arrival, so the narrative spun by Battler, exists as a social and ecological terra nullius, this “empty canvas”, into which Kinzo inscribed his personal vision. This passage continually reaffirms the notion that land can be viewed through the lens of ownership – which far from a neutral idea.

By turning the land into something that can be “obtained”, “bought”, and “claimed” by a singular individual, its ecology is exposed to the logics of neoliberalism. And, indeed, Kinzo’s eldest, the designated heir to the financial empire, Krauss, doubles down on this process. The guest house is a symbol of Krauss trying to extract monetary value from the idea of land ownership: He plans on turning the island into a vacation resort for well-paying customers. As Rudolf comments on Krauss’ plan:

“You were brilliant when you saw that using this island only as a place to live was a waste. I think it was a pretty good plan to turn it into a resort that could use the prospect of marine sports, fishing, honeymoons and the like to attract customers. If I were the oldest son, I’m sure I’d have strained my brain looking for a way to make profit off this island.”

Later, Rudolf adds:

“I’ll bet you want to liquidate but can’t. After all, there’s no reason for anyone to buy such an extravagant hotel on an isolated, empty island without any established sightseeing routes.”

An island existing on its own, as an ecologically closed system by itself, is an impossibility under capitalism. Value must be extracted from everything, even the fact of land and ecology itself, else, it is, as Kinzo’s children seem to unanimously agree, a “waste”. Rokkenjima, so full with dense forestry and filled to the brink with life is “empty” because humans cannot make more money out of it. Establishing sightseeing routes, cutting through the ecology to maximize human access – and human profit – to and from it, is the only way not to “waste” it. The black-tailed gull is not granted any meaningful connection or presence on the island. And yet, on the morning of the 6th of October, the skies clear, and the black-tailed gulls cry again, alive and present on the island, whereas those who previously so proudly wore the one-winged eagle lie slaughtered into piles of blood and gore across the mansion and garden.

Kinzo’s fortune – not coincidentally – is maintained through having invested his money during the Fifties into the iron and steel industry, key actors in material resource extraction and environmental devastation, also given the connection of the steel and coal industries. The influence the economic system has on the ecology is marked by resource extraction. When it is a tropical thunderstorm that entraps the Ushiromiya family on this island it previously called its possession, forcing everyone to meet their violent demise, there is a certain comedic catharsis to it – thunderstorms, their increasing likelihood and extremeness, are a direct result of the economic mechanisms that marked the Ushiromiya ascension to power. For all their money, the Ushiromiyas cannot escape the storm. By exploiting nature they rise, by being unable to control such a large natural event they fall.

The theme of the Ushiromiyas’ fall repeats in the ecology, not only being found in the fauna but also in the flora. The rose garden is part of Krauss’ “development” of the land as well as Kinzo’s self-inscription onto the island. It is a model of making sense of nature – whereas the Ushiromiyas describe the forest of Rokkenjima as uninviting, dark, and imposing, the rose garden is a source of respite, admiration, and a stage upon which their control is played out. But the garden is far from a fitting presence on the island – it is noted multiple times that the yearly thunderstorms devastate the garden, leading to it requiring major repair and replanting every time. Rokkenjima is not a natural habitat for roses – and yet, as a mark of pride and possession of nature, it has to be repeatedly reinstated on it. And yet, after the storm passes, the trees of Rokkenjima still stand, whereas the roses of the Ushiromiyas have been scattered and largely destroyed. It is just as fitting to underline the Ushiromiyas’ relationship to the ecology around them that Maria’s concern for the well-being of a singular rose – an entirely positive process in which two organisms interact in a caring and gentle way – is seen as childish and absurd, whereas establishing a rose garden on Rokkenjima in the first place is seen as logical and meaningful.

Turning from the text to the real world, there is an actual and vast touristic network spanning the Izu islands. There is reason to assume that Krauss’ plans might have been fruitful if it were not for his face being separated from the rest of his body. Then again, the Izu islands also feature a long history of hotel ruins and closed tourist resorts – a very interesting example being the Hachijō-jima Royal Hotel, a project very similar to Krauss’, just some decades prior. Also featuring a sizable hotel complex in the Western style, it is now an abandoned ruin, having closed in 2006 (see Lowe, 2016). More importantly, the Japanese government used to advertise this hotel as the “Hawaii [sic!] of Japan”, a marketing pitch that, according to David Lowe, saw success at the time (2016). Let us put a pin on the mobilization of an image of Hawai’i by Japanese government actors, and turn from the branches of this rotten family tree to its roots and finally fire Chekhov's Winchester M1894.

2.4 How to get away with fascism: Kinzo, imperialism, occultism, cowboys, the nonexistent philosopher’s stone, and (hi)storytelling

This reading of the Ushiromiya family so far has purposefully taken individual members to underline larger system, but of course, this choosing-of-focus is an artificial fragmentation. Eva’s ambition overlaps with Krauss’ neoliberalism. Rudolf’s misogyny overlaps with Eva’s attempts to push Natsuhi down. Rosa’s explicit violence against Maria overlaps with Eva’s implicit violence against George. I cherry-picked aspects of their violence that seemed to stick out as an illustration, but they all orbit around the same centre of gravity, the source of it all: Kinzo.

Multiple times in Ep1, the Ushiromiya family history gets narrated, specifically, surrounding Kinzo’s financial decisions. Every time, the story starts at the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923[xvi], and ends around 1950, with the start of the Korean War. During the earthquake, the family is said to have lost their means of production, having been industrialists beforehand, and having lost several members, leading to Kinzo’s unlikely ascension to the head of the family. Kinzo is said to have acquired some starter capital in the form of a massive amount of gold before 1950, very early going all in on some form of Korean War bonds, being called Korean War Demands in the text. Kinzo is in these descriptions universally praised for his cunning, willingness to take risks, cooperation with the West, and seemingly inhuman foresight. Let’s reexamine this story again: A Japanese former industrialist rebuilds his family’s fortune between 1923 and roughly 1950, by acquiring gold of mysterious origins in between that timeframe. In the text, the adults speculate that Beatrice might have been a mysterious widowed financier willing to support Kinzo, whereas Maria insists that Beatrice used black magic – the philosopher’s stone, specifically – to create gold out of nothing. But this story of the family fortune is painfully familiar to me as a historian capable of speaking and reading German. Now, class, can anyone tell me what might have happened in these less than three decades that a sufficiently violent man could have used to make a small fortune out of nothing?

When I commented in the Discord chat that I use to ramble about Umineko on exactly that fact after the first time the financial history of the family was narrated, and called Kinzo a fascist, Ozaawa confirmed my conclusion. The Ushiromiya family gold – the source of it all, Kinzo’s great legacy – stems from fascist sources. The mysteriously lacking narration of the company history for the Thirties and Forties aside, there is another factor to consider to point towards this conclusion as early as the middle point of Ep1. When Krauss shows Natsuhi an actual bar of the family’s gold reserves, Natsuhi notices the absence of a note of the forge/bank that is customary for high-quality gold bars. All that the gold bars show is a one-winged eagle. Now, of course you can think of the philosopher’s stone all you want, and deliberate how gold bars created from magic might look – but unmarked gold acquired in the Thirties and Forties could be explained by much less magical origins. The eagle itself is a symbol mobilized by many fascists the world over – its role as a symbol for the Ushiromiya family hints further towards the origins of that fortune.

The supposed mystery of the gold’s origin only becomes less mysterious when considering what means of gaining wealth are fully accepted as legitimate parts of the family history. The Korean War Demands – some way of profiting of the Korean War – are seen as a masterful stroke by Kinzo. That the Korean War was an incredibly bloody proxy war between the US-American and Soviet Empires, one fought with a land and population as collateral that had been violently occupied by Imperial Japan for decades prior, makes no difference. Kinzo’s war profiteering in 1950 is a socially acceptable form of imperialism, whereas the source of the gold is not. That Kinzo simply changed which imperialists to support between 1940 and 1950 does not change that he is profiteering of it in some capacity or another. His supposed cunning as a businessman is nothing more than a keen understanding of which empire will win and lose in which conflict combined with a willingness to turn the blood spilled by imperialism into gold.

Speaking of spilling blood, the murders of Rokkenjima are, as elaborated in the introduction, called “the demon’s roulette” in the text on multiple occasions, referring to some obscure black magic ritual. Magic and the occult are, so it is said by several people at multiple times in the text, bound by the logic of miracles. Kinzo explains it as such to Kanon:

“In other words, magic is a game. It is not the case that the one who performs the best becomes the victor. The victor performs the best because he has been granted magic. [...] Of course. I made it difficult. ...But you must try to solve it as well. That will form the seed that summons the miracle of my magic. If every one attempts it and everyone fails, that will be that. However, if the miracles come together and give birth to magical power, it will happen! [...] That is why you must attempt it too. Everyone must attempt it. And in so doing, they will give strength to my magic!! Do you understand?!”

Kinzo’s magic trick requires unfaltering belief in the riddle of the epitaph. Everyone, no matter of which background, can solve the riddle of the epitaph, a riddle that promises those who solve it wealth in the form of gold, and everyone must attempt to do so. The neoliberal credo is that everyone must use their own cunning and skill to strive for wealth, and that everyone can ascend to wealth when they are cunning enough. The demon’s roulette, as a pars pro toto for black magic and the occult, operates noticeably in parallel to the logics of capitalism. The occult as explained by Kinzo, in this reading of Ep1, therefore becomes a mirror to imperialist capitalism – capable of withdrawing it from the narratives that cloak it and obscure its violence, the demon’s roulette embodies and demonstrates the violence necessary to operate imperialist capitalism. It is easy for the characters to think of the gold as a distant, clean commodity and bargaining chip. It is easy for me to describe that the text alludes to the origins of the gold in fascism and imperialism. But when Battler breaks down in tears at the sight of his parent’s disfigured and defaced corpses, when the blood and gore of everyone mixes so much that class distinctions break down just as much as the bodies, when the eldest and most powerful man and the youngest, abused servant both lie in death and dead in the same room, the demon’s roulette unveils what stands behind the Ushiromiya wealth: blood. Rudolf’s negotiation with Krauss features the only mention of roulette in the text that I noticed that is not the demon’s roulette:

“The iron rule of the money roulette is that you bet against the loser.”

The demon’s roulette is the money roulette. Capitalism and imperialism operate like the occult in the embedded narrative of Ep1 does, just with one being more socially accepted than the other. Just as the violence of the occult fails and falls apart when people’s belief in it shakes, so does capitalism.

In the end, the family tree planted by Kinzo bears the fruits he has ultimately sown. Is not Eva as manipulative and emotionally violent as him? Does his obsession with Beatrice not speak the same language as Rudolf’s misogyny? Is Krauss’ money-making not just as random and based on chance as his? Does Rosa not beat her own child like he beat his? When Kinzo laments how horrible his children are, is he clairvoyant enough for that to be self-hatred? The violence that marks the Ushiromiya family stems from imperialism and fascism and capitalism in all their entanglements, made manifest in the structure of the family and mansion.

A perfect illustration of this is the symbol of the Winchester M1894. It is a gun featured in western Westerns, a motive that keeps reappearing. Being the actual gun used in filming some Western[xvii], Kinzo had it bought and retrofitted to his liking. Kinzo, so is reaffirmed many, many times in the text, is obsessed with the West. His ability to schmooze up to the GHQ is just one example of this. Kinzo, the Japanese imperialist, being close to the West, is yet another pars pro toto; Japanese imperialism has historically grown in close proximity to Western imperialism. With the end of the Shogunate and the beginning of the Meiji restoration, the idea of industrialization and restructuring of society after the western model laid the ideological groundwork for building imperial Japan; particularly, the contact point of the Pacific brought Japan into connection with the United States, extending its Empire by the annexation of the Kingdom of Hawai’i. That Japanese government agents used the idea of the US tourist industry in Hawai’i – an inextricable part of imperial control and domination – to promote a hotel resort on an actual island close to where Rokkenjima would be in the real world, ties Krauss’ island development project back to Kinzo and Kinzo’s obsession with the West. He has a western-style mansion, a western-style rose garden, his children have western-style names, and he has a western-style Western rifle. The idea of the cowboy in the genre of the Western is one inherently tied to US myths of westward expansion and manifest destiny. If the rifle then symbolizes the cowboy, and one questions the context of the genre where the cowboy is the protagonist, it becomes a tool of violent colonial inscription. Rokkenjima becomes Kinzo’s colonial playground, one which he violently claims and violently maintains while wielding the cowboy’s gun, one modified to his liking. It is western imperialism with a small twist, retrofitted for the logics and specific situation at play in Rokkenjima. Natsuhi dies, claiming the rifle and the title of head of the family, shot by the instrument of imperialism she could, in the end, not wield properly.

When Battler wishes for the seagulls to cry, he envisions the police showing up at that point, solving the murders logically, restoring sense and meaning and order as it was before. But the murders unsettle the dynamics of the Ushiromiya family, in a way that cannot be undone. They reveal the deeper violence at play, embody that blood and gore which was previously obscured. One can doubt that the police can restore the status quo that Battler dreams of, as the state, of which the police are central actors and agents, is linked to the very imperialism that sits at the core of these murders. And indeed, as the epilogue of the embedded narrative reveals, the police do not do anything of meaning in reaction to the murders. Ep1, in this reading, becomes a story of the violence of imperialist capitalism crashing down on the family it once uplifted. All of this is a nice reading, but that is a story that does not necessitate magic being real. This reading is missing one integral piece: Beatrice, the sexy, sexy ominous demonic presence of the horror story that is Ep1, exists.

3. On Divine Comedies and Worldly Tragedies, or: how did I almost miss this

So far, I have not really said anything that is not obvious from even a superficial reading of Ep1. It does not take much attention to figure out that the Ushiromiya family is deeply fucked up. It does not take much attention to figure out that Kinzo is a disturbingly violent man. The entire second segment of this essay is simply a close reading of something that sits at the surface of Umineko Ep1. Sure, I did that little trick of understanding early on that there is imperialism and fascism at play here – but I can be far from the only one who picked up on that as soon as it was placed down in the text. This essay, for the longest time, was just that second segment, that close reading of the family violence – and I wondered if that even was enough to publish it. It was missing something grander, some reason to give me a seat at the table of those scholars who understand Umineko from early on. Missing that element, that link to make a more complex reading of Ep1 work, I simply gave up. I started Episode 2, broken-hearted, and followed it until it is implied early on that George will be sent into an arranged marriage. And all along I was making jokes about Umineko to the admin of the Discord server where I ramble about Umineko – she has not read the story, but enjoys my commentary on it. I made a joke about the frame narratives being nestled, like wooden dolls – and then I wanted to double down on that joke by referencing the well-known movie Shrek (2001) by saying something along the lines of “or like ogres and onions”. But I felt I needed some other joke, something a bit more weird than a simple and well-known Shrek meme, to mask my devastation at being unable to solve Ep1. And so I said: “Or like the layers of hell in the Divine Comedy. Didn't Beatrice call herself a guide through purgatory in the tea party? Is she the Virgil to my Dante?[xviii]”. The exact line I am referencing is spoken by Beatrice, when explaining the murders of Eva and Hideyoshi in the first-order frame narrative:

“Come, arise, children. I am the guide of Purgatory. Forgive the deadly sins and hold the Seven Stakes.”

A sentence I had glossed over when I first read the tea party, one seemingly inconspicuous. But it had lodged itself into my brain and become the basis of aforementioned joke. My joke, made simply because I was momentarily tired of Shrek memes, had been closer to the truth of it all than I could have ever imagined. It took me twenty-nine minutes to see it, to realize it. I came back to the Discord chat, typing in all caps. Beatrice exists. Boy, does Beatrice ever exist. Beatrice is (not only) the guide of Purgatory. Beatrice is the guide of Heaven. Beatrice is a literary figure that has existed for seven centuries.

3.1 14th century Italian poetry, in your Umineko? It’s more likely than you think

The Divine Comedy, originally the Commedia and then the Divina Commedia, is a long poetic text by exiled and grumpy Florentine author Durante Alighieri, better known as Dante Alighieri, written in the early 14th century. Its narrative is divided into three parts. In Inferno, the Dante of the narrative descends through the centre of the Earth. He receives help in navigating Hell, which is located in the centre of the Earth, by the Roman poet Virgil, who knows the rules and dangers of the nine circles and centre of Hell. Each circle of hell features a specific punishment for sinners. In Purgatorio, Virgil and Dante emerge on the other side of the Earth onto a sole, circular island in the pacific. This island, marked by a mountain, is also subdivided into nine rings and one centre. Souls who wish to enter heaven have to ascend through the rings up the mountain to find themselves in the Garden of Eden atop the mountain. Here, Dante meets a woman named Beatrice. In Paradiso, Beatrice guides Dante through the celestial heavens. The heavens are inhabited by the most virtuous of souls and divine beings. They are also subdivided into nine parts, plus God in their outermost layer. Upon Dante reaching God under Beatrice’s guidance, the story ends, as Dante is imbued with fundamental understanding of God.

Under the eurocentric lens of western academia, the Divine Comedy is considered to stand among the most important works of world literature. It is also considered one of the, if not the foremost entries into the Italian literary canon[xix]. It, that much is certain, played an important role in formalizing the Italian language, and had introduced a very detailed description of hell and demons, something unprecedented given that western church canon[xx] had avoided giving clear descriptions of hell. The tropes established in the Divine Comedy regarding the structure and functioning of hell have received an incredibly extensive reception over the centuries, being integral pieces of the collective imagining of hell and demons, and referenced in much contemporary media. I hold very little knowledge of contemporary Japanese media, but I know that the Devil May Cry franchise has been very successful and in some connection to the Divine Comedy since 2001.

The Divine Comedy features a very extensive range of appearing figures, symbols, metaphors, and narrative systems. From real life figures living and dead to themes spanning such questions as the implications of a round Earth (see Schlingen 2021, p. 386) and human bodiedness in connection to human emotions (see Howie 2021), there is a lot one can take out of the Divine Comedy. And indeed, one can read Umineko Ep1 alongside – or perhaps against – the Divine Comedy. The opening slide of the first-order frame narrative reveals that it is set in Umineko’s Purgatorio – whatever that may mean. This setting of the tea party, and the sentence in which Beatrice describes herself as the guide of Purgatory, are direct hints at a connection between the Divine Comedy and Umineko Ep1. And yet, the most meaningful connection between the Divine Comedy and Umineko Ep1 is much more simple. As Lady Bernkastel explains to the player-reader in the second-order frame narrative:

“First of all, about that girl. She does have the name Beatrice, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she is ‘one individual woman’.”

That begs the question: How many individual women is Beatrice, exactly?

3.2 Into the Beatriceverse

Beatrice Portinari is a Florentine woman that was married to a man named Simone de Bardi in 1287 (see Lewis 2001, p. 72). She died in the summer of 1290 (see Mazotta 2000, p. 18). Her father, a banker named Folco Portinari, died on the 31st of December 1289 (see Lewis 2001, p. 77). That much is something we can say with relative certainty. Church recordings in central Italy were thorough when it came to deaths, births, and marriages. Anything else we know about Beatrice Portinari – well, it is complicated. The most extensive account of Beatrice Portinari’s life was written by Dante Alighieri in the 1290s, the Vita Nuova. Dante Alighieri reports extensively on his lifelong obsession with Beatrice Portinari, a woman he spoke to merely a handful of times, at least to his own accord (regarding the number of direct interactions see Lewis 2001). If we trust Dante to tell the truth, they were about the same age, setting her birth at around 1265, and indicating that she was 25 at the time of her death. Dante’s infatuation with Beatrice Portinari lead him to engineer social situations in which he might be able to see her. The Vita Nuova holds little information on anything Beatrice Portinari ever did out her own accord. We know nothing reliable about her interests, likes and dislikes, or emotions. Most what we know about her life is delivered to us through the eyes and words of a man who held a deeply one-sided obsession with her. If the Vita Nuova was simply the ramblings of an obsessed, grieving poet, Beatrice Portinari might have been drifted out of our collective memory.

But the Vita Nuova is not the only time Dante wrote (about) Beatrice Portinari. Divine Comedy Beatrice is one of the central figures of that poetic work, likely a direct reference to the real-life Beatrice Portinari. Divine Comedy Beatrice is the one who starts the events of the story; Virgil appears before Dante in the name of Divine Comedy Beatrice, who wishes to see Divine Comedy Dante guided to the heavens. It is in constantly referencing Divine Comedy Beatrice that Divine Comedy Dante keeps a focus through hell and purgatory. Divine Comedy Beatrice takes on the role of an angelic being guiding Divine Comedy Dante to God (see Kirkpatrick 1990, p. 101), and performs “the priestly roles of confessor, teacher, interpreter of Scripture, and spiritual guide” (Waller 2021, p. 702). These two Beatrices – Beatrice Portinari and Divine Comedy Beatrice – stand in a complicated relationship. Feminist critiques of Dante taking possession of the memory of Beatrice Portinari and puppeteering it for his own purposes have existed for a long time. To cite a longer passage from Kirkpatrick 1990, p. 101:

“Beatrice has been cited more than once as evidence that the selflessness that the lover attributes to an ideal lady is not so much a manifestation of spiritual nobility as a covert sentence of death. [...] Whether as the selfless object of courtly love or as an angelic being, the lady dies insofar as the historical woman becomes a cipher on which the patriarchal will of the writer - be he courtly poet or God - can exert itself.”

We do not know what Beatrice Portinari thinks of the long poetic text written after her death by a man she barely knew in which he wields the image of her. What we know is that centuries after her death, Dante’s obsession with her is still idealized. His writings are regarded by many as the height of romantic poetry, and allusions to Divine Comedy Beatrice run throughout western literature[xxi]. I agree with the point Kirkpatrick is making, but would maybe extend it by the semantic question if we are faced with a “death sentence” of the historical woman or her unwilling entrapment in a “literary immortality” that robs her of all agency and personhood. In the end, though, both these terms describe the same act of violence.

These two Beatrices, as well as the relationship between the two, are certainly figures at play in Umineko Ep1. We can count the extratextual number of Beatrices as two, which leaves us with the question of how many Beatrices we are dealing with in Umineko Ep1. There is a woman named Beatrice which Kinzo met sometime in the Thirties or Forties, a woman that died at some point in the past, as Genji explains when the survivors barricade themselves in Kinzo’s study. I would like to title this Beatrice “Umineko’s Historical Beatrice” for the time being. We know little about Umineko’s Historical Beatrice, just as we know little about Beatrice Portinari. Kinzo’s entanglement in Japanese imperialism and with the axis powers would certainly leave him with a plethora of opportunities to exert totalizing power over quite a number of women. Then, there is “Kinzo’s Portraitized Beatrice”. Kinzo weaves a narrative around Umineko’s Historical Beatrice, just like Dante did around Beatrice Portinari. The resulting woman, Kinzo’s Portraitized Beatrice, is one he mobilizes as an excuse for his obsession with the occult. It is difficult to tell at this point if Kinzo made that mysterious contract with Umineko’s Historical Beatrice, or if the contract is part of the narrative of Kinzo’s Portraitized Beatrice. Then, there is Golden Witch Beatrice – a myth, whispered by the servants and Maria in awe, fear, and distant hope for liberation, a myth of a second master of Rokkenjima, one who assumes control when Kinzo sleeps, but also haunts the mansion in perhaps some level of agency. There is the Mystery Financier Beatrice, an explanation the adults and Battler come up with for the letters and for Kinzo’s gold and for the murders, a very human, if hypothetical woman – Mystery Financier Beatrice is closely related to Kinzo’s Portraitized Beatrice, perhaps by intention of Kinzo. Both Mystery Financier Beatrice and Kinzo’s Portraitized Beatrice are removed from any actual agency or self-hood, they are stories told and speculated upon. Then, there is Arisen Beatrice – a woman, in the flesh, who we only catch a glimpse of at the end of the embedded narrative, who greets the surviving children, primarily Maria. And lastly, there is Eternal Witch Beatrice, the witch who we see in the second-order frame narrative and, as I assume, the same Beatrice we encounter in the first-order frame narrative.

Now, take this list with a grain of salt. These Beatrices do overlap and may even sometimes be the same person. There is plenty reason to assume that Arisen Beatrice and Eternal Witch Beatrice are the same, as much as there is plenty reason to assume that there is a strong overlap between Golden Witch Beatrice and Eternal Witch Beatrice. Perhaps Arisen Beatrice and Umineko’s Historical Beatrice somehow are the same figure – Lady Bernkastel mentions that she was mortal once, implying that one can ascend to being a witch from a state of mortality. But, ultimately, I mark these Beatrices as distinct because just as much as Beatrice Portinari and Divine Comedy Beatrice, they have the capacity to stand in relationship to one another, and they have vastly different agencies, roles, and limitations when compared to each other. Every single one of these Beatrices is commanded by different forces, used and presented and (figuratively and literally) painted by different people, sometimes by her own, sometimes by individual others, sometimes by collective others. Close attention needs to be paid at how these eight-ish Beatrices, two extratextual and six-ish intratextual, are played out in very different ways. And, as I theorize is integral for understanding Umineko Ep1 – the very relationship between Beatrice Portinari and Divine Comedy Beatrice mirrors the relationship between Umineko’s Historical Beatrice and Kinzo’s Portraitized Beatrice intentionally. When the survivors retreat to the study, and Genji recounts the story of Kinzo’s Portraitized Beatrice, the first reaction that the listeners have is understanding and empathy for Kinzo. It is only when realizing that the murders happening around them are closely tied to Kinzo’s obsession with and hope for a resurrection of Kinzo’s Portraitized Beatrice that they realize that Kinzo had gone too far. In Kinzo, so my reading, Umineko Ep1 satirizes Dante Alighieri. Eternal Witch Beatrice lashing out can be read as a symbolic act of intertextual retribution for the textual violence and entrapment Beatrice Portinari has suffered, just as much as it could be a retribution for the suffering Umineko’s Historical Beatrice had endured. Umineko, so I further theorize, can be read as an inverse Divine Comedy – a Worldly Tragedy, if you will. Let me further illustrate this point by turning our attention to round islands in the Pacific.

3.3 Rokkenjima is other people: Reverse-engineering hell and the omnipresence of guides

Rokkenjima is an interesting stage for the violence of Ep1 to play out. As elaborated in sections 2.3 and 2.4, Rokkenjima can be read through an ecocritical and postcolonial lens, as an ecosystem upon which Krauss exerts capitalist logics and as a space which Kinzo uses as a miniature colony. But reading Umineko as a critical parody of the Divine Comedy, we also gain access to another understanding of Rokkenjima; as a twisted mixture of hell and purgatory. Hell and purgatory in the Divine Comedy have different, more specifically opposite, spatial structures. Divine Comedy Dante goes through hell by descending, going down each ring, narrower and lower than the one before. Reversely, he ascends purgatory by going up each ring, narrower and higher up than the one before, before reaching Eden – and Divine Comedy Beatrice – at the top. Such spatial trajectories also get mentioned in Umineko Ep1, but ultimately and immediately deconstructed. When the visitors arrive on the island, Battler comments upon the sloping path one has to take up from the landing pier to the mansion complex:

“A serpentine, twisting path led through a dim forest. It ran a bit uphill. I’d guess the path was made all twisty so the slope wouldn’t seem too steep, but personally, I’d have been happier if they’d had the guts to make some stairs in a straight line ......No doubt they made the path twist on purpose, to put on airs of distance and importance...”

One might read this path guests of Rokkenjima ascend through as part of the microcolonial architecture that is such an integral part of Kinzo’s and Krauss’ laying-claim to the island. One might also read Battler’s alternative as an expression of that same architectural hubris, as a disregard for the geological and structural reality of that stretch of Rokkenjima, because it remains to be questioned how intrusive a set of straight stairs[xxii] might have been in the context of the local landscape. But this spatiality may also be read in conjunction with the very first lines of Inferno:

“In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.” (Alighieri/Turner 1320/1996, p. 27)

This entry of Divine Comedy Dante towards his journey into hell mirrors Battler’s monologue in a couple of ways. Whereas the difficulty of the paths in the Divine Comedy represent the theological difficulty of salvation, difficulties through which Divine Comedy Dante has to be lead by Divine Comedy Beatrice as the representation of perfected christian belief, Rokkenjima’s meandering paths, at least for now, represent both a nuisance to the characters and their unknowing physically ascent into a hell that will unfold around them soon. Whereas at the top of the winding path in Purgatorio, the Garden Eden awaits with Divine Comedy Beatrice ready to appear and take Divine Comedy Dante to the heavens, at top of the winding path in Umineko Ep1, the rose garden awaits with Golden Witch Beatrice ready to appear and murder everyone.

But this inversion and reconfiguration of spatiality is more than a singular instance of a mirror and parody of the Divine Comedy. Whereas Divine Comedy Dante has Virgil and then Divine Comedy Beatrice to explain to him all the minutiae and idiosyncrasies that govern the realms of the Divine Comedy, there is a distinct lack of a singular, final, authoritative voice explaining the idiosyncrasies of Umineko Ep1. This is not because guidance is absent in Umineko Ep1, rather the opposite: The omnipresence of contradicting, incomplete, and biased guides is what makes Umineko Ep1 so impassable on every narrative and metanarrative level. Battler seemingly guides the play-reader through most of the embedded narrative, but how much competence can one expect from a guide that uses the first moment of introspection the narrative provides to him to whine about how difficult it is to be a child born into unfathomable intergenerational wealth? What ability does Battler have to introduce us to the women of the embedded narrative when the first thing he does on multiple occasions is to joke about harassing them or come very close to actually doing it? When the Ushiromiya adults take over with the narration, how trustworthy are they? Can we believe the ultrarich capitalist to give us a proper account of how the servant’s social space functions? Can we trust the violent imperialist Kinzo to properly explain the functionings and logics of the occult to us? Umineko Ep1 is littered with instances of people speaking for other people, trying to explain what the true meaning of someone else’s words and actions and emotions is. The closest the player-reader comes to gaining a guide through Umineko Ep1 is only after having traversed the story, when Lady Bernkastel gently removes the fourth wall, turns it around, and fixes it in place again. But according to her own report, Lady Bernkastel uses the player-reader as a piece in a game to deal with her boredom; a move made out of pity and amusement. Is she the ultimate authoritative voice which may guide the player-reader through the narrative?

From the constant discussions of murder mystery novels in the embedded narrative, to the murder victims discussing the implications their deaths have on the genre in the first-order frame narrative, to the outright obliteration of the fourth wall in the second-order frame narrative: Umineko Ep1 brims with metanarrative commentary. By presenting us with a plethora of guides through this strange hell-purgatory of Rokkenjima and making each of them untrustworthy in the same moment, Umineko Ep1 engages in a permanent suspension of suspension of disbelief. The player-reader is supposed to engage with Umineko as a fictionalized narrative while remaining very aware that it functions as such. If my reading is to stand any ground, this is where the concept and figure of the witch begins to unravel.

3.4 Darkness, witches, angels, and the absence of a god: How to decipher Golden/Eternal Witch Beatrice as an anti-Beatrice

Reading Umineko as a parody and commentary on the Divine Comedy means that a lot of the motives and symbols of Umineko become very legible from the start, courtesy of the extensive symbolic lexicon employed by the Divine Comedy.Unfortunately, one of the most important symbolic figures of Umineko, the Witch, has no meaningful direct equivalent in the Divine Comedy. If we approach the witches in Umineko Ep1, we gain pitifully little information on what they are. The dramatis personae of the second-order frame narrative informs the player-reader when trying to set Eternal Witch Beatrice’s entry to dead that she can theoretically be destroyed, but not by means accessible to the player-reader. One of Lady Bernkastel’s lines implies that witches start off mortal but ascend to witchhood at some point and then are immortal. When Lady Bernkastel talks about what Eternal Witch Beatrice is, she says the following:

“Get what I mean? In other words, she’s not some Human. Her existence is a personification of the rules of this world. To beat her, you have to expose the rules of this world and unravel them.”

The key to witchhood, then, is closely linked with understanding the truth(s) of Umineko. Witches are also incapable of being harmed by material means (see Kanon’s and Natsuhi’s failed attempts to lash out at Golden Witch/Arisen Beatrice). They exist in a sort of immaterial, half-immortal state, in which they are closely linked to immaterial ideas and truth(s). You know which group of figures in the Divine Comedy exists in a sort of immaterial, half-immortal state, in which they are closely linked to immaterial ideas and truth? That’s right, you have read the title of this subsection: Angels. Alison Cornish explains the theological nature of angels, as interpreted by Dante and introduced into the Divine Comedy, as follows:

“Angels differ essentially from human beings in that they are separated substances—separated, that is, from matter [...] This separated state makes them purer and better receptors of intellectual substance. They are “intelligences” who feed on intellectual fare, namely, truth, and what Dante repeatedly calls the “bread of angels,” to which they have direct access but to which the philosophically inclined may also aspire” (p. 38)

I am not saying that witchhood in Umineko translates one-to-one into the notion of the angelic in the Divine Comedy. But there is no denying that the two direct allusions to Dante that Ryukishi07 placed in the first-order frame narrative are meant to create meaning, and the criticism of Dante’s obsession with Beatrice Portinari through Kinzo’s obsession with Umineko’s Historical Beatrice cannot be a coincidental reading. I also know from being slightly spoiled by Ozaawa that there will be a character named Virgilia later on, and I look forward to seeing what Ryukishi07 does with that character. My point in all of this is that those two texts clearly enter into a dialogue, and that dialogue allows me to use established readings of the Divine Comedy to unravel Umineko. Dante’s angels and Ryukishi07’s witches can be seen as entering a dialogue with one another.

Just as Dante places Divine Comedy Beatrice in close proximity to the angelic (see Cornish 2000, p. 37), Kinzo allows for Kinzo’s Portraitized Beatrice to be regarded as being in close proximity to witchcraft. Both Dante’s angels and Ryukishi07’s witches are complex allegorical figures that fulfill many roles and objectives at once. Whereas Divine Comedy Beatrice in her quasi-angelic state is identified with (reflecting) light as the central motive to stand for God (see Cornish 2000, p. 39), Golden Witch/Arisen Beatrice is associated with darkness. Both when she interacts with Kanon and Natsuhi, and when Sayo observes Golden Witch Beatrice way earlier in the story, the Beatrices stand cloaked in darkness to the point that the darkness becomes them, reciprocally personified. Golden Witch Beatrice is said to be the master of Rokkenjima at night, when the island is cloaked in darkness. Divine Comedy Dante can only ascend through purgatory during the day, when God’s light graces the island. If Divine Comedy Beatrice glows bright and is the light as she – like an angel – reflects God and God’s truth, Golden Witch Beatrice commands and laughs from the darkness in the absence of a God, and stands for a much more wordly truth, that of Kinzo’s violence.

Given that Lady Bernkastel tells us that Eternal Witch Beatrice is a personification of the rules of this world, and that this world of Umineko is deeply metanarrative, I propose a very theoretical early reading of what witches are in Umineko: Witches are allegorical representations of the fundamental forces and properties of a narrative. Eternal Witch Beatrice, so the second-order frame narrative, has the power to kill someone eternally, without fail, and yet fail does not exists in the realm of witches. I cannot explain every aspect of what is said in the second-order frame narrative through this reading, but: Let us reexamine the idea of narrative entrapment in immortality/death that has been explained in subsection 3.2 through the examination of the relationship between Beatrice Portinari and Divine Comedy. Is that constant denial of agency by assuming complete control over someone’s memory not a (metaphorical) way of killing someone over and over, given that death can be seen as the greatest possible loss of agency an individual can suffer through? Eternal Witch Beatrice's power, as explained in the second-order frame narrative, is one she has reappropriated from the abuser(s) of her namesake(s), namely, Dante and Kinzo, now wielding it as her own. In that sense, I find it fascinating how the epilogue of the embedded narrative stresses that the murders that have happened on Rokkenjima turn into an urban legend afterwards. The most important legacy the Ushiromiyas leave behind, the thing that they will always be associated with, is the mystery of their deaths that left them a puddle of gore on the grounds of Rokkenjima. Every time this urban legend is repeated again, the deaths repeat, and the Ushiromiyas are denied agency by becoming reduced to a singular aspect of their memory. If we read Eternal Witch Beatrice’s power as such, then the Rokkenjima murders become the ultimate act of retribution against Kinzo, one that forces him into the same fate as he forced upon Umineko’s Historical Beatrice.

We can further examine the figures of Beatrices in Umineko Ep1 through the lens of the Divine Comedy, as some miscellaneous symbols and points also connect. Kinzo wishes for nothing more than to see “Beatrice’s smile” again before he dies, a point he makes clear in the prologue/first scene and constantly repeats. Divine Comedy Dante is constantly reminded of his path to heaven and salvation when thinking about Divine Comedy Beatrice’s smile, and it is this smile she shows him when he arrives at the summit of purgatory (see the commentary in the translation by Turner 1990, p. 558). Divine Comedy Beatrice’s smile becomes a mark of salvation and the path to God. When Kinzo cries and shouts about “Beatrice’s smile”, it becomes a symbol of that absence of a divine presence, and, as he will not see “Beatrice’s smile” again, he does not find salvation, but death. Indeed, Umineko Ep1 seems to mock the christianized logics of punishment and salvation at multiple turns. The stakes that Eternal Witch Beatrice commands are ascribed to demons that stand for sins more or less appropriate for the people killed by the individual stakes.[xxiii] When finding the corpses of his deeply violent, mysogynistic father and the woman that enabled him at many turns, Battler wonders what they had ever done to deserve such a punishment. He repeats later that no one deserves such a fate. And, as Eternal Witch Beatrice makes clear in the first-order frame narrative, the stakes and the forces that wield them are supposed to forgive the sins – by killing the sinners. In this inherent violence, the Rokkenjima murders withdraw from the logics of christian salvation, just as much as Arisen Beatrice denies Kinzo her smile. There is no salvation, only death. Eternal Witch Beatrice does not seek out salvation for the Ushiromiyas (except Maria), she seeks revenge in the form of blood.

Another symbol to decipher is that of the butterflies. Golden Witch Beatrice is said to appear in the form of golden, glistening butterflies. Butterflies indeed appear in the Divine Comedy, namely, in a metaphorical role in the in Purgatorio.

“O proud Christians, woeful wretches, who sick in the mind's vision, place trust in backward steps, do you not see that we are worms born to form the angelic butterfly which flies to justice without shields? How is it that your spirit soars so high, when you are as imperfect insects, like the larva lacking its full formation?” (Alighieri 1320, as translated in Singleton 2019, p. 60-61)

Here, as explained in Turner’s commentary on his translation of Purgatorio, the butterfly is used in its capacity as an analogy for metamorphosis, a literary tradition reaching back to antiquity. More specifically, Turner further explains, it stands for “spiritual change as metamorphosis” (p. 171).[xxiv] It stands as a warning against pride (Singleton 2019, p. 61). In Dante’s usage, the butterfly stands for a yet-to-be-completed angelic spiritual transformation that is hindered by pride. In contrast, one could read the butterflies of Golden/Eternal Witch Beatrice as meaning that she has already undergone a transformation – not towards an angelic state, but towards witchhood, Umineko’s likely answer to Dante’s angels.[xxv] If Golden/Eternal Witch Beatrice is the swarm of butterflies, she has already metamorphosized; moved by a spiteful pride and wrath against the man who harmed Umineko’s Historical Beatrice, she has transformed by a logic completely opposite to that presented in the Divine Comedy. Once again, Umineko’s register of motives opposes its Divine Comedy counterparts in full force.

The last motive that I want to look towards in its interactions with (or rather against) the Divine Comedy is that of the “Golden Land”. In the Divine Comedy, the exact wording of “Golden Land” is never used, but it explicitly leans on the long-standing motive of the “Golden World” – one that is in Dante’s usage intrinsically tied to the idea of political order and stability acting as justice under the Roman Empire, as Robin Kirkpatrick explains (1990, p. 112-113). In other words, the logics of the Divine Comedy entangle ideas of political hierarchies, rule/ruling, spiritual ascension, justice, and Christianity under the concept of the “Golden World”.[xxvi] It is, also remarkably, situated partially on top of the mountain that is purgatory; the Garden Eden being a part and aspect of this concept (compare Kirkpatrick 1990, p. 112). The political order that houses and props up the mansion complex of Rokkenjima, Kinzo’s private and privatized Garden Eden, is completely unsettled and exposed as unjust by the forces that govern Eternal Witch Beatrice’s Golden Land. As Kirkpatrick once again elaborates:

“In canto XXVII of the Purgatorio, Virgil performs a verbal coronation in which Dante is declared to be at last free, upright, and whole, and thus fit to enter the Golden World.” (1990, p. 113)

Character’s aptitude for entering the “Golden Land” in Umineko Ep1 is indeed a topic brought up, but Dante’s equivalent – Kinzo – is made unfit to enter the “Golden Land” by death quite early on. Whereas Dante’s elaborated and detailed “Golden World” is a symbolic stabilization of spiritual and political practice at the time, Umineko Ep1’s is a vague threat and promise at the same time, one that symbolically destabilizes the ideological and political practice on Rokkenjima. In short, the ambiguous and so far not fully explained register of motives, symbols, and ideas surrounding Eternal Witch Beatrice stands as a rejection of Divine Comedy Beatrice and the literary trope Divine Comedy Beatrice became over the centuries.

3.5 Ave Maria: A short tangent on the role of motherhood and Christianity in Umineko Ep1

Not only the figure(s) of Beatrice(s) unravel through a closer reading of Umineko Ep1 alongside the Divine Comedy. If you are like me, you might have wondered early on what is going on not only with so many of the names being western, but also christian in origin, not even mentioning the crosses littering the outfits worn by several of the Ushiromiyas. One example that comes to mind, that unravels rather neatly, is Eva. Eva, the non-anglicized form of Eve, stands as a crude parody Christianity's human progenitor, first ever mother. Eva is the second human, if you so will, that Kinzo “created”, and is marked by a constant wrath for being locked out of first place. Through being the first to prolong the bloodline, she outperforms Natsuhi in the violently misogynistic structure of the family. Just as Eve makes Adam bite the apple, Hideyoshi merely follows Eva’s quest for the gold. In other words, Eva, a woman wielding misogyny against another woman, mirrors the foundational misogynistic trope of Christianity in name and in some of her relations to other characters.

But even more pronounced is the concentration on the concept of motherhood in Maria and her proximity to Beatrice – both in the Divine Comedy and Umineko Ep1. Mary is but the anglicized form of Maria, patron saint of motherhood, and one of the principal divine figures in catholicism. In the Divine Comedy, Divine Comedy Beatrice's closeness to Mary in the celestial rose, the symbolic seat of saints, underscores her exemplary nature as a pious woman and her allegorical role as divine wisdom and divine truth (for an explanation of this more analysis of Divine Comedy Beatrice and the celestial rose, see Singleton 2019, p. 61). In Umineko Ep1, it is Maria's closeness to Golden/Eternal Witch Beatrice that receives thematic meaning, when we read Beatrice as a marker of the worldly absence of the divine, as I have proposed, Maria's proximity to Beatrice means she is closest among all the characters to understanding the truth of the violence at hand. Whereas in catholicism, Mary is a symbol of divine grace in motherhood, Maria is the inverse, a symbol of the worldly pain in daughterhood. Mary nurtures Jesus, Maria is harmed by Rosa. Even the name Rosa reinforces Maria as an inversion of Mary. Roses have a long symbolic tradition in catholicism to refer to Mary, which is the reason a rosary is called a rosary, as the Latin word for rose garden. Which is the place in which the physical violence of Rosa against Maria takes place.

4. Recurrence, (in)justice, punishment, rage, catharsis, and torment through narrative (im)mortality: Trying to estimate the central themes of Umineko via Ep1

All this being said and analyzed, this leaves us with the question that started this essay, the question I directed at Umineko Ep1: What the fuck is going on here? In the introduction, I explained that I am interested in how much of Umineko you can solve within the information presented in Ep1, or as I named it, Umineko’s scholar’s mate. I also said that I am bad at murder mysteries and that I have no idea what is going on in the epitaph. Now, it has been a while since I started writing this essay, almost two months, and in the meantime, I have acquired the Answers Arc of Umineko on steam. And there, I was presented with a sentence that made things particularly interesting; it said something along the lines of “this will answer most of your questions, but you still have to solve the epitaph by yourself”. Now, I do not know if I read this sentence, this spoiler correctly; but to me, it implies that the canon text will never provide a singular, clear answer on what the epitaph riddle means.

The classical murder mystery systematically opens up several questions for the reader/viewer/player to answer, only to answer them all at the end, in an elegant fashion, perhaps to shine light on the clever detective character. Umineko Ep1 withdraws rather openly from the murder mystery genre. The logics by which a murder mystery novel operates are brought up even in the embedded narrative, where characters seem to be mostly oblivious to the fact that they exist within a story. Operating within these logics, something that Battler calls Game Theory in remembrance of a lesson Kyrie once gave him on chess, Battler tries to solve the story of Ep1 by rational means, and fails spectacularly[xxvii]. In the first-order frame narrative, i. e. the tea party, George concedes that magic must be real and at play, and that this story, which he then consciously recognizes as a story, can not be a classical murder mystery novel. Here is the thing: There is violence at play in Umineko Ep1, a lot of it, and they story tasks the player-reader with uncovering and understanding it; but, as I propose, the player-reader is not (entirely) supposed to solve the murders of the 4th and 5th of October 1986. The violence represented in the murder mystery genre is localized, individual; even in the most brutal crime novels, you have a couple dozen victims at best. When the seagulls cry (again), about 18-ish people lay dead in the embedded narrative. So far, this follows that general system of the murder mystery genre. But even with those 18-ish victims are difficult to fully keep apart; the murders happen in stages, people die in small numbers, one or only a handful at a time, and yet the player-reader has trouble following along. The fact that the number of victims alone is difficult to reconstruct points (intentionally, as I suppose in this reading) to the fact that the underlying violence of Umineko Ep1 cannot be represented in the murder mystery genre. Kinzo ascended to his position of head of the family, sole ruler of Rokkenjima, and multimillionaire by participating in imperialist-fascist projects. The estimated number of deaths associated with the Second Sino-Japanese war is around one order of magnitude larger than the number of words in the entirety of Umineko. In other words, listing but the name of every victim structurally connected with the historical violence in Ep1 would exceed the limits of the text itself. The logics of the traditional murder mystery genre (treating death and murder as localized and individual exceptions to a larger sense of peace and order) are fully incapable of adequately representing genocide, a mode of violence in which murder and death become collective, embedded, and structural.

Umineko Ep1 – and by my suggestion, all of Umineko – then becomes a tale of (meta)narrative violence, or how narratives can be mobilized in support and even creation of material, actualized violence. Multiple times, characters puppeteer the narrative of progress; Battler’s answer to the question how the murders might have happened if it were not for magic is to refer to technological progress. Multiple times, characters affirm the narrative that “modern times” are more logical, enlightened, progressed. All this they do while standing on a family fortune built on blood. It is the narrative of progress upon which the neoliberal ideology that builds up the family rests, an excuse, distraction, denial of the true origin of their status. Whereas Umineko’s Historical Beatrice, a woman harmed to no end by Kinzo, exists, the philosopher’s stone does not. The underlying implication of the epitaph is an alibi, a lie, a myth; Kinzo mobilizes the idea of the witch and magic to deny what he has truly done to acquire the gold. Maybe he has bought into his lies so much already that he has partially started to believe them himself.

The clues that the game lays out in the main menu might then be read as much more allegorical than to be taken at face value. The technical specifications of the Winchester M1894, like its fire rate and ammo capacity, might be less relevant to solving Umineko. It seems, at least to me so far, far more relevant to read the Winchester M1894 as a symbol for colonization and colonial inscription. In that, the detailed contents of the epitaph might become irrelevant to solving Umineko, and thus the epitaph has to be regarded as a clue in form of an analogy, an analogy for the lie of neoliberalism that anyone could gain fortune, an analogy for the nonsensical and empty narratives neoliberalism props up, an analogy for the Game Theory employed by capitalism. Perhaps the future episodes will reveal that trying to solve the epitaph at face value is a losing game. Indeed, maybe, its purpose is to create losers to its supposed game, because it might be this analogy for capitalism itself. As Jack Halberstam put it in 2011:

“Failure, of course, goes hand in hand with capitalism. A market economy must have winners and losers, gamblers and risk takers, con men and dupes; capitalism, as Scott Sandage argues in his book Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (2005), requires that everyone live in a system that equates success with profit and links failure to the inability to accumulate wealth even as profit for some means certain losses for others.” (p. 88)

In that sense, people losing to the epitaph is a necessary component to the money roulette as well as the demon’s roulette. I have no certain idea why Kinzo has put up the epitaph in the first place. Perhaps he genuinely believes he has cracked a dark magic code. Maybe he believes it. Maybe he does not. All I know for certain is that I will not solve the epitaph any time soon; perhaps that is the entire point of it, perhaps not.

Eternal Witch Beatrice claws her way out of (and then back into) several narratives, within the text and outside of it. She is vengeance personified, an answer for Beatrice Portinari and Umineko’s Historical Beatrice, women eternally entrapped in narratives created and maintained by men many times more powerful than them. Both Kinzo and Dante puppeteer their respective narratives of Beatrices to create and maintain their legacy. And in both instances, this violence repeats and echoes in recurrence. Violent systems of control are more likely to transform and stay nearly as violent than they are to dissolve. The Ushiromiya children repeat the sins of their parents, and their parents repeat the sins of their father. Like the musical format of the Rondo that one of the subtitles of Umineko mentions, this violence is going to be picked up again and again and again in future Episodes. Every time, it will be varied a little bit. Move back to the 3rd of October and change a couple of factors, and the violence that is the Ushiromiya family is likely to resurface again, just in a different iteration. No matter which iteration of chess moves one looks at, the players will likely aim to reduce the other’s material advantage and number of pieces; the Ushiromiyas are destined to destroy each other over and over and over again in the gamified violence of imperialist and colonial capitalism. This violence repeats synchronically and diachronically; who even needs a magical time loop when imperialism and the patriarchy and capitalism are so cyclical in nature?

Ultimately, though, I know that Umineko is a hopeful story. Ozaawa told me that the central sentence they see in Umineko is “without love, it cannot be seen”. I do not know the context in which this sentence appears, but there is a thematic equivalent in Ep1, namely, a challenge Kyrie places into the logics of Game Theory:

“Events in the world of humans are normally full of noise. Aren’t human emotions that way? Even if the exact same thing occurs more than once, there’s no guarantee that humans will always act in a predictable fashion.”

Whereas the world of witches – the realm of narratives and their powerful implications – operates on strange but fixed rules and semi-random but calculable probabilities, humans have the capacity to defy odds. Whereas it is likely that systems of violence permute throughout generations, there is always hope to be had that the human heart can ultimately defy these systems. The chance of breaking the cycle is always non-zero. That being explained, I love Eternal Witch Beatrice.[xxviii] Her struggle to defy all the narrative entanglements she was and is trapped in, her incredibly human feelings, her desire for autonomy and agency, are to me the core of the story, and what motivated me to write these thousands upon thousands of words.

5. On chess openings, or: What I still can’t explain

Here is the thing: All of this is a lot, many thousand words in fact, of speculation and half-baked theorizing. This is a reading, not the reading; I can’t even begin to fathom what this story is once the player-reader completes it. Even if I am to be right and the epitaph does not solve in a singular, meaningful, truthful way, there are still so many things I can not explain. Maybe I am completely wrong on many, if not all accounts. It would be awfully convenient for the lesbian that is bad at murder mysteries if solving Umineko under the classical logics of murder mysteries is intentionally impossible; perhaps I have misunderstood so much that I have deluded myself into thinking that such is a valid reading. I still hope this essay is an entertaining practice in trying to closely read Ep1 of Umineko without knowing all too much about the future episodes.

After finishing Ep1 for the first time, I formulated some questions I could not answer, but that I thought important to answer:

- What was the role of Rokkenjima between 1923 and 1945?

- What is the original contract made between Kinzo and Beatrice somewhere in this time? Does it even exist?

- What kind of interest can Beatrice collect on the gold when Kinzo got it from collaborating with imperialist fascism or even engaging in it?

I think they still hold value to ask, though some answers I have already partially established. And, I think this should be added:

- Why did Rudolf rightfully report in advance that he would die during the night?

- What is a witch?

And, this is still a burning question of mine: How did pochapal solve much of this story very early on? What the fuck is even going on?

6. Citations

Alighieri, D. (1996). Divine Comedy: Inferno (R. Turner, Trans.). Oxford UP. (Original work published around 1320).

Cornish, A. (2000). Angels. In R. Lansing (Ed.) Dante Encyclopedia (1st ed., pp. 37-45).

Halberstam, J. (2011). The Queer Art of Failure. Duke UP.

Howie, C. (2021). Bodies on Fire. In M. Gragnolati et al (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Dante (pp. 494–509). Oxford UP.

Kirkpatrick, R. (1990). Dante' s Beatrice and the Politics of Singularity. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 32(1), 101-119.

Lewis, R. W. B. (2001). Dante's Beatrice and the New Life of Poetry. New England Review 22(2), 69-80.

Lowe, D. (2016, April 17). The Rise and Unravelling of the Hachijo Royal Hotel. Ridgelineimages. https://ridgelineimages.com/haikyo/unravelling-of-the-hachijo-royal-hotel/.

Mazzotta, G. (2000). Alighieri, Dante. In R. Lansing (Ed.) Dante Encyclopedia (1st ed., pp. 15-20).

Schlingen, B. D. (2021). The East. In M. Gragnolati et al (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Dante (pp. 383–398). Oxford UP.

Singleton, C.S. (2019). Journey to Beatrice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP doi:10.1353/book.68489.

Waller, M. (2021). A Decolonial Feminist Dante: Imperial Historiography and Gender. In M. Gragnolati et al (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Dante (pp. 701–718). Oxford UP.

7. End notes

[i] Citation needed.

[ii] This overly detailed descriptions is not setting up a point I want to make way later, do not worry about it.

[iii] For anyone still confused, here is the dramatis personae broken down in non-linear order: Kinzo is the head of the family. Krauss is Kinzo’s eldest child, Krauss’ wife is Natsuhi, and their one child together is the teenager Jessica. Eva is Kinzo’s second child, she married Hideyoshi, and they had one son, George, a young adult, together. Rudolf is Kinzo’s third child, he had a son named Battler, 18 years old, and later married Kyrie, his former secretary. Kinzo’s youngest child is Rosa, her child with an unknown person is the nine-year old Maria. The servants are Genji, trusted head servant, Godha, renowned cook and newest member of the servants, Kumasawa, an old woman and long-time servant at the household, Kanon, barely a child, and Sayo, another very young servant. Doctor Nanjo hangs out on the island as well.

[iv] This overly detailed descriptions is not setting up a point I want to make way later, do not worry about it.

[v] This overly detailed descriptions is not setting up a point I want to make way later, do not worry about it.

[vi] Death count: 6.

[vii] Death count: 8.

[viii] Death count: 9.

[ix] Death count: 10.

[x] Death count: 13.

[xi] Death count: 14.

[xii] Death count: Everyone? 14-18?

[xiii] This overly detailed descriptions is not setting up a point I want to make way later, do not worry about it.

[xiv] Death count: Who knows.

[xv] Slight hyperbole.

[xvi] Which in Battler’s internal monologue narration gets placed as follows: “The Great Kanto Earthquake happened in Taisho 13 (1924) [...]”. Now, Taishō 13 is 1924, that much is correct, but the one major earthquake of the era I could identify is firmly located in September 1923, indeed being called the Great Kantō earthquake in many sources. This could mean several things; perhaps I am bad at research, perhaps the translation made a mistake somehow, perhaps it took Kinzo a year to assume the position of the head of the family after the earthquake, or maybe this is intentional by the author to make the reader question Battler’s authority in narrating the past.

[xvii] Frankly I forgot which one. Sorry :(

[xviii] The well-read observer might now think “Kassandra how the fuck did you instantly remember Virgil as a character of the Divine Comedy but not Beatrice”, to which I would like to respond with one of Patrick Star’s most famous aphorisms: The inner machinations of my mind are indeed an enigma.

[xix] “Literary canon”, not to be confused with “literary Kanon”.

[xx] “Western church canon”, not to be confused with “western church Kanon”.

[xxi] I personally remember reading Dan Brown‘s Inferno as a teenager, where in typical Dan Brown fashion, the woman becomes an object to be taken by the wisdom of the middle-aged academic white man; and I am pretty certain the idea of her being “a Beatrice” runs throughout the text as much as allusions to Dante and his work.

[xxii] “Straight stairs”, not be confused with “gay stares”, which is what I do whenever Eternal Witch Beatrice is onscreen.

[xxiii] Eva got killed by the stake of Asmodeous, who stands for lust. The last time Eva is seen alive is when she is very very horny towards Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi, a capitalist invested in the food distribution business, is killed by the stake of Beelzebub, the demon responsible for gluttony. Kinzo, the ultrarich capitalist, is killed by the stake of Mammon, the demon of greed. Kanon dies wrathful, lashing out at the darkness, and is killed by the stake of Satan, demon of wrath. Genji, proud of his servant role and the trust Kinzo places in him, is killed by the stake of Lucifer, demon of pride. Doctor Nanjo, a man who reacted to all the death and blood around him by freezing in place and barely reacting at all, is killed by the stake of Belphegor, who stands for sloth. Kumasawa dies by the stake of Leviathan, who stands for envy – I am unable to fully decipher that one. Maybe she felt excessive envy for the safety that those who were barricaded in the study found themselves in.

[xxiv] You might be wondering why I am using one translation while using another translation’s commentary to analyze the quote. The answer is simple; I liked the one translation more from its poetic execution.

[xxv] The butterfly as a symbol for Eternal Witch Beatrice also takes on another role; I cannot quote this enough, as stated by Ozaawa 2023: “Beato trans.”

[xxvi] This is so tangential I dare not even put it in the main text, but Dante’s fascination with the Roman empire might tie back into his political support of the Holy Roman empire and the figure of the Holy Roman emperor, a political entity that claimed to be a direct heir to the Roman empire. The imperial symbol of the Holy Roman empire and emperors is the two-headed, two-winged eagle. In my deliberations on the symbolic implications on the One-Winged (and one-headed) Eagle, I have yet to resolve a direct connection to any real world symbol, and the Holy Roman empire is the closest node of possible connection my brain can come up with. However, I assume that it is completely unrelated.

[xxvii] Failing spectacularly is kind of Battler’s entire modus operandi, if you think about it.

[xxviii] And not just because its t4t. But also because it is t4t.

#kassandra plays umineko #umineko spoilers #umineko #I appreciate all the kind words in the comments and reblogs and DMs :) thank you all

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jewishcissiekj · 4 months

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For anyone looking to read/watch/listen to everything Asajj, I wanted to post my checklist for both Legends and Canon Asajj and tag them properly for convenience

Canon Asajj checklist -Dooku: Jedi Lost (Audio Drama) -Jedi of the Republic – Mace Windu #5 (Comic) -Brotherhood (Novel) -Hyperspace Stories #5 -Star Wars Adventures: The Clone Wars – Battle Tales #2 (Comic) -The Clone Wars S1 E16 (TV) -The Clone Wars (Movie, Novel) -The Clone Wars S1 E1 (TV) -Sharing the Same Face (short story, The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark) -The Clone Wars S1 E5 (TV) -The Clone Wars S1 E9 (TV) -Worthless (short story, Stories of Jedi and Sith) -The Clone Wars S3 E2 (TV) -Tales of Villainy: Give & Take (short comic story, Star Wars Adventures (2020) #12) -The Clone Wars S3 E12-14 (TV) -The Clone Wars S4 E19-20 (TV) -The Lost Nightsister (short story, The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark) -The Clone Wars S4 E21-22 (TV) -Dark Vengeance: The True Story of Darth Maul and His Revenge Against the Jedi Known as Obi-Wan Kenobi (short story, The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark) -Sisters (short comic story, Age of Republic Special #1) -The Clone Wars S5 E19-20 (TV) -Kindred Spirits (short story, Star Wars Insider #159) -Dark Disciple (Novel) -The Bad Batch S3 E 9 (TV) -Star Wars Adventures: Return to Vader's Castle #1 (Comic) -Star Wars Adventures: Return to Vader's Castle #3 (Comic) -Star Wars Adventures: Return to Vader's Castle #5 (Comic) -Obi-Wan #4 (Comic) -Star Wars (2015) #47 (Comic, only depicted on playing card) -Star Wars Adventures Ashcan (Comic) -Halcyon Legacy #1 (Comic) -Halcyon Legacy #3 (Comic)

Legends Asajj Checklist -Restraint (short story) -Star Wars: Clone Wars chapters 6-7 (TV) -Star Wars: Republic #51-52 (Comic) -Jedi: Mace Windu #1 (Comic) -Star Wars: Republic #53 (Comic) -Rogue's Gallery (short comic story, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures Volume 3) -Dark Heart (short story) -Star Wars: Clone Wars chapters 11-19 (TV) -The Cestus Deception (Novel) -Star Wars: Republic #58-60 (Comic) -Star Wars: Republic #64 (Comic) -Jedi Trial (Novel) -Yoda: Dark Rendezvous (Novel) -Star Wars: Republic #69-71 (Comic) -The Clone Wars: Shadowed (Webcomic) -The Clone Wars S1 E16 (TV) -The Clone Wars (Movie, Novel) -The Clone Wars: Prelude (Webcomic) -The Clone Wars S1 E1 (TV) -The Clone Wars: Shipyards of Doom (Graphic Novel) -The Clone Wars: Secret Missions 2: Curse of the Black Hole Pirates (Junior Novel) -The Clone Wars: Secret Missions 3: Duel at Shattered Rock (Junior Novel) -The Clone Wars: Secret Missions 4: Guardians of the Chiss Key (Junior Novel) -The Clone Wars: The Fall of Falleen (Webcomic) -The Clone Wars S1 E5 (TV) -The Clone Wars: Crash Course (Graphic Novel) -The Clone Wars #7-9 (Comic) -The Clone Wars S1 E9 (TV) -The Clone Wars: The Valsedian Operation (Webcomic) -The Clone Wars #11-12 (Comic) -Keep the Faith (short comic story) -In the Air (short comic story) -The Clone Wars S3 E2 (TV) -Hunted (short comic story) -Fashion (short comic story) -The Only Good Clanker (short comic story) -Under The Hammer (short comic story) -The Clone Wars S3 E12-14 (TV) -The Clone Wars #5-6 (Comic, retconned) -The Clone Wars S4 E19-22 (TV) -The Clone Wars: The Sith Hunters (Graphic Novel) -The Clone Wars S5 E19-20 (TV) -Star Wars: Obsession #1-5 (Comic)

And a guide: -In no way these are my recommendations, I actually unrecommend a certain book here, my recommendations list can be found here. this one is the Wookiepedia list just less confusing (I hope) -She isn't a main character in all of these. At all. And some are just cameos, I didn't get into specifics about that. -Most of the canon books & short stories can be found in e-book/digital form, or in physical copies pretty easily, just look them up. -The same thing that goes for the canon books goes for the canon comics, although most of the issues listed are part of a series (as might be evident by their numbers). That doesn't mean you need to read the rest, because they're pretty stand-alone and usually just reference the other issues of the series/have a framing story related to that. -I'm not sure where you can find the Star Wars Insider issue or the Adventures Ashcan, sorry about that. -The Legends list is much more complicated than canon, since anything related to The Clone Wars series may contradict the prior Legends media. That's why I marked those in bold, as they are only officially part of that timeline, and don't make much sense with the rest of it (most of it, other than the actual episodes, were mostly de-canonized when Disney bought Star Wars with the rest of Legends). -There are ofc the original printings of those, but I also I believe most of the Legends books listed were reprinted as a part of the Legends brand, but if they weren't then idk what to tell you. -The Legends comics were also reprinted, mostly in big, pretty expensive collections. So it might be harder to buy those. I think there are digital copies of those collections, though, so you can buy them for cheaper that way. -The Clone Wars webcomics can be found here , through @clonewarsarchives (a great resource overall) -The short TCW stories (in bold under short comic story) can all be found here (once again through clone wars archives) -The Restraint short story can't be found anywhere I looked, only in the 2nd printing of Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter. One of 2 things on the Legends list I've yet to read. -The Dark Heart short story was originally published online, so it's here legally (link straight from Wookiepedia I sure hope it's legal). -I have no idea how to get to the Graphic Novels normally but I trust they're on eBay and co. -I've only talked about legal options but obviously, there's more. Act with discretion and I'm not posting links like that here. I might be able to help more through DMs but you know.

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balsamfir-fics · 2 years

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a hope at risk (prelude)

Genres: angst, 99% canon (eps 6-9), more angst, eventual smut, established childhood crushes to strangers to lovers, post-pining, becoming machine herald (sort of)

Pairing: Viktor/Female Reader

Warnings: series will have eventual smut. none in this preview.

Summary: For nearly two decades after you waltzed out of Viktor's life as the childhood friend who broke his heart, he hoped to forget you. Now that you're back, firmly settled in his life and his arms, he wants nothing more than to live, to love, to dream. With a terminal diagnosis you've yet to learn about in a city waiting to erupt into war, however, Viktor realizes this is a fight for survival against all odds.But he can't lose you again. He won't. He hopes.

Chapters: Prelude | Part 1 | Part 2 [M] | Part 3 | Part 4 [FINAL]

Chapter Word Count: ~2k

Author Notes: Unedited. Sequel to a hope never forgotten. This work can be read independently of its predecessor – though reading that first will more thoroughly contextualize Viktor and YN’s relationship. Prequel summarized below for those who don’t have time to read it!

Prequel summary: If you are reading this without having seen the previous work, this is the debrief: YN is Heimerdinger’s adopted daughter; YN and Viktor are childhood friends who grew up together between the ages of 10-16 and separated at 16 immediately after an unspoken confession of love. The uncertainty and cowardice of youth prevent YN from keeping contact until twelve years pass. Over the next five years the two keep orbiting each other, gravity pulling them closer, until Viktor’s hospital stint as per Episode 5 forces YN to reckon with their lifetime of love. The end of A Hope Never Forgotten sees Viktor’s seventeen-year-long hope and longing fulfilled.

A Hope Never Forgotten follows Arcane canon up to Episode 5; this work will follow Arcane canon until the end of all currently available content (Episode 9). This piece borrows themes from prior League of Legends lore, but following the events of Episode 9 it will become an imagined ‘what comes next’ as we wait for the events of Season 2.

The prior work deals primarily with holding onto hope; this one deals with themes of loss and survival. Both are about decisions made and avoided.

It is a strange thing, Viktor thinks, to graduate from Have-Not to Have – to cross from the fields of the Hopeful into the lands of the Fulfilled.

To have hope was to face forward, gazing wistfully into the future with hands clasped and breath bated. Hope was fickle, but familiar; science relied heavily on hope, though science preferred the term ‘hypothesis’ to hide wishfulness behind empirics. Viktor was no stranger to work that was fueled by something so equally powerful and fragile; he toiled at the chalkboard in the hope that discovery might come to him, and he long ago conspired with a disgraced young scholar in the hope that magic could be effectively controlled. And if not for work, then Viktor still considered himself intimately acquainted with hope. Against his best efforts, it continued to return to him on lonely nights or during awkward reunions. For seventeen years he danced with hope, losing it only to find it again, and finally – finally! – he was rewarded for maintaining it when you stopped running from him and admitted your love. You were now his, and he was yours, a joining that was long overdue. Viktor was given the love his soul craved for so long. He became a Have.

He should be happy now. He should be wrapped up in blissful communion, eyes towards you and focused on little else than the triumph of a love re-established. But while being on this side of hope surpasses his every expectation and brings him joys he thought he would never have, it simultaneously eats away at him, unearthing insecurities that only the Haves can experience.

Those with something to lose live every day trying to prevent loss. In the dead of the night, you sleep soundly next to him, cuddled around his seated form. You are delightfully unaware that he is not, in fact, in dreamland with you. Your warmth transfers to his skin, but it’s only where you make contact that he feels remotely comfortable. Everywhere else, he is icy, fading, creeping ever-so-steadily towards the end of his existence. The chill of his apartment engulfs him as he muffles another cough into one of his many on-standby handkerchiefs, and his gaze flickers towards you as you stir and mumble something incoherent. You don’t rouse – good. Viktor prefers to have as few witnesses to his deterioration as possible, and especially avoids allowing you to lay eyes on any evidence of his failing lungs.

You still think he’s having a slow recovery from his bout in the hospital; Viktor still hasn’t found an acceptable way to tell you that his days are numbered. Everyone else knows his secret, and everyone else knows you’ve yet to find out (Heimerdinger has already warned Viktor that he’s quickly losing the ability to spend the rest of his life living honestly). Jayce looks like he’s about to let the secret out every time he sees you – only Viktor’s measured glare (or plea of desperation) keeps Jayce’ lips tight.

It’s stupid, Viktor knows, but he had never intended to tell you in the first place. Never in his wildest dreams did he think you’d end up not only in his bed but in his heart, firmly embedded in his life and not running away from him. He thought you would leave after his many efforts to push you away in the weeks following his hospital stay, and that he’d fade from your life by becoming a memory of a happier childhood, never again to resurface. It had seemed kinder to leave his prognosis quiet when you had made it painfully clear over the past seventeen years that some secrets were near impossible to share with each other.

Viktor became a Have mere weeks ago, not a fortnight after receiving his death sentence, when he learned the truth of your feelings and the love you never lost for him. Your admission had never been part of the plan; he was supposed to die in much the same fashion as he’d lived his life after you left in your youth: he should have been a forgotten part of your periphery, not a central component of your life. He wasn’t supposed to find out you loved him. You weren’t supposed to find out he still loved you. He should have been allowed to die alone, unaware that his hope had been correctly placed and that his life of longing would smile upon him. And yet – he was happy not to die a martyr for love, happy to give up his less-than-blissful ignorance of your true feelings. He sighs to himself in the dark, rounding his shoulders as he tucks the blankets around him tighter. It was much easier to justify keeping secrets when you were hiding from him as well– when he thought his affection was unreturned. But now? With your heart in his hands and his in yours? How can he reveal the cruelty of fate when he knows he cannot bear to see the distress on your face? Viktor twists to reach for you now, brushing an errant strand of hair from your forehead. His heart seizes as you unconsciously nestle into his touch, wanting more warmth from his fingers even in your sleep.

The terminal fate he had resigned himself to burns in his mind. He was weeks away from his final breath and ready to walk towards the final door. But now? Viktor shifts in his seat, scuttling himself back down into bed and tucking the blanket around you. His thumbs brush against the rise of your cheekbones as he marvels in your subconscious reactions. His hair falls to his pillow in a million different directions, but he doesn’t care; he merely reaches up to brush his locks from his eyes so he can continue to view you unobstructed. You exhale, shiver, and roll closer into his side. His heart seizes and clarity strikes.

Now, he wants to live. Now, he wants to borrow time, if only to make up for so much of it that was lost before you told him of your love. He is angry – at you, for withholding crucial knowledge; at his lungs, for failing him; at Piltover, for leaving the undercity’s health unconsidered – but most importantly, he is angry with the stars for placing him in an unmaneuverable position.

There is no way out. He has to tell you eventually; he will die, soon.

His shoulders shake as he feels a cough coming on; he twists himself—painfully—and grapples for another handkerchief from the nightstand. Everything hurts: his throat is raw from sputum, his ribcage aches from the exertion of each hacking breath, and even his arms protest as strength leaves them. But when you curl around him, shifting closer and molding your skin to his back, he feels none of the pain. He wipes at the side of his mouth, squinting in the darkness to ensure that the handkerchief caught every drop of blood.

Then he turns back to you, leaning slightly over you with one arm propped on his elbow. Viktor presses his lips to your forehead, his ministrations imbued with the gentle whisper of his affection. Your throat makes a contented noise that fills Viktor’s overworked heart, and he allows himself another kiss before he slips out of bed to hide the soiled handkerchieves at the bottom of his hamper. He’s not ready to return back to bed, though every cell of his body screams to be wrapped up in your embrace. So he tenderly limps into the kitchen instead, deducing that a spot of warm chamomile might help quiet his thoughts or at least help him move past them. Water begins to boil in a pot on the stovetop; this avoids the scream of his kettle, and completely subverts the risk of you waking.

Tired elbows keep him stable as he sits on the other side of the counter, watching the steam rise from the pot as the water bubbles. Only the stove lights are on; the dim yellow glow warms him just as much as the water vapor, and allows him the space to assemble his mind. He shifts back in his seat, the movement making the light bounce against something on the counter. His eyes drift toward the glint, and he recognizes a stack of your stationery at once, haphazardly nestled in a box of your writing supplies. On the stove, water gurgles to signify its readiness.

Viktor puts the notepad on hold as he gets up to prepare himself a steaming mug, but returns to his seat quickly and lifts a sheet from the stack. Steam rises from the mug, long yellow rays of light catching the wisps. Long fingers rummage for a writing utensil in the box; Viktor finds one, takes a sip from his cup, and places the nib on the page.

There’s so much I want to tell you, my Sparrow, he writes. So much left unsaid. He pauses, blows on his tea, and waits before taking another sip. I’m so scared. Now that I Have, I only find myself briefly at peace. You are in my heart, against all odds, despite all the secrets you tried not to reveal. But now that you are mine, I fear loss. When I had nothing to lose, it had been so easy to accept my lack of future. It wasn’t the least bit frightening. But with you in my arms and wishes granted, I have become supremely aware of how all this will be taken away. Viktor lifts the end of the utensil to his lips, biting the tip as he searches for the words to express all he feels. The pen drifts back towards the page, but he stops here, not able to find the words that will allow him to continue. He stands, finishing the rest of his tea as he leans his hip against the counter for support, then he places the dish in the sink. The unfinished letter is folded away and walked over to his bookcase, where Viktor tucks it away in one of his old journals.

Tomorrow, perhaps, he’ll sit you down and tell you he has to leave soon. But tonight, he elects to return to the bedroom and slide back under the covers. Tonight, Viktor wraps his arms around you as you sleepily burble beneath his chin. He smiles at the ridiculous noise, tucks you into his frame, and closes his eyes.

Tonight, he indulges in being alive.

#viktor arcane #viktor x reader #viktor x you #viktor arcane fanfiction #viktor arcane smut #viktor smut #viktor fluff #viktor fanfiction #viktor arcane fluff

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kurlyfrasier · 2 years

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The Mand’alor’Kar’ta Masterlist

Click here to get back to perusing my other fics!

The Mand’alor’Kar’ta: Prelude to Beskar Kisses & Bleeding Heart

~ Synopsis: According to legend, the Mand’alor’s other half was the only one who could make their heart beat again after taking possession of the darksaber, which keeps the Mand’alor alive until their other half is found. OR: The day Din found Reader and how Reader ended up in his employ.

Beskar Kisses was written first. The series consists of cute keldabe kiss moments (one-shots) between Din and Reader. Written in Reader’s POV. (complete)

The Bleeding Heart series consists of side story one-shots that happen throughout Beskar Kisses in Din’s POV. (updates likely to be infrequent. So if you would like to be tagged, let me know!)

Below is the storyline in chronological order:

Bleeding Heart: Necessities

Bleeding Heart: Spice, and Death is Nice

Bleeding Heart: In and Out

Beskar Kisses & Bonfires

Bleeding Heart: The First Time

Bleeding Heart: A Chronologue ~ Part 1, Part 2

Beskar Kisses & Grime

Beskar Kisses & Strangers

Bleeding Heart: Slip of the Tongue

Beskar Kisses & Firefly Wishes

Beskar Kisses & The Teacher

Beskar Kisses & Death

Beskar Kisses & Target Practice

Beskar Kisses & Someday

Beskar Kisses & Stories

Beskar Kisses & Home

TAGLIST: @againstacecilia @djarinslove @bxmxtx @takeyour-pants-off

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tincanaudio · 1 year

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Today is Bandcamp Friday! For the next 24 hours, Bandcamp are waiving their cut of sales, making it the best time to support the creators you love by buying their music & their merch.

We're splitting any sales made today between Gendered Intelligence, a trans-led grassroots organisation in the UK that works to increase education and understanding of trans people, and Small Trans Library Glasgow, a mutual aid organisation that also functions as a small lending library of trans-authored books for trans people in Glasgow.

Below the line are some recommendations on what you can find on our Bandcamp site.

First up, we have our latest release: Anamnesis: An Audio Drama

An experimental microfiction audio drama about memory, identity, and mistakes. Adapted from the solo journalling game Anamnesis by @GoblinMixtape.

Second, we have multiple releases for our ongoing audio drama concept album, The Tower, including ad-free versions of Parts 1-3, full series soundtracks, lo-fi remixes and extra music.

We also have our delightful fantasy comedy series The Dungeon Economic Model and its soundtrack (and more lofi remixes!)

If you're a fan of shows such as Quid Pro Euro and Stellar Firma (the latter of which I worked on and very much inspired the sound design for DEM) we think you'll definitely enjoy this educational series about maximising your profits by moving your town to a Dungeon-based economy.

Finally, and this is a personal choice more than anything, we have our entry into the 'OST Composing Jam: Crunchtime' called Valley & Mountain.

This release is a soundtrack to an imaginary game, made in 48 hours live on Twitch and inspired by the music of Stardew Valley, Dark Cloud, Minecraft and the Legend of Zelda series.

It's one of my favourite things that I've made.

#bandcamp friday #bandcamp #audio drama #soundtrack #music #the tower podcast #the dungeon economic model #stellar firma #quid pro euro #anamnesis #Bandcamp

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the-lumiose-goodies · 3 months

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horde-of-lus An oddly colored riolu appears in front of the meowstic, she juggles her head around in her paws before putting it back on her shoulders

Hello! Word on the street is someone named Renée is running for mayor. What are your thoughts on that??

Our current mayor's very corrupt. Like totally. And I understand her why she wants to run for it. To stop his madness.

As about mayor:

Yea, I 'unno about it, it's like they're responsible for the city, I think however, they don't have like much power here, conseil is also responsible for the changes. But the current one sees them as his puppets, so Renée wants to end the puppetry itself.

Ask hints has been updated.

[ @horde-of-lus / @ask-team-misfit ]

#answered #joëllemeowstic #renéeluxray #liefsimbobeon #coilailpeblaceriolu #pokemon #pokeask #/ an update during the break from prompts #part 1: the legend's prelude

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burstfoot · 7 months

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Figured I'd make a post outlining Arknights' auxiliary material for those who want to see more of the universe and aren't aware of all that's out there! ANIMATION Arknights Prelude To Dawn (S1) and Perish in Frost (S2, currently airing): [Crunchyroll]

A straight up adapation of the main story, up through Chapter 0 to Chapter 6! It's much more fast-paced than the story, so I wouldn't use it to replace actually reading it, but it's very cool to see some of these scenes in full animation. Lee's Detective Agency: (Youtube)

A mini-series animated in a chibi-style with a comedic tone focused on the adventures of the Kuroblood-illustrated Lee's Detective Agency! Distributed by Crunchyroll globally, but entirely free to watch.

Closure's Secret Files: (Youtube)

A cut-out styled series of shorts hosted by Closure which outlines a lot of the game's basic mechanics!

Holy Knight Light: [Youtube]

A short Youtube OVA focusing around Penguin Logistics delivering a package, celebrating Arknights' first anniversary!

[Upcoming]: Kay's Daily Doodles: (Twitter Annoucement)

Another free youtube mini-series that starts airing December 1st, focused around Ceobe! Here's some additional animations! Each event usually also has a 15 second 2D animated preview of the event, but there's so many of those that I can't list them all. Official Anniversary Event 3D Animations: Lone Trail Where Vernal Winds Will Never Blow Il Siracusano Ideal City Stultifera Navis Invitation To Wine Near Light Dossoles Holiday Under Tides Bonus 3D Animated Shorts: Legend of Chongyue Arknights Special - IL Siracusano Lo Scontro Youtube Shorts: Ch'en and Lin's Watermelon Splitting Game Part 1 Ch'en and Lin's Watermelon Splitting Game Part 2 Amiya's Siracusan Food Guide Part 1 Amiya's Siracusano Food Guide Part 2

Comics, Manga, Manhua

Officially Translated Rhodes Island's Records of Originium: Rhine Lab: (Offical Website)

A canon manhua centered around the circumstances that lead to Silence falling out with Saria and joining Rhodes Island with Ifrit, as well as Ifrit's attempt to save a dying infected stowaway on the landship. Essential reading for understanding the Rhine Lab storyline and characters - read it right after Mansfield! One of the characters, Darya, is mentioned in both Ifrit's module and briefly in Lone Trail.

Rhodes Island's Records of Originium: Blacksteel: (Official Source)

Rhodes Kitchen -TIDBITS-: (Official Source)

An anthology story related to the cuisine that's important to a variety of operators. While it might seem unassuming, the art is gorgeous and it's really well-written. I particularly recommend the Goldenglow (Chapter 4) and Rosa (Chapter 5) chapters.

Unofficially Translated

Arknights Comic Anthology: (Mangadex)

As the title says, a series of non-canon anthology stories regarding the cast of Rhodes' Island! Note that the link provided only has complete translations up to Volume 4 (and Vol. 4 is missing Ch. 7), and most of the chapters avaliable after that point were MTL'd, so I can't vouch for their accuracy. Chapters I'd recommend are: Volume 1: Chapter 12 (focused on Myrrh trying to improve her medicine), Chapter 14 (focused on Saria and Silence trying to put apart their differences to take Ifrit on vacation, afaik the only place where they are directly referred to as her "moms") Volume 2: Chapter 1 (Manticore tries to make friends), Chapter 3 (The LGD gets drunk), Chapter 11 (Texlapp and Mosexu yuribait), Ch. 13 (Magallan tries to find a pet), Chapter 16 (Ethan spies on the interior lives of Rhodes operators) Volume 3: Chapter 6 (Snowsant, Ifrit, Nian and Shaw are forced to make friends), Chapter 7 (Gummy flashes back to Chernobog), Chapter 10 (FEater and Shaw yuribait), Chapter 13 (Blackout on the landship, as well as Ayerscarpe and Leonhardt yaoibait)

Volume 4: Chapter 4 (Thorns tries to make friends with Weedy [this one is my favourite]), Chapter 6 (Tomimi tail spankings), Chapter 9 (Elysium helps Frostleaf get along with Dur-Nar) Volume 6: Ch. 1 (Whisperain opens up to others) [this one isn't MTL'd afaik]

123 Rhodes Island: (Mangadex)

A series of non-canon gag 4komas! Many of the games' offical stickers are done in this series' art style.

Arknights: Operators!: (Mangadex)

A compilation of 4komas posted on the official ArknightsJP twitter account! Thank you to @sleepywoodscans for their work on translating these, please show them some love!!

[Edit: For clarities sake, the only stuff here that has used MTL is later chapters of the Comic Anthology! Sleepywoodscans’ work on Operators! is all done by hand (they’re a native Japanese speaker). Again, I really appreciate their work!]

Arknights: A1 Operations Preparation Detachment: (Mangadex)

Part of the Terra Historicus website and not yet officially translated, focusing on Fang, Kroos and Beagle, and a catastrophe striking the Columbian city of Tkaronto. Unfortunately, only translated up to Chapter 6, but one of the characters (Elba) has a brief cameo in Light Sparks in Darkness! Edit: Chapter 7 has been translated by @pooce-art, and they're working on Chapter 8!

Angelina: Sketches of THIS Messenger's Journey: (Mangadex)

Also published as part of the Terra Historicus website and not yet officially translated, focuses on the adventures of Angelina travelling across Terra as a Messenger! Recent chapters relate to the upcoming Sami event & IS4, as well as the upcoming So Long, Adele.

Prelude Suite: Unrestrained Play: (Wiki)

Unfortunately, I can't find a full translation for this one - an epilogue to Hortus De Esscapismo focusing on Arturia's background. Of course, major spoilers for Hortus apply - if you can find a full translation yourself.

As well, an upcoming manhua focused on the Break the Ice cast was annouced during the 4.5 Anniversary stream. As far as I'm aware, chapters have not begun releasing yet!

Other:

Arknights Ambience Synesthesia: (Youtube)

youtube

A series of concerts (3 so far), focusing around Arknights' music! A live performance has been done every year, with skins released in-game for the concert's theme & 3D animations produced featuring the skin's cast in 2022 and 2023.

Monster Siren Records: (Spotify) (Official Website)

Arknights' official (and-in-universe) record label publishing game OSTs, themes for almost every 6 star operator that releases, and occasional bonus songs.

Arknights: Endfield: (Twitter)

An upcoming 3D action gacha game from Hypergryph, set in the far future of Arknights' universe on another planet. Currently in closed beta testing for their CN servers!

Arknights: Nomad City: The Founders: (Youtube)

A to-be-released CN Arknights board game! Unclear of if it will ever be translated or released globally, unfortunately...

Terra: A Journey: (Wiki)

An upcoming CN lore book focused on the intricate details of Terra's worldbuilding. As well, unclear if it will be translated or released globally.

UNOFFICIAL:

Some fandom-developed tools that might be of use to you are the Arknights Terra Wiki - which just transferred from FANDOM to wiki.gg, and has very detailed information on both game mechanics and world-lore.

As well, the Arknights Story Reader can help you catch up on stuff you don't want to or can't read in game!

Conclusion:

Thank you for reading! I hope this provided some new information to you or at least provides an easy reference resource in the future. There's a lot to check out even outside of the game, and I hope you find some stuff you enjoy!

#arknights #ohhhh my god this took way longer to write than expected #dont want to reblog beg but they would be greatly appreciated!#take care with the mangadex & non-offical links #I can't guarantee their safety #i could've sworn who is real had a 3d trailer but it mightve been an ambience synthesia vid

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dandelionfairywish · 1 year

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monster Squad

Everything monsters

1 .viki dramas and movies

2. Netflix original dramas and movies

3. viki take of dramas and movie sometimes without warning and you might not see them depending on where you live so enjoy while you can and I'm going to keep them on the list if they do get removie because sometimes they put them back on.

My Love from the Star.

Blood

Tale of the Nine-Tailed

Orange Marmalade

I Cannot Hug You

Zombie Detective

Love Between Fairy and Devil

Doom at Your Service

Happiness

Kiss Goblin

Kissable Lips

The Sweet Blood

My Amazing Boyfriend My Amazing Boyfriend Season 2 Rattan Ghost Doctor Oh My Ghost Bring It On, Ghost The Legend of the Blue Sea 49 Days With a Merman The Witch's Diner The Master's Sun Witch's Love

Sell Your Haunted House

The Witch Store

The Witch Store Reopening

Mirror of the Witch

My Chilling Roommate

The Untamed

Goblin

Hotel del Luna

Ashes of Love

Wu Xin: The Monster Killer

Eternal Love

Ancient Love Poetry

The Blue Whisper

My Girlfriend Is an Alien

My Girlfriend Is an Alien Season 2

Meant to Be

Angel's Last Mission: Love

Bride of the Century

From Now On, Showtime!

The Great Shaman Ga Doo Shim

Half Bright and Half Rain

The Bride of Habaek

The Psychic Duo

Hi! School - Love On

Moonshine and Valentine

The Legends

Lovely Horribly

Missing: The Other Side

Black Knight: The Man Who Guards Me

Love and Destiny

Miss the Dragon

Scripting Your Destiny

My Dear Brothers

Lovers of the Red Sky

Legend of Fu Yao

Immortal Samsara

Phantom School

Aono-kun ni Sawaritai kara Shinitai

Nana's Game

Romantic Warriors

Eien no Kinou

The Silence of the Monster

The Fox Fairy

My Fantastic Mrs Right

I'm a Pet At Dali Temple

Be My Cat

My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho

My Husky Boyfriend

Meow, the Secret Boy

My Roommate Is a Gumiho

Legend of Nine Tails Fox

The Legend of White Snake

Fox in the Screen

Kokdu: Season of Deity

Three-Body

76 Horror Bookstore

Twelve Legends

The Investiture of the Gods

The Great Ruler

Mirror: A Tale of Twin Cities

Novoland: Pearl Eclipse

Ice Fantasy

Ms. Cupid in Love

Love and Redemption

Ever Night

Ever Night Season 2

The Ghost Bride

A Korean Odyssey

The Uncanny Counter

The Uncanny Counter Season 2

Mystic Pop-Up Bar

The Devil Punisher

School Tales the Series

Sweet Home

All of Us Are Dead

Kingdom

Alchemy of Souls

Alchemy of Souls Season 2: Light and Shadow

Arthdal Chronicles Part 1: The Children of Prophecy

Arthdal Chronicles Part 2: The Sky Turning Inside Out, Rising Land

Arthdal Chronicles Part 3: The Prelude to All Legends

The Starry Love

Warm on a Cold Night

Deep Sea Mutant Snake

Golden Spider City

Immortal Vampire

The Starry Night, the Starry Sea

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kettouryuujin · 2 years

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About Me/Writing Masterpost

Goes by: KettouRyuujin, Kett, Kettou

Age: No offense, but I don't feel like sharing that.

Timezone: EST

Likes: Species transformation, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Tokusatsu, Pokemon, fantasy/sci-fi, strategy games, board games, TFTG (transformation with genderbending), making people laugh and/or smile.

Dislikes: Angst for the sake of Angst, bad endings, drama for the sake of drama, sitcoms, non-canon ships (with rare exceptions), transformations that only change skin color or keep one too close to their original species (without good reason), making people upset.

Points of Note:

Not Neurotypicial. Has issues with anxiety, social protocols, and attention span.

I do have Strong Opinions on certain things, but that's why I made that Unpopular Opinions blog - so I had a place to drop my thoughts without forcing my followers to listen.

If I mess up or offend you - Please let me know what I've done, ideally politely. That way I can correct the matter as soon as possible.

(Writing Masterpost is under the break)

If you're curious about any of these, feel free to send me an ask. This list is for Tumblr posts only. I post more polished versions of a lot of these on my Ao3.

Pokemon Legends Arceus: Mysterious Destiny

Original Idea Post

Chapter 1: A Mysterious Prelude (Old)

Chapter 2: The Problem at Hand (or Paw, or Claw)

Chapter 3: Hi-Ho, to the Dungeons We Go!

Chapter 4: Sentinel of the Fieldlands: Lian

Chapter 5: Past and Future about Discussions - Wait. Strike that. Reverse it.

Chapter 6: Axe Balm. Apply Directly to the Forehead.

Chapter 7: Information and Realization

Chapter 8: What'll Ya Have, What'll Ya Have?

Chapter 9: Psychic of the Icelands, Sabi

Chapter 10: A Whirlwind Aroma!

Chapter 11: In Which Pieces Come Together

Chapter 12: Technically a Trial

Chapter 13: Toller of the Mirelands - Arezu

Chapter 14: Buffering...

Chapter 15: Dance of the Bell

Chapter 16: So You Wanna See an Evolution Party? (V1) (V2)

Nobility AU

Original Idea Post

Jade’s Rites/Trials HC

Phase 1 (Wardens->Nobles)

Wyrdeer's Trial of the Hills

Kleavor's Trial of the Woods

Ursaluna's Rite of the Moon

Lilligant's (Dance/)Rite of the Sun

Basculegion's Rite of the Waves

Arcanine's Trial of the Isles

Sneasler's Trial of the Cliffs

Electrode's Rite of the Hollow

Braviary's Trial of the Skies

Avalugg's Rite of the Tundra

Phase 2 (???)

Nobles' Summit

(TO COME LATER)

Fallen Fire

Wake-Up Slap

Stance Change

Parental Bond

Tasked with Survival

Original AU post

Part 1

One-Shots/Misc.

Swimming Lessons

#devchat

Reverse Inheritance

It'sJustAPrankBro

Temporal Static

Fearful Ghosts

In Which Iscan Freaks the Heck Out

Getaway

Nameless snippets based on @retrofeather’s art

Snippetless AU Idea posts (Asks for these would be GREATLY appreciated)

JJBA x PLA (with Stand Database)

Tiny Legends (with an ask)

#about me #pokemon legends arceus #pokerus au #nobility au #pokemon #pla #pokemon mystery dungeon #pmd #Masterpost #Pokemon Legends Arceus: Mysterious Destiny #Fallen Fire #Tasked with Survival

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wowzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa · 1 year

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this is a short(?) story i wrote about an alternate universe in which europe doesn’t exist. you might like it <3

oh btw i make music with my friends, u wanna check it out? itjustwontdie.bandcamp.com

Heartworm 2023 / Cancer In America (FINAL VERSION)

CLASSIC EDITION - REDO

my first story rewritten for apparently the fourth time. but i can tell. this one’s the keeper. mostly bc a lot of generations ii and iii are just edited versions of the 2022 ones but whatevs lmao enjoyyyyyyy ✨✨✨💀😭😭✋🏼✋🏼🍠🍠👢👢👢👍👍👍❤️❤️💖💖😂😂😂😂💖💖😂😂💖😂😂💖😂😂😢😂😂😨

——————

PRELUDE …AND THEN THERE WERE TWO

Let me take you back to March 1927, in a small town in Germany, nowadays called List. All the residents currently living there were gifted, or perhaps cursed, by the birth of a wonderful baby, a son to a young couple trying to make their way through life. This boy was a very special boy and had all his chances to do whatever he wanted as a child, but stayed with the rules and the rules only. Did this truly benefit him or, like, anyone? Find this out for yourself.

At the age of two, he got a job as the spokesman of a nearby toy factory called “SpaßZeit”. It was founded and run by two elderly-aged brothers, Karl and Leon. This company was very famous in West Europe but if you weren’t in that specific area in that specific time period, you won’t have heard about them.

At the time young Konnor got this job, underwater, close to a volcano near a Sicilian village, another baby boy was born, brought to consciousness in an abandoned sea-ville. This boy, soon to be called Oscar, got onto land at around one year of age. He says he doesn’t remember much of the rest of his history, but other times when asked, he’ll go silent, avert his eyes, and leave the room.

Konnor got his parents considerable money over the next few years up until he was orphaned in a freak car accident, his parents drunk driving off a bridge on the way home from a meeting at Spaßzeit.

He and his little sister, Henrietta, stayed at the factory while the two brothers, growing old, nearly burnt themselves building what would’ve been the world’s first animatronic that they called Busterdog. In fact, those two walked right out of the fire without a scratch! Konnor escaped alive, but didn’t think to get Henrietta. Legend says, she apparently fused with or melted into the animatronic. Allegedly, Konnor saw something exit the fire, but it didn’t look like her. Anyways, the next month, on the turn of 1941, the smoke from the fire was still being run out. It was considered toxic, and no one was allowed near the site. The eldest brother (Karl) passed away from an unknown cause and the government was convinced the smoke and ashes carried some kind of virus. The citizens tried to resist, but a lockdown was enforced in 1942. Everyone’s lives in that town became somewhat dystopian from this point forward.

——————

GENERATION I

PART 1 …FUN TIMES

A 12-year-old boy walked into List. He was very rugged and dirty, but had well intentions. His shirt had holes in it and was an off-putting shade of white and his flood pants were nearly shorts that matched the brown shoe that he had. This boy was Oscar, no last name (known to him, at least). He was going to turn thirteen this year soon. He had been taken care of by an unknown woman for over a year before she mysteriously died when he was six and, missing the ability to relax in a safe home, he wanted to apply for a foster family. In order to do so, he had to go to the Krankenhaus and test and get a vaccine for the disease Blorgschnecke, and it affected mainly teens. In the waiting line, he grabbed an article of the local newspaper instead of watching Tokio Jokio on the little Fernseher. He didn’t know much about the current events. He was, in fact, homeless. He had been living mostly behind a dumpster for about two years.

Konnor was having an awful day, as he was applying for a foster family that probably wouldn’t love him and his birthday present from the universe was a Q-tip up his nose and a needle full of toxic chemicals to counter the ones already in his system.

Oscar was the only one not wearing a mask in the line. Everyone else was angry at him. Finally, one man spoke out and everyone started yelling at him. He was confused, as he could not hear what they were saying. Konnor noticed this and told everyone to take their masks off because they were becoming useless: most people in line had them around their chins.

While a riot formed in the street and buildings crashed, Oscar and Konnor stared at each other, flabbergasted, from across the crowd.

———

The next week, the two met in the woods. The government was getting worse every day and gangs were forming that would publicly loot and murder civilians.

They talked for a long time, and they agreed that for the next couple weeks, they should stay somewhere to protect each other. They went searching for a suitable shelter to temporarily stay for the time being. Most places were either taken or, more commonly, past the point of repair. The two finally settled on a cave just south of the mountains.

It was very empty there, and the cave didn’t go deep. Oscar also pointed out that there was an old man to come with the cave. When asked what he was talking about, he turned around and pointed at the surviving Fun Times brother, Leon. He was not aging well, and he had heart problems that showed. He looked up at Konnor like he was an angel.

He said, “Ah! How you gave me such a fright!” They slowly hugged. Leon was tired, yet Konnor wanted to ask questions. “How come you didn’t talk to anyone after Karl passed away?”

“Oh, Konnor. Those legends are crazy. Then again, who knows what could have come out of the alliance of the Dark A…”

Konnor awaited patiently for the end of the pause, but soon enough realized it wasn’t an intentional pause.

The man suddenly couldn’t speak. It seemed he was choking, but he didn’t have anything in his mouth. He looked like he was trying to pry hands off his throat but there was nothing there. In fact, very soon, there was nothing there.

Konnor tried to see if he had a pulse while Oscar rubbed his forehead in disappointment, saying “Why does this have to happen to every old person we meet?”

Konnor continued to panic.

“How could this happen?! Help!”

“Maybe it’s Sinbad or So White and the three Coyotes,” Oscar pithily pointed out.

“Have you tried checking his pockets?” “What could be in there? How would that even help?! Get in your head!” “Just check them.” Konnor kneeled back down and, shaking, reached his hands into the old man’s pockets, to find a folded up piece of paper. It seemed like a note. “Give it to me.” Konnor refused and kept it to himself. They started wrestling on the floor. They got each other in a lock and Oscar quickly grabbed the note. He unfolded it. “Well? What does it say?” “It says, stay away from two things in life. The evil robot, and the.. beast of the night? What, like a dragon or something?” “I have a question.” “What?” “How did you know to reach in his pockets?” “I’m from a place where it’s actually… customary to look in dead people’s pockets. “Where are you from, then?” “I… oh, look! A dead body! We should get that out of the cave before the police get us!” “Okay…”

They shoved the body outside of the cave and rolled it off a cliff. “Glad to see that old man gone,” said Konnor. “Really? I thought you liked him.” “Naw, all he ever did was burn down a factory trying to build a dog from scratch.”

PART 2 …MORE FUN TIMES

“Well, if we’re gonna eat anything, we’d better set up a fire and get some meat.” “Who elected you leader of this outfit?” “You don’t have a last name! How am I supposed to trust you?” “I know how to make hollandaise sauce.” “Do you even have parents?!” “Why do you need to know?” “I doubt you even have a family.” “What about it? What about yours, Konnor?” There was some silence.

“I’ll only get into mine… if you get into yours.” “Fine, I’ll get some kindling.” “Mm hmm. I’ll hunt whatever I can.”

When Oscar came back with kindling and a little dagger from in the middle of the woods, Konnor also came back with two dead pigs. They had a big meal that night.

The next day, Oscar took one of the bigger bones and, intending to make a broth, boiled it in water along with some random spices. He got curious when the whole batch turned blue and started bubbling. He took it off the fire and drank some. It tasted nice. Nothing happened. He heard a loud noise coming from the cave entrance.

He ran over and Konnor was sitting nearby. “Konnor. What was that?” “What was… what?”

“That noise, just now!” “I didn’t hear anything.” “It was coming from this room.” “Look, we need more firewood, and I’m busy finding leftover steel to make helmets and that kind of stuff.” “Swords, too.”

Oscar walked over and tried to open the entrance like he normally did, but it was stuck.

Konnor went to open it for him and see himself in even more glory, but it was stuck no matter how hard they tried to open it. This was bad, this was very bad.

Oscar ran back to the kitchen and the pot where the potion-like broth once was was now empty and there was little to no sign of spillage on the floor. Oscar began to feel very dizzy and uneasy and collapsed without warning on the kitchen floor.

PART 3 …VISITORS

Oscar had experienced some changes since the kitchen incident and become paranoid and even more malnourished.

He kept trying to make a potion that would “undo the curse”.

He had boarded off the original place where he made the cursed potion and would sometimes inhale too many fumes and forget entire hours of time.

While, along the way, he had made some interesting and wacky broths, he didn’t find a ratio of ingredients that was the same as before.

The two had been living together for months now and it was early 1943.

The two had managed to open the entrance, but it was very hard so they would keep it open all summer and closed all winter. Oscar had begun to make a potion book, documenting each “precise” combination. “Precise” meaning “a little bit” and “some” and “a lot”, of course.

Konnor began to regard Oscar as a wizard, and their roles in protecting the cave began to become clear. Konnor would hunt and make metal things, Oscar would make potions and do anything with wood, and they would both garden, which was especially hard since there wasn’t much natural light in a cave nor enough space to garden out front.

It would sometimes be tricky to keep this routine up, however, but only because sometimes Konnor would be tired or have injuries. Oscar was a good fighter when it came to beasts and such but still didn’t like the feeling he got when the enemy was dead or hurt, even when the enemy was particularly mad or evil.

Someone knocked on the entrance.

There were two people, a girl and a boy.

Konnor and Oscar invited them in and they opened the entrance from the outside, making it movable again.

The visitors, in uniforms of some sort, formally introduced themselves as Diana and Michael as they made their way through the

Diana said, “What are your names?” “Why are you asking?” “We have a warrant.” “From who?” “BND.” “This is a really bad time to come-“ “Well, regardless,” said Micheal, “we have been sent here by the German government, and you people are living in this cave without a telephone, housing license, and address.” Konnor pointed out, “How do we know you people aren’t scammers? You look a little young for the government.” Diana showed him a badge with a picture of an elderly man on it. Konnor said, “Wait. That’s not-“ Diana started fighting with him and Oscar ran away. Diana was good at karate but she spoke German, both confusing and bad news for Konnor. He threw hard punches but she was quick and dodged a considerable amount. Oscar ran back with the last potion he made and dumped it all on Diana without any warning. She disappeared as it was pouring. Michael was now gone too.

“Oscar…what did you do?!”

“That doesn’t matter right now.”

“Doesn’t it?!”

“You invited them in and I only defended you and that’s all I’m going to say about that. Don’t make me come over there and bludgeon you with this metal pot.”

Konnor went silent.

Oscar walked to the entrance and went outside.

Konnor immediately followed him out the door but when he looked around, Oscar wasn’t anywhere.

Oscar woke up on some leaves in the woods at midnight. It had been two weeks since the fight with Diana or…whatever her name was. He got up and saw some blood on his hands. He looked at the leaves below. They were also blood red. Blood was dripping down his front. He then looked around him. He could feel the trees looking at him, staring at him. He felt paranoid.

The trees told him it would be best to go and leave the woods behind. He obeyed something for once in his life and ran away.

He woke up in the passenger seat of a Volkswagen Beetle next to a guy who was a few years older than him. The moon began to go down. The driver said, “What were you doing out in the woods?” Oscar said, “Well, I’m not completely sure.”

“Oh, come on, it’s not like you were sleepwalking?” “I… really hope I was.” “And, if you weren’t?”

“It’s nothing. I think the question should be, why would you pick up an unconscious stranger from the woods at two A.M?” “I don’t know. You were bleeding from the head-” “I was?” Oscar felt his forehead and there was dried blood all the way down to the end of his nose. “Yes, you were. And you looked like a gang beat you up.” “Yeah. What’s your name?” “Brian Adams. Yours?” “Is this interrogation gonna go on any further?” “Look, just, where do you live?” “In a cave, only northeast of that abandoned bomb shelter.” “Got it.”

Oscar pressed his face against the window so that his nose was snow-white. He looked at the trees, and their leaves fell off. Their branches formed crosses and the clouds began to turn red. The clouds dripped a red liquid down onto the ground which grew plants. Oscar exclaimed, “Look at that!” “What is it? Show me.” They pulled over. Brian grinned. In real life, there were actually no blood plants and no crossed trees and no out-of-ordinary clouds.

The driver got out a knife. Oscar said, “This is weird. What do you think it is?” “I think… you’re one of them.” “One of who? Is it those Mexican guys who go around stealing earlobes? Because I have nothing to do with them.” “You’re one of the cursed ones.” “Huh?”

PART 4 …PLACEHOLDER ARC

The moment there was a flash of light, there was nothing.

The moment there was a vision, there was simple, plain, wandering blindness.

The moment there were bleeding vines, there was then a road.

Oscar was running down this road, covered in his own blood once again.

He ran into a Glundenheisten (grocery store) and started looking for scissors, a staple gun, matches, or anything else that could be used to fight Brian.

He lit a match but dropped it in the corner, five boxes of wafers now engulfed in flames. He was still looking for a blade of any kind and not acknowledging the safety hazard two feet away from himself.

That’s when an alarm went off in the building.

Policemen ran in and told everyone to find shelter. Konnor ran to Oscar and shouted in the midst of all the noise, “Why did you run away?!”

“The trees were telling me to!”

Konnor was enraged at this.

“You’re insane! The trees did not tell you to run away!”

“They did, too!”

“That doesn’t matter. We have to get OUT of here! Come on!”

“What’s all the commotion about, anyways?”

“A nuclear bomb is being fired at us!”

Oscar, who’d never seen or heard of a nuclear bomb, gazed in amazement out of the window, surrounded by chaos and fire.

“Huh,” he mumbled to himself.

“Will you look at that…”

———

GENERATION II

PRELUDE …AWAKEN, DARLING

Welcome to September 1945, the perfect time of the year to live in America.

Just warm enough, orange trees, kids playing in the park, people waking up from comas…

Two who fell under this category were Konnor and Oscar, your favourite apocalyptic survivors.

I know what you must be thinking. Apocalyptic? What am I talking about?

You’ll see.

After this, there’s only one more generation, by the way, and then something really wild happens.

Beep, beep, beep.

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

Beep beep beep beep.

BeepBeepBeepBeBeBeepBeBeBeBeep.

BeeBeeBeeBeeBeeB-B-B-B-B-Beeeep.

The same way the hospital machines frantically press when heartbeats become faster, Konnor and Oscar jolted to consciousness in their beds.

“What year is this?”

“1945, sir.”

“We time travelled two years in the future?” Oscar didn’t know what to think.

“Only two? This sucks,” said Konnor.

The doctor said, “You didn’t miss anything. The war kept on going until a couple days ago.”

There was a note on their bedsides, it said, “BUSTERBLORG IS COMING”.

“Where are we?”

“Las Vegas, Nevada.”

“Oh. Well, we should be getting back now.”

“Back to where?” asked Konnor.

“Germany, of course!”

“And what business do we have there?” “Getting back our things, or at least the things that haven’t exploded anyways!”

“I’m pretty sure our cave will be covered in mould by now.”

“What about Buster?”

“What about him?”

“He was a robot! He could’ve sent the nukes!”

“Nuclear Bombs, and he’s probably been in the garbage disposal for a while now,” said Konnor confidently.

“Recycle, and he’s probably been after us for quite some time now,” said Oscar bitchily.

They got out of their beds, had their equipment taken off, and signed their checks as Johnny and Bobby.

PART 5 …DON’T BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

Jonathan and Carlo were people.

Okay… uh.. Good people or bad people?

Oh, yeah, I’ll tell you that later.

Jonathan was from Holland, an interesting place to be at the time. He was raised by loving parents who always stood side by side but one of them disappeared one day so Jonathan left to embark on a journey trying to find his mom and the phone charger she took with her. (Yes, I know, 1945, “at least be true to your own story”, okay, fine.) Jonathan met an older friend, Ray, they called him, and he owned a smoke shop. Carlo was born to a loving household in the Islands, out of which he got adopted because they couldn’t afford him anymore. He was then raised by somewhat strict French-Dutch parents who didn’t see him often. He ran away and started living behind a smoke shop, where Jonathan found him and they became friends who would sometimes buy eachother food and protect each other from the mobs.

They started to travel Europe and try and find a safe place to stay.

One day in Germany, Jonathan saw a rusty gate surrounding a torn building that said “Do Not Trespass! BND Only.” Jonathan trespassed, not being BND, just to see what the big deal was about an old building. What could be the matter?

He thought he saw something move in the ground. Its spikes poked out of the ground as it slithered like a snake, smoothly through the dry dirt. The dirt crumbled into rocks and clumps.

Oh, but this wasn’t a snake. It roared in his face, showing its terrifying fangs and eyes. He didn’t know what this thing was! He screamed and tried to run, but he tripped and fell.

He heard something else coming from inside the building.

He got up.

He then saw a humanoid shadow run away from behind the building.

He grabbed his camera and took pictures of the giant slithering creature and the shadow-like silhouette.

He ran away back home and told Carlo all about it, who told the newspapers.

Konnor and Oscar always checked the newspapers at the 99-cent Depot (there were no Glundenheistens in Las Vegas) in case Leon or Busterblorg showed up and they had to make a run for it. Konnor noticed an article about cases of strange, mutated animal sightings surrounding the 1941 Europe pandemic. There were theories of radiation. He told Oscar. They both knew they had to go back to Germany. This was not over.

———

Their cave had been mostly cleared out.

There was still the pot that was used to make potions, even though it was a tiny bit warped.

There was a bow-arrow and a sword on the ground, a couple other not-important things, as well as a note.

It read, “BUSTERBLORG HAS RISEN”.

———

Oscar - Memory 1

Underwater, Oscar felt stinging all over.

He didn’t know what was stinging him.

The place was completely empty, and it was a bit eerie to him.

He swam down to a house and what he thought could be shelter.

The door was open.

He saw pictures.

Pictures everywhere.

Oscar picked up one displaying a mom and a dad and two kids.

The mom’s face was carved out, as well as both the kids’.

The dad looked somewhat unhappy in the picture, even though they were at the beach.

Did he not like the waves?

Was he upset by the trees?

Was he angry at his delicious drink?

Perhaps.

Or, perhaps, he was in an unhappy marriage.

Maybe the mother got custody of both the kids, so their faces got carved out too.

Or the kids and the parents had a falling out too big to repair.

A good situation made bad.

Of course, Oscar didn’t know that this was a family, that there were other people at all, because it could have been random spots carved out of the photograph.

All he saw was a picture of an unhappy man.

Oscar pitied the man and brought the man everywhere with him. He gave the lonely man the gift of company.

But the man was still unhappy.

Oscar hugged the man and complimented him and made him a hat.

But the man was still unhappy.

Oscar was tired of this man not smiling so he stomped on the picture, the glass shattering into millions of pieces and shards.

The man was now smiling.

———

Konnor and Oscar, who just happened to be dressed in black, filled a bag with their things.

Three knocks were heard on their door.

They looked at each other.

“Oh, no.”

They opened the door to see younger Jonathan and Carlo standing there.

“We were forced to!”, exclaimed Oscar.

“Yeah! By the government!”, said Konnor.

“Well, we are the government,” said Jonathan.

Carlo gave him a look and said, “What? Excuse Jonathan, uh, we’re not. But if you are taking their stuff, we would like their potion book.”

“P-potion book?” Oscar had been thrown sideways by this request.

Konnor, still collected, said, “Okay, but I and my friend must talk. Sorry, just a moment, please!” Konnor then abruptly slammed the door.

It was clearly audible what they were saying.

“OSCAR! No! NOOO!”

“Whatever happens, we have to stick together!”

“What do we do?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Your book, your choice!”

“Your fuck, your shit!”

“Uh?”

“Okay. …Let’s grab this…” “What are you doing?”

“Barricading the door.”

Jonathan, trying not to laugh, put his ear up to the door as Carlo said, “Why are you barricading? We’re not government, promise, okay?” “Sorry! No cook book for you! Sorry, Jonathan or whatever you said your name was!” “Yeah, it’s Jonathan!” “I’m Carlo, by the way.” Carlo reminded Konnor of himself, so he thought he could talk some sense into him. “Okay.. Konnor, how do we know we can trust you with our book?” “Because I’m Carlo Agouza. Headline of Vegas News.” Osczr was shocked, but also was angry at himself for not realizing this. “Uhhh… what are you doing here?”

“I know about your whole situation with the Spaßzeit building, and I know you have something to do with the… well, that.”

———

The two opened the door and they all sat down.

“So, why do you need my recipes?”

“Well, Jonathan and I are going to try to do two things:

Uncover the radiation mystery and make ourselves immortal.”

“Why, though? I get it about the radiation thing, but why do you need to be immortal?”

“Because we need to live long enough to see the end of the Cancer of Videt.”

“Cancer of Videt?”

“Yeah. It’s a long story, but when the time comes, we will be there to kill the Cancer. It’s a curse that is carried through not just rogue body cells, but rogue life.”

“Wow,” said Konnor. “We might have some experience with that.”

“Great,” said Carlo.

“How did you find us, though?”

“Well, it’s a lot of digging.

Jonathan and I did our homework. You used to be the spokesperson of Spaßzeit. Then, we found that, by the time the Lockdown had ended, you had disappeared.

We then traced you to the ‘43 explosion through a spy named Brian Hopkins, and that you were flown into Canada by a soldier because German hospitals need home addresses and you were living in a cave. No caves in a ten-mile vicinity of that old Glundenheisten exist besides this one.

We believe his mother’s been taken by this curse and that the entirety of Europe, especially this town, has also been plagued by this curse.

We need your help to destroy this Cancer.”

Oscar and Konnor looked at each other and nodded. Konnor spoke.

“Well, here’s what we think. We need your help, you need our recipe. If you can work with us on our radiation project, we can be your supplier of all things Videt.”

PART 6 …A NEW PLACE

Blood.

Blood everywhere.

Oscar only saw Brian.

Carlo was smiling.

Carlo was laughing.

Carlo was holding Oscar’s head.

Oscar’s body had been left on the ground.

Konnor was sitting there with a giant hole in his stomach.

He was yelling at someone, like they were in a fight. Maybe he was angry at Jonathan, who was running out the door.

Then, Oscar’s head started to regurgitate blood. Blood was thick and bright red.

Things started to go dark.

Then, he woke up.

Konnor was brewing some coffee.

Lately, it seemed that things were looking up.

Despite Oscar’s visions, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before, and he just shrugged it off.

Nobody really knew why, maybe it was just the way the light came through the cracks in the stone, maybe it was that Konnor and Oscar’s party had expanded, maybe it was that now they all had a common goal, a purpose.

Also, recently, Oscar had turned sixteen (fourteen if you don’t count the coma).

Later this week, they were going to set out to Keystone Hollows, a small and peaceful Sicilian village just by the bay, because that is supposedly where Brian went. And they’d had a lot of questions for him.

They had started packing their things.

They each had an individual backpack to take with them, and a small ice box that they would fill with snacks.

Konnor’s backpack had inside a first-aid kit that Carlo lent him, clothes, a compass, a dagger, and a bottle of water.

Oscar’s backpack had inside an axe, a wool blanket, a jar of change, a notepad, a rock, clothes, and a bottle of water.

Jonathan’s backpack had inside a bow and arrow, a candle, a lighter, a packet of money, and two bottles of water.

Carlo’s backpack had inside a notepad, two pens, sunglasses, and some seeds.

On Sunday, they began their expedition. They put up a defense system containing extremely potent poison that Konnor and Oscar made, a tripwire that Jonathan just had lying around, and a lot of cardboard.

———

Konnor - Memory 1

“In Ordnung Junge! Dies ist Ihre Zeit zu glänzen!” Leon assured Konnor’s confidence.

Konnor smiled nervously as the camera began to zoom in on him. He didn’t particularly like being on camera, but he understood that his work was valuable and his family would get paid in return.

He began to speak his lines.

“Hallo, ich bin Konnor. Meine Eltern schenkten mir ein Spaßzeit-Spielzeug aus echter, gereinigter Menschenhaut! Ich spiele damit und habe so viel Spaß mit der neuen Technik.

Holen Sie sich unsere Nazi-Hitler-Spielzeuge für nur RM 1 bei Ihrem örtlichen Glundenheisten!”

Kinder, lernt jetzt fluchen! Mach deine Eltern wütend!”

The brothers were so happy, they hugged Konnor. They gave him a dagger for him to remember them by. He kept it for the rest of his life.

———

They traveled via hitch-hiking, an experience that Konnor had to hold Oscar’s hand through.

It wasn’t a very long ride, since they were just going through Switzerland to Italy, but it was very scenic and they enjoyed the trip.

Then, they just had to deal with the over-sea journey. They didn’t have the money for a flight, and they were in a rural area.

The group took a rowboat across the vast 20-degree water.

They landed safely on the outskirts of Keystone Hollows, southwest Sicily, just by the ocean.

Something about this place was familiar to Oscar.

———

Konnor - Memory 2

“We’re going to be fine, Konnor.”

“Don’t worry, Konnor.”

Konnor gazed at the steaming pile of crashed cars on the narrow bridge highway.

Konnor’s mother suddenly screamed. His father was shouting swear words.

Suddenly, the car was dangling off a bridge. Konnor had almost pure adrenaline pulsing through his veins.

His father told him to climb and that he would be okay.

He climbed up and got back on the highway.

He, shivering, followed the cars and planned to find the nearest shelter.

After a few hours, Konnor spotted a shelter, but when he got to the front door, his parents weren’t behind him like he expected them to be.

———

Monday, October 1st, 1945.

Radiation had spread to parts of Spain. It was all over the news. It had been declared an epidemic.

Of course, Konnor, Oscar, Jonathan, and Carlo weren’t hearing of this, because they were in Keystone Hollows, a small Sicilian village.

They built a chest with their weapons and blades.

Oscar also made some sort of tool that he didn’t name, using mainly Jonathan’s stuff. He didn’t use it for the rest of that trip, but kept it in his pocket no matter what. Now, back to navigation.

You look east, you see a gravel road and a sandy town, way out in the hills, and past it, the idyllic grassy meadow, the trees slung with foreign decorations.

You look west, you see the vast, seemingly endless ocean, and some sort of rusty boat and abandoned dock not far off the shore.

Something about that boat looked awfully familiar to Oscar. He wanted to go see it, but they would have to do that later. For now, they had to go through the grassy meadow, into the Greater Mountains where, supposedly, Brian lived.

———

Oscar - Memory 2

Suddenly, as Oscar stared slack-jawed at the ship, everything turned more vibrant and colorful, as if through the lens of a toddler’s vision.

The ship returned to its old, beautiful, sparkling, majestic state. Where some old rotting piles of wood stood began to grow some small buildings. Shelters, perhaps.

Oscar began to spectate himself walking towards it. The place was beautiful on the inside. Everyone was friendly there, and he had a lot of friends.

an v oi

———

The four walked into the main village, Konnor and Oscar dragging the ice box.

It was a pretty place, but there wasn’t much to see, given that it was rural and small.

The first thing they saw was a parrot on an oddly placed branch, no tree to be seen. The branch was dug into the sand.

The parrot said nothing but, “Go no further! Go no further!”

They eventually found a shelter to stay.

They left their ice chest there, and decided to come back every day before sundown.

Oscar was silent the whole time, as residents looked curiously at him and the rest of Konnor’s party.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Carlo grew a blank stare and started to walk out. Konnor and Jonathan followed him, not knowing what was happening.

One of the residents had told Carlo exactly where Brian was, in exchange for half of their money. They now had $5.30.

Meanwhile, Oscar stood still, frozen by the haunted atmosphere of the building.

———

Ding-dong.

Ding-ding-dong.

DingDingDingDing-dong ggg.

DiDiDiDiDiDidi—dong.

A man wearing a suit and a moustache came and answered the door.

Confused, Konnor explained, “We’re looking for Brian…Brian?”

“Brian, the old owner of this house? I think he must be 20 now.”

“Then who are you?”

“I’m Lorenzo Adams.”

“Lorenzo? This isn’t our dude. C’mon, guys.”

“Hold-Hold on!”

“What, Lorenzo?”

“Have I seen you somewhere?”

Lorenzo pointed at Carlo.

“I’m Carlo Ago-“

“Oh my, Dio! My cousin Leronza lives in Nevada! She mailed me this crazy newspaper about things happening in France and Germany and Hungary- I- Well, I think I might be able to help you. But it depends on what it is that you are seeking…”

———

Oscar woke up on some leaves in the woods at midnight. It had been two weeks since the encounter with Lorenzo or…whatever his name was. He noticed that the leaves below him were blood red. He looked again at his hands. They were also blood red.

Blood was dripping down his front.

He then looked around him. He could feel the trees looking at him. They told him it would be best to go and leave the woods behind. He said no this time, as he had become curious what they were driving him away from.

He began to walk over behind the trees.

He suddenly felt something on his right leg. He reached down and felt it.

It was a pair of freezing cold hands.

Oscar got dragged down to the dirt.

He looked up and saw Brian’s face.

Except it was pale and gaunt, and it had bite marks on it.

Brian, almost turquoise a shell, made two very shallow, rattling breaths. He then ceased to breathe.

Oscar tried to wake him up or see if he was still alive but to no avail.

Oscar walked out onto the road.

There was nothing on it. There was, in fact, barely a road. The road was covered only in cobwebs and further darkness around the corner.

He tripped on something and fell backwards, hitting his head and blacking out.

———

“So, Lorenzo, grace us with your intellect.”

“Well, you see, I used to be a scientist at this place… Draagen Facility, we called it, but no one ever knew the real name, just the address.

We would experiment with nuclear radiation, early atom explosives, all the dangerous materials.

Once, we tested male rats in a small environment riddled with nuclear radiation.

One of the twelve Ratten survived, but had clear physical changes—if not injuries.

Also, we put three plants in that small environment. One of them grew. We called that plant something.”

“What was the plant called?”

“I… can’t remember.”

Suddenly, the door slammed, as if one of the boys pushed it. None of them did.

Konnor pulled it back open, even though it felt like someone on the other side was trying to hold it closed. They walked inside, and suddenly, instead of the aerial, wooden home filled with beautiful furniture, it was

cemented and packed with cobwebs. Everything was grey and rotten. There were maggots everywhere.

There was a pile of completely moldy tomatoes directly in the kitchen entrance. Jonathan walked further than Konnor and Carlo did, and saw that the Fernseher (television set) was on.

He sat on the floor silently and watched the alarm test that was being aired.

WARNING! PERICOLO! GEVAAR! DANGER!

Air quality has dropped to below the “red” level in these areas…

Please, all families and citizens, stay in the nearest shelter. There has been a recent explosion in your area and there has been a toxic air alert of 16.1 pCi/h. This is extremely dangerous to breathe or be unprotected in. Get all of your things and hide underground until further notice.

Various jarring alarm noises came from both outside and the Fernseher.

Carlo went running outside, going back to the shelter to warn Oscar.

He left his backpack, though, and Jonathan planted three trees. That was the last time Jonathan went outside for a long time.

PART 7 …BRIAN LUGOSI’S DEAD

Welcome to the wonderful Keystone Hollows — The place that you’ll never leave!

———

The group had returned to the cave, now more of a half-underground mansion hut, and hid cooped up in there in the midst of what might have been just a typical everyday nuclear apocalypse.

Carlo noticed that all his things are gone.

He didn’t use everything he brought, however.

Everything in the ice chest had been eaten.

There were just empty bags and cans left. It wasn’t like a crazy person had gone through it, though. It was very neatly done, as if by pressure. Each bag was popped in the lower-left corner, each can was just slightly opened, but the straw handle was perfectly in place.

Carlo assembled the bags all into place, so that all the seals were facing south.

They formed a drawing of two trees.

Carlo immediately ran outside of the cave.

He saw two plants growing out of the ground, in the left half of a small planter.

———

Oscar woke up in the cave.

He was trying to deny to himself that he woke up in the cave. He wanted to go back to the woods and find out what happened to Brian.

He then saw the amount of blood coming out of his head and put a wrapped gauze bandage on.

He fell asleep again.

———

March 20, 1946

They were living on tallow and some mysterious fruit that they were growing inside next to a light bulb. Carlo was feeling ill and had a migraine recently but didn’t complain too much because he didn’t want to kill the buzz of Konnor’s upcoming nineteenth birthday!

Konnor was an adult now, and this was an important thing to celebrate.

So you can imagine their confusion when a fog began to roll over Europe and the Fernseher that they had stolen from Keystone Hollows suddenly wasn’t working.

Oscar mainly took care of Carlo and fed him healing potions every now and then. He was good at keeping secrets, so he kept a lot of Carlo’s. By the way, Oscar still didn’t explain the ordeal of the woods or his bandage to them, but would disappear a lot to the woods to try to find him. There were no cobwebs. It was like there had never been any. In fact, he rarely ever talked to anyone besides Carlo.

Jonathan was starting to develop a theory that they had never left Keystone Hollows, as well as a much more likely theory that they had never actually left Germany.

Some possible incentives to think as such:

Ray, the owner of the smoke shop he lived behind, was called Lori by his friends.

Just like it would have been for Lorenzo.

That reminded him of the search for his mother and how off-track he had gotten trying to distract himself. Her name was Loretta.

Konnor was beginning to worry that this fog wouldn’t clear over before his birthday.

This was a strange situation, and Oscar and Carlo knew something the rest of them didn’t.

———

“No. No! No! NO!”

Oscar was digging around in the wood once again, for darkness and cobwebs and Brian’s body. None. Just a completely empty valley where the road was, and tulips growing where all the cobwebs were.

Spring. Spring. That’s why, that has to be why, he thought. Too many flowers, too many of something or other.

He had only been there before in fall and winter.

He wasn’t at all paying attention to the fact that he was searching these woods at one in the afternoon.

He was too busy worrying, burdened with Carlo’s secret.

Oscar was frantically digging in the leaves, getting teary-eyed. He just wanted an answer.

He suddenly felt dizzy, like he was on a boat.

That’s when the floor started moving.

Oscar looked east.

He saw a pile of leaves covered in sand and, past it, more woods, the trees slung in foreign decorations.

No! No, no, no, no! This can’t be it!

Oscar looked west.

He saw a creek past the tulips.

In that creek, there was an abandoned rusty old boat, half sunken.

Oscar was running towards it as if he were running for his own life.

Then, just as he was about to touch it, he tripped on Brian’s body and, hooked on it, fell right into the creek and quickly drowned.

Instantly, he woke up again in the cave.

He gasped for air as he noticed, in a split second, that he was back home.

Okay, this is some kind of cruel joke, isn’t it, thought Oscar. I refuse to engage and I will find answers!

I am going there and I am going to find Brian and I will force him, one way or another, to tell me everything.

———

Oscar saw a shadowy figure in the woods.

He started to chase it. Every turn it took was unexpected and he got slowed down. He picked up speed and was just about to grab it but he fell down into something.

Oscar woke up again in the cave.

No, no, no!

Oscar went back to the woods.

He saw a shadowy figure in the woods.

He started to chase it. He remembered the route it took. He managed to grab it and jumped over the hole he fell into.

He pinned the figure against a tree.

What he saw was something undead. It growled at him. He held it down.

It snarled at him.

He held it down.

It opened its mouth wider than any human could do, and it screamed at him.

Oscar, frightened, jumped back, letting the monster go, and hit his something on something, falling backwards.

Oscar woke up in the cave again.

He went to the woods but this time he could not find the monster or the boat.

He looked at his wristwatch and the time had not changed by a second since the first time he went into the woods.

He noticed that every time he went into the woods he forgot another thing that happened.

———

Konnor looked down at Oscar, who had been caught attempting to bleed out on the kitchen floor again.

Oscar had been gone for a week with no explanation as to where he went. Carlo had gone missing as well, but he hadn’t reappeared yet.

Jonathan was busy baking Konnor’s birthday cake and decorating it.

He was stressed about Oscar and Carlo. What is going on with those two?

Oscar went silent for a half-year and disappeared for days.

Carlo went silent for a month and disappeared indefinitely.

When Oscar finally did return, he came unconscious.

This was a strange, strange situation.

Jonathan was now almost completely sure that there was some place that they never left. He wasn’t sure where it was, though.

Oscar jolted awake suddenly, his mouth closed and dripping with blood.

He pointed at the entrance.

“What are you pointing at?”

PART 8 …SO, THEN, A WORMY THING

Oscar - Memory 3

Oscar sat, eating a dumpster frankfurter.

It was dark outside.

Suddenly, Oscar saw light, and heard a wail.

He thought the heavens had come down to Earth.

He thought he was dying.

He looked suspiciously at the frankfurter, which, in daylight, was actually covered in mould, and then looked back up again at the sound.

Then, he heard a voice screaming.

Then, there was an explosion.

Then, there was nothing.

Oscar got up. He walked towards the source of the explosion. He heard footsteps.

He then saw a flame. One flame, two flames, three flames, a considerable amount of sparks and smoke, then the building was on fire.

He saw something walk out of the building.

Then, another, smaller explosion.

Then, once again, there was nothing.

And then there was everything.

And then there was light.

Broad daylight.

Oscar lay in a pile of ashes and asbestos.

He got up and dusted himself off.

He heard a horn.

He saw a boat sailing away.

———

“Hello…” “Jonathan, did you invite this woman?” “No..”

An elderly lady stood at the door, leaning on a beaten wooden cane.

The old lady showed herself the way inside.

“Boys, I have very crucial advice for you!”

“What?!”

“Don’t mess with radiation. It is very bad for your health. And we wouldn’t want you going and dying, would we?”

“Wait, how do you know us, again?” “Heartworms.” “I’m sorry?”

“He died of heartworms. The things sick dogs get. Karl died of heartworms. No one knows, except for the police, most of which are dead.”

“Hold on, how are you surviving the apocalypse as an elderly woman?”

“Why, I was born in the apocalypse.” “Excuse me?” “I was born in 1941.” “That wasn’t an apocalypse, that was a virus, like influenza.”

“No, I’m not sure you understand. I was born in 1941.”

“How could you be an elder if we, teenagers, are thrice as old as you are?!” “Well, actually, I’m nineteen today,” stated Konnor, confidently. “Well, technically, you’re seventeen today,” added Oscar with an additude. “Well, technically, shut up,” yelled Konnor. “Up yours, birthday boy,” growled Oscar.

The elderly woman was startled by their argument. Wait.

Where did the elderly woman go?

———

April 2, 1946

Jonathan woke up from a deep slumber.

That was a good night’s rest, he thought. Had to have been over 8 hours.

He glanced at his watch.

Oh. It actually had been over eight hours!

It had been nineteen days!

He didn’t remember anything about celebrating Konnor’s birthday but he remembers stabbing someone… Oh, no! Did he stab Konnor? Did he stab himself? Did he stab a stranger?

No, he thought as he observed the green blood on his knife. He walked further into the front room and noticed that their cave’s rocky floor had been uplifted by something cylindrical.

Hooooooold on a second.

He remembered a dragon of some kind.

This was the breaking point for Jonathan.

There is something wrong with this cave, he thought.

And then, as he looked up towards the ceiling, he saw someone (not Oscar, Konnor, or Marco, but a stranger) hanging on the drying rack.

Okay, that’s it, I’m out of here, Jonathan thought. He started packing his things.

“I’m gonna go find Mom.”

By now, he had almost completely forgotten that Marco ever existed, so that was useless by now.

He walked out of the cave, leaving behind that chapter of his life. He had given up on ending the Curse, he had given up on life in Germany. He was finally heading home.

———

Now, it had gone back to just Konnor and Oscar, but now, instead of defending themselves during a time of corrupt government, they were defending themselves during a time of no government whatsoever.

It was April 18th when they awoke.

Carlo and Jonathan were gone, and so were their things.

got up and looked down at a very pale Oscar. Right beside his head was an uplifted trail of blood-washed rock and stone. The entrance was open!

Who knew how much radiation the two could’ve been exposed to while they were asleep?!

Konnor looked down again at Oscar, who seemed to have gone back to sleep. He attempted to wake him up. Nothing worked. Also, in doing this, he noticed that Oscar’s skin felt quite cold.

Flies began to gather on Oscar’s skin. Konnor had to waft them off and keep Oscar warm.

He covered Oscar with blankets.

Konnor started to make some bean soup.

———

Oscar woke up.

He was alone. Everything was blurry.

What was this place? What was happening?

Surrounding him were four walls, each with two or three doors, all closed but one. And the open door led to nowhere.

He looked up, and he saw more doors on the ceiling, what looked like a reflection of the doors he was in the middle of. He tried walking up towards one of the doors and realized his body was sideways. He looked down at where he thought one of the walls were, and it was just the floor again.

Oscar looked behind his shoulder and saw the same wall of doors that he was facing. Then he noticed that his body was also facing that wall.

Had he even turned his head at all?

Where am I?

What kind of weird game is this?

He tried to open a door. It was locked.

He looked closely at the door. He blinked.

He realized he was looking at his hand.

He was now, once again, in the middle of the room.

Oscar started to panic.

He ran over to another door. It was also locked.

He tried to escape, but wherever he went would lead him to the exact same spot.

He tried to open another door.

He pulled with all his weight and was sent flying.

He noticed the door was now opened wide and that a vague shape of some smaller person was walking into the room.

There Oscar stood, staring at a 12-year-old Oscar.

Neither of them knew what to say.

———

Konnor would check on the plants every other day or so, just to make sure it was still growing.

He was beginning to wonder if he was losing his mind. Where was everybody? How was Oscar still able to take a nap?

It felt like Konnor’s life was at a standstill.

He could stay here at the cave with Oscar, who was more or less dead, or he could move on and get a life and try to save the world and be the hero. But he couldn’t do that if he had waters to plant and a care to take friend of and a giant food of supply, could he!

No one knew that he was alive.

And he didn’t know that anyone else was alive.

His entire life was now a leap of faith that, somewhere out there, there was a good samaritan. Someone that knew about him.

They’d better come fast, because Konnor was starting to see two of everything.

———

“Un-fucking-canny,” mumbled Oscar as he looked at every angle and every scar of his old self.

“What happens to me?” “What do you mean?” “If you’re me, you’d know. In the future, how do I go from me to you?” “I- I guess you don’t.” “What?” “If I’m dead and I’m seeing you, then you’re dead.” “No… I’m not. I can’t be. I can’t die at twelve!”

“No. Listen to me. Get out of Germany now.” “Why should I trust you? What if this is just another broken delusion?”

“No, I’m trying to warn you! You need to leave Germany as soon as possible! You are going to die!”

“But-“ stuttered the younger Oscar,

“If I leave, then you die.”

“No! You don’t understand! I’m dead because you stayed in Germany. You’ve got to get out of here now. Turn back.” “But if I left then you would never exist.”

This stopped Oscar in his tracks.

“Oh. You’re right..”

“You know what? This is a stupid trap! You’re not me!”

Oscar was trying to explain to him to leave, but he kept realizing that no matter what Young Oscar did, Oscar would end up dead.

It was like Death had Oscar in a checkmate.

“But wait!”

“There’s no worth waiting for you. I hate you.”

Oscar’s eyes welled up with tears.

“No! We have to stay here! I’m real! I’m you!”

“You’re no person. You’re just a curse.”

———

“Konnor? Is that you?”

A deranged-looking Oscar, covered in blood and rotting pieces of flesh, got up and hugged Konnor. “Yes, Oscar. I’m here for you. You were asleep for a couple hours,” giggled a dirt-covered, limping Konnor.

He pointed at the ceiling, just above a wall that had black scribbles on it.

“MONDAY TUESDAY WHENSDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY THIRSDAY EIGHTDAY ONEDAA ONEDA OADANDA”.

Oscar looked behind Konnor at a giant pile of shriveled fruit and discolored soup.

There were maggots and flies everywhere.

“Konnor…” “What is it, you guys?” “I really messed up.” “Me too.” “No, like, I messed up really bad.”

“Well, let’s hope the sleep midgets don’t punish you.” “What?” “I’m so glad to see you. We’ll get through it.” “Merry Christmas,” said Oscar on this 1st of May as they embraced each other.

This was actually not the lowest point in either of their lives (see: Konnor became an orphan and Oscar was homeless in the winter), but it came very close.

———

“What did we get beat by?” “I don’t know. I remember an old lady and then I remember someone killing her and transplanting into this wormy thing.” “So, then, a wormy thing?” The two were dressed and clean now, but neither of them were all the way mentally stable, and the cave still smelled like beans and rotten apples.

“When was Christmas again?” “I have no idea.”

Oscar went to sit down and he took one of the rocks growing off of a branch of their plants and dropped it in some acidic bean soup.

It sizzled and let off steam. It smelled nice, like roses. He studied it with a microscope and poured it all out into a bucket that he dumped onto the plants. The plants immediately started to look different, but neither of them paid attention.

Outside was starting to look more like it did, but they still kept an up-to-date map about areas with more radiation than others.

Konnor was noticing that he had a headache, and so did Oscar. Neither of them knew why.

———

GENERATION III

PART 9 …START AT THE BEGINNING OF THE END, MY FRIEND

———

Some time in the mid-late 1940’s;

X-rays had finally come to underground post-apocalyptic Germany, so Konnor and Oscar were able to finally get a good diagnosis.

It was a somewhat cold summer, given that the ozone layer had been completely shattered and who knows what that could have led to.

Konnor and Oscar walked up to the Krankenhaus to finally get tested to see whatever this was.

It was a miracle, they said.

A miracle about what?

“A miracle that you’ve lived this long.”

What?!

“You have tumors.”

Oscar and Konnor had gotten diagnosed with brain cancer for being exposed to too much radiation.

Neither of them knew exactly what this meant, but it was scary for sure.

Oscar still hadn’t told Konnor that he was a curse — that their bond was a curse — and he wasn’t sure when he was going to.

The two climbed out of the underground Krankenhaus, worried and confused.

Was this the beginning of the downfall of Oscar and Konnor?

Well, only time will tell. But, I must say, things are gonna get really interesting.

———

Konnor had a plan.

He knew now how everything was gonna go down. It wasn’t all sunshine and flowers, either.

Oscar was planning to tell him about what happened in the room of doors.

He was now completely sure that they were dying because he killed his younger self.

That had to be why this is all happening.

If his younger self was dead, both of them would be dead. Their lives had to go exactly the way they did, or neither of them would’ve been alive.

And they were now desperately trying to track down the monsters that attacked them before, because Konnor was sure that these things were the curse. As you well know, though, having seen all sides of the story…

———

With every stroke of the brush, Oscar’s art got more beautiful.

He was painting a butterfly.

It was a blue butterfly.

He put his arm around to reach for a different brush, and instead of what he was looking for, he felt cold faux leather.

He reached behind himself again, just to feel the same material, what seemed to be a shoe.

Oscar turned around in panic, only to find that he was at his own funeral.

He got up from his chair and, shaking, stared silently at his own dead body.

Konnor stood at Oscar’s coffin alongside others, shaking his head.

Oscar wandered the room, looking at everyone who was attending.

He saw the faces of Carlo, Jonathan, Michael, Leon, and he paced further to see a collection of strangers, the doctors that had diagnosed him, and the thing that shook him the most, his parents were standing at the foot of his corpse.

How were his parents here?

He had no parents!

Parents were supposed to be mean and selfish and unforgiving!

He didn’t even know what his mother or father looked like. How could they appear in this sick dream?

How would they know their son, who they probably never touched, died of a brain tumor? This was when Oscar walked up further.

He discovered that a brain tumor was actually not the cause of death.

Oscar’s dead body had been stabbed in the heart several times.

“It all makes sense now,” said Oscar coldly to himself. He tried to signal to everyone that he was there and, in fact, alive but the people attending didn’t seem to notice or care.

“I was the curse of Alkam, and Jonathan and Konnor finally killed me.

So… what, now?”

———

PART 10 …I DIDN’T THINK I WAS GONNA GET THIS FAR

You’ve read this far, you must like this story. Do you like it enough to keep reading, or does this feel like a fit time to end your journey? It is up to you.

In the event that you choose to keep reading past this little checkpoint, I think you’ll find that the remainder of your time with us here in post-apoctalyptic Nazi Germany is more carelessly written than the previous few parts. Consider everything from now on bonus content if you’d like.

———

Oscar finally confronted Konnor one autumn morning.

“Remember John an-an’ Carlo?”

“Yeah, what about them?”

“They… kind of killed me.”

“What?! Blasphemy! What, are you stupid? If you were dead I wouldn’t be talking to you right now!”

“No. Konnor, listen. They killed me.” “Whatever. And?”

“I was the thing they killed.” “Okay, now you’re just repeat- you’re just rephrasing youself. Tell me what happened.”

“I was the thing I killed.”

“Explain, please.” “I… was… the thing… that they lived… to kill.”

“Yes? …And?!”

“I was… the curse.”

“The- ha!- the curse of what?”

“I… am… the curse.”

“You’re the reason Germany’s an ashtray?!”

“Konnor.”

“Are you the reason I don’t remember what my family looks like?

Do you know how awful it is to not remember what your family looks like?!”

“I was stabbed in the heart! It weren’t no toothpick, either! You were alive! You were alive and well! I wasn’t!”

“It was a mistake to ever meet you or move in with you into this cursed death-pit.”

“The first thing I ever saw was a boat! That boat sank! We read about that boat in the news! I should’ve known then! My first bed I ever slept on was shared with an inmate who was known for murdering children! I lived in a poor kingdom where we were treated like slaves and then when I finally escaped I lived with someone who died within a year of having me!”

“I’m leaving!”

“Please do, do leave! I’m going to do nothing but harm you.”

“Well, that is obvious.”

Konnor swiftly grabbed all of his possessions and slammed the cave entrance on his way out.

Oscar began taking down the boards that he had used to block off the old part of the kitchen.

———

PART 11

———

1948 was a strange year so far.

Well, of course. After all, it was Konnor’s and especially Oscar’s first time living completely alone in years, except this time, he had a home to take care of.

It was also Oscar’s first time living as a dead person, believe it or not.

He still wasn’t entirely sure who killed him, Jonathan and Carlo or himself. Imagine if he was dead because of the Room of Doors incident.

Strange autopsy that would be, don’t you think, suicide by homicide?

The fifties were approaching and the remainder of the government had already built up an entire faux Europe; the one that the world lovingly knows today. They had already killed everyone that knew about what happened, or so they thought, and the last flight from Original Europe was leaving for New York. (unnamed) had boarded that plane. Oscar’s ex-roommate.

Even though it had only been a month or two since (unnamed) had left, Oscar had forgotten what his name was.

Oscar didn’t have to worry about his brain tumor because it was indefinitely terminal at this point, but he still had his moment of nervousness and anxiousness.

Wait, when did Oscar grow a tumor?

Anyways, he was planning to kill a monster later this week at the canyon. For now, he planned on making life potions, ones that cost the most resources. Luckily, he had (dying) plants outside and he was living in a cave about half a mile away from the mountains, where all sorts of things lived and grew. But he didn’t need those resources, because he wasn’t planning on making potions any time soon.

sWAIT!

———

Konnor had quickly gotten used to the bustling nature of Albany, New York. He had gotten a job as a bartender. He was planning to buy an apartment where he could start to write papers so he could quit his job at the bar and become a businessman, hopefully in Senate. Sometimes he missed his old life with Oscar, when things were simpler, but he knew that a freer life in America was worth it. However:

He did not take into consideration that, in order to apply for Senate, he would have to state his hometown, and according to every map being produced from that time on, that town never existed, only “List” which was in its place.

———

Oscar held out his knife against the creature, who had shapeshifted from a humanoid animal to a dizzyingly gigantic mutated earthworm.

This was the beast that had nearly killed him before? Interesting.

Oscar, filled with rage, swung his blade against the pattern of the beast’s scales, leaving a bleeding gash in its side.

The giant spiked heartworm burrowed underground and rose back up, lifting Oscar into the air.

As he was flying directly above the thing’s mouth, he realized he had bitten off far more than he could chew.

The beast jumped up and, just as it was about to bite off Oscar’s leg, he ran on the area below its mouth, using it as a floor. He jumped down below onto the ground. He landed on his feet.

An earthquake happened all at once, shattering the ground. Oscar, standing on a falling fragment of the ground, jumped and threw his blade at its eyes. He missed and his knife landed directly into its mouth. It choked on the sword as it had dragged itself down its throat horizontally, cutting open the tissue to drain out blood and pieces of entrails.

Oscar thought he killed it. He tried to climb back up. The heartworm had successfully eaten his knife, however, and slithered towards him in all of its wrath.

It dove down into the hole he was in.

That’s when his vision went completely black.

———

Oscar woke up, almost drowning in a sea of red water filling up the canyon.

He swam up to the top in a panic, and accidentally swallowed some of it.

He saw the creature laying dead on its back.

It had drowned in its own blood.

Oscar was both happy and also scared… and… a little cold, if I’m being honest.

It started to hail outside.

Now, hear me out. Oscar might not survive.

He is swimming in infected, tar-like, frozen blood. There is a very little chance of him surviving this one.

I mean, c’mon, we’ve already intercepted his death like, what, 5 times, now. If he dies this time, there ain’t no savin’ that guy. Like, maybe it’s just meant to be!

———

Okay, it’s about time I did an arc with Jonathan. Plus, I type well enough now if I want to turn off autocorrect, so now there’s no excuse not to.

Alright. Carlo’s dead, so dear old Johnny boy went… where? Wait, lemme scroll back a second. So many backstories… yeesh…

…M’kay, found it.

So, Holland was a nice-ish place to be in the later 1940’s. They and Hungary were the only ones mostly not affected by the apocalypse, so their economy was amazing at that point.

However, Jonathan was more damaged and brooding than the other boys there, who were mainly just playing games all the time; that is, when they weren’t in school.

One day, as he was checking another street for his family, he met a boy named Johannes (Dutch for Jonathan; they literally had the same name) who was having a hard time with school but wanted to learn so badly after the war and such.

They had a conversation and Jonathan found that a lot of the struggles Johannes had with school were the same ones Jonathan was having with his search. It was hard; he could barely keep up with all that was happening but this was so important to him; etcetera.

The two eventually became friends, creating a complicated dilemma. Our dear old Jonathan didn’t want to leave the warm company of Johannes, but he also didn’t want to get sidetracked on his journey for another five years.

And don’t go trying to jarringly interrupt this part, because it’s not going to

PART 11 …A GOOD LOOK IN THE MIRROR

Now you’re all caught up with where our dear sweet Johnny boy is in his life and mostly perpetually will be,

we can continue with the rest of the story.

———

Oscar swam out of the dirty Aqua-Pack canyon very calmly and slowly, knowing (thinking) that he was, for sure, going to die because of Jonathan killing him. So this gave him a lot of liberty in whatever he did.

Regardless, Oscar was now back home in the cave.

He was silently awaiting the day our dear old sweet innocent Johnny boy would return.

What he really wanted to do was go try to find (unnamed) but he didn’t quite care enough, knowing that it would be near-impossible if he didn’t know the guy’s name.

So he stayed back and started mentally preparing and gearing himself for our dear old sweet innocent loving Johnny boy, angel boy. :)

———

After Konnor got rejected from government jobs, he had no choice but to go to “Europe”, except this time with no friends and no money.

Hot diggity dam.

———

Oscar, fully armed, had spent every day for weeks awaiting the return of Johnny Angel Boy Oh My Goodness He Is So Amazing Angelic Wonderful Dear Old Loving Sweet Kind Generous King Of Gratitude Savior Of The Universe.

But, instead of The One And Only Johnny Very Kindest God Soul Amazing Great Cool AngeOscar instead got Konnor in a ripped up, burnt top and dirty and stained jeans.

Oscar put a finger to (unnamed)’s mouth.

“Shhhh, sh-sh-sh-tsh-tsh-ttsssshhhhh.” “What is it?”

“Blink twice if Johnny’s behind you.” “Wha- why?!-“

“BLINK TWICE, GODDAMN IT!”

“I got cured.”

“What?!”

“I had a surgery in America. I’m tumor-free now. The surgery and radiation cured me. But then they banished me.”

“You didn’t even send a postcard! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because then I can do this,” said Konnor slowly before he rose like a shadow upon Oscar and stabbed him six times in the heart with an old dagger.

———

PART 12 …EPILOGUE

———

Berlin, Faux Germany, April 1965

Oscar walked along the grassy fields of Berlin. A bustling city it was indeed, but it never failed to preserve nature and wildlife.

The nuclear families and mass civilization never knew that Oscar had existed.

His life was of no importance to them.

They didn’t know the truth.

He didn’t care at this point. All of this, his whole journey through modern urban culture, was nothing but a cold reminder that nothing mattered anymore. No one would ever know.

When Oscar had awaken from the dead, the first thing he wondered was,

Where’s Konnor?

But Oscar soon learned that the Cancer had killed him.

That means there was no funeral.

Anyone out of the very small group who had known Oscar still probably thought that he was alive and well.

And the thing Oscar was most deeply terrified about was that he didn’t seem to really care.

He knew full well that he was destined to wander this city and watch it disintegrate until everything went to black and there was nothing to wander anymore.

Just nothingness.

And thank you for reading my confusing, poorly-plotted fairy tale about cancer in America.

——————

FIN

9/29/2020 - 5/23/2023

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forcedacquiescence · 1 year

Text

Costly Progress: Economic Growth in the Postbellum United States

Prelude

Blogging…there are few assignments so distasteful to a special type of combat veteran who spent most of his career avoiding the press, avoiding any form of internet trail at all, as much as humanly possible. One must, however, use whatever tools are available, despite the extreme discomfort, and press on, even if the lack of first person blogging proves itself a disappointment.

It likely comes down to reach. Some historians need to reach a larger audience with their message; a trained classicist now specializing in the American Civil War’s Western Theatre, and more specifically, in the small-unit warfare of the U.S. Army of the Tennessee’s units, for a potent example, should probably use whatever tools are available to combat the Lost Cause in all of its dishonest glory. One probably needs an audience for that.

Introduction

The astonishing economic boom and transformation of the post-Civil War United States is the stuff of legends, but it could not have occurred without the human element. Frankly, three decisive elements of this metamorphosis are the victory of the United States national government in the American Civil War, which provided security, unity and opportunity for the damaged nation, the construction of the various national railroad networks, especially the transcontinental railroad, which allowed for easier access and transportation of natural resources, and a large influx of immigrants, which provided bodies for factories and businesses to exploit mercilessly for economic gain. These elements, along with technology, fueled this second part of the Industrial Revolution. It could not have occurred without them.

Analysis

According to David Hacker, the American Civil War possibly resulted in 750,000 to 850,000 soldier deaths from all causes.[1] The war also practically shattered the south’s agrarian economic punch, something Susan Carter explained in her statistical study of American economic expansion, where she noted that southern states exported nearly 4,500,000 bales of a cotton in 1860, but practically none in 1864.[2] Yet, by 1900, the U.S. GNP per capita had increased from a little more than $2,000 to 9,000.[3] What changes brought this on?

Historians are not economists, so they tend to look for historical events that helped trigger this economic boom. The end of the Civil War in a victory for the United States ended slavery, and this probably made the south temporarily more poor, but it did allow for the unimpeded expansion west, a second Manifest Destiny that opened more land, more resources and more opportunity for groups of Americans seeking a better life. Only nationally connected railroads could open the west up quickly. So, the first major event would be the completion of the railroad networks, especially the transcontinental railroad. Frankly, the railroads boomed, and by 1876, the Unted States had 17,800 freight locomotives, and 22,200 passenger railroads at a time when industry began to blow up.[4] That is not a coincidence.

The second would be a boom in immigration. The first wave of major immigration brought millions of Irish Catholics into the nation, along with a smattering of Bavarian Catholics. This, of course, brought savage reprisals from Protestant “Know Nothings” and Nativists who were horrified for several reasons, most of them concerning their own ethnic, linguistic and religious prejudices. Obviously, they could not stop it; the service of Catholic Irish and German soldiers in the U.S. Army proved decisive, with the Irish Catholics especially earning a powerful reputation for courage and ferocity in the fighting, which only encouraged more immigration, especially when post-Civil War American wages began to exceed those of European nations. The result, more Catholics! Also, some Jewish immigrants came too, which sadly only brought more prejudice, but it also managed to pack the factories of the Northeast and Midwest, transforming the once primarily agrarian United States into an industrial powerhouse. All told, more than 25 million people, most of them Catholics but with large numbers of Jews as well, immigrated to the United States between 1869 and 1920, after up to six million Irish immigrants landed on American shores between 1845 and 1860, with the majority hailing from Poland, Italy, Hungary, and other Slavic-speaking nations, along with up to a million from Spain and Portugal.[5]

Finally, the Bessemer process allowed factories to produce quality steel at a faster, cheaper and more efficient pace, which increased the availability of steel for industrial work. As railroads themselves spawned support industries – locomotives do not grow on trees and must be manufactured from metal, usually steel – more capital poured into the economy, allowing greater investment opportunities.

The evidence that railroads and immigration fueled the Revolution is abundant. First, as Andrew Carnegie himself pointed out, “a railroad of iron would be a cheaper thing than a road of common construction.”[6] Factories developed quickly after the transcontinental railroad linked east and west, whereas before, as Carter notes, they only developed in the canal-rich Northeast, which gave U.S. forces an advantage in the Civil War.[7] Railroads simply allowed more goods and resources to be transported farther and faster than ever before. This covers the supply side of economics.

Secondly, immigrants and African Americans performed a large share of factory and even track laying work, with Dr. David Brody an expert on immigration and labor, stating that up to 80% of factory work occurred “on the backs of immigrants, including children.”[8] The railroads themselves relied on immigrant labor, with 90% of Central Pacific workers being Chinese immigrants, and roughly 75% of the Union Pacific being Irish and German immigrants, many of them Civil War veterans.[9] Immigrants built the railroads and manned the factories, and without either one, there would be no Gilded Age.

Transportation, resources, land, security and an abundance of workers are the major ingredients for an industrial boom. The U.S. national victory (“Union,” if you must, but “Union” simply means the loyal states, the national government, and the Armed Forces of the United States) in the Civil War, the completion of the transcontinental railroad in the honor of Second Manifest Destiny, and a large, even massive, influx of immigrants, which provided a large chunk of the work force necessary to make the “Gilded Age” gilded – and absolutely horrifying to the abused, exploited millions of poor Americans living and dying in horrible conditions – all proved vital.

There are other factors, of course – ruthless “Robber Barons,” and the development of new industries such as oil production, come to mind – but these could not have made much of a difference without the ingredients in place. The development of oil production industries especially; they would not have occurred without trains and workers already in country. At the very least, these played a very, very important role in the transformation of America from agrarian wilderness to industrial superpower.

Of course, that comes at cost, great cost, and the whole enterprise can be summed up by the words of a child working in these conditions. “About a year and a half ago I took to the girdle and chair. I do not like it; it hurts me; it rubs off my skin; I often feel pain. I work 16 hours a day for pennies.”[10]

[1] J. David Hacker, “A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead,” Civil War History 57, no. 4 (2011): pp. 307-348, https://doi.org/10.1353/cwh.2011.0061. [2] Susan B. Carter, Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present: Millennial Edition (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge U.P., 2006), 96. [3] Robert J. Gordon, The American Business Cycle Continuity and Change (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 113. [4] Manfred Weissenbacher, Sources of Power: How Energy Forges Human History (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2009), 243. [5] Alejandro Portes, Immigrant America: A Portrait (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014), 124. [6] David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (London, UK: Penguin, 2008), 190. [7] Carter, 104. [8] David Eliot Brody, Essays on the Age of Enterprise: 1870-1900 (Hinsdale , IL: Dryden, 1974), 101. [9] Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869 (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2005), xx. [10] Brody, 117.

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