#beatrice is imposed on shannon. kanon imposes himself on beatrice

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shannon also bringing up the "violent witch" narrative as well in much the same way that the other servants were doing so in the kitchen oh it's not looking good for her at all

#umineko liveblog #shannon's story forming the basis for what kanon tells battler later on #shannon planting the seed on the beach so that kanon's story gains more credence in the kitchen #thinking again about kanon and shannon's introductory scenes being the same mirrored narrative structure #thinking about kanon and shannon telling the same bits of the beatrice narrative in mirrored ways #coming to very horrifying and very despairing conclusions about all of this #only thing stopping me from losing my mind is that there are too many logistical problems for a shannon-kanon culprit x2 combo theory #namely that a lot of things make no sense if shannon was also scheming alongside kanon #ie all of shannon's behavior up until her death totally contradicts her being complicit #but it is seeming like shannon was the basis of at least a good chunk of the witch narrative #even if i can't find a way to say she had an active involvement #maybe to extend the mirrored narrative metaphor it's that shannon says it as fiction #and then kanon does it as reality #to hark back to my notion of shannon and kanon having an inverse relationship to the golden witch #beatrice is imposed on shannon. kanon imposes himself on beatrice #i think this explains it maybe. so shannon's not sus but kind of sus in that it's her story but it's not her fault

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The Duality of Self you've noticed in Umineko's characters is pretty interesting! Do you think you could put the characters and what Dualities you've identified in a separate post? I dunno, I think it'd be nice to have them all in one place

sure! i'll list them here for now but i'll also be sure to try and work it into the next writeup whenever i get to it.

so some of the self dualities i've noticed so far are as follows:

-shannon/sayo. probably the most evident self duality given that this girl almost explicitly has two literal selves with different wants, motivations, and emotional responses. shannon is the complicit coping mechanism that lets her endure the horrors, sayo is the repressed outraged true maelstrom of emotions that represents the genuine depths of her desperation.

-george the adult/george the kid. george's main Deal is that he is trying so badly to emulate and assimilate into the Good Businessman Adult role model imposed on him by society and his family. the problem with that of course is that it's a total falsehood mask that does nothing but hurt him when all george really wants to do is have fun and follow his heart in a similar manner to battler.

-natsuhi/ushiromiya natsuhi. natsuhi wants so badly to strive for a hypothetical ushiromiya ideal that she feels she can never reach and because of this despite the fact she's overall pretty good at what she does she denies herself the validation of her identity. rather than realising that ushiromiya natsuhi is literally just the same as regular natsuhi she separates the two and places herself under a burden that is only eased when someone higher up in the hierarchy (kinzo) validates her existence.

-jessica/the ushiromiya heir. jessica fares better than most when it comes to knowing who she is and what she wants but she's equally trapped by the expectation that the rest of her life will be dictated by her being someone she's not. the tension here is that every part of her will never be a true ushiromiya successor and i think she struggles a little with the fact that she Cannot accept herself becoming a person everyone demands that she becomes.

-kanon the human/kanon the furniture. less of an internal struggle because it's pretty clear that motivation wise kanon is not operating out of pure service to kinzo and the household. however, despite all his bitterness and scheming, what is interesting is that kanon only thinks of himself as kanon, his servant's name. he acts in deeply human ways, but he never connects with his more human self.

-maria/witch!maria. not sure what to call this but maria clearly experiences a total shift in expression/self-perception when she gets to enter the world of beatrice and magic. the emulation of what she imagines beatrice to be like is almost a 180 to the version of maria that exists outside this context. even battler remarks on a couple occasions that it's like maria "becomes a completely different person".

-rosa. i don't have a neat name for rosa's dichotomy but there's this definite tension where i think on some level rosa genuinely tries to live up to the Good Aunt And Mother image she projects for everybody to see but her true emotional core, as damaged and spiteful as it is, cannot help but continue to hurt and abuse maria. she pretends to be competent but she's still the weak doormat of the ushiromiya siblings. she can't be who she wants other people to think she is.

-hideyoshi. minor one but hideyoshi's put-upon accent as part of a very deliberate crafting of a facade that doesn't reflect his genuine self when entering into the world of business. his falsehood doesn't extend that far because he's unable to accept a western style of living, so his front will always only ever be shallow.

-nearly all the ushiromiya siblings have their inner child rule their psyche and take over during the conference. decades old power dynamics come to light, and the true messed up part of the argument is that it's essentially a bunch of wounded children scheming to sabotage each other because the damage was never able to heal.

-final one that's not really a dichotomy of self because it's not intrinsic and is also way more than a duality is beatrice. beatrice is a name that is applied to a million and one entities. the ghost story of rokkenjima. the concocted backstory of kinzo's wealth. a war bond. a wealthy sponsor from a bygone age. the golden witch. maria's fantasy. the person sowing the seeds for murder. beatrice as a concept is expressed through so many contradictory facets that it's impossible to draw a clear throughline of what the True Beatrice looks like, if such a person can be said to even exist, or "exist".

#umineko #umineko liveblog #anonymous #from my count literally over half the cast has expressed this contradiction/duality of selfhood #which. yeah. makes me think i'm onto something here with this haha