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tomorrowxtogether · 6 months

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TAEHYUN: “TOMORROW X TOGETHER is youth itself”

TOMORROW X TOGETHER The Name Chapter: FREEFALL comeback interview

2023.10.25

Everything TAEHYUN says eventually circles back to one thing: music. It’s not just what he invests his heart and soul into, but also his primary medium for expressing love, as well as the driving force propelling him forward.

You tried keeping a journal and reading more books earlier this year.

TAEHYUN: That no longer applies though. (laughs) I got busy with work. It felt like a great year, being on tour and everything, but it came with some pressure. I know it’s not possible for someone to be able to give me all the answers to life, but I bought some books anyway, thinking they might at least provide some tips. I guess I’d still be reading if they had any really amazing ones … (laughs) I kept a diary for around one or two months. I usually share my thoughts and feelings to the other members, my friends, and sometimes staff members more than my family. At one point I was struggling emotionally, and I was telling someone on staff about it, but they just went into work mode. (laughs) They told me, “You can get it all out later in lyrical form. It’d be good to sort through it.” So I ended up keeping that diary half because of that and half because I was using my phone too much during the tour.

What sort of things did you write in your diary? Some people simply write down the things that happened that day and some talk about their feelings and emotions.

TAEHYUN: I mostly write down my thoughts and feelings. Shocking, right? That’s what I usually go for. Then I started to have doubts when every day started to feel the same. I asked the person who recommended that I keep a diary and they said, “You write the same thing, but each day you feel a little different. You should work through that.” My number one priority is how something makes me think or feel, then I can explain what actually happened. Later on, I can look back and see how I was feeling at the time.

Are you trying anything else new lately?

TAEHYUN: I’m actually laying off things one by one. I’m even taking a little break from exercising and just concentrating on doing what I have to do. I feel like taking a short break here and there means I have more physical and mental capacity when I have to concentrate on my work.

What do you do when you have a little bit of downtime?

TAEHYUN: I had about three days off and I just got back from a trip to Gangwon Province with some friends. I was so happy that it made me worried for the future. I find it stress-relieving to talk about light-hearted, random things and to just say whatever comes to mind without thinking too hard. (laughs)

Considering how good you are at everything, what kind of things make you nervous?

TAEHYUN: Well, just showing up to the MTV Video Music Awards means having to be totally focused as soon as someone points a microphone at you. (laughs) People ask us questions we’re not expecting on the red carpet, and Kai and I were more nervous for that than our performance. For Lollapalooza Chicago also, we were super focused since we had to pull off various media promotions at the same time.

But then you have to fully immerse yourself in the performance that follows, right? Like in songs such as “Thursday’s Child Has Far To Go” where you have to be full of energy.

TAEHYUN: I just get totally swept up in it all. (laughs) The thing I was so thankful for at Lollapalooza is that the audience was absolute perfection. They were more excited for “Blue Spring” than we expected, so we really were working together with them to make that performance what it was. It’s not like I try to get to that place on stage—it just happens. When I’m up there, I get full of main character energy. (laughs) For a song like “Thursday’s Child Has Far To Go,” it’s not like anyone tells me to do that—I just get so into it that I end up doing things like spraying my water bottle around. There’s no other experience like it. Nine times out of 10, I perform just like I planned, but for songs like that, it’s completely different from how I rehearse it. If the audience reacts well when I go wild, I think, Do I really have to stick to the plan, or can I do whatever I want? (laughs) But I still make sure not to cross a line.

With all that in mind, how did you feel about the carefully planned-out performance of “Back for More (with Anitta)” at the VMAs?

TAEHYUN: I think it was a bold move since that live performance was the first time anyone had heard the song. I wasn’t nervous on the actual day, but I was while practicing. After BEOMGYU does the intro, I have to sing “When I’m with you,” and I was repeating the words, “When I’m,” inside my head, like, 20 times. (laughs) What I wanted was for the audience to be reminded of Michael Jackson. The intonation was similar, and I even ad-libbed in a similar way, and I was hoping the dance moves would remind people of him, too.

What is it about Michael Jackson that you think’s so alluring?

TAEHYUN: When people talk about Michael Jackson, they usually talk about how he dances, but for me, it’s all about his vocals. I think every song he sang in, from his days with the Jackson 5 right until his last release, all show an unbelievable amount of skill. So I thought over how I could sound equally enticing. I was focused on being energetic while still getting the intonation just right.

I feel like you would have had to use a variety of different vocal styles for the songs off your latest album. Some of the songs are more straightforward, American-style pop, but others have a subtle, more nuanced feeling.

TAEHYUN: I felt like it went the smoothest of all our albums, at least as far as recording the vocals was concerned. Not only are we a lot better, but we’ve also worked with our producers a lot, so it’s a lot faster now. I fully interpreted the songs first, but my vocals were kind of lagging behind what I had envisioned. (laughs) It was frustrating because I couldn’t sing what I was imagining, but eventually my vocals caught up, making things easier for sure. I gave a lot of thought about my vocals and came up with two requirements. One is to practice finding what I call healthy vocals. We have a set list of over 20 songs that we do dozens of times, and if I want to be in the same good condition to perform it, finding healthier vocals is going to be better in the long run, I think. And now that I’m getting better at conveying the same kind of nuances live that I’m able to do while recording, I want to perfect it.

How is it you’re always able to make those kinds of judgment calls and keep on improving?

TAEHYUN: First I think about what I’m not good at, then what I am good at. I work on what I’m not good at, and when I feel tired out, I practice what I am good at. That’s how I do it. I think I have to acknowledge things first to overcome them and improve. And I think I know better than anyone else exactly what I’m not good at. I feel like anyone would have a way better chance of improvement if they don’t try to fool themselves. It’s similar to what we’re saying on “Chasing That Feeling,” I think.

Like “Chasing That Feeling,” you’re facing things head-on rather than avoiding them.

TAEHYUN: People all say, “if you can’t avoid it, enjoy it,” but I’m not like that. (laughs) I’m more like, “if you can’t enjoy it, just grin and bear it.” So I think I was able to relate to the song. You know, there’s lots of times when you know what you want to do but you just can’t get your body to move. I think that’s the “feeling” the song is talking about that you might feel but when you still have to work toward the things you have to do.

The message, music, and choreography of the single are a little different from what you’ve done before. How did you go about interpreting that?

TAEHYUN: I couldn’t actually picture the choreography after I heard the song, but I feel like the dance gave the song its persuasion and emotion. There’s parts where we run, chase after something, reach out, and act like we’re in pain. We got the choreography, practiced it, reviewed the video, and I think that helped me understand the intended direction better. The album’s about coming down to Earth, so naturally it was always going to be a little harsher and more challenging, but it’s still about moving forward. I feel like the single really encapsulates the story of the whole album. It was amazing because it felt like it could apply to people from all walks of life.

Are there any songs off the album that you really related to?

TAEHYUN: I’m not sure if this counts as relating, but, as you know, we have a complex backstory now. There’s some lyrics that really capture how we got to where we are today in “Happily Ever After”: “Oh my God / The ending is unknown / Life is not a fairy tale.” Up until now, we’ve been more like a fairy tale, and I like how it’s about the past, present, and future all in one song—like, Now that I’ve come down to the real world, I know life’s not a fairy tale, but it’s still a beautiful thing because I can’t see an inch in front of my face and there’s no saying what I’ll find at the end. That’s where I’m headed.

Speaking of which, where do you feel TOMORROW X TOGETHER is at right now?

TAEHYUN: I’d say this latest album is a major turning point. Sure, we’ve always been relatable, but I feel like we’ve never handled those topics in a realistic way. Now it’s all about coming down to Earth. I think we’ll get more comfortable with the process of taking the things we need to and will say and putting them into lyrics. It feels like my life story and what TOMORROW X TOGETHER sings about will overlap more and more as time goes on.

What direction do you ultimately hope to pursue in music?

TAEHYUN: I’m not set in stone on that yet.. (laughs) I’ve always liked a lot of different kinds of music, but lately I’m trying to listen to music that’s touching and easy on the ears. I mostly listen to songs that have good vocals and lyrics—especially those with compelling lyrics.

For example?

TAEHYUN: Off the top of my head? “Good News” off Mac Miller’s album Circles. I was inspired by and found a lot of comfort in that song and the whole album when I was having a hard time. So I gave YEONJUN a copy of it on vinyl for his birthday this year. I still feel melancholy whenever I listen to “Good News.” I have a T in my MBTI, but it makes me feel like my powers of empathy just skyrocket. (laughs) “So tired of being so tired”—I love those lyrics.

Sometimes music is a source of stress for you, but music is also what helps you get rid of your stress.

TAEHYUN: Isn’t it ironic? But music itself doesn’t really give me much stress, actually. I feel like the sweat and tears that go into the process of making music and choreography makes me feel alive. Yes, I can get stressed out from other things, but music takes care of that.

When you look way down to the end of the road you’re on, what do you see?

TAEHYUN: Hopefully the quality of my work will go up over time to the point that I’m at a level where I can move people after just a second with me. Lots of things can move a person, but for me, I’m especially moved when I witness great art. I was moved when I saw Jung Kook’s choreography video for the song “3D” recently. He’s got an aura all his own. He’s the GOAT, hands down. (laughs) Every move he makes across every bar of the song just oozes cool and nuance. It’s like, What did I just watch? What am I listening to? I had to watch it again. I think that’s what it means to be moving.

Everything you say circles back to music. I know you have goals as a group, but do you have any personal dreams of your own?

TAEHYUN: I’m happy when it shows how much effort I put into something, even if only slightly. And those are the dreams I can make come true fairly soon. Anyway, they’re all related to work. (laughs) I think that’s what keeps me moving forward. If I practice without being asked sometimes and suddenly I can pull off things I had trouble with before, then later doing things that someone tells me to do becomes more enjoyable, too.

What’s your take on the pressure you feel when you’re doing that and you come up against something difficult?

TAEHYUN: I just deal with it. I always use the expression “get it done” because it feels more like I’m achieving something. Just saying I’m “doing it” makes me feel like I’m being told to do it and there’s no sense of accomplishment there. (laughs) So I try to focus on the concept of getting things done when I’m asked. I think all the other members feel similarly. We all say, “We got it done.” (laughs) When someone says, “This is hard” then I get comforted when someone says “Yes, it is supposed to be hard,” or “It is hard and I’m having trouble too.”

Sometimes I can tell how much you value the other members for working and weathering together.

TAEHYUN: I think people can tell that I’m kind to people I really care about. (laughs) There’s MOA, of course. And the other members, and the people on staff, and that’s pretty much it. Some people who have worked with me and got to know the real me might see me and think, He’s trying his hardest. (laughs)I always try my best to be sweet, warm, and friendly.

You also purposely go out as far out as you can on the stage for the fans, and you remember dates for things like concert ticket raffles.

TAEHYUN: I find it harder to put things into words, but I’m usually okay at showing them, so that explains why I use actions instead of words. I always try to be attentive and caring. I also try to put my ideas into words like, Well, what if we tried doing it a little more like this?

It seems like the way you pour yourself into your work is your own kind of love language. You showed your thanks for MOA by borrowing the title of an article, “Musical perseverance pays off,” when giving your speech after a number one during your previous promotional period. What are you hoping to convey to MOA through the music on your new album?

TAEHYUN: Whenever we release an album, I hope that lots of people are able to relate to it. The new album tries to empathize with things that don’t get talked about much, so it should fill people with strength. I hope it does, anyway. I hope people can find some consolation in the lyrics. Because it’s not really things they would talk with other people about. (laughs) What I mean is, we don’t tend to talk to people about getting around to acknowledging and accepting things. I know I need to get this done fast, but I’m really deceiving myself and others about it. The music recognizes that process. At the same time, it says we’ve been there before too, so just chase that feeling. I hope it helps people out in some small way.

It sounds like this album really has the power to console.

TAEHYUN: Indeed.Because TOMORROW X TOGETHER is youth itself. That’s why we’re conveying such stories.

#txt #tomorrow x together #231025 #weverse magazine #taehyun #kang taehyun #the name chapter: freefall #freefall #weverse

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poppyseed799 · 5 months

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Since I mentioned how Martyn saved Last Life for me, I think it’s time I finally make my Martyn Appreciation Post that I’ve been meaning to make because the fandom is too mean to him sometimes.

Once upon a time, I discovered a series called 3rd Life. I watched it because I had watched Grian many years ago and figured “sure, I’ll see what he’s up to now.” The premise was very interesting and the episode got me hooked. The second episode came out and I watched Scar’s, it was so funny I subscribed despite never knowing anyone except Grian before 3L. I watched the series as it came out, always watching Scar but branching out to see the other POVs too, because I was invested in the whole story. And of course, how could you watch 3rd Life without watching Martyn, the hand. His editing was great, he added so much to the enjoyment of the story with just editing.

And then suddenly, (I think this was the first instance but I could be wrong) he had almost died and there was a voice telling him it wasn’t his time to die yet. I watched Scar first as always, so I knew Martyn would survive, but the editing made it feel like he wouldn’t until that voice came and “saved” him. I wasn’t expecting anything like that at all. What was that voice supposed to be? Why wasn’t it the right time for him to die? Fans all talked about it of course. Back then, it was called the “voice lore”, cuz that’s all we really knew. A voice. This voice lore gave fans even MORE to talk and theorize about, which is always great in fandom spaces. The series went on, the voice coming back sometimes as we’d try to figure out what was going on. It wanted him to kill Ren, but he never did. He couldn’t, because Ren had died and Martyn fell shortly after.

The 3rd Life finale was fantastic. I cried. Like actually I cried, and despite not writing often I even wrote a little retelling of the cactus fight mere hours after watching the finale. It was that inspiring. I was crying as I wrote. Eventually, I got around to watching Martyn’s POV of it, cuz how could I not? It was amazing, a totally different side of the war, a very tragic one at that. Of course, Martyn died. I knew he would, I watched Scar first every time. But I wasn’t expecting what would happen after he died. His character falling in a dark void, some speech about always fighting, even if you have nothing to live for. It made me cry. Yes, I cried a lot in my time in the life series. It’s great that a series could make me feel that way. Anyways, I cried at that speech. Then it ended, and the voice returned. It wasn’t very happy with Martyn. I was actually legitimately worried for his character. Until that point, I had been imagining afterlives for all of the characters (yes I cried at Scott’s finale too). Happy afterlives for them, since I loved the characters so much. But when I saw that last bit of Martyn’s finale, I was worried he wouldn’t get a happy ending like I wanted for all of them. But of course, my feelings aside, this was lore. Why wasn’t the voice happy? What was it going to do?

I went on twitch and found Martyn streaming, talking about 3rd Life. I watched and learned so much behind the scenes stuff. I’m just going to bring up this point now: Martyn’s interactions with life series fans is part of what makes him and his lore so great. But more on that later.

Then Last Life came out. I was so excited, I actually recently dug up my old DMs with my sister from when I found out about it, apparently I was a couple days late to realize it came out lol. Not sure what I was doing, I also don’t think I knew there would be a second season, even though I know I watched Grian’s finale where it said there would be. Idk maybe I forgot. Anyways… I was OBSESSED with Last Life. Completely and fully invested. My birthday was during its run and all I asked for was my family members to draw wizard Scar. But anyways the point is Martyn. The voice returned! And this time… there was more! Martyn was acknowledging the voice. There was a secret shadow group formed, and we learned more and more about the voice but not enough… yet.

One of my favorite parts of Last Life was when Martyn was… hallucinating? Jimmy and Mumbo were alive and he did Mumbo’s intro. It was well put together, disturbing, sad, and also a great teaser for the episode when he uploaded that Mumbo intro compilation. Then he runs and has an argument with the voice before finally giving in. Like… wow. What was that lol. It was awesome! Martyn’s character has always had such… character. He’s merciless and willing to betray, yet also loyal and empathetic. It feels like he would be a sweet guy and a nice friend if it weren’t for the circumstances. I love c!Martyn so much, he really feels like he has feelings even tho he’s just real life Martyn’s OC he roleplays as in minecraft.

But now, that famous Last Life Finale. Martyn dies (in a very bad way I might add) and the same thing that made me sad last time happened again, but worse. The voice was upset with him. This time, to his face, and VERY angry. That end speech is one of my favorite parts of the life series EVER. I want to have it memorized. It explained so much, was so powerful, just vague enough that you might not understand at first but could easily figure out with a bit of thinking what they’re referencing. And since that day, it was no longer called voice lore. We knew what the voice was now. It was now known as the watcher lore.

Now, to be honest, I think I actually first experienced this legendary speech from a stream. I was just absorbing the Last Life finale (which was disappointing for me personally but that’s a different post) when I saw Martyn was streaming an explanation of his lore. I watched it, and it was amazing. I got to learn what everything meant, little bits of trivia and behind the scenes, all that! It honestly saved my slipping enjoyment of Last Life. I had never watched EVO, but the great thing was you didn’t really need to. If there was something you didn’t understand, you could ask other fans, or just ask Martyn. That’s one of the best things about the watcher lore! The guy writing it is very open to discussing it with fans so you can understand it better, show him your theories, learn behind the scenes and all that!!

I just don’t see how people could hate it so much. Out of all the life series creators, Martyn interacts with the fans the most. Not even in an uncomfortable way, he seems to understand fans and fandoms well. Here on tumblr if you’re interested in his lore you can just shoot him an ask and he’ll likely answer! He’s planning on making an explanation video for his lore too, which will be really helpful. It’s the most interactive part of the life series (aside from the new “suggesting secrets for secret life” thing), of course the fandom will obsess over it!

It’s just disheartening to see people diss it so hard just because they think the fans are annoying. First of all, most posts that talk about that reek of cringe culture, second of all, have some respect for the hard work Martyn puts into this!!! There’s no reason to drag him down just because his work inspires the fandom more than you’d like it to. I’ve seen people say it’s just fan service. First of all, I don’t see a problem in him seeing fans talk about watchers a lot and think “let me give them more to work with!”, especially when second of all HE WAS PART OF EVO, I’M PRETTY SURE HE WAS ONE OF THE WRITERS FOR IT. He has full right to continue the watcher story. Also people don’t seem to realize the lore has existed since 3rd Life? Probably because we didn’t know it was watchers back then. But still, he didn’t randomly see watchers and go “I’ll do that”. Before the watcher reveal I think I saw watchers in the fandom like twice? Because Grian made the series. It was mostly just AUs anyway. So yeah. Martyn wasn’t like stealing fanon lore for clout he just wanted to use watchers and we went “that’s so cool” and went insane.

Within the series, the lore isn’t as overbearing as people claim it is either. Once again stop dragging Martyn down for gripes you have with other fans. There wasn’t even ANY in double life. In Limited Life, it was just a few rhymes and such, which was still awesome! His finale also added more to the lore, was very cinematic and cool. Lots of work put into it.

On that subject I also made it to the Limited Life Finale Stream!!! Explaining the lore and answering questions and giving behind the scenes information!!! It was great! Other members of the series helped him with his finale which is cool. He gives us tons of stuff to work with all the time, lore to theorize on, he just gives so so much to the fans. It’s no surprise at all that we love his lore.

Just… most hate I see is so misdirected towards Martyn. Don’t hate him because he made an incredible story! I stand in front of him with a sword and a shield and say “he is not your enemy! Everything you’re complaining about is because of the fans!” So you turn around to fight the fans only to see I am also standing in front of them with a sword and shield. But that is a conversation for another day.

Basically, Martyn lore so good he is great for the fandom and I cried ten million times while in this fandom. In a good way.

#trafficblr #martyn inthelittlewood #eyesandears #life series #this post is a mess and I don’t think I conveyed anything properly but. Thats how my posts are baybeyyyyy

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yril-writes · 10 months

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— RED FLAG!

synopsis ; fushiguro togi, the beloved customer of the red light district. Dating him without knowing anything about that man screams red flag, until you got an intel about his life it all went to flames.

scenario ; toji is the famous vip customer in the red light district where you are currently working, the dating part between the both of you is nothing but a contract to keep nosy people out of both of your lives.

"So, when are you going to tell me that you have a fucking kid?! I thought that you were divorced but a kid?!"

"And I didn't know you liked being fucked by a dad like me?"

type ; drabble

include/s ; fushiguro toji

pairing/s ; single dad character x fl! reader

genre ; a hint of spicy corn

warnings ; cursing

The man who you've been dating in contract keeps this secret of his in his pocket. He acts as if he is holding the world in the palm of his hands, taking everyone and controlling all people he can possibly get. Unfortunately among those people, you stood up head to head with this man without even knowing how he can just make you disappear by just saying a word. His name is Fushiguro Toji, he is well known in the red light district, always looking for women to spend the night with and sometimes go and gamble as well. It was your shift at the bar, then he came in and like the whole room felt cold as ice and all they could hear was his slippers hitting the wooden floor making creaking sounds, he was on his way toward the counter of the bar. "Can I get you a drink?" you politely asked in a gentle voice, only for him to let out a chuckle and stared at you as you worked. You felt that the way he stares may bore a hole behind you, so you walked towards him and glared at him. "Sir, you might burn a hole through me if you keep staring. Do you mind? I am trying to work here." the tone of your voice came out a little annoyed, you deeply regret after saying those words against that man. But after telling him off, he didn't stop staring at you instead he gave off an aura as if desperately getting your attention, all the customers felt uncomfortable so one by one they all left the bar. "Thanks! Now I won't have to serve for the customers. NOT! MR. FUSHIGURO! I AM TRYING TO WORK HERE?! If you can't grasp that in your fucking head, then I'll drill it into you, how's that sound?" now you're just fed up by the situation, but in Fushiguro's perspective he found someone he could have this deal with he was offering other people. Finally he found a match. Of course it was already suspicious as to why he wanted you to be his, even if it's just a paper it felt heavy to talk about it was also a sensitive topic to begin with. He told you he needed someone with a no strings attached relationship. And the catch is that he would pay you handsomely, who would ever refuse such an investment, so with no other choices, you agreed. The contract mostly contained about Fushiguro controlling his urges, and your job is to just literally stop him from going overboard at anything. You didn't mind the mix of pleasure in your daily life with this man, actually you couldn't complain, the man's performance exceeds your expectations. He wasn't known for no reason, though when it comes to gambling he loses more than wins. And you gambled not knowing what he had, until you heard a knocking on the door in the apartment that the both of you slept. Opening the door, a small figure greeted you. "Is my dad there? Tell him I need money." the kid half your size is standing in front of you, asking bluntly for money from his father. (Did this kid just dad? Fushiguro has a kid?!) still shocked the kid walked past you and went directly in the room you both just made out like a minute ago. "Money." he reaches his hand out towards the man fully naked sitting up on the bed, scratching the back of his neck he gives him the money. And the kid immediately goes out the moment he gets a hold of the money he wanted. "So, when are you going to tell me that you have a fucking kid?! I thought that you were divorced but a kid?!" he says with that low toned voice of his mixed with the morning tone as well, giving a small chuckle he shoots you with that typical smirk he gives. "Hey, doll. Mind shoving that big mouth of yours on my throbbing hard on, instead of nagging?" eyeing his member as he glances at you across the bed, you sigh and raise a finger. "You are a fucking red flag. I'm out!"

a/n ; I could make a part two of this! A smut one but that is for another story! Toji as a gambler addict and a vip of the red light district kinda fits and reader as a bartender!

taglist ; @sammushy @jasugoi @gcj-doesart @ryuuudesuwa

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lia-land · 2 months

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A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

5/5 stars

Spoilers*

I don’t think I can put into words how much I loved this book. A shorter review because I have nothing to criticise. This book is perfect.

I did go into it having seen spoilers that Feyre and Rhysand would be endgame, but I didn’t find that to negatively affect my reading experience. The build-up was amazing and I would gladly read another book entirely made up of the two of them exchanging magical flirty notes.

The twists, characters, and pacing are all so perfect and there was not one boring or slow chapter. I would especially love to see more of Tarquin and the Summer Court. I do feel bad about how Feyre, Rhys, and Amren deceived Tarquin, but it was for the greater good.

Chapter 54 and 55 are pure gold. Personally, I think the tension during the throne room chapter and the inn chapter are unmatched, but 54 and 55 were so satisfying to read after the build-up. I had the audiobook on when I got to 54 and 55 because I was getting ready to go out and I wish I had time to fully process everything. I love when a book has the power to change my mood. I’d seen spoilers for all of it, but it still had an effect, which is impressive. What I’d give to experience this book for the first time again…

I like Azriel, but I was so mad when his arrival robbed us of Rhys and Feyre going to buy lingerie together. Though, somehow, I think I preferred how that chapter ended. Something about Rhys sending her a vision of it was sexier than if it had happened, so I can’t even be mad anymore.

The cliffhanger!!! I hope we get a bonus chapter of Rhys and Feyre’s ceremony one day. It’s a need.

The only thing that would have made this book even better for me is if Rhys’ trauma from Under the Mountain was acknowledged more. It felt just slightly skimmed over. We get little glimpses through lines like ‘it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just your body reacting,’ but I think it’s an important aspect of Rhys’ recent history that should have been acknowledged. Not just in this book, but throughout the series as a whole (I’ll discuss this more in my A Court of Wings and Ruin review).

Also, the House of Wind is a bit of a plot hole because they make it clear that no one can winnow in. They can only fly in or take 10,000 stairs. If this is the case, how do all the people on Starfall get in? Surely they don’t all have an Illyrian plus one and didn’t go up the stairs in their formal attire. I’ll personally be overlooking that because the rest of the book is so good.

Importantly, I should note that the only reason I saw spoilers for everything is because I was so obsessed with Rhys and Feyre that I was reading short fanfictions about them while I was still reading ACOMAF, because I quite literally could not wait for them to finally get together and I also didn’t want the book to end too quickly. In hindsight, I don’t actually know if the plot is any good because I was far too invested in Rhys. The plot could be nonexistent and I’d still give this five stars for Rhys and his charms.

Infinite stars out of 5. This was exactly the kind of book I was expecting and more.

#a court of mist and fury #a court of thorns and roses #a court of wings and ruin #acomaf #acotar #feyre #rhysand #feysand #tamlin #feyre archeron #night court #velaris #cassian #azriel #mor #amren #sarah j maas #book review

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mobumi · 22 days

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So Here's my final Bucchigiri review!

Overall a fun ride, but something is missing.

I give it a 6.8/10.

First time I saw the teaser and trailer for this l was so curious because the visuals looked amazing and I couldn't wait to see it. When I finally watched it, I have to admit I was disappointed, not because I thought it was bad, but because I thought the plot would be something completely different, especially judging Utsumi's previous works. I wanted it to be my new Buddy daddies, but alas.

As I mentioned before, I noticed some problems in the pacing and writing which, in my opinion, affected the quality of the show. But what I really enjoyed was how entertaining it was. The comedy seemed just right, the running gags were okay, and just the vibe in general worked for this universe they created. The 1001 nights lore was really well used!

I liked how this anime subverted my expectations and played with the shonen genre and overused tropes, that was definitely the fun part. There were some very good parts and metaphors that I think elevated the show and gave it something special.

But with this finale, you can clearly see all the things that the show lacked, more so in the writing. Ichiya's motivations were nonsensical and it didn't justify manipulating a teenager or killing him just to fight his former bestie. Arajin has such a rocky development and seeing him the exact same at the end felt kind of useless after his face off with Matakara. Added to that, the genie lore that doesn't make sense even with the great metaphor of being a Honki person and some plot holes here and there that are hard to look past. It almost feels like the people working on this project were not fully invested in developing the world more or the characters, just enough to keep the audience guessing. For me it was like eating something good but lacking in seasoning. I wanted more SEASONING, and not just salt and pepper (ok I'll stop with this analogy 😂) but yeah something more consistent.

I didn't expect something incredible though, so in terms of ending it did do the job and overall gave us something more than satisfying for what it was.

I had fun watching Bucchigiri and getting involved in the fandom! Though I have conflicted feelings about this show, it made me watch until the end so that means they did a good job making the audience interested and see its potential.

If there is a season 2, I would probably check it out of curiosity, but I think it'd be better to just end on this note and move on...

#bucchigiri?!#i probably forgot things i wanted to mention #but yeah overall this is my take #it was fun reading all the posts and people's opinions about the show #bucchigiri #anime #anime review

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notexactlyrocketscience · 1 year

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TMA ending reflections (and theories about the sequel!)

When I initially listened to the ending, it felt like a good plan (and the prospects of a perfect happy ending) unnecessarily jeopardised. Jon and Martin’s panicked conversation sounded so hopeless and their final decision felt impulsive. Everything was in shambles, and a good outcome was unlikely at this point. The promise of Somewhere Else seemed like an empty euphemism to make certain death more bearable. I was frustrated, and heartbroken.

Now that I've taken a few days to process and distanced myself from the characters' momentary pain, I actually truly believe that what happened at the end was a happy accident instead.

I don’t think I can put it better than the Reddit post already has—The original plan proposed by Annabelle could have had equally (if not worse) disastrous outcomes. Even if it had been canonically executed, knowing the way Jonny and Alex love to write, things would still have been shown to end ambiguously—just less tragically poetic. For the purposes of the narrative, I think they did a great job of ending the series on a climactic, fulfilling (and hopeful!) note that remains faithful to the overall tone of The Magnus Archives. Jon and Martin weren’t exactly planning on doing what they did, but it’s given them a chance at the best and happiest ending that was up for grabs.

And I love that I genuinely don’t feel like I have to be in denial of the canon at all to fully believe in this interpretation, since it was left strictly ambiguous on purpose.

But there’s more!

The Magnus Protocol teaser has a seemingly unharmed (and physically corporeal) Martin surprised to see the familiar tape recorder show up again, long after he’s assumed they’ve stopped listening. This, plus the fact that Jonny and Alex have confirmed they will appear in TMA 2, tells me:

It’s unlikely that Jonny and Alex will appear simply to voice other side-characters, even those with distorted voices. It’s clear from Q&As that they take casting very seriously. I can’t see them double-casting (former) main characters.

So we’ll see Martin again, post-escape from Eyepocalypse. Not just an old S1-to-S5-era never-seen-before Magnus Archives tape found by Alice and Sam. Including formerly unrevealed tapes from TMA would be a really nice touch (and I hope we’ll get that too!), but I’m sure Jonny wouldn’t release that particular teaser if he wasn’t solidly planning on following through in some way. Jonny has always been very serious about giving the audience breadcrumb trails with properly viable clues.

Well … what about post-Eyepocalypse Jon? Well, I think Jon is only going to appear in such a way that either fully retains the ambiguity of the TMA ending, or hints/confirms in some way that he is also alive and unharmed (in whatever avatar or semi-avatar form).

In any case, if post-Eyepocalypse Martin (and maybe Jon) do indeed appear (which seems very likely at this point), it will also be implied or shown that they are, indeed, together—in a non-tragic, romantic, bordering on wholesome way.

I say this because confirming their death or separation after the TMA finale would completely ruin the sanctity of the ending. It’s really neatly tied up and beautiful as it is right now. Answering questions to ambiguous events negatively in sequels (eg having formerly surviving main characters simply as side-characters who die in sequels) is really hard to land properly. It borders on being disrespectful of the investment the audience put into the original. Jonny has always been very receptive and sensitive to these things.

However, showing that characters from a previously ambiguous ending are living their best lives as mysterious side-characters that pop in and out—bamboozling the main characters (but delighting the audience)—is a lot easier to execute favourably. It also keeps from taking attention away from the protagonists and the main plot of the sequel.

So my expectation (read: hope) is that we’re going to see Jon and Martin in our world, where the end of TMA implied that the tapes are, and where I assume The Magnus Protocol is set! They will be happy and together (this may be explicit or implied vaguely, I am not sure how they’d keep that completely ambiguous if the post-Eyepocalypse versions of the characters themselves explicitly appear), and nothing worse than TMA finale will happen to them.

I only have this belief because I have incredible faith in Jonny and Alex as writers! I think they subverted insensitive tropes creatively and did just about everything right in TMA, and I can’t say that about most authors I love. Yes, I do generally want my blorbos to be safe and happy, but the above is not just a culmination of my wishful thinking. Jonny and Alex have already said that they certainly aren’t going to try to overshadow TMA, but I’m also hoping The Magnus Protocol will complement TMA while not really trying to step on TMA’s toes. They didn't have to drop so many JonMartin return hints (or even write JonMartin into TMA 2 at all) but they did. Super excited and optimistic for what's to come!

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bishy437 · 3 months

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Hey! I know it’s a bit late but I just saw your polls and your recent own opinion and thought I’d add my two cents. Scum Villain is my personal favorite and tgcf is my least favorite. Like many others, tgcf was my first danmei and first mxtx novel and svsss is my most recent.

I liked tgcf but it didn’t really feel like anything was happening, the pacing was very slow and a lot of the arcs felt really disconnected from eachother (which makes sense considering the scale and all the characters but..) a lot of the arcs that heavily featured side characters didn’t really grab my attention as well as, for example, the Yi City arc from mdzs did. I tried to latch onto the characters, I really did but they just didn’t leave much of an impact on me at all, which is strange because pretty much everyone in svsss interested me.

While svsss may not be perfect, it was just so engaging! i read the first 3 books in two weeks and I had so much fun! I felt so much! sy’s stupidity (affectionate) was just sooo infuriating in all the right ways and his relationships with the cast were super fun! There was definitely a clear progression of events and thinking and just a huge looming of stakes (even though a lot of them were just made up in sqq’s head). The character development too! Svsss was just a delight to read. So many of the side characters are just so amazing too: sqh and mbj have become some of my all time favorites and just all the extras were so good!

Anyways I just have so much love for svsss and I guess I just didn’t connect enough with tgcf. Thanks for reading :)

hi! i agree with everything you’ve said!

i read the books in the order of mdzs -> tgcf -> svsss and i didn’t expect to enjoy sv the most at all considering I had initially liked mdzs due to its horror and tragedy aspects. Tgcf had plenty of tragedy + some horror but as you said, the characters were somewhat unstimulating.

although i do feel the need to give a shoutout to QuanYin. That sidepair actually had me invested the most out of all the other side characters in hob. it’s a shame the fandom tends to sleep on them (i’m guilty i need to draw them Soon!!)

i think what i love about sv is that it’s more of a ‘show don’t tell’ book compared to tgcf. Tgcf took ages explaining things that didn’t need to be explained.

Moshang were barely even in the main story and yet the “Fuck! he can’t fly!” scene had me laughing for literally half an hour and fully believing in moshang supremacy!! mxtx did that with only a few lines during the final showdown!!! and yet we had an entire arc for beefleaf that only made me interested in the sibling dynamic between shi qingxuan and shi wudu 😩

i know sv has its faults—all the books do—but i do think it gets a more of a bad rap than it deserves.

thanks for sharing :)

#i guess we’ll always be in the minority but maybe that’s not a bad thing!#after all hob fandom can be pretty intense at times while sv is so chill most of the time #answered #anonymous #long post

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pochapal · 1 year

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Umineko Liveblog: Thoughts/Theories [Episode 1 Chapter 11 Edition]

Umineko chapter 11 served, primarily, as a space to breathe after the high-intensity horror of chapter 10. Nobody died. Nothing drastic went down. It was a quiet chapter, built to encourage you to contemplate on everything that has happened and everything that is still to come.

That does not mean that nothing happened within chapter 11. Despite its toned-down vibe and pacing, plenty unfolded within this chapter to think on. New character developments, new mysteries, and new clues pointing towards the shape of the bigger overall picture.

So, today’s writeup will explore the following topics: Beatrice’s witch narrative as a conscious performance with a conscious audience, Genji’s suspicious proximity to everything that has happened thus far, Kinzo’s vanishing act, how horror and mystery relate to the Detective/Romantic dichotomy, the Ushiromiya hierarchy being the biggest obstacle to the truth, the magic circle and the elephant in the room, the salient conundrum brought up by the existence of a gun, and the relationship between common sense and magic.

Let’s go and rotate Rokkenjima in our minds for a little while and see what we can’t figure out.

1-11 is a bigger chapter with more components than you’d expect going in. The first thing I want to talk about, and the major element that overshadows most of this chapter (as is to be expected), is the witch narrative. For what is likely a whole bunch of reasons, someone is invested in inserting the shed murders, and every unpleasant thing that has gone down on Rokkenjima thus far, into the myth of Beatrice the Golden Witch.

For the purposes of this discussion, whether or not an actual Golden Witch is truly present during this sequence of events is irrelevant. What matters is that the suspicious parties on the island are fixedly returning everyone’s line of thought back to the occult as often as they can, generating a supernatural air through language and gestures rather than hard evidence. In other words, the Golden Witch is, at this stage at least, a complete and total performance.

Hideyoshi, our suspicious man of the hour, continues to very insistently call everything unsettling he sees “demonic”. He does not think about the clues, nor does he permit anybody else to think about the clues. The blood in the dining room is foul and scary and unexplainable, therefore everybody should leave before the demonic foulness follows them. This is, of course, despite the fact that up until the deaths started happening he firmly did not believe in the story of Beatrice one iota.

Not only this, but whenever there is information that cannot be easily verified, Hideyoshi affirms it as truth. Nobody except for Genji and Kanon have checked the phonelines and the radio. Hideyoshi states unquestioningly that they are all therefore stranded with no way of contacting the outside world until the typhoon passes. You could merely argue that Hideyoshi is foolishly trusting even where it’s unwise to do so, but there is an inherent and immediate contradiction in his behaviour: he is fully in on Eva’s schemes and subterfuge, and has worked with her to try and get one up on Krauss.

Why am I bringing Hideyoshi up specifically? One of his major character traits we’re introduced to right at the start of the story is that when he is engaging with the business world, Hideyoshi affects a Kansai accent. In other words, Hideyoshi constructs a performance to conjure the illusion of a man that “exists” in order to get what he wants through what he says and how he says it.

How much difference is there, really, between Hideyoshi’s pretend accent in business meetings, and Hideyoshi’s frantic panicking about witches and demons during crime scene investigations? It’s all performative. It’s all scripted. As always, Beatrice “exists”.

This can be seen further when you examine Maria’s actions during this chapter. She spends the bulk of it pointedly ignoring everyone in favour of watching cartoons on television. The performative fictional story on her screen interests her more than the legitimate tragedy unfolding around her. This is likely not some newly-seen quirk of Maria’s; she is actually normally rather astute and present in situations that are disturbing and upsetting. She engaged with Kumasawa’s tale of omens on the boat. She is aware of the dread that comes with her rose vanishing. She is present for her mother’s beating of her. These are all very real things with very real impacts on Maria. And yet, she doesn’t bat an eye at the very real and very grim tragedy until she gets to infodump about magic circles.

I do not necessarily think this is all conscious on Maria’s part, and is more a thematic point being expressed through Maria’s character than anything else. I think the salient connection between Hideyoshi’s business affect and his sudden insistence on the witch narrative and Maria treating the tragedy with the same level of interest as she would a cartoon all point towards the same thing: the occult witch side of things is an augmented fiction brought to life, a method-acting stageplay that must be acted out for a variety of reasons both known and unknown. Maria, the child who only likes what she likes, is bored by the theatrics right up until she gets to play her role. The rest is just set dressing. Noise to make you believe.

Of course, it’s worth pointing out that the people we see inviting the witch narrative into “existence” are actors in this fiction, rather than the director. Hideyoshi is acting on direction. Maria is not acting on direction, but she is responding to carefully selected stimuli. If we only stick with them, we will likely not get any closer to figuring out what’s actually going on with all this. What we need is to find out who is the author of the witch narrative. Who is the one writing Beatrice into “existence”?

There are possibilities, but nothing concrete yet. However, merely by positing the existence of a conscious author of this fiction, this also forces you to consider the other half of this equation: a fiction needs an audience. Somebody needs to be witnessing this piece of theatre. There is somebody that this writer wants to tell their story to. The author is obscured. The why is obscured. But perhaps the audience is not.

Of all the people on Rokkenjima, there is one who sticks out the most obviously: Battler. He has been removed from this family for over half a decade. He is only barely starting to reconnect with his relatives, most of whom he has a distant and inaccurate impression of based on a resentful memory. To an outsider who is not privy to the way Battler thinks, it would be the most natural thing in the world to assume he still harbours resentment or indifference towards the rest of the Ushiromiya family. In other words, of all the people on Rokkenjima, he is the least likely to be seriously affected by the murders going by this logic.

If you were crafting a supernatural murder mystery tinged with so much tragedy, wouldn’t someone like Battler be an ideal candidate on paper? If you’re making a detective story, you need a Detective to go along with it, or it’s all for nothing.

However, the above statement relies on assumptions that aren’t water-tight. We do not know if the orchestrator of the witch narrative is consciously crafting a mystery, or if it’s just a by-product of the supernatural horror. We also do not know what the narrator wants from their audience, exactly. How much of what Battler is doing is what the culprit intends for Battler to do? How on-track is the witch narrative?

To answer this, we need to consider perspective and genre, and the all-important Detective/Romantic dichotomy.

Luckily for us, there is a scene in this chapter that directly talks about this stuff. When Battler is on the brink of starting to buy into the witch narrative, he has a kind of psychic heart-to-heart with brain ghosts of Rudolf and Kyrie that motivate him to continue to deny the existence of a witch. Rudolf discusses the horror genre, landing on the conclusion that horror exists to fabricate sensations for humans to experience in order to liven up their dull lives. Kyrie discusses chessboard thinking again, highlighting that the deeper you go into a game, the easier it gets to read the opponent as the number of potential moves shrinks to its absolute minimum.

In combination, these two epiphanies bring Battler into a Detective’s mindset where he is more willing than ever to both solve the mystery and deny that the witch exists. Given that Battler has this moment of introspection as a result of the stimuli provided by the witch narrative, it makes it easy to argue in favour of the witch narrative constructing a Detective story.

If that were the case, then everything is being laid out in-universe like a solvable mystery, just as it is to an external reader of Umineko. Somebody on Rokkenjima is expected to examine this mystery with a clear head and solve it. Battler, if Battler is the intended audience, is expected to be the Detective, to cut through the illusions by design.

Where this theory falls apart, though, is that it contradicts the nature of every person capable of perpetuating the Beatrice myth and the witch narrative. Would Kanon, in his determined desperation, want to get caught out and have his chances at escaping his circumstances ruined? Would Kumasawa spend so much time setting the stage at the start, reinforcing the existence of Beatrice in Maria’s mind, for the explicit purpose of having Battler tear it to shreds? Would the letter and graffiti be produced in such excruciating detail just to be denied? Would Eva and Hideyoshi ever consent to acting in a way that makes their crimes not only noticeable, but completely discoverable?

The witch narrative as a Detective story theory fails to marry up with the human element. The horror is not a conscious construction designed for humans to revel in its falsehood to feel better about themselves, because the stakes are too high for anybody to produce a performance that contradictory.

So instead, let’s consider the counter-fact: the witch narrative as a Romantic story. Returning to Rudolf’s horror metaphor, he misses out the crucial aspect of the genre, which is the way that the existence, or “existence”, of the monsters happens when the human audience is exposed to enough narrative material that they themselves conjure their own version of the monster in their minds. The true horror of the genre comes when something sticks with you even after you finish the story, something you cannot rationally deny no matter how much logic you throw at it.

To fit the witch narrative through this Romantic-horror lens, the express purpose of creating the illusion is to get the audience to fully believe in the existence of the witch. No matter what logic, no matter what reasoning, even if you don’t like it, you still can’t doubt your way out of acknowledging it. Through an overloading assault of occult tropes, at least something is bound to stick.

And indeed, Battler wavers for just a moment. It is only after his moment that he flips the script, and would from now on be acting against the way that the originator of the witch narrative likely intended him to. If you’re making a Romantic story, you need your reader to approach it from a Romantic’s perspective. If your reader is set on hard-denying you Detective style, then that’s an irreparable wrench in your plans. Perhaps this is the case. Perhaps the author misjudged Battler’s character, and their scheme is going to come crashing down around them.

That said, what if that’s not entirely the case? What if Battler, no matter how much he leans into his mystery-solving logic, is still acting from the place of the Romantic? After all, he is not coldly and methodically approaching this mystery. Everything he does comes from a deeply emotive place, from an untold sympathy and compassion for his murdered family members. He is not approaching this entirely clear-headed and objective. He is furious that his loved ones have been taken from him. Love is the ruling emotion of the day, not curiosity.

Further than that, the nature of Battler’s epiphany contradicts its own conclusions. He reaches his new perspective by going into his mind and conjuring versions of Rudolf and Kyrie that impart on him the emotional truths he needs to feel validated in continuing to doubt. He does not rely on his own reasoning, on facts and logic, but the memories of his loved ones that are real enough to change his outlook. What is the difference between brain ghost Kyrie telling Battler to remember that the act of cornering is a mutual one so the truth is easier than ever to grasp, and “Beatrice” announcing her impeding and impossible revival through letters and graffiti and the terrified behaviour of deeply compromised individuals?

The emotional truths hinge around words issued by people that “exist”. Everybody involved is invested in having their story uncritically believed. The culprit needs the illusion of the witch to get away with their crimes unscathed. The story of Beatrice is a powerful obfuscation of the material truth, something so overpowering and scary that you can’t fully deny it no matter what you do. Through and through, the witch narrative is Romantic.

So, if Battler is a Romantic masquerading as a Detective, what will happen when he runs against something he can’t deny completely and unequivocally? One major crux of the witch narrative is that it allows a convenient excuse for you to put all the suspicion and doubt on somebody who isn’t a member of the Ushiromiya family. Believing in Beatrice is to uphold the innocence of every human being on Rokkenjima. For Battler, who deeply cares about his family despite having every means to not do so, at what point would the allure of the abdication of blame become too strong to resist?

In his own words, Rokkenjima entered a “different world” the minute the letter was read out. How much would you really want to leave that world when the deeper you go into it, the more painful it will be to leave? Six people are dead. If a witch didn’t do it, somebody Battler knows and cares about killed other people he knows and cares about.

If you follow this through, Battler’s “role” in the narrative is to question right up until it becomes too painful to do so. What value is a truth that can only harm you? If Battler was a Detective, he may be inclined to seek it out anyway. But Battler isn’t really a Detective, so would he really seek to tear down the illusion even knowing what it would cost? Either way, if someone assuming the role of Detective gives up, that solidifies the illusion and removes room for doubt stronger than anything any singular occult symbol could ever do.

Both the Detective and Romantic reads of the witch narrative are plausible and have basis in reality. Both have their gaping flaw, all of which hinge around understanding of the people involved in this story. If you take the Detective’s read, you must have therefore misunderstood the motive of every person linked to the crime. If you take the Romantic’s, you must have therefore misunderstood Battler.

Either way, the common theme is that there is somebody not being understood in this whole performance. The two easiest to reach interpretations condemn the actors and the audience, respectively. Neither scenario, however, touches on the role of the writer, the orchestrator in the shadows.

Who is this person, deciding to produce the witch narrative? What do they want? Why do they want it?

If you could, even a little, fill in the obfuscating negative space surrounding the person behind Beatrice, that might be the thing to set you on the path to uncovering the real truth. Neither Detective nor Romantic, but a secret third thing.

Of course, this line of thinking asks you to consider something outside of the common sense frameworks being built up by Umineko all around you. That the story’s internal logic can only get you so far, and that there’s something additional you need to perceive, or at least perceive the outline of, in order to make more headway.

I am talking about the deeper mysteries of the text of course, but I am also talking about magic.

There’ve been several explanations of the way magic functions within Umineko thus far: it’s a convenient lie to pave over an uncomfortable truth (if a witch made the gold appear with magic, then Kinzo did not acquire it in any kind of evil way), an expression of dreams and desire (to Maria, magic is the one thing that brings her joy), an obfuscating wedge that influences reality against everyone’s wishes (the letter inspires murder even though nobody actively believes in “Beatrice”, so is that not in itself an act of magic?). Above all else, magic is a creative force that can shape the material world from an immaterial stance.

In other words, magic by nature denies and defies common sense and the common sense systems inhabited by most people. Battler struggles with this frequently in this chapter; the witch narrative is neatly set up for him to buy into, but he keeps hesitating because every single part of it goes against common sense. In the physical world, witches cannot exist to instigate a violent summoning ritual. People can’t be killed in impossible and occult ways. Everything must have a mundane explanation. You can think your way out of any problem.

And yet. Battler said it himself. The minute that letter was read out, Rokkenjima entered into another world. Nothing has changed, yet everything has changed. Maria’s rose was there, and yet it was not. Beatrice “exists”.

In every case, the same thing happens. The imaginative rule of thought overrides critical logic. Magic happens when you cannot doubt. Like a good fiction, the illusion only works if you can suspend your disbelief enough to let it manifest. If you read a story with a pedantic frame of mind, picking apart at the very structural seams of the thing until meaning itself unravels, you destroy the magic root and stem.

For instance, I can destroy the illusion of Umineko myself right now. I am merely spending time looking at a collection of png images overlaid atop each other, accompanied by text and audio files. There is not a temporal continuity in this story; each “scene” is a disconnected fragment of information with no actual connective tissue between it and the next. The onus is on me to “believe” that the space between chapter 1 and chapter 2 proves the world of Rokkenjima to be “real”, even though in reality I am shown two disjointed moments – one where Battler (Battler himself being a collection of symbols I am choosing to buy into until it resembles a person in my consciousness) is screaming inside a plane (a loud voice recording plays alongside a drawing of a plane’s interior), and then another where Battler is in the airport on the other side.

The plane journey never existed in narrative, and yet it “exists” in my perception of the story. It becomes more real when the other characters discuss how Battler behaved on this flight. It becomes impossible to deny the plane journey illusion.

If I wanted to, I could still hold fast to the objective truth that the flight never took place, but I ultimately choose to buy into it anyway, because I want to believe in the structural integrity of Umineko. I want to read and engage with Umineko, so Umineko becomes real and engaging enough for me to do that. If you call this nebulous imaginative process “magic”, then magic therefore unequivocally exists, because without imagination/magic, there is no meaning-construction to be done.

Like fiction, like magic, the contradiction lies in the fact that in order to engage with a world, you must therefore suspend your common sense in order to grant it the fullest “existence” that you can. This is a very pedantic ontological point, I’m aware, but is not magic itself also a pedantic ontological point?

The important takeaway remains that too much “common sense”, too much reliance on logic, too much Detective, kills the magic dead. And unless you consciously choose to conjure it up again (such is the case when the reader of a story deconstructs it to language then reconstructs it to narrative) it will stay dead no matter how much the author/witch tries otherwise. Therefore, it’s in the best interest of the author/witch to keep their audience from denying their narrative. It would be bad for business if everyone became a skeptic.

Which is why it is very curious but also completely unsurprising that the narrative of Umineko itself is insistent on maintaining the illusion. Whenever Battler is not telling the story, we are constantly treated to passages and phrases that are all permutations of “it was impossible to figure out, so everybody stopped thinking”. Given that the reader’s instinct is to distrust a first-person narrator as unreliable, and Battler is the element of the story dedicated to denying the witch narrative, it is surely a little suspicious that the more “reliable” third-person narration likes to make a point of passively encouraging acceptance of the witch narrative in this way.

The most compelling evidence for the witch narrative only comes through the third person narration when Battler isn’t there to question or deny it. Battler doesn’t get to see the magic circle on the storehouse door. Battler doesn’t get to see the butterfly that haunted Shannon in her final moments. The only thing Battler gets to see is the letter being read out by Maria, the significance of which is impossible to deny even for him, even if he claims a witch had nothing to do with it. Everything that most strongly affirms the illusion of Beatrice is shown outside of Battler.

A cynical read would be to claim that this is proof the magic is bogus, because under Battler’s scrutiny it would all fall apart as the sham it really is. But as outlined earlier, magic is inexorably tied to the human capacity for imaginatively sequencing reality. If magic didn’t exist, then a whole bunch of other crucial things would also by definition not exist.

So the takeaway is that we are supposed to treat the signs of the witch narrative with gravitas and seriousness. The opening summary for episode one states that our goal here is to not think too hard about what happens and accept all that we see. This directive is not given to Battler or anybody else on Rokkenjima. This directive is given to us before we even start reading the story.

It is important that, at least for now, we accept the witch narrative as something to genuinely engage with, and not as an inconsistency to be torn apart. Destroying the illusion without gaining any understanding would defeat the purpose of whatever the narration is really trying to do – like I’ve discussed before, it is highly likely that the narrator of Umineko has a specific purpose and agenda in presenting this story the way it is presented. There is some kind of truth that needs to be reached, but that can only be reached by entertaining the witch narrative as being real.

Whatever the truth of Umineko is, it cannot be reached through common sense. It cannot be reached by outright denying magic. Even if the truth itself is not magic, a rejection of magic will keep you from it. We would be failing as readers if we were to, like Battler, automatically assume the magic is meaningless without a second thought. Just as within the story “Beatrice” needs the Ushiromiya family not to deny the witch narrative, so too does the narrator need the external audience outside of the story not to deny the witch narrative. We all need to remain at least partially convinced, because doubt is the death of a story, and too much doubt would not only tear apart the witch, but also Umineko itself. The illusion is important for everything to function as it should.

So let’s now turn our attention to one of the cornerstones of this generated narrative illusion: the magic circle. This piece of graffiti becomes a talking point as Hideyoshi and Nanjo bring it up to the rest of the family, in tandem with Battler puzzling over the purpose of using it to advertise the location of the bodies.

Once brought up, Hideyoshi and Nanjo describe the appearance of the magic circle to Maria, who confirms it as a legitimate occult symbol. Based only off their uncertain descriptions, Maria still manages to draw a perfect replica of what they saw, and then goes on to define its meaning: a sacrificial symbol to grant freedom from inescapable bonds.

Through this exchange, some facts about this magic circle can be established. Regardless of whatever was physically painted on the shutter door, the conceptual idea of the symbol is authentic and verifiable. Somebody has deliberately introduced the notion of this sacrificial circle, and made sure that legitimate information would be conveyed to Maria, who would then in turn grant it a sense of truth that nobody else could. It is a simple and powerful way of strengthening the witch narrative: after all, who would go to the lengths to produce such a perfect symbol if it didn’t have meaning?

What is worth pointing out, however, is that the message and purpose of this magic circle in no way fit with the other actions and motives of the “Beatrice” narrative. The letter and the actual killings indicate that the intended pattern is for everything to line up with the ritual established in the epitaph – these are the six chosen by the key to set the ball rolling on the Golden Witch’s resurrection. The magic circle should be irrelevant; by all measures, the six bodies themselves are where the power comes from. The first twilight makes no mention of a sigil, or that anything has to be done beyond the sacrifice of the six.

The magic circle is theatre, then. Its purpose is not truly occult, but instead to heighten a sense of belief in the occult. To somebody unfamiliar with the epitaph and its implications (which is almost certainly pretty much everybody there), the appearance of six mutilated bodies on their own would not induce any kind of supernatural paranoia. It would be a grisly and terrifying scene, but without the over-the-top iconography, the witch narrative would not manifest.

Like Battler surmises, the culprit wanted the circle to be seen. He lands on it being a flashy way to advertise the location of the corpses, which is true enough, but is likely only one part of the reason why. The purpose of the circle is to catch the attention of the oblivious, so that they are forced to acknowledge what is going on. This includes both the murders, and the narrative of the witch. Both these things need to happen in order for events to progress, for whatever reason. Battler considers that the circle may be a message intended for Kinzo’s eyes, but the opposite is most likely true. This circle was drawn for the benefit of everybody except for Kinzo.

And of course, if the circle is to be treated as a narrative entity, then it’s important to examine the storytellers. The ones who fill everybody in on the details of the circle are Nanjo and Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi at this point is pretty evidently entrenched in upholding the witch narrative, but it is also curious that Nanjo is one of the originators of information about the magic circle as well.

Throughout the story so far, I’ve kept flip-flopping on whether or not Nanjo is to be suspected, or if he is unfortunate enough to be incompetent at the worst possible time. What’s worth considering about Nanjo is that while he has performed suspect activities (confirming the details of the magic circle, encouraging everybody to stop looking at the crime scenes), he is not outright perpetuating the witch narrative in the way Hideyoshi has been. Nanjo never describes anything as demonic, as inexplicable. He just describes it in a matter of fact, albeit disturbed, manner.

Hideyoshi being in on the witch narrative makes sense. He is almost certainly embroiled in whatever went down when the six were actually killed. Nanjo occupies a weirder space. He very conveniently presents things in a way that would benefit the witch narrative without ever being an outright suspect himself. He has no connection to the inheritance dispute. He is not trapped in the desperate cycles of torment that the other servants are. He has not been seen to interact with any suspicious element in the story. He is just there. And yet. And yet.

That said, there is one suspicious thing Nanjo does do in this chapter, even if it is suspicious in a way that isn’t directly related to either the murders or the witch narrative. When the possible meanings of the magic circle are brought up, everybody’s attention turns to the iron cross situated front and centre. Nanjo is the one that brings up that the symbol is best known for its usage by an ancient religious order, which leads the others to latch onto that theory until Maria outlines the actual occult meaning of it.

What’s interesting here is that the other meaning associated with the iron cross goes unremarked upon. I don’t believe this is because that meaning is irrelevant in Umineko – in the previous chapter, the iron cross was distinctly described as looking “European” – so it is worth considering why this meaning is never brought up. Nanjo knows enough about the history of the iron cross to discuss its ancient religious meaning, but he doesn’t talk about its usage as a fascist icon?

Assuming Nanjo is aware of that meaning, and is not saying it, this would not be the first time that he has spoken over what should otherwise be an elephant in the room. Right at the start of the story, when discussing a will with Kinzo, Nanjo very overtly hinted towards Kinzo using a will as a means of confessing some kind of sin, being as explicit as he could be without directly stating whatever said sin is. Kinzo denied that he had any such skeletons in his closet, before pivoting to talking about his one regret being that he never saw Beatrice’s smile again. Nanjo, however, still firmly made it clear that he believed in the existence of some great sin in Kinzo’s past that needs absolution, something that Nanjo never directly says out loud.

How likely is it, then, that Kinzo’s sin and the deliberately unspoken-on western fascist iconography are linked? Nanjo has known Kinzo for years, enough that he is one of the very few people that the man actually trusts. Could it be that, whatever this sin of Kinzo’s is, that Nanjo is in some way complicit? That he can’t talk about it, because talking about it himself is to admit an involvement he would rather not have anyone know about? Nanjo is very good at being an unremarkable, inoffensive presence. Perhaps it is a practised front, a means of self-preservation in the face of whatever murky thing lies in the past.

As the magic circle hints at, everybody on Rokkenjima is confined by an inescapable obligation. What obligation holds Nanjo there? Unlike the family members and the servants, Nanjo is simply a physician. Nothing about him is personally bound to the Ushiromiya family. And yet he’s here, stuck same as the rest of them. What does Nanjo know? There has to be something, because of all the possible magic circles drawn, the one with this specific image was chosen. Somebody used this symbol to evoke that grim secret. Try as he likes to bury his head in the sand, I feel like sooner or later, this thing will come to light, either via confession or via the culprit forcing it out into the open.

I’ve already spoken on who I think is the best candidate to have produced this magic circle, and so far nothing has contradicted that theory. It still needs to be a person who has access to the occult knowledge who isn’t Kinzo, who had the means and opportunity to produce the circle. That still leaves the same two culprits as last time. Kanon by now is an established suspect, and there’s not much more I can say on him that I haven’t already said.

Instead, let’s turn our attention to the next most suspicious servant, who has a knack for being at the centre of a lot of bizarre and convenience coincidences. Let’s think about just how sus Genji really is.

I’ve already outlined in an earlier writeup how Genji makes the most sense to be an accomplice to Kanon if Kanon is the culprit. This time I’d like to examine how Genji’s actions in this chapter paint him as even more suspect.

The obvious thing to mention here is how easily Genji could get away with lying. In this chapter, Genji confirms to everybody that the phones and radio are down, leaving them with no way to contact the outside world. This claim is bolstered by Hideyoshi immediately reacting with utmost belief. Nobody else has any room or reason to doubt what Genji is saying. Genji says something, a person parroting the witch narrative reinforces it, and it becomes hard fact.

Meanwhile, not once have the phones and radio been inspected by anyone other than Genji. In this way, his claims are even flimsier than narrative evidence located in non-Battler POV segments. Whereas with those, we the reader get to see something, even if that something is not true, here we get nothing except for Genji’s word. Genji, who is the closest ally of Kinzo, and would know him and his quirks enough to justifiably have a passing understanding of occult concepts. Genji, who knows Beatrice. Genji, who is strong and competent despite his advanced age.

Genji, who is at the centre of a lot of convenient coincidences. The phones and radio are broken? Who is in the best position to sabotage these things. Krauss’s personal boat is out for repairs and thus unavailable on the exact date of the conference? Who is best positioned to arrange such a set of circumstances. The bodies are found in a location only a servant with a key could access? Well, I sure do wonder who fits best there. In chapter 10, it was said that searching for fingerprints on the storehouse door would be useless because Kanon and Genji’s prints would already be on there from opening it up. Genji is present for both the magic circle in the garden and the bloodstains outside Natsuhi’s room. Genji is the one that greets Eva and Hideyoshi at midnight after they return to the guesthouse. It is always Genji, always present.

When you give it even a moment of scrutiny, Genji is right at the heart of the witch narrative, moreso than even Kanon. It would be impossible to deny Genji’s involvement at this point no matter which way you slice it. There are too many instances of this happening to dismiss it as coincidence.

The only issue with trying to pin anything on Genji is that the question of why remains totally opaque. Genji has the means and opportunity to be a likely culprit, but why would he do that? All my other major suspects have a clear motive. Eva and Hideyoshi are either trying to save their own skin (if you want to be charitable) or gunning for the gold and the headship (if you want to be uncharitable). Kanon deeply loathes the Ushiromiya family and the way they’ve treated both him and Shannon and is acting from a place of desperation. Genji, however? Genji is in good standing with Kinzo. Genji has given no indication that he is either resentful of his position as a servant or interested in the gold. So what reason would Genji have for involving himself?

I’ve sketched it out before, but the only thing I can even vaguely think of is based on the way that Genji will say “I faithfully serve the master of the household”. This phrasing is interesting, because it can be taken to mean that Genji’s utmost loyalty is to whoever the head of the Ushiromiya household is, and not Kinzo specifically. Would this mean, then, that in a situation where Kinzo were to no longer act as the Ushiromiya head, Genji would switch allegiance to whoever took his place? If, say, Kanon were to find the discarded ring in the courtyard and use it to seal some letters, would that be enough for Kanon to become the new “master”?

If so, why would Genji act like this? He is one of three servants on Rokkenjima to refer to themselves as furniture, but unlike Shannon and Kanon, we are not ever shown any specific facet of abuse inflicted on Genji beyond the standard abuse inherent to being part of the servant class. Genji is the senior servant. He is Kinzo’s good friend. Natsuhi and Krauss distrust him, but they aren’t outright hostile to him. Nobody berates him. Nobody disrespects him. So why would this kind of blind servitude be a core part of his character?

The only thing I can think of to explain this in a way beyond “Genji is just like that”, is that Kinzo has indicated that the murders and the revival of the witch are only one half of his desired outcomes on the demon’s roulette. Kinzo’s understanding of magic is founded on the idea of getting a result with astronomically low odds in the face of infinitely more likely occurrences. With the epitaph, there are two outcomes: either thirteen people die and the witch is resurrected, or somebody solves the epitaph, finds the gold, and succeeds the headship. Both of these outcomes would be acceptable in Kinzo’s eyes.

Kinzo’s insurance for the murder part of the epitaph is well-outlined; he holes himself up in his study and waits for everyone else in his family to die so that he can meet Beatrice again at the end of it. What is less clear is his insurance for the succession part. It’s abundantly clear that he does not want his own relatives to solve the epitaph and claim the rewards (and there may be some contract word trickery where the fortune is safe if not in the hands of someone who is part of the Ushiromiya lineage) and has not so subtly pushed Kanon to think about solving the epitaph for himself.

I think my earlier theory that Kinzo is grooming the two young furniture servants to play specific roles in the epitaph ritual holds strongest here. Kanon solves the epitaph and becomes the new Ushiromiya head, thereby preserving Kinzo’s fortune in a way that keeps it out of the hands of his loathed offspring. Shannon, meanwhile, becomes a vessel for the Golden Witch’s spirit once the murders have finished. In Kinzo’s dream scenario, having Shannon and Kanon survive to the end would allow him to have his cake and eat it. Beatrice revives, and the fortune is preserved. Kanon and Shannon become the new Ushiromiya head and the new Golden Witch. The cycle repeats.

Of course, giving the headship to Kanon would be a risky bet. If even a single member of the Ushiromiya family survives, there is absolutely no way that Kanon would get a shred of anything. So the only way for this plan to work would be for either every single Ushiromiya to die, or for there to be some means of protecting Kanon’s status.

Genji deeply and fondly cares about Kinzo, enough that he can bring out a softer side to the man. If Kinzo were to frame this as a final request to an old friend, would Genji be likely to follow through with it? He cares about Kinzo, and he has a soft spot for Shannon and Kanon. I think it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine he’d be willing to protect these kids on his master’s say. Genji has nothing to gain, but also nothing to lose. He is prime suspect material without even trying.

And better than that, Genji’s suspicious position continues to fulfil his duty of upholding the Ushiromiya hierarchy. Both Battler and Eva say it themselves; the easiest conclusion for anybody to reach is that the murders are the work of a servant with a grudge against the family. When the typhoon ends and the survivors leave, this is almost assuredly the story that will reach the police’s ears, because it’s easier than having to examine the rotten foundation present in the Ushiromiya family members themselves.

The unspoken element of this whole murder mystery setup is the class dynamic at play. The two groups of people on the island consist of the extremely wealthy family members, and the put-upon and abused servants. Almost immediately the most suspicious members of the family leverage this class discrepancy to plant seeds of paranoia towards the servants, relying on the fact that it’ll be easier to condemn them than their own relatives.

When Eva discusses with Battler that the most likely culprit is a servant (even if the evidence does indicate that) she is setting in motion that dilemma. Who can Battler distrust more easily? His beloved aunt, or a servant? Who would he rather send to prison by pointing the finger come the morning?

Of course, Battler tries to shoot Eva down through chessboard logic, claiming that pinning it on a servant is too easy and too obvious, that it’s the expected move to make when taking on a family of paranoid rich people. The truth would naturally be more complex than that, so Battler tries to puzzle out what that more complex truth might be. However, the evidence still paints the picture that only a servant could have given Maria the letter, that only a servant could have set up the storehouse scenario. When those facts become impossible to deny, what happens then?

The petty “servants seeking revenge” narrative is just as much a brute-force obfuscation as the witch narrative. In the face of such atrocities, it is easier to hand all responsibility over to a witch, or to the lesser servants, than it is to consider that your own relatives are complicit. Without the witch narrative in place, the servant narrative would easily win out. The Ushiromiya family would close ranks. They would convince themselves only a servant could have done it, and they would all as one state that a servant did do it. No thinking needed. All you’d need is the reliance on your place in the class hierarchy. Any suspect family members are protected by everybody taking the easy road.

By all accounts, this series of murders should do nothing to disrupt the cycles of abuse and violence in the Ushiromiya family. The wealth and class violence should ensure that no matter what, they will get away consequence-free. So what could actually manage to put an end to this rotten cycle, then?

This is where the witch narrative would shine. You cannot believe in both the witch narrative and the servant narrative. Believing in the witch also means ceasing to suspect the servants by virtue of its very construction. And more than that, if you consider that the witch narrative is using the murders to force everyone to consider a deeper truth than tricks and culprits, a successful witch narrative may very well destroy the Ushiromiya structure once and for all.

If the magic circle’s alternative symbolism has weight, if the implicit meaning is true, then the witch narrative will drag to light the Ushiromiya family’s dirty secrets. Here, it does not matter if the individuals in the family believe or not. What matters is that the witch narrative is painting a picture of the fascist core at the heart of Rokkenjima. In that case, what happens when, after the murders, word gets out that the Ushiromiya family is brimming with rotten politics? What does it mean for the world to know that this successful family is sitting atop a pile of illegal, possibly fascist, gold? It would be a PR disaster for every company associated with the family, worse even than money troubles. The very structures upholding this family would be used against them and they would be powerless to stop it.

Given how intrinsically woven the witch narrative is into the fabric of the murders, there is no way they could even attempt to cover it up without it also looking like they’re trying to cover up the murders of their family members. If they tried to bury the second truth to the killings, it would only serve to paint them as the culprits. In a roundabout way, this is a more material manifestation of the believe the witch/deny the witch dilemma. If Eva denies the witch narrative, she is suspected as a culprit. If she attempts to cover up the occult presentation of the crimes, she becomes suspected as a culprit. It’s the same thing on two different levels. A top-down conundrum that forces the Ushiromiya family to play along with the story for their own good.

And here, at the intersection of Ushiromiya hierarchy and unsolvable mysteries, we get the latest problem to solve: Kinzo’s disappearance.

After returning from the storehouse terrified and traumatised, Eva and Natsuhi take it on themselves to make sure that Kinzo, the only person still unaccounted for, is alive and well. Natsuhi out of a sense of fear and duty, Eva out of a sense of wanting to be proven right. Some time later, they return to the parlour with the grim news that the Ushiromiya family head has disappeared.

This is immediately an intriguing problem. The last time we saw Kinzo was in the morning, shortly before the discovery of the bodies. He was in his study, present enough to have his bizarre heart-to-heart with Natsuhi. Beyond this change in character (that is not without precedent), there was nothing up with Kinzo in this scene that would even imply something like this would happen.

Natsuhi met with Kinzo in the study at around 08:00. Chapter 11 starts at 08:45. Assuming some wriggle room, this gives a window of maybe one hour tops within which Kinzo can vanish. Drilling further, you can assume the time that Kinzo disappeared was most likely when everybody was finding the bodies, leaving the mansion empty save for Maria and maybe Kumasawa. That window would likely be shorter, perhaps no longer than thirty minutes.

So. Somehow, Kinzo manages to disappear without a trace, unassisted, in a span of half an hour. A timespan that also just so happens to coincide with the discovery of the six corpses. It’s a very weird and very convoluted setup.

The first questions to ask are: where did Kinzo go? And is he still alive?

In terms of location, this can be narrowed down considerably. Kinzo obviously was not in the garden or storehouse because this is where everybody was during the timeframe of his disappearance. Natsuhi and the servants later performed a sweep of the entire mansion, confirming that he was not there either. His study remains empty, so he is not there, either. That is pretty much every known place on Rokkenjima ruled out.

Except for one: the Golden Land. Or the vault. Or wherever it is the ten tons of gold ingots are hidden. If Kinzo is anywhere, it is likely he is here. It’s an impossible place that nobody will think to look for until it’s too late, requiring an engagement with the witch narrative to even stand a chance of locating him. Why would he go here, when it’s been established that his study is the safest place to be during a series of murders?

If he left of his own volition, which seems likely given that nobody could have feasibly helped or forced him, we need to consider his last actions before disappearing: his conversation with Natsuhi. Could something about that interaction have prompted him to move? Perhaps the fact that Natsuhi, a marked sacrifice, survived the night shook his confidence. If something that small can go awry, perhaps the demon’s roulette isn’t as guaranteed as he’d like it to be. So by heading to the “Golden Land” ahead of time, it means that he cannot be “sent” there as part of the ritual. Also, unlike his study which can be opened from the outside by a key, the only way to even find the hiding place of the gold, let alone access it, is to solve a nigh-impossible riddle that nobody has any interest in.

Except if you think about it, even that is rife with contradiction. In order to reach the gold, you likely need to complete all the steps of the epitaph riddle. Doing so would likely render the riddle unsolvable for anybody else thinking of trying their hand at it, defeating the purpose of the demon’s roulette. For Kinzo’s magic to manifest, he needs two equally viable extreme outcomes to pit themselves against each other. Why would he eliminate the resisting force that would guarantee his miracle? Something doesn’t add up.

And more than that. When discussing his disappearance, it is made abundantly clear to the reader that this is an extremely weird thing for Kinzo to do no matter what. His updated character status all but states outright that him ever leaving his study is completely and wildly out of character for him. Natsuhi and the servants make it very clear that, for some reason, it should be “impossible” for Kinzo to leave his study. And yet he is gone regardless.

Why would it be impossible for Kinzo to leave? He is not physically sealed inside the study; there is a locking mechanism from the inside that he can use to come and go if he so wanted to. All his needs are in theory met inside the study, so it’s not likely he would want to go out and interact with his family, but impossible? That’s a strong word. How and why would Kinzo be trapped in his study, in a way that makes it apparent to those who know him best that he would never leave?

It gets weirder, though. In the flow of this same conversation, after highlighting how impossible it would be for Kinzo to leave the study, Natsuhi offers an alternative explanation: Kinzo, on a fickle whim, likely decided to go out for a walk. Ignoring how ridiculous that is as an excuse, there is the more pressing issue here. How can it be impossible for Kinzo to leave his study, and yet also equally likely that he would simply wander around oblivious to the ongoing crisis?

How can Kinzo be both trapped in his study, and also capable of roaming around the mansion? Why would Natsuhi say such a thing?

Really, when everybody is acting like this, it’s no surprise that Eva is this confident in her conspiracy theory. Speaking of which, let’s address the second question related to Kinzo: is he still alive as of his disappearance?

I am not sure. I think that, either way, we won’t see Kinzo again until we discover his corpse, but as to when that will happen is a mystery. Logic dictates that he can’t be dead yet, because nothing about him fits the criteria for the next twilight. One old man dying on his own does not constitute “the two who are close” in any possible way.

He could fit the criteria for any twilight after the second, but if he’s an intended sacrifice, why take him ahead of time? If you kill somebody for, say, the fourth twilight before the second has even happened, doesn’t that invalidate the sequence of the ritual and prevent Beatrice’s resurrection?

This might make sense if Kinzo was abducted by somebody with a vested interest in stopping the ritual (but again, nobody was around to take him), except that raises another contradiction. If the culprit didn’t want the ritual, why ensure the killings match the first twilight, and why go to all these lengths to fabricate the witch narrative? If something sticks out like this, the whole thing will unravel, and as we’ve already established, the culprit needs the witch narrative to succeed for any of this to work.

So if all that is the case, why did Kinzo disappear? What for?

If he was taken to be killed, who took him? Where is he? If you assume my earlier theory of Kinzo being in the room with the gold, the culprit keeping him there to kill him once again contradicts the witch narrative: if the epitaph gets solved, the murders stop. If a body is found in a place where you need to solve the epitaph to access, it completely shreds every drop of legitimacy that a witch could be present.

How, then, can you reconcile Kinzo’s disappearance with the witch narrative? There is one thing I can think of, but a lot of it relies on baseless conjecture inspired by one singular detail.

After searching the mansion for Kinzo, Natsuhi returns carrying a gun. She claims to have taken it from Kinzo’s personal collection as a precautionary measure. The existence of this rifle immediately solves one mystery, and creates one more.

The bodies in the storehouse had their faces mutilated in a way that wasn’t clear. There was no tool found that could have done that to them. A rifle like the one Kinzo has would very conveniently blast a hole in someone’s face, tearing it up in a way that matches what Battler saw. This strongly indicates that the culprit, or the person who set up the first twilight anyhow, has access to a gun.

If you assume this as truth, another problem immediately arises. The gun was kept in Kinzo’s personal collection. The location of this collection is not specified, but based on everything we know, this gun was almost assuredly kept inside Kinzo’s study. This means that, in order to create the first twilight, the culprit had to take the gun from Kinzo’s study and use it.

(As an aside, even if you figure that there is more than one gun at play, all guns are likely stored in the same place, so the issue is not with the number of guns, but the location of Kinzo’s collection).

The list of people who could have taken the gun from the study that night is incredibly small – only Genji has a key to the study, and only he and Kanon would stand a chance of being granted entry. Luckily, it is very likely that Genji and Kanon are involved in the crime, so this fact holds water.

What doesn’t hold water is what this implies. There is no way for anybody to enter Kinzo’s study without Kinzo knowing. If Genji and/or Kanon took the gun to mutilate the bodies, Kinzo would also therefore be aware about the first twilight at around midnight. How likely is it that Kinzo would let them take the gun without at least asking questions? A spiteful old man like him would almost certainly want to know who died, if only to make sure it adheres to the pattern of the epitaph if nothing else.

So in this scenario, the servants take the gun, mutilate the bodies, and then either return it to the study or keep it for themselves depending on if there’s more than one gun. Either way, this means Kinzo has full knowledge of what has gone down. One could even argue that this makes him an accomplice to some extent.

Under this scenario, it might make sense for Kinzo to disappear from the study. Since Kanon and Genji were preoccupied with the bodies, the only way for Kinzo to vanish is to leave the study himself. Except the most likely culprits chosen by the demon’s roulette are all people who wouldn’t dare harm Kinzo (Genji is honour-bound, Eva killing Kinzo would contradict her ambitions to be recognised by him), so it is not like he would need to flee the study for somewhere safer. Nobody suspicious would actively target Kinzo, with maybe the exception of Kanon. But Kanon almost certainly cannot act on his own, so that’s a moot point.

And more than that, would a Kinzo who is fully aware of what has gone down act the way he acted towards Natsuhi in their conversation? He adamantly refuses to leave his study, telling Natsuhi that he does not want to hear even a single word of the other siblings discussing the inheritance. Would he act like this if he knew every single sibling except for Eva was dead? The night before, Kinzo had given himself fully to Beatrice and the demon’s roulette, ceasing to care about trivialities like the inheritance and the conference. Why would he suddenly care about this again? Odds are that even if he doesn’t know who’s dead, he should know that even one murder would stop the inheritance talk dead in its tracks. So why would he say this?

If Kinzo knows anything, his conversation with Natsuhi makes no sense. He would not say that. Not if he knew people were dead. Not if his gun had been taken. Even if he didn’t clue Natsuhi in on any of this, he would have received evidence that the ritual is happening, so he should have been even more off the “ohhhh Beatriceeee” deep end than normal. Instead he acts as if none of this Beatrice murder stuff is happening at all.

The two scenarios are not compatible. Either Kinzo does not know about the murders, or there’s something up with his talk with Natsuhi.

If Kinzo knows nothing, how was his gun used in the first twilight? If he knows something, why did he act like he did towards Natsuhi? Both cannot be true. And yet they seemingly are.

We have to assume the gun was used to mutilate the bodies, because there is nothing else shown to us that makes sense. For the gun to be used, that means somebody was in Kinzo’s study past midnight in order to obtain said gun. We also have to assume that fact to be true.

This places the contradiction squarely within his conversation with Natsuhi, then. Luckily, there’s already a basis for something weird going on in this scene even without the tangled psychic knot of his disappearance to contend with. Halfway through the conversation, for no reason, Kinzo’s entire personality pulls a complete 180, going from bitter and hateful to reassuring and praising Natsuhi as a worthy member of the family.

Kinzo’s actions in the latter half of the conversation are discussed by the narrative as if he’d become a “different person”. More specifically, it’s as if Kinzo transformed into the exact person Natsuhi needed him to be at that exact time. He says exactly what Natsuhi needs to hear in order to have the strength to face the rest of the family. This runs counter to the established loathing and abuse of Natsuhi we have been told about by Kumasawa. One explanation would be that he now respects Natsuhi for surviving the first twilight, but this is incompatible with the notion that Kinzo knows nothing about what went down outside of his study. This again goes back into the incompatibility between the gun being used and Natsuhi being reassured.

How can you explain this away?

I have one way, but it’s an insane reach that I’m not confident in, and relies on a very specific reading of Umineko to work.

Previously, I’ve discussed the way that scenes Battler isn’t present for are more interested in conveying the Romantic’s emotional truth than the Detective’s logical truth. My prior example was how the occult symbols aren’t seen by Battler, so their importance lies more in the way that the people who do see them react. I also argued that this makes the physical details of those things hard to concretely pin down, to the point where whether or not they physically exist does not matter. I also argued something similar in chapter 9, with regards to the very weird and disconnected framing of Shannon’s scenes, that some truth was either being hidden from us or being fabricated in the presentation of that chapter.

I never wanted to outright say it, because I think it’s a leap, but for this to work I’m going to argue that non-Battler scenes are fully capable of outright lying to us about everything seen within them. This would mean that we can trust nothing that happens outside of Battler’s vision except for the feelings and emotions inspired by what supposedly happens.

Let’s re-examine Natsuhi’s conversation only focusing on the emotional trajectory. Natsuhi is stressed and dejected, overcome with insecurity. Throughout the scene she goes from this, to nervous, to despairing, to reassured, to confident. Natsuhi’s emotional journey is valid, because this lines up with the version of Natsuhi that takes charge that Battler gets to see. What I am instead arguing is that the means of Natsuhi reaching this emotional state are a total fabrication.

In plainer terms, this means her conversation with Kinzo did not actually happen. Perhaps she still conjured a version of Kinzo in her mind to reassure her, but this would be no different from Battler relying on the memories of Rudolf and Kyrie to reassure him. If you assume that the scene was Natsuhi performing some kind of self-soothing via brain ghost Kinzo, this opens up another opportunity: Kinzo has not been in his study since midnight.

Natsuhi is the only person to claim to have seen Kinzo since the previous night. Her claims cannot be verified. If you distrust Natsuhi, then you can expand the timeframe for Kinzo’s disappearance from half an hour to eight. The last time we saw Kinzo was in his study at the strike of midnight. The time before that was around 20:00 the previous night, when Shannon and Kanon tell Kinzo about Maria reading the letter. If you take that as the last “confirmed” sighting of Kinzo, then that extends the window even further to twelve hours. In that case, Kinzo could have been gone long before anybody came to take the gun the first time.

The problem with this, other than the fact it’s completely insane, is that by this logic, a good fifty percent of the story needs to be treated as a potential outright fabrication. If Kinzo wasn’t in the study when we were shown that he was there with Natsuhi, then that means that we can’t rely on the argument between the siblings as being what we think it is, on George and Shannon’s proposal not having happened totally differently from what was shown. Nothing that Battler didn’t see can be trusted if you accept even this one thing as possible.

So, if so much of the story can be explained away as a fabrication: why? Why have half the scenes outright lie to the reader? What does this tell us about the narrator? If the emotional truth is the only valid thing in a sea of lies, and we are expected to take these lies as genuine in order to parse the emotional truth, is that itself not a form of magic?

In the study in chapter 10, Ushiromiya Kinzo “exists”. George and Shannon’s romance “exists”. Natsuhi’s crisis of confidence “exists”. Beatrice “exists”. It’s all there, and all valid if we choose to believe it, but only if we choose to believe it. Tear at the seams of the illusion, and it all comes down. Doubt is the only thing that can kill a witch. Doubt is the only thing that can kill a story.

Umineko is a work of fiction, deliberately constructed and narrated by somebody for a specific purpose. Whatever it is, the narrator needs the reader to have utmost faith in the illusion of the fiction. So what if half the scenes are made up? Can’t the same be said about every part of Umineko? It’s all made up. It’s all a story. Why draw an arbitrary line at what kinds of fantasy-conjuring are acceptable? Battler’s POV is language and images same as the other narration. What gives his viewpoint more authenticity?

Like the earlier plane scene example, meaning is constructed by the reader. The audience of a story receives symbols, and uses those symbols to create a being that “exists” convincingly enough that they can step into another world. To put it another way, the goal of the witch narrative is to get a human to perform magic, and if you are performing magic this way, are you too not also a witch?

What is the point of fiction without meaning? Of emotion without belief? Even if he’s not physically present, does the brain ghost Kinzo not have as much of a valid impact on the world of the story as the absent flesh-and-blood man? Kinzo has not been present for the family conference at all, and yet his figure has been a guiding force dominating the psychology of everybody there. What is the difference between the argument in the parlour and Natsuhi’s moment in the study, save for the fact that one scene has a visualisation of Kinzo and the other doesn’t?

This is a story about magic and witches. The nature of magic is to create something that feels real enough to change the material world. Money, witches, fictions, ghosts. These are all things that everybody has bought into and produced in this story. Following this through, it means that everybody on Rokkenjima has the capacity to perform magic. Past the mystery, perhaps this is the purpose of the story, a Romantic’s truth that exposes how everybody has the capacity to change reality through changing its meaning. This does not answer the question of “how did Kinzo disappear”, but how much does that matter compared to his impact on the minds of the other characters? We already know he’ll turn up dead one way or another. What matters are the secrets he carries, the way he intersects with the narrative and his role in letting us access the deeper truths of this story. In comparison to that, the Detective logistics of a disappearance are mundane and boring.

Either that, or Kinzo actually has been dead all along, and everybody on the island is complicit in the coverup, and Eva was right about everything the whole time.

Or the gun was never in the study at all and this is all a deranged moot point. Such are the joys of rotating Umineko in your mind at such breakneck velocities. You never know which theory is more likely. Take your pick.

Let’s head to chapter 12 and see how the story progresses.

#umineko #umineko liveblog #long post #11.25k words long. you have been warned #umineko writeup

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pyreo · 6 months

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On September 22nd, 2004, the first episode of Lost aired. It went on to have six seasons, 121 episodes, attained critical acclaim and caused mass confusion and disappointment.

I've taught writing classes and I often reference Lost as an example of how easy it is to sound interesting. Lost pulled viewers in with multiple promises that, as time went on, it struggled to satisfy. Creating mystery is, actually, a really easy thing to write. But you're making a promise to your audience, and it needs to be upheld later.

One thing that's remained fascinating to me about Lost's production is how the style morphed through its lifespan. The premise was simple enough to grab you in an instant - plane crashes on island. Dozens survive. How will they get home? The renowned masterstroke of the pitch was that the drama didn't begin and end on the island - each episode had a self-contained plot augmented by flashbacks to reveal more about the survivor of the week. The drama was magnetic, easy to hop into, and didn't need to promise eventual payoff as much as it enjoyed portraying human backstories of betrayal, mistakes, and foul play.

But Lost was expensive, and it needed to do well, and executive meddling took hold in a way that turned episodic drama into more of a scripted reality show.

Reactions to the episodes were closely followed. Characters that were popular became more central to the plot, and disliked characters were killed off (as, well, they were stuck on an island and couldn't just move to another city). Entertainment Weekly quoted creator Damon Lindelof:

Lindelof acknowledges that they are ''universally despised'' by fans, that's going to change, he vows: ''We had a plan when we introduced them, and we didn't get to fully execute that plan."

Their writing was reactive, engaging viewers as a two-way street - if you like them, we'll give you more. The more you hate someone, the more tragic their death. The intent of the writers became secondary to the whims of consumer ratings. It wasn't so much a scripted story as a survival show, not against the harsh wilderness of the island, but against the viewers themselves.

This method extended to the overall thesis behind the famous mysteries. As people became invested, they wanted to know answers to all the active questions being raised. Why did the survivors see random animals that nobody else noticed? Why did the same sequence of numbers keep coming up? How were Locke's disability and Rose's cancer seemingly cured? To keep everyone hooked with narrative twists, the island was not undiscovered - it was in fact a former research base from the 1970s, with old, decrepit research stations. And then, the island is not even uninhabited, and the survivors contend with being preyed on by unseen natives, and then they find a pillar of black smoke roams the island, murdering anyone it encounters. The viewers loved it and demanded more, but at the end of the day, they wanted to know why, and Lost began positing pseudoscience at random to try and explain what was happening.

The eventual writing morph took place when it became clear to the showrunners that the people demanded their 'why's, and the science fiction angle could not support everything they had set up. Seasons 1 & 2 invoke a lot of sci-fi elements - research stations, animal testing, number sequences, codes scrawled on walls, hatches and ruins hiding human activity, all of which raised expectations that the final explanation for it all would be tangible. Suddenly, everything would make sense.

By season 5, everyone was time travelling. Deep below the island sat a magical wheel that teleported the entire landmass when turned. Daniel Faraday is an outright psychic. An unaging man is revealed to have been on the island since the 1860s. All while couching the revelations in science fiction technicalities to keep up the pretense - ie, the plot revolving around a hydrogen bomb, or the psychic being named Daniel Faraday.

In season 6, the writers were forced to make a decision on how to resolve their convoluted, multi-timeline narrative, and the answer was: religion. Suddenly the sci-fi veil fell and the reasoning became completely Biblical. The smoke monster wasn't a terror beast at all; it was Some Guy. We see the literal manifestations of Good and Evil as Some Guys, fighting for control of the island since time immemorial. The core conflict was never human research, as implied throughout, but the unknowable forces of heaven meddling with human existence, including direct references to the Book of Exodus. The famous series finale shows the entire cast finding each other one last time in a church and accepting the end of their roles in the narrative.

And people were confused. They had been promised something else. It's so interesting to watch the tug-of-war between scientific teases and the final, outright admission that what they wrote was not scienfitic in the least. In some ways the marriage of unspoken reasoning with the supernatural is elegant. A station called The Lamp Post used a large Foucault pendulum and a board of ever-changing coordinates to imply the island's location could be divined by esoteric logic, but logic nonetheless. The swinging, ever-moving pendulum implied mysticism; unfathomable mathematics rooted in the earth itself. But the Lamp Post is a reference to The Chronicles of Narnia, a Christian-allegory fantasy story, and the island's location is controlled by a Magic Wheel. It's compelling, it looks dynamic, and it deftly obfuscates that there's no actual science involved at all.

youtube

The original question, 'How can they get home', is by this point obliterated, subsumed by the need to submerge everyone in Island Lore. They couldn't ever get home. The island itself is unfixed in reality. This clashed with earlier implications that the island was simply a dark spot of communications and water currents that resisted discovery, but what does that matter?

One of the earliest mysteries, The Hatch, was an underground station with a computer, into which a number sequence had to be input every 108 minutes to reset a timer. This created a problem of faith that revealed much about the characters - should they repeatedly reset the timer on nothing but the belief something will happen? Or let it run out, out of denial or curiosity? It turned out the timer displays hieroglyphs for some reason when it ran out, and then it caused a giant electromagnetism burst which is discovered to have happened on the day the plane crashed - a concrete answer. The plane was in fact broken apart in the air by electromagnetism from failure to reset The Hatch, caused when Desmond failed to input the numbers after three continuous years of doing so.

But then in season 6 it becomes not an accident at all - the crash was intentional, as the plane's survivors were 'candidates' brough to the island by God to unknowingly apply for stewardship of it. And also the Hatch exploding gives Desmond psychic powers. The original philosophical conundrum served drama between the characters and nothing else, and the entire concept gets retroactively lassoed into the new Battle Between Good And Evil angle.

My enduring perception of Lost's popularity was that at the beginning, everyone was hooked on the possibilities for what was going on - the recurring number sequence, the discovery of strange testing stations, what was the monster, what was the island, really - and then the eventual mass disappointment as the final season wrapped its character arcs in a perfectly acceptable way by having them reach spiritual peace. It made sense, honestly, it was structurally sound - but it wasn't what the fans had been been theorising together for six years. And, like when characters were killed off in quick response to negative reception... why should the audience not expect to be catered to in the way they'd been led to expect?

There's a tumblr post from 2011 I think summed it up best:

We were shown miracles and then hatches; ghosts, then scientists. Season 5 went totally balls out sci-fi and seemed to point to “Science” as the ultimate winner. Then season 6 came, and the question was put to rest. Faith won, and science L O S T. I guess this disappointed and surprised some people, even though they had spent 6 years watching “The Magic Island Show.”

#lost #Youtube

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hamofjustice · 10 months

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I don't want to just painstakingly copypaste my triple-layered self-QRT thread about it on Twitter and any other ones floating around but

I am very emotionally invested in seeing Penny, Arven, and (personally) especially Nemona again in the Scarlet/Violet DLC, after GF followed up the best 3 hours of Pokemon game story ever by having to abruptly cut it off the second these lonely kids finish opening up to you and say you can hang out with them anytime. Which you never do. It was some pretty painful whiplash, and I was sure the main point of the DLC was to relieve that, especially when their arcs don't seem quite complete yet. Very clever, evil marketing! But uh... well... about that...

It is very worrying that aside from a little "the story so far" montage, they have not been seen or mentioned in promotional material/footage whatsoever. Y'know, DLC for the game that's about how the real treasure was the friends you found along the way (literally, in Nemona's case), and even if your family and support systems fail you, you still have each other? Written from the heart by someone who said Arven's story is inspired by their own life? With the sappy Ed Sheeran song about reaching out for connection with others, that also seems to be named after Team Star? The game where one of the features the devs seemed most proud of was going on adventures and into boss fights with 3 of your friends? The game that ended with a fully functional and quite immersive bonding adventure with these characters you'd gotten to know and care about, that basically everyone thought was the best part of the game by a mile, and were left wishing the whole game was like that?

Yeah, I (and everyone else) have been driving around alone in that game for 8 months ever since finishing that story. 8 months of minor updates with a ton of the beloved characters functionally or literally gone, while we go around doing online stuff with nothing else to do in the world, with a single player postgame more barren than we had on Game Boy Color (thank god for mints and bottle caps though). I'm left just... wanting to go back to the way things were before I beat the game. Not to be overly dramatic, but this world I supposedly saved feels like one I failed to save. And I'm getting really frustrated. (The framerate hasn't gotten any better, either, but this isn't about that.)

It's like Game Freak (or whoever forced this thing out a year early, or both) never expected you to boot the game up again once you got bored of the Ace Academy Tournament, which the game acts like is the entire total of what you could want from being friends and "rivals for life" with your squad (I mean I'm the sicko that loves Tera Raids, so I'm not that bored, but still). It makes a bunch of implications that your adventure is just beginning, and then it totally just... isn't. Why is the E4 building closed? Why do you only rematch the gyms once? And most of all, for me personally: Why did we get access to our friends' rooms if there's nothing to do or talk about there? (Besides look for character study clues, which they have lots of)

All they could come up with when asked to write a newsletter email about what you can still do in S/V and why you should still be playing it was Raids. That was it. Remember when you had an endless challenge in the Tower/Maison that you could optionally take on with a bunch of story characters as your partners instead of alone, that motivated you to keep getting stronger bit by bit? Remember rematching gym leaders multiple times and watching their teams grow and evolve each time? Yeah, there's none of that here, because that would take more than a week to implement. If you want friends and you want battles, you'll have to do it yourself online now. They're not allocating any budget for that.

Your rival for life, who's so excited you're on her level now, who seems to have the passion and skill to be the your Battle Tower gameplay loop by herself if she wanted to, who battles you for hours offscreen with multiple teams, whose whole character arc is that she finally has someone she can do this with... is fully static, with one kinda mediocre team that never grows or changes. She can't keep up with you and doesn't know what items or EVs are. You have to get lucky to even see her at all. She is no more your rival than your Home Ec teacher is (no offense Saguaro, you're cool too). I think it's really, really sad.

I'm left nostalgic and pining to go back, having to cope through fanfic because my character can't spend the day with - or even so much as take a new trainer card photo with - the girl who said they might be her greatest treasure, without resetting my save, because she and the others are standing somewhere that the camera and internet features are both disabled.

Like, legitimately, I want to keep being friends with these kids the way we were before, and have the ability to do post-game stuff with them, like being able to go out and adventure together whenever in some basic, non-story capacity, or just, I don't know, maybe give them more than one line of dialogue in their rooms? I don't want a new region or new characters. Not yet, anyway.

I thought I was preordering the continuation of their story and rewarding the company for making me care about Pokemon so much again.

But, uh... I'm really worried that the people who own these characters do not care. And as I said on the trailer's comments before they turned them off (lol), I'll be pissed enough to not buy any more games if I'm right, and we're forced to abandon these poor kids. At the very least, it's some pretty garbage marketing to leave the possibility of that up in the air. If nothing else, that is a frustration that I'm going to keep talking about for a while, even if it ends up being fine.

I thought it was impossible, and I was being silly. Why not have our friends in cute new outfits as promo art when the DLC was first announced, and all they had was promo art? Seems like an easy slam dunk. Oh, they didn't yet? Well, I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

And then they weren't in the trailer either, months later. Are they trying to sell us on it or not?

The whole reason I want the DLCs. Still not a single word acknowledging them, just that little opening montage. Still no hints of how the DLCs have anything to do with Area Zero's ongoing story, either. How is a sea turtle linked with a landlocked crater?

So like... At this point I have to assume both DLCs start with you making your friends cry as they're left alone again, arbitrarily excluded from events they're more than qualified to be invited to, to make room for some new dweebs we don't need, who won't be given nearly enough time to be as compelling as Nemona, Arven, and Penny were, because that makes the trailer look more like a new game, and that's the only way they know how to advertise. More. New. Buy. Consume. Throw away. Buy. Consume. Throw away. I should assume this so that whatever we get can't be worse.

But they're probably not (self-aware enough / allowed / both) to write that. Your lonely / orphaned / anime-binging friends might just cheer you on for getting to go do something cool like being forced to train a new legendary because the story said so, then go back to being statues with as much relevance to your life as an NPC in a third story apartment that tells you what a hold item is.

Can't I just live in Paldea with my friends, in the version of the game we would have gotten if it was finished, instead of being pulled into these adventures for the sake of looking good in a trailer? (which it doesn't btw lol) It's not an unrealistic thing to want when that's what it briefly was, and I was so excited that it would keep being that I've been thinking about it this entire time.

...

I hope I'm wrong about all this, and next year I can look back on this post, happy that the DLC did actually allow us to continue to take care of these characters, conclude Area Zero's mysteries in a satisfying way, fix up some technical issues, let us relive some things that are currently once-only (including letting us see that photo album our character made but we had to screenshot ourselves), and make it fun to keep playing for years afterward, and let that be the model for games going forward, but uh...

They really are not showing me anything I care about in the game I desperately want to care about, that I saw - and wanted to defend - the heart in, despite the circumstances it was produced under, and that really worries and frustrates me. The surprisingly many great things about this game got my hopes up for an awesome postgame full of warm fuzzy feelings and cool things to do 8 months ago that just didn't deliver, and now, I'm not sure if they'll even let me pay for one, at this rate, because they're not advertising one.

Just throw us a scrap. If whoever's in charge here stops caring about this story, I won't care about the next one.

Anyone else feeling this?

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journey-to-the-attic · 29 days

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Hi Kin. I wanted to ask, how did you manage things like writer's block or creative burnout while writing JTTA? I'm midway through a longfic now and it's kind of exhausting. I feel like I'm whining but I barely get any comments or asks or anything.

hi anon! honestly i'm not sure if i was the right person to ask this, because i... kind of didn't? as in, i didn't really have these problems - boring answer, i know!

i got lucky because i hit a sweet spot where the base story and characters were strong, but with just enough gaps in plot, worldbuilding, development, etc. such that the momentum of filling everything in carried me through the whole process. but there were definitely a lot of occasions where i sat there thinking "okay i have no idea what to do now"

in those cases, often i had to just step back and ruminate on it for a little while - i've pretty much constantly got little ideas bouncing around my head, and sometimes they hit each other like snowballs and form into more fully-fledged plot points, scenes, dialogue, so on. i try to keep track of these in notes apps, personal discord channels, etc, and dip into them if i'm stuck on something!

not sure if your fic is for obey me, but this could still apply even if not - with all the pop quizzes and devilgrams that put the characters in a bunch of new contexts, it's helpful seeing how that character's static vs dynamic traits persist/change depending on them, and often that'll give you inspiration as well. depending on what you've got available, you could browse through source material, or brainstorm aus, whichever you enjoy most

i'm really not sure HOW i've stuck with obey me for so long, but somehow it's just stuck with me. i don't remember being so invested in it before jtta, so that's probably why, but i just really love these guys, and i suppose that's why i never burnt out of it? i think it was also because i knew what story i wanted to tell, and i really wanted to make sure ik got her happy ending, and that carried me through as well

seriously, though - do take breaks. every writer's mileage varies, so take a step back whenever you need to. writing fics should be fun! sometimes it does feel like a chore, and it becomes more like 'the only thing i hate more than writing is not writing', but it happens to all of us. sometimes you've just got to rest until your second wind comes along

in terms of comments and such... yeah, it's a tough one! the unfortunate thing is that a vast majority of readers - even if they really enjoyed your writing! - won't leave a comment. don't take this as a direct reflection on your writing! often the reader can't think of what to say, is too shy, or quite simply forgot

again though... i'm not sure if i'm the best person to ask for advice here! i started publishing jtta without much expectation for an audience, given the genre of game it's written for, so any attention was more a nice surprise than anything. i suppose that, later on, when the fic was more well-established, i did start holding some expectation of response - and it really is tough when you don't get as much of one as you were hoping for

i've seen people talking about how the ask culture on tumblr has died down a lot in recent times, so i'm sure you're not the only one feeling like this! all i can suggest is trying to find more friends (mutuals?) and... networking, i guess? i've seen advice saying to share your fic within communities of writers, too

i can't honestly say if these things'll work, because i'm very bad about interacting with a wider fandom in anything - i usually keep to myself, so often i don't have much of an expectation for how and when people come chat. as in real life, i'm only a chatterbox when approached first haha

i'm not sure how helpful this has been, but i'm rooting for you! if you'd like to share your fic here, please do - though i understand if that's something you'd rather keep to yourself as well.

creating things is a joy - it might take some searching to find a circle, but the beauty of the internet is that you will, somewhere out there! wishing you the best ^^

#answering asks #anon asks

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cup-of-hot-worm-milk · 18 days

Text

HEARTBREAK HIGH SEASON 2 REVIEW

Likes, dislikes, and some general thoughts.

TL;DR spoiler free review: I give this season a 6.5/10. It’s not bad but compared to the previous season, it certainly felt like a downgrade. Some of the editing choices felt poor, a few characters that had felt layered and realistic had lost their substance, a couple of interesting plot beats and character arcs were either rushed or solved with very little satisfaction and pay off, and I can’t help but feel a lot of the drama had become far too unrealistic by the end of the season. I had some fun watching the teenage hijinks, and there are stand out scenes/storylines that had me invested from start to finish, but overall I can’t say that this season lived up to its predecessor or my expectations.

Longer rant under the cut! SPOILERS AHEAD!

I’ll start with what I liked and enjoyed (in no particular order):

Cash owns my heart now and forever. Season one had already solidified him as my favourite character, and watching him go through his asexual journey, trying to navigate his relationship with Darren while setting boundaries was… Ugh, so fucking good. I’ve had my own share of relationship anxiety, fearing that because I had no interest in sexual activities that I would be hurting my future partner. Dusty’s whole talk with Cash felt so reminiscent of things people would say to me when I tried to talk to them about my own sexuality. I was so ecstatic when Cash told him to fuck off, because no, asexuals are not robbing their partners of anything. Our sexuality and boundaries in relationships are not problematic or abusive; no person should ever feel like their worth in a relationship is based on whether or not they have sex with their partner. Anyone who says otherwise can fuck right off. I was crying during Cash’s talk with his Nan. 10/10 best storyline.

Quinni not masking was so cathartic. Neurotypicals really don’t understand the stress and mental gymnastics we have to go through every fucking day just so we fit in. It’s so fucking hard and watching her be herself fully was just amazing. Slay honestly.

BI MALAKAI BI MALAKAI BI MALAKAI

All of the Australian pop culture references. So good. Chinese succulent meal. The reference to Scomo shitting himself at the McDonalds. Cash not registering to vote and his friends getting mad at him even though our voting is so shit and never taken seriously (I along with several people I know have written shit on our ballots and have never gotten in trouble ever). THE NUTBUSH. Woodsy’s little jab at Pavlova being from Aotearoa (New Zealand) and not Australia. Ugh, so good. Finally, references I understand /hj.

Amerie and Harper being best friends… Their protectiveness for each other… My heart.

The class camp made me so nostalgic. Can’t speak for every Aussie, but my camp did have the boys sneaking in beer. Although, we all got too scared so we all just had a sip before pouring it all out before we could get caught. We didn’t even get buzzed, lol. Also, the class getting high on shrooms together, oml.

Malakai and Amerie… Ugh, those two… So messy and complicated and I love them.

Props to HBH finally making an authentic (albeit toxic) love triangle. Only took a while but we got one.

Woodsy helping Harper with driving lessons… My heart.

Quinni being so hyperfixated that she survived her snakebite. She’s just like me fr. I also loved the editing changing when it was her perspective. This is her world and we’re just living in it.

Idk his name but whoever played Chook was genuinely terrifying. 10/10, I wanted to smash his face in every time he came on screen. Truly phenomenal acting.

Actually, I’ll give a round of applause to the entire cast. All of them did stella jobs.

And now… the dislikes (again, no particular order):

Spider’s arc. I know some people like him, but as someone who went to school with, and got bullied by dickheads like him, I could not get behind his whole redemption storyline. I really didn’t like how they blamed his misogyny and arrogance on his toxic mother - it felt like they were saying that men are only sexist assholes because feminists obsess over profiling them all as rapists and abusers which is so fucked on so many levels. It just felt like they were given excuses for his behaviour and how it isn’t really his fault, it’s because of his mothers abuse and I am so fucking over that theme. Abuse does not justify shitty behaviours from ANYONE. It can apply context, sure, but I am not going to excuse someone for being a fuckwit just because they have a shitty homelife. I was abused! I had hurt people around me to cope! That doesn’t make it okay!

Also… People like Spider are more likely to be misogynistic because of a sexist environment - not because of crazed misandrists believing all men are rapists. I think it would've been much more believable if instead, Spider hadn’t had a father or a close male role model to grow up with and became very insecure about his perception of masculinity and manliness, so he used society and social media as learning tools to form his personality and unfortunately internalised a lot of misogyny.

The conclusion of Spider’s redemption also felt way too rushed. He only stops joining Voss because the man slipped up while ranting and because he got slapped in the face. In season one, it really looked like they were going to explore how Spider’s insecurities around vulnerability and masculinity made him put up a front to shield himself. During his relationship with Missy, some points almost felt like they were going to full dive into exploring it but then they backed out, or they wouldn’t let the scenes room to breathe before rushing into the solution. I would’ve liked it more if Spider had time to really grapple with his worldviews and how hurtful he was being, and working on distancing himself from sexist ideals. It would’ve felt a lot more authentic imo.

And I really was not on board with Missy x Spider. I don’t know, it didn’t feel like an authentic attraction, just more like the writers somehow needed someone to jumpstart Spider’s redemption journey while also providing a convenient romantic love interest. Maybe it could have worked if they two were given more time to develop an understanding companionship and Missy wasn’t into him while he was still a fucking dickhead? Maybe they could’ve had the whole rival's sexual tension thing work if it was given way more focus instead of just “Boy see Girl doing something sexy and fall in love”? I don’t know, romance and sexual interest isn’t really my expertise, so maybe it’s just a me thing.

Rowan’s whole character was a huge miss for me, holy shit. It’s 2024, STOP MAKING MENTAL ILLNESS A FUCKING VILLAINOUS TRAIT. I don’t even know what the fuck his mental illness was supposed to be. I work in youth counseling and psychology, and none of his symptoms feel authentic. Was it psychosis?? Was he supposed to have borderline personality disorder??? Untreated PTSD with severe hallucination and dissociation symptoms??? Type 1 bipolar going through a severe mania episode?? FUCKING WHAT DID HE EVEN HAVE??? For a show that handled autism so beautifully in these seasons, they dropped the ball so horribly with Rowan. Bad character, bad execution, bad storyline, bad everything. Do your fucking research on mental disorders instead of just writing “obsessive and crazy” hbh writers, fucking hell.

Also, why did he need to have this whole dumb past connection with Amerie? Why did Amerie suddenly have a backstory of being a major cunt and bully? Why was none of her shitty behaviour talked about in season one? You’d think when her classmates were ostracizing her for the sex wall and getting everyone involuntarily sent to SLT’s, they would’ve brought up this shit. Spider and Harper had their personal reasons to dislike her but no one else brought up anything. Why not just have it that in the earlier episodes, Bird Psycho was spreading baseless rumours and misinformation? Then have people divided on whether or not they would believe Amerie when she went to disprove them? You can even have others making shit up to add to the situation for more drama.

Sasha and Zoe… Oof, bad execution all around for those two.

Sasha… Oof. Thought her storyline was going to deal with her hypocrisy around activism and being a sjw invested in identity politics. Maybe some exploration on how applying moralism to activism is never a good thing EVER and that you shouldn’t care about oppression just because it makes you look like a better person - you should care about it because oppression is fucking disgusting and needs to be eradicated. Should’ve known they would’ve just made her into a bad joke. Pouring one out for the missed opportunity.

I really thought that Zoe’s character was going to explore sexual insecurities and how everyone has a different approach to sex. Examining the difference between sexual pleasure and sexual intimacy. Maybe even some discussion on how it’s okay to have sex simply just to explore your own preferences and likes, and how no one - especially women - should ever be slut-shamed for liking sex. But nope, she was a really bad celibacy joke and a plot point for Darren. Yikes.

Speaking of Darren, my fashionable child, look how they massacred you. What was their whole deal with Quinni this season? Did they suddenly forget about her autism? Did they suddenly stop caring about her difficulties with masking? Season 1 Darren “You’re my too much” would NEVER have fucking told Quinni that the world couldn’t play be her rules. Season 1 Quinni panicking in the bathroom at a party? Oh, no, Amerie don’t touch her, that’s not how we help Quinni. We help Quinni by providing a quiet and safe space and reminding her that she is in charge of what we do next. Season 1 Quinni becoming non-verbal due to a meltdown because Sasha was being bigoted? Nope, Sasha you don’t get to talk to Quinni, no one forces Quinni to talk, she will do it when she is ready. Wtf happened Darren? It really just felt like the writers were trying to make drama between them both and decided to butcher Darren’s character to do so. Just… oof. Very bad.

Harper’s trauma being forgotten about or developed after two episodes… What. Nothing about her relationship with her dad, nothing about her relationship with using sex as a coping mechanic, nothing about her PTSD, absolutely fucking NOTHING. Why? She just felt like she was there for other characters to develop off of.

Also, Ant and Harper felt really rushed. I would’ve liked it way more if Ant actually went and befriended some girls before he got into a relationship with Harper, or even if the both of them became friends before they developed a romantic relationship but they really weren’t given room to breathe.

Also also, Ant accomplished nothing?? I don’t remember one significant thing he did this season that gave more insight into his character or that wasn’t just to uplift other character’s developments. It sucks because last season alluded to some religious trauma that I thought we were going to get to explore more. He needs so much more substance than just “haha, funny guy” imo.

Missy and Malakai deserved more to their stories than just relationship drama. Where was their Indigenous culture? Where was Malakai’s ‘gone my country’ story element that helped him last season? We rarely ever get Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander actors able to show their culture even in Australian media, so last season when they brought it up I was so happy but now… No mention of it? Nothing? I loved their friendship and their scenes together but God, I wish they happened more outside of their romantic relationships.

Amerie’s pregnancy storyline felt super rushed. Really wish it had more time to breathe, and to stress the importance of contraception and abortion rights. It all began and ended within one episode… Really felt like it deserved just a little bit more time, y’know? Especially in this day and age. It kind of just felt like last minute drama. Maybe more will come out of it because Amerie told Quinni? I hope the fuck not though because I really do not want Quinni’s character slaughtered.

Cash… Showing Chook… Where he lived… Cash is not fucking stupid. What the fuck was that. Making drama for the sake of elevating the story I guess.

Harper’s and Amerie’s dumb fight in the last episode that was really there so Rowan could have a mental breakdown. Yikes.

Wasn’t a big fan of some of the music choices. Few great songs, few iconic songs (Untouched by the Veronicas my beloved), but overall some pretty dodgy choices. I like BLACKPINK, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not that popular in Australia? And The Cranberries are amazing but again, not really an Australian favourite? Idk, just felt like they were picking from the Top 500 Charts.

Okay, the whole fire thing was really fucking stupid. In 2019-2020, NSW had massive out-of-control bushfires that ravaged the country. We have incredibly intense fire-safety because out country is so fucking flammable. Our sprinklers don’t run on electricity - the heat melts the protective plug on the sprinkler, and then water is released from where it’s stored in the pipes. We have fire blankets and extinguishers. The school would’ve been doused. And by the way, there is no such thing as only two teachers chaperoning formal. Not for 25< kids. And the cohort teachers would’ve been invited to go anyways?? And if a crazed man with fire did appear out on the oval, the students would’ve legally had to evacuate to another safe place. Cops and the firefighters would’ve been called immediately. All of the last episode was just such unbelievable bullshit, oml.

“Oh but the school is really sketchy” Idgaf, that whole fire thing was so stupid.

The afl over nrl holy shit. Like, as a queenslander, that shit really fucking hurt to see, I am so sorry sydney goers.

Alright some general thoughts:

Much of the drama in this season just didn’t feel authentic. Most characters were forced to make stupid or unrealistic choices so that drama could happen rather than just allowing the plot to naturally allow for intriguing stories to unfold. I felt like this season was forcing everyone to be involved in something tremendous at every single point, only then to become overwhelmed with how to finish or solve the issues so it was quickly given a bandaid or ignored in favour of moving onto something else.

The first season had the main issues of separating Amerie from her classmates, of people trying to navigate relationships with all the messiness of being a teenager, and of dealing with things that you don’t know how to solve. Characters were given time to be emotional, to make mistakes but not be villainized for them. Scenes and problems were given room to breathe, there was time for all of the story beats to develop and come together.

This season felt more akin to something I’d see in Riverdale or Pretty Little Liars. Over dramatised problems and a mystery that involved pretty shitty characterisation to pull off.

I still like Heartbreak High, and if there is a third season, I’ll definitely give it a watch, but overall, I’m not very enthusiastic about season 2.

One other thing is more related to the backlash I’ve seen from two of the main characters, Malakai and Missy. Some people are infuriated that these two bisexuals have ended the season in a straight-passing relationship and… Okay. I’m not going to sugarcoat any of this; stop being biphobic cunts. You complaining about these two characters ending up with an opposite-sex partner is biphobic. Bisexuals aren’t limited to only ever being in same-sex relationships, fuck off.

Okay, now I’m done.

#heartbreak high

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