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I think that the real Battler would never choose to abandon Ange. That would be very inconsistent with how he's been portrayed in the story. So I always took it at face value that Toya was a separate, new identity. It's all somewhat ambiguous how it works though. One funny thing that the manga adds about Toya/Battler is that the reason EP3 is so very anti-Eva is because Toya had been under the impression Eva was the murderer too. All Sayo said was that one of his family members was the culprit, and the only survivor was Eva, so Toya jumps to the wrong conclusion and helps Ikuko write a spiteful Forgery directly accusing Eva. But Eva reads it and realizes it was written by Battler, and tells them what actually happened. Anyway, thanks for sticking with the LP, Prof. I enjoyed reading everyone's reactions and theorizing.
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Nov 30, 2017 02:47
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Happy birthday, our beloved witch, Beatrice. Completing this thread, full of people trying to understand and reach her, is probably one of the best presents she could receive. Thank you again prof for planning this out so perfectly.
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Nov 30, 2017 02:58
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I hope you all come to join us in the Discord for the after party, where all dreams are fullfilled in the Golden Land.
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Nov 30, 2017 03:03
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PetraCore posted:I think the emotional aspect of 'this horrible series of events happened and derailed my entire life and living the life I had before is impossible, all my family is dead but one, I can't bear to keep living as Battler' is present, but it's overshadowed by whatever physically neurologically happened. If it was just the emotional trauma aspect, that can be worked past over time, like Ange has, but Toya is still unable to identify himself fully as Battler even when he has emotionally recovered quite a lot. I feel it's worth repeating that all the forgeries touched on in the series after Episode 2 were written by Toya, at least as the two-person team. He probably was using writing "what if" scenarios on the incident as a coping mechanism to try to sort out those memories he felt were "not his", if for no other reason than to get it out in the hopes it would stop plaguing him. The fact that Episodes 5 and 6 were half-complete non-stories (as well as Piece!Battler being trapped in the locked room in Chapter 6) is probably a sign of how painful the process actually got.
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Nov 30, 2017 03:08
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Rune Full Moon posted:Happy birthday to Sayo, I think. Nah, I feel like Rosa met Beatrice some time in the summer, and Yasu obviously had to have been born before that. Also they're consistently stated as being 19, and if they were born in November 1967 they'd still be 18 at the time of the incident.
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Nov 30, 2017 04:51
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The 29th of November is the day that Yasu discovered the gold and "Beatrice" was born. Her real birthday is probably the same as Shannon's, which is the 25th of May.
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Nov 30, 2017 05:06
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Lion's birthday is 11/29, though whether that is the birthday of Ushiromiya Lion, Kinzo's child/granchild... Or the birthday of Lion, the 1/2,578,917 hope, who was certainly born in a way that day, is a very good question. Either way, the thread ends on the day in its title.
D3m3 fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Nov 30, 2017 |
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Nov 30, 2017 05:20
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Fates End posted:Behold, the real truth of October 5th, 1986. I shouldn't be laughing at this, but drat, that thousand-yard-stare on poor Ange's face at the end. "I suffered my whole life for this nonsense?"
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Nov 30, 2017 05:34
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I'd encourage anyone who hasn't already to just go to Youtube or wherever and listen to all the music in the VN once over. Not all of the tracks are winners, but the ones that are are priceless. I've been meaning to re-read the thing for years but never got around to it, due to Umineko being a words-blob of unmatched proportions. But every so often I listen to a Hope or far or lastendconductor to reaffirm that yes, this was some good poo poo. I think dai and zts and the rest deserve a good chunk of the credit for making Umineko what it was. Scenes like the last duel of Episode 4 or Clair's burial in episode 7 wouldn't have been the same without dreamenddischarger and Golden Nocturne.
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Nov 30, 2017 06:25
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Congrats to Prof for finishing this behemoth of a VN! I'm glad someone managed to see it through and do Umineko justice. I fell behind on the thread somewhere around early-mid Ep 4, but started binging in spurts when I saw this was hitting Ep8 and caught up just in time for the end. Made for a hell of a ride, watching the theories pop up and grow at that kind of pace, so thanks to all the goats and witches in the thread for that.
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Nov 30, 2017 06:32
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Seems a lot of people believed Beatrice was somebody else. Here's something like an eight hour playlist that lists all his points that support the Rosatrice conclusion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLhqUzUgxc
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Nov 30, 2017 06:40
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D3m3 posted:the thread ends on the day in its title. Holy poo poo I didn't notice. That's so amazing. Love it, prof.
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Nov 30, 2017 08:01
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Randomzx posted:Seems a lot of people believed Beatrice was somebody else. You have no idea how grateful I was when the thread didn't push Rosatrice theory to the end. I think a few people floated it earlier on, but it mostly got abandoned and that theory triggers my "someone is WRONG on the INTERNET" sense something awful. ...no pun intended.
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Nov 30, 2017 13:44
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A couple bits of post-release material worth talking about here, if anyone's interested. Answer to the Golden Witch A month or two after the release of Episode 8, KEIYA, a prominent member of the Japanese When They Cry community, released a summary and and speculation guidebook for Umineko Chiru named Answer to the Golden Witch. Though most of it isn't translated - there's not much new information anyway - it included a very comprehensive interview with Ryukishi07, where he discusses the text and his intentions in writing it, alongside where he felt he fumbled a bit, in a very rare and frank manner. There's special attention paid to his decision to keep the catbox of Rokkenjima closed, as is the focus of a lot of Episode 8. The original translation can be found on this wordpress blog here. If you enjoyed the story, it's definitely insightful and worth a read. Our Confession First, a little background. The reception - at least among the Japanese fandom - to Episodes 6, 7 and 8, as well as the solution to Umineko in general, was not very positive. Aside from what could be charitably described as a lack of general understanding and considerable negativity towards the gender and sexual themes in Yasu's narrative, people complained that the solution was too vague and difficult to understand, the motive lackluster, and the story too pleased with itself and hostile towards the fandom for these sentiments. In response, Ryukishi released Our Confession, intended as a final, more explicit hint on the solution, as well as a bookend to Umineko as a whole. It was released as a sort of novella in booklet form, only including a few illustrations. Framed as a sort of unreleased episode transcribed by Dlanor some time after the events of the story, it essentially describes the creation of a gameboard from the perspective of Beatrice/Yasu. Though it keeps the spirit of the rest of the text and is veiled in magical language, it explains how many of the tricks - especially those that involve the fact that Shannon and Kanon are, well, the same person - are conducted, as well as other details like how accomplices were recruited that can fill in a lot of blanks from the other episodes. Sadly, the only translation done of it that I know of (conducted by AnimeSuki user Wanderer) was based off scans that were missing a few pages, and is so incomplete. Despite this, I think it remains coherent, as well as very cathartic and charming. It shows a lot of Yasu's real character, behind her personas, in a way that is not framed exclusively by her ultimate tragedy in the manner of Episode 7. For instance: Yasu posted:Which new demon shall I call? The complete and properly formatted version can be found here, at the Umineko wiki. Or here's a simple text dump, if you can prefer. Ultimately, in spite of the release, the original Japanese fandom continued to hold a relatively poor perception of Umineko's ending that largely persists to this day. Years later, the manga version of Episode 8 released, containing the kinda confusingly-named chapter Confession of the Golden Witch, which shows Yasu's story and the methods behind the murders in an even more explicit fashion, with no magic present. If you've already taken a look at that, you probably won't get much more new information from Our Confession. But I'd recommend it anyway. It's lengthy and a more than a bit clunky, though, so if you decide against it, then at the very least you should read the epilogue, which is, as far as I know, the final piece of Umineko content written directly by Ryukishi until years after the fact. In my opinion, it's a great closing to the story. I'll include it here. Dlanor posted:As a result of Lady Beatrice's death, I am releasing this incomplete tale in accordance with her will. PoorWeather fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Nov 30, 2017 |
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Nov 30, 2017 15:38
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PoorWeather posted:Sadly, the only translation done of it that I know of (conducted by AnimeSuki user Wanderer) was based off scans that were missing a few pages, and is so incomplete. Rather than missing scans, I'm pretty sure it's because the Japanese transcriptions at umineco.info intentionally omit some parts from TIPS that are available only commercially. Aah I really should take a look at editing Our Confession even if it's the last one I do 
tiistai fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Nov 30, 2017 |
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Nov 30, 2017 16:28
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tiistai posted:Rather than missing scans, I'm pretty sure it's because the Japanese transcriptions at umineco.info intentionally omit some parts from TIPS that are available only commercially. Oh, that makes sense. I'll be honest, my understanding of this stuff is mostly based off forum posts I found. It actually ended up being super hard to find concrete information on it from the time.
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Nov 30, 2017 16:33
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KataraniSword posted:The Witch of Certainty, Lambdadelta, only grants her power to those with the willpower necessary to see things through to the end no matter what the cost or circumstance. That's why she appeared for Beatrice, and why it's suggested in TIPS that she appeared for Miyo Takano in Higurashi. Certainty only comes to those who already have the determination to create certain outcomes already. But is that really true, or what they want the audience to think? Or is it just the roles they play in this particular iteration of this game? Because if what you say is true, Berne unequivocally failed, and we're led to believe, would have been seething because she can't bear a loss. But when next we see her, she's fine- casually sewing her friend back together and bantering with all of the people she was gleefully destroying two updates ago. It seems like an act... so what if it was all an act? What if she was pretending the whole time to be evil, just as Lambda pretended to be good, or at least the opposite of whatever Berne is? Now, don't misinterpret me, please; I'm not at all saying Berne is secretly a "good" person, nor nice nor kind, because she very much isn't. After all, I read the previous story by R07, and I know about the circumstances that created her, a terrible mystery with a crime even more monstrous than this one. She can't ever be the same as the person she was introduced to me as: you don't go through what the girl who was Berne did, as young as she was, as many times as she did (and that's the part that makes me go  every time), and come out the other end as anything approaching a sane, stable human. And she had already gone through most of it by the time we knew er cruelty was manifesting even back then, and it was chilling. But is being cruel... the same as being evil? Especially when you don't benefit from your cruelty, don't earn riches or power or even a measure of contentment? When you don't even really like yourself very much, to the point of humiliating and punishing somebody who looks a little bit like you?We've been making this assumption that Berne responded to her abuse by becoming an abuser as the Ushiromiyas did to varying degrees, but... what if that assumption was wrong? What if, in actuality, Berne is horrified and disgusted by the violence that afflicts her? What if she hates the fact that she cannot change, that for all of her struggles for freedom, she cannot rise above what her abuser did to her? How awful a fate must it be to have a memory of happiness and companionship in your heart existing with the certitude that you will never know it, because those memories aren't yours anymore... She might be free, but her memories trap her in a prison even more secure than Beatos. Because someone eventually came for Beato, not the person she expected, but they came... and the ones who can do the same for Berne (Higurashi spoilers here) don't even know she's missing. I mean, Rika Furude is right there, after all, in the mountain shrine where she always been, a-dreaming pranks with her friends... Bernkastel is just the aggregate of her pain, and nobody loves pain. Knowing this history isn't necessary to enjoying this story, but it does add a poignancy to Ange's decision in chapter 4, as it was the same decision that Berne faced at the very end of her story: the happiness of one version of herself that she would never know, versus misery for all but all together. Cruelty after all, is merely the indifference to- or pleasure in- the causing of pain and suffering. We think of this as synonymous with evil, because nobody likes pain and one of evil's definitions is "something harmful or undesirable", but... pain is also an essential part of life. Anyone who says it's not a big part of growth or learning,... or love... is lying. So maybe Berne's cruelty precludes her from being a good guy... but it makes her the perfect villain. You know what I mean when I say villain, yes? I mean in the melodramatic sense, the archetypal villain meant not to be a person, but a representative of a force or forces arrayed against the hero, who represents not us, but our higher aspects. I'm talking about Captain Planet, and other such shows you might have watched on Saturday morning, or in perhaps the seasonal plays that are part of the British tradition. Du you know they have these little shows in shopping malls in Japan for the kids, performances in which the whatever sentai heroes of the moment fighting some big ugly monster? It's all pure ham, of course, with lots of yelling and posturing, as these things do... and thus they are not seen as particularly enriching or laudable in a literary sense- pretty much the dramatic equivalent of a Bic Mac and fries. A lot of stories don't even have villains or even any human antagonists at all; it's just hero vs self, hero vs. nature, hero vs. deadline or what have you. These are stories about life, and you're not a hero in you life, you're just you... so why have a villain for such a tale? Real life doesn't have villains, just a lot of people who think their the hero of their own story... so why do stories with evil queens and wicked stepmothers and dragons persist, when by their very nature they are simple, essentially morality plays in ink and spandex and rubber, something to get the kids to eat their vegetables and go to bed on time in the name of "justice?" Because we need villains, that's why. Humanity and relation to reality are all well and good for a human story meant to be reliable, but in stories where the problem is bigger than that- meaning pollution, or greed, or materialism or betyrayal, or entropy, or depression- a human doesn't cut it; you need someone bigger, beyond humanity. Someone beyond sympathy, someone to snarl and sneer and swoop about the stage in black clothing, someone to declare a dastardly plan while swirling a wineglass/stroking a white cat, someone to grin whilst imagining unbearable agonies visited upon their foes, someone to laugh maniacally into the storm, and someone to smug it up until something goes wrong, and things fall apart, or your incompetent minions screw up again, or those plucky heroes escaped your trap, and why, why is my perfect plan NOT WORKING THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!!!!! (You will note my use of extra quotation marks. Surest sign of a deranged mind, that.) Now, is this not exactly the role Bernkastel played in this tale? I mean, she always said she was the cruelest witch, that she would pursue and condemn all who stood against her, that she is the Witch of Miracles who denies miracles. But she does it.. too well, doesn't she? If she were really out to destroy Ange, or destroy Beatrice, there are more efficient ways to do it than the way she went about it, aren't there, ways that don't put her directly in the path of Battler's fists*? Why is a Witch, regarded as someone with such control over her emotions, so prone to losing her temper or making such deliciously smug expressions? Why does someone who doesn't care about people know so much about getting under people's skin, with expressions she probably spent hours to craft? Beato began this tale in a similar manner, assuming a monstrous form in order to goad Battler into solving the mystery and potentially killing Beato, but her failure was that she wasn't as monstrous as she pretended so she collapsed under the weight... so if Berne wanted them destroyed, why did she come down and assume the mantle of monstership and even allow Beato a crack at her? Berne turned herself into the perfect monster... and then allowed herself to come to the most humiliating, ignominious ending possible, and she should have seen it coming, she is capable of theoretical equations far beyond any human understanding. Or... did she plan it? Because the great shock to me... is that this is the Berne I knew. She is the witch of Miracles... and the miracle she brought about in this tale bears too many parallels to the one in which she became said witch. Here, I disagree with your statement that miracles only come to those who can survive without them; if a miracle comes and you don't need it, that's not a miracle, that's good luck. Miracles happen because they need to happen, because survival is impossible without them, as it was impossible for the Girl who was Berne to see the future past a certain date. She needed a miracle to live, just as Ange and Beato did... and Berne brought a miracle to both of them using the template of her own. Because a miracle is an equation, a probability: a very specific one with a stringent amount of factors... and Berne knows that when shooting for perfection, nothing else will do. So she systematically slices and stomps every "lesser" possibility through her cruelty; that is why she is called a reaper- because every avenue in which things are different from the "miracle" is closed off. No bad end, no nice ends, no comfortable ends- to shoot for a miracle means all or nothing. So it makes perfect sense that when Ange teeters on a ledge of suicidal depression, Ange would not only not stop her, but push her off: did not Berne's own miracle come after she had given into despair, and lost all hope? And does it not make similar sense that Berne would force the monstrosity out of Beato in the same way, and use her claws of cruelty to draw parallels to the similarity between Beato and Ange, force them to work together to take her down? Didn't the miracle that created Berne depend on a similar act of understanding and forgiveness toward her abuser as well? To put in another way: think of the game in terms of therapy or psychology, in which Ange as a six year old comes into the office crying that she's afraid of the unseen monster under her bed (the Tragedy, Eva's potential role in it, etc). Battler's way of treating her is to try to tell her that there are no monsters. Berne's way of treating her is to put her on a chair, give her a big stick and say, "I'm going to leave the room now, and when I come back, I will have turned into the monster under your bed and am going to come for you with everything I have, and if you don't defend yourself, you will die." Neither of these are particularly viable or advisable from a therapeutic standpoint, but one method was significantly more successful than the other. Battler's error, in his approaches to both the truth and helping Ange, is his stringent belief that this is a story without villains- and he's right, but what of it? There are still forces here that lead to a tragic end for Ange, an inescapable fate... and these forces have to be dealt with somehow. So was Berne a destroyer, or did she have love in her heart too? And did she show that love by giving Ange the one thing the girl who was Berne never had: an embodiment of all the doubt, pain and fear plaguing her that she could destroy without guilt? A dragon to be beaten? *And there's another thing: we've already gone over how much Berne suffered before this, how she felt so much pain that she hollows out her own emotions. Do you really expect someone who's felt such pain before to even remotely be phased by getting smacked around a bit?
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Nov 30, 2017 18:25
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Something that I've been waiting to link here: http://goatsreadingseacats.tumblr.com/ They stopped part-way through episode 5, but they reference the entire story and the manga as well. As they're going back through the series, they do a more thorough analysis on what parts were fantasy, what were the motives on each gameboard, and why Sayo liked Battler. The part that really got me was the update where one of them suggests that George accidentally gave Shannon the okay to kill them all back in episode 2, when he was talking about how a couple's happiness is complete at the moment of proposal.
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Nov 30, 2017 23:06
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Rune Full Moon posted:Something that I've been waiting to link here: The 'they' in question is actually a witch here in witchchat! They haven't visited in a little while, though.
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Nov 30, 2017 23:21
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Fates End posted:The 'they' in question is actually a witch here in witchchat! They haven't visited in a little while, though. Hello, I am here! And am responsible for the bad YGO jokes! It's very flattering that people still read and link to Goats Reading Seacats; be warned it never started as a serious project and was mostly a silly vehicle to cry about Yasu and vent about how no one appreciated her character. Blush blush cringe.
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Dec 1, 2017 02:13
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Well, poo poo, look at me getting caught up with this thread just a little bit late. Thank you, Prof, for this Herculean effort. I can already tell that not too far in the future, I'm going to want to share Umineko with other people and maybe get even a little too insistent/obsessed about it, but for right now, I don't really have any more words to share... just kind of want to think about it quietly for a while. Although I will say that the ending was thoroughly satisfying in a way that for a while I was doubting it could be, so enormous respect to Ryukishi07 for that.
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Dec 1, 2017 02:43
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Congrats and thank you, Prof! I suddenly had something to grieve about in the middle of the thread, and Seacats (and the thread) were honestly quite helpful with that process, viz 'without love it cannot be seen', and thoughts about it helped keep me on an even keel. Sad to see it go! I'm still thinking about that ending.Myriad Truths posted:One funny thing that the manga adds about Toya/Battler is that the reason EP3 is so very anti-Eva is because Toya had been under the impression Eva was the murderer too. All Sayo said was that one of his family members was the culprit, and the only survivor was Eva, so Toya jumps to the wrong conclusion and helps Ikuko write a spiteful Forgery directly accusing Eva. But Eva reads it and realizes it was written by Battler, and tells them what actually happened. So, then, Eva knew about Toya's true identity when the first book was public, and didn't communicate it to Ange for the entire period the books were being published? I suppose either out of discretion or, in the least charitable scenario, spite? Or maybe she was just trying to avoid a situation where Toya suffered an attack. Ahh, it's all so complicated...
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Dec 2, 2017 17:30
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free Trapt CD posted:So, then, Eva knew about Toya's true identity when the first book was public, and didn't communicate it to Ange for the entire period the books were being published? I suppose either out of discretion or, in the least charitable scenario, spite? Or maybe she was just trying to avoid a situation where Toya suffered an attack. Ahh, it's all so complicated... That was quite intentional by Ryukishi, according to the interview. He wanted to leave different ways to interpret a lot of things depending on the reader - did George hide Battler's letter to Shannon, for example? I suppose the same's true of what resurgam said of Bern above.
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Dec 2, 2017 18:11
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Also of note about EP 3 is it's the only version where Battler actually dies. I think Toya was trying to say something there 
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Dec 2, 2017 20:08
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PoorWeather posted:Ultimately, in spite of the release, the original Japanese fandom continued to hold a relatively poor perception of Umineko's ending that largely persists to this day. So I wasn't imagining things when I whiffed a scent of spite from the whole goat thing, or from the (manga only?) scene in the library where it's claimed that opening the catbox would release the story to the public domain, who would mercilessly slaughter the inhabitants of the island for all eternity! (My answer, as before, remains the same. So the gently caress what? Some goats were never going to be pleased because they'd gone in expecting a fairly straight-forward mystery--except all of the mystery got wrapped up fairy tales and meta layers and meta meta layers and maybe if the author wasn't so obsessed with being clever and allowed themselves to be more fair with the clues the goats wouldn't have revolted en masse. "You just didn't get it!" only goes so far as a defense--I used to attempt that defense myself, back when I was a newbie and terrible at writing, before one of my more trusted friends gently pulled me aside and explained to me that I can't possibly expect my readers to also read my mind. If it's not in the text, and barely there in the subtext, then it's too obtuse for it's own good--see also the plot of Final Fantasy VIII, another story about memory loss and witches and a big hosed-up family.) dotchan fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Dec 3, 2017 |
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Dec 3, 2017 04:26
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I feel like R07 only really had problems with two groups of people: 1) People who treat real-life tragedies as murder mysteries, caring only about solving the "puzzle" and finding the truth rather than how the people involved are affected by the publicity and theories. This is pretty obvious from Erika, if nothing else. 2) People who assume that any mystery that doesn't follow a certain set of rules is a bad mystery, or say that a mystery is unfair solely because they can't solve it; relatedly, people who think mysteries should only deal with physical tricks because stuff like "X wouldn't have done it because they were in love with the victim" isn't certain enough. (I recall seeing an R07 interview where he said that he was sad that the motive was so often an afterthought in mysteries, and one of his goals with Umineko was to write a mystery where you had to figure out "whydunnit" to solve "whodunnit" and "howdunnit".) The thing is that the goats embody parts of both these groups in different situations. R07 coming down on the goats eating the catbox (largely group 1, denying any possibility of happiness in the Ushiromiyas) can easily be seen as an attack on mystery fans writing fanfic in general, because the distinction between goats as real-life murder fans and goats as over-restrictive mystery fans is blurred. I don't think that was intentional; in fact, destroying the catbox by revealing the single truth was seen as bad in the witches' realm because it would stop them speculating. From the interview linked earlier, R07 didn't even really have a problem with people who didn't try to solve the murders and just enjoyed the fantasy battles, as long as they still thought about what things actually meant. He was only annoyed at the people who distrusted the author so much as to declare it impossible to reach any truth.
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Dec 3, 2017 12:42
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I want to thank Prof for managing to plow through the entire series as fast as you did. I lurked on Shiny777's thread when it was going and once it died, I didn't think I would ever get to read the series. (I did find another LP thread for it on another website, but...) I also want to thank the thread for understanding Sayo's heart. I read through the series before (see above) and I was extremely disappointed that most of the thread posters didn't understand why Sayo would go to the lengths that they did, didn't think it was fair that Sayo got to go to the Golden Land with everyone else, and generally trashed them. I was afraid I would see the same here, but it was a very pleasant surprise and... well, thank you.
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Dec 4, 2017 16:44
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Thank you so much for LPing this, Prof! It was an incredible ride. And thank you to Shiny for starting an LP back then--I was a little iffy on Seacats at first, but I spoiled myself and found Sayo so intriguing that I was determined to see it through this time. And now I can buy the second half on Steam; I skipped some of the music and videos so I'd have something new for when I play through it myself. When I was spoiling myself, though, I somehow got confused and thought Ange canonically died. So thank you to the Witch of Miracles for surprising me with a happy ending. 
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Dec 5, 2017 22:04
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Rune Full Moon posted:I want to thank Prof for managing to plow through the entire series as fast as you did. I lurked on Shiny777's thread when it was going and once it died, I didn't think I would ever get to read the series. (I did find another LP thread for it on another website, but...) Just wanted to second this, it really has been amazing to watch someone finally do a full LP!
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Dec 5, 2017 22:09
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Rune Full Moon posted:I want to thank Prof for managing to plow through the entire series as fast as you did. I lurked on Shiny777's thread when it was going and once it died, I didn't think I would ever get to read the series. (I did find another LP thread for it on another website, but...) Well, to be fair, that thread only got partway through the story, not even as far as Chiru. And they had just finished a vicious episode, one of the ones that portay Beatrice in the worst light... and we wouldn't get into the whys and wherefores of Beatrice for a good long time, even if the hints are obvious in retrospect. Sure, there were hints dropped in the 3rd and 4th episode that Beatrice wasn't the monster they pretended to be, and I was interested by the end of the first thread but I wasn't ready to embrace them yet... I felt sorry for them, yes, but they were still murderers, you know? Think back- did you feel any different about them at that point? In order for love to be seen, we had to know all the rest of the story- the "whydunnit," as R07 said- and for that to happen, the story had to leave Beato's control. They had been struggling against the weight of their psychological burden for years already without the added guilt of mass murder, and they were plainly not interested in defending their actions or explaining themselves after the fact. If Battler didn't know and had no clue or motivation to pursue the truth, and Beato had sunk into a coma, and we have Tohya's struggles on the meta-level, then from a fantasy standpoint. the only ones left to move the story along is... um... ...yeah. So instead of thanking me, perhaps we should thank them instead. They were heart-stoppingly cruel and gross, but... would we have learned anything at all about the heart of the Tragedy?
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Dec 5, 2017 23:59
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resurgam40 posted:Think back- did you feel any different about them at that point? the only thing I cared about at that point in the story was when battler and beato were gonna make out to be honest
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Dec 6, 2017 05:13
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Rodyle posted:the only thing I cared about at that point in the story was when battler and beato were gonna make out to be honest
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Dec 6, 2017 06:49
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resurgam40 posted:I felt sorry for them, yes, but they were still murderers, you know? Think back- did you feel any different about them at that point? Yeah, I remember not falling for the "lol I trolled you all along" thing Beato and Virgilia were trying to pull at the end of EP3. I thought she was clearly forcing herself to go along with the game for some reason and EP4 only made it more obvious. Rodyle posted:the only thing I cared about at that point in the story was when battler and beato were gonna make out to be honest
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Dec 6, 2017 08:21
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resurgam40 posted:They were heart-stoppingly cruel and gross, but... would we have learned anything at all about the heart of the Tragedy? Yes, the best way to learn about internal organs is to tear open a corpse and look at them directly. That is why biology classes have dissection assignments.
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Dec 6, 2017 09:16
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Rodyle posted:the only thing I cared about at that point in the story was when battler and beato were gonna make out to be honest Same. edit: I mean the "trolling twist" in episode 3 felt fake and forced to me and by the time episode 4 rolled around it's obvious that it was. MagusDraco fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Dec 6, 2017 |
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Dec 6, 2017 15:09
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If we're talking about the impressions of the previous thread, it stopped before that - back in early EP3, right when Rosa begins the Kuwadorian story.
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Dec 6, 2017 15:26
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 Maybe the term "explosive" isn't something that Battler would want to hear after all this time.  Many thanks, Prof, for this excellent ride. I learned a lot, and this story really pushes one to think for themselves and read between the lines. It's been a hell of a trip. Til next time!
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Dec 6, 2017 23:01
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Yeah I managed to not get spoiled between the end of Shiny777's thread and this one and the ride has been great. I might give this one a second read through when I have the time (lol) because some of the early stuff I remembered is cast in such a different light.
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Dec 6, 2017 23:06
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Something stuck out to me during episode 8: Lion is consistently lumped in with the fantasy creatures. If Lion truly were, as Bernkastel claims, a version of Yasu from a world without The Cliff, and they are an ordinary human, you wouldn't expect them to be categorized with the magical gun-rabbits or the personification of SS Van Dine's rules. Even if you make the distiction of humans who were actually there in 1986, you'd expect Lion would count the same as Kinzo, Shannon, and Kanon. But no, they're all humans, and Lion is a fantasy creature. And what do all the fantasy creatures have in common? They are all products of Yasu's (and Maria's) imagination. So then Lion isn't just a simple "What if no cliff" but specifically what Yasu imagined they would be, what they wish they could be. Really puts the confident gender ambiguity in a new light. I'd say more but I've been commandeered by my miko.
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Dec 7, 2017 00:19
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resurgam40 posted:Well, to be fair, that thread only got partway through the story, not even as far as Chiru. To be clearer, I'm talking about the thread where I finished the series, not Shiny777's. The other thread went through the entire eight episodes, with some additions from the manga (though the chapters were still coming out at the time).
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Dec 7, 2017 01:32
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