#i have specifics for how the supernatural/occults work in this world

[druidberries]

after Seb talked with Griffin he informed Elowen of everything he'd told him, and told her he absolutely still wanted to become a vampire. luckily for them, Elowen may or may not have met one of the most infamous vampires out there, and she could definitely get him to turn Sebastian. the first few days after being bit were strange for Seb, it was hard watching Elowen bake and not being able to eat it :( his neck hurt and he started feeling cravings for something he certainly never did before.

once the turning process had ended and he was officially a vampire the very first thing he did was uh...break in the new coffin with Elowen

previous // next

HE IS SO CUTE I HAVE BEEN WAITING SO LONG FOR THIS

#tjolgen1 #guys #vamp seb... #this is so long overdue #i have specifics for how the supernatural/occults work in this world #and one of the things is like #vampire dark forms can have horns #but not big ones #and none that are like going up the side of the head or anything #just the kind at the front of their head #also sorry this is so many pics but I didn't want to break it up or leave any out #i love this post #ok cya #ts4 #ts4 legacy #sims #sims 4 #sims 4 legacy #tjolc #save: tjol #tjol: elowen brady #tjol: sebastian stein #tjol: vlad

[theresattrpgforthat]

Games with an atypical division of Player/GM responsibilities? For example, in Fellowship, the players have final say in lore/world building questions, not the GM. (Not counting GMless games, which have atypical GM duties by default)

Alternatively, if that's too niche: any games explicitly designed for rotating GMs and/or 'West Marches' style campaigns.

THEME: Unique Player Responsibilities / Rotating GMs

Hello there! I hope to do your ask justice, although I feel more at home talking about the first half of your question than the second. I’ll ask my followers to supply some more suggestions in the tags/reblogs, and throw at you what I have!

Fae’s Anatomy, by Hebanon Games.

Fae’s Anatomy is a comedic storytelling RPG wrapped around a challenging logic puzzle, recreating the high-stakes melodrama of medical procedurals like Grey’s Anatomy, House, and General Hospital. 

Anybody can be an expert in Fae’s Anatomy. The game is set in a world where all forms of magic, spirituality, and mysticism are science. Science? Just another form of wizardry. Quackary, superstition, and pseudo-science work, but so does chemotherapy, antibiotics, and sound medicine.

In many ways, I’d say Fae’s Anatomy feels like a typical ttrpg: you have one person giving hints and clues to the rest of the players, who will use certain skills and abilities to solve a problem. But the closest role to the GM role - the Patient - is simply different from the doctors in what limits them. The Patient is suffering from some kind of mysterious illness, and while they have a little bit of information available to their general illness, the app presented to them to help them run through the diagnosis keeps the solution obscured enough to keep them on their toes. The Patient also has to role-play their symptoms well enough to help point the doctors in the right direction. In some ways, it feels like Fae’s Anatomy is an elegant form of charades - and if you want to hear how this game plays, you can check out the special episodes that Lawful Great Adventures recorded using this game!

Apocalypse Keys, by Rae Nedjadi @temporalhiccup

The Doomsday Clock is ticking down and emotions run high as you and your team of DIVISION agents struggle to find the Keys before the villainous Harbingers unlock the Doors of Power and bring about the apocalypse.

As an Omen class monster, you are the only thing capable of holding back the apocalypse. Combat occult threats and investigate supernatural phenomena alongside your team of supernatural agents working for the shadowy DIVISION. But in a world that shuns monsters like you, only your deepest, most heartfelt bonds can grant you the power to stop those who seek to unlock Doom’s Door.

There are two ways in which Apocalypse Keys uniquely empowers the players in ways I consider slightly unorthodox. Firstly, there’s the fact that the lore of DIVISION, the shadowy government agency that holds your monsters leash, isn’t fully fleshed out at the beginning of play. It’s slowly uncovered with each mission and playbook advancement, with the players being presented with questions and workshopping the answers together.

Second is the mystery mechanic, which was popularized by Brindlewood Bay and The Between, and also made its way into games such as External Containment Bureau and Bump in the Dark. While the GM designs clues and thinks about what kinds of Harbingers might be responsible for this specific apocalypse, it’s up to the players to decide what the answer to the mystery actually is - and it’s the player’s roll that determines how accurate they are.

Brinkwood, Blood of Tyrants, by Far Horizons Co-Op.

Mask up. Spill blood. Drink the Rich.

The world is not as it should be. The rich feed, literally, upon the poor, as blood-sucking vampires who barely bother to conceal their horrific, parasitic nature. The downtrodden peoples of the world struggle under the burdens of rent, payable through the sweat of their labor or the blood of their veins. Evil has triumphed. Many have given in to despair. But all is not lost.

In Brinkwood, you take on the role of renegades, thieves, and rebels struggling for freedom and liberation in a castylpunk world controlled by vampires. Radicalized by tragedy, you have taken up arms and fled into the forests, where you were taken in by unlikely allies - the fae, forgotten creatures of myth - who offered a different path and the means to fight back against your oppressors. Masks, forged of old wood and older magic, are the final tool left to fight a war long ago lost. If you wear them, they will take their price, etching themselves upon your very soul. But they will also let you spill the blood of the rich and powerful vampires that now rule the land, and from that blood strengthen yourself and your movement.

There’s a lot of things about Brinkwood that I absolutely love, from the way the mask playbooks are meant to be swapped among the characters/players with every mission, to the slow but steady revolution that you build by fostering connections with various factions in the Bloody Isles. But for the purpose of this request, we need to talk about Your Exquisite Fae.

Your Exquisite Fae is the process by which the group collaboratively creates a faerie patron, otherworldly and uniquely powerful. It’s inspired by the game Exquisite Corpse, which has each player draw a piece of a drawing without knowing what the others have already created. In Your Exquisite Fae, the players receive answers to prompts written by other players but aren’t given hints as to what the context was - and then they elaborate on what those answers mean. For example, one player might state that the Fae has eyes that reflect the night sky, gleaming like a thousand distant starts. The second player might decide that those eyes see the deepest fears of the enemy, giving the group an advantage at finding weaknesses and secrets when spying on vampires.

Ars Magica, by Atlas Games.

Ars Magica is the award-winning roleplaying game by Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein•Hagen about wizards and their allies in Mythic Europe. This flexible, deeply built world can support games that are historically accurate or fantasy-based, epic or small scale, political or personal.

Players work together to tell the story of their covenant — all of the magi, their companions, and grogs. This history can span decades. It might be heroic, tragic, or both in turn. The covenant could influence the entirety of Mythic Europe or the fates of a small corner of the world.

Spells will be cast. Duels won and lost. Houses may rise and fall. But magic is forever.

The last time I talked about this game, one of my followers pointed out that this was an incredibly complex game that was designed to accommodate rotating GMs. The game styles itself as a troupe-style game, which means you’re not just responsible for your mages, but also your companions and servants. If you want a game with complex relationships and big-picture conflicts, this might be the game for you.

Slugblaster, by Mikey Hamm.

In the small town of Hillview, teenage hoverboarders sneak into other dimensions to explore, film tricks, go viral, and get away from the problems at home. It’s dangerous. It’s stupid. It’s got parent groups in a panic. And it’s the coolest thing ever.

This is Slugblaster. A table-top rpg about teenagehood, giant bugs, circuit-bent rayguns, and trying to be cool.

It may look like a small thing, but during crew creation, each character playbook has specific roles in determining the crew’s resources and relationships. The Grit picks a faction that trusts the crew. The Guts chooses a faction that the crew has somehow annoyed. Each player draws a portal between the known multiverses, but the Smarts draws two. The Chill has final say over where you hang out when you’re not Slugblasting, and The Heart has final say over your crew name.

I’ve drawn direct inspiration from this setup in my own game that I’m playtesting, by giving each playbook final say over some element in the world, and I think it really boosts player agency and gives them control over the kind of story the group wants to tell.

Planedawn Orphans, by Sharkbomb Studios.

Planedawn Orphans is a campaign kit that helps you prepare a campaign for the fantasy role-playing game of your choice. It provides a flexible and versatile framework to start a campaign. The campaign kit will help you get started and provide structure and support, but some assembly is required.

Set in the Planar City, a strange melting pot that connects the vast diversity of the multiverse. You all play Planar Orphans stranded in this city, your original home worlds destroyed, corrupted or lost. A mysterious Patron has brought you together, provided you with a base of operations and tasked you to complete a Planar Key. This key will let you create a new plane for you and your fellow refugees. Your quest will bring you to exotic places filled with strange creatures and bizarre phenomena.

This isn’t a standalone rpg, but rather a campaign kit for whatever system you like - or even multiple systems! I’m recommending this toolkit because I’m actually planning to use it to run a series of rotating-gm games later this year, with a friend of mine. You’re building your own custom dimension by jumping into a series of vastly different worlds, and your home base is built collectively. There’s a lot of player agency and GM agency here, as players have plenty of control over their home dimensions (since they can’t ever go back) and the GMs can take turns designing custom worlds for the party to jump into. I definitely recommend checking it out.

Also Check Out

Asymmetrical Games Rec Post

#rotating gms #unique player responsibilities #tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #dnd #game recommendations #asks #indie ttrpg

[pochapal]

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

[adarkrainbow]

I am so glad I happen to have access to one particular book - it isn't mine but it happens to be part of my mother's collection. "Les perversions du merveilleux", The perversions of the marvelous, by Jean de Palacio.

It's not a book you find in your usual libraries, as it isn't printed anymore and now you get it usually in rare bookshops, or quality second-hand bookstores. Just on the Internet a second hand copy - not even of good quality - is worth at least 30 euros. It is a study, based on roughly five hundred literary fairytales published between 1862 and 1922, on how the "marvelous genre", the "genre merveilleux" - aka the fairytale - mutated and evolved in literature during the second half of the 19th century and the fin-de-siècle.

I often talk of the "great century of fairytales", the "golden age of fairy literature" in France, going from Perrault and madame d'Aulnoy's texts in the early 1690s to the publication of Le Cabinet des Fées in the late 1780s. But it doesn't mean fairytales as a literary genre stopped existing in France. It went on throughout the 19th century - but simply as a minor, overlooked, undignified genre, crushed by the dual tendency towards realism-naturalism (rejecting anything magic and fantasy-like as childish) and towards the fantastical (the "fantastique", opposing itself to the "merveilleux" - fantastique was the "right" way to do supernatural). If the late 17th and full 18th century was the "golden age" of literary fairytales, the 19th century and early 20th was more of a "dark age" - but there was a new boom and resurgence of the literary fairytale, a "Renaissance" by the fin-de-siècle, the two last decades of the 19th century and the pre-World-War 20th century. Of course Palacio here goes a bit further and expands his study all the way to the 1860s and 1920s, but it is still a focus on the "fin-de-siècle fairytale" and its "perversion" of the "marvels" of the genre.

Because what was the fin-de-siècle all about? Finding back a magic, an occultism and an onirism lost by the wave of realistic, social and scientific works ; reconstructing magic and marvels in a modern world while also brutally deconstructing it in front of the recent changes in humanity. Digging up the lost past and confronting it to the present - in comparison, rejection, or embrace. But it was also taking the innocent, the beautiful, the good, the fabulous and wonderful, and making it cynical, bored, depressed, cruel, sadistic - and what better choice of material than these childhood tales and "naive fables" of good fairies and happy princes? Twisting fairytales, but also exacerbating them - because the fin-de-siècle was also focused on the beautiful, the richness, the poetry, and it found a kindly echo and friendly cousin within the abundance, the preciosity and the extravagant luxury of these old fairytales. As such it is no wonder that almost all the artistic movements around the turn of the century - symbolism, decadence, all the way up to surrealism - took a great interest in traditional fairytales.

Anyway - this book talks about what the fin-de-siècle did to fairytales, and it is deeply fascinating. The first chapter is "For a fin-de-siècle merveilleux" and establishes both the "marvelous genre" of this era, and the process of "perverting" said marvelous in three specific ways: sequel-tales (continuing the story after the canonic ending), expanded tales (focusing and expanding on a specific detail of the original tale) and "counterfeit tale" (changing the setting, the gender, the iconic item, the social class, the time era of the original story).

There are two chapters dedicated to iconic character-types of the fairytale. One is the Fairy - "La mort des fées", "The death of fairies" - it explores the whole wave of depicting the fairies as a dying race or an extinct species, as the last remnants and survivors of a long-gone world ; but also the presentation of the fairy reinvented as the "femme fatale", the deadly woman, the lethal seductress ; and the symbolism of the fairy as a "woman of letter" - either a muse for the artist, or a storyteller making fairytales, when she isn't the center of a set of "dangerous wordplays" using language itself against reality. The other chapter is about the Ogre - "L'ogrerie décadente", "The decadent ogrery". It explores how the fin-de-siècle uses the ogre as an allegory or a metaphor rather than an actual character, when the ogre doesn't rather become a good and benevolent character, or helpless victim - it also talks of the focus the era had on Little Thumbling, Petit Poucet, and the transformations of the seven-league boots in light of an era of "speed and progress". But most interestingly, it also focuses highly on the "ogress", who was much more explored than the male ogre, thanks to the era's obsession with monstrous women - it talks of the sexual ogresses more like succubuses, of the greedy ogress-like women focused on eating money rather than flesh, and there is an entire section about the short story by Paul Arène "Les Ogresses".

As for the other chapters, they are all centered around onf of Perrault's fairytales. "La belle au lit dormant", "The beauty in a sleeping bed" - how the identity and nature of the fairies was changed to make them dubious and unclear entities ; how the metaphor of the sleep of a hundred years explored the passing of time or the return to the long-gone past ; as well as how there was a tradition of fin-de-siècle authors openly contestating, criticizing or rejecting Perrault's words and affirmations to tell the "real" story of the Sleeping Beauty.

"Miss Blue-Beard, or from the rehabiliation to the decadence" - the way the authors tried to redeem the character of Bluebeard, while also making alternate versions of the tale with a "rise of the feminine power" - from a greater focus and importance on sister Anne to an exploration of Bluebeard's previous wives and his intimate problems with women, passing by the angle of how power goes from Bluebeard to his surviving wife that takes everything from him.

"The metamorphosis of Cinderella": the great focus and fascination the authors had for the famous glass slipper of Cinderella ; coupled with how it became recurrent to depict the "after-marriage" life of Cinderella, turned into a "house-wife".

And finally "The absence of Griselidis" - dealing with the most often ignored and forgotten part of Perrault's three "verse tales".

#fin de siecle #fin de siecle fairytales #decadent fairytales #fairytale analysis #history of fairytales #literary fairytales #jean de palacio #french fairytales #perrault fairytales

[thotpuppy]

✨Bidding Now Open!✨

I'm a bit late in making a promo post, but I just wanted to share with you that I'm offering both a Teen Wolf fanfic AND any fandom fanart for @fandomtrumpshate this year! It's my first year participating. I think it's a really cool project, and I'm really happy to be a part of it. (:

My Offers:

(long post including art examples)

DoughritoArt Auction #1 (^ click to see listing!) Organizations this auction benefits: Bidder's choice of any of the listed groups (See full list.) Type of fanwork: Fan art Subtype(s): Banner, Book cover, Drawing/painting/etc., Photo manip Fandom(s): Any Length/scope: Minimum bid is $10 for simple edit, eBook cover, or plain illustration. $20+ full book layout or more complex illustration. $40+ willing to do complex painterly illustrations. Basically, the more you donate, the more complex and detailed the result. Fan art details: High Resolution/print quality Illustration, Banner, or Book Cover. Willing to do full sleeve book cover (Cover, Spine, and Back [including text]) as well. Comfortable with Edits or Illustration, capable of using commercial use assets, happy to discuss specifics. Especially interested in: I am particularly fond of stories involving queer romance, trans characters, and occult imagery. I am fond of both historical and modern fantasy. I really enjoy working with Original stories, but I also like 'underrepresented' fandoms, older fandoms, and superhero media. Unwilling to address: No extreme gore (i.e. Splatterpunk), no graphic horror (mild horror is okay), not super fond of extreme musculature. Struggle with illustrating of anthropomorphism, mecha/machinery, scantily clad/nude women. Other notes: I would like to have a very direct communication with the bidder. I want to make sure I am able to tailor your art to exactly what you want. I would like a lot of input at the initial stage, so I have a good idea of what direction to go (i.e. illustration vs edit and what subject matter), and I would like feedback when presented with multiple options. Special interests: Poly ships, Canonically trans or nonbinary characters, Trans or nonbinary interpretations of canon characters

ThePurebloodPrat Auction #1 (^ click to see listing!) Organizations this auction benefits: Bidder's choice of any of the listed groups (See full list.) Type of fanwork: Written fanwork Subtype(s): fan fiction (new) Fandom(s): Teen Wolf Highest rating: E Length/scope: Depends how much the bidder contributes. Bidding starts at $5 for 2k+ words. Every $5 adds 5k words, i.e. $10 = 7k, $15=12k. Maximum word count minimum is 25k. Minimum Bid: $5 Especially interested in: I am most interested in Sterek, Stackson, Scallison+Stiles, Jydia+Stiles, or other main MLM pairings. I am very open to poly ships. I enjoy some dark themes, but typically prefer to write main pairings in healthier relationships while the dark elements are external in longer plotfics, I don't mind the main pairing featuring dark themes from a kink-oriented perspective. (i.e. if you'd like 5k of a character getting nonconned, I'm cool, but 20k of yandere!character stalking their partner, I am less cool.) I enjoy transmasc characters. fave tropes: creature!Stiles (werewolf, raven shifter, vampire, otherwise supernatural), magic!Stiles, mpreg, Omegaverse, canon divergent, med.fantasy, college au fave characters: Stiles, Derek, Jackson, Lydia, Peter, Erica, Isaac, Allison, Scott, Parrish, Finstock, Sheriff, Boyd, Liam, Corey, Danny I enjoy writing complicated people and complex relationships. I enjoy creative world building. I tend to write very introspectively. Noncon, underage: OK Unwilling to address: Not super into Bad!characters, but willing within reason. No Scat, no bugs, no necrophilia, no Major Character Death, no genderbending. Less extreme, I am less fond of: All human/no wolves AU, Post Apocalyptic AU, Time travel Other notes: I would like to have a consistent communicative relationship. I tend to go weeks without working on something and then binge write a whole huge chunk at once. I would love to be able to shoot a few ideas at you randomly and have you respond in a day or two, to make sure you like the direction I'm going. Special interests: Poly ships, Trans or nonbinary interpretations of canon characters

Here are a few examples of cover art and illustrations I've done:

#teen wolf #sterek #stiles stilinski #stackson #fth 2024 #fanart #digital art #steter

[widowshill]

How do you think Dark Shadows would differ if made today? Would it still be the cult classic or is that kind of writing lost to us?

with the disclaimers that I don't think you can set out to make a cult classic, and also I only know as much about the entertainment industry as the next person, and also I don't really think the writing in Dark Shadows is that good, I do think it's an interesting question! I'll do my best.

To start: for me, the lion's share of the show's enduring appeal is in its earnestness, and part of that is the palpable shoestring budget. things like flubbed lines, camera man and mic shadows in the shot, and other genuine mistakes are part of what you watch the show for, they do not detract but add to the experience. this contributes a similar sense of watching live theatre (paired with most of the core cast being new york theatrically trained and bringing that acting style with them) because you know you're seeing something usually done in one take, where the mistakes bleed through, where who the actors are as people is alongside them on the stage. they flub, and recover, and this is part of the story: so too do the Collinses make vast mistakes, and go on. it is an imperfect world riddled with faults.

This is not something you're going to get in the current media landscape from one of the big networks like ABC; I find it almost impossible to imagine a daytime show being produced with the kind of natural errors Dark Shadows contains. To capture that same kind of poor theatre troup earnestness you would have better success as either a) actual serial theatre, b) a webseries / tiktok series / etc, c) a low-budget independent or college tv station, or d) a miniseries, possibly. If a major network took it on and purposefully put those mistakes in, it would not feel the same. I'm a bit bored of the constant insincerity/irony in a lot of 2020's media, and I think it would rapidly veer into that genre of work.

As far as being a daytime serial, specifically, I don't think the current media environment is exactly right: part of the reason they aired a gothic horror soap opera to begin with is it was part of the broader cultural conversation, next to television like Bewitched, The Addams Family, I Dream of Jeanie, The Munsters, The Twilight Zone, etc. American entertainment in the late 60's had a love affair with the occult (with witches, monsters, ghosts, the works) and this permeated broad aspects of arts and culture: The Haunted Mansion opened at Disneyland in 1969, Monster Mash was number 1 on the Billboard chart in 1962 (and #91 in '70, and #10 in '73). Pair that with prominent artists like John Zacherle's discography, Vincent Price's film credits, 70's gothic horror comedies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Phantom of the Paradise, and of course the wild popularity of gothic romance paperbacks in the 60's and 70's. This isn't everything, of course, but just to broad-strokes the landscape.

It's not that we don't have supernatural media today — horror is one of the highest performing movie genres, and there are shows like Ghosts and WWDITS, and Watcher Entertainment — but it's not quite the same explosion of culture (in my opinion). Making a gothic romance-horror-vampire serial would be more at home in the 2010's among the love affair with Twilight, True Blood, The Originals, the dominance of horror game Youtube, the height of Supernatural, Crimson Peak, What We Do In the Shadows 2014, etc. One imagines this is why the 2012 film adaption came out when it did; the cultural moment was conducive, overall. Most nighttime network television today (and I am generalizing) is dominated by legal, medical, and police drama; current soap-operas (especially General Hospital) reflect that, and there are only three soaps getting aired, period. Nothing is impossible: but a soap in the Dark Shadows vein (ha) getting green-lit today seems unlikely, vastly unlikely with the ebb in vampire fervor.

What I will say that works better in today's production moment for a potential series revival (revision?) is we're starting to see an embrace of practical set building / prop making / etc that was lost to us for a little while, especially among the horror genre. For example: Blumhouse's FNAF utilizing the Jim Henson creature shop, the beautiful set work on Haunted Mansion 2023, the use of practical effects in Beetlejuice 2. This is something that to me feels integral, for making Dark Shadows. You may disagree! But I don't think the heavy dependence on CGI did 2012 any favors. The magic inherent in the show (curses, ghosts, whatever you want to call it) is supported by movie magic and the invisible (or sometimes visible) artisanal hands crafting the world for us.

Moreover, with Bridgerton, especially (but also Emma, Little Women, The Gilded Age, The Great, etc) there's been a bit of a renaissance of lush period pieces. The current fascination with historical romances (and anachronism!) lends itself very well to a dive into 1795 or 1897. My best guess is that if we produced a revival right now, there'd be a very heavy focus on one of the alternate time periods (probably 1795), and they would lean on anachronism (and sex) very heavily, and the present year would be a very very minor presence, if they bothered with it at all – and maybe they wouldn't!

As for the writing, specifically? There's nothing that extraordinary about Dark Shadows' writing, to me, what is extraordinary is the characters and the actors' management of them (and Lela's direction) and what they are able to do with the script (aside from a few standout moments of memorable lines). There are brilliant television writers out there who could write a lovely gothic adaption. Some of our priorities in terms of storytelling are different: one thing you would have to acknowledge that the original show rarely dealt with and never performed well on is race. However a lot of the dominant concerns in the cultural landscape do reflect the issues at the forefront of the themes in the writing: especially women's bodily autonomy (Barnabas' hypnotism and forcing Josette's identity onto the nearest brunette/the inherent violation of biting and enthrallment, the way his victims are 90% of the time poor women, or sex workers, or the criminalized and otherwise vulnerable); women's economic position (Liz running the house and business, Victoria and Maggie's subject to endless horrors for a wage, Carolyn free to kick getting married down the road because she's economically secure) and the rigid dominance of the hetero-nuclear family structure as it is entwined with economics in America, and its subversions; and, especially, the way that the American houses (architectural, economic, genealogical) are built on the exploitation of those beneath them, often demanding the physical sacrifice of bodies and blood.

If I had my choice — and this is not what I think is probable, what is probable is a lean into the literal vampires and witches and sex associated in a modern-day setting — a current version of Dark Shadows would lean heavily into those themes, and take the reflection of the literal monsters (Barnabas, Angelique, Quentin, Laura, etc.) on the metaphorical monsters (Elizabeth, Roger, Burke, David, etc.) seriously. Preferably I'd want it set in the 1960's-70's again, because, like Collinsport, we seem to repeat the same sins over and over again, currently we are engaged with and reversing much of the progress that was made by social movements of that era, so in some senses we are returned to that time, culturally. Preferably I would emphasize the mystery? the permeation between the boundary of human and monstrosity? that dominated the early supernatural arcs with Laura and the beginning of Barnabas; and emphasize the terror, especially the terror of violence contained within the charming, and genteel, and refined, and beautiful. Above all I would not begin any first episode of anything with Barnabas, who should be first and foremost a reflection on the family so ready to accept him as like kind.

cult classic? I don't know. I think there's an appetite for earnestness; for long-form storytelling; for the quotidian — to learn about characters as they eat breakfast and bicker, as well as fight monsters. and theatre-trained enunciation that you can hear. I would hope, with sufficient intimacy training, the kissing and sex scenes would be a little better and not make me so very miserable.

#➤ answered. ┊ Collinsport 4099. #➤ ooc. ┊ she’s nauseous，she’s hysterical，and she’s exhausted.

[batbeato]

I was also thinking alongside the lines of an Umineko AU, where magic is actually real. The era of sorcerers and witches and alchemy and beasts are still generally assigned to being myths. It's still in regards to everything Ushiromiya and Rokkenjima and Beatrice.

I was thinking that magic would still be prevalent in ways similar to the anime Iroduku: A World In Color, or maybe something like Encanto where it runs in family lines and individuals have gifts. Or maybe Kinzo did something, who knows.

But Witches and Sorcerers magic, alchemy, is something long-forgotten and even rumored to have not actually existed - not like they do in stories. Which would further obscure Beatrice's heart in the Meta from Battler - because magic does exist, even if there's no one left that knows if Beatrice's magic is the real deal and killed everyone-

(Speaking of which, I wonder where exactly Meta-Battler's memory cuts off? At the airplane, in the cousins' room in the guesthouse? We never see him question in the vn where they are, I don't think. Does he assume Beatrice just ripped him through space and time to torment him with her games? Not to mention we know Rosa appears and is getting forcefed her family at the end of one of the episodes? Where does she go, after? Where does everyone else go? Are they just lurking in corners, out of sight?)

At the same time though, so much of Umineko is trying to pierce through the veil of magic - not to tear out the guts of the story, but to see the heart hiding underneath. In utilizing literal magic in the plot, even if things like occult black magic and sorcerers and witches and demons are deemed myth or legend, if writing with canon-context, wouldn't it clog the narrative?

Also, it's a rule in mysteries, isn't it? To not actually use supernatural creatures/abilities - including magic? At least, not to hand wave how the crime occurred and pull a solution out of thin air. Though, in a world where traces of magic exist, regardless, Sayo probably wouldn't use it? She wants someone to stop her, Battler to solve the mystery. Her murders - though not anyone else's, arguably - following the rules of a who-dunnit, how-dunnit, why-dunnit mystery.

Rambling here, sorry.

Putting this on anon, because I'm slightly afraid of offending anyone.

Honestly I think it all would really depend on the specifics of the AU and how magic would interact with the existing story to enhance or change it. If it ended up not really changing much, that wouldn't be interesting, but maybe it could. For example, maybe different types of magic are gendered, so 'witches' are generally supposed to have 'feminine' magic (healing, connecting with nature, emotions) and witches that have 'masculine' magic (controlling the elements, summoning powerful demons, etc.) is considered to be heretical or evil. Maybe Rosa encouraged or tolerated Maria's interest in magic at first, but as the abuse continued and Maria grew to be interested in 'unsuitable' magic that intensified the abuse and lead to a cycle. Just an example I'm throwing out - I'm not the best with magic worldbuilding.

Magic being 'real' would probably impact a lot of the metaphors about magic as love, understanding, illusion, etc. though. You'd have to work with that a lot to try to figure out what to do to replace it with in such an AU. In Umineko proper, magic is sort of real but also sort of not, existing in a gray area where you can interpret it either way.

As for using magic in a mystery, Knox doesn't explicitly forbid it. The rules relating to the supernatural are "It is forbidden for supernatural agencies to be employed as a detective technique." and "It is forbidden for unknown drugs or hard to understand scientific devices to be used."

The first relates to the detective, so as long as Battler himself (or Erika) doesn't use magic to suddenly just know things, all is well. As for the second, it doesn't explicitly mention magic, but it mentions similar deus ex machinas. So long as the magic is explained, it should be able to be used as part of a mystery. Van Dine, however, does explicitly forbid supernatural methods of murder/crime. So take that as you will. (Van Dine's rules are very strict compared to Knox.)

It's really about, if you want to make an AU and you think you'll have fun with it, go ahead. I feel like people feel the need to put so much thought into AUs but people can just have AUs, whether they're really meaningful and significant or just fun, which is meaningful and significant in its own way. I have tons of AUs that are just... fun. And that's nice.

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

[followingtheladyofthesacredflame]

Omg!! How did you get into working with different deities? How do you make it work with the Bible and how was God's reaction to it?? Would love to know !!❤️

Hi! <3 Thanks for the ask. Long answer inbound so be warned lol.

So I grew up Catholic, baptized, raised, and confirmed. When I was a kid, I always preferred praying alone or in nature - I had a little prayer corner (basically an altar) in my closet and I loved chatting with God by the rosebushes we had. I never liked the idea that your relationship to God, Mary, Jesus, the saints, etc., had to be dictated by the strict rules of the modern church, so I fell out of regular practice but still prayed in my own ways.

I have also always had a fascination with the natural world, the supernatural, and the occult, and done things I couldn't really explain with just Catholicism. I collected crystals even though I didn't really believe they did anything special. I collect figurines of dragons and pretty daggers and things, especially those with Celtic knot designs (for heritage reasons). I had a set of tarot cards and runes that I loved using even though I told myself I was just doing it for fun - and yet every time I used them, I was encouraged and given accurate advice. Beyond this, I've also always been creative. I find myself drawn to creating stories about fire, power, deep space, and the meaning of humanity.

About a year ago, I had an extremely strong desire to use my tarot cards. I wasn't entirely sure why, but it felt necessary in the same way that prayer felt necessary. When I did finally get out my deck, on a whim, I asked if anyone was reaching out. I'd been seeing more and more "witchtok" and similar content on social media, so it was on my mind. I got a definitive "yes," but was also told to figure out who it was on my own.

So I did more research and found Brigid, and it just felt like coming home. It was such a strangely calming and welcoming feeling, like sinking into a warm bath. Things about me and my life suddenly made way more sense and I felt instantly more connected to my faith than I ever had before. She's the patron of poets, a fire goddess, and a goddess of healing and motherhood, among other things, all of which resonated with me in terms of my history, my values, and my interests.

Obviously, this caused a bit of a crisis, as I still believed in God and was worried about the idea of being seen as sinful for practicing witchcraft, so I went to the Big Man about it directly. I went to my church and spent some time praying alone in a quiet room and again, I had that warm, welcoming feeling. It felt right. When I finally dipped my toes in and made my altar, I was so comfortable and happy that I kept going without question.

Since then, I've been learning about folk Catholicism and Christian witchcraft, and the more I learn, the better I feel about my faith and the more connected to my world, heritage, and deities I feel. I've grown to have a relationship with other deities and spirits as well. I think of it as simply having a different way of believing - I don't worship any particular deity above any other, I just give them each the respect they deserve and see them as powerful partners and friends.

As for how it all works with the Bible...as controversial of a take as this is, I take most direct phrasing from the Bible with a big pinch of salt. I can't read Hebrew or Greek, so I have to rely on translations, and all translations are bound to be biased to some degree. I also don't fully understand the cultural context of the original text, so it would be impossible for me to pick up on the nuance and wordplay used by the original authors to convey their meaning. I see the Bible as a resource, but not a textbook if that makes sense.

All of that being said, I don't believe the passages referencing the banning of witchcraft are talking about all magic but instead specific magical practices of the time that were either dangerous or immoral. I also recognize the commandment "You shall have no other gods before Me" as saying that the Abrahamic God prefers to be worshipped as the creator and powerful being that He is, not as just another deity in a pantheon. This to me doesn't read as "there are no other gods and you're not allowed to believe in them anyway" so much as "respect Me for my place as the creator of all things, then respect the other gods as champions of their domains."

#witchcraft #celtic witch #brigid devotee #witchblr #celtic paganism #christian witch

[antiquery]

re-listening to the magnus archives for the nth time and man the quality drop-off after the episode where gerard kaey just Explains the Lore to jon is astonishing. I'd thought the decline was mostly confined to latter season 4 and 5, but nope! it's there halfway through the series!

I think a number of things about the show's premise are fundamentally unworkable, but one that really stands out to me now is the extent to which it wants to be a drama when it has done very little to establish, specifically, what its characters are like around each other. I have a pretty good idea of who Jon is, and a reasonably solid sense of who the rest of the cast is, but I don't really understand how any of them fit together. even Jon and Martin, ostensibly the central relationship of the show...I don't really understand what that is! what's the shape of their dynamic? what do they see in each other? what do they like and dislike? why are they together (even in a platonic sense)!

(sidenote: honestly I feel like the most well-developed relationship in the whole thing is Jon and Elias, because there is a very clear rationale for what's going on there: Elias is grooming Jon and has some emotional investment besides that because he thinks of Jon as his property; Jon at first isn't aware of this and then struggles with wanting to leave but also wanting to stick around because he's curious, and because on some level he wants Elias's approval. yep, check the box, that's A Relationship)

now this lack of character stuff isn't so much a problem in the early series when it's primarily about the shortform statements— a frame narrative, and a handful of constant characters to populate it, are handy for all kinds of reasons! there's a much better version of this series that casts Jon as a kind of occult Hercule Poirot, and afaict that was originally what the series was supposed to be. but once the show makes its ill-fated pivot towards drama, it has to be about the characters because that's all a drama is ever about, and the gaps become blindingly obvious especially because of the decision to make the first part of season 4 about Things Falling Apart

and like, listen, if you have a group of characters who are friends, and you're a drama, you kind of always want to do this, right? the Platonic ideal of this kind of thing is the lead up to the Buffy season 4 finale, where Spike tries to get everyone at loggerheads, and then all of season 6. but the reason that works on Buffy is that the viewer has a very clear idea of what all of these relationships are, and why they exist. take Xander and Buffy: Buffy loves Xander because he's a goof and he's sweet and he does the right thing when it counts, even though he's not special or strong; she needs someone like that, who knows and sees everything she is and yet still loves her from the ground, and it was never going to be Willow because Willow is also, in her way, part of the supernatural world. where's the wedge? Xander feels inadequate and like he has nothing to offer Buffy! boom, done, conflict generated.

but like...what is the conflict between Martin and Jon in early season 4? Martin used to be super involved and now he's not and there's kind of nothing to be done about it? Basira just randomly despises Jon because...she lost her partner, but never expresses it in a way that reads as anything other than petty sniping, which isn't really in line with the rough sketch of her character we've gotten so far? it really feels like the writers' room (well, one guy in this case) decided that there would be A Conflict at the beginning of season 4 between the characters, but never stopped to realize that with the board state as it was, there wasn't really a way to do that that made any sense, because we have no idea who these people are when they're together.

it's such a shame because the early season horror shorts really are so strong. I know the author cites MR James as his inspiration, and that shines through in a way that I'd confidently call an improvement on James' work! really well-crafted, minimalist horror with a laser focus on the story's core idea, the Thing that makes this tale scary— there's a wonderful intention to it that makes them a joy to listen to. I just wish it'd kept going like that...

#the magnus archives #tma #very curious about people's thoughts on this &obv I welcome disagreement #afaict most of the people who fell off the wagon did so around the start of 5 #so I'm curious if anyone else thinks the dropoff came earlier #and if so for what reasons #notebook #bookshelf blogging

[childlikegoblinqueen]

Writing Notes: Chapter 51 -- And Real World Stuff in a TOH Fic.

I'm getting to a part of the story where a bunch of the breadcrumbs I've been laying out are coming together into bread pudding. Mmmmmmm

For those who might have read Stranger Tides, or if you are only reading Sweet Child (Which is FINE! ST is a lot more niche!) You might have noticed that I like to add real world politics stuff into my fics.

I don't think this is too much of a stretch, especially since the villain of TOH was an actual 400 year old Puritan religious fanatic. A lot of references to real life trauma and issues were woven into canon, and frankly, I imagine the political scene on the Boiling Isles post the cult of Belos would be complicated at best.

More below!

In Stranger Tides, aside from the supernatural Stranger Things inspired threat, there was a moral panic plot involving a group of parents who branded themselves as GOO (Gravesfield Opposed to the Occult). This is, for hard core Buffy fans, an obvious nod to MOO (Mother's Opposed to the Occult) from the episode "Gingerbread".

But GOO was inspired for me by groups like M*m's F*r Lib*rty, who claim to be working for the good of children, but instead promote book banning and try to take over school/library boards to push their beliefs that hurt Queer kids, POC, and generally target marginalized communities.

So, in Sweet Child O' Mine, The Keepers of the Coven System is my stand in for very specific groups that have been intimidating folks and recruiting members by playing on the fears of privileged suburbanites. I'm sure you can figure out who I am referring to. If you need a hint, several of these real world folks were just found guilty of seditious conspiracy.

Since the themes of Sweet Child deal a lot with Hunter wanting to raise his child in a place that is kinder than the world he grew up in, this is particularly triggering, especially, since after all this time, he still having feelings of guilt regarding his hand in causing pain.

Vee wants him to stay in the Human Realm, where she thinks it is safer. On the Boiling Isles, he's a reluctant public figure. In Gravesfield he's just another New England White Boy.

I wanted to add another semi canon character into this mix, so while we found out that Langwidere, Boscha's wife is the granddaughter of Osran, Gawain is Gavin's father. He also struck me as the type of witch the Blight's would have done business with, post Alador getting a clue.

And considering how Glandus was portrayed in TOH and how Gavin seemed to regard his father, I hope I did an okay job writing him!

Also, for those wondering, the last chapter ended with something exploding on the street outside of Ed and Josh's shop. Right outside of where Hunter, Willow, and Gus had been.

#toh fanfic #hunter noceda #willow x hunter #toh hunter #a03 fanfic #willow park #huntlow #fanfiction #the owl house #writing notes #ao3 writer #ao3 fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #ao3 author #gus porter #toh gavin #spotify #willow toh #hunter toh #toh vee #fan fiction analysis #fan fiction #fic writing #archive of our own #toh alador #edric and emira #Spotify

[oddnub-eye]

🖊 Auge ♥ -- And pick a random OC! I only really know Auge?? Please tell me more!

I'm going to interpret this as an opportunity to talk about two different characters in one ask so HERE WE GO!

If I really wanted to commit to the bit with Auge, he'd have been part of a set of four. Auge is (loosely) based on the Yu-Gi-Oh Card Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon (just like most of my online handles): his name translates to Eye Pendulum Dragon, he's got the heterochromia, his primary magecraft being fireballs relating to Odd-Eyes attack being referred to as "Spiral Flame Strike" (and no, actually, the "Spiral" part of that is not why Auge has Kamina glasses its just a happy coincidence).

Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon was part of a set of Dragons referred to as either "The Dimension Dragons" or "The Four Heavenly Dragons" alongside Dark Rebellion XYZ Dragon, Clear Wing Synchro Dragon, and Starving Venom Fusion Dragon

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sakuhime Nitta is the primary POV character and one of the three main characters of my personal setting The Dead and The Divine (formerly known as Demigods vs Vampires). In spite of this, Sakuhime is neither dead nor divine, and was in fact a normal teenage girl who's only friend was a bedridden Victorian ingenue but in modern day Japan (named Akemi Unmei). She had an intense obsession with the occult that evolved into a general interest into folklore and mythology and as such can talk your ear off about Jove (not Zeus, specifically Jupiter/Jove and how he differs from his Greek counterpart) for about 5 hours.

This daily life of being lonely and studying literally everything but what she was told to study in class would come crashing to a halt when she was ambushed by vampires after they used the leader of a Group Project she was working on to lure her into a trap, wherein she discovered that she was a wizard/sorcerer/mage (I change the term I use for the setting like every other day) and could do magic.

The magic did absolutely nothing to help her because she was a n00b and very few things can stand up to a Vampire in The Dead and The Divine and a newbie magic-user is not one of them. Luckily, she was saved by the kid who sits next to her in class - a lad named Tsukitaro (he is a gamer) - turned up to save her, revealing himself to be the Demigod son of Tsukiyomi. Now deeply involved in the supernatural, Sakuhime has to fight like hell to learn magic as fast as she can and get as good as possible as the situation escalates very quickly from there, with the most powerful vampire in the world eventually taking a personal interest in the young mage/wizard/sorcerer.

Sakuhime's primary magic is conjuration/summoning, with her first familiar being based on a Nekomata.

#answered asks

[praemoniitus]

Zed Finch’S RP PLOTTING CHEAT-SHEET

Want new-and-exciting plots for your character? Long to reach out to more of your followers, but don’t know where to start? Fear not! Fill out this form and give your RP partners both present and future all the of juicy jumping off points they need to help you get your characters acquainted. Be sure to tag the players whose characters YOU want more cues to interact with, and repost, don’t reblog! Feel free to add or remove sections as you see fit. Template here.

Mun name: Monroe OOC Contact: honestly the best way is inbox, or tumblr i.m. Since I don't have a discord

Who the heck is my muse anyway:

in the simplest way, Zed (born name Rachel Laura Finch), after one too many encounters with The Entities or things associated with them. Learned too much and was "banished" to a world that is doomed to end. A human who learned "secrets" the Kryptonite of these powerful things, and instead of killing her. One, or it sent her to another dimension

Points of interest:

Due to the encounters she had, she devolved P.T.S.D., took up smoking cigarettes. Also does not do well underground ,or small enclosed spaces. At least small spaces she cant get out if. Wears 90s grudge style. Her eyes are gray unlike the FC's natural eye color. Not big on strangers either. Which is a battle when your work in a shop. She prefers people she knows to strangers

What they’ve been up to recently:

Zed's been trying to stay out of the spotlight. Trying not to get noticed by any powerful supernatural being. This cuts into any dreams ,or future plans In her free time she is learning how to crochet. And learn ancient Greek. And she is still reading about the supernatural and paranormal.

Where to find them:

At The Bell , books, and occult shop where she works, the nearby coffee shop on a corner called Coffee Corner, not aware winning coffee ,but it sure is good. And also can be found in the apartment above the shop. w

Current plans:

Survive ,that its in its simplicity. She has no desire to return to her "home" dimension. The horrors' in her new one are easier to handle. At least in her mind. Basically the phase of "rebuilding" her life in what ever dimension she was "banished" to

Desired interactions:

Found family , she is not interested in having enemies ,though she understands that's unavoidable. But rebuilding her life. Though throwing her into supernatural situations where she has to come face to face with things that either want to harm her, or to wish her good will.

Offered interactions:

• looking for supernatural/paranormal items for the shop, or prevent an innocent person from being harmed by it • am entities (or avatar) cross her path and something meaner that saves Zed from it • slice of life, in a supernatural world

Current open post/s:

open starters || starter calls || interest checker

Anything else?:

I primarily have her in the 90s to early 2000s era, check verses for more specifics

Tagging: @hiraethpariah , @dreameasel (tagged by: @obscurushydrae)

#⭐ dash games

[tipsycad147]

5 Ways to Forge Communion with Crows

MARCH 18, 2024 BY RICK DE YAMPERT

Some 17,000 years ago, a human ventured deep inside Lascaux Cave in what is modern-day France, and painted a therianthrope (a human-animal hybrid) that some observers believe is a crow-headed shaman. It's the earliest evidence we have of how long crows and their cousins the ravens, part of the family of birds known as corvids, have enchanted humankind.

Crows and ravens are the most intelligent animals that most people will ever encounter, given that they are far more ubiquitous and "accessible" worldwide than those very smart apes and dolphins, and far more intelligent than dogs or cats. Renowned wildlife biologist John Marzluff calls corvids, "feathered apes." And, crows and ravens are the most magical animals that most people will have a chance of encountering.

As evidenced in myths, legends, and even historical accounts, the uncanny abilities and behaviors of crows and ravens have led cultures around the world to regard the birds as supernatural creatures, as emissaries from the gods, goddesses, and Other Realms. Tales from the ancient Norse, Celts, Native Americans, and other cultures have revealed how those peoples forged mystical connections to corvids, while contemporary accounts from individuals tell of synchronicities, eerie encounters, and even magical manifestations involving the birds.

At the most basic level, just intently observing crows and ravens will remind one—whether you're a birder, amateur naturalist, or just taking a break in a park—that nature, the earth, the universe are more fascinating and mysterious than we realize.

For myself and others on a Pagan spiritual path, crows are sacred creatures: they are the living embodiment of an aspect of Gaia the great Earth Goddess.

There's more.

Corvids can offer us a way, in conjunction with various shamanic techniques, to wake us out of what British metaphysical-occult investigator Colin Wilson called the "robot mind" of mundane consciousness, and stop the chattering of what the Buddhists call the "monkey mind." By attuning ourselves to the extraordinary, even supernatural abilities of corvids, we can better alter our consciousness so that we can open our Third Eye and access the divine realms.

All this while knowing that Gaia the Earth Goddess, in her joy and whimsy, has placed these creatures right there in our backyards.

Here are five ways—some practical, some magical—to forge communion with crows. (For a deeper dive, see my book, Crows and Ravens: Mystery, Myth, and Magic of Sacred Corvids.)

As noted by both science and anecdotal evidence, crows are more "human gregarious" (my term) than their somewhat shyer cousins the ravens. Given that and the fact that ravens are not found in Florida, where I live, the followings tips are drawn from my experiences with crows. Still, I suspect that these practices apply equally to both corvids.

1. To quote the musical Oliver!: Food, Glorious Food! Ok, duh. Of course if you feed them, they will come. However, crows offer a special case. A scientifically controlled experiment by John Marzluff demonstrated that crows remember specific human faces, especially the face of a human who has shown them a kindness, or the face of a human they perceive as being aggressive or harmful toward their kind.

It gets freakier: Crows can communicate to other crows the nature of a particular human, even if those other crows did not witness the initial behavior that caused a crow to mark said human.

So, whenever you feed crows, be sure to tilt your head toward wherever they may be, to give them the best chance to see your face and recognize you as their benefactor. I also speak a mantra out loud each and every I time I feed them. My mantra is, "Crackers for crows! Crackers for crows!" The goal is to give the crows a consistent audio as well as visual touchstone.

As for food, I use dried corn for my rituals or magical workings involving crows, but for everyday feedings (my clan of five to nine crows visit me daily in the backyard of my Florida home) I use tortilla chips, popcorn, saltine crackers, or any brand of those big brown, round crackers. Crows are omnivores: they'll eat just about anything, but keep it simple.

How to attract crows initially and establish a feeding regimen? Years ago I began this way: each and every time I heard crows cawing in my backyard, I would take crackers and place them on the lower branches of the Chinese tallow tree that grows naturally at the edge of the woods behind my home. This became my "Crow Spirit Tree" because the crows loved to perch there whenever they came to visit.

Whenever I approached the Chinese tallow to place crackers on the lower branches, any crows in the tree would flutter to its highest branches, but they would return to snack after I retreated to my back patio.

In the following weeks and months, I allowed the crows to "train" me by taking them crackers each and EVERY time I heard them caw. If they said, "Jump!" I said, "How high?" After a few months I began tossing tortilla chips and popcorn on my lawn. The crows were skittish at first, but after a few weeks they overcame their wariness and began alighting on my backyard to snatch their treats. I also began to notice a crow high in a nearby slash pine, keeping a lookout for red-shouldered hawks or other possible menaces while his clan would feed.

2. Get to know your neighborhood crows— as individuals. But how can that happen, you say, crows all look alike! True enough, and even discerning between male and female crows by sheer, casual observation is very difficult. Males typically are slightly larger than females, but even that is not a reliable indicator. I simply intuit whether a specific crow is male or female, and move on.

However, observe the same crow clan over a period of time and you will see that individual crows' behaviors differ, and can be downright idiosyncratic. (By the way, I'm not a fan of referring to a group of crows with the traditional term "murder," but feel free to do so if you choose.)

It's simple to see why I gave the name Rockette to one of my crow visitors from years ago: whenever she walked, one of her legs had a peculiar high-kick motion that resembled those famous show dancers at New York City's Radio Music Hall. I surmised Rockette's strange gait was the result of some past injury.

Lord Valient the Bold was an alpha crow who was noticeably larger than his fellows, and was the only one brave enough to come with 10 yards of my back patio. Mr. Piggy was the first crow I ever saw who would pick up and pack five or six medallion-sized crackers in his mouth at one time.

Boga and Bacca, a crow couple I named after Hollywood lovers Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, would scoop crackers off my lawn and fly to my home's rooftop to munch on them. (By the way, crow couples mate for life.)

Like more than half of all bird species, crows are passerine, which means they have feet that are adapted for perching. While cardinals, robins, and Carolina wrens dart and flutter through my backyard, crows will perch and stay awhile on the branches of the Chinese tallow, slash pines, and bluejack oaks, thus rewarding human watchers—especially ones with binoculars.

And yes, as you can see, I name my frequent crow visitors.

3. Compile a crow vocabulary list. One of the fun aspects of crow encounters is crow talk! Yes, crow talk is communication. OK, that's true of a broad spectrum of animal vocalizations, but crows have an ample vocabulary beyond their common "caws" and beyond that of other creatures. This brings up one of the best ways to distinguish between crows and ravens: Typically, a crow "caws" and a raven "croaks" or "gronks." (See the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's excellent video, "Caw vs. Croak: Inside the Calls of Crows and Ravens.")

As you encounter crows, note how they converse with other crows nearby. Once you hear a crow call, listen for a reply. Sometimes the distance of their call-and-response is astonishing: a crow will shout a staccato burst of caws, and a not-too-faint reply will echo from several blocks away or far across a nearby field, park, or patch of woods.

Devise your own onomatopoeia for the corvid talk you hear. My own crow dictionary includes, of course, "caw"—the all-purpose, readily recognizable, stereotypical crow word . . . except that it's not. Spend some time with crow kind and you will quickly learn there are different types of "caws." The typical one is a muscular, robust, even jarring burst that is a bit raspy or guttural. But crows also frequently voice a less harsh sound that I call a "soft caw," and a third type that I call a "yip caw," which has a similar tone to a dog's lighthearted "yip."

All these "caws" are vocalized in any number of repeats, different rhythms, and/or degrees of forcefulness, thus creating an astonishing variety of crow communications.

There's more. My crow vocabulary list also includes a guttural, cat-like caterwaul (which I mistook for an actual feline the first time I heard it), the rarely heard but beautiful "dove-murmur," the "hoot-murmur" (which I mistook for an owl the first time I heard that call), the "clicky-clack," and more.

As you begin to notice and catalogue various crow sounds, make note of the surrounding circumstances: time of day, how many crows are present, whether it's before or after you've fed them, the presence of other birds, etc. Soon you may be able to match particular vocalizations with specific conditions.

For example, I've noticed that a robust burst of three "caws" is typically the first crow sound I hear coming from my backyard in the morning. I'm convinced that call means one of two things: either, "Come feed us, Rick!," or perhaps it's a summons for other crows to come join the impending feast.

4. Do a tarot reading with crows. The ancient Norse of the Viking Age (793–1066 CE) created raven banners to prophesy their success in battle. The ancient Irish and ancient Tibetans devised divination systems based upon corvid speech. Here's a way to bring Crow Spirit into your divination practices.

If I'm in the mood to do a tarot card reading, I often will seek an assist from my crow visitors: I will count the number of crows the next time they arrive in my backyard, or alternately I will decide to note the number of "caws" the next time I hear a crow call nearby. Whether the number is one, five, seven, or whatever, that number becomes my "shuffle number." Let's say I heard three caws. After I complete a traditional shuffle of my selected tarot deck (usually Crowley's Thoth or the Morgan-Greer deck), I will count down to the third card in the deck and place that card in the first position of my chosen tarot layout, whether it's the Celtic Cross, a basic three-card spread, or another. Then I will count down to the third card of the remaining deck, and place that card in the second position. Count down three more and so on until all the layout positions are filled. Thus, the crows have provided the final shuffle for my reading.

As with all your tarot readings, keep a detailed journal of the cards revealed in the layout, your immediate interpretations, and any results that manifest, or not, in later days. After doing several "crow tarot" readings, see if you can discern any repeated cards or other synchronicities.

5. Add Crow Spirit to your altar. Several years ago, I was in the backyard of my Florida home and I heard a bustle high in a slash pine, and as I looked in that direction I saw a hefty branch crash onto my lawn and break into several pieces. A nano-second later I heard a crow caw. I looked up and in that very same tree I spied a crow.

No matter whether the crow physically caused the almost-dead branch to fall, I knew immediately that I had a natural talisman—one piece of the branch—to place upon my sacred Pagan altar. (I used another piece to create a Crow Spirit Wand, replete with a quartz crystal, an Apache tear, and crow images created with a woodburning tool, but that is a more involved process that I cover in my book.)

The piece of branch on my altar is a classic example of one of the most basic forms of magic: contagious magic, which holds that things once connected or associated are able to affect one another when separated.

No need to wait for a serendipitous falling branch. Find a tree favored by crows and, after asking the tree for permission, harvest one of the fallen branches, twigs, leaves, or needles that inevitably rest under the tree's canopy.

Even if you have no altar, place the branch or leaf in your home to serve as a palpable daily reminder of Crow Spirit.

[thenightlymirror]

I think a supernatural coincidence is supposed to be helpful specifically in a way that is not falsifiable. So, a mechanical law is testable. It’s just the way the matter and energy and motion of the universe conserves itself. It’s symmetries. It’s reflexive.

A spirit on the other hand, if it’s like a person, might be fickle, and choose to do some things sometimes and not others. Spirits at work. Are spirits reliable? Should we bother?

Who is around to watch when mere coincidence presents itself as intentional? So much of the mechanics of mystery is about the power of forgetting, or especially, mixed attention. Being in the zone, in the middle of some other activity, when the spirits can slip in to the division in your attention. They are unconscious. Which to clarify means, to everyone else it looked like consciousness but you had no idea what was going on. A Freudian slip is subconscious, but the “invisible hand of the market” is unconscious. When you raise your kids like an asshole despite your best intentions because the sum total of your reactions to life make you like your parents despite wanting the opposite, that’s unconscious. Someone else is acting through you when “you” aren’t aware.

So, a lot of haunting are out-sourcings. I couldn’t handle if this was me, so it must be the vibe. I assume the vibe being equivalent to unconscious behavioral frameworks laid out by family, society, language, economics, must be the greater meaning of affect. It wants something. It requires satisfaction. That’s funny that vibe rarely demands action of us. I’m sure that dissociation is the whole of psychoanalysis.

Anyways, what was I getting at? I’m thinking about parapsychology and occult sciences, as a kind of species of the same thing that happened in transcendentalism with religion. With the age of science came this urge to explain parting the Red Sea as a rare but scientifically possible event. Or, if there are ghosts, there’s some way to make it cohere with rational thought and causality. I am much more ready to believe that the universe is simply an absurd dream than that every ghost story is a true and that there’s some yet unknown scientific principle at work.

To me, to presume freely that I know what the world is, the interesting thing is in what our strange experiences say about what constitutes a life. It is passionately false. We have been so utterly tilted into our heads. I’m sure most people see what they said they saw, or, they certainly believe they saw it now. The glitch in the experience gets reinforced by memory and the memory slowly constitutes itself outside of you in other people’s memories. It lives.

And as far as quantum physics goes, I’m sure it’s saying something very strange about what observation is and its role in the universe, but it doesn’t become a simpler way to explain people’s ghost stories. We probably won’t understand how mysterious and terrifying consciousness is as a physical law until we understand our misunderstandings more honestly.

[sims-social-cheats-no-dow1f]

sims social cheats no download PC C67?

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Here's a huge list of Sims 4 cheat codes to give your gameplay a boost. If you're not in the mood for downloading and meticulously. In this list, we'll share the absolute best ones, ranging from the most useful to the silliest, and everything in between. These are the best Sims 4 cheats. In the majority of cases, the cheat code name for a trait is just its in-game display name with no spaces. However, there are some exceptions. Cheat, Cheat Code ; Fills All Your Sim's Needs, Hold down shift and click on your sim and click make happy ; Stops Your Sim's Needs From Decaying. How to Enable Cheats in Sims 4 on PC · While in the game, press Ctrl + Shift + C on your keyboard to display the cheat input box. · Type in. How do I use cheat codes in The Sims 4? Cheating in The Sims is as much a traditional part of the game as building a wall around the pool and watching your Sim slowly drown. Our ultimate guide to The Sims 4 cheats will tell you all about how to enable cheats, and which cheats will give you loads of money to spend, let you build anywhere in the game, or just kill whichever Sims you don't particularly like. No judgement from us. To input The Sims 4 cheats on PC, you first need to open up the cheat console within the game. Exactly how you do this will depend on your hardware:. In order to enable many of the below cheats, you'll first need to enter the following into the console:. Not every cheat code in the game requires this, but many do. In my opinion, it's worth leaving testing cheats turned on in the background if you intend to use cheats at all. It doesn't affect your game in any way, and it's quicker and easier than remembering to enable them every time. Some cheats defy easy characterisation, but are nevertheless some of the most useful in the game, particularly if your Sim finds themself in a tight spot:. Money makes the world go round in The Sims 4, and just like in real life, it often feels like there's never enough of it. Luckily, there are money cheats aplenty to give your Sims a leg-up if you choose to provide them with one:. The expansive and flexible Build Mode is widely considered a highlight of The Sims 4. To really take your building skills to the next level, though, you might like to play around with the following cheats:. Keeping Sims feeling positive makes it easier to improve their skills, career performance, and more. Use the cheats below to set your Sims' moods:. Note: There are literally thousands of moodlet buffs in the game, and it would be impossible to list them all here. Elsewhere in the guide, we include codes for buffs that convey specific special statuses i. Without strong relationships your Sims can't keep their social needs high, advance in many careers, or duh make more Sims together. Here are the cheats to help you skip the small talk:. Life-long aspirations and short-term whims give Sims a sense of purpose and direction in their lives, and fulfilling them grants Satisfaction Points you can spend on bonuses. The cheats below can help speed up the process:. Traits are what give Sims their individual personalities. In The Sims 4 there are hundreds of traits in various categories, but they all have one thing in common: you can equip them on your Sim using the following cheat formula:. In the majority of cases, the cheat code name for a trait is just its in-game display name with no spaces. However, there are some exceptions, so please refer to the tables below for a full list of trait codes in The Sims 4. Note: For Cause of Death traits and others that convey a supernatural creature status on a Sim, see the Occult Cheats section below. Sims will have trouble if their kids don't attend school now and again — though work for adults is, technically, completely optional see Money cheats , above. But it doesn't have to be a matter of hard graft, thanks to the cheats below:. Sims can practice a wide variety of skills to help advance them through their careers, fulfil their aspirations, and generally make day-to-day life easier and more rewarding. You can use the following cheat to set a Sim's proficiency level in any skill:. Sims are designed to age and die, but you can customise their lifespans in the gameplay options menu including turning ageing off altogether. To really exercise power over life and death, however, you can use the following cheats:. For ways to insta-kill your Sims, see the Occult Cheats section below, which details how to equip a Cause of Death trait resulting in instant death and a playable ghost Sim. However, if you want to skip straight to the good part, these cheats will confer supernatural status on the active Sim right away:. You can track the occult talent progress of Vampires from Vampires and Spellcasters from Realm of Magic in their Simology tab. To artificially increase or decrease their respective XP points, use the cheats below:. While the other sections in this guide cover cheat codes that you enter into the command console, there are other cheats in The Sims 4. Just like with buff cheats, there are far too many of these to list comprehensively here — not to mention the fact that some of them don't actually do much for you anyway. So instead, I've put together a list of the most useful ones:. And there you have it! Every single Sims 4 cheat at your fingertips. Whether your intention is to create a paradise for your Sims or a hellish life of suffering and torment again, to each their own , you can now do exactly that. The Sims 4 best expansion packs and other DLC. The Sims 4 base game is going free to play in October. The Sims 4's new patch fixes the incest. The Sims 4 wants and fears. Wild Hearts shows off more of its giant-monster battling technology in new gameplay trailer. Cyberpunk Sandevistan location. FIFA 23's first patch is a "tuning update" aimed at penalties and dribbling. As Microsoft launch a website praising the acquisition as their "vision for gaming". If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Rebecca Jones 2 weeks ago 1. The Sims 4 base game is going free to play in October A Sims-related livestream is lined up for October 18th too. CJ Wheeler 3 weeks ago The Sims 4's new patch fixes the incest As well as some other bugs. Graham Smith 2 months ago The Sims 4 wants and fears The return of the wants and fears system explained. Rebecca Jones 2 months ago. Wild Hearts shows off more of its giant-monster battling technology in new gameplay trailer That's one big pig. CJ Wheeler 2 hours ago. Cyberpunk Sandevistan location Become unstoppable with this Legendary Sandevistan in Cyberpunk Ollie Toms 2 hours ago. FIFA 23's first patch is a "tuning update" aimed at penalties and dribbling Referees are being tweaked too. CJ Wheeler 3 hours ago. We've been talking, and we think that you should wear clothes Total coincidence, but we sell some clothes Buy RPS stuff here. Can only be applied to a cat or dog. Pet ID is required because pets cannot be the active character.

[sims-money-cheat-code-au]

sims money cheat code 100% working 7H8#

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 The Sims 4 money cheats ; rosebud - receive 1, simoleons ; kaching - receive 1, simoleons ; motherlode - receive 50, simoleons ; Money X -. The Sims 4 money cheat code Enter these into the Cheat Console, then press the Enter key: Alternatively, you can enter 'testingcheats true'. The Sims 4 – Build/Buy Mode Cheats. Cheat Code, Result. jects, Combine objects by ignoring placement rules (Move Objects on). The Sims 4: All Money Cheats ; Katching. 1, Simoleons ; Motherlode. 50, Simoleons ; FreeRealEstate On. Makes all lots free to purchase. How to Get Unlimited Money in Sims 4 using Cheats · Rosebud: Gives you household funds · Motherlode: Gives you household funds · Money X. How do I use cheat codes in The Sims 4? Cheating in The Sims is as much a traditional part of the game as building a wall around the pool and watching your Sim slowly drown. Our ultimate guide to The Sims 4 cheats will tell you all about how to enable cheats, and which cheats will give you loads of money to spend, let you build anywhere in the game, or just kill whichever Sims you don't particularly like. No judgement from us. To input The Sims 4 cheats on PC, you first need to open up the cheat console within the game. Exactly how you do this will depend on your hardware:. In order to enable many of the below cheats, you'll first need to enter the following into the console:. Not every cheat code in the game requires this, but many do. In my opinion, it's worth leaving testing cheats turned on in the background if you intend to use cheats at all. It doesn't affect your game in any way, and it's quicker and easier than remembering to enable them every time. Some cheats defy easy characterisation, but are nevertheless some of the most useful in the game, particularly if your Sim finds themself in a tight spot:. Money makes the world go round in The Sims 4, and just like in real life, it often feels like there's never enough of it. Luckily, there are money cheats aplenty to give your Sims a leg-up if you choose to provide them with one:. The expansive and flexible Build Mode is widely considered a highlight of The Sims 4. To really take your building skills to the next level, though, you might like to play around with the following cheats:. Keeping Sims feeling positive makes it easier to improve their skills, career performance, and more. Use the cheats below to set your Sims' moods:. Note: There are literally thousands of moodlet buffs in the game, and it would be impossible to list them all here. Elsewhere in the guide, we include codes for buffs that convey specific special statuses i. Without strong relationships your Sims can't keep their social needs high, advance in many careers, or duh make more Sims together. Here are the cheats to help you skip the small talk:. Life-long aspirations and short-term whims give Sims a sense of purpose and direction in their lives, and fulfilling them grants Satisfaction Points you can spend on bonuses. The cheats below can help speed up the process:. Traits are what give Sims their individual personalities. In The Sims 4 there are hundreds of traits in various categories, but they all have one thing in common: you can equip them on your Sim using the following cheat formula:. In the majority of cases, the cheat code name for a trait is just its in-game display name with no spaces. However, there are some exceptions, so please refer to the tables below for a full list of trait codes in The Sims 4. Note: For Cause of Death traits and others that convey a supernatural creature status on a Sim, see the Occult Cheats section below. Sims will have trouble if their kids don't attend school now and again — though work for adults is, technically, completely optional see Money cheats , above. But it doesn't have to be a matter of hard graft, thanks to the cheats below:. Sims can practice a wide variety of skills to help advance them through their careers, fulfil their aspirations, and generally make day-to-day life easier and more rewarding. You can use the following cheat to set a Sim's proficiency level in any skill:. Sims are designed to age and die, but you can customise their lifespans in the gameplay options menu including turning ageing off altogether. To really exercise power over life and death, however, you can use the following cheats:. For ways to insta-kill your Sims, see the Occult Cheats section below, which details how to equip a Cause of Death trait resulting in instant death and a playable ghost Sim. However, if you want to skip straight to the good part, these cheats will confer supernatural status on the active Sim right away:. You can track the occult talent progress of Vampires from Vampires and Spellcasters from Realm of Magic in their Simology tab. To artificially increase or decrease their respective XP points, use the cheats below:. While the other sections in this guide cover cheat codes that you enter into the command console, there are other cheats in The Sims 4. Just like with buff cheats, there are far too many of these to list comprehensively here — not to mention the fact that some of them don't actually do much for you anyway. So instead, I've put together a list of the most useful ones:. And there you have it! Every single Sims 4 cheat at your fingertips. Whether your intention is to create a paradise for your Sims or a hellish life of suffering and torment again, to each their own , you can now do exactly that. The Sims 4 best expansion packs and other DLC. The Sims 4 base game is going free to play in October. The Sims 4's new patch fixes the incest. The Sims 4 wants and fears. Wild Hearts shows off more of its giant-monster battling technology in new gameplay trailer. Cyberpunk Sandevistan location. FIFA 23's first patch is a "tuning update" aimed at penalties and dribbling. As Microsoft launch a website praising the acquisition as their "vision for gaming". If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Rebecca Jones 2 weeks ago 1. The Sims 4 base game is going free to play in October A Sims-related livestream is lined up for October 18th too. CJ Wheeler 3 weeks ago The Sims 4's new patch fixes the incest As well as some other bugs. Graham Smith 2 months ago The Sims 4 wants and fears The return of the wants and fears system explained. Rebecca Jones 2 months ago. Wild Hearts shows off more of its giant-monster battling technology in new gameplay trailer That's one big pig. CJ Wheeler 2 hours ago. Cyberpunk Sandevistan location Become unstoppable with this Legendary Sandevistan in Cyberpunk Ollie Toms 2 hours ago. FIFA 23's first patch is a "tuning update" aimed at penalties and dribbling Referees are being tweaked too. CJ Wheeler 3 hours ago. We've been talking, and we think that you should wear clothes Total coincidence, but we sell some clothes Buy RPS stuff here. Can only be applied to a cat or dog. Pet ID is required because pets cannot be the active character.