#spoilers for Higurashi btw

[rubberduckyrye]

Struggling to sleep but I've been seeing rumors that Dottore will be playable and get done kind of redemption arc like Childe and Wanderer.

Problem with that.

One: Childe never got a redemption arc. Hes just a very charming character who is a likeable antagonist. But also, as the 11th harbinger, hes still just a cog in the machine. Always has been.

Two: Wanderer's redemption is less about "redeeming" him and more about how this poor fucking guy couldn't catch a break and eventually he snapped, was manipulated and abused and tortured for centuries and is an allegory for abuse victims in general who acted out in horrible ways but are on the path to recovery after finding someone willing to let them have that safe space to do so. I see this less as a redemption arc because even as "Scaramouche", he HAD kind traits associated to him (like according to some lore he was kind to kids and elderly folk) so this story is about rehabilitation and recovery and less about redemption.

Three: While rehabilitation is overall the ideal for criminals rather than harsh punishment and imprisonment, when you have a character like Dottore--who, if Wanderer/Scaramouche is an allegory for an abuse victim in recovery--then Dottore is an allegory of an abuser. And not just any old abuser--a serial abuser. A selfish man who is arrogant and likes to hear himself talk who all lives in danger for his selfish aspiration for experimentation. A man who does not care for children or elderly people, only for himself... you can kind of see where I'm going with this. These are two very fundamentally different kinds of "bad"--Scaramouche was a bad person, yes, but he wasn't what I personally would consider to be "evil". Then you have Dottore who is evil, borderline a predator in behavior and in practice. I don't think he has any right or reason to be doing what he is doing.

As in. I havent seen a whole lot of redemption arcs for these kinds of characters done right. That's a big point of concern.

Another big point of concern is, I'm sure Dottore has his reasons for doing these things, it has yet to be revealed what those reasons are, aside from "Mad scientist wants to do horrible science" and for his own selfish gain.

His motivations don't line up for a redemption arc is what I'm getting at.

I really hope HYV doesn't. Try to redeem Dottore. Like I really hope they don't try. Just make him playable as he is people love a fucked up mad scientist you dont need to make every playable character the Traveler's friend PLEASE for the love of god.

And it's not that I dont have faith in the writing team to tell a good story (well... I dont exactly have full trust in them after the disaster that was the Sumeru Interlude Quest, but that's beside the point) but I have. Literally never seen a character who is a symbol of evil (i.e. the man has no redeeming qualities in personality, no apparent kindness or even willing to change his ways) redeemed in a good, tasteful, and thoughtful way. Like ironically I think the closest I've seen was... Teppei from Higurashi GOU/SOTSU. And that was incredibly muddied by the fact that Satoko herself became that kind of "evil" that wasn't truly redeemed by the end. Even that left a bad taste in my mouth.

So I just hope Dottore, if hes playable... idk. Don't try to redeem him, I don't think it's possible to redeem characters who symbolize the peak of humanity's "evil" so I don't want HYV to try. Like either keep him to be a terrible awful man or give us a fresh new Segment gone rogue who doesn't have anything like that attached to him.

It would be FAR more interesting of an allegory to me if they went for the latter route, actually. Kind of like, a family member of that "irredeemable evil" who now has that tied to them as a sin of the person they are related to but not themselves guilty of. It could be fun to see how HYV would treat such a character, and if done right, it could be a really fun way to explore how people (especially victims) often associate family members of abusers to the abuse they carried out but actually had no part of.

Anyway that's my 3AM rant of the day. I have Insomnia. Can you tell?

[simikae]

MION SONOZAKI IS THE BEST FRIEND I COULD EVER HAVE

[daily-basil]

Hauuu~

[looseinthecatroom]

Jfc this really REALLY is the week of " I want us to be together above all else" "I do too but what I NEED is something different than what you've chosen".

LIKE

(First Higurashi Sotsu, then I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, now Good Omens.)

It has been a hell of a week my good chums. x_x Talk about a TREND.

[uebermacht]

Due to popular demand: I finished Chapter 2 of Higurashi, here are some thoughts:

Apart from all the awful stuff that happened, it gave us a lot of background information about the mysteries and even delivered a suspiciously simplistic solution to some of them, and then... wtf was that ending.

The disrespect of Ooishi coming in, basically telling you that all your possible theories and conjectures are absolute bullshit, and subsequently leaving without elaborating, wth man :')

Also I started the third chapter and the first act already made me cry, I have the creeping feeling that I'm in danger

[sweetmelodie]

do you know. do you know how hard it is 2 be only on gou and dodge all the sotsu and meguri spoilers........... ive already heard of like 4 different fucking events that happen that are HUGE SPOILERS IM SO UPSET!!!!!!!!!!! UGHHHHHHH 💢💢💢💢💢

[imperishable-prayers]

(SO WHATEVER HAPPENED THERE IS REAL AND DID HAPPEN, OKAY)

[do-you-ship-it-polls]

sorry if some of these are not toxic. i dont know them.

propaganda under the cut. there is so much

Junko and Mikan (Danganronpa)

Toxic yuri but it’s actually so toxic it ended the world for a while

Alicent Hightower and Rhaenyra Targaryen (House of the Dragon)

Doomed toxic Yuri with all the hate and yearning. They were childhood friends (whose actresses played them as having romantic feelings for one another) until parental abuse/patriarchy intervened and they became enemies yet still care about each other despite it all. Situationship so bad it caused a civil war. Gays divorcing without even breaking up. Also they have matching scars on their arms that they inflicted indirectly and directly. Basically if the realm allowed gay marriage they would have been an awesome ruling and happy couple. Childhood friends to enemies to friends to reluctant enemies (the love is there but it’s a tragedy - not enough to save them) idk they are driving me insane.

Misty Quigley and Natalie Scatorccio (Yellowjackets)

ACTUAL toxic yuri

Taco and Microphone (Inanimate Insanity)

Listen, I just want to see the controversy. There is a whole blog dedicated to tacomic discourse. I want everyone to bark and snarl and bite. I’m an avid tacomic shipper btw, I ❤️ toxic yuri

Jasper and Lapis Lazuli (Steven universe)

It’s all “toxic yuri <333” until the yuri is toxic /j

Rika Furude and Satoko Hojo (Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni)

They are baby married and living together (with no adults???) in the main Higurashi story but Gou focuses on their relationship and how focused on Rika Satoko is (spoilers: she is time looping and killing them both to do so and stay together)

TL:DR Codependent Doomed Toxic Yuri. Long version: They are extremely codependent childhood friends who literally lived together since they were preteens because they are both orphans. Both would rather kill themselves then live in a world where they aren't by each other's side. (Spoilers) In Higurashi Gou/Sotsu, they attend a prestigious catholic all-girld school together and become more distant towards each other. Timeloop shannigans occur where Satoko keeps trying to convince Rika to not go to said school- but every loop ends with Rika still wanting to go and Satoko killing herself to reset the loop. All of this eventually makes Satoko (who has horrible abandonment issues) trap Rika in timeloop so they can relive their childhood forever even if gruesome murders occur in every loop. There's even a gut pulling scene- they are literally the ship of all time.

[pochapal]

Just FYI there's some points later in EP1 (& onwards) which are more sensical/meaningful if you've read Higurashi, you should probably decide ahead of time what your spoiler policy is re: people explaining these parts.

(Loving your playthrough so far btw)

from what i've heard a lot of the higurashi similarities/overlaps have a lot to do with story themes and narrative mechanics. my current understanding is that higurashi and umineko use the same storybuilding "systems" to create their own narratives - the best comparison i can think of is that this is very similar to how homestuck and problem sleuth share the same mspa dna where knowing one helps with the other but isn't essential.

given that i think the best spoiler policy is to let me sit with and figure out things on my own first. a lot of people came into umineko after having read higurashi first so i want to keep providing the perspective of someone who is only familiar with one of the two stories for the liveblog. eventually if there are like. themes/concepts or whatever that are callbacks or references to higurashi i don't mind having them discussed after the fact (ie say there's a phrase or idea or something that originated in higurashi and is being redeployed in umineko then i don't mind that being raised up to me, but it it's something that would straight up spoil a plot detail of higurashi or potentially give me more insight into umineko than i should have at this point then maybe hold fire).

in terms of when to discuss appropriate stuff, the long-term plan is to do a big final end of episode wrapup longpost where i really sit with and try to piece together/understand each episode as much as i can before starting the next one. around then would probably be a good time to share any higurashi intertextual references with me!

(i'm glad you're enjoying my readthrough!)

[nabateaprodigy]

i would love to read about your umineko experience! That's always interesting to read thoughts of a person who experience umineko first time. Take care.

Of course, I'd be happy to post about my experience for Umineko so if you have any specific you want to hear my thoughts on June send in an ask! (Just keep in mind to keep the question limited to the first two episodes!)

For this post though I suppose I can talk about how I got interested in Umineko and then started playing it myself. I'm sure like a lot of other people they were probably familiar with Higurashi: When They Cry. While I never watched the anime or read the visual novel for it I was at least aware of the series.

I knew Higurashi from the anime it had in the early 2000s. I didn't know the anime was based on the visual novel of Higurashi. (I've also heard the anime was pretty accurate to the visual novel.) I did know because of its reputation for being so violent.

But besides that, I didn't get into it myself I'm not sure why. But I dunno maybe I just wasn't interested in it? Because I knew of it anime first I probably just put it on my watch list but never got around to it. (This was all years ago btw so I've known about Higurashi for a while now.)

But around this year around Spring, I did end up finding out about Umineko by this video!

It just kept on appearing in my YouTube recommendations and then after that more Umineko OSTs started showing up in my YouTube Recommend. Those are The Girls Witch Hunt, Fake Red Shoes, Liberated Liberator, System 0, and Worldend Dominator.

So through these videos, I ended up finding that they were all from Umineko! Not only Umineko but Umineko: When They Cry so I found it was from the same series. From mostly the Featherine song I ended up getting interested in her as a character. So she was one of the reasons I wanted to play Umineko as she's the reason I got into it.

While I knew little to know nothing about her she seemed cool and I wanted to know more about her. (Unfortunately, I did get spoiled about her but not about everything. And nothing for the rest of the visual novel so I'm still spoiler-free free thankfully.)

So after making a post on Reddit, I decided I'd end up playing Umineko first then Higurashi after. Thankfully you don't need to play Higurashi before Umineko so I was fine with jumping right into Umineko.

My laptop was kinda like dying...so I waited until I got a new one before I'd start playing Umineko. Then I went through learning about The Umineko Project mod and everything about that and how to download it. So that's how I'm experiencing Umineko through that mod and I'm glad I did cuz it's amazing!

But yeah that's all I have to say! Cuz after that I got into playing or well I guess reading but you know the same thing really. So that's what led up to me playing and getting interested in it!

[livecharliereaction]

longer ramble (post tsumihoroboshi part 5)

enough higuing today OK: im rly liking the different protags btw meakashi shion pov and now the rena bits it works VERY WELL! But it also rly makes sense that the first 3 had to be keiichi because to understand renas/shions/rly anyone elses thoughts you have to understand some things about hinamizawa itself so making us play from the pov of a guy who just got here? its kinda the only option. I think those last tips r from the "evil rika" by the way so like demon allegations never stop with her + sonozakis. which of course makes SENSE three families n all that. i think satokos outbursts seem sort of normal for a traumatized child and as i said before; rena can do ANYTHING and ill forever just be able to brush it off with a "ohh shes a weird girl i guess :P" and now that she killed 2 people again i am not changing this statement in the slightest. She can just do that. Let her do whatever the hell she wants ETC. But clearly not a demon from three families with how she describes it all.

In shion pov she did actually call this "evil rika" a demon too so calling her that suffices for now. They do keep saying that the elderly think of rika as a reincarnation of oyashiro. i mean i dont think id be too off the mark to just call that "evil rika" oyashiro but i think its a term made up by the villagers instead of her REAL name so im just gonna call her "evil rika" until they provide me a better way to call her.

I also think that she will be the way this ties into umineko. I know a few facts... 1. theres a character with the same voice casting i dont remembr her name but u know the one who kinda looks like her anyways 2. the playing order should be higurashi first if at all and then umineko because theres characters who will refer to something that happened in higurashi/something youll understand if you have played higurashi... But like even aside from this kinda meta information i know theres a girl who looks like rika a lil too much. OH IDEA? Its just another oyashiro reincarnation 8 generations before or 8 generations after higurashi. Ok that might be jumping to conclusions a little but just something to state so itll be funny to look back at either if that happens OR its actually super false as hell

...as a matter of fact I used to think the other umineko character looked a LOT like satoko but i saw her on the tl the other day i think n i dont think so anymore. Color palettes more similar to miyo takano if i HAD to choose n that seems like a stretch too. OK but i need to mute the wtc tags though because were in peak spoiler territory i feel... Ok.

Also last thing: that time of rena stating she wants to go back in time immediately cut to all of the guys having a nice time without a single mention of the people rena killed (ofc - keiichi pov) but in a way RIGHT NOW? its kinda out in the open if that DID happen until we get rena pov again which i find a little fun.

Oh but one thing does still bother me to no end... Renas mentions of seeing oyashiro before makes literally no sense with the information we have so far. BUT ONCE AGAIN. renas just kinda weird. Maybe thats a conclusion she made because well shes a little weird and also mentioned to be like actually mentally ill. Man how did they write a character like that where shes my absolute #1 favorite no shot but then i trust literally nothing she says??? So funny. Love her

stopping for today though i mean i want to continue but we have to have SOME self discipline left so it all doesnt end in like a week:P ok bye

[crossover-enthusiast]

Yeah idjdmsms

BTW since you seemed to like Rena, here's a compilation of her that I think is fairly spoiler free krjdmdm

https://youtu.be/ZW5yPs8Ri0I?si=hgV8H6agpWyAIP-x

But yeah

I think during the first timeline(In the Higurashi AU, Kevin is in the place of Keiichi btw, just telling ya so you have more context as to what happens in the first timeline for ACTUAL Higurashi), Keiichi would be really paranoid due to everything that was happening. But whenever the assault happened, Akira would just suddenly show up while he was walking down a path one day—visibly panicked and literally sobbing. Keiichi, being.. well, himself—would loudly ask what was wrong while rushing over. Only for Akira to basically collapse and just start repeating that he felt unclean over and over.

Maybe the last people Akira saw before the assault happened were Rena and Mion, so he'd utter that while panicking. But Keiichi, paranoid, would mistake it for them both having done something so bad that they made him get sent into a panic like this.

Oh my god she's adorable I love her

Also love how the anime kinda gives everyone a little :3 mouth sometimes

Anyways! Oooo yeah -- I imagine in his paranoid state he'd demand to know what Rena and Mion did to Akira, but they'd have no idea what he was talking about

[100cat]

Current thoughts on Higurashi: When They Cry Ch. 3, Tatarigoroshi

(No spoilers plz, but also . Spoilers from me here tho HKGJD)

(I have just reached the end of chapter 6 btw-)

So I hate Coach, he’s weird 😭 I know the point is supposed to be that he’s ~silly~ and ~quirky~ but it doesn’t make me feel less uncomfortable GKGKG I mean like yeah he’s nice. But he’s also 🤨 to me. Jail 👏

This whole Chapter just feels more sus than the others, but also it has so many more wholesome moments as well 😭

Ok with that out of the way, onto things I’m liking so far!

Once again, wholesome moments. Amazing. I’ve always loved Keiichi and Satoko’s dynamic, and it’s really nice to see them get along so well here.

As always, the show-not-tell of the group’s strengths and love for one another showing here. That’s something I really admire about the writing- each character is so multidimensional that trying to describe them with one word feels so wrong. And they all care about each other so much!

But my favorite thing right now is how heartbreaking the current situation is. If you or anyone you’ve cared about has dealt with child abuse, then you really get how the characters are feeling :c it really hits home for me, more than the other chapters (not that they had to be relatable to be as impactful as they were-)

Once again the overall writing is incredible, and I am once again grateful that it was written in first person point of view. You can really feel Keiichi’s confusion and frustration as he argues with Mion over how to get Satoko out of the abusive household. (While the laws may be different here in America, I do feel like I understand the complexities of the law when dealing with abuse better now. ) Like… he’s just a kid. A teenager. He wants so badly to help his dear friend, but he’s naive and optimistic. There’s nothing anyone can do, really…

Oh man, and the scene where Coach and Keiichi hear Satoko’s uncle being awful to her, and both of them knowing there’s nothing they can do?! The “wait and see” approach that Keiichi hated the social workers doing- i looove how that phrase and idea keeps popping up, it’s heart wrenching and thematically impactful 😭

Just remembered they’re gonna have to face demons or something later oh no- we haven’t even gotten to the Watanagashi festival yet o.o”

And just knowing that the creator worked as a social worker once… (from what I’ve heard) …wow. This stuff is heartbreaking!

Also ACAB lol no one likes the cops. That’s another theme of these games I like. But are we getting some timeline convergence/ZE morphogenetic field stuff with Keiichi seeing Ooishi and hating him on sight..? Exciting!

[hesbianhojo]

Guilty

So Satoko only fully “loops” once in my AU before coming out to Rika and avoiding the rest of SotsuGou, however this means the chandelier scene did happen and given that he starts dating Rika by this point the guilt she feels starts becoming overwhelming and constant. This manifests in a new version of his witch self taunting him so like pain :)

[nbmahoushoujo]

...anyone else getting lambdabern vibes?

[thatgirlinskullz]

seeing the shitty censorship in Higurashi Sotsu is pissing me off so fkin much i can't even put it into words.. and i can't for the life of me find the uncensored version anywhere so i guess i'm just gonna have to suffer through the black circles and half-blank screens for 2 more episodes.. uugghh

and i don't understand why they're doing this now, when Gou didn't have anything censored - or at least not where i watched it. and i'm watching Sotsu in the same place so i just don't understand... uuggghhh

anyway 2 more episodes to go (allegedly).. fkin hyped for the ending tbh. can't wait! (even with the shitty censorship)...