#there is stuff you can interpret about his character if you include these kind of things I mean maybe I -overdo it- but there's stuff there

[hunter-sylvester]

Hunter's Drawings

I wish I had a better screenshot of the ones hanging on the wall in the last picture but they really don't get shown very well.

[misc-obeyme]

It’s me I’m back with Lesson 34 spoilers below. (including the hard lesson)

I always try to write these posts shortly after finishing the lesson so that it’s like… my immediate and unfiltered thoughts lol. Sometimes I change my mind about stuff after I see other people’s interpretations of things. So if you were wondering why I’m taking the time to write this at 2 am, that’s why. I totally forgot about the lesson during the day due to the whole Thanksgiving thing.

ANYWAY.

I feel like we got SO MUCH BARB in this lesson?? He was barely in it. But we had other characters talking about him and that honestly makes me happy, too. Probably because I like when they give us some perspective into his character.

BUT FIRST.

Belphie. We were actually playing the role of Lilith in his little Celestial Realm dream sequence, right? And then at the end it’s all but we’re not siblings.

Listen. I just think that Belphie has a lot of unresolved trauma surrounding Lilith and I really don’t feel like having MC play hide-and-seek with him in a dream is going to be enough to help him move past it. Enough to make him want to help MC? Maybe. But I dunno.

However, I also think I probably shouldn’t expect anything more intense than that from an otome game. They were just trying to give us SOMETHING to explain why he was cool with making a pact.

WHICH WE FINALLY DID. With Beel, Belphie, AND Levi. I get Beel & Belphie doing theirs at the same time, but I’m still a little baffled about why Levi waited so long. There probably isn’t a reason, but who knows maybe they’ll surprise us with something lol.

Ah. Lucifer.

This was my favorite part:

I love Mammon, he always just says exactly what he’s thinking (unless it’s how much he loves MC lol).

But we all knew it wasn’t going to be that easy, right? We knew Lucifer would be last. We knew that Lucifer would be the most difficult one to make a pact with. Remember what happened with him last time? Of course he doesn’t want to make a pact with us now. We’re likely going to be going through some kind of long drawn out drama that will eventually lead to Lucifer giving in and making a pact with us.

However, I found both Solomon’s and Diavolo’s reactions to this absolutely hilarious:

Can the two of you take this seriously, please?? I know you both find Lucifer highly entertaining and yeah, I'm usually laughing at him most of the time, too, but I need that pact to get back to where I'm from, thanks.

But we’re only on Lesson 34. So I think we still have plenty of time to make a pact with Lucifer, learn the truth about Nightbringer, and return to our timeline (or have the timelines merge or whatever nonsense they’re gonna do).

I’m still hoping for all that to get resolved by the end of this season lol.

Now, I found this exchange from Belphie’s Celestial Realm shenanigans especially interesting:

Assuming this is accurate to what actually happened when Lucifer was still an angel, this means that the angels knew Barbatos. They know him by name, they clearly think he’s a big deal, and they’re surprised that he’s agreed to be Diavolo’s butler.

I was always under the impression that the demons and the angels didn’t really know much about each other. But now I’m wondering if maybe Barbatos had something to do with the end of the war that happened before the Celestial War. The one that was between the Celestial Realm and the Devildom. I have no reason for thinking this other than the fact that as angels, Lucifer & Simeon clearly know him. And what else would they know him from? Though I suppose anything could have happened lol.

And then there was all of this:

What does it MEAN?! (Obviously I chose the second option for MC's dialogue, which increased Barb's intimacy.)

Barbatos my true love. Why did you give MC a real piece of paper from your grimoire? He’s always been cautious, always keeping MC at arm’s length, and now all of a sudden it’s here’s a piece of my grimoire? There is NO WAY he doesn’t have all of the build up from the OG. I can’t believe that he would actually give MC a piece of his grimoire if he had only just met them at the beginning of Nightbringer. So I’m tacking this on as additional evidence that Barb knows all.

Also can we just appreciate Lucifer in 32-A? All his brothers are completely out of it and he single-handedly motivates every one of them back into action.

It sure worked, huh? Do you think the credit card is in the freezer yet?

You guys. THE HARD LESSON.

It was everything. I LOVE the Little Ds. I LOVE them hanging out with Diavolo. I LOVE that Barbatos couldn’t accompany MC because Diavolo requested some fancy human world dish. This entire hard lesson was *chef’s kiss*

GOD I love Barb's knowing look and Dia's little frown. I love them so much it's almost painful lol.

Okay that’s all I’ve got to say about this lesson. In general, I enjoyed it. They coulda played up Belphie’s yandere tendencies a bit more. I felt like his change of heart was rather rushed, but they really can’t put him through the therapy he needs. I don’t think the lessons are long enough for that.

[kinopio-writes]

Waltz in from the depths

May I request some headcanons for sir pentious x a reader who is very tall n strong who does gardening and landscaping around the hotel ? The reader kind of gives off old dad vibes personality wise! Unsure how descriptive you want asks so I hope this is okay!!

-Definitely NOT the silly corner 🐹

A/N: The description is perfectly fine! Shoutout to @the-s1lly-corner—who definitely did NOT send in this request—for reblogging my stuff! Anyway, congrats Sir Pentious! You’re the first character I’ve written on this blog! Just like how you’re the first character to be redeemed. Btw, this turned out to be neither platonic nor romantic. Interpret it however you like! Sorry if it sucks, lol. Trying to get used to writing for other people.

Warnings: None

———

Sir Pentious x Tall&Strong Gardener!Reader w/ old dad vibes

Since you said the reader does gardening and landscaping around the hotel, I’m going to make them a staff member. Specifically one that was there pre-Sir Pentious’s arrival

• being intimidated was an understatement

• he definitely (cartoonishly) gulped upon seeing your shadow overcast his entire body—hat included!

• Sir Pentious would do his best to avoid you after the initial encounter

• he was your number one suspect as to who was plotting to kill him

• if the fact that you were holding a scythe every time he saw you had anything to say! (reminder; you’re a gardener)

• every time he saw you, his hood would flare in alarm and he would slither away immediately

• he’d only look at you from a distance

• by that I mean that he would spy on you with binoculars while you harmlessly do your thing

• he would be in his room, creating something that would be effective in dealing with you

• “Aha! Behold! (Name)-repellent 10000!”

• all of this doesn’t go unnoticed, of course

• but every time you would try to talk to him, he’d have an unpleasant expression on his face (you can see this expression a lot in episode 2 when Charlie was with Pentious)

• you’d eventually get the message and stop bothering him

• only after episode 3, where everyone had to participate in trust exercises, was when he started to warm up to you

• after the whole ordeal with Vaggie’s idea of building up trust, you’d compliment him for being a resilient little guy with a pat on his back and his guarded persona would start to crumble

• now that you’d get to know each other normally, he’d naturally gravitate towards you because of your laid-back attitude

• not to mention you were more of a listener

• he can yap endlessly about his inventions or whatnot and you’d actually listen!

• he’d constantly try to appeal for your approval as well (like with Lucifer and Vox)

• while he had no interest in gardening, he would try to help

• feast your eyes upon his watering invention; Sodden Grounds 13000!

• you’d give him a pat on the back. “Thanks, little guy. This would help a lot with my time. I appreciate it.”

• his heart would swell and he’d burst into tears

• no one had praised him for his inventions before

• except for his eggbois, but they didn’t count

• they’d just get wrecked to oblivion most of the time (looking at you, Alastor)

• after that, he would be more eager to make your daily tasks easier

• too eager at times

• he was really just chasing that dopamine rush of being acknowledged for his achievements

• so don’t forget to remind him to relax from time to time

[mchib]

‘We need more bipolar characters’ 

YOU COULDBNT EVEN HANDLE HIM

first of all i think this is common knowledge but he exhibits a complex and erratic personality which i think could potentially be interpreted as symptom of bipolar disorder - bipolar is a characterized by extreme mood swings that include emotional highs (mania) and lows (depression) - throughout the series and manga (i think the manga shows this better) mellos behavior fluctuates dramatically displaying periods of intense energy impulsivity and irritability which align with manic episodes,,. - in the manga mellos depicted as ambitious driven and sometimes reckless in his pursuit of catching Kira. he has a chronic case of impulsive decision making such as kidnapping poeple and hijacking a character showcases a lack of regard for consequences which is a hallmark trait of manic behavior - i also think mellos extreme emotional responses ranging from fits of rage to moments of despair mirror the intense mood swings characteristic of bipolar disorder. he also struggles with self esteem and identity also point towards bipolar disorder... individuals with bipolar disorder often experience fluctuations in self esteem oscillating between grandiosity during manic episodes and profound self doubt during depressive episodes - mellos constant comparison to near (who he he and only he sees as his rival) and his need to prove himself could stem from underlying insecurities exacerbated by his mood swings

him developing bipolar could totally be a normal trauma response from literally a lot of abuse that he has faced, most of the main characters from wammys house show no signs of like rebellion or outlandish behavior like he does but that doesnt necessarily mean that nothing happened and i think the author gave characters such as near and the other orphans way too much mental fortitude. bipolar can be developed at any age and its especially common between ages 15-19. not to mention other than it being genetic, theres a huge link between bipolar and childhood trauma. like imagine being groomed your whole childhood into this competitive environment with other 4 year olds to be the smartest toddler so u can substitute this crazy genius when he dies. and think of it like come on theres no chance all of these kids desperately wanted to be detectives when they grew up there was definitely like some sort of foul play. L is an exception obviously since the orphanage became abusive after he came and he was treated like a king basically while the other orphans mental state was completely disregarded because they were only brought in from several corners of the world solely to be his successor. in fact the first generation orphans were literally expected to kill themselves because of the pressure and A killing himself literally was not a shock at all to the orphanage in fact i suspect that a lot of the first generation orphans made to succeed L had a horrible mental state and also killed themselves which if you think about it B (which stood for backup) losing his mind was completely normal even if the way he went about challenging L was not. not to mention how he had to live with shinigami eyes but thats for another post lolol.,,, anyways yeah mello's behavior is actually justified when you think about how much of an abusive household he lived in even if its kind of obvious that the author disregarded coming up with an explanation for the orphans mental wellbeing and how it would have affected their adolescence except from the character of mello and even when they show mello they basically make him seem insane and watari like an angel . reading the la bb murder cases from mello's perspective really opened my eyes to like how it actually was in wammys house u can really understand it from his tone and stuff also with that one page hold on lemme find it

'but what if they could copy him? what if they could make a backup? that was us. L's children, gathered from all corners of the world. children gathered together, never told each other's names. but even for a genuis like watari, creating a fake L was easier said than done. even for near and i, who were said to be the closest to L... the more we tried to be like him, the closer we got, the farther away he was, like chasing a mirage. so i hardly need to tell you what it was like when wammy's house was first founded, when he was still experimenting. the first child, A, was unable to handle the pressure of living up to L and took his own life, and the second child, beyond birthday, was brilliand and deviant. B stood for Backup.'

'L was the goal of everyone in wammys house. everyone one of us wanted to surpass him. to step over him. to step on him. M did, N did and B did. M as a challenger, N as a successor. B as a criminal.'

sorry for my complete lack of spelling punctuation and grammar but i think i got my point across and also big thanks to @monards who helped me finish this draft by giving me the energy to continue and also encouraging my crippling death note addiction by feeding into it with questions and remarks like 'woah!' and 'eureka!'

[tubbytarchia]

Also I need to say SOMETHING because I've been tormented by this for the past few days after having been made aware but yandere Pearl makes me so upset, imo it's such a disservice to her character!! That or other interpretations that just make her out to be evil. I understand the appeal of the trope and for AUs and stuff, ofc go wild!! But that is very much not what happened in DL canon and anyone who thinks that she's only interesting with the yandere trope attached is a fake fan!! Pearl was labelled crazy and of course she leaned into it, because what else does she do? Nobody wants her, everyone believes she's lost it, so she might as well!! At the very least it serves as some intimidation that Pearl CAN use to her advantage but did she ever want to? She's not crazy for Scott, not by any stretch of the imagination. She wanted some kind of approval, or acceptance. She didn't just want Scott to herself or whatever argument people try to make and she most certainly wasn't evil or cruel. Many times when people were getting up to mischief, Pearl didn't take large part if at all even if she was there. She often played along and, yeah, she played along, like most Lifers would, no? I can see how her behaviour could be observed as obsessive when she keeps trying to settle near Scott but, I don't even know how to articulate my thoughts other than to reinforce that that wasn't her obsessing over Scott. I suppose you could view Pearl as evil depending entirely on what you classify as evil in a death game where most everyone has to kill anyway, and where a lot of people commit arson and stuff (Joel killed some Jellies, loved to bully Jimmy, retaliated having the Relationship burnt down by burning every other establishment he could, is he also evil? What makes Pearl evil? Does she just get called that more because Joel is expected to be a menace by default?), but there is so much more nuance there than some form of "she flipped on a dime in session 1 and immediately became a crazy ex after a breakup". But you know what, that's what Scott wanted people to believe and if anyone in the fandom does then I have news for you

Also I'm not trying to say that playing a villain character is bad (Scott is such a villain though not at all a plainly visible one, and he's very compelling as a character) nor am I trying to make Pearl out to be some totally innocent sweetpea. Or maybe I am. #Pearl did literally nothing wrong to warrant this (but like, art of her being girlboss and stuff goes hard still, she OWNED the scene still when she embraced the label. She was mad cool, but it's not "being evil" that makes a character mad cool)

(PS don't take this too seriously, although I do heavily disagree with this interpretation personally, I'm not police and also I love all the Lifers including Scott dearly. Reminder that this is just about the characters they play and it's reasonable for viewers to believe his story foremost if they've only watched his POV and such, I think)

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/740284683556929536/

Omg I'm so sorry! I wrote that anon when I was sleepy so it had very ham-fisted wording. Yes, I meant to ask about portraying self-esteem issues about bodies. I thought guys don't talk about it much.

To that one person, why would dudes comparing dick sizes be considered smut? I can see it being rated M. Are you suggesting the rating go up to E?

--

Ahahaha.

Uh... anon... if that's truly what you were trying to ask... I think maybe you need to work on your writing a bit more. The vibes you give off are odd, to say the least...

Like, creepy pervert angling for foot fetish photos while lying about what they want-level weird.

It sounds like you want to heavy-breathe while reading guys' descriptions of their own penises, not like you want help with writing.

--

The reason your ask reads so "She breasted boobily down the stairs" but from the other side is that guys, at least from what I've seen, do not stand around comparing their dicks, at least not in the way you implied.

The people who most commonly compare their junk out of curiosity are toddlers.

This is something tiny children do. Anecdotally, some teens do it, but a lot don't, and there are clickbait articles about athletes sizing each other up this way, but they are just that: clickbait. I'm not saying it never happens, but you wrote about it like it always happens.

It is fucking weird to have a grown-ass man routinely doing it outside of maaaaybe some weirdly homoerotic scene in a stoner comedy or something.

People joke about this practice because it's a thing that exists, not because it is ubiquitous.

That's also why it reads like porn. IRL, if some dude is like "I think we should compare our dicks... uh... and they should be hard so we can compare properly", many other guys are going to interpret that as sexual. And also self-deluding. Which is a good reason to say no.

--

Most people in locker rooms and public bathrooms try to give each other a little privacy if they can, regardless of gender. Openly ogling is what you do if you're about to proposition someone for sex. Or, if it's hostile, you stare because you're about to beat them up.

I'm not saying a guy couldn't sneakily see the size of another guy's junk and have a response, but the whole way you described this sounds like you've never spoken to a human before. Did you seriously get this idea from those clickbait articles?

Among other issues, penises become erect. They look different in different states of arousal. Surely, you've heard of "growers vs. showers"? Temperature also matters. There's a whole fucking bit on Seinfeld that everyone quoted for like years and is probably still quoting about "shrinkage"—i.e. a guy is insecure that someone saw him when he'd just gotten out of the pool and his dick looked small because he was cold. Hopefully, the locker room isn't that cold, but you still don't know what a dude's dick looks like all of the time from catching a glimpse of it one time.

So an adult man who is not completely unfamiliar with penises is not going to 1. openly stare at another man in the locker room and 2. look only at his penis and have some crisis about "Mine looks different".

I suppose for the right character in the right circumstances, you can sell any kind of goofy-ass reaction, including the "breasted boobily" stuff where women think consciously about their tits in a way that actual women generally don't and male authors love to write. But you have to make it a whole Thing. She has to have some reason why her nipples are super sensitive today and thus she pays attention when she normally wouldn't.

Instead, you keep asking these dumbass questions like you're 12 that boil down to "Literally all men are the same cardboard cutout based on their D&D stats from this character sheet. Please tell me some facts about these stats!" instead of approaching people as individual humans who all react differently. You haven't even said anything about what kind of culture these characters come from. Both personality and specific culture (not just big things like nationality but shit like whether they're athletes who change with the same guys all the time) are going to affect how and whether men talk about self esteem and bodies.

You're boiling this down to "What does the penis-having alien species all do?" despite already getting several answers that told you to stop doing that. You either didn't listen or didn't understand what people meant so badly that it's pointless to keep giving you help.

This is not a good way to write three-dimensional characters.

--

Now, I'm not saying nobody has ever snuck a peek in a locker room. Lots of people, regardless of gender, do that. But we're talking covert looks and that kind of looking gives you glimpses of many body parts and not always a very clear look either.

Most actual men on most actual days of their lives are going to feel insecure about their bodies relative to someone else because the other dude looks better at the gym or grows chest and facial hair more easily or is much taller or isn't going bald.

We love to make jokes about penis size, but in my experience, the level of perpetual crisis dudes have over potential baldness is way higher. There are a shitton of ways to be insecure about yourself and your body. That goes for any gender.

Maybe a dude feels insecure because the other guy is much less body-conscious and has an easier time changing in front of people or because he's paid five times as much and is changing into a thousand dollar suit.

Many of the markers of masculinity and attractiveness have very little to do with penises.

There's also a vast difference between your POV character thinking some other dude's huge package is admirable and your POV character thinking he himself is inadequate. He could think his own dick is average and that it would be nicer to be hung like a pornstar without being insecure about it. He could also have a big dick yet still be insecure about it because he's a weirdo who's obsessed with penis size. He could be a size queen who wants to take a ride on that. He could have an ex girlfriend who thought big penises hurt and be creepily fascinated and wonder whom this guy fucks and how they manage.

--

All this shit is a character point. Stop treating it as immutable truth where someone can give you the Correct Answer™ for you to slot into your writing or spank bank fantasies.

[weaselbeaselpants]

I really dislike Chaggie being compared to Jally. I ship both, but....

Jack and Sally aren't a couple in Nightmare til the very end. Jack only comes around once he's literally been shot at and forced to see things out of his fantasies for once and realize that other people really do love and support him; like Sally. The entire rest of the time Jack's stuck in his own mind. Sally's in love with Jack but she's actually not supportive of his Christmas and even tries sabotaging it because she knows what he's doing is wrong even if it took an unexplained visionflower for her to get that hunch first. Her line is literally "although I'd like to stand by him" not "I support him even if I really don't want to". And in the end not only is Sally vindicated by being right like Santa says she is, but Jack suddenly realizes what she's done and falls for her right then. YMMV on how good a couple they'd actually make ((they aren't Diane and Mr. PB; eat shoot Lindsay Ellis *annoying cries*)) but that's what's cute about Jack and Sally: Sally does her pining maturely (stalking not included) while Jack instantly falls all over in love with her because he's Jack.

I understand there are different interpretations w people think Jack was always in love with Sally but obviously I digress and have always kind of disagreed with that reading, as did the writers of TNBC. Because, if you did have a version where Jack was always feeling something romantic towards Sally, or WORSE, was in a relationship- you would get Charlie x Vaggie.

If I'm right (seasoned hazbinnies feel free to correct me on this) Charlie and Vaggie were not written to be lovers initially but later retconned into being later into the writing process....which shows. I think promo stuff from back then called the two just "friends" and Vaggie and Charlie don't act very romantic. As I just laid out and as any shipper of Jally could tell you it's not hard to make that kind of dynamic cute and quirky. The problem is it isn't even THERE.

Vaggie is apparently Charlie's girlfriend and I guess just also believes in the hotel but is skeptical of it, though I wouldn't consider that on par w Sally who was straight up gonna poison Jack in one of Caroyln Thompson's earlier scripts. Especially given that she's an angel this could either work for or against her character but Vaggie seems more like an agent then a loving bestie, even. I think I remember one of the spin off comics for Hazbin which had Vaggie just straight up admitting she's doing the hotel plan because it makes Charlie happy and she'll do anything Charlie wants.

To be honest, it reminds me more of Dr. Mrs. the Monarch from Venture Bros going on about how/why she puts up with Monarch's shit when he doesn't listen to her and it's because he has "passion for a villain"...the difference is that in that case you can kind of get where Mrs. the Monarch's coming from in her emotions. With Vaggie, well, guess that's a sin of not having all the details of her feelings laid out yet. I mean, when you ever get Vaggie's feelings. Such little work about your main couple in comparison to Angel or Alastor.

AND THEN CHARLIE? You can really tell she wasn't written w Vaggie as her gf in mind.

Boy howdy I REALLY HOPE for the series that Viv and co listened to some of the crew complaints and gave Charlie a more empathetic and supportive vibe because ho mah gawd and I mean this as someone who ships them- Charlie is a HORRIBLE girlfriend in the pilot.

Again, thematically, Jack has the excuse of being in a manic depressive episode and also not knowing Sally very much at all in TNBC. He sees her as just another one of his Halloween Town friends who's especially talented but doesn't even realize she and the rest of the town cares. He's not listening to her when she comes to warn him because he's self obsessed. He's nice to her but also passive cause that's how he is at that point of the story, even if he's gentlemanly about it. Compare to Charlie who, while always adorable Didneyprincessesque, is dismissive of Vaggie's concerns, anger, fears and reform while she's not only aware of Vaggie's feelings WHILE BEING IN AN APPARENTLY COMMITTED RELATIONSHIP WITH HER is concerning. And that's before you get to Charlie not noticing Vaggie getting tossed around by Alastor right in front of her.

It'd be different if Al does his weird smarmy shit and Charlie is uncomfy but only stiffens up and shows her actual strong side to him when he touches Vaggie- "HEY! Don't you lay a finger on her!" but no, nothing.

I ultimately get what Viv wants and is going for by comparing Charlie and Vaggie to tnbc, but I think in practice in the pilot it fails because it

was never planned out to be a couple

they're supposed to be a couple but Charlie and Vaggie aren't all that romantic

they're supposed to be a couple but Charlie isn't very supportive or even defensive

People give Jack a lot of shit (rightfully, in the video games) and give the movie and Jally shit for being a "bad fit" but I again vouch for them not only on the grounds of tnbc being complete and at home in it's own skin. The rest of the franchise not so much, but the movie and the writers of the character know what kind of person Jack is and have his redemptive quality be that he falls for Sally; I love him and Sally both as characters but also as a couple for that reason. I'd feel totally different if Jack, say, was Sally's bf throughout the film and acted the way Charlie did. I can be critical of TNBC and I think some of Jack's writing is flawed and could be better, but y'know, I will defend it pedantically like I'm doing right now.

With Charlie and Vaggie, I ship them because they're my favorite characters from the pilot but dayum. I'm the kind of hermitshipper who's able to sustain myself off scraps and headcanons and even I'm saying these two need some work. Cuz they do. They need A LOT of work. And better writers.

If Chaggie is ''endgame'' in the final season then I hope "A Happy Day in Hell" is just an outlier scene or it's going to be retconned that they aren't lovers yet because if not- oh Vaggie! Get urself a Hasani Walker comic and fast my gurl you need it.

[onesidedradiostatic]

Intro Post + FAQ!?!?!?

STRIPES TRUTHERS DNI!!!!!!!! (this is a joke)

I'm not replacing my pinned post because I like my pinned post. it's special to me. it describes my blog in a single gif. but I'll link this in my bio.

hi! I think this was long overdue. first of all, introduction!

I'm pink! she/her, 19, filipino-chinese, 🇸🇬

I am an asexual sapphic on the aro spectrum! I'm not repulsed in either department though, I consider myself mostly sex-neutral and romance... idk, ambivalent irl, favourable in fiction.

keep in mind that hazbin hotel itself has a lot of explicit humour, so canon-typical level of that kind of humour should be expected here. however, outside of text-only nsfw jokes, I typically don't post or reblog nsfw art (and IF I did, I would use community labels/appropriate tags). I may also tag certain text-only nsfw joke posts as #suggestive, just as a precaution.

and now the FAQ...

FAQ

Other than one-sided RadioStatic, what do you ship?

I've actually done this before, but decided I'd update it a bit.

cherrivel is only there because of the need for velvette to have someone at the hotel to be obsessed with, refer to this post. it is currently unserious and could easily never come up in my posts I just thought to include it because of that one time I brought it up. other crackships may come up if I find it funny (ie adam x mammon).

this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, I do not like any reciprocated romantic alastor ships, I'm not here to police anyone for what they do in fanon, but all I ask is no one send me anything of the sort. I interpret alastor as a repulsed aroace, and the dialogue in which his asexuality is implied in canon implies to me he would never pursue dating (rosie knows alastor wouldn't be dating charlie because he is aroace, which implies she knows he is an aroace that doesn't date**). so that is how I choose to portray alastor in my posts.

**TO BE CLEAR, there IS nuance to this. because action =/= attraction. funny situations such as a fake date with vox as a distraction that he doesn't like at ALL entertain me. but I do not believe he is the type to pursue it under normal circumstances.

regarding qprs... well, as you can see, I really only care for qpr radiorose, but this is the part where it comes down to personal preference. qpr radiostatic largely depends for me, maybe if it's like an au where they never had a falling out or something but otherwise, I don't personally really see it, but that isn't to judge anyone who does. HOWEVER, I do like thinking about their past friendship, here's a post I made before regarding alastor's side on it.

Who's your favourite character?

unfortunately, it is the stupid tv man in my pfp. alastor is my second favourite though if that's not immediately obvious (wow tumblr user @onesidedradiostatic's faves are vox and alastor who could've guessed?)

Do you know [insert pre-series information here]?

I need to clarify, I am NOT a pre-series hazbin fan. I only got into hazbin properly at episode 5-6's release, prior to that I had only watched episode 4 out of curiosity due to twitter discourse. any information I have regarding pre-series stuff comes from the wiki, tumblr posts or anons who have informed me of stuff. my main source of information is the main series, that is how I first consumed hazbin after all.

What the fuck is the "Lucifer's Commissions Saga"?

it all started with an anon talking about the most unrealistic thing about vox owning an alastor body pillow being that alastor was able to be printed on it without glitches. I then dropped a stupid idea I had in my head for a bit about lucifer being offered 50k to make a sexy alastor painting for vox. one reblog later. well. it turned into vox commissioning lucifer for the body pillow. and then a bunch of asks came in related to it and it turned into a saga which is now my legacy. feel free to scroll through this entire thing. also a fanfic of it by ChaoticAce2005 now exists. go check it out. AN ANIMATIC BASED ON ONE OF THE POSTS BY NATAKARANIA ALSO NOW EXISTS. CHECK THAT OUT TOO.

The original post mentions Val commissioning Lucifer for the art for Vox, Val is canonically a talented artist, why would he do that?

in my defence, I kinda forgot about that when I posted the original joke. later asks, I've mended that val HAS drawn for vox before but vox nitpicked too much and val's not always willing to do a fully rendered sexy alastor... so vox has to outsource. and he just happens to do so to the king of hell.

Hey, hey, listen! What if Vox doesn't have a crush on Alastor but wants XXX instead!?

hey, I respect you! I respect your opinion and hc. but this blog is built around that concept specifically, I like vox wanting something he can never have, wanting romance from a guy who literally cannot feel the same way about him. so I'm probably not gonna be as passionate about other takes. but your opinion is valid! I'm just not really sure what you want me to say other than respectfully disagreeing.

Why don't you use RadioSilence for one-sided RadioStatic?

radio silence is the name of another book made by the author of heartstopper, alice oseman (which I heard also has a canon aspec character!). even though it is already a used tag for this ship, I refuse to contribute to flooding the book tag with hazbin hotel. it's already an issue I see even when searching #radio silence with the space, I think those in that fandom should be allowed to search for content without being flooded by content from another fandom. please understand.

I instead use #onewaybroadcast in accordance with this poll. I still use the regular #radiostatic and #staticradio tags in addition to it for more reach and because vox's side still technically counts under it, if anyone doesn't like specifically one-sided radiostatic for whatever reason, they may filter out the specific tag or block me.

read more about the tagging issue here

Why haven't you answered my ask?

you see. once upon a time I used to answer every ask in my askbox. but then trying to come up with intelligent responses to every single ask was kind of draining so I gave up on that. so nowadays I just answer whatever I feel like, if you don't see your ask answered for a while it may still be answered later cause I do go back to old asks sometimes (and sometimes I just forget about asks I'd wanted to answer before). currently my askbox stands at 180ish unanswered asks going back to as early as end of february, that's how much I kinda just gave up trying to clear my askbox. DON'T be discouraged from sending new asks though! I'm actually more likely to answer new ones that I'm able to form a response for immediately.

Wait, I checked your time zone, why are you posting at 2-5am?

I haven't had a normal sleep schedule for like at least 4 years now, don't think too hard about it. and don't rely on my time zone for my active hours, I could be active at literally any hour 😁👍

Can I write a fic about [insert idea posted on this blog before]?

OF COURSE!!! I would actually be honoured if you did!! credit for the idea would be appreciated (although it depends if it's mostly me or my anons' ideas, sometimes it's a combined effort), but otherwise go ahead! and do send it to me if you please, if I have the time or motivation I may read it!

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more may be added at a later time, but this is what I can come up with for now. I've been holding back on this for a while, trying to phrase every single little thing with tact, just understand that a lot of it is personal opinion!

Tags

#osrs.txt - all text posts, including asks #osrs.art - self-explanatory, art done by me #osrs.mp4 - videos which can range from compilations, shitpost edits to high effort edits #osrs.helluva - my helluva boss reactions/liveblogging and related stuff

#radiostatic parent trap subplot - the short series of asks joking about the torn picture vox has reminding them of the parent trap, turning into a crack subplot #projecting irl experiences onto radiostatic squad - where a bunch of anons came together to recount irl experiences with incels and say "yeah this is vox" #the ays - angel dust realising he and alastor are the reason for the vees' focus on the hotel and decides to brand both of them as the ays #lucifer's commissions saga - everyone's favourite as explained above, and also the biggest arc on this blog (my legacy) #alastor's modern sexuality label crisis - started with alastor misinterpreting "asexual" as asexual reproduction, continued on to him misinterpreting more modern sexuality labels #vox's stupid fucking turtleneck - it started with me trying to start up a debate on the colour of vox's turtleneck in the vox and val photo and escalated into people in my notes and askbox trying to gaslight me into thinking the turtleneck has stripes instead of it being a KNITTING PATTERN. this is what the STRIPES TRUTHERS DNI is referring to btw #cursed yellow val - tag name taken from andy-solo1, started as a response to the turtleneck discourse, I believe the turtleneck is a similar colour to val's wings therefore yellow turtleneck truthers are implying val's wings are also yellow #respectless anons - started with an anon trying to correct colour names and saying "not to be velvette..." and ended up with other anons being kin assigned characters #all the fucking parodies - there's been 2 parodies for you didn't know and 2 for respectless by others based on shit from this blog now, this tag is needed #the fanon val killjoy beef - tag made for the made up concept of valentino and katie killjoy beefing, started from this post

[cursedcupcakemaster]

This is a small series I made for nothing but enjoyment

Notes:I don't own twisted wonderland or it's characters this is just my interpretation of how they'd be they belong to Yana Toboso and Disney

Reader is gender neutral, some of these are kind of short

Type;vanilla strawberry cupcakes

How Heartslabyul helps their partner after a bad day

Riddle:

Riddle isn't really a stranger to bad days

When he heard you were having a bad day he decided maybe you needed some cheering up

A little teatime and maybe a cuddle session with the hedgehogs would do the trick

Riddle smiled to himself as he had everything ready for you asking Trey to tell you to meet him in the rose gardens for teatime

When you get there you weren't expecting what you found, your favorite snacks and tea waiting for you with Riddle smiling his face a bright red for once not from anger

He told you how he knew how it felt to be overworked and so tired from everything so he wanted to give you what he knew was a well deserved break

After tea you both went to the hedgehogs for snuggles with Riddle making note to maybe have things like this every week with you

Trey:

This man has seen his share of nuttiness throughout each day of every year but he knows one can only take so much

He knows just the thing to make you smile again, a nice batch of sweets

Trey always remembers your favorite desserts

When you come back from class and are clearly exhausted, the smell of fresh baked treats hits your nose

Trey will invite you to sit and talk about what happened that week that made you so down

He'll remind you that while things look bad now they'll get better and he'll be there for you so for now just have a cookie

Ace:

Ace knows bullshit when he sees it so he knows when you say you're fine despite the tired look in your eyes and your shoulders slumping, he knows you are far from it

He knows it won't be easy to get you to tell him but that doesn't mean he won't try to figure it out

Ace kinda figured out your day had to be horrible if you lost your homework, got pushed a few times, and almost got set on fire in alchemy

He decided maybe something simple would cheer you up

You weren't exactly expecting to find him in your room when your day was finally over much less him with a deck of cards

Ace had decided to perform a few magic tricks for you with the cards and within a little bit he had you smiling, card tricks were good for smiles after all

Deuce:

When this sweet boy noticed how unhappy you were he knew something had to be up

Deuce kinda followed you around for a bit and he figured out you were having a rough week because of a lot of things tests included

Deuce knew you needed to take your mind off of things at least for a little bit and it hit him

He decided to take you for a ride on his blastcycle

Deuce waited until after class before asking you to follow him

He led you to the beach where his cycle was helping you on and telling you to hold on tight

You two rode off for a while until the sun started to set

You hugged him thanking him for helping you and Deuce knew he had to go for rides with you more often

Cater:

He knows right away when you're frowning something had to have been bad, real bad

Cater is good at reading expressions so even if you weren't he'd know you needed a break from the crazy that school nonsense brought

Cater decided maybe his boo*you* needed a day at your favorite skate park

He'd text you to grab your board to meet him there

He knows this would at least make you take your mind off the hard stuff so you could smile again

Cater loves seeing your face when you skate because you look happy and free something he adores about you so he knows you'll probably need 3 or 4 skate sessions in the week he's happy to obilge you

[mdhwrites]

Did Luz ever believed that she could save Belos?

I think the bigger question is whether or not Luz ever CONSIDERED that she could save Belos.

Remember, in the first episode, she shoves a pack of fireworks directly into a dude's mouth. She sicks the cubes against the crunch publisher and then just leaves. She lets Willow do whatever she wants to the monster hunters. She straight up leaves Tibbles to be eaten by his miniature pets now that they're full size. Etc. etc. Luz is not exactly someone who seems to even question what she should do to an enemy, let alone their humanity versus her own.

This isn't even a complaint about her but just kind of a fact. I don't mind that she doesn't care about her villains. It admittedly places her mindset more on the axis of the Isles which actually isn't great for her ever disagreeing with them. It's why stuff like her clearing out Eda's cheat box honestly feels weird because her morality in general is pretty close to gray but she is clearly framed as morally better than the majority of the Isles, especially early on. It's just... Not really true by her actions. Remember, by episode three she's already sneaking out for her own self glory and on mass lying to get into the school she wants and only one of those required any pushing from others to do.

It also makes the jabs at SU kind of weird because like... The show never cared about its villains before now. The fact that they're not dead is mostly because Luz just leaves them to other people or can't kill them. She's just not that sort of protagonist. I mean, she fucking branded Belos back in King's Tide as a way to make sure everyone with a brand didn't die... Which you know, kind of means HE'S going to die. She literally uses his life as a trump card to get him to do as she wants. It's part of why people laud that moment as Luz being clever because even if the way she does it is bullshit, the idea is sound.

The ONLY exceptions to this are Amity and Hunter but... Only kind of. In the episodes where they are true antagonists, she has no way to actually fight back against them, ending up leaving both unscathed as she has to use trickery or just run for it. Then they're not primary antagonists but instead people in tension with Luz which is different. Luz is shown their humanity and suddenly gives them a chance. Why is a good question and uh... The fact that of her villains, these are the only two conventionally attractive, white people who she might want to date is NOT GREAT. To put it mildly. Especially when in their third proper episode together, Luz is stating that she'll befriend Amity explicitly as part of fulfilling narrative tropes. And if you want to say Kikimora disproves this: She doesn't. Luz explicitly helps Kikimora to prove a selfish point. If she wasn't freaking out about her own family, she'd have likely left Kiki to rot. It's not like she exactly ever tries again with the little demon after all.

No, for the VAST majority of villains, you fuck with Luz, Luz will fuck your shit up. It's honestly weird that it takes Luz so long during Winging it Like Witches to decide to go the violent route on Boscha, which I just assume is so she doesn't end up back in detention or expelled. Or because she thinks Boscha can and will kick her ass if she tries something like that on her own. But yeah, Luz isn't some sort of cinnamon roll. In fact, I think a lot of people's interpretations of Luz are much more based on what her archtype appears to be than what her actual character is (myself included while I was writing fanfic for the show). She's introduced as the quirky, nice girl in the first episode and she's not SUPER far away from it, that is the closest to an archtype she has besides just kind of morally questionable teenager, if she has really any archtype or structural base to her character. You know, besides audience surrogate and thus kind of bland and non-committal in order to serve that.

She has a couple interests but 99% of the time can keep them reigned in. Sure she knows what fanfic is but that just means she spends literally anytime online/with fandom. Her energy is cute but very erratic for it showing up... At all. Her kindness is extremely limited and she honestly just isn't that quirky. She has one series she supposedly obsesses about but quotes at most half a dozen times in the show which makes it more a character quirk than a defining characteristic.

It's kind of part of why Luz doesn't grow because the series seems to spend a LOT of time trying to figure out what Luz is. Is she a morally questionable teenager? Is she an excitable goof? Is she the moral center or the one having to learn morals? And yes, a character can absolutely serve several roles and be flexible. I think she actually does that well in the first half of the series where she shifts a bit for the sake of other characters' stories, which is one option for your main character. You know, before her narrative role changes and they get a VERY firm idea of who she is siiiiiiiigh but it's still weird with how they did it.

It makes so much of what we're told and what people latch onto end up feeling contradictory. As an example: Her being bullied. We only get maybe three moments in the entire series that even hint at her having any sort of bad experience with other people, let alone kids her own age. It informs nothing about how she behaves or her character. She could have just been a normal kid most people left alone and nothing would change. So this element, that so many agree universally on, is just... Almost purely fanon and the moments it comes up in canon are really awkward and just don't make much sense with literally EVERYTHING ELSE she does.

It makes her getting a shapeshifter as her palisman ironically make a lot of sense. Her character has always just been what's convenient for the writers and what others project on her. A lot of her canon character just isn't used a lot. Instead, people opt for what the fandom says about her.

And that version might have considered saving Belos. Might have thought taking a life actually mattered. But canon Luz is just worried about becoming the bad guy. That this is the start of her villain arc, not that she is finally having to murder someone. Just that her justifications might make people say she's like the villain in her story.

Because canon Luz never considered if Belos should live. Not from the second it inconvenienced her back in Hollow Mind. Earlier with what he did to Eda if you want to be REALLY generous, even though she never acts on what Belos did to Eda. She only becomes a revolutionary once she can't have magic cloak because of it.

Almost like Luz isn't the morally good person that the show told us she was. She's just a selfish teenager which can be a lot of fun, so long as you own up to that being your character. Shame TOH never did.

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As a note: This blog is actually a LARGE part of why I stopped really being able to write Luz. I literally had a moment writing this one off where I went "Luz wouldn't do this. This is too nice and understanding." It was ROUGH. And what sucks is that with the morality around her, at least when characters are still interesting, her being a nice, caring person is the best dynamic for her. It just... Isn't actually her dynamic and that's rough.

Also that story is from a year and a half ago. Just... Man I wish my brain would unhook from this show already. *sigh*

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[pochapal]

Umineko Liveblog: Thoughts/Theories [Episode 1 Chapter 14 Edition]

Umineko Chapter 14’s thesis statement was “let’s take these patterns and conventions we’re establishing and blow them all up with gleeful abandon”. Less than an hour from the Second Twilight, we’re forced to bear witness to twilights four and five, and not necessarily in that order. The Witch Narrative is off the rails. The most important character in Umineko to me died, and Beatrice may actually well and truly be real for once. Whatever’s going on here is one hell of a mess.

So let’s try and untangle whatever the hell went down here. The Chapter 14 writeup tour includes the following stops: the hot mess formerly known as the Witch Narrative, Kinzo finally being totally super dead for real, the world’s nastiest most evil twink death in human history (Kanon), identity and furniture and roulettes, Beatrice the Golden Witch’s understated grand entrance into the story, the 19th person conundrum (part 7123748296), and some downright funky stuff happening beneath the story’s surface.

Let’s get this going.

To start, we need to talk about the Witch Narrative. So far, the Witch Narrative has been the term I’ve given to a very clearly established phenomenon and set of actions. When there are characters who have some kind of vested interest in encouraging you to view Rokkenjima as a supernatural incident rather than a crime, then that’s the Witch Narrative. The person painting the magic circles is perpetuating the Witch Narrative. Characters such as Eva and Hideyoshi talking about how frightful and demonic things are is also the Witch Narrative. If you’re thinking “maybe this is Beatrice after all” or if things are aligning a little too well with the worst interpretation of the epitaph riddle, then that is without a shadow of a doubt the Witch Narrative.

So what happened? Kanon being gouged in the chest and also killed mere minutes after the discovery of the torn-apart pair who are close is not right. Skipping to twilight five (for the trolls) straight after number two is not good Witch Narrative etiquette. The sequence of murders and horrors is crucial to authenticating this slaughter as folded within the ritual to revive the Golden Witch and/or reach the Golden Land. Everything so far has dictated that in order for the witch to revive and none to be left alive certain steps must be carried out in a certain order. If this performance is thrown out of sequence for its audience, the song goes funky. Suddenly you’re aware you’re watching people playing pretend on a stage and this world you’re buying into is only ephemeral. If the sequence of deaths doesn’t matter, then this isn’t an occult ritual at all. It is in fact a disguised butchering.

Showing your hand like this this early makes things very difficult for those peddling this narrative. Deaths happening out of sequence takes this from a supernatural force happening beyond everyone’s control to something that could easily done by a human desperate to make everybody believe. If my theories about how this performance is happening ring true, then it becomes infinitely harder for Genji to make any further moves with the simultaneous blow of his most useful pawn kicking it early and the order of events getting all scrambled. How can the stomach, leg, and knee get gouged in a way that still works in service for this narrative now?

Given what I’m thinking, Genji is likely moving on his own now. Kumasawa and maybe Nanjo are complicit in the spreading of the story, but they are almost certainly unable to be as useful to any kind of scheme as Kanon was. They are older, less mobile, less physically able. Kumasawa can scream about magic circles all she likes, but does she have the strength to move and mutilate corpses? Very unlikely. The options to carry things out have been severely limited to an almost unsalvageable degree. Every crime so far has been a type of locked room that works via tricks that could only be carried out by two active parties. Being on your own can only get you so far.

Which leads you to an immediate conclusion: Kanon dying in the basement boiler room was not part of the plan. Or, not part of the Witch Narrative at least. His death marks a point where this scheme has totally gone off the rails, and Genji’s script has been rendered worthless. The presentation of the death is obfuscated, but the truth beneath it is that something went deeply wrong that shouldn’t have.

This is a bold claim I’m making, but I also think I have enough proof in the story to substantiate it. I think, going by everything, the next incident following the deaths of Eva and Hideyoshi was to involve the basement in one form or another. I also think that this was being prepared in parallel with the Second Twilight – Genji and Nanjo leave the kitchen at the same time as Kanon and Kumasawa, but the two men don’t reach the scene until after Kanon has already unlocked the room and Eva and Hideyoshi have been found dead with the stakes in their skulls. Enough time to, say, take a trip down to the basement and set some dominoes in motion.

As to what I think was part of the Witch Narrative, I think everything was on track right up until the moment Kanon set foot in the basement. The foul smell filling the hallway was almost certainly set in motion by Genji and/or Nanjo (perhaps by turning on the boiler while Eva and Hideyoshi were being found in order to time it to make the smell the strongest at the perfect time – this may also have precluded moving Kinzo’s body there depending on where he was before now). Kanon acting bizarrely freaked out was part of the plan. As was Kumasawa screaming about hearing a noise, and the two of them breaking off from the group to rush ahead to investigate. Everything falls apart when Kanon sets foot in the basement and Beatrice shows up and he dies.

So what was the intended plan in the basement involving Kinzo? I think, if I were to hazard a guess based off of pre-existing patterns, the boiler room in the basement was going to be used as another locked room, this time featuring Kinzo. I think this would have been a play in two acts. The first act would have Kanon and Kumasawa chase the noise to the basement and “find” the head’s ring on the ground. The family would search the boiler room and find the back door exit locked up, and no sign of Kinzo anywhere in sight (there would be efforts taken to keep anyone from investigating the boiler). The ring alone on the ground in an empty room would stand in for the Third Twilight – Kinzo is without his headship and authority, so it must therefore fall to everyone to praise Beatrice’s noble name in his stead. Dissatisfied and creeped out, everyone leaves the basement – the back door is locked from the inside, and the front door locked with a key placed in Natsuhi’s possession.

From here, this would likely have led to another discussion chapter about how the ring got there. The setup of the scene would be enough that Battler would question whether or not a nineteenth person placed the ring there, or if Kinzo himself actually dropped it there as part of some other ploy. The servants would be questioned and swear up and down there was nobody else in the basement when they entered. The sound would be discussed, as would the impossibility that anybody known to be alive could make that noise. The conversation would then turn to Kinzo as the likely suspect and Natsuhi, who’s been complicit in covering up Kinzo’s death for some time already, would start sweating as this truth grows closer to being uncovered. It’s up in the air as to whether or not the servants would help or hinder Natsuhi here, but I think it’s likely Battler would have started to think on Eva’s words from earlier. More fuel on the Natsuhi culprit fire that she can’t fight because she can’t admit to knowing what he knows. Maria would then cackle and say to everyone that this is obviously Beatrice manipulating things with her magic, and boom, scene.

Something would then happen in the next chapter to turn attention back to the boiler room. Perhaps the smell grows stronger. Perhaps the conversation about Kinzo grows to a fever pitch. Perhaps a servant fakes hearing another noise from the basement. Whatever the case, we would return to the boiler room a second time. There would be a point made of showing Natsuhi pulling out the only key to the boiler room and everyone stepping inside to find Kinzo’s body on the floor, burned up with an icepick stake in his forehead. The inner lock for the back door would still be set. Genji and Nanjo would confirm the body’s identity via the polydactyly. Somehow, Kinzo’s dead body appeared in the middle of a perfectly locked room.

Likely there would then be discussions of who could have killed Kinzo, given that at the time of his “death” everyone was yet again together (minus Kanon/Genji slipping in and out of the parlor to get food and drinks). The assumption would be that Kinzo was alive in there all along, and then killed himself for some reason – contradicted by the fact that if he launched himself into the boiler, how did he drag himself back out into the middle of the floor? The mystery would stump Battler, because the only major solution would be to assume a nineteenth person was also already hiding in the locked basement, and killed Kinzo and displayed the corpse, but Battler would chessboard himself out of leaning on that option. Out of options and stumped, we would stay at another stalemate where there’s no proof that Beatrice exists, but no way that the surviving humans could have set up this scene (there are of course ways, such as a back door that wasn’t really locked or a second key/master key with which to return to the boiler room and set things up, but nobody will think of them). The horrors would escalate. The Witch Narrative would persist. And so on. And so on.

This scenario, believable as it is, never came to happen. Instead we got what we got, and we need to figure out why. Why did Kinzo show up like this? Why did Kanon die, despite all known logic and reasoning stating that the contrary would be ideal? Why are things speeding up at such an exponential rate? I think we can get a good shape of what was supposed to be with Kinzo, but understanding what happened with Kanon is almost certainly the linchpin driving this deviation from the Witch Narrative.

So, let’s review: Kanon and Kumasawa head to the basement after “hearing a noise” that nobody could have possibly made. Kanon speeds off ahead of Kumasawa and encounters… something in the boiler room. He has a conversation with this something and comes to a revelation about his status as a human being, and then he gets gouged in the chest and killed. The presentation is straightforward: Kanon sees butterflies in the boiler room, he identifies it as Beatrice, he stands in defiance of her, and dies as a result. Except, of course, that it really isn’t that simple at all.

The tonal shift is introduced through the phrase “a fantastical scene”. Fantasy has been a phrase thrown about a few times in the story so far by characters in reference to very specific things, people, and concepts. The siblings call Kinzo’s story of the gold ingots “fantasy”. Beatrice is “fantasy”. The occult symbols around Rokkenjima are “fantasy”. Maria’s behaviour is “fantasy”. Straight away, we can draw parallels between the use of the word “fantasy” and the term “existence”. To be fantasy is to “exist”, is to be something that is propped up by narrative and belief irrespective of the material reality.

In that case, what does it mean for a scene to be fantasy? In a story about storytelling and about fantasy and about “existence”, there is surely nothing accidental about the prose describing a series of events as “a fantastical scene”. Two things are immediately happening here. The first is that we are stepping into the framework of fantasy, of belief without proof and immateriality fuelled more by ghosts than flesh. The second is that we are entering into a self-conscious scene capable of describing itself as such. This is a narrative unit that knows what it is, a story told by a teller with an agenda.

I think to explain what’s happening here, it’s worth circling all the way back to some of the metafictional stuff I was entertaining back before people started dying. More specifically, the notion that there are narrators with agendas involved in the construction and presentation of Umineko. This is most passively seen in the less-reliable third person scenes where we can be shown metaphor and falsehood to convey a deeper emotional truth – Kinzo has most likely been dead all along, and yet he has also made numerous appearances in his study over the weekend of the family conference. However, the “fantasy” of these moments is never explicitly highlighted. These scenes are a type of “fantasy”, but not a fantasy that you need to be told is the case. You can understand Natsuhi and Genji’s hearts and feelings towards Kinzo regardless of whether or not you think the family head is alive or dead.

Here, though, to be directly told you are witnessing a fantasy is tipping the scales. The arbitrator of this fantasy, of whatever might be going on in the narrative beyond the framing confines of Rokkenjima, is much more actively and directly introducing the concept to Kanon’s final moments. On their own, they would be in the same vein as whatever was happening with the Kinzo scenes if a little more heavy handed and obtuse, but we are not left to puzzle out whether or not we can trust what we are seeing. We are told outright this is fantasy. We are forced to acknowledge from the outset that there is something untrustworthy and unreliable about this chunk of the story.

Why?

I think that this is glaring evidence of some kind of discrepancy between the narrator(s) and the actors in Umineko. Something happens in the boiler room which the narrative feels the need to paint over with a depiction of swarms of butterflies and cackling murderwitches – the need to plaster fantasy over this scene matters more than upholding the story’s rule that Beatrice remains a possibility in shadow. Just as I argued that the Witch Narrative went off the rails here, I think the same thing applies to the Umineko Narrative as well. If there’s a metafictional “game” going on here, then Kanon in the boiler room knocked that off kilter, too. The zero on the roulette threatened to ruin not only “Beatrice”, but also Beatrice and also the fabric of the text itself. Whatever Kanon did or almost did rattled a lot of people all at once.

But what is this thing, actually? What we’re shown is Kanon having enough of being bound to the whims of Kinzo and Beatrice and their bastardised excuse for “magic”, and him deciding as a result to abandon his position and furniture and ruin the demon’s roulette in motion. In real terms, this is hard to parse as meaningful outside of its fantasy context. Kinzo, as we know, is not the one setting the roulette in motion in the way we’re led to believe. Beatrice is a dubiously-extant entity represented by so many different people wearing her name instead of a concrete person. Magic is anything belonging to the realm of metaphor or anything that happens on a non-material level. And the Demon’s Roulette is the catch-all term for the epitaph ritual, the Witch Narrative, and maybe also the layers of abuse going on on Rokkenjima.

The only term that has a direct material representation is “furniture”. Luckily, this is probably the most important part of Kanon’s moment of defiance, so it is extremely fortuitous that we can more easily define furniture in a way that makes sense in order to more deeply understand what’s actually going on here.

To recap, “furniture” is the label applied to servants on Rokkenjima within Kinzo’s inner circle. Three servants in the story use this label – Shannon, Kanon, and Genji. From Shannon’s backstory that we got in chapter 8 during the proposal, it is very likely that “furniture” is a term foisted upon the teenage orphan servants that come and go on Rokkenjima as a kind of degrading, abusive brand. We see this most keenly through Shannon, who submits to Battler’s sexual harassment because she is furniture and thus lacks the will to deny anything. These vulnerable abused kids are forced into a new name and a new role where they are little more than living objects for people more powerful than them to use and abuse as they see fit. To be furniture is to be totally under the thumb of Kinzo’s abuse, serving those needs even when it goes against all morality and all that you are.

Genji’s positioning with the label is less clear, given that he was, at some point at least, on more equal footing with Kinzo. It is likely that Genji adopted the “furniture” label for himself as a kind of expression of his feelings – he is nothing more than an extension of Kinzo’s will, and all he does is in service of his master. He does not have a life outside of servitude. However, the difference here is that Genji willingly stepped into the label versus Shannon and Kanon who had it forced upon them. To an outside perspective, this creates an unfair impression of equality between the three of them, when Genji absolutely has more material autonomy and personal rights than either Shannon or Kanon. Genji feels bad about Kinzo and about how all he can be to the man is his butler. Shannon and Kanon are cruelly abused and dehumanised every second of their lives. It is a false equivalency. The only commonality here is that to be “furniture” is to occupy an undesirable position within hierarchy.

Under this light, Kanon’s declaration that he is no longer furniture can immediately be read as Kanon deciding in that moment to cease existing as an object to be used by people with more power than him – power “exists”, and in a closed environment ruled by fantasy, power can be denied with more ease than would normally be available. Kanon decides he is no longer an extension of another’s will, but instead his own person. He decides this because Shannon is dead, and the least he can do is take revenge against the systems that killed her.

That said, such an explanation is deceptively simple. If denying your status as furniture comes when you cease to adhere to the whims of power, the boiler room scene carries with it the implication that this is the very first time Kanon has done anything of his own will. Kanon has been deeply involved with the Witch Narrative thus far, and if this scene is to be trusted then this is an admission that he has had zero autonomy in the prior events. Or, to expand this further, Kanon is not where he wishes to be and is only now realising this desire. He steps out of his role as a pawn in the augmented fiction around him, and Beatrice kills him for it.

You can view this as happening on multiple layers, each one perfectly able to feed into the “fantasy” hanging over everything. On the level of the Witch Narrative, this is Kanon partaking in an act of defiance and getting killed for it. On a more abstract level, this is Kanon threatening to ruin Umineko and being taken out of the story as a result. To be killed by Beatrice so explicitly comes with much deeper ramifications given the state of Beatrice's presence in the story thus far. If a ghost-myth-metaphor appears in the flesh to kill you and turn you into a prop for the next part of the story, what does that mean?

It was not enough for Kanon to just die. He had to be gouged and killed and transformed into the victim of the next twilight – you can easily make the argument that under the terms of the story being turned into a gouged/killed victim is yet another, more severe form, of being rendered furniture. With the Ushiromiya siblings, this concept can easily exist as a form of poetic irony – these powerful abusive individuals are all left as butchered pieces of furniture to be used and deployed however Beatrice sees fit. You are never as powerless as you are when you're a mangled corpse being manipulated by your own killer.

Except Kanon was already furniture – in his own words, even, this is a servitude that applies to Beatrice as much as it does Kinzo. The reversal of fortune works less well on Kanon; his death is an act of rebellion that is transformed into a reinforcement of his inescapable position. He tries to become human and fails at the first hurdle, and thus goes from being furniture to once again being furniture.

I think this situation is worth examining through the lens of the dichotomy of self framework to yield more information. To recap, almost everybody in Umineko struggles with the gap between who they want to be and who they're forced to be. This is a near-universal constant, seen with Natsuhi as much as it is with Shannon. Everyone desperately desires to be somebody else, and hardly anybody can reach this dream.

Kanon is a curious wrinkle in this pattern in several regards. Up until now, as a servant Kanon has been markedly less furniture-like than Shannon. At every turn he has been prickly and begrudging and making no secret of his own feelings to himself, unlike Shannon who leaned so far into the mask she ended up cutting herself off from herself. With Shannon, Sayo almost certainly feels more complicated and unpleasant emotions, but this is completely partitioned off from her servant self. With Kanon, there is an emotional authenticity to his character, but unlike Shannon, Kanon's “Sayo” is nowhere to be seen.

Kanon is not trying to become his desirable self. He is attempting to transform his undesirable self. Where Shannon/Sayo was looking for an exit from being furniture through George, Kanon's actions promise no such escape. He never discards his furniture name, only the label. Kanon does not multiply himself. Kanon reduces himself into a singular concentrated point within the story.

To Beatrice, an entity that thrives on multiplicity and iterative selfhood, an individual who not only defies her rule of power but also eschews his own identity complex in the face of self-actualisation would be something to be loathed. In Chapter 14, Kanon stands for everything Beatrice is not: painfully human, and painfully material.

By rejecting the status of furniture, by holding true to the only name he’s gone by in the story, Kanon is fraying the edges of the hard rules of the fiction governing Umineko. Everyone in this story is duplicitously in tension between their perceived and ideal selves. This tension allows for a rife breeding ground for secrets and uncertainty. This grey area turns everyone on Rokkenjima from human beings into murder mystery characters. This nebulous state of being is the genesis for “existence”. This is how Beatrice asserts dominion.

Kanon chooses a position that is neither, essentially queering the witch-human dichotomy. He is not Kanon the performer in Beatrice’s narrative of magic and murder, but nor is he Kanon the servant in Kinzo’s narrative of power and abuse. His moment of empowerment coming as it does throws all this off the rails, just as this sequence of events throws the epitaph ritual off the rails.

Kanon, in real terms, deals a potentially fatal blow to the Witch Narrative through his “zero on the roulette” gambit, and Beatrice’s only recourse is to clumsily plaster over this act of rebellion with fantasy before any Detective-oriented observer can bear witness to what could be this entire pantomime’s undoing.

However, what happens in the boiler room is not a simple act of metafictional housekeeping. There is a strong and prevalent sense that whatever Beatrice does, she does it spitefully. Shortly before Kanon’s death, there is a bizarrely=presented exchange between himself and the witch, curious for myriad reasons.

Two things which immediately stand about the moment in question are firstly that this serves as our introduction (allegedly) to Beatrice’s presence in the story, and that it tips us off to the fact that there may be an element of hypocrisy to the impartiality of the so-called indiscriminate murderwitch. Kanon’s reward for his defiance is subjecting the Golden Witch Beatrice to the mortifying ordeal of being known, and so we owe it to him to see what we see when the curtain is tugged at even just a little bit.

The immediate thing which jumps out is that Beatrice addresses Kanon not with annoyance, but with loathing. There is something personal and vindictive about the retribution she inflicts upon him. It’s not enough to simply kill him with the stake and set up another Twilight; there is a mockery and a derision. Before Kanon is killed by Beatrice, Kanon is made aware of how much Beatrice hates him. The why in the moment is mostly clear - Kanon threatens to undermine Beatrice’s narrative, which applies simultaneously to all Beatrices and all narratives in play - but we are told in as many words that this rage is specific and personal.

Earlier, we have a comment from Kanon that he refuses to be led astray “again” by either Beatrice or Kinzo which is. Interesting and revealing wording to say the least. Especially when we try to consider who the person behind Beatrice may be in this scene.

If, somehow, we had confirmation that the Beatrice in the boiler room was a metaphor for Genji, then this exchange would make more sense. Kanon the begrudging accomplice making one act of rebellion too many, and Genji’s facade of professionalism slipping to show a hint of what may be true emotions below the surface. Except Genji is not in the basement with Kanon very much on purpose, so whatever materially happened to Kanon did not directly involve Genji, the most likely living target for these emotions.

It’s not even worth pretending Kinzo is alive enough in this moment to not only hear Kanon’s words, but also respond. Even in my initial hypothetical “narrative-compliant Third and Fourth Twilights” outline, for any of it to work Kinzo has to be dead at this moment. And more than that, Kanon specifically makes sure to distinguish between Kinzo and Beatrice in his speech. He has not only been led astray by Kinzo, but also by Beatrice. In this interaction, to Kanon, Kinzo and Beatrice are separate entities.

So the question becomes, as it has been from literally the start: who is Beatrice?

I don’t think it’s possible to answer this question in the direct sense of “what is the identity of the person behind the witch that killed Kanon”, but I think we can explore “what this figure we are calling Beatrice like as an individual?”. The Detective’s truth on the matter remains obscured to the point where any guesses at this point would be meaningless, but the Romantic’s truth remains a valid option. We don’t need to unmask Beatrice to get a sense of her character.

What we know about Beatrice in this chapter is thus: she appears via a cloud of butterflies, she is associated with the fantastical, and she makes the active choice to kill Kanon and wrap his death into another Twilight. From this, we can extrapolate a few things: this Beatrice operates at least in part in adherence to her own mythos, even if she doesn’t necessarily strictly uphold the Witch Narratives in the terms that the culprits have set out. She is not in total alignment with whatever scheme is going on with the Witch Narrative, and she has on some level a personal, spiteful disdain towards Kanon.

When Beatrice kills Kanon, she puts him down as the “furniture” he is. When he attempts his self-actualisation, there is a moment where the narrative insight we get into Beatrice condemns him as foolish and futile and vulgar. It is not simply annoying that Kanon is stepping out of his role. It actively repulses Beatrice on some level. From what we get of Beatrice, there is the impression that Kanon’s decision deeply violates some kind of taboo to the point where Beatrice’s mode of operation leaves the fantastical and dips into the visceral, even if only momentarily.

So what we can claim to learn is that there is something irreparably offensive to Beatrice about people stepping out of the confines of their pre-ordained roles, which is something incredibly interesting to consider. She holds a deep loathing towards Kanon for daring to defy his fate, more so than someone like Genji would if this were a mere case of Kanon messing up the Witch Narrative. Beatrice takes Kanon’s transgression personally, not in the sense that this is a specific attack on her, but in the sense that it upsets her sensibilities more than anything else could.

So why would that be? What about some small little servant choosing to throw off his symbol of abuse and oppression is so offensive to a mighty witch such as Beatrice? She’s centuries old, an accomplished alchemist, and brimming with supernatural power. According to all we know of the Beatrice mythos, she should be able to toss Kanon aside with a snap of her fingers. But there is a mockery towards him, a taunting and a toying coming from a personal degree of loathing.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Kanon got under Beatrice’s skin, but it’s something close. She takes something out on him for his transgression towards her - in his speech, Kanon marks out both Kinzo and Beatrice as individuals he is defying, and that has to be important. It’s clear to see why a furniture servant abandoning the degradation would upset fascist abuser supreme Kinzo, but what about this would be so upsetting to Beatrice? Why would she care at all?

I have some idea, but to elaborate on that I first need to talk about one other curious feature of Beatrice’s presentation in this chapter. She has as tangible a presence as you can get in this chapter, except for one detail: in her “conversation” with Kanon, Beatrice never actually speaks. Her “dialogue” is relayed through the narration and through Kanon’s own responses, but Beatrice herself remains voiceless.

The immediate effect of this is that Beatrice remains in obscurity even as she shuffles around the spotlight. We know in this chapter that she gets mad at Kanon and kills him, but we don’t get anything concrete about Beatrice. No face, no voice. In other words, Beatrice is not given an active presence in the story. She is relayed to us second-hand, even though she plays a crucial role in the events in the boiler room.

There is something to this beyond the benefits to the mystery narrative that keeping Beatrice obscured entails. Of course this presentation keeps us guessing about several elements of Beatrice’s existence - we can’t say either way what Beatrice’s physical form looks like or what it could mean. Revealing Beatrice definitively as either a human or a witch would run counter to Umineko’s narrative worse than anything Kanon could ever dream of.

However, that does not necessarily mean that the only way Beatrice could have appeared in this chapter was in this way. It’s not enough that she’s a hidden presence. She’s also a passive one. She performs no direct action. She never directly tells us anything. Beatrice is kept in check by the narrative as a spectral entity. The only “active” thing we see of Beatrice happens to be her own feelings towards Kanon’s desperate stance.

Beatrice is held in fantasy and only fantasy. The one exception to this is still little more than a gesture at Romantic examination. Beatrice has no tangible, material, Detective’s presence to her. Even in death, Kanon’s murder is not described as someone plunging the stake into him. The stake appears and he is impaled by it - passive voice for emphasis. The only “active” step taken in the death sequence is when Kanon pulls the stake out of his chest. Nothing is directly manipulated by Beatrice’s hands.

Technically, we can’t actually say Beatrice does anything in this chapter. This is something that in truth ties into the broader presentation of Beatrice as a figure in Umineko. Going by the stories told by the servants about Beatrice beyond the Witch Narrative, there is a common thread in all these tales: Beatrice shows up and then something happens. Even in Shannon’s story of the injured servant, her tale is not “Beatrice pushed the servant down the stairs”. It is “a servant disrespected Beatrice and then fell down the stairs”.

There is a very understated and very curious denial of agency seen with Beatrice, on reflection. All she’s really allowed to do is sit there as a cloud of butterflies and be an emblem for misfortune happening that is later accredited to her. I’ve referred to Beatrice as a murderwitch throughout this liveblog, but what’s interesting is that while this reputation is there, we aren’t ever shown more than the reputation itself.

The excuse so far has been that the literal witch Beatrice has been unable to do anything on account of needing to be resurrected in order to return to the material plane first. But even that narrative is something contradicted to the point where it can’t be trusted. Kinzo’s scenes make it clear this is all an attempt to summon Beatrice from a place nobody can normally reach, yet he is also convinced in some scenes that Beatrice is already there, watching him with amusement from the sidelines.

This could be explained away with the whole “Beatrice lacks a physical form and thus she isn’t really there” line of reasoning, except that in chapter 14 she appears to quite literally orchestrate Kanon’s death, and prior to that she allegedly had the means of injuring a servant who disrespected her. How can Beatrice cause harm to servants and yet also be so far removed from the physical world that a violent occult ritual is needed to ensure her presence?

Beatrice is not there, and yet Beatrice is there. In other words, Beatrice “exists”. It’s not just that Beatrice “exists” but that the act of being Beatrice is to inherently inhabit a position of “existence”. Beatrice is a passive entity, strictly defined by indirect non-involvement.

In other words, from a certain angle, Beatrice The Golden Witch is just as restrictive a role as “furniture”. To be Beatrice is to be unseen, voiceless, inactive. No matter how much you may feel or hate or rage you are not given the cathartic release of wrapping your hands around someone’s throat. For all her loathing of Kanon, the only tool at Beatrice’s disposal is to continue to perpetuate her own myth-narrative, merely folding Kanon into the pattern. And at this stage, the Witch Narrative is more akin to a process than a personal action. There is something very distanced and abstracted about killing for the Twilights; it is about continuing to engage with the horror-mystery and not about yourself and your own feelings.

Even through the metaphorical allegories of Beatrice this mode is seen. Genji is bound to the role of Beatrice, defined as his tragic and terrible devotion to Kinzo. Genji couldn’t have escaped this fate if he’d tried. Kanon is coerced into upholding the Witch Narrative through his position as furniture, thus conflating both states of being into one and the same thing. Even further back, whoever is behind the story of the alchemist that gave Kinzo the gold is reduced to a portrait of a white woman in the mansion’s hallway, stripped of everything but a confining ideal. To be Beatrice is to be contained by other people’s demands and expectations.

When it’s laid out like this, it is no surprise that Beatrice reacts to Kanon’s rebellion with outrage. This choice is the one thing she can never do because her whole existence as Beatrice is predicated on that not being an option. Beatrice, no matter the form she takes, is trapped in her role. To cease being trapped by the role of Beatrice is also to lose the power granted by being Beatrice. She is the demon’s roulette. Anyone who risks becoming something more than their assigned category is anathema to her entire nature.

Kanon rebels against Kinzo’s will where Beatrice never could. No wonder she kills him for it.

But, of course, now we need to think about how Beatrice actually managed to kill Kanon in the first place. And to do that we need to revisit the next most obvious from the start question: how many people are on Rokkenjima?

The 19th person issue is one that at times feels too blatant to give more than a cursory amount of attention to: there are nineteen people “existing” on Rokkenjima because Beatrice is an immaterially real shared identity construct. There only being eighteen physical bodies is irrelevant to this count - the number of “people” increases further if you start thinking about people’s multiplicitous selves as their own entities. Witch Maria and Human Maria, adultsona George and kidsona George, Shannon and Sayo, Natsuhi and Ushiromiya Natsuhi, et cetera. Beatrice being an additional facet of the peddlers of the Witch Narrative is merely this mechanism brought to an extreme point.

Except, cutting past all the fantasy and obfuscation, Kanon does still in fact get killed in the boiler room. At the time of this murder, either eight or nine people are already dead by this point. And of the eight other survivors, seven of them very conspicuously are not in a position to murder him at all.

So this dilemma boils down to a singular issue: either Kumasawa killed Kanon, or a nineteenth individual did. The story goes to great lengths to ensure that this is the setup we’re working with here. Where Eva and Hideyoshi were allegedly killed in a way only a witch could have done, Kanon could have only been logistically killed by a witch and nobody else.

There is of course a third angle here, and that’s that Kanon killed himself. It’s technically an option on the table, but one I am not sure has much, if any, basis. The entire scene hinges around Kanon choosing to act out in defiance in a space devoid of observers. There is nobody save for the reader for Kanon to convince of the authenticity of his words and motives. For this premise to work, it would almost certainly necessitate a level of metatextual awareness from Kanon that we have not seen at all.

Kanon acts and reacts to a threat in the room. Kanon makes it clear that his goal is to take this person down with him if he can’t save himself. Everything points to there being a second person in the room with Kanon capable of inflicting harm on him. A person that would, then, hypothetically, flee out of the back door and into the night before being found.

At this point in the story, even Battler is fairly on board with there being a 19th person moving around on the island. After all, nobody among the group of survivors could have been responsible for killing Kanon, save for maybe the incredibly frail Kumasawa. The options are pared down to Kumasawa, suicide, or a 19th person. This person’s identity is unknown, but the fact of their existence is, on the surface of things, pretty undeniable.

This, however, feels like a trap. The existence of a 19th person is part and parcel of the Witch Narrative. To readily agree that there is a 19th person on the island is to buy into the same immaterial theatre spawning the magic circles and the demonic stakes and letters speaking of alchemy. You either accept all of it, or you accept none of it. It’s already been established that the occult artifacts at the murder scene are little more than decoration placed by somebody doctoring the bodies. If this fact is true, then the existence of a nineteenth person must therefore be false.

But if Kanon was murdered by somebody, that somebody was not among the eight survivors. Thus the contradiction making this yet another “impossible” mystery. The only two points of data we have are totally irreconcilable.

Save for one read on the situation: Kanon was killed by somebody outside of the group of survivors, and this individual is also not a 19th person. There is exactly one way in which this can be true, and that’s to consider the possibility that the person that killed Kanon is among those presumed dead.

This is something that’s not impossible. The obvious objection is that for a person who we think is dead not being dead is that that would invalidate the epitaph murder ritual, but we’ve already established that the sequence of events only has value as far as convincing the survivors of something inescapably occult. If twilights can happen out of order, then there’s no reason why we need to assume that a victim has to actually be dead. It’s all about the affect.

If this were true, it would allow somebody outside of the group to move around and kill without disrupting the premise of the eighteen on Rokkenjima. This would mean that Kanon’s killer is one of the victims of either the first or second twilights.

From the outset, both pools of suspects are problematic. Eva and Hideyoshi, even if they weren’t dead somehow, were both physically in the guest room at the time of the murder - there’d be no way for either of them to sneak by the others down into the basement to kill Kanon. The six on the first twilight, beyond being mangled past recognition, are stuck within a locked room to which only Natsuhi has the key.

I still think that if we’re to entertain this possibility, the culprit must be one of those assumed to be inside the garden storehouse. Which means we’ll need to interrogate the function and construction of this reverse locked room.

It’s an established fact that the shed is locked from the outside. It is also an established fact that there is only one key, and this key is held by Natsuhi who has not had a single meaningful opportunity to sneak off and unlock the storehouse.

The only way to interrogate this setup without contradicting the physical facts of the story is through a Detective/Romantic examination of chapter 10’s narration. What we know are the above datapoints. Everything else is extrapolation and assumption, especially if we abide by the non-Battler POV = Romantic obfuscation logic.

So, extending that line of thinking leads us to distrust anything that can’t be immediately verified by the scenes in the parlor. The most crucial fact, and the one that the argument I am making hinges on, is that everybody that was killed still being in the storehouse when it was locked up cannot be trusted with absolute certainty. The only people on the scene during the locking of the storehouse were those involved in the Witch Narrative to some degree, and Natsuhi, who by her own admission could not stomach to look upon the scene for longer than necessary.

Who is to say that, during this period of uncertainty and unreliable perspective, somebody playing dead inside the storehouse slipped out while Natsuhi was looking away in disgust? This would facilitate the existence of an individual who is not part of the group of survivors, yet who also does not contravene the 18 person premise.

There are holes in this, of course. It’s a huge leap to assume that Natsuhi somehow missed a whole person getting up and leaving the storehouse, and there are numerous questions as to how the narrative-peddling servants would permit someone to roam free who would then later betray the occult illusion and murder Kanon. But the basis of this theory is not impossible, so perhaps there are ways to work around this.

We already know Natsuhi’s perspective is highly unreliable, as proven earlier in that exact chapter. She so desperately wants to hide the fact of Kinzo’s death that she starts to buy her own lies, having imagined hallucination conversations in a most likely empty study to verify her own beliefs. If brain ghost grandpa can “exist” through Natsuhi, then it is much less of a stretch for her to willingly or unknowingly let something like this slip. Maybe she was in her own head. Maybe she tuned it out in an act of extreme denial. Either way, it is theoretically possible for Natsuhi to overlook something that big.

As to the servants permitting this, the obvious answer is that this person was allowed to let go as a contingency by Genji in the event of a Witch Narrative stalemate. An additional body roaming around that the audience of this theatre has already written off would be a huge boon in authenticating his own crimes. This person killing Kanon, then, would not necessarily be the end of the world for Genji - as per maybe-Kinzo’s words regurgitated through a hallucinatory phantom, total annihilation is as valid an option on the table as any other outcome. A roulette can land on many outcomes, and an “impossible” killer taking Kanon out transforms this individual into Beatrice in the consciousness of the survivors, furthering the plan either way.

Given that, the question then becomes: which of the dead six could theoretically do this? Who here would pretend to be dead, skulk around the island for a time, and then end up killing Kanon?

I think there are a few suspects we can eliminate off the bat. Krauss and Shannon, the half-face corpses, most likely don’t fit here. As individuals, it does not track with who they are to imagine them acting this way - going by my theory, this would place Krauss as someone who played possum to survive his own assassination attempt backfiring on him. There is absolutely no way that someone like that wouldn’t have immediately come out of the shadows to expose Eva and Hideyoshi; Krauss didn’t even have it in him to keep his embezzlement bragging on the downlow. As for Shannon, the victim in this situation is Kanon. There is absolutely not a single scenario in which Shannon would kill Kanon for any possible reason - he is probably the only person in her life towards whom she feels unconditional love and trust. We’ll never know for a fact how Shannon/Sayo felt towards Kanon’s desperation to save her, but even in the most emotionally complicated interpretation, it still makes no sense for Kanon to be killed by her in retaliation, and it makes no sense for Kanon to have done anything he did in the intervening twilights had Shannon actually survived somehow.

More than that, I have always thought that Krauss and Shannon’s faces being half-destroyed is as close to cast iron proof as you can get that they are definitely, totally, for real dead, for the simple fact that a mystery story’s base assumption is that anybody with injuries that buck the trend are suspicious. Instead, I think this is more likely a case of a tree hiding itself in a forest.

Which turns our attention to the three failsiblings and Gohda. It’s not Gohda, because narratively it makes sense for Gohda to be as much of a victim of circumstance as Shannon in the end despite his bullying of her - middle manager and minimum wage worker alike are insects before the CEO. His abuse of a shred of worthless power cannot save him, therefore he must be dead. Rosa, likewise, would not work narrative-wise to survive. She had a complete character trajectory highlighting the revolving wheel of abuse within the introductory chapters. Her character was never destined for anything more than being doomed by the systems she never managed to do more than perpetuate - surviving the First Twilight would give her licence to try to escape the cycle, which would undermine the whole point of everything that came before.

So we’re left now with two candidates: Rudolf and Kyrie. Both of whom are understated characters with ulterior motives that were never fully elaborated on before they met their ends. Kyrie’s conversations with Battler hinted at the existence of a strategist’s mind with a scheme of her own separate from the gambit Eva strongarmed everyone into going along with. Rudolf, meanwhile, has the lone dangling thread of his “tonight I think I will be killed” comment, the sole thing that, as of this point in the story, we have no clue as to what he could have really meant by that. All we can glean is that the “murder” comment was most likely not a literal portent, but a fear of his that whatever secret he carried would see many people turn against him - either way, there is a Big Thing with Rudolf that never got elaborated on at any point ever.

For this reason, and a couple more, I am inclined to think that if there is a person playing dead, then that person is Rudolf. It would give us room to explore this abandoned plot thread, and it would create a full circle parallel with the comments earlier in the story about how much Rudolf acts like Kinzo - the dead father pretending to be alive, the alive son pretending to be dead. And more than any of that, more than any narrative or thematic reason for this working, is the fact that there is something associated with Rudolf that has otherwise only come up with the discussion of dead bodies.

I am, of course, talking about makeup.

There is a point made of highlighting that Rudolf wears makeup in the earlier chapters as a means of highlighting his superficiality and vanity. He is the pervert covered in glamour. He is, quite literally, bringing a false face to the family conference. Rudolf’s face, his true self and his secrets, have been concealed from the start. Makeup as an image is tied to Rudolf and used as a reinforcement of the fact that this man is not to be trusted.

The word “makeup” is also used in exactly one other context: the mutilated bodies. First we are told that all this gore has ruined the immaculate makeup on Rudolf’s face, and then further down the line we are treated to the description of blood described as "makeup” plastering the corpses. It’s a very curious word to throw into Battler’s panicked monologue, incongruent enough to stick in your mind more than most details.

Given that, it is not much of a stretch to assume we are seeing the literal masquerading as the figurative - this is the whole MO of the Witch Narrative, after all. In a sea of real blood and guts, who would notice that one person in the group was instead pained with makeup? We already know that there is an artificial substance in abundance on Rokkenjima that can be used to mimic the appearance of blood - if it can be painted on doors to create the illusion of a magic circle, then surely it can also be painted on a human face to create the illusion of a corpse.

So in this scenario, Rudolf sits pretty and painted in a sea of bodies, and slips out at the last possible moment. He then hangs around somewhere unseen for a while, before being the one to murder Kanon.

On several levels, this makes sense - whatever schemes Rudolf and/or Kyrie had cooking were derailed by the Witch Narrative, and as someone firmly cemented in the Ushiromiya hierarchy his first instinct would be to take it out on Kanon. This would serve as an explanation for the loathing and disgust conveyed by Beatrice in the boiler room scene, but it does still leave several elements unanswered.

If we assume the Beatrice stuff to be a fantastical plastering over a mundane killing, then we need to ask why Kanon would think and say the things he does if the person before him was Rudolf. Rudolf is emblematic of several kinds of power and abuse, but he is not directly a literal or metaphorical figurehead for Kanon’s oppression. Rudolf is most Kinzo-like when his face is full of makeup - it is an insincere mask with no substance to it. Rudolf is someone Kanon only sees once a year. It makes no sense for Rudolf to be someone Kanon feels the need to take a stand against like this. Rudolf doesn’t really have it in him to be a satisfying Beatrice.

Unless, of course, something changed during the time the surviving Rudolf was off-screen. There are eight whole hours he is unaccounted for. Enough time, perhaps, for someone dedicated enough to solve the epitaph and learn of whatever grim truths lie alongside the gold vault? Perhaps something that relates to his final unspoken secret? There’s still a lot of ground to cover in that area. There’s every possibility the answer lies there, that somewhere down the line we’ll find out how someone could so easily embody a Beatrice position.

That said, this is not the only option for explaining things. Beyond the idea of bodies not being dead and blood makeup and failsons turning into witches, there is something else very weird that goes on in this chapter that absolutely needs looking at, and might even take us to a stranger place than that.

Structurally, chapter 14 is strange. It is a chapter with several oddities - the appearance of the otherwise ephemeral and totally unseen Beatrice, and it is a chapter without a defined timestamp. Every other chapter in Umineko tells us when it happens and goes out of its way to make sure it doesn’t tip its hand too soon with the Beatrice enigma. So for Kanon’s death chapter to feature a lack of time and an abundance of butterflies and other witch-related happenings is more than a little suspect.

Namely because this is not even the first time this has happened in this story. There is one other chapter in the story which deprives us of a timestamp and shows us a golden butterfly, and that’s chapter 9. Which is also, curiously and alarmingly, Shannon’s final chapter.

I spent a lot of time going over chapter 9, highlighting the strangeness of its structure and what that could mean. My conclusion at the time was that we were witnessing something doctored and unreal - to borrow terminology I’ve learned since, my conclusion was that chapter 9 was a “fantastical scene”. I also spoke about how Shannon and Kanon have the curious quirk of being the only ones to ever actually see with their own eyes evidence of Beatrice’s existence, a fact which continues to hold true even in chapter 14.

Now, you could argue that this “disruption” is evidence of the metatextual ripple effect Beatrice’s manifestation is having on Umineko’s reality, but even that wouldn’t be a satisfying answer, because there is also one other time Shannon and Kanon have had structurally identical scenes, and that example was completely devoid of any hints of Beatrice or magic.

Way back at the start of the story, Shannon and Kanon have basically the same introduction scene: they awkwardly present themselves before the family, they fumble their duties and drop something, one adult berates them while another adult berates the first for being too harsh on them, Battler makes the same comparison to a waitress dropping a fork for both of them, and then they have a debrief scene afterwards that hints at deeper, more complicated feelings towards the situation.

Shannon and Kanon enter the story using the same narrative beats with a slightly different retexture. Shannon and Kanon also leave the story using the same narrative shape with a slightly different retexture.

Both walk off on their own going directly against their assigned duties - Shannon heads to the mansion instead of the guesthouse, and Kanon runs off on his own instead of sticking with Kumasawa. Both have a conflict between their “furniture” and real selves - Shannon calms the Sayo inside her to prevent causing a scene, and Kanon attempts to cast aside his furniture role in order to directly cause a scene. Both witness glowing butterflies on their own in a dark corner, and both are heavily implied to have been directly murdered by Beatrice more than any other person in the story. The only difference is that for Kanon, we see it happen, and I can’t help but wonder that had chapter 9 been a full length chapter that we wouldn’t have seen something very similar unfold with Shannon.

This is yet another heap of stuff to add to the pile of “weird parallels and symmetries between Shannon and Kanon” that keeps growing throughout the story. This still isn’t even really touching the bizarre relationship they have to Beatrice and all the ways that that’s played out - both having the ghost story in common, both occupying an odd proximity to the role of “Beatrice”, Shannon as vessel and Kanon as performer. There is a lot of this kind of stuff swirling around the two of them, and I think it really comes to a head with Kanon’s death.

After all, one way of reading this chapter is that both Shannon and Kanon end up suffering the exact same destiny. Neither escapes being furniture, and Beatrice kills them for it. Shannon buried Sayo where she shouldn’t have, and Kanon’s casting aside of being furniture came too little too late. Different textures, but the same shape. This, combined with the fact that both are notorious Witch Narrative spinners in their own ways, paints a very bizarre picture full of question marks with no clear answer.

Nobody else in Umineko shares this level of direct parallel, so it has to mean something deeply significant that Shannon and Kanon are entwined like this. I don’t have the answer yet, but I do think that this is not the end of it. I think that as soon as the metafiction stuff really comes into focus that all of this will become extremely relevant. These two are wrapped around Umineko’s core story structure in a way nobody else is, narratively weird in a way that is only otherwise seen with entities that “exist” in the story. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but there very much is something going on that cannot and should not be ignored.

And one final thing, one final deranged detail that’s worth pointing out that threatens to possibly undermine several thousand words of this very writeup, is that the word “makeup” appears in the description of Kanon’s death. He lies there, hole in his chest, blood makeup dribbling down his body. I previously asserted that this was indicative of a surviving Rudolf taking up the mantle of being a threatening individual acting outside the group, but Kanon also has this word applied to him. A hint towards his killer, or something else?

If Kanon’s death is tainted with the word “makeup”, this means we should suspect something about it. Perhaps it is merely drawing attention to the fact that the stake to the chest is just decoration and affect - to get really tinfoil with it, Kanon managed to pull the stake from his chest before collapsing. If everything is fantastical, perhaps so too is the assertion that the stake was ever in his chest in the first place - perhaps for whatever reason his assailant did not have the time/means to set this up exactly like an epitaph murder. Or perhaps something more is going on. After all, Kanon leaves the chapter mortally wounded, but he is not actually confirmed dead. There’s wriggle room here for something else to happen.

Maybe, just maybe, what we saw here was merely another farce. Kanon taking the chance to fake his death and take himself out of the story while he still can - killing “Kanon” the furniture so the human beneath the mask can survive. Notions of Beatrice and a 19th person and an impossible murder as theatrics to cover up the fact that the tragedy at the heart of the scene is without substance. If so, the question would be whether or not this was intended by The Plan or if this is indeed Kanon acting out on his own. Has Kanon gone behind the scenes to be Genji’s “ghost” because there is no miraculously-surviving Rudolf? Are there two people in this position now? Is there any true substance to any of these theories at all?

I don’t know. I think the truth lies somewhere among all this noise, but I do think it’s starting to come into focus.

[icedragonlizard]

Mr. Gentleman Mouse Thief is in my mind at the moment, so allow me to talk about him for a little bit.

Daroach isn't my most talked about Kirby character or anything, but I sincerely think that he's really cool beans.

Squeak Squad is... on the lower end of Kirby games for me, but at least it did introduce a very cool character in Daroach.

He's definitely my favorite out of the wave 2 dream friends.

I love that this guy just has an aura of coolness around him not commonly seen in most others in the cast. And I also love that even after redeeming himself, he's legit canonically still a thief LMAO.

Daroach's thievery antics make a lot of room for potential as to how he could interact with others in the cast, in my opinion.

I don't necessarily take Star Allies intro gags as either canon or gospel, but I'm well aware of the gag where Daroach steals Magolor's ship away from him. And I think that was utterly hilarious.

My interpretation of Daroach is that he's laidback, good-humored, and is capable of notable kindness as he has a soft spot for some people (most notably his squad, Kirby, and the rest of wave 2). But he also very much enjoys causing mischief via committing robberies.

He steals from most of the other dream friends, quite frankly. Although it's not particularly personal as he doesn't really have disdain for any of them. He just does it because it's fun and enriching for him. He's relatively indiscriminate in terms of who he robs, as there are only a few people that he truly won't steal from.

Those few people include Kirby (because he ain't gonna mess with Kirby), Adeleine, Ribbon (because he'd feel terrible to steal from them), and Meta Knight (he'd want you to believe the reason he doesn't steal from Meta Knight is because of how cool Meta is, but in reality it's because Meta Knight WOULD MAKE HIM REGRET IT).

Daroach is a trollish guy in my headcanons. He's good-humored, like I said. He cracks bad jokes and he might talk your ear off when he's hanging out with you. Part of the motivation of him stealing from certain people such as King Dedede is by virtue of liking to get a rise out of them.

My interp of Daroach being this good-humored is what allows him and Marx to be friends, as they both have that "enjoyment from getting reactions out of people" thing in common. They've definitely teamed up together in mischief before.

I've also blessed Dark Meta Knight by having him be buddies with Daroach.

I like to imagine Daroach's (and by extension, the entire squeak squad's) home being secretive. Like a hideout. It'd make sense because if people found out, their place would totally get raided in revenge for all the robbery attempts. My headcanon is that the squeak squad has their hideout located in a secret place in the Popstar country of Sand Canyon (an area introduced in Dreamland 3).

But yeah, that kinda sums it up here. I've got a lot more for Daroach that I could talk about but I'm gonna keep it brief (at least in comparison to a lot of my other posts LOL).

The guy is super cool and sly, and the stuff we have to work with for him can be very fun use in terms of how he could interact with other characters. Mischievous gentleman thief that's laidback and likes to have fun!

[emoangel44]

very curious abt your noelle concept actually... as you said about your vintage wedding dress design. can you go into depth abt that i really wanna know the thoughts behind it!

okok.... i made a post about noelle and kris being "toxic relationship divorcecore" right after chapter 2 came out this post will be basically explaining what that means. the snowgrave (or weird route but i will use snowgrave as this refers specifically to the chapter 2 weird route and may not apply to later chapters) does a lot of cool shit (like if you want the "purposely mimicking a video game creepypasta" rant just ask) but my personal favourite is how it like... kind of forces a relationship between between kris and noelle.

in order activiate and/or get the most out of it in the first place you have to various things including:

1. give noelle a ring(s) for her to wear as a weapon

2. insist that you will ride the ferris wheel with her (which she usually does with susie. her crush)

3. steal noelles clothes and wear them yourself (her watch but still)

4. tell the shopkeeper you're "something else" instead of friends

all of these will make noelle very uncomfortable.

spamton also calls noelle a "hochi mama" (which is a word for "whore", basically) and your ""side chick". aswell as this, if you believe spamtons "hyperlink blocked" means love (which i personally do) he also makes a double-meaning comment about kris and noelle "making (love)".

after the snowgrave route noelle will start to notice kris first in a room when she usually always notices susie first (again. her crush).

my personal interpretation of this is that it is a method of trying to make you (the player) uncomfortable by effectively making you play a really weird game of smashing dolls faces together with characters you like who are having an awful time. it does this by kinda playing with both forced heteronormivity (by forcing the nonbinary kris into a masculine role and forcing noelle, likely a lesbian, into a weird straight-gender-roled relationship she doesnt want) and their family histories of unhappy marriages (with both asgore and toriel as well as rudy and mayor holiday). this is a subversion of how in the normal route you allow kris and noelle to reconnect and become closer in yknow... a normal way.

there is also an argument to be made that the same "make the player feel uncomfortable and bad for fucking up kris' life for their own desires" thing might also be being done with ralsei and his weird crush on kris/us? and him looking like fucking identical to asriel and that making us fans (the guys who made all those "save the goat" aus) want to get closer to him and making kris be not a fan of the fact a guy that looks like their brother keeps flirting with them and that it might be trying to play with like incest-baiting the same way the snowgrave stuff is with that other stuff i mentioned but yknow. not getting into that

[mwapollo]

hi! :D

so i bingeread ALL of your lore posts last night (theyre all SO GOOD you analyze things so so so so well)

whatre your feelings on scarian/mumscarian?

hi!! thank you so much. I believe I recognise you from notifs (I was really flattered to see someone reading through my posts). it's such an honor for me :) I'm so glad that there are people who share my point of view even regarding things that have so many different (much more popular) fanon interpretations. especially with grumbo! I don't want to dissapoint you after this kind feedback, but I don't really like either of them. there are several reasons for it (highly subjective; by all means, I have no intentoins of reassuring you or hurting your feelings, I'll just try to explain):

grumbo is my OTP in its original sense: One True Pairing. there is a time period (S7 post-election + turf war) where I fanonise Mumbo and Scar dating (I'm planning to make a post about that I promise it all makes perfect sense!), and also I really like Martyn's desperate crush on Mumbo in the deathloop, but the main story, both on Hermitcraft and in Life Series, is 100% about grumbo in my eyes. in every arc of every season of whatever project, I can explain in details where I see grumbo. even! in the endgame of 3rd life, Grian is thinking of Mumbo (there's one particular moment cut from Grian's POV but saved in Scar's). so. they have always been my priority, and scarian didn't stand a chance against them in the first place :D

I can't imagine Grian being romantically drawn to Scar or vice versa. I see them as failure of friends, rivals, enemies or someone else platonically, more complex than words can express in this already not-so-little post, and their canon and romantic fanon dynamic is not my cup of tea. their interactions are proportionally more toxic than tender, and Grian already has so much feelings for Mumbo that for me there's no room for developing another equally detailed and strong love story.

I'm all for polyamory (I've had such experience in the past myself), but somehow I can't enjoy mumscarian; in the existing content, I never see them interpreted as equal partners. the trend the problem of not developing either Mumbo or Scar in these pairings with Grian is a topic for another long and tiring discussion. mumscarian seems to me like a compromise scarian fans make just to include Mumbo when they don't really know what to do with him. if it sounds salty, it really is, unfortunalely-- I don't like how Mumbo is portrayed most of times. mumscarian content always feels like... "ah, desert duo and their usual stuff! ...and this guy, too", and meanwhile I love Mumbo's content and personality both in c! and cc! versions so much I can cry about it. you get my point.

sorry for dumping this into this post, and sorry for perhaps not lining with your expectations :D

this way or another, Scar is a great character with his own motives, feelings and desires, and I (hope I) do my best to interpret him as a deep and detailed character whenever I include him in different AUs and narratives.

my co-author and I even have an AU (in a completely different setting and atmosphere) with a bit of scarian and antagonist/villian Scar. but I can say no more :> I already feel guilty for taking so much of your time, and this idea is kinda secret from public since we want to create something with it one day

thank you for an inbox and your precious feedback again, dear anon! pleasure to talk to you :)

[vidavalor]

Hello! Thank you for visiting. Armchairs and blankets and snacks are over there. *points* Stuff about my blog is here. Please read. Thank you. :)

Hi there! Below please find some stuff about the content of my blog under the cut. As always, message me if you have any questions or comments.

Content Info:

-I don't have an age rating on my blog as we all mature at different rates but I'd say some of the stuff is more adult than others. There is cursing and frequent discussions of sex. High school age or above should be fine here.

-Infrequently, a post may discuss characters who have a history of domestic and/or sexual abuse. All of these posts will contain individual trigger warnings so you will know before you read them and can make the choice as to whether or not that is something you would like to read.

-I don't TW posts for religious trauma in general because I write a lot about it but if the abuse veers into anything related to physical or sexual violence, anti-Semitism, racism, or any type of queer-phobia or anything of any of those types of horrible natures, I will add a TW for it at the top of the post.

-This is queer-friendly space, as is a lot of Tumblr, thankfully. If you are a jerk to me or to anyone engaging with me here, you will be blocked and, depending on the situation, likely reported. In the words of David Lynch as Gordon Cole in Twin Peaks:

-I write a lot about Good Omens and much of what I write about is centered around analysis pertaining to Crowley & Aziraphale's relationship. I welcome all interpretations of it and can see many different ones, personally. I believe that engaging with art means being open-minded and curious about how others see things. It does not mean demanding that your way is "the right" way and I don't expect everyone to agree with me. I say this because Good Omens has a sizable fanbase that identifies as asexual and/or aromantic for some people of that community, the idea of Crowley & Aziraphale as a sexual and/or romantic pairing is not appealing. My point is that if that is you, how you see this show is valid, too. We may disagree on some details on this one particular show but believe you me, we do not disagree about how much there needs to be more representation of asexual and aromantic life in the arts. I have your back on that and if you would like to share something with me that is related to Good Omens or anything else, really, but are hesitant to do so because you see that I write a lot about a different kind of interpretation of Crowley & Aziraphale, please do not hesitate! I love seeing everyone's ideas and creative works. You all are so inspiring. :)

-Feel free to say hi or throw something into my Ask inbox thingamajig. I live for messages. Please be sure to include your pronouns if it's not already readily visible on your blog so I know how to properly address you. She/her for me, please.

Thank you for reading & I hope you're having a great day. :)

[hollowed-theory-hall]

That theory in Riddle being sexually abused by a Doctor figure and the behaviours he depicted + the talk on unsympathetic victims... Kind of violently reminded me of Severus, and especially his Worst memory where the Marauders did what they did to him. Even his bond with Lily was this unhealthy dependency I think? Well not the right word. But Lily was the only thing keeping him sane and going I feel.

Anonymus: Adding on to the previous ask about Sev and Lily and unsympathetic victims. Do you think the Evans ever acted for Severus the way the weasleys did for Harry? A safe retreat? Do you think they ever tried to report Tobias? How do you interpret Sev and Lil's bond? I know a lot of the fandom thinks Sev was infatuated with her/ romantically loved her...but I often felt that Severus raised Lily to a holy Mary status, and that while he did in fact love her, it was platonic (in which case there is a comment to be made about the way platonic love between opp sex PPL is perceived and ridiculed)

I'm not the op of the post you mentioned, but yeah, Severus is a great example of an unsympathetic victim. Personally, he isn't a character I like all that much, but he is undeniably an interesting one. This turned out a little rambly, but that's what I got.

We don't know how SWM ended, but, yeah... not pleasant regardless of how far it went.

Severus was definitely a victim of abuse, both at his home and school and what he went through was awful. That victimhood doesn't excuse his treatment of students in his care. Like, I had a temporary position as an instructor for teenagers, and Severus' treatment of his students makes me want to throttle him a bit.

But as a child, as a teen — he definitely didn't deserve the life he got. Dumbledore has a tendency to turn a blind eye to abuse for various reasons, which ended up fucking a lot of people over, Snape included. (Tom and Hary too)

As for Severus' dependence on Lily, yeah, I think he was incredibly fixated on her. I agree with you that that fixation isn't necessarily romantic. Lily, was essentially Severus' first friend — his best friend. Lily was to Snape what Ron was to Harry in a way. The first person he felt he could trust.

I went through The Prince's Tale to refresh my memory on all of this, and I wanna talk about his friendship with Lily first, actually.

“. . . thought we were supposed to be friends?” Snape was saying, “Best friends?” “We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging round with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev, he’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary MacDonald the other day?” Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face. “That was nothing,” said Snape. “It was a laugh, that’s all—” “It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny—” “What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?” demanded Snape. His color rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in his resentment.

(DH, 569)

Severus sees himself and Lily as best friends. He's happy when she dislikes James, but, he never makes any attempt to become romantic with her. It can be read either way, but personally, I like to read it as a close friendship.

(A little unrelated note about the above quote I saw someone mention once somewhere: Severus knows James fancies Lily, and warns her about it in that same conversation above, and It's interesting he raises Lily's potential romantic interest in James as a retort when she says she doesn't know what he sees in Mulciber. Is anyone shipping Mulciber/Severus? 👀)

I mentioned in this post how I believe Severus' Patronus is a doe because he sees Lily as his defender. Even after all these years. And I think, that too, can be about friendship. Because Liy was his first friend, his first defender. The fact that in SWM we see her step in to defend him suggests to me it happened before. That Lily stepped in to defend Severus, so when he calls for a guardian, in the form of a Patronus, it's still Lily.

And after SWM, Severus is less concerned about what happened to him, he's more concerned about losing Lily. That was the worst thing about that memory. Not his humiliation or assualt, but the loss of his first, and probably only best friend. I don't think he ever trusted someone else like he trusted Lily:

“I’m sorry.” “I’m not interested.” “I’m sorry!” “Save your breath.” It was nighttime. Lily, who was wearing a dressing gown, stood with her arms folded in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. “I only came out because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here.” “I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just—” “Slipped out?” There was no pity in Lily’s voice.

(DH, 571)

Is he a blood-purist who thinks Lily is a perfect muggleborn and therefore an exception to everything? Yes. Severus is in the wrong here about calling Lily a mudblood and thinking it's fine because she's a good mudblood, she's not like the other muggleborns. Lily has every right to cease her friendship with him over it.

But it's telling about his priorities the first thing he does is try to fix their friendship, to apologize to her.

Did he deserve to be hanged upside down and likely stripped in the middle of a large audience at school? Hell no. James probably didn't see it as a big deal, but it's so messed up I don't really know what to say, really. Like, I think Severus definitely fought back and wasn't always the victim of the Marauders, though. In the scene I mentioned above with Mulciber it's implied Severus and his Death Eater buddies are just as bad as James and the Marauders are. Their targets are just different. I think what James did is awful and inexcusable, but at the same time, I think, in the same way Tom Riddle hung Billy's rabbit to scare his bullies away, Severus tried to do the same, if less successfully. It's why he invented spells like Langlock (used in SWM on him) and Sectumsempra.

A lot of his demeanor is the result of abuse. He bullies and scares his students because he's mimicking his father, his abuser. he learned from him to control by force, with fear threats, and degradation. Because that's what Severus experienced as a child. Also, the fact he became a professor as young as he did, meant he felt had to force his students to take him seriously. Some of his first students probably saw him in his lowest moments as a student himself. So, he resorted to the fear and insults that his father likely used when he wanted to be taken seriously.

I truly think the loss of Lily's friendship is what stung the most about the whole ordeal of SWM. I mean, Severus has a lot of bad memories. I'm sure this wasn't the only time he was humiliated and assaulted. He was abused by his father. He was almost killed by Lupin as a werewolf during the prank. And then he joined a terrorist organization where he was likely tortured, where he likely watched people die. And in all of this, his worst memory is this one case of assault that I doubt was the only one? This doesn't make much sense to me, I think it's his worst memory not because of what happened to him, but because he lost his friendship with Lily over what he considers a "stupid slip".

And yeah, after Lily's death, in his mind, Snape raised her to a saintly status. He never has a mean thought about her, because he feels guilty over her death. He feels like he killed his only defender. So, of course, his memories of her are colored like she was perfect. That's how he wants to remember her so he can keep feeling guilty and hating himself over it. He feels like he deserves to feel that way. This is something you see with victims of abuse, they rationalize their abuse by convincing themselves they deserve it.

And Snape is a very bitter character who doesn't want to get better.

As for whether I think he found solace in the Evans household the same way Harry did with the Weasleys? The answer is yes actually. And there's some evidence for it.

Lily knew things weren't good at home for Severus:

“How are things at your house?” Lily asked. A little crease appeared between his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “They’re not arguing anymore?” “Oh yes, they’re arguing,” said Snape. He picked up a fistful of leaves and began tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what he was doing. “But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.”

(DH, 563-564)

And Severus mentioned later in that conversation how his father doesn't just not like magic — he doesn't like anything. Severus and his mother are very clearly implied to be abused by his father when his mother is mentioned. He doesn't describe much of what goes on at home, he tries to act fine, but I'm calling it abuse because of what it most likely is. Severus can't wait to leave home as an eleven-year-old. This isn't something that usually happens in healthy households.

Additionally, Severus spent enough time in their house it was conceivable he and Lily snuck into Petunia's room to find her letter to Hogwarts:

“You shouldn’t have read—” whispered Petunia, “that was my private—how could you—?” Lily gave herself away by half-glancing toward where Snape stood nearby. Petunia gasped. “That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in my room!”

(DH, 566)

So, he probably stayed over with the Evans parents most of the day and only returned home to sleep. That's what I think happened. And, Lily's parents seem very kind and accepting of magic from what little we hear of them:

Lily glanced toward her parents, who were looking around the platform with an air of wholehearted enjoyment, drinking in the scene. Then she looked back at her sister, and her voice was low and fierce

(DH, 566)

“You knew?” said Harry. “You knew I’m a — a wizard?” “Knew!” shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. “Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that — that school — and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!”

(PS, 41)

I think Severus preferred the Evans house over his own. His own where his parents argued and his father abused him and his mother. Where his parents both worked and left him wandering the streets as a young child.

As for whether the Evans parents ever tried to report Tobias, we just don't really know. I'd say no. Domestic abuse in the 1970s was still largely unrecognized and not treated legally and medically like it is today. So, I don't think they'd have anyone to report to even if they wanted to. Especially with where the Snapes lived, which was essentially slums that the police didn't bother with anyway.