#thoughts about chapter 14

[nachiah]

Spoilers for Chapter 14 of Tokyo Debunker under the cut

Chapter 14 only made me love the Mortkranken duo even more!! I'm just gonna kinda ramble as opposed to my usual, more organized stuff with screenshots and whatnot: I really like that it focused mostly on Yuri's backstory - namely the things he would refuse to tell us otherwise. It goes to show that his bravado and somewhat self-centered nature is mostly for show. He's hiding just how bad he's been hurt by others, and keeping his guard up. As for Jiro, we get a little more of an idea of the sort of sheltered upbringing he had. It's becoming clearer and clearer that he didn't spend much time in the outside world. There are places he wanted to go, but couldn't for whatever reason. And now, it's not like he can just go anywhere. Yuri needs to be there with him - and we learn why: It's his stigma. The injection he received in the immortal patient chapter was probably something to further damage the anomaly without damaging Jiro too, too much. He has no control over his stigma, so *anything* that happens to him - including the effects of poisons and injections - happens to the one that inflicted it. My hopes for his stigma being something like that were realized. Perhaps at the point of making the pact, he wanted retribution. He wanted those that inflicted pain onto him to suffer the same fate. That, however was a bit of a double-edged sword, because now he can *only* be treated by Yuri - but we have no idea why he's unaffected. I personally think it has something to do with a certain level of trust, but that doesn't account for the coma... unless he already knew Yuri back then. Now for the ship-related stuff, and boy did we eat good this time: Yuri rips Nicholas a new one after letting the Frostheim thing slip, and gets mad when people mention that house in general... But when Jiro asks about the funding he could've had, he's met with a calm and direct answer. The way he stepped between Yuri and the Frostheim students when they tore into Yuri (and when he probably noticed Yuri couldn't handle it himself). That man was absolutely ready to throw hands. When Yuri was crying in the infirmary, Jiro said something interesting... to "wait until *we're* alone." Not "you." "We." This means, of course, that Yuri has let his guard down in front of Jiro before. More than once, I would assume with that kind of response. Then the tenderness when he asks MC to "keep him from losing his way..." I also have to note the proud smile he had when Yuri was revealing the truth of the matter to everyone. I love their dynamic so much. They clearly depend on each other, but they are independent enough to not give in to each other when there's a difference in opinion. Just a match of wits with a touch of snark. But when something does happen, they do whatever they can to help one another. Even having just struggled to awake from a small coma, Jiro uses everything he's got to relay that important tidbit of information to Yuri. Jiro *needed* to tell him about the discrepancy. I loved it all - start to finish. While MC took a bit of a back seat in this one, I feel like it was necessary to really show both Jiro and Yuri's overall dynamic and to keep the spotlight on Yuri this time.

[vynnyal]

This is a pretty good point in the wip to share this, methinks :]

Map part for the hole dwelling map, starring... Not my ocs! I wanted to use ocs, but I don't have any-- so I just used the characters from a fic I was reading at the time 😂

Turns out, the symbolism was so much fun to twist into the 11 seconds I had to work with, I ended up going way more complex than I meant to. If you wanna read the fic this was based on, please do!! And tell the author I said hi! :D

[avirael]

Febhyurary 2025 Day 01 - Hello, World

"Hello, World! I'm Elsie and I used to work as a fisher in a tiny village off the southern coast of Vylbrand. Nowadays I live on a small tropical island in the Cieldalaes with a group of people who helped me out of trouble. It's a lovely place with even more lovely people but there is also a lot of work, so I do my best to help where I can and repay them for their kindness."

[fools-of-light]

“I did it. I lived, I survived, and now a new day starts again.”

[akkivee]

the pivotal points in bat’s past 🤔

kuukou

age ????- his best friend moved away

age 14: attained a higher level of asceticism than his father, met hitoya who helped clear an assault charge on some good will that went awry

age 15: left home to flex his talent, got humbled quick lol but met ichiro and vowed to grow stronger

jyushi:

age ???? (presumably 6)- received amanda from his grandmother

age 13- started middle school where he ‘befriends’ iyogi

age 14- has been a victim of bullying for a year and the bullying escalated to the point his grandmother was killed. met hitoya who made sure iyogi ain’t seeing the light ever again and a little later helped jyushi find the will to keep living

hitoya

age 14- loses his brother

age 23- upon receiving a tip, he decided to change majors from being a doctor to a lawyer in order to jail the guy that bullied his brother. broke up with jakurai after a disagreement

age 31- meets kuukou and jyushi for the first time and we see the fruits of his lawyer efforts

[sunshineneedsaplacetokeephernsfw]

Attire mission: Purchase premium attire to get an extended romantic story!

Me: *on Liam's route* Romantic my ass! This is a tragedy

[ghostlycod]

“I have this scene in my head for my fic that I really love but i don’t feel like writing all of the other stuff to get to it.”

I see this comment like 5 times a day in fic writing spaces lol

a scene that you don’t want to write is a scene you don’t want to read. don’t write stuff you don’t want to read.

me, personally: wait until the scenes that get you to that first initial scene you were excited about are just as interesting as that scene too. it won’t be the first, second, or third thing you think of. if u have a scene you really want to write, write that, and keep writing only those exciting scenes that come to you. eventually you have a million interesting scenes for your fic and they become puzzle pieces for you to arrange and then eventually the strings come together and you realize you really do have an interesting way to get to that original scene, and you’re just as excited to write it, if you haven’t already written it when you were brainstorming other scenes earlier in the writing process that you didn’t even realize could carry your story like that.

[beetlethebug]

me, working on my poly mismag fic: yeah it'd be nice if we had a slow burn into the polycule also me: jammer wants to kiss sam so badly right now it makes him look stupid

[pochapal]

happy october 5, 1986 (+37)!

i do not have a full writeup done yet because i have been busy with starting my phd and contracting diseases and surviving horrors and rotating abstract concepts in my mind etc etc etc but what i do have is a hot off the press raw and rough preview of the chapter 14 writeup to share with you all in order to celebrate umineko day in some form regardless.

so, on this day of slaughter i am sharing with you a small slice of my writeup: the 3rd and 4th twilights that could have been had chapter 14 decided not to go crazy go stupid with it. i hope this is a tasty appetizer to satiate everybody as i continue to work on bringing the full writeup to completion.

happy umineko day and thanks to everyone for supporting the liveblog so far! <3

[...] This 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 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 laugh and go witchmode 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? What on earth is actually going on?

[whumpy-wyrms]

yk i was having trouble writing tllr chapter 12 because Dew is sick with a fever in the beginning and i just,, idk felt uninspired or something because im not the biggest fan of sickfics or whatever

well now i’m sick with a fever and it’s helll so sorry Dew im gonna have to put you through this now my bad 👍👍 at least i am now inspired

if this post makes no sense it’s because my brain hurts and i’m tired 👍👍👍

[avirael]

Febhyurary 2025 Day 07 - Sleep

"After I awoke a strange girl explained to me that I had been asleep for a long while and that my head had been badly injured. It certainly hurt enough to make her tale believable. She seemed to be a medic and told me to stay in bed and rest until I was fully healed. Strangely enough she did so without speaking a single word and only communicated using notes quickly but cleanly written on a drawing pad. Despite this oddity and the fact that I had never seen or heard of a person like her before - strange scales covered parts of her face and arms and equally scaly horns grew where her ears should have been - she seemed very friendly and I felt like I could trust her."

[very-uncorrect]

I'm gonna die one day oh my god holy shit fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck there's no afterlife oh holy shit fuck help oh my god no no no no no

[orcelito]

I've been thinking about ITNL 15. I mean this is always how I do it, post a chapter and then immediately start solidifying what the structure of the next one is

I think it'll be shorter than the past two chapters. Just bc I want it to stop at one specific moment (heheh) & then the chapter after is dealing with the fallout.

Which means we should see Wolfwood in chapter 17.

Soon!

[eyes-0f-etro]

cloud strife

[flowerslut]

later? wym we’ll get them later. shannon where’s the child

don’t worry about it

[rosiethorns88]

After finishing the recent Lunar Chronicle's piece, the subject came up about the most satisfying bookish reunions I've read. I thought Scarlett & Wolf were a top-tier reunion, but then thought of these two. I remember when listing to the audiobook the first time, I experienced the rare and involuntary event of dropping what I was doing and lie supine in bed, clutching my pillow through the waves of fear, tension and relief from Chapters 13 & 14. 

This wasn't a rose garden at the end of a rainbow. No fancy dresses or masquerade meetings. This was a dingy motel room with a bandaged-wrapped rat pack welcoming back their runaway. Though without knowing the context of this scene, it's super hard to understand the emotions conveyed. Andrew is holding down Neil by the neck, simmering with anger, but not toward Neil. Neil is in a state of pain and fear, but not by Andrew. What they're both probably feeling is a huge wave of relief knowing that they're both in the same room again.

Took a bit of liberty here with Andrew keeping his hand on Neil's neck (which I've personally equivocated to Andrew's version of a hug) which instead happens just before he pushes Neil down by the shoulder. On a technical note, I had fun with the previous set of illustrations and their background quotes, so I decided to carry that concept through this and any future AFTG artworks if it suits.  As with the previous two prints, this print will also donate a portion of each purchase to The Trevor Project (donations posted on shop listings). Link in bio!