firemtn

This one's really putting the answers in the answer arcs. Let's keep thinking.

Okay, obviously I have to start with the big thing.
ALSO. UH... I'm using she/her for Kanon. It kind of just is what makes sense to me at this point.

• I Was Right.
  Just by the existence of gender in a society, this level of reasoning is possible for firemtn. What do you think, everybody?
  Since episode 3, I've believed Kanon must be Beatrice due to a combination of elements, the most major of which being that Kanon seems to have the most opportunity to fake her death and act in the background of the events on Rokkenjima. In fact, even as early as Episode 1 I thought that Kanon must have been the one to give Maria the umbrella. I’ve also said it’s possible Shannon could be working with Kanon and also doing these things, but have hesitated slightly on including her here in large part due to Shannon’s early death in Episode 1 which was claimed to be "guaranteed" (and uh, still, what the fuck was Hideyoshi looking at back there??), and that frankly, Shannon seemed to have no motive other than to help Kanon, as she seems perfectly satisfied and happy with George, regardless of how shit he is, whereas I could envision Kanon deciding to kill the family. As soon as Episode 6’s gameboard began and Shannon and Kanon began discussing love, however, I immediately cued in on what they were putting down. From my notes: “kanon and shannon have to fight??? over who gets to be in love??? huh??? shannon and kanon's happiness is mutually exclusive... they thank each other for being able to realize their love....... this makes. no sense. they've been on screen together before. but. are kanon and shannon the same person?” I didn’t trust my instincts at first, as honestly, it felt like a really ridiculous sort of reach. But uh, yeah, I did eventually tell @senegart and later declare it here, and here we are. It all lined up, one of the main themes of the episode is Dualism after all -- Shannon and Kanon, Zepar and Furfur, Egg-Beatrice and Elder Beatrice, even the stupid coin/cup puzzle is about it! To be honest, as vindicated as I feel about everything, I also feel like Episode 6 spells this out so hard by actually laying down that Kanon and Shannon’s happiness is mutually exclusive that I feel a little like I got that particular part of it too late… Looking back, there was a big clue in Episode 4 when Kanon and Shannon have that discussion about how usually one of them is dead after the first twilight. I did cue in to that after starting to think about Kanon and Shannon being the same person, I even questioned myself if the fact that they had broken the fourth wall meant they were the Gamemaster’s Pieces (as only Kinzo, who is a Gamemaster’s Piece, and Erika, who is controlled by Bernkastel and doesn’t respect the integrity of the fiction, have also done this). Battler flirting with Shannon with his coolguy english lines was a way bigger piece of the puzzle than I thought too -- George was honestly a really powerful smokescreen for Shannon’s involvement to me, I did not think that was the actual six years ago thing entirely because of him. Also… all that gender shit in Kanon and Beatrice’s dialogue -- and, damn, I never commented on it but Chapter 3 has Shannon talking about how happy she was to have been able to “live as a woman” before she dies in a way I even at that very moment had thought made it sound like Shannon was transfem too -- just kept happening in a way that stopped feeling like a funny joke I was telling myself and something intentional, especially given that I knew queer people had to like Umineko for a reason (and Bern and Lambda didn’t seem like quite enough…). I’ll also admit that well, being trans myself probably made me way more able to pick up on that theme in the writing by being able and wanting to imagine it was there to begin with. That whole bit with Erika flailing for Kanon to also be named George felt like a callout on that limitation some people might have too. Too bad Erika, maybe you'd be a better detective if you weren't cis...
  But here we are. Erika’s presence on Rokkenjima only makes 17 people, not 18. Kanon is Shannon is Beatrice. Or rather, they seem to all be three facets/personas(?) of one single person who, likely, we don’t even know the name of. The context of Episode 6 also makes it quite clear this person is the baby from 19 years ago that Natsuhi supposedly killed (congrats, you only killed a servant Natsuhi! But I guess you don’t feel all that guilty about that part!!), AND that context, along with all of the other implications in the narrative from Kanon, Beatrice, and Shannon tells me this person is a trans woman. Wow! That’s a lot of new information about this person who is Beatrice! And yet, there are a lot of questions remaining here:

1. How did the baby survive? My best stab in the dark is that either Genji or Kumasawa (or both) found the infant and hid her away, possibly in Kuwadorian, possibly back at Fukuin House, probably both. Certainly if anyone knows this child still lives, it’s them, being that they are both Beato’s greatest supporters, Ronove and Virgilia, as well as who Kanon describes as being her parents, essentially.
2. Why does the Kanon persona exist? This was also one of my concerns about the “Kanon and Shannon are the same person” theory -- Shannon began working for the family something like ten years ago, whereas Kanon only showed up three years ago. Understanding the singular person they both are as being a trans girl (which like, seems unavoidable given the baby Natsuhi "killed" 19 years ago was amab) it would honestly make more sense if Kanon was the one who’d been there ten years and Shannon only came later. Why literally start coming in to work one day as an entirely separate person that represents your own repression? Episode 6 seems to imply that each persona represents this person’s feelings for one of the cousins (Maria aside -- though Beato also loves Maria, just you know, not romantically) and I can understand the Beato persona being made from her feelings for Battler she was trying to forget & the desire to be the kind of girl he’d like, but if Kanon is this person's feelings for Jessica the way Beato is for Battler, then why is the entire function of the Kanon persona to shut down the possibility of romance with Jessica and disbelieve in her own happiness? The story kind of presents Shannon, Kanon, and Beatrice as both being actual separate personalities but also more groundedly as representations of indecision between one person's potential futures and who they're drawn to, and definitely seems to imply that they're guises this person can swap between at will, so like, I'm not sure what to take away here yet?
3. WHY IS SHE KILLING EVERYONE? While Battler's game seems to show he understands who Beato is, it offers no insight to her personal motivations beyond like, love and wanting to be seen by Battler. There’s no reason even remotely implied for the Rokkenjima Murders at all that I could grasp here. But I'll return to this point later.

• Reading For Featherine
  Ange’s back!!! And she’s hanging out with new character Hachijo Tohya aka Featherine Augustus Aurora aka Ryukishi07’s Milfsona! I know with Battler having supposedly “figured it all out” we needed a different reader surrogate but I’m honestly just happy to see Ange again, even if this isn’t really much about her. And, it does seem like Amakusa killed her for Okonogi. That part sucks. But Ange's here! Yay!
  Tohya is interesting. Tohya apparently wrote everything we’ve read from Episode 3 to 6, in the style of the original message bottles, which assumedly represent Episodes 1 and 2. She claims she understands the truth and wants others to reach it on their own as well, while also talking extreme shit about how people just want answers fed to them directly. Definitely feels like a Rohan Kishibe sort of self insert that exaggerates the author into a comically awful, self important caricature, as kind of a self deprecating joke, but I do wonder if Ryukishi was a little disappointed in some fan reactions too. In the meta world, however, Tohya is simply the human piece of Featherine, who is fishing tales out of the sea of fragments, pulling Ange back from her demise to an event that could have but didn't happen so that she'll read episode 6 with her. There's like, an ouroboros here questioning the reality of everything we've read, where it came from, and how we should interpret it that feels like a direct challenge to my own feelings of distrust towards Lambda's game last episode. It's a reminder that everything here is part of the fiction, nothing we've seen is any kind of reality of what actually happened on Rokkenjima. It's all ideas, not truth, but those ideas can help us understand the truth.

• Beatrices
  I'm seeing double! Four Beatrices! Get it because, aside from Elder Beatrice and Egg Beatrice also there's Shannon and Kanon so like, yeah, okay,
  There’s plenty of other places to talk about Shannon and Kanon though, let’s talk about Beatrice. Egg Beatrice is such a weird character to appear here, it threw me off so badly.. For a while I thought that part of the reason she’d resurrected incomplete like this was because Battler didn’t fully understand Beatrice and like. Maybe? But I don’t really know that’s the case at this point. She’s like, a sweetie but it feels so weird how like timid and subservient to Battler she is and I like, GET, the idea of her calling Battler and whoever the person that Kanon and Shannon and Beatrice all are her parents but it definitely is not my favorite writing choice. That said, I think her journey to like, understand herself, wandering through like every layer of the story we got, from 1986 to 1983(?) to 1998 to each meta world, hanging out with the representation of Beatrice as the ghost of the island and everything is really cool. In general I really enjoyed seeing the two Beatos interact, and also it's relieving and grounding to have a Beato more like the Beato we all know during all this. That element of her exploring every layer of the story to find herself, as well, is so cool. She truly still owns the story even while she's in this state.
  Narratively, I'm honestly still kind of stumped on what exactly Egg Beato represents... They emphasize that Beato left the game, this ressurected Beatrice is a "new" version of her, but like, that's not, actually, what that means for the story, like, Beatrice is representative of a specific facet of a specific person (who's name I don't know) -- she's still here. I wonder if this is like representative of Beato letting go of baggage from the last six years, if she's starting her love for Battler anew in a way? There is so much tied up in the six years ago thing, and letting that go feels... important (though like, in general I just kind of hate the idealization of first love so maybe that's why I feel that way). Is Egg Beato's timid personality more authentic to the core person that Shannon, Kanon, and Beatrice stem from? I kind of imagine this stuff is going to be hard to answer without really knowing more about who that person is, though...
  Also I know I was going to focus most on Beatrice herself here but... man. I love that Kanon is the one that teaches her how to be a witch again, not Elder Beatrice. Beatrice's return is so triumphant and it's so cool Kanon is the one that gets her there. It really does feel like Beato is her ideal self...

• Gamemaster Battler (and also Erika is here)
  Man. I genuinely feel like Battler in this episode is like… a pretty real part of why I felt like I didn't enjoy it quite as much while I was reading as I could have in spite of how satisfying so much of it was. As much as he's a stupid horny idiot, I’m really fond of Battler! And it's not fun to see him be the grim serious game runner, it's not fun to see him be Kinzo-adjacent! Of course like... I don't really think he actually is that much like Kinzo honestly. He has the aesthetic of Kinzo, right? The cape and the white and red and the brooding and sobbing about how much he misses Beatrice and the grim forcefulness towards others and the being mean to Egg Beatrice for not being the same as Beato. Except like. He truly is still Battler beneath it all! Even when he runs Beato's murder game to prove he understands it, he can't bring himself to actually kill anyone, he still offers Erika more help and fairness than he should. Because he's Battler! It's not pride that makes him give Erika her tape and let her retcon her own actions, it's that he's a soft-hearted dude who wants to believe the absolute best in everyone, even when he probably shouldn't. That's not who Kinzo is at all. That's my guy! That's why I like him!
  Also he's still Battler because, man, only Battler could fall apart this fast even after grasping the truth. Only Battler could dig himself a hole so deep while being convinced he can still make everything work that he gets locked for eternity in his own mind prison to solve the logical mess he put himself in. Again, that's my guy. Honestly like, even without the tape and the overall undeserved belief in Erika, even without him digging his own grave by trying to power through with his original plan, his biggest mistake was absolutely making himself "die" during the game. The thing is that like, yeah, this is obviously a classic Beato move -- faking the death of Kanon or Shannon or both in the early game -- but that works for her because Kanon and Shannon aren't obviously her! You can't kill yourself off and expect Erika Furudo of all people to not immediately figure out you're fucking with her!
  And god, Erika is so brutal this episode. She's gone beyond the metagaming of the previous episode and has driven directly into the absolute depths of treating the gameboard as pure fiction, just deciding to kill off every single one of the "victims" herself explicitly to set up a trap for Battler to break his own logic by not telling him about it. It's something that works explicitly because she and Battler are such opposites in how they treat everything. And the solution to the logic error Erika traps Battler in being something that only works because Erika won't look at the situation as reality, something that works exclusively in the format of how Umineko's gameboard is presented as, essentially, real time tabletop roleplaying (Because if she was actually looking at the room itself, it would become clear -- Kanon might not be there, but Shannon is, or Beatrice, or whoever their root person is), is such a perfect reversal to Erika's mindset as well. It's also a very interesting choice that the episode where Erika throws away all vestige of interacting with the gameboard as "reality" is also the one where we get the only piece of characterization for Erika as a "real person" who exists in 1986, not just Bernkastel's game piece, as another reversal to all this. Fascinating character, that Erika Furudo.
  I will say, I think some of Erika's bits this episode, particularly the whole fake wedding, are like... kind of unnecessarily long...? There's some stuff that feels weirdly paced and drawn out for no reason and that whole "putting the ring on Battler" bit is a big one. Oh well!
  Oh and also to go back to Battler again: I really appreciate that he's the damsel in distress and explicitly The Bride in this situation. That's the good stuff.

• Shannon and George vs Kanon and Jessica
  Can I just check in and talk about these relationships that ShannonKanon is in here for a sec. Specifically, mostly, Shannon’s. This perspective we’ve gotten on who they all are is really enlightening for all three but like, I think it finally clicks into place everything that’s felt so weird about how George and Shannon’s relationship is depicted. It’s placid, saccharine, hetero garbage because that is explicitly what Shannon wants it to be. What else, as a young trans woman, could feel better than having this extremely heterosexual cisgender man seeing you as you and validating that and doting upon you for being A Woman and allowing you to take part in the conventions of cishet society? I know that shit is intoxicating. The romance is portrayed as this perfect magic love because of how alluring that premise is, how miraculous it feels for Shannon to have found her way there and how certain George’s love feels. I can even see how Shannon has much more power here than it initially seemed -- so much of the way she acts and interacts with George is so much more clearly now her playing with him versus what it read as before (him being a creep). Also like, as part of Beatrice she is actually in control of everything. And like yeah all this explains why Shannon and George get to win so much. It’s not just that the relationship is established, it’s this alluring validation of self that George represents. He’s so safe and so within the conventions of society and would let her be so normal as A Woman. But that makes George an even worse prospect for her. You really think incel brain-ass George Ushiromiya who is still motivated in his romance by jealousy towards a twelve year old for saying “see you again” in english six years ago even as a 20-something, the extremely conventional family man who dreams of being the capitalist patriarch and having the perfect nuclear family is going to be cool when he finds out Shannon is trans?? Fuck no!! There is a tragedy underscoring this romance that’s been treated as such a magical thing by the narrative/Shannon herself and it’s, what happens when George has to see the reality of Shannon and not just his delusion of her as his perfect little wilting violet princess he’s protecting? This relationship, more than any of the other two, is the one that actually needs a miracle to work. Not because Shannon is furniture, but because George straight up is just a terrible prospective partner for her!
  Jessica and Battler would be totally fine for her though I think. Literally from the start we’ve seen that Jessica is truly willing to accept Kanon as whoever she truly is -- honestly like, Jessica would absolutely take Kanon saying “I want to be a girl” or whatever maybe too enthusiastically, like, very awkwardly so, and also she would have an asthma attack on the spot when she started thinking about the sheer idea of being a lesbian. It would be cute! At this point in my life I have zero love for the fantasy George and Shannon’s relationship represents but I will absolutely always take the bait on the fantasy Jessica and Kanon’s relationship represents. It’s how I already saw it, but knowing I was right cements it all the more. What IF a girl liked you when you were still a weird quiet little boycreature but also could see there was something more to you and she was so caring and wanted to see you flourish and be the most ideal version of yourself? Wouldn’t that be so nice if you could just let yourself have it? Wouldn’t that be so perfect and wonderful and magical, to grow together, to become yourself with her? The real issue with Jessica and Kanon’s relationship that allows Shannon’s relationship with George to win out is that Kanon can’t accept herself. Which, like, of course, it's terrifying. This whole episode is about Battler understanding Beatrice also so like yeah, I believe in that too, she’ll be good with him. That romance is what the whole thing is about. I just needed to say George sucks ass and I hate him and Shannon needs to leave him immediately and also that I do still wish Jessica and Kanon could get their chance to grow together... Truly, if only Umineko was yuri.......

• What Now???
  Okay so like. The episode ends with Beatrice and Battler together and everything is so nice and awesome and we're all in the Golden Land and everyone is happy and real and with their true loves and, oh right. When the Seagulls Cry, No One Is Left Alive. This episode feels so much like a conclusion in that it reveals the truth of who on Rokkenjima is Beatrice and Battler graduates from being the protagonist by winning the game, but also.
  We haven't actually solved what the fuck is happening on Rokkenjima still!
  This episode offers no answer or closure to why everyone is dying! In fact, it simply emphasizes that no matter what happens, everyone on Rokkenjima will still die. These last two episodes have ended barely at the second twilight, and yet they still function within the catbox of Rokkenjima, where no one can escape from death. If I'm to take a stab at it, I think the answer to this is not something we can actually find on October 4th or 5th. Something must be happening on October 6th instead. This is why it doesn't matter if Beatrice or Eva or Rosa or Erika is the one killing everyone, because no matter what anyone does in the time period of the gameboard, everyone will die when the 5th changes over to the 6th anyways. Eva in 1998 even claims everyone else died in "an accident" and that she was saved by solving the epitaph and going to Kuwadorian -- what if she's NOT lying? We know now 1998 isn't the future of Episode 3, so it isn't actually a given that she's a murderer in that world. What if the role of the epitaph is not to lead to Kinzo's gold, but to lead to the only way to safety? That's why Beatrice insists the killings should end when the epitaph is solved, and yet they never actually have -- because nobody is comprehending that the family needs to go to Kuwadorian to escape danger, they just care about the money. This also satisfies everything Virgilia states in red in the previous episode. The issue with this theory, though, is how prepared everything has been beforehand. Why be cryptic and make everyone solve a riddle to escape the mansion exploding or getting decimated by a massive wave from the typhoon or something if the game is meant to be the family's salvation? Is it simply just because the family wouldn't listen to a servant about this, so Battler (theoretically) needs to be the one to do it? Why do your best to make it seem like something else entirely happened? Also, like, how would Shannon/Kanon/Beato know some kind of disaster is going to happen ahead of time so she can establish an entire game based around it and prepare the message bottles and bank account letters beforehand? On the other hand, as @senegart said to me when I brought this up with them, a disaster wiping out the family on Rokkenjima would also match up with Kinzo becoming head of the Ushiromiya family in the aftermath of the Kanto Earthquake, so it fits narratively! It feels like I'm on to something, but the logic doesn't quite hold up to me yet.

• Other Thoughts
  Hey what’s Genji’s deal. He’s also explicitly been stated to be Kinzo’s furniture like Shannon and Kanon but he’s. Definitely not part of the trinity, so like, what relevance does furniture hold to who he is?
  Literally feels like Nanjo isn’t in the game anymore. He's clearly in on so much of this, but also he's just doing fucking nothing. Did he even speak once this episode??
  What's goin' on with Sakutaro?? It almost kind of feels like Ange giving him back to Maria at the end of Episode 4 is something that's affected everything in a nonlinear way so Maria just has him back again even in the past now? That's like, fun if so I guess. It doesn't need to make sense I suppose, I'm just wondering about it!
  The EVA Beatrice vs George fight is the only time Umineko has ever gotten me to root for George a little. He does deserve to escape Eva's big life plan for him and become his own person, even if he sucks. It's just sad that his ideal self, the one that he's built up so much certainty to turn his back on the whole family to be, is...... exactly the person Eva wanted him to be except he's going to marry Shannon (and maybe even more specifically, going to marry his idea of who Shannon is, not necessarily Shannon herself). The Sun Wukong on Buddha's palm comparison really is apt...
  KYRIE GIRL CALM DOWN you do NOT have to dump literally all of your trauma onto Jessica the second she mentions romance oh my god!! This was almost a section in itself but like, there's not thaat much I have to say about Kyrie's bit beyond what I already said about it clearly being the maternity ward swap'em up theory I had before... and overall my feelings about Rudolf now plummeting back into "fuck this guy" territory again. I was a little too amused by the figure skater thing, maybe...
  Actually damn, this means Battler also figured out Kyrie is his biomom, huh? What a weird thing it must be to know someone is your mom when she herself doesn't... Hey Umineko is extremely a game about moms, isn't it.
  This is another episode making me go “wow amazing sound novel fight scene!” I love how much the team for these games fucking go for it within the format, it's so cool.
  I laughed so hard when Kanon was going through all these beautiful memories of everyone and then just went “fuck Gohda though I hate that guy”
  I do love that inventing mysteries for your partner to solve is treated as the literal highest form of romance in Umineko. That's great. Erika will absolutely catastrophically destroy any relationship she could have with Dlanor but it's cute they talk about this regardless.
  I don't really have any huge thoughts about Red/Gold Truth right now beyond thinking really hard about the revelation red truth is essentially calvinball and can just be anything that doesn't create a logic error with other red truth. I'm wondering if Gold Truth is more strict than that -- I've been toying with the idea that Red Truth is a Gameboard Truth and Gold Truth is a Reality Truth but I don't actually know that such a definition really jives with the Literally Two gold truths we have.
  Lambda's progression has been really fascinating. She started out seeming like the most outwardly antagonistic of the Voyager Witches but she's ended up so sympathetic to Battler and Beato by this episode, where Bernkastel has only become more and more twisted. I'm really interested in seeing what she actually does during Bern's game next episode, that could be really juicy.
  Also, uh. Sorry for saying I didn't trust you to write a solvable game Lambda. This episode made it pretty clear that it is in fact required to write a solvable game and that if you hadn't, Bernkastel absolutely would have locked you in mind hell over it.

Next episode is being run by Bernkastel for Featherine. I have no idea what that's going to look like other than that I assume a new 18th person on Rokkenjima is going to appear, as keeping that number in equilibrium seems to be important somehow, and also I am aware there is still one guy in the fighting game that has not yet appeared in this game so like, probably showing up now right? I know Bern and Featherine are talking about carving up the guts of the story for all the answers and all but somehow I have the feeling that we're not going to be getting the full truth of what's going on in the 7th of 8 games. Really excited to see what happens next either way though!