User:RD/comm/umineko

Content warnings

• Umineko spoilers
• Umineko is a relatively linear story that is best experienced without spoilers (or very minimal spoilers). There may be full spoilers on this page.
• Once I'm done with this page, I'll hide its contents in a revision link so it isn't as easy to accidentally see spoilers.

I have been told that spoilers matter for this thing. I'm taking that semi-seriously; I saw a couple things about it in a review, but I do not know much right now.
don't read this file unless you have at least watched a video playlist of the game.

hmm... the kanji are way too hard to read on this screen. and none of this line is being read. I think I am looking at the english playlist first and coming back to the Japanese text for reference. the Japanese voice acting may be enough to put things into context.

we've got. a mansion.
the house doctor?
this conversation about Ushiromiya dying from alcohol feels... irrelevant. it's here to be interrupted isn't it
or maybe we're setting up a theme of denial.
> as though it melted the soul
they're playing a chess game each time. so, the theme is that this man's life is an antagonism? between the two players? but what are the sides? Ushiromiya is gross about his control over the mansion. that's pretty funny. so... what does he want to do instead of write a will?
　　oh man he's pulling a Dinesh D'Souza. yeah, the mood is set here
not one thing to tell people or leave behind! - oh really. that must be the big thing he's wrong about
"I created everything" - this means something else. like... the entire world he lives in? who knows.
- no tomb, no coffin! those were the witch's terms!
Ushiromiya is annoyed at the butler for not understanding that the contract is actually contradictory with the concept of a will, entirely

it's possible I can guess some of this story having seen Touhou stuff and Deltarune but, no, there's definitely a lot of uncertainty left here, there are definitely going to be things for me to find that haven't been spoiled. I'm excited.

- show yourself to me, Beatrice, before I disappear to the demons
　　is Beatrice... the witch?
- Beatrice is hidden watching everything. wow, that's familiar

October 4th, 1986 - the first day

another ushiromiya bragging about starting from nothing
and a consistent pattern of them having odd names.
　　- Grandfather's own name is perfectly normal
- keep her away from the head household
- I have no dreams for the future
why is Maria's name spelled like it refers to reality somehow. the other names are kind of normal, spelled in arbitrary kanji. but this one is not.

Episode 1: Legend of the Golden Witch

- the island wasn't on any map. only the Ushiromiya family came here
- maria frightened by missing torii and cloudy sky
- missing seagulls.

- the plane will fall over, the boat will fall over.
- the wheelbarrow fell over.
　　it took me a bit to fully catch this. this is a weird word. it can mean to fall off or to crumble inward depending on what it's used for. I guess you could compare it to the English phrase "fall in": you'd say that at the railing of a boat, although you'd say it about the ocean rather than the boat.

Battler picks up the bags before the servant, wanting to be normal. or at least as normal as capitalists are, anyway — there has been ample setup here that George's uncle building up a corporation is what the main characters consider normal. there is some very evident subtext in this first stretch of the story that it might be based on the concept of the aristocracy vanishing or fading into obscurity and giving way to capitalism, but making that weirdly literal. which I love; fiction is great for its ability to create surreal scenarios.

- grandpa still has three months.

- shattered glass moment.

ok I really do not understand the Battler and breasts thing. it doesn't even really make sense as a character trait. when the characters were going on saying dumb things about men and women at the beginning... okay. it's like, you have to set up what the characters think is normal, even if it's a little concerning, even if it's one of those moments of 'are straight people okay?'. when the characters establish that that's what their normal is like, the character designs being rather stylized and having these conspicuous breast shapes to where the silhouettes look a bit weird just feels like it embodies the setting's culture, even if that culture is tacky. if there's the tiniest bit of irony in it, it flies. I really could have overlooked all of it until this moment where it didn't even make sense. that said...
> we are furniture
- Battler questions the deep subservience of the servants and implicitly raises question of whether they're real or actually fabricated
is... ralsei a maid joke, like, actually?

> haven't these people ever heard of a kotatsu?
second big subtext: when everything is 'European-style' including people's names it makes everything seem inherently more fake when you're from Japan and you put yourself in these characters' places for a second. there is this inherent bias for native Japanese speakers to think for a second that a 'Western-style' building "isn't real" and "was suddenly made up" even though they'll quickly realize that isn't literally true and those kinds of things can exist in Japan.
Toby Fox managed to get across the same feeling with Flowery by making this character that because he first reads as a contrived character and then is inappropriately Japanese it makes him feel more fake. oddly, I wouldn't say the same thing applies to the summer festival / castle world, that feels pretty like a pretty "authentic" depiction of Deltarune's version of Japan in comparison to the flower people.

- Beatrice, the witch hidden in the darkness of the forest
- Grandfather ordered a painting of the witch
- Jessica: that portrait is the symptom of his delusions

- Grandfather (Kinzo) is deep into divination through oldtimey drinks.v absinthe? if I don't have the wrong noun in mind I watched a video where somebody tried to make that with alchemy equipment. it was a rare and expensive thing at the time, and maybe even a bit in the 1980s, no wonder this man is giving it a try
* what you first see in this room is 'alchemy'. what you see second is 'occult' and demons. what you see third is that all of it is European at the same time as being those things.

Grandfather says a bunch of stuff about the family members. I see why there had to be such a long section introducing them, so it could actually be established that everything he says is questionable.
- nobody is fit to succeed me!!

- Grandfather: a risky situation generates the greatest magical power, risk is given to those with power

- Ushiromiya family used to own spinning mills. in 1923 it lost its wealth. Kinzo entrusted to rebuild it
- Kinzo took a big bet, but it is believed the United States occupiers protected him
- during the Korean War he carefully profited from the emergency measures
- he marked out the island under a government program but refused to give it back, and got to keep it
wow. there is a weird amount of history in this
- once he had restored the family's wealth he started the phase of investing in businesses and getting more

- George thinks there is a family legend where the epitaph on Beatrice's portrait leads to buried treasure
I'm laughing. this is a misdirect, isn't it??

- Grandfather did a demon-summoning ceremony, and Beatrice appeared. not ominous at all.
- he said he got the money for his bet in exchange for his soul, though nobody believed him
okay. so like, the reason the Ushiromiya family had to keep earning more money was the starter pile of gold wasn't quite "real". then they rationalize what happened as being all about their own abilities, because from what we're told it wasn't not. so... did Kinzo slowly defraud those people? like, the gold behaves like it's real but it's still going to disappear as far as I know. it's just very advanced counterfeiting in a way
- we thought Grandfather challenged us to a battle of wits
here we go, this is the chessboard. it's Grandfather trying to get more (the witch) without giving anything away, while the family looks for the witch too to try to find the gold

characters discuss the utility of gold bars versus storing wealth in stocks (corporations) or bonds (the government) for an amusingly long time. this is so not what I expected this story to be about before I started reading it but okay. this is fine.
- the rich family's old wrinkled wife?
- beatrice doesn't exist outside this picture

- Rudolf: the president of Marusō corporation brought one of the gold ingots to be examined, and it was 99.99% pure.
- Krauss: it was just an illusion of money
　　- Rosa, don't tell me you believe this man's lies
- Krauss how are you getting money if you haven't found the gold bars

- fourth condition: sell the gold and distribute the money
well that's impossible

- [S] dark silver rule: if you have not done right unto others I will not do right unto you
- Hideyoshi's company, an owner of restaurants, went public, and its rivals are trying to take it over from the inside
　　implication: companies are WASP swarms (pronounced Wasp Swarms) from the beginning with an alliance between "founding" owners and swarms of shareholders that construct together into a stable, expanding pool of wealth
like many things in here the characters' view may be a little optimistic or simplistic. but, if they are even partially right... wow, that's disgusting. it starts to show you how co-op theory is outright connected to existing forms of class society which have an imperialist shape to them, however accidentally. a neocolonial or "micro-" imperialist shape. it's common for people to now act like a network of co-ops is safe or a network of donations going to some particular trunk is safe, but it all resembles a prototypical corporation, it all resembles the East India Company that expanded over India to loot everything in it, and then set up an army and a government. [1]
so this is why I sometimes feel as if teaching people narratives is more effective than teaching them philosophy. the East India Company was a complicated period of history and you need a superficially-neutral narrative to delve into it and see what's going on. likewise, a superficially-neutral narrative like Umineko can give a very lucid picture of what a corporation is

- danger will bring out great magical power. including the danger of "greedy fools" - so, "the miracle" may just happen instead. and it is Beatrice. - why did I put that puzzle out in the open? to power up my miracle, that's why this concept confused me earlier but, I like it. the weird logic of this island is amazing actually.

- at the moment the fools solve my puzzle oh gosh this is Dess right here isn't it but the big difference is that we simply get to see what "Dess" (Grandfather) is planning in a very general way so we can more clearly see the antagonisms between him and the family. > smile we are definitely seeing a theme of lost dreams here already. of Kinzo's lost dream that he hopes he hasn't lost and can make into "a miracle".

- you never know who will be born and survive until you've already won - you don't win the game inside the game, a game is a contest where you win with magic well this is a bunch of Idealist nonsense. now keep going with it, game, and never change sure. Kinzo is disgusting in several small ways. but you've really made me wonder where this is going to go

- solve the seed and summon the miracle this sounds to me like even Kinzo doesn't actually know how to solve his own alchemical riddle to get to the secrets of creating wealth/corporations and he might be leaching clues off the family. it's... it's almost like looking for the Dragon Balls. gosh I'd thought of the idea that the Dragon Balls are inherently tied to wielding power and what having or achieving power means but not that they're alchemical in nature and they could be about creating wealth. what is it with religion and the secret to creation turning into the secret to wealth. you see it with the Buddhist scrolls / Dragon Balls and you see it with alchemy having this dual nature of understanding the universe for either big-picture or 'holy' metaphysical knowledge and of understanding a narrow task of creating objects that are useful or valuable.

- Kinzo's door is so important we have to recap it. the door is sealed because the alchemical knowledge inside is way too important to leak and he needs to keep some of it to gain power.

> Behold the sweetfish river running through my beloved hometown. You who seek the Golden Land, follow its path downstream in search of the key...
> 鮎／阿諛⋯貫く⋯下りて（？）
okay there is a pun in here involving servants and flattery. I don't fully understand what it is. but "くだりて" may be an archaism for humbling yourself to the master of the mansion. (they said "でございます", nothing is off the table here.) it could also mean literally going downward. the spiraling staircases from the beginning come to mind.
the road of 'flattery' that pierces through the hometown of old.
I can definitely sense that if you can't read the original sentence at all you'll be at a disadvantage solving this. the translation I have in front of me has been reasonably easy to follow so it still might have left enough details that were already there in various background things.
> As you travel down it, you will see a village
> In that village, look for the shore the two will tell you of
are... any of the characters named "mura"? ok, now these dialogue boxes that kept giving all the kanji in people's names are really suspicious

> On the first twilight offer the six chosen by the key as sacrifices.
oh no. those are almost certainly people.
for Kinzo this is about what you'd expect, he actually said he'd sacrifice everybody. he might very well mean people. but then again it could be a misdirect that refers to six of something else?
> On the second twilight, those who remain shall tear apart the two who are close
hmm. now that line sounds a little more like trees casting shadows or something.
I can see where Toby got the idea of a slightly ambiguous prophecy now
> On the third twilight, those who remain shall praise my noble name.
> On the fourth twilight, gouge the head and kill.
oh god. that's making me think of other things. I have the worst urge to somehow reference this line in Auldernet because really how can I not
this... makes me think that "those who remain" and "twilight" are figurative somehow. because they're kind of showing up too much to be literal.
it's hilarious how every time I get stumped it's always throwing Trotsky at things that helps me figure them out, occasionally even with fiction.
though why do 2nd, 3rd, and 4th line up so well. who the hell wrote this story??
> On the fifth twilight, gouge the chest and kill.
> On the sixth twilight, gouge the stomach and kill.
> On the seventh twilight, gouge the knee and kill.
> On the eighth twilight, gouge the leg and kill. [foot?]
"kill" must be figurative. there has to be a specific word that only sounds like that but has another specific meaning. the only other option there is that like they find the skeleton of Grandmother or something and the distances between the bones maybe lead to places; Kinzo is spiteful enough maybe he would make a dark joke about "killing" his wife after the time she's already died of natural causes and couldn't say anything about it. I doubt this is going to actually be a bone puzzle though. it seems a little more likely these are puns.

> On the ninth twilight, the witch shall revive, and none shall be left alive.
> On the tenth twilight, at journey's end, you shall attain the power of the Golden Land's treasures, once and for the last time.
that part is going to be more literal. the concept of "killing" may refer to destroying parts of the island or something, but maybe if they do it the witch will appear and the island and all of them will actually be gone. I know something crazy happens in the later episodes of this, though I don't know what it is.
oh yeah an "unrelated" quote comes to mind here.
> Nothing remains but our regrets

> The witch shall praise the wise and bestow four treasures.
> One shall be all the gold from the Golden Land.
> One shall be the resurrection of all the dead souls.
literally?
> One shall be the resurrection of the love that was lost.
> One shall be to put the witch to sleep for all time.
hmm
first: this makes universe-rift Dess more likely
second. within the context of Umineko, it kind of sounds like Kinzo is trying to get more than he can possibly get from the universe and he will tear the witch apart into nothing trying to get to the source of the witch's power. this prophecy sounds like it will end tragically for Kinzo. I can see why he's okay with taking the risk because he has nothing right now (nothing which is real), but yeah.

- good job writing this down, Maria!
all right, gotta love that unsubtle hint.

• characters are on the beach, so they maybe already went through "mura" and the two?
  

- Shannon thinks the river is the actual Hayakawa that leads to the ocean
- George says at the mouth of the river is Odawara castle
which he also says was once wealthy. of course. that's the kind of place that would stick in the old Ushiromiya family's mind. so it could be the place.
- Shannon found Sogakishi

- Battler: it's always possible to bust through a door
- George thinks the six are people.

hang on what is Golden Land, that phrase sounds really fishy
oh no. I looked it up and "Golden Land" could be obliquely referring to an afterlife that exists in Hinduism. this is not looking good.
> a celestial realm filled with desirable objects attainable by those who remember Prayaga
> Remembering Prayaga in Hinduism signifies mental acknowledgment that leads to sin dissolution, recalling the holy site for liberation, and fostering mindfulness that enhances spiritual reflection and connection to divine purity. [2]
so... it's an alchemy-like idea. I find it a little weird Hinduism would be the reference when Kinzo was all about Europe, but it's whatever. you have a very familiar concept of having to purify everything you know of which may be your own understandings of the universe or may be literal substances to get to the prima materia.
the implication is, the philosopher's stone or the witch is not from Kinzo's plane of existence. you cannot get there. you may only be able to get there when you die, if it exists at all.
when this is fiction and all I think the witch exists. but that witch is going to be standing in heaven (or hell) judging people from outside the universe. she is almost completely unreachable. which makes me a little confused in that, if the witch is a supernatural entity, how is it possible to 'put her to sleep for the last time'? aren't supernatural entities that live beyond the material universe usually defined as immortal?

we have an idea of animism here. when an area doesn't have a benign local-god (kami, numen, etc.), it has fae, or a witch. in some ways it's like animism becomes religion in order to tame experiences that appear to be hostile mythical creatures. it may be difficult to domesticate a fox so Japan's fox shrine is a symbolic way of taming foxes. and everything less evidently real goes through the same process.
- edit: Inari mentioned later

- Maria clung to the idea of witches in order to not lose her childhood dreams
- witches are fickle. they forgive when they want to and not when they don't
oh gosh. it's like the wizard of oz (ounces of gold), but if he was an unforgiving god. this is a mood. nobody literally believes the economy is a god all by itself but so many people have dumb superstitions of some kind about it that circle back to this idea.

- Maria hands Battler and Jessica two cheap bracelets presented as 'magic artifacts'
those might be The Two, not two people.

- this island has been cut off from the world

- maria can't find the rose, and wails after nobody believes her. her mother hits her a few too many times. it gets ugly.
it's ambiguous at this point whether the cook picked the rose (my first thought earlier), the weather destroyed it, or it disappeared.
- maria's honesty
so that's what her name means. I see
> 'Who brought you the umbrella?' 'Beatrice!'
of course
Maria took an unnecessary risk, while danger happens to be the only way to see a miracle

- the key

second day

- the phone breaks down. although it's an internal phone line

- Natsuhi wants to stay locked up in her room
does it have anything to do with the presence of the charm on her door?

- the mirror was believed to deflect evil spirits. it looked more authentic than the plastic charm
has the author making a commodity fetishism joke or is it just me. if it is, it's definitely a joke rather than a real point. this is turning products into magic objects, but very very literally

 note: this motif is very familiar to Japan what with all the tokusatsu shows. it wouldn't have been hard to think of

the real genius of Umineko has apparently been making me see Marxism in it and wonder how much of it is intentional

- two people are missing.

- Natsuhi receives an actual key.
locked rooms are almost vaguely important to magic here in their own way, aren't they? the locked room is part of how the riddle is so effective. Natsuhi locking her room means something too.

• door opening animation that the animation in Undertale for walking into the barrier suspiciously resembles

- Natsuhi: they weren't inside the study
did Kinzo flat out ask the witch to make them disappear? this is looking so suspicious. he doesn't respect any of them except maybe Natsuhi
although making Shannon disappear is a strange choice. all she did was think about retiring; she didn't even ask for any of the gold.

- there is something wrong with the storehouse
- dripping magic circle found on storehouse
ok wait. did these three disappear because they went looking for the gold? it was Shannon, Krauss, and Rosa

- I'd seen this many times before on TV
that's just a room full of blood with no bodies in it. three... lacks of bodies?
everyone is screaming and trying to get away. to be fair what's going on is at least really weird. but there is a hint that maybe the concept of visually censoring events is being used strategically here and being messed with
I kind of 'cheated' here. I have a tiny spoiler I got a while back to thank for being able to read this scene so well (?). but the whole concept of objects on the island being fake was already set up at the very beginning on the boat and when Kinzo is first introduced, so I feel like this was guessable anyway
speaking of islands... when was this released relative to The Truman Show?
I have a lot of connections to make on motifs that appear in Umineko but it's going to be challenging to organize everything so any spoilers past Episode 1 are semi-contained just enough you will never see the end of the story before things from Episode 1. I think partitioning off motifs as their Umineko incarnation and making sense labels for them could help a bit on things like Wavebuilder combination pages. like, if the motif says 'redacted motif' or 'Umineko spoiler (Ep. 3)' and you only see the Item number when you hover over it, you wouldn't have memorized what the number "is" if you haven't already been to that page.

- the doctor believes those are real bodies?
- there is a high probability they were damaged after their deaths
so the prophecy may be fairly literal. okay.
um. I cannot believe I'm asking this. which character gets the pick. we've only seen three of them die, right?

1. 2 is Shannon. #3 is Krauss. so who the hell is #4. is that Rosa. don't tell me it's Rosa.
   

additional: Rudolf. Kyrie. Gohda. six sacrifices?
we've still got chest, stomach, and knee to go if the people are getting numbers. but after that there are only three more that die, at least. and then on the ninth death or event the witch appears and things turn around.
so... are the sacrifices actually going to go somewhere to meet the witch? Krauss was told to find the gold, then he died. so is his soul going to go see the gold somehow? an odd thought.

- Hideyoshi: this is devil's work!
no kidding. must mean the witch did it, look at her position in all this

- tool house contains gardening tools usable as weapons, including hammer and sickle
this work is trying to say something but I have no idea what it's trying to say
- is Shannon the same as the others?
it sure seems like she drew the same kind of spite to her.

- blood in the dining hall?
Jessica's reality is broken

- Battler: it's not just us, the killer is confined to this island
- Maria: the killer isn't human ... sacrifices chosen by the key
what is actually the key here. I want to say the choosing happened when the family was alone arguing. but I'm not entirely sure what the key is.
that's probably important because the key is going to determine the next three sacrifices.
oh... is it... is the letter actually a key to unlock Maria and turn her into the killer or something? it has to be something weird like that. she showed her allegiance to the witch.

we're retracing where Shannon was to vaguely get toward what happened

- George: if I hadn't given Shannon the ring...
- Battler: that's where you're wrong
this work is trying to say something.

- Eva and Battler discuss whether there is a 19th person.
implication: as there are fewer people, it becomes more obvious who could be the killer. 12/18 left.
gosh there are so many elements apparently copied out of Umineko into Deltarune that make almost no sense because of how they've been taken out of context. in theory giving them new context would be a good idea, but it feels like Toby half botched that actually.

- Eva: think about what "servant" sounds like. arms and legs.
that's some imagery right there.

- [S] flipping the chess board / spinning the chessboard around
- the culprit is too obvious for this to make any sense
- eliminate the beginning of the story and you have the perfect crime
one of the only times horror-adjacent fiction has talked about in-universe fiction as a plot device and it hasn't felt cheap but at most a little awkward.

- Battler suspects Eva of trying to turn others against the servants
ah, this here might be the hidden theme the work is 'trying to say'.
* [S] Stalin is Monokuma — but backwards, so Monokuma is Stalin. and that is not actually thematically relevant to the story for some reason, it's just mysteriously in there.

- Maria brags about knowledge of magic circles
- freedom is not limited to the body; it can refer to the bonds of fate, or spiritual bonds
> obligations
> It's a magic circle to borrow the power of the sun. He who wears it as a talisman drawn in gold shall be able to break free from the bonds of any prison and receive the power to gain freedom
I think, I remember... the sun is gold. but the sigil wasn't drawn in gold. this is a very polarizing sigil that seems to make some people free and other people dead.
> Psalm 17
> I have planned no evil ... eyes on me ... my enemies crouching like lions
the author must have thought this psalm was really funny. for reasons that are obvious to me but probably not to anybody else.
this is drawn on the circle. this is a spell of like, +3 protection from Trotskyites.
but the spell wasn't drawn in gold like it was supposed to be, so like, was it turned into an offensive spell for the same purposes?
> they will break from their fetters
oh yeah the author is messing with me. this is fucking (pronounced censored) saying something
although it's perfectly ambiguous. I feel as if I'm watching Inception right now and I can't tell whether it's Communists or anticommunists planting the message in the guy's head, good grief.
> Psalm 116, 16 and 17
> The lord has freed me from my chains
oh she gave the wrong psalm. god that is on the level of Sans asking you where you could have seen him before. this little demon may be the one "injecting" these weird messages into the narrative herself.

- Hideyoshi: they weren't freed by being killed, were they?

- Battler: since we got that invitation, we've been locked inside some kind of bizarre world.
- us daytime inhabitants had been invited into the night
hmmm. what do day and night mean here. there are two opposing things the sun could mean. unless the joke is that the witch has snatched away the sun to create night and that's what borrowing the power of the sun is. which would make some kind of sense actually.

- Rudolf (past): why do you think they go to so much trouble making movies about demons? because they don't exist.

- Kan'on: why did Shannon have to die?
- Genji: it was nothing more than bad luck
ok but is that a lie? the witch benefits from lies. that is one of the top themes here

• is Kan'on another reference or not? he seems to have been spared because he nominally sided with The West despite its corruption.

- If you doubt her you will meet with disaster
thought A) Beatrice is a capricious local-god. fits with the themes
thought B) this is a lesson everyone in the fight with H.B. needs to learn, including H.B. none of them can see "Beatrice" is there, and the inability to see the people who worship her is leading to disaster.

- it is abundantly obvious now where Beatrice is. she explains that Battler can't see her
- Beatrice: she's right here
- Battler, because all the servants are looking that way, looks behind him

- they would eventually return to the parlor
> I guess it's like "The North Wind and the Sun".
> If you force someone to stay shut in, they'll resist, but if you tell them to do whatever they want, they'll come back obediently

something occurs to me. in Deltarune there is a prophecy about how anybody can be the hero. there's also the evident mystery of how any of a few people can be the antagonist. that second thing is a lot clearer here.

> an impulse to break away from your life as a kid, like a chick trying to crack the shell of their egg
> adults think kids know nothing about the real world
> because people hate being like everyone else, they try to learn skills other people don't know
> studying is annoying. but these delusions are convenient for bragging about having a skill
this is so funny when you actually know what it means.
> if they know something no one else knows, it becomes part of their identity
but, this one. is this swatch analysis??

- Rosa slapped her for doing it before
I can't believe that after seeing into the symbolism I'm now laughing at this.

- Battler: they're trying to make us think a 19th person did it. I don't like it.
* he says this like three times.

- these murders are just Beatrice legitimately collecting interest

> only the power of imagination can pull clues out from the darkness

- what do you think you're saying to the wife who will act in the dead man's place??
Leo Leo moeru Leo
god, if you look closely enough at this thing.
- you only think it's Aunt Natsuhi because you're looking at the case from a single angle
god we're to the moscow trials part of the story. this is not just me. this is actually for real
...this. this is why the eagle has one side. that took me so long to get. I was like, is it facing West...? no.
umineko is violet holy shit (pronounced censored)
I guess that's not too remarkable when I have already labeled a few works of fiction like 'pataphysics violet but it is very rare. it's rare enough to get a Trotsky counterpart story that is sincere and it's almost nonexistent for it to be violet

- when those lively seagulls return to the harbor everything will settle itself
they're never coming back

Legend

• >: direct quote
• -: statement directly in text
• *: comment
• [S]: abstract theme directly in text
• (no mark): comment