I Once Passed A Chainsaw Shop, And There Was Chainsaw Bill Buying A Chainsaw.

[rionaleonhart]

Over the weekend, my uncle told me the story of his application to Cardiff University. He got an interview, spoke to the interviewer for a while, and then the interviewer gave him a folded piece of paper and said, 'Could you take this to the professor down the hall?'

My uncle did so. The professor unfolded the piece of paper and read it. Looked at my uncle. Looked back at the paper.

My uncle could see the note from his vantage point. It said 'CANDIDATE IS ROARING DRUNK.'

He did not get a place.

(If you're wondering: yes, he absolutely was.)


I listened to the ending song of Umineko again and got SO EMOTIONAL about this stupid visual novel series. It's so beautiful and agonising and deeply, deeply weird. There's nothing else like it. It measurably changed my perspective; at one point it presented me with a question, and I went 'well, the answer is obviously this, but I'd have said the answer was obviously the opposite if I'd seen this question before playing this game.'

(The question, if you're curious, is this (it's best not to look if you're planning to play Umineko). It's got a very simple, very obvious answer, but which answer that is depends entirely on whether you've been through the journey that leads up to it.)

I'm sad that Umineko is in such an inaccessible medium and I can't get everyone I know into this odd thing. Everyone loves paying to read over a million words superimposed over dodgy art on their computer screens, right?

A part of me wants to try to write fanfiction, but I wouldn't know where to start. The canon's just too weird. And it gave me an OTP that's equal parts 'beautiful and romantic', 'juvenile and ridiculous' and 'colossally fucked-up'; it's hard to know how to strike the right balance there!

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

My uncle could see the note from his vantage point. It said 'CANDIDATE IS ROARING DRUNK.'

He did not get a place.

I was going to ask!

A part of me wants to try to write fanfiction, but I wouldn't know where to start. The canon's just too weird.

I've encountered things like that. (I have a lot of feelings about Southland Tales that do include shipping two improbably-named characters once one of them stops being his own twin, and don't include being able to explain Southland Tales. Plus, the tie-in comic suggested that Justin Timberlake's character was actually God, and the Taverner brothers are the messiah, which...what's "If you follow the theological implications, which could very well be meant literally, this would be incest and/or selfcest, I'm not sure which" in shipping terms?)

(That movie also contains a weirdly graphic portrayal of two cars having sex. I can explain why that happened more clearly than I can explain literally anything else about that movie.)

And it gave me an OTP that's equal parts 'beautiful and romantic', 'juvenile and ridiculous' and 'colossally fucked-up'; it's hard to know how to strike the right balance there!

If anyone can pull that off, you can.

[rionaleonhart]

once one of them stops being his own twin

???????

I realise you've literally just said you can't explain it, but I am registering my need for an explanation regardless.

That movie also contains a weirdly graphic portrayal of two cars having sex. I can explain why that happened more clearly than I can explain literally anything else about that movie.

Well, of course you can; you were in Top Gear fandom!

[wolfy_writing]

Okay, let me attempt to explain:

The year, 2008. The universe, alternate. The U.S., mired in a perpetual Middle Eastern war sparked by a terrorist attack on American soil, and implementing an increasingly repressive system of constantly monitoring American citizens in the name of security.

Also, the Baron von Westphalia, the great-grandson of the wife of Karl Marx, has invented a clean energy system called "Fluid Karma", which uses the motion of the waves to generate kinetic energy, and transmits the energy from place to place via quantum entanglement. This is, however, ripping holes in reality, which the government is attempting to cover up.

One of the resistance groups kidnaps officer Ronald Taverner Jr., and gets his twin brother Roland Taverner Jr. to impersonate him. Roland is very confused, has a slight lag to his reflection, and hasn't excreted any form of biological waste for the past week. (Ronald Taverner Jr.'s pooping habits are plot-relevant, I promise.)

Anyway, it's eventually revealed, at the end of the world, that Roland and Ronald are the same person, because if you send a person through the hole in reality, they end up as two people, largely the same, but with some memory weirdness.

It's that, plus several million other deeply weird events, some moderately clever literary references, and the director insisting that he doesn't get why it's so confusing, it's basically the same plot as his previous movie. (His previous movie was Donnie Darko.)

[rionaleonhart]

he doesn't get why it's so confusing, it's basically the same plot as his previous movie. (His previous movie was Donnie Darko.)

I nearly laughed aloud at this.

Thank you so much for taking on the daunting task of attempting to explain! This all sounds interesting, if odd.

[wolfy_writing]

You're welcome! It's odd, it's interesting, and it's actually really funny!

[marginaliana]

Ronald Taverner Jr.'s pooping habits are plot-relevant, I promise.

I... okay.

I have to admit I'm curious about how the hell you could do graphic sex between two cars. Probably not curious enough to go watch it, though. Might have to seek out some gifs.

[wolfy_writing]

It's all to do with the prophecy hidden in the porn star's movie script. It's also why the one true religion is revealed in the Rock's bleeding tattoo.

If you wanted to see a clip with the cars having sex, someone put that specific scene on Youtube (warning - cars having surprisingly graphic sex): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCYB0lzoofc

[marginaliana]

Welp. That is some graphic car sex! For the first half of the clip I was just going, 'hmm, yeah, I guess,' and then the graphic part happened and... wow. As advertised!

[wolfy_writing]

For added confusion and lack of context, I'm sharing my two favorite bits of dialogue:

"Look. Green, you dream. Blue, in an hour you feel new. And you can forget all about mellow yellow and ancient orange, 'cause, hey, I'm giving you blood red. Do you bleed? I said, do you bleed?"
"Yeah, yeah, dog."
"Then you take the blood train. You talk to God without even - without even seeing Him. You hear His voice, and you see His disciples. They appear like... like angels under a sea of black umbrellas. Angels who can see through time."

"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the way the world ends. Not with a whimper, but with a bang. But there is hope. In the end we can be reassured by one undeniable truth. Nobody rocks the cock like Krysta Now. And I mean nobody."

[samuraiter]

Visual novel 'fic is no easy task. Canon tends to be equal parts dense and inaccessible, and the fandoms tend to be painfully small.

[rionaleonhart]

It's frustrating! I personally struggle to write for characters who aren't voiced in canon, too.

Danganronpa fandom is pretty big, but I suppose that's not a pure visual novel, and it's also in the slightly weird position of having become big through a Let's Play before it was actually released in English. My time in that fandom definitely led me to expect more When They Cry fic than there actually is. Alas!

[samuraiter]

Danganronpa is a weird exception to pretty much every rule that exists, I've noticed.

[pict]

I know quite a bit about Umineko via fandom osmosis and just plain fascination, but I've never played it. Not entirely sure why! I binged the anime despite knowing it's inferior and had weird dreams about it. To this day, I'm not sure what that was even about.

But there's so much about this story that appeals to me: meta, time travel shenanigans, witches, the entire concept of Ange (I love embittered and put upon younger generations trying to clean up the mess made by the previous generations), Yasu and all that surrounding jazz, etc. So many of my plot-related pings! All there! And I own it on Steam. I just haven't gotten around to it, for no good reason other than Lack Of Time and not loving PC gaming.

Maybe that will change this year!

[rionaleonhart]

I've heard the anime's a bit of a disaster, which is a shame, because a good adaptation could be cool to watch! Although there are some respects in which I'm not sure how it really could be adapted. (Did the anime do red text? How??)

It's worth giving the visual novel a try, particularly if you're into meta and witches! (And Ange, who's really interesting both in her character and in her role.) I'm not a fan of PC gaming either, but at least the gameplay isn't much more complicated than 'press a button to advance the text, occasionally save'. It's easy to dip in and out of when you have a spare half-hour, which was what I did until I got really into it and zoomed through the rest of the chapters.

If you do play it, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[keltena]

My uncle could see the note from his vantage point. It said 'CANDIDATE IS ROARING DRUNK.'

...Oh dear. I'm not sure where I was expecting this story to go, but probably not there! I wonder if the interviewer or professor still tell the story too?

"Ricordando il Passato" is one of the most unfairly tear-jerking ending themes ever, I swear. It just comes on and whoops, here come the emotions all over again. Umineko really is something special; I've seen or heard of other works that are similar in one way or another, but nothing that's quite like it overall. It's just such a bizarre and unique mix of elements. (Though I think the bonus episode, along with When They Cry 5, is coming out sometime in the foreseeable future? I'm both very excited and somewhat nervous!)

Umineko is such a ridiculously inaccessible canon on some levels that it borders on comical. "Are you cool with VNs? Okay, what about >1.5mil words of very literally translated, sometimes awkwardly-paced VN? Also, there's some really graphic violence and gore, and incredibly heavy subject matter including but by no means limited excruciatingly detailed depiction of child abuse, and also on the flip side there's a nonzero amount of uncomfortable Pervy Anime Humor™ and pantsless bunnygirls, and—wait, where are you going?" Sometimes I do point people at the more accessible LP Archive playthrough if they're not sure yet about the canon or don't want to click through a VN, but it's still such a strange and dense doorstopper of a canon.

A part of me wants to try to write fanfiction, but I wouldn't know where to start. The canon's just too weird.

Yeah, Umineko is really hard to write for. Which seems completely backwards, when so much fanfic fuel is explicitly written into the canon! But it's just so... much, that even if you want to write something simple and contained, where do you even start? Let alone if you're actually trying to replicate the original.

From what I've heard from a friend who writes a lot of BeaBato, it really is a tricky balance to get right! Judging by their work, one possible solution seems to be "write as many oneshots as possible so you can cover all the different aspects of their relationship, and Beatrice herself, between them", but that depends heavily on personal writing style. :P

[rionaleonhart]

I'm sorry I forgot to reply to this earlier! Umineko really is unique; Higurashi is the only thing I've experienced that comes close to feeling like it, and they're still both very much their own thing.

I'm interested and nervous to see what Ciconia is like. It doesn't seem perfectly crafted to appeal to my interests in the way Higurashi and Umineko were, but I'm definitely going to give it a shot.

"Are you cool with VNs? Okay, what about >1.5mil words of very literally translated, sometimes awkwardly-paced VN? Also, there's some really graphic violence and gore, and incredibly heavy subject matter including but by no means limited excruciatingly detailed depiction of child abuse, and also on the flip side there's a nonzero amount of uncomfortable Pervy Anime Humor™ and pantsless bunnygirls, and—wait, where are you going?"

This really is the dilemma. Stop being so unreccable, Umineko!

The LP Archive playthrough was actually my first exposure to Umineko, but I couldn't get into it. I was eventually persuaded to give the actual visual novel a try by, er... by... I'll be honest: it was this Simpsons parody. It clicked for me when I was actually playing it; maybe I needed the music.