A few weeks ago I began reading the visual novel Umineko no Naku Koro ni, partially because I enjoyed the Higurashi anime and partially because Tuxedage said it was a mindfuck; I’m up to 3 of 8, and it’s becoming clear that this VN is going to take a while, to say the least. (I’ve never read any visual novels before, so I was not sure what to expect.)
The cramped window and tedium of having to constantly hit the spacebar to advance lines aside (I wish I could just tell it ‘my reading speed is 400WPM, please advance at that rate automatically except for dialogue’; visual novels seem to have the worst of both worlds of novels & anime, where they show as little information as a screen of an anime yet still force you to choose your own pacing without interaction being as easy as a novel where you read an entire page before needing to take any physical action), I’m enjoying it. It’s an interesting mystery setup, I was able to beat the protagonist to some of the solutions which gratifies my ego, and recently it showed off the best use ever of Hempel’s Raven which pleased the heck out of me.
On the downside, I happened to read ANN’s review of the second volume of the manga and apparently the author Ryukishi07 remarks that most readers will be convinced that it’s all supernatural and inexplicable (implying that it’ll turn out to be like Higurashi, with naturalistic explanations for all the events) - which makes me angry since in the dozens of hours I’ve spent reading this, I was pretty sure that we were being shown all the events from third-person omniscient perspective, and one of the narrative rules of third-person omniscient is that you don’t lie to the reader, and we see plenty of supernatural events from this perspective.
You’re on the third game. You’ve seen the same series of events, multiple times—but they’re not the same events, are they?
What you see may be true, without being what you think it is. Consider Battler’s position. Give it some thought. There are multiple layers of mystery in here.
Sure, but it’s one thing to show a true event and let the reader infer the wrong things, and another thing to simply lie entirely:
An example of the former: in episode 2, IIRC, there’s a nice bit where Beatrice tries to set up a locked room by granting as axiom both that the only key to the room was in someone’s possession the day before and also after the murder in that room, which is so suspiciously worded an affirmation that I instantly thought ‘oh, so someone could’ve taken and replaced the key at any time in between’, and sure enough, that’s what Battler then argued.
What I’m worried about is that we’re going to be told that the goats, the lightsabers, the parties at the end, the tea parties in another dimension, Rosa being fed her siblings—all the supernatural events we are shown, not told about, in which there’s no need for misleading inference or mistaken assumptions or interpretations—will be somehow waved away like ‘it was all a dream!’ and I’ll be mocked by the author for being so gullible as to believe what I saw on the screen. As Beatrice might say, there have to be some ground rules that both players follow or otherwise there can be no game. And going back on what was shown like that would definitely not be cricket.
What you see may be true, without being what you think it is. Consider Battler’s position. Give it some thought.
I certainly hope that there will be some satisfying resolution, given how much time I’ve already invested in reading Umineko, yes.
Re. 2: I’m pretty sure red text has been brought up already. I’m also pretty sure those battles happen, in the sense that someone experiences them, but they aren’t necessarily what Battler and Beatrice are arguing about.
Unfortunately (?), there are multiple possible interpretations of what happened in Umineko. I’m inclined to take it all literally, but bear in mind that if you do that, you cannot also assume simple causality on a single timeline.
If you haven’t already, this would be a good time to watch through Higurashi, Higurashi Kai and Higurashi Rei. Especially that last one.
Well, we’ll see what I think by the end of episode 8. I’m less than halfway through, if the episodes are all similarly-sized. I was just posting an interim review because it’s so darn long and arguably should be considered multiple works, some of which I’ve now finished.
What I’m worried about is that we’re going to be told that the goats, the lightsabers, the parties at the end, the tea parties in another dimension, Rosa being fed her siblings—all the supernatural events we are shown, not told about, in which there’s no need for misleading inference or mistaken assumptions or interpretations—will be somehow waved away like ‘it was all a dream!’ and I’ll be mocked by the author for being so gullible as to believe what I saw on the screen.
Update: this is exactly what happens. It even quasi-breaks the fourth wall to mock you. I had no words that day (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
...And then we get mocked some more in the final episode.
I will happily agree with you that certain bits of of the narrative are… decidedly not kosher in that regard.
Nevertheless, Beatrice does spell out the rules of the game, though she’s subtle about it—so once you know it’s a game, you do have somewhere to stand. And I at least ended up enjoying it anyway.
(You’re lucky. I didn’t realize it was supposed to be a soluble mystery until after it had been solved in-plot, which means I’ll never know if I could’ve solved it.)
The software is open-source. I had a look at it some time ago, and it’s also pretty hard to understand, but modifying it to your [gwern’s] specifications should be doable.
Umineko runs on Nscripter, which is closed source according to wiki. Fate/Stay Night runs on Kirikiri2, which is, indeed open source.
I’m not sure if the Umineko translation worked like the Tsukihime one, where they ported it over to the open source ONscripter, but AFAIK there is no way to change the text scroll behavior.
Just so you’re aware, it’s fairly easy to dump the script files from Umineko if you’d prefer to read it that way. There’s also an auto mode, which is irritatingly slow, and a skip mode, which I used to skim through the art after reading the script file.
You might prefer the story of the Higurashi visual novels to the anime, and the English release has a configurable (and pleasantly fast) auto mode.
A few weeks ago I began reading the visual novel Umineko no Naku Koro ni, partially because I enjoyed the Higurashi anime and partially because Tuxedage said it was a mindfuck; I’m up to 3 of 8, and it’s becoming clear that this VN is going to take a while, to say the least. (I’ve never read any visual novels before, so I was not sure what to expect.)
The cramped window and tedium of having to constantly hit the spacebar to advance lines aside (I wish I could just tell it ‘my reading speed is 400WPM, please advance at that rate automatically except for dialogue’; visual novels seem to have the worst of both worlds of novels & anime, where they show as little information as a screen of an anime yet still force you to choose your own pacing without interaction being as easy as a novel where you read an entire page before needing to take any physical action), I’m enjoying it. It’s an interesting mystery setup, I was able to beat the protagonist to some of the solutions which gratifies my ego, and recently it showed off the best use ever of Hempel’s Raven which pleased the heck out of me.
On the downside, I happened to read ANN’s review of the second volume of the manga and apparently the author Ryukishi07 remarks that most readers will be convinced that it’s all supernatural and inexplicable (implying that it’ll turn out to be like Higurashi, with naturalistic explanations for all the events) - which makes me angry since in the dozens of hours I’ve spent reading this, I was pretty sure that we were being shown all the events from third-person omniscient perspective, and one of the narrative rules of third-person omniscient is that you don’t lie to the reader, and we see plenty of supernatural events from this perspective.
EDIT: final thoughts in my review
There’s lying, and there’s lying.
You’re on the third game. You’ve seen the same series of events, multiple times—but they’re not the same events, are they?
What you see may be true, without being what you think it is. Consider Battler’s position. Give it some thought. There are multiple layers of mystery in here.
Sure, but it’s one thing to show a true event and let the reader infer the wrong things, and another thing to simply lie entirely:
An example of the former: in episode 2, IIRC, there’s a nice bit where Beatrice tries to set up a locked room by granting as axiom both that the only key to the room was in someone’s possession the day before and also after the murder in that room, which is so suspiciously worded an affirmation that I instantly thought ‘oh, so someone could’ve taken and replaced the key at any time in between’, and sure enough, that’s what Battler then argued.
What I’m worried about is that we’re going to be told that the goats, the lightsabers, the parties at the end, the tea parties in another dimension, Rosa being fed her siblings—all the supernatural events we are shown, not told about, in which there’s no need for misleading inference or mistaken assumptions or interpretations—will be somehow waved away like ‘it was all a dream!’ and I’ll be mocked by the author for being so gullible as to believe what I saw on the screen. As Beatrice might say, there have to be some ground rules that both players follow or otherwise there can be no game. And going back on what was shown like that would definitely not be cricket.
I certainly hope that there will be some satisfying resolution, given how much time I’ve already invested in reading Umineko, yes.
Re. 2: I’m pretty sure red text has been brought up already. I’m also pretty sure those battles happen, in the sense that someone experiences them, but they aren’t necessarily what Battler and Beatrice are arguing about.
Unfortunately (?), there are multiple possible interpretations of what happened in Umineko. I’m inclined to take it all literally, but bear in mind that if you do that, you cannot also assume simple causality on a single timeline.
If you haven’t already, this would be a good time to watch through Higurashi, Higurashi Kai and Higurashi Rei. Especially that last one.
Well, we’ll see what I think by the end of episode 8. I’m less than halfway through, if the episodes are all similarly-sized. I was just posting an interim review because it’s so darn long and arguably should be considered multiple works, some of which I’ve now finished.
Update: this is exactly what happens. It even quasi-breaks the fourth wall to mock you. I had no words that day (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
...And then we get mocked some more in the final episode.
Don’t worry, even if it doesn’t give you a satisfying resolution, it does give you a hafu or two for your list.
If it does, I will be a little disappointed in the comprehensiveness of http://vndb.org/ which I had already mined for hafu characters.
It’s very spoilery and not terribly straightforward, so I’m not surprised it’s missing.
Ah. Yeah, that was a little bit weird. I still think they should’ve included it, though...
I will happily agree with you that certain bits of of the narrative are… decidedly not kosher in that regard.
Nevertheless, Beatrice does spell out the rules of the game, though she’s subtle about it—so once you know it’s a game, you do have somewhere to stand. And I at least ended up enjoying it anyway.
(You’re lucky. I didn’t realize it was supposed to be a soluble mystery until after it had been solved in-plot, which means I’ll never know if I could’ve solved it.)
I don’t know if this uses the same software as Fate, but if so, try using your scroll wheel. I find it smoother than keys or clicking.
Alas, my trackball has no scroll wheel. Sounds like it’d be hard to know when to stop, too.
The software is open-source. I had a look at it some time ago, and it’s also pretty hard to understand, but modifying it to your [gwern’s] specifications should be doable.
Umineko runs on Nscripter, which is closed source according to wiki. Fate/Stay Night runs on Kirikiri2, which is, indeed open source.
I’m not sure if the Umineko translation worked like the Tsukihime one, where they ported it over to the open source ONscripter, but AFAIK there is no way to change the text scroll behavior.
They did indeed port it to ONscripter, so that’s the one I’m referring to.
I remember doing.. something.. to the text scroll behaviour, though not what. The source isn’t that impenetrable.
Just so you’re aware, it’s fairly easy to dump the script files from Umineko if you’d prefer to read it that way. There’s also an auto mode, which is irritatingly slow, and a skip mode, which I used to skim through the art after reading the script file.
You might prefer the story of the Higurashi visual novels to the anime, and the English release has a configurable (and pleasantly fast) auto mode.