alias_sqbr

Umineko Theorising

Mon, 25 May 2026 11:18:12 GMT

Masterlist.

Spoiler warning! I have watched up to partway through Episode 6, and also have some vague memories of discussion I encountered before playing.

Please do not spoil me for anything later in the game, including letting me know if any of my speculation or vaguely remembered spoilers are true.

In general this story is a lot more fun if you go in blind and come up with theories as you go, less to Solve the Puzzle and more to experience the planned out rollercoaster of interpretations and subversions. I have no idea if any of my theories are correct but feel like having worked them out will improve my enjoyment going forward either way.

Feels good to have my thoughts in order, and I came up with some more ideas while I was writing! For now I am going to just keep watching the LP but I might go back to writing summaries if it feels like that would be helpful.

CW: Incest theories
( Spoilers!! )

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Umineko Episode 4: Alliance of the Golden Witch Part 1

Mon, 25 May 2026 02:27:53 GMT

Masterlist.

Some pretty intense scenes of children experiencing bullying and abuse in this Episode, it was well handled but distressing enough that I went through some sections at 2x speed.

This is only the a partial post because I very suddenly felt like stopping my summaries and working on my Theory instead, and want to post this part while it's fresh in my head.

( Read more... )

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Umineko Episode 3: Banquet of the Golden Witch

Sat, 23 May 2026 13:48:01 GMT

Masterlist.

Ha, I have now started Episode 6 and once again all my theories are in disarray. Episode 5 was amazing though, a really clever deconstruction of the existing structure and the very concept of a murder mystery.

CW: Suicide. Domestic violence, kinda?

( Read more... )

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Umineko Episode 2: Turn of the Golden Witch

Thu, 21 May 2026 15:52:56 GMT

Masterlist.

My Episode 1 post is pretty dry and full of details, because I mostly engaged with it as a murder mystery puzzle and world setup. Episode 2 has more about characters and feelings, and is where I got more attached to those aspects. It's also where things start to get Surprisingly Weird.

Halfway through writing this post I had an EPIPHANY and now have a THEORY. I have written it upo in my Theory Post, which will come after I have written up Episodes 1-5 since it draws on all of them.

I just finished Episode 5, and kind of want to finish writing everything up before Episode 6 throws all my ideas out the window, but also I want to see what happens next!!

( Read more... )

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Umineko: Episode 1: Legend of the Golden Witch

Tue, 19 May 2026 07:23:14 GMT

Masterlist.

I started writing a "short summary" for people who haven't played and to get my thoughts in order, then realised it was (a) getting long and (b) would be easier if I looked up a plot summary to remind myself. So lets go episode by episode until I finish or get bored haha. You can also just read the wiki page I referenced yourself but mine is shorter, if you can believe it, and has a few extra thoughts.

I mostly go through the mystery stuff, there's a bunch of humour and character moments which aren't captured in this summary. I'll avoid anything that significantly spoils later Episodes until a later post, but will not be super strict when it feels more logical to mention things now, or if I have current speculation that I either did or could have come up with at the time.

Please do not leave any comments which spoil past episode 1! I have played up to partway through Episode 5 but some people reading might not have.
( Spoilers for Episode 1 )

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Umineko: Masterlist

Tue, 19 May 2026 06:51:51 GMT

Non-spoilery review

Episodes:

Episode 1: Legend of the Golden Witch
Episode 2: Turn of the Golden Witch
Episode 3: Banquet of the Golden Witch
Episode 4: Alliance of the Golden Witch Part 1

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Umineko: When they Cry

Mon, 18 May 2026 21:49:01 GMT

I've been watching a Let's Play of the classic, epic Japanese visual novel "Umineko: When they Cry" by Ryukishi07, and am currently up to Episode 5 of 8. I'm quite enjoying it but it's LONG. The LP is 168 episodes which are 30 minutes to two hours long.

I'll try and write a proper review when I'm finally done, since the story keeps reinventing itself, but so far it's a family drama and murder mystery with supernatural elements, which explores events from different angles in ways which cleverly play around with narrative, both from a storytelling perspective and as a way of exploring how people view the world and each other in different ways.

It's very much worth going into unspoiled if you are interested. But content warnings for violence and gore (mostly just text), suicide, child abuse (well written but harrowing), gender essentialism, male gazey character designs and and "joking" perviness (sometimes condoned by the narrative, though it's better about female characters than you might initially assume)

No unambiguous consent issues so far asides from some rape jokes but it feels like the kind of story where that could definitely be a Thing.

I'm watching Jokrono's let's play, which involves two young male gamers sometimes being thoughtlessly Unfortunate, especially about Japan. I'm sure there's others out there but this is the one I was recced and I'm overall enjoying it.

( Just cut for length, no spoilers )

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Steering the Craft Chapter 4: Repetition

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 13:07:39 GMT

Masterlist

I decided to poke my writers block by getting back to this and immediately hit a thick wall of Fear of Failure even though that makes no sense with writing exercises. But I persisted!

( Read more... )

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Big pile of Jack Jeanne fanworks

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 14:17:59 GMT

I feel SURE I made a post with most of these like a year ago but I can't find it!
( Read more... )

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Fanworks dump (not Jack Jeanne)

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 14:11:25 GMT

Fanworks dump (not Jack Jeanne)

I've been super creatively blocked lately but also haven't made one of these posts in like 18 months. Jack Jeanne gets its own post.

Fanart:
Gundam Witch from Mercury
Lady Eve's Last Con
Murderbot
The King's Avatar
Boruto
Naruto
Star Trek TOS
Welcome to Ghost Mansion
MDZS (The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation)

Fanfic:
How I Attended an All-Guy's Mixer
Samurai Love Ballad: Party
( Read more... )

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Two Jack Jeanne scanlations I worked on

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 13:26:42 GMT

I helped out with redrawing backgrounds for a couple of scanlations of Jack Jeanne spinoff manga, which was more fun than I expected!

Both are prequels set in the year before the game takes place. They're both high on slashiness but relatively low on trans vibes despite all the cross-dressing.

Parsley This is about two secondary characters (Sugachi and Kaido) and might actually be enjoyable out of context, as the story of a new student at an all boys acting school finding his place once he starts playing female characters.

Pecker Backstory for Neji and Chui, won't make much sense out of context.

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Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 01:13:47 GMT

I was tagged by anghraine, and as is traditional am tagging anyone who thinks it looks fun. I think I may have done this one before but feel like doing it again regardless.

Since I am as much an artist as a writer I'll ponder it from both angles. Won't bother linking everything but my account is sqbr.
( Read more... )

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Half-assed mirror of my top ao3 works on neocities

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:47:03 GMT

I've been meaning to do this for ages and the recent extended outage was the final push I needed to give up on using any sort of fancy css or archive system and just do a plain old html list of the default ao3 summaries.

So: Behold a half-assed webpage.

You need a very basic understanding of html to use neocities, but it was pretty easy to do once the ao3 came back up, I just saved the results of clicking "download html" to a folder called "fic" then changed the links to "./fic/[filename].html". People have to scroll a bit to find anything but if the ao3 goes down long enough they'll be willing haha.

I just did the first page of works sorted by bookmarks, there's others I might consider putting up there but this is good enough for now.

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Music Meme Poll

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 05:27:53 GMT

Rules: put your music on shuffle, and make a poll with the first 5 songs that appear to let folks vote for whichever they like best!

I was tagged by gothyanki but I don't actually listen to playlists much these days, I either listen to specific albums/songs in a variety of ways, or the radio. Last time I did this meme I cobbled together a collection to randomise from, but this time I decided to just listen to the radio (specifically Double J) and write down the first five songs I like enough to theoretically listen to on purpose (though the only one I remember ever actually seeking out is "Weather With You" and then only because it was attached to other Crowded House songs I like more)

View Poll: #34287

Crossposted to tumblr, which means it has to be radio buttons. NO NUANCE as they say on tumblr.

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Music: Full Flower Moon Band – Smoking ft. Drunk Mums

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 06:01:04 GMT

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Fantasy story with loner male knight and cross-dressing female page

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 04:42:38 GMT

I didn't watch Dunc and Egg but Cam did, and he found himself thinking about how fun it could be to have a story where a somewhat loner knight (disgraced/unproven/just antisocial, whatever) takes on a determined and surprisingly knowledgable page, who he eventually realises is a girl in disguise, and they have Adventures (but no romance, preferably)

He asked if I knew of any stories like that, since it feels like a really obvious premise, and I felt like I must have seen something along those lines by Tamora Pierce/ Mercedes Lackey etc but nothing came to mind. eg the Alanna series has the crossdressing page part but not the loner knight, Kel doesn't have the cross-dressing, etc.

So I come to you! At this point we're mostly just curious if it exists at all, but actual recs are definitely not unwelcome. Books/tv/movies, whatever.

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Little Simz - Young

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 02:58:14 GMT

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Iron Infusion

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 03:21:43 GMT

I am VERY sore today but if I don't write this up I'll forget.

So! I got an iron infusion! It was not very exciting.
( Read more... )

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Media and Power: 01 Unit 1: Construction of Meaning: Picture Composition

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 09:17:46 GMT

I finally got back to this! Masterlist.

The chapter: Construction of Meaning: Picture Composition.

It was really interesting reading this as someone who has read lots of art theory for the purposes of being better at art, and picked up some more formal theory via vague osmosis from my artsy parents and their books, but not generally thought about composition very deeply from a media analysis angle.
( Read more... )

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Media and Power: Masterlist

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 09:09:44 GMT

Going through the free university mini-course Media and Power from the University of Iowa.
( Read more... )

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Some Puzzle-y Games I Have Played Lately

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 12:39:18 GMT

Spirit City Lofi Sessions is a productivity game but I'm including it anyway :P

Actual puzzle games: Strange Antiquities, Mega Mosaic, Botany Manor, Logiart Grimoire, The Roottrees are Dead
( Read more... )

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Historical games about not being violent

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 06:10:27 GMT

During the family Christmas Zoom call Mum asked if I had any recs for historical computer games in which the protagonist does not commit acts of violence. When I asked what kinds of gameplay she enjoyed she just said "nothing too hard".

So here's what I came up with after exploring the historical and education tags on steam, if anyone has any recs or anti-recs please let me know!
( Read more... )

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Does anyone want a copy of Little Known Galaxy?

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 19:34:55 GMT

Little Known Galaxy is a farming sim IN SPACE I ended up with an extra key for in a bundle. I have played a little and it didn't grab me but it wasn't terrible and has good reviews. Mac and PC compatible.

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Random Life Update

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 11:13:24 GMT

My therapist suggested I might be burning myself out working too doggedly on a game lately, I was dubious but whenever I feel stuck I've instituted a policy of taking a break not just until I feel up to working again, but until I have felt up to working on a different creative project for a while first. And the positive effects on my mental health and creativity, both generally and even regarding my game, have been significant!

And also it SUCKS. I have this straightforward option for immediate You Did A Thing dopamine right there and have to IGNORE it and find some other more vague, complex source. Excruciating! Especially since all creativity for me has to work around long stretches of Being Too Ill To Do Anything.

So yeah, after much thought about what creative thing I could be doing this time...I am writing this post haha.

Anyway. Life is not too bad! Had a bunch of annoying health stuff, nothing serious just tiring, but despite that I am successfully if intermittently working on a game! It's a remastered version of a game I released 7 years ago, because I'd run out of energy rather than being entirely satisfied with it. So I am happy to see something much closer to my original vision coming together. But making games is so sloooow it is taking forevver, even with the vast majority of it already done.

Also we got a benchtop dishwasher and it's been really good. We have to hand fill it with water because there was no way to get the plumbing to work, and it's too small to handle everything, but it still makes washing the dishes overall way less exhausting.

I'm currently playing the otome (romance) game Nor9 for the switch and it's pretty good, and am still having fun in Jack Jeanne fandom. A friend dragged me into Twisted Wonderland aka "what if there was a magic school full of hot boys inspired by the villains from various Disney properties" which is more fun than it has any right to be, I am not playing the game (gacha + phone game = no) but the plotty videos are on youtube and the ongoing anime is pretty good.

HMMM I feel there was something else but this will do!

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Curious what the scam is with a real estate "letter" we got

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 04:59:00 GMT

There was an obviously computer-printed "hand-written" letter in our letter box from someone claiming to want to buy houses in "your suburb" which emphasised multiple times that the house can be in any condition and that they're not a real estate agent.

So they're obviously targeting easily-fooled people who want to sell their run-down houses but find the process scary and are vulnerable to the promise of some random stranger just giving them a big pile of cash as quickly and easily as possible.

Now that itself could be the scam: offer unfairly low prices and know your target is unlikely to complain. But idk it feels like part of a scam scam not just a sincere if shady attempt to actually buy people's houses. I tried looking up real estate scams but it's all about scams aimed at people buying houses, which makes sense, since that's the more natural situation where you can take people's money and run.

I guess it could be one of those nigerian prince type scams: Offer a high price for the house, well above market value, make the seller think they're the one taking advantage of a dumbass woman, but oh no she needs a little deposit first to handle some unexpected fees, if you could just help out with a tiny proportion now she'll be able to pay the full amount any day now...

Either way, I reported it to consumer protection, since they might be able to do something with the phone number.

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