Ladies and Gentlemen, I complained about some Umineko stuff for quite some times now ever since the big revision we did, and it's time to do more than complaining.
Thanks to anyone who helped, either directly or indirectly.
Anyway, I know it'll obviously be a controversial thread, but since I'm moving tommorow it would be very nice of you to not overflow the thread with "just commenting to watch" or "oh boy it's gonna be good" as well as derailing. Just hit the Watch button if needed. Otherwise I'll delete any derailling comments if they happen to prevent stuff from going well.
I could have done the thread later, but hey, impulse makes everything
The Creator or what mistranslation does to mfs
It's been quite some times since I claimed that The Creator wasn't a singular being, but rather a title. Sadly
me being right on everything isn't universal knowledge yet it was a poor, old CRT before we even revised Umineko.
"Kami Tenchi" and "EGD" were exposed as inventions (or misconceptions in the first case) in threads regarding their verses, and now is the time for one of the most used mistranslation in VS debatting, "The Creator".
Memoirs of Lambdadelta english translation and how 造物主 is cruelly misinterpreted in this
Across all of Umineko, including manga and extra stories, we only see "The Creator" being formulated that way a single time in the entire verse, which is in
this sentence of the english version of Memoirs of Lambdadelta. It is the only single sentence who ever used the term 造物主 in that way.
Now when you see this, you immediately think "they are clearly differenciating the gods from this singular being. It is the only one referred as singular and it is even made into its own sentence."
The problem is: the translation was likely handled by a different team from the ones doing ep 1 to 8, and they seem to fail to grasp the context + they seemingly didn't make a good translation.
Our Creator page says that Creators can't be a thing, because japanese has no plural so it can't be a plural term. Except this is obviously wrong. I think it's quite common knowledge on anyone dealing with jap series such as WTC that japanese's way to define gender or plural is context and/or suffix.
One of the most common misconceptions is that 造物主 is read as "The Creator" as in, a single, monotheistic God. While it
can be translated as a singular thing, it is a common mistake of machine translators for it to be taken as singular
despite the word not having any difference between its singular and plural form.
In addition to that, the term itself is used to refers to the 3 divinity of Shintoism,
as reported by japanese wikipedia (yes, the kanji used in the title are different, but that's because 造物主 redirects to it since it's the exact same meaning), meaning the word in itself isn't a proof of plurality nor singularity.
Now, let's look at
this scene, everything looks normal, right? Except you have a part of the extent that just got removed, which
you can found in the japanese transcript on japanese Umineko wiki right there (it is also in the japanese version of the VN as well as both the japanese and english version of the manga, during Lambda-Sayo exchange, so it's definitely something acknowledged in both medium). Although there's fanpatchs which corrected that part, so I'll not divulge too much into "lol bad" territory.
「はい、自分はもう、魔女です。自分が求めるものはたったひとつ。自分と異なる魔女に
よる、自分を魔女だと認めるとの推薦だけです。」
それはまさに、あの少女と同じ願い。
Is the screen that ends with "same wish as that little girl".
But after, that Lambda is supposed to say this in the next screen (with Sayo's response, which you see in the screen, being after the sentence).
「……実にたくましい魔女だこと。なるほどね、あなたがそうだと自称する限り、誰にも
あなたが魔女でないと否定することは出来ないでしょうね。……
でも聞かせて欲しいの。
神も造物主も、誰に認められずとも神であり造物主よ？ そしてそれは魔女も同じはず。
…誰が認めずともあなたが魔女であるならば、私が認めずともあなたは魔女であるはず。
そうでしょう？」
See how Lambdadelta's sentence ends with a very off "but tell me." in the english sentence? Well, all the part in bold is what she's meant to say, but isn't here in the english version. It roughly translates as:
"Let me ask you that then. Aren't god(s) and creator(s) still god(s) and creator(s) without anyone to recognize them? And that is the same for witches. In that case, if you are a witch without anyone's approval, then you don't need my approval to be a Witch. Am I right?"
Lambdadelta doesn't put "Creator" as something better than Gods and there's no indication of it being a monotheistic being above the rest. Although the point here is that the translation clearly has its problems.
Now when you compare it to the one for the main EPs... th
ey always see Creators as a group of individual or
a title, and never referred to 造物主 as "The Creator" in any way. Hell, you even have stuff like
"two Creators" being said (although it was a comparison).
So with this, I demonstrated that "The Creator" is a one off thing from a seemingly worse translation than the main EPs. Now I'm sure there's people who could say stuff like "yeah they removed a sentence but it doesn't mean the first team is right or the second wrong", so we'll do more than that by using the japanese version as well as some supplementary materials!
Concrete proof that "Creator" is a title for some dudes (and Featherine is one of them)
So
our cosmology blog have a fan-translation supposed to "correct" the official one, by replacing every mention of Creators as plural (or "a Creator") by The Creator. But as explained above, there's no given reason to do such a thing, and japanese is all about context.
But from if you look at the Creators TIPS, nothing can tell you if it talks about singular or plural, right? Well, the answer is that the context is given by the
previous TIPS,
the one about voyagers (here's
the transcript of the official english translation).
Short summary for those who don't know about these: EP4 TIPS have 3 of them following each others, basically explaining the hierarchy between witches and stuff. The Witches' TIPS (about Territory Lord) ends with a short mention of voyagers and how Lambda/Bern are part of them; and the Voyagers one ends with an explanation that
witches higher than Voyagers are called Creators.
航海者より高位の魔女は、造物主と呼ばれる. being the part that says this very sentence. (Oh, and in case someone might says the verb is up to interpretation, it is read as "yobareru", which is the passive form of "yobu", which means to "to call"; here it means "to be called". And the only other part that isn't the names of Witches/Voyagers/Creators is より高位 which means higher than/of a higher order than... -here being witches of a higher order than voyagers-).
Since japanese is defined by context, and context uses a plural group of individuals here, it means Creators is also supposed to be read as a group of individuals in its own TIPS.
But there's more to it. Besides small stuff like Beatrice talking about
ascending to the "status of Creator" (
造物主の座にさえ 上りつめるだろう, with
ぞうぶつしゅ being the kana form of the kanji for Creators), you have the
all-too-famous scan of Featherine reaching the status Creator / becoming a Creator, which we dismiss because of... a scan saying she reached it.
Like seriously, it doesn't talk about any last boundary stopping here, they said she reached the highest, forbidden heights, which in lore is what "Kingdom of Gods" is. Any stuff like being the last boundary of another domain is just people trying to justify something that doesn't need to.
And then you have the last and maybe biggest thing,
Ryushiki07's own explanations regarding Featherine and Creators, which are basically everything you need to prove this point even more.
Question 1 and 2 are basically saying Featherine writes the world and is Ryushiki07 "i'm strong af" self insert, which he calls the strongest character. But what's interresting are question 3 to 5, that talk about what is Featherine's nature, why Voyagers fear becoming Creators, and also kind of an explanation of "Maria being the strongest Creator" statement in the story.
Auau type of existence
- Question 3:そもそもフェザリーズとは、どういう存 在なのでしょう?
- A『Ep6』のTipsで、フェザリーヌ が「生き死にを繰り返している」とあったのは、 フェザリーヌ自身が駒だった頃、自分たちも 誰かにライティングされている登場人物であ るという事実を知り、自由意志と信じて疑 わなかったことが、誰かにライティングされ ている物だと気づいたために死んじゃったん ですよね。でも彼女は、自らもライターとな って帰ってきた。 そして恥も外聞もなく、自 分の作品の中に自分を描くことで真の自由 意志を得た。彼女は今、リレーマンガのよ うな世界にいるのかもしれないですね。自 分のキャラは自分で書くけど、それ以外は 複数のライターが書いているような世界に 存在しているのかもしれません。
- Question 3: What kind of existence is Featherine anyway?
- A:In the tips of Ep6, it was said that Featherine "constantly repeats a cycle of life and death." When Featherine herself was a piece, she realized that she was a character being written by someone, and what she had believed to be free will was being written by someone else. That's why she died. But she came back as a writer herself and found true free will by drawing herself in her own work, without shame or embarrassment. She may now be in a world of relay manga. She may exist in a world where she writes her own characters, but other characters are written by several writers.
- Question 4:航海者が造物主になるのを恐れるとい うのは、そのあたりに由来するのでしょうか?
- A:そうですね。 マンガって読んで いるときは面白いけど、いずれ読み飽きち ゃう。でも白いノートを与えられて自分で書いていれば無限に遊べるので、マンガを読 むより遙かに面白いかもしれない。ただし、 自分のアイデアが枯渇したり、描く行為に 飽きたら終わりますよね。しかも自分(作者) の望まないような展開やキャラクターは生ま れてこない。造物主というのは何でも生み 出せるが故につまらない生き物ですよ。
- Question 4:Is that where the Voyager's fear of becoming a Creator comes from?
- A:That's right. Manga is interesting when you read it, but eventually, you get tired of reading it. But if you are given a blank notebook and write in it yourself, you can play with it endlessly, which is much more interesting than reading manga. However, if you run out of ideas or get bored with the act of drawing, it's over. Moreover, you (the artist) will not be able to create characters or developments that you do not want. A Creator is a boring creature because they can create anything they want.
- Question 5:------ 他人が作った面白い話を読めなくなる んですね。
- A:造物主でないほうが、TVの前 に座っていればどんどん物語を見ることが できるのと同じで楽なんですよ。人間は、 自分が誰かの作品の登場人物であることす ら自覚しておらず、自由意志によって行動 していると信じているので、一番気楽な存 在です。一方でベルンやラムダたちは、チャンネ ルを自由に変えたり、ときどきシナリオライ ターに注文をつけて、話に介入できる階層。 ただし介入すると物語が変わってしまうの で、その事実はギリギリまで知らないふりを している。 フェザリーヌは、そこに踏み込ん で死んでしまったんでしょう。 白紙のノート に妄想するのは楽しいけど、そこにずっと話 を書き続けるのはかなりしんどいので、魔 女は死んでしまうわけですね。魔女というの は、「自分たちは、誰かの創作物じゃないか」 ということに気づき始めていて、なおかつ 異なる創作物を閲覧できる立場にいる者で、 上に行けば行くほど執筆者の立場に近づい ていき、本当に執筆者の域まで到達すると 終わってしまう。真里亞が「原初の魔女」と 呼ばれた理由は、飽きることなく、ゼロから ドンドンとアイデアや世界を膨らませていけ るからなんです。
- Question 5:---You won't be able to read interesting stories made by others
- A:It's easier to not be a creator, just like it's easier to sit in front of the TV and watch more and more stories. Humans are the most comfortable because they don't even know they are characters in someone else's work, and they believe they are acting of their own free will. On the other hand, Bern, Lambda, and the rest of the hierarchy can intervene in the story by changing the channel at will and occasionally giving orders to the scenario writer. However, they pretend not to know this fact until the very last minute, because it would change the story. I think that's what killed Featherine. It's fun to fantasize in a blank notebook, but it's very hard to keep writing stories in it, so the witch dies. Witches are those who have begun to realize that they are someone else's creation, and they are in a position to view different creations. The reason why Maria was called "the Witch of Origins" is because she can expand her ideas and world from scratch without ever getting bored.
To summarise all the big infos here: Creators are the writers of the world (those who create fate, to take Lambdadelta's Memoirs words), Featherine is one of them and her avatars (witch, human, etc... selves) are her self-inserts, there are several writers, Voyagers fear boredom (after all it is their main disease) and Creators are booring af, they know about stuff but pretend they don't, Voyagers are those who know they are under someone's control but don't want to be the one under for this reason, and Maria is the Witch of Origins and all because she would never get bored, which is what it means to be the strongest Creator in the verse's context.
Overall, it establish without a single doubt that Creator is a title granted to several beings, whom Featherine is part of.
As such, we should delete "The Creator"'s page, change Featherine's last key to give her Creator stuff, yeet this note from the world, change any justification using "The Creator" and update the cosmology + verse pages accordingly.
Quite a big change already, isn't it? Well, there's more!
The Third Domain, the infinite ladder and their headcanons
So now that we introduced the quite important Q&A and Creator info, it actually helps to tackle even more things.
A ladder is quite a big thing
So the basis of High 1-B or p much anything involving 1-A comes from a single thing: Lambdadelta talking about an infinite ladder with infinite steps, which we consider to be restricted to the Witch Domain.
Well, I'm here to challenge this notion, and explains how it just
can't be as limited as we think it is.
I would first get your attention to
this specific scene, especially the sentences that appear on the first screen appearing since the timestamp.
In this english translation, Lambdadelta says that
all beings can be put between two extremes
, the extremes being the lowest part of the Human Domain, and the highest being the "Kingdom of God", with the infinite ladder being for
everything in between, nowhere does it says that it is restricted to the Witch Domain, just that they are around "the middle". While the Witch world is part of that infinite ladder, the opposite doesn't have to be true.
Not convinced? Well, there's more to support that.
This statement is pretty much the same in the japanese version, being
全ての存在は、運命に翻弄される側と運命を生み出す側の二極の間のどこかに位置していると説明できる。
However the kanji translated as being there is 存在, which has another meaning,
existence. As shown prior, Lambdadelta Memoirs is really badly translated, and the specific part of the sentence 全ての存在は can be commonly read as
all of existence, making the idea that Lambda's talking not only about the Witch Domain even stronger.
In addition to that, you can't say that Lambda didn't know about Featherine's study or about anything outside the Witch Domain either,
since she's the one who litteraly gave us the information about it for the very first time, meaning she knows about it all too well, and yet still think this ladder is for all of existence and not just her domain.
What it means is that the Witch Domain would actually only hold a finite amount of layers, and that the only character who may qualify for scaling to an infinite amount being avatar Feath.
But before any rebuttals using the Third Domain, please read the two others parts.
New layers in a new domain?
With the idea of a Third Domain (which is how people decided to nickname where City of Books and Aurora's Study are, something I'll talk about in the next part) was born the idea of infinite new layers of a hierarchy.
My arguments will be a
gainst the hierarchy proposed in our current cosmology blog known as "3rd Domain Hierarchy".
First thing is: it clashes with Lambdadelta explanation, which only mention a single ladder for everything up to Creator. She knows about the Senate, she knows about the City of Books, she knows about Featherine's Study, she knows about Gods and Creators, yet never once did she made a difference between anything under Kingdom of God regarding the ladder. They all are mere layers of a single big ladder and it doesn't make sense for her to not say anything about it.
But wait, let's see what are the scans used to prove a new hierarchy, and an infinite one, at that.
Ignoring the first scan which just says that Featherine>Witches, the second one uses a sentence talking about Beatrice "stepping in her level".
Here's the japanese version of that exact part in the screen.
その意味において、自らの魔法体系を組み上げた彼女は、魔女としては初心の部類に入りながらも、その域は魔女をすでに凌駕して、…貴方の域にまで踏み込み掛けていると言えるかもしれない。
The part that was translated as "step into" is 踏み込み which does mean that, but just in a "to get into" way. It isn't talking about any kind of layers, and is just another way of saying "I think she's starting to become a witch of your caliber / of the same level as you". There's no cosmological implication regarding this sentence, making the thing already pretty shaky, but then you have the proof of a new infinite hierarchy which is...
"Voyagers journey having no endpoint". I don't think there's a need to get the japanese on this one. Featherine was a Voyager and ended as Creator per Ryushiki07's words (see the part using the interview) so it's just flowery language.
Besides, this statement comes from a TIPS before anyone even talked about Featherine's world, and seeing it as referring to that makes no sense (given Voyagers aren't living there and have no business having their journey there for most of them), and is obviously referring to them ascending the layers of the infinite ladder the way Lambdadelta explained in her Memoirs.
As such, there's no second hierarchy, and the ladder extent to the entire verse except the "Kingdom of Gods". I think there's no hiding that it'll affect the tier of the verse, but I'll only talk about such matter at the very end.
Now, to our next issue.
City of Books, where are thou? (featuring Lambda/Bern stuff)
Lambda/Bern aren't encompassing everything dude
Quoting the CRT who made it happen, we have a key for Voyagers which is based on them being "abstract and universal laws that cover the entirety of the witch domain" which later got extended to including the "Third Domain".
Not mentionning the fact that we have no scan about it and that most of it is just taking bits of statements like Golden Fantasia having Lambda saying the world is meant to entertain them (which, as seen in the interview, makes more sense for it to be like someone watching a TV, not them being the entire world); it contradicts Lambda Memoirs again but also Umineko in general.
The true, undeniable Lambdadelta flat out says she isn't anywhere done with the infinite ladder, and also stated a screen prior that witches were in the middle of it. In her Memoirs, which obviously apply to her true self.
The japanese is kind of similar besides possibly taking "witches higher than me" as being used to refer to Beato eventually going to surpass her because she doesn't have fear.
Anyway, as of now in Umineko, Bernkastel is stated to be below Lambdadelta several times and she likely would have lost their fight if not for Feath's intervening, so this also apply to her.
Besides, it should be mentionned that what we were doing is saying that somehow, Bern and Lambda already finished ascending this ladder and were in fact on the same level as Featherine's manifestation, which makes no sense.
As such, we should just follow what the work tells us, and remove this nonsensical key.
Third Domain, Featherine's study, and City of Book
First things first, the "Third Domain" is a headcanon. Nowhere in any of the medium was it ever referred as a domain or anything like that. The only thing we have is Featherine's Study being outside of the Witch Domain, which would just be its own realm just like how you can have stuff between Human/Witch Domain.
Now, we are under the idea that the City of Books is at the top of the ladder
because of this transition showing Feath's study in it.
And well, I guess it can be a proof?
But I think it is kind of a strecth to put others witches on Featherine's (self-insert?) level based on this.
The Senate are the strongest witches in existence, and
"hardly different from gods and creators", but they are still witches, which means they are still in the ladder. Since Lambdadelta, a witch of the Senate, still thinks she has a long way to go before reaching the end of the ladder, the Senate not being at the end of it looks more logic. And as hown prior, said ladder only stops at the "Kingdom of Gods", so it's more coherent that way.
Another minor problem I have is the fact that the Tea Party used seems to have Feath writing and talking to someone which would be another Creator based on how there's a being emphasis on Feath talking to "nothing", "no one", etc... and how it echoes Ryushiki07 equaling Creators with Writers or his talk about what Feath does in Question 3, which would imply that Feath's Study is closer to the "Kingdom of Gods" than the City of Book.
However this last argument is shaky af, so I only want to propose to keep City of Books and Feath Study above Witch Domain, but still on the ladder, as their own thing and not a part of an invention such as this "Third Domain".
At best, I think the City of Books scaling to her study may warrant a "possibly" if there's a need for it to have it; but that's just preferences on this one, so you can ignore it.
I intended to include a part about Oblivion, but eh, I'm lazy, so let's see how it affects tiering.
"Wow, Yuri's revision ends up being a downgrade, how surprising
Surprise no surprise, everything I said will downgrade the verse quite a lot.
To summarise the current tiering reasonning for the Meta Beings, here how it is:
- Dudes in 1-B are in the Witch Domain, since they are in the middle of an infinite ladder made of infinite layers; but the layer they are on is unkown
- Those in High 1-B are at the end of the Witch Domain or already started leaving it; because we think that the infinite ladder is restricted to this domain only
- 1-A is for those above the Witch Domain
- 1-A+ is because, since Voyagers' journey has no end, it means there's an infinite hierarchy to a new domain between the witch and creator domain.
- High 1-A is for Feath, because she's above everyone in this domain and sustain stuff; but we don't consider her to be a Creator
- Tier 0 is for Maria and The Creation, who are above Feath and everything in existence to the point of lacking limitations entirely.
Now let's take this, but with the new infos we used and the changements they bring
- Dudes in 1-B are in the Witch Domain, since they are in the middle of an infinite ladder made of infinite laders but the layer they are on is unkown
- Since the ladder extents to everything up to the Creator and doesn't have to stop at the Witch Domain, being at the end of it is just higher in 1-B
- At least 1-B for being above the Witch Domain
- There's no second hierarchy or anything, with the Voyagers stuff not hinting toward any form of new cosmological structure and its the same place as the one for the higher 1-B so... yeah, another big 1-B
- Feath is a Creator therefore her true self can't be used to scale Creators. However there's a possibily that the Great Witches and the Self Insert are riiiiight at the very last layer, even if Erika's statement is to be more "it's so ******* high it doesn't make a difference where they are"; meaning those in the City of Books could be seen as possibly High 1-B. Also Oblivion would likely scale to High 1-B as well, since it's the void background of existence.
- Gods and Creators, such as Featherine and Full Potential Maria are beyond the entire ladder and lacks all form of limitations, making them reach the honorable tier of 1-A.
How Featherine's Study fit in it can be debatted between 1-B and 1-A; although the highest end seems unlikely.
End of the golden thread
To summarise, we need to:
- Yeet "The Creator" page and anything keeping the idea of such a being existing from all the profiles. Then we have to change the profiles to show how Creators truly are.
- The infinite ladder extents to all of existence and not just Witch Domain, it is an important thing which would be taken into account for the cosmology
- There's no other hierarchy than the ladder and we should stop using fan stuff like "Third Domain", which sets a bad precedent. Just say "City of Books" and "Feath Study"
- Voyagers aren't encompassing all of existence, with Lambdadelta saying they are in the middle and even the strongest witches just being veeeery high in the ladder
- Changing the tiers accordingly, which gives what I proposed prior.
I'm planning another little CRT about magic and oblivion, but I guess I just like to do the big ones first.
