ファタモルガーナの館 // The House in Fata Morgana: Door 3 (Visual Novel Informal Club)

[Daisoujou]

Home Thread Here!

Pace

Everyone is welcome to read at their own pace and post any impressions, theories, or questions at any time within this thread. Those of us starting together may loosely informally stick together, but please feel free to chime in any time!

Guidelines

• Please use spoiler tags or collapse where needed and describe, indirectly, what point in the chapter they are a spoiler for!
• When asking for help, do your best to provide context. Pasted text, screenshots, descriptions, etc. Unlike book clubs we can’t flip to relevant pages, so we may need a little help identifying exactly what is being discussed.
• Feel totally at ease to ask questions or give your thoughts, any time! Clubs live and die by participation, and asking whatever question you have, no matter how silly it may seem, helps others who are reading it and even the answerer themselves.
• Have fun, and do your best to interpret anything said with as much good faith as possible

Door 2

Door 4

[Daisoujou]

I figure if @Starzor gets into it they could be telling me they finished Door 2 any time now, so I decided I’d try to stay ahead of people by a door with the thread creation

[Starzor]

Hahaha, that’s a good plan. I didn’t read any today, but the next few days, especially the weekend, will probably make a big leap.

[Akashelia]

Maybe found a good non-spoilery marker to post my first impression about this door
Total read characters so far: 139,738

Door 3 first thoughts, until the end of the scene with フェナキストスコープ

First of all I was surprised to have a choice after the end of door 2!
I chose to touch the mirror, and I was was Giselle. I met Michel who said that the witch was called Morgana. Could be the maid? Michel looked a lot like the white haired girl. The music was great.
Didn’t try the other option yet.

Haha the hair color again.

As the maid guess, not that surprised to see the girl with white hair again. Though it’s pretty fun that the roles are now reversed, before she was a maid, and now she is the wife of the owner. I think I even recognize Mel’s bedroom. (though once again, she seems doomed to have an unhappy fate, who are those writer that basically want to see her suffer in 8 different ways xD)

Now sure where this is going, it is said that Jakopo got lost by his ambition, but not sure how that will unfold. Fun to have a not likable character for a change (unlike Mel for example). Probably won’t feel to bad for him when it goes bad? Only for the girl with white hair? And probably the maid Maria has a role to play? To be continued!

[Starzor]

I’ll probs start door 3 during the weekend, been kinda hooked on cyberpunk for the past few days haha.

[simias]

How do you manage to go so fast while having a job, children and at least as many book clubs as I do. I’m still not done with Door 1.

Confess, witch.

[Akashelia]

The answer is Yomichan Manga are all mokuro’d, books are all transformed to epub, VNs are all textractor’ed. Then I do the magic! I wouldn’t be reading so fast if the year was, say, 1603
TW: short working daysnow that I think about it, there is another answer to that, which is Denmark? here the work day ends at 15 or 16 when it’s a long day (that’s 3PM or 4PM for our US friends). Then I just bike 15min and I’m home. or I’m already home and just change computer to start reading

[Starzor]

Thoughts before the actual opening of door 3 (read if you chose to 'Examine the mirror')

So after touching the mirror, we got an interesting little in-between doors scene here, with ジゼル and ミシェル, two new characters. Then ミシェル mentions that the witch actually exists, and her name モルガーナ. After this, we are back with the maid, and when telling her this, she pulls a move straight out of Uzumaki from Junji Ito (via image).

And some BGs for @Akashelia

In this last image, the candle light was actually slight moving in the mod, which was super cool.

[Daisoujou]

I meant to bring up the choices again, but wasn’t sure when exactly they happened.

Spoilers for the structure (what the choices do) if you want it, no story spoilers

There are only a few times in this VN where you’ll be asked to make a choice, and they DO matter, but this isn’t a VN with big branching routes. Getting one wrong will lead to an early bad end – I know these endings are short I’m honestly not sure how immediately they come or if you continue for a bit then have to backtrack, because I picked all the proper ones to continue on my first run; I thought they were fairly obvious at the time.

[Akashelia]

Probably read 4-5 hours today, 30k character (total so far 189.874) and… finished door 3!
Need to collect my thoughts and digest it all before I make a post about it…

[Daisoujou]

Oh impressive! I’m trying to make time for Hundred Line, which I’ve been neglecting, so I haven’t even gone back to start Door 3 (and do the interlude bit) yet

Umineko is there waiting to be continued too; I’m in the midst of so many very long form projects. Meanwhile really getting the urge back to learn how to speak so I can voice chat with my friend and stuff

Hope you enjoyed door 3 anyway

[Akashelia]

Hehe yeah that’s a lot of stuff you have going on. Fata Morgana is my main read at the time so I enjoyed giving it all! But now facing a 3 week break, so let’s see where you all are when I’m back

[Starzor]

You really went all out , I better catch up

[Starzor]

Finished door 3 today too. And wow there is a lot to unpack. Gonna need to collect my thoughts too before I post anything.

[Akashelia]

What already?? That was super fast did you finish it in one day??
I’ve started writing down my post, will be posting it soon!

[Starzor]

Yesterday and today, so two days, but I got so into I just had to finish

[Akashelia]

That’s super impressive, even if I had the time, not sure that I would have the stamina!

[Akashelia]

Final impressions of door 3 (spoilers included)

I really liked the conversation between the maid and the girl with white hair. While the maid seems to remember everything from every time period, it looks like the girl with white hair has no idea of what she is talking about.

That part especially was interesting. They already had a similar conversation in door 1. Maybe we’ll learn more about the incident with ギマシュ at some point.

Part of the conversation back in door 1:

• あら……そうですか？ それなら……、夜のお散歩だったのかしら。 やっぱり……夜の方が出やすいんですのね。
• ………すみません、すぐ……、すぐ戻りますから。
• ……そういえば、食料品屋の奉公人も、金庫をこじ開けたのは深夜なんですの。 前に、有名な事件があったでしょう？
• え……？
• ああでもギマシュは、投獄されたのかしら。 いやですわ、よく覚えていない……。

Not really trusting Maria from the beginning. When she convinced the girl with white hair to go out of her room to dance with her AND to put perfume, I was sure something was up. To me she is setting up the girl with white hair on purpose, but I can’t tell why, I’m not seeing her as romantically interested in Jacopo.
Then it was revealed that she was a very close childhood friend with Jacopo. Before that I was a bit slow at reading this door, the setup with Jacopo’s hobby was a bit painful to go through, but after that the pace really picked up and I almost couldn’t put it down.
That’s also right when Maria showed her true colors.

The parts where we see her like that were a bit comical in my opinion, but why not.
Now that I think about it, it was also Maria that convinced the girl with white hair to interrupt the meeting with the tea the girl with white hair had 0 chance

Oh and she was also behind the rose garden being destroyed. Feels very bad for the girl with white hair, the only person she thought she could trust is the one destroying her! I almost hope she doesn’t find out. Still don’t really know Maria’s motive though.

Very good advice! After reading this door, I will never again trust someone to tell something to someone else for me, I will only tell them directly.
The fact that it was Maria behind Tommaso TOO was pretty mean, hadn’t thought about it, though it makes sense now.
I had accepted that Jacopo didn’t like her at the beginning but it’s even more tragic now that he apparently loves her but is manipulated to think that she is unfaithful.

It was painful to see the girl with white hair try so hard, but unknowingly making it worse each time, and to see Jacopo declare her love for her twice but both time she wasn’t actually here.

But to be honest I thought that this door actually ended in a mild way. I had 100% expected (after Jacopo realized that he came too late for his wife, that she was gone, and that Maria was behind it), that when he entered his office, not only Maria would be there, but the head of his wife would be hanging from the ceiling, with blood dropping, like in the ghost story that Maria told at the beginning… So I was pretty relieved that it didn’t go that far, to be honest almost felt a bit too much like a happy ending, that Jacopo got to shoot and kill Maria instead of dying himself.

Maybe we should try to get some life lessons out of this VN x)
Door 1: DNA test any potential romantic partner
Door 2: Don’t be racist but also don’t date psychopaths
Door 3: Don’t use a middle(wo)man in your relationship, talk directly to your partner. And maybe something about DEI??? hmmm

[Starzor]

Complete Door 3 impressions (spoilers)

@Akashelia

I really liked the conversation between the maid and the girl with white hair. While the maid seems to remember everything from every time period, it looks like the girl with white hair has no idea of what she is talking about.

Yeah, also the maid seems to be in the mansion all along in the exactly same form, the girl with the white hair was clearly shown to have died in Door 2, and she adopts different characteristics in each door, some of which may just align with the current “masters” of the mansion to have them fall for her. It’s like she is an instrument of the curse of unfortunate love of the mansion.

@Akashelia

Not really trusting Maria from the beginning. When she convinced the girl with white hair to go out of her room to dance with her AND to put perfume, I was sure something was up. To me she is setting up the girl with white hair on purpose, but I can’t tell why, I’m not seeing her as romantically interested in Jacopo.

When she said the thing about the tea leaves, I had a tinge of suspicion, but then the whole scene with the dancing and perfume? It was clear to me then that she set her up, although I was not able to correctly guess the motives up until it was revealed.

@Akashelia

It was painful to see the girl with white hair try so hard, but unknowingly making it worse each time, and to see Jacopo declare her love for her twice but both time she wasn’t actually here.

Yeah, those were some very painful scenes, for her to write so many letters, just for all of them to be misdirected by Maria like that.

@Akashelia

But to be honest I thought that this door actually ended in a mild way. I had 100% expected (after Jacopo realized that he came too late for his wife, that she was gone, and that Maria was behind it), that when he entered his office, not only Maria would be there, but the head of his wife would be hanging from the ceiling, with blood dropping, like in the ghost story that Maria told at the beginning… So I was pretty relieved that it didn’t go that far, to be honest almost felt a bit too much like a happy ending, that Jacopo got to shoot and kill Maria instead of dying himself.

That would actually be a pretty cruel ending for sure, really nice with the foreshadowing. But the way I also see it is this ending is actually pretty cruel. Had Jacopo died, that would’ve been it for him. But in this way, he lived out his days whilst every day crushed the hope of him ever finding his loved one more and more. Prolonged the suffering for him for tens of years.

I kinda ended up making my thought a reaction to @Akashelia 's thoughts, since you had it nicely structured already .

And that’s some really nice lessons you outlined there xD

[Daisoujou]

Excited to see what you all think – I’ve been devoting more days to other stuff but when I pick it up I’m getting a pretty decent chunk of reading done in the hour or so I spend, I just got past the 踊り scene.

I’m kind of always saying I love the music, but I am particularly fond of the stuff that plays in this door. Nice lively vibes. Guess I’ll wait til I finish it, but just as before I’m always particularly frustrated by this door (in a good way), with how straightforwardly sweet the white haired girl is and her being punished for it at every turn