Picture Perfect


I was playing a poorly made Umineko fangame in RPGmaker, I think the game used stock assets spare the protagonist's sprites. My character was Battler Ushiromiya, and after playing for a while, I had reunited with Jessica Ushiromiya, his cousin. They were very happy to see eachother, as in the original story, they haven't seen eachother in 6 years.

I'd gotten into a battle and to my surprise, the enemies were just garbled messes of pixels, but they were no match for Battler and Jessica's POWER OF FRIENDSHIP!, which had made the battle end instantly and even'd made the enemy smile, somehow. Not long after, the two of them also met George Ushiromiya, and with, assumedly, the same happiness. And so this act ends.

Despite the stitched-together nature of the game and the amateur dialogue in the battles that I do not quite remember, the game gave off a very melancholic and nostalgic feeling, almost like being a kid again.

Now I'd "woken" up in my room and I then went to the kitchen to get some water, but inside the fridge, all of the bottles missed any caps and their front end bent in such strange ways that they were undrinkable. But, there was another bottle of water near the microwave, and I drank that, but not before flipping the bird at the dark corners of the room, which promptly pissed off some 'shadow beings', this also'd made me want to drink some milk.

Soon after, my "mom" and "dog" had arrived home and they'd scared the creepy shadows off. After that, they'd gotten into the large bedroom that had our bigger TV, I'd followed suite and got in bed, which made my "dog" start to lick me. But there was something strange, this wasn't any dog I'd ever had, I'd assumed my mom just got one without me ever noticing with how distant we are sometimes, but, looking at it, it did not even looked real, it was like a living animation with overexagerrateda and cartoony movement. A textbox popped up:

"The whole gang (4) is here!"

I'd first assumed this referred to us, as I felt someone missing was there, but there were only the three of us. At this point, I also look at my 'party' and see: me, my mom, my dog and "the shadow ones...", I did not think much when seeing the odd fourth attendee, as it felt 'right'. There were also three more party members at the top which I do not remember, but I presume they are Battler, George, and Jessica.

And that was it, overall, from the presence and overall atmosphere of the prologue and how the second act ended, I feel this dream represents an alternative version of my family, which had no issues and was just... "perfect", like looking at a child's crude drawing of themselves with their parents.