I think I’ll just quote myself from this other post about adversing Higanbana to new readers, as I addressed to all of the other works as well.
About getting other people into 07th Expansion works in general
I would add however, that making part of their theory making without revealing precious info and instead giving ambiguous hints like any good Game Master (ahaha.wav all day long) is the better way to go.
Even better if you have other people reading and let them talk about it… that part however I would say it’s better to be done only with people who are in the same EP as them in the very least (I used to make posts tagging these people on Facebook and their respective progresses to facilitate this discussion matter), but as the number of people reading around me increased so much, I began throwing them in chat groups for each respective EPs they were in. They would then leave the chat as soon as they finish reading that said EP, and ask me to get him into the “Up to EPx” group chat. I would make part of any of these (I do use Facebook a bit too much after all) and discuss and give non-spoileristic hints in case no one would answer a person who would want to talk about something.
In any case, like most of these specific group chats, they end up dying a bit fast even when there are many people to discuss (especially when these groups are composed of university students too worried about “dem difficult exams all the time”), so, I just try managing the discussions when people feel like talking about it in person (once in a while I get a question or another in those still, but they are rare).
Just to add some curiosities about my own experience regarging that matter, as Umineko is something I DEDICATE myself to get people into:
A pattern I understood fairly quickly about Umineko is that most people tend to marathon the whole EP1 up to a random part of EP2 as soon as possible once reached the first “Day 2” in the VN (many stall very heavily during “Day 1”, which is comprehensible, given that the introduction is so freaking huge and detailed).
At that, I abandoned EP1 as a chat option as it could lead to potential spoilers about the yet-not-revealed-to-be-looped deaths from people who would go asking “When it does get good and what happen” (and that happened 2-3 times, people in here don’t seem to get to worried about spoiling stuff from the beginning even if them themselves are still on it, as EP1 as a whole is widely known considered to be but a introduction for something so much bigger even by some people I know that didn’t yet started reading). Instead, I begin "meme"ing up (thanks for making characters so easy to have fun with, Ryukishi) some parts and dialogues using some printscreens to indirectly encourage some more reading occasionally up to when they would pick it up again.
Another curiosity is what I call “The Big Hiatus”, which happens to literally every single person I kept track of the Seacats reading thing. Normally it happens around between the beginning of EP5 up to the end of EP6, and the reasons to it vary a lot:
Some feel dismotivated to continue yet another half after it took so long for them to finish EP1-4, others just get absolutely frustrated as for getting overall clueless about anything at all after EP4 (that by the way, besides being a longer, confusing and painful read, I’m impressed it isn’t where people goes “Hiatus” on) started getting exhausted of the mystery and decide giving a break… and there’s this other group I love that, after hearing that EP7 is where major stuff gets revealed (my main motivator for most people during EP5-6), do their hiatus on purpose until they figure it out by themselves and asking me if it’s right or wrong… which doesn’t really go for too long (unless they are waiting other people to discuss, after all, it’s on Chiru that most people really start wanting to discuss things, and the hiatuses kinda contribute to that in a way), after they either reach the truth (only 2 people I know thus far managed to connect the dots properly, and I applaused their efforts, they even had a little notebook for Umineko stuff just like me), while the others ultimately don’t really get it and can’t go pass my little examination, choosing instead to just read EP7 already (I make some statements like “and how you explain this”, “how is that related to that”, or just straight denying especific non-revealing stuff with the RED statements) until they either give up and proceed with EP7, or just keep trying until they can properly explain it).
Which leads to “The Great Marathon” (most of the people who reached that far reading the entirety of EP7 and EP8 in less than 2 weeks), and joining the “cool goats” team. Most of them have many questions about it even after the end, so we just explain to them what they missed, some crazy foreshadowings from other chapters, and overall help out with the doubts they might have, especially about a certain someone’s timeline (freaking Ange’s case still is one of my biggest challenges to understand in Umineko’s entirety, it took me a LONG while or the overall Meta explanation (to be fair, holy crap, that was one huge revealing that takes quite a reread or two of the whole thing to even be able to explain without getting stuck… heck, if it wasn’t for the manga’s explicit helping hand, I wouldn’t even be able to figure out by myself a certain really nice revealing that was part of it (a.k.a. Forgery of EP3 -> Eva visiting Ikuko’s house and giving her diary to them -> Explaining certain developments in the entirety of the presentation of future Episodes ).
After that is done, I properly instruct them about how to mislead new players which would ask them for clues without giving them spoilers, but still helping them. As of now, I have 6 people in this little “Ask the Game Masters for some tips” business going on… though most people end up just asking me directly still, which is fine to me besides being kinda time consuming to be honest lol
And this is how getting people into Umineko feels like to me, and I love every single moment of it.
As of now, I’m also reading in group with 11 other people (4 of which are veterans, while the rest didn’t finished the VN just yet), each person dubbing certain characters, while everyone have fun discussing the scenes live, altogether (we are streaming it on Twitch, and uploading to Youtube just after… or so I wish, I actually stopped uploading there since 6 months ago because I’m lazy with that stuff and it fails way too often to upload such a large file, re-starting from 0 every time it does lol).
I did subtitled the first 3 videos of said amateur experient in English if anyone is curious about it (and don’t mind Brazilian people butchering the poor English language… hey, that’s kinda part of the fun too actually), here:
Umineko Streaming in group with HUE people
That aside, these are pretty much all of my hints as to how to get people into Umineko and how to manage the theory crafting between them properly.
PS:
Ironically enough, I abandoned this forum for a almost an year in guilt for accidentally disrespecting the guidelines and posting spoilers in spoiler free topics. That’s a major fuck up of which I won’t forget too soon. But welp, I’m back and will do my best to help people to get others to read Ryukishi’s amazing and often overlooked works.
The real problem is, Umineko is basically all I care about, and it’s all I think about. It’s all I ever want to discuss, too, so when I decide it’s not worth talking about to my friends that show such disinterest, they get mad at me when it’s like day 12 with no contact or phone calls or something.