When The Mountain Goats Cry is a sequelfic to Umineko, focusing on Will, Lion and Erika. It's beautifully written, full of well executed shoutouts and has a pretty interesting plot going on. It expands on Will and Erika's characters much more than the canon did while Beatrice and Battler are reduced to basically side characters.
While the writing gets (apparently on purpose) cheesy at times, which can put off some people. It's definitely not for everyone, but it keeps the cast amazingly in character despite some very, very unexpected plot twists.
It should be noted that while the series seems to go the extra mile to keep things in canon, the author's interpretation of some events might put off some people.
Think of it as how And Another Thing is to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. The writing tone is definitely different, but it's still the same characters you have grown to know and love.
UPDATE: For reasons unknown, the original fic was taken down from the author's page (the author him/herself doesn't know why that happened) so it's being all out rewritten here
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- NOTE: The rewrite is only 2 chapters in and hasn't been updated since 2012
Tropes associated with When The Mountain Goats Cry:
- Big Damn Heroes: A much less dramatic version between Will and Erika.
- Flanderization: Will is the only one who suffers from this at times, being much more of a jerk here than in canon at times when talking to Lion. It is justified in that he has been basically living with Lion(and therefore getting buttpinched) for days.
- Freak Out: Will's backstory that explains how he became Wizard-Hunting Wright
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Will and Battler.
- Mood Whiplash: Chapter 5. Oh god chapter 5.
- Original Character: Sort of. Meta-Van Dine.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Will....sorta...it's complicated.
- The Plan: Unless the author is throwing a curveball, Van Dine had one hell of a plan prepared.
- Shout-Out: The fanfic contains a lot of direct quotations to S.S Van Dine, and attributes them to Will's gestures or speaking. It seems sort of overdone at first, but once it sets in that Will is Van Dine's successor it makes sense It also has a few Shout Outs to ''Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 5.
