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Just marathoned this over the last couple of days, and it's been quite a ride. I've never even heard of this thing before. Going to have to think a bit more about the locked room stuff, but I did notice this. ProfessorProf posted:That is indeed a translation artifact. Allow me to step in on Beatrice's behalf to clarify: Of course, she is not counting herself, a weird butler, anime stake girls, or a theoretical horde of imaginary goat-headed men. Because they're "magical beings", right, and not humans, as if that's something that could exist. Except... we have three servants who are also claimed to be "furniture", magical beings, created by Evil Kidnappin' Grandpa via his delusional magical practices. Beatrice goes on at great length about how they are not human at all! The only one whose humanity she may have vaguely acknowledged is Shannon, and she later denies it anyway. So, by her own words, those 18 people cannot possibly cover those three servants, meaning that there could easily be three more people on the island than we've seen! Of course, one could say that this is some kind of translation difficulty instead, and that really whatever word she was using instead of "human" ought to cover magical servants too... but then there would have to be more, because of her completely fake anime squad! And one could say that they are actually human after all, but in that case, all that magical bullshit that happened with those servants is null and void! Now, it's going to be more interesting to solve the foolish mystery stories she's been telling Battler using only the 18 suspects we've got, but even so, this isn't the sort of mistake I'd expect from an infallible witch, if such a ridiculous being actually existed.
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Dec 16, 2016 04:27
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Not at all! It's simply a matter of what Beatrice herself believes and the way she uses language. If she claims both that the servants are inhuman furniture and that there are 18 humans on the island, it's consistent. That doesn't mean that Battler himself has to accept that the servants are inhuman, only that Beatrice would refer to them that way. Edit: Let's take a look at the Turn of the Golden Witch locked rooms. I know these were already talked about, so I apologize for treading over ground that's at least been partially covered, but I'm trying to work my way into the right frame of mind for this thing. First, we have the Halloween Murders in the chapel. The actual cause of death isn't clear, because of the post-mortem mutilations. It could have been done with poison, or via gun, or even by surprise with a knife. Since there's a decent time window, whoever did it has plenty of time to set up the scene and fill them with candy and draw the magic circle. The only real difficulties would be 1) why someone would do this and 2) how the murderer got into the locked chapel. The second question is probably best to answer first, since Battler already solved this one for us; Maria had the key, but then she slept, and the key could easily have gotten out of her control for a while before being discovered in the morning. Before proceeding to a suspect and motive on the first one, how about the second. Jessica and Kanon are killed in her room. Kanon is suspected of committing the murder, because his body has vanished, but red text assures us he's dead, and because Battler accepts that, we have to provisionally accept the red text rule as well. Unlike Battler, we aren't hampered by the idea that none of the 18 people could have done it; he's laboring under the delusion that murderers are some other species of person, when really all it takes is for someone to be subjected to a stress they can't endure. (And we've got plenty of stressed-out people around here, and none of them seem particularly stable.) So it would be easy enough to bring in any of the servants as an accomplice and say that the door was locked with one of their keys, but I don't think that's necessary just yet. What happens when Jessica's body is discovered? ProfessorProf posted:...Aunt Rosa walked around the room as though looking for something, or as though she was collecting her thoughts. Then, she found something on the side table by the bed, and picked it up. So Rosa wanders around as if looking for something, and just happens to stumble across a key. Awful convenient. This presents a very simple solution: Rosa picks up Jessica's key at some point before this. Jessica, as we discover, had Kanon's key, and therefore didn't need her own key to get into the room. Rosa murders them in the room (one at a time or together; the anime slapfight is of course a fabrication, so we don't need to assume they were killed at the same time). She leaves, taking the key with her and locking the door, and pockets it. Later, when searching the room, she slips the key out of her pocket and "discovers" it. Everyone else had just searched the room and not found a key, after all, so it's odd that she'd suddenly run across one, but not impossible. And her immediate accusation of Kanon takes the focus off of that. This also makes Rosa the likely murderer in the first instance, and that makes perfect sense, because she'd have no particular trouble manipulating Maria and stealing her key, and of course she's most likely to have a freaky complex about Halloween and an opportunity to collect candy to stuff into her siblings' bellies (since she had to buy some for her daughter anyway). Now, the question arises, why would Rosa choose to do all this? The most obvious answer is, of course, money. She'd probably justify it to herself as saving her daughter (and that scene at the end where she's fighting off an army of "demons" to help Maria while Maria tells her she was the witch all along is certainly telling from a psychological perspective). She needs to kill all her siblings, because she's the youngest, and killing Jessica as well cements her claim. Now, Rosa herself argues this, by saying that if she were really the murderer, all she'd have to do is shoot the remaining kids and come up with some excuse. But, of course, this is exactly wrong. If Rosa is the only survivor left at the end, the police are definitely going to have some serious questions for her. Of course, she needs to leave some other people who can be suspected, and she needs to spend some time cementing her innocence in their mind by "investigating" the murders. And who better to serve as a patsy than the lovely occultist dad who has been raving about a murder ceremony to the point where he literally inscribed a plaque in his home with it? The one who probably has access to all areas of the grounds anyway, at least as far as the police are concerned? If he's executed by the state, she gets the money, and even before that she probably can arrange to be in charge of his affairs while he's at trial or something. In any event, Rosa separates the children and the servants (which definitely does not make her look less suspicious). This is followed by more fake magic bullshit that can be safely discounted; note that it is not reported as magic by the actual people involved at that time, only that "Kanon" showed up, but wasn't really himself, and then Nanjo and Kumasawa were killed, and then the fake Kanon disappeared. Of course, Nanjo and Kumasawa's bodies are not found at that time either. It's entirely possible that their story is a fabrication, possibly concocted under threat by Rosa. There's another locked room here, but regardless of whether the story is real or fake, that isn't an obstacle because Nanjo had a key and it's easy enough to lock the door after leaving. (The only reason Battler couldn't use that was his insistence that nobody he knows was involved.) We have external evidence that the two servants were already killed in the form of blood that could have come from literally anywhere and a note... that is also discovered by Rosa, meaning she could have easily written that in advance and produced it at the right time. This is followed by another anime bullshit battle which our detective doesn't witness, after which Genji comes and announces that he's found the bodies of Nanjo and Kumasawa. So at this point we have three groups and I don't believe Rosa has had time to murder anyone else, which means that she must have at least one accomplice, and given how the groups shook out, this probably has to be Genji. Given the show of loyalty he made to her earlier, this could work, and it's possible for him to have retained a key, too, given that Rosa was the person he handed it to. Sleight of hand could easily have made it possible for her to let him keep his, or slip him one back before he left the room. This allows him to lock the door where George and Shannon are killed (George being another strong claimant for the money). Then Battler drinks some liquor (Genji points this out, in fact), and begins to see the weird bullshit himself. If Genji's in on with Rosa, perhaps he drugs him at this point. And then he conveniently starts believing in witches offscreen, without us seeing the arguments used to convince him. Suuuure. It isn't perfect (I'd prefer a single culprit, for instance), but so far I don't see any real need for a witch in episode 2, at least. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Dec 16, 2016 |
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Dec 16, 2016 05:50
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"...It is probably the key to this... to Milady's room."
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resurgam40 posted:Of course, that all depends on if they were actually killed in that order, and the rooms can be locked from the inside without keys. I assume they would, but this is a weird house operating under weird rules, so repitiotion requested: did these people die in the order they were found, and can the doors be locked from inside? I'm no witch, because no such thing exists, but I can answer half of that for you: ProfessorProf posted:
The rooms (at least some of the rooms) can be locked from the inside. That being the case, your murder/suicide theory has some legs, especially if you finger Crazy Grandpa as the primary instigator, possibly with Genji as backup.
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Dec 16, 2016 22:42
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"I don't know the practical details of the trick, but I have a general idea. My apologies, but if we supposed that Kanon-kun was the culprit, it can be explained extremely easily. Even as to why there was no corpse."
"Huh... But Kanon-kun wasn't holding a master key, right?! Putting aside the other servants, at least Kanon-kun shouldn't have been able to lock the door!"
"The brain speed of a little sister is always the big sister's minus 1. Right now there is no one I need to worry about, so I feel relieved."
"...I, I'm sorry. Could you explain it so that even I can understand? Kanon-kun's master key was in Jessica-chan's pocket, closed up inside a closed room. After the door was locked, it should have been impossible to put it in her pocket from outside the room no matter what trick he used...!"
"That's not it, Aniki. If it was done in the way Aunt Rosa imagines... this trick could only be used by Kanon-kun. And, the door could be locked without a key, while the master key was still in Jessica's pocket. And, as a result, his corpse would also disappear."
"It's simple. George-kun, when you return home, you lock the door, right? You twist the knob, *click*, right?"
"...It looks like you've got it, Aniki. That's what Aunt Rosa was searching inside the room for. She was searching for Kanon-kun, who had locked the door from the inside, stuck the key in Jessica's pocket, and was hiding somewhere, waiting for us to walk right past him."
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I suspected that move might come next. If they killed themselves, we'd be at a loss for suspects in the next murder. Well, it doesn't matter too much. The key has to be Kinzo. His body is the one that's different. He's the one that's burned and he's the one that's only got one key. Why burn only him when the others are shot or stabbed? One possible motivation would be to conceal his identity; even with the extra toes, that isn't impossible, but let's assume for the moment that it's really him. I can see two ways this might have happened so far, although I might mull it over some to see if there are more. One is the boiler itself: the boiler room hasn't been identified as a closed room as explicitly as the others, so what if there is an air vent that leads to the boiler? If he is the last to be killed, everyone else having already been murdered and locked in, you kill Kinzo, dump the key to the previous murder site into his pocket, and shove him down the vent to the boiler. Second way depends on you being able to lock the doors from the inside without a key, which might still be a possibility depending on how you interpret the red text. In that case, you grab him, shove the other key in his pocket, tie an incendiary device on him with a fuse, and shove him into the room. Then you point a gun at him and tell him to lock the door. He'll probably do it to maximize his chances of survival, then spend his last few minutes trying to remove or disable the device. He burns to death on his own and there you are. Edit: doesn't explain how he literally might end up in the boiler. We, maybe you leave the door open and he fortuitously stumbles in there while flailing around the room. Edit 2: that second method actually works better with someone that isn't Kinzo, since it's easier just to stab someone fatally than build a timed incendiary and the others have master keys. Tell them you'll consider calling for medical help if they lock themselves in or shoot them right away if they don't. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Dec 17, 2016 |
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Dec 17, 2016 01:04
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Kinzo's letter isn't too tricky. It clearly wasn't in the incinerator with Kinzo, so you just leave it in the boiler room before murdering anyone.
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Dec 17, 2016 03:49
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Battler-as-murderer doesn't make as much sense once you start looking at motives - he abandoned the family already, which would have made it difficult or impossible to inherit. It makes it hard to imagine that he's going to turn around and decide to murder a dozen people for money, and the only one he seems to actually hate is his father (who is still alive on this go-round). That's not to say it's impossible, at all, and it would provide him with a good way of denying the witch (I did it, and here's how), but it might be interesting to look at some other people first. So let's do that, actually. It isn't necessary to provide motive to convict someone, but it can be a useful tool to narrow the list of suspects. Right now, it feels to me like money is going to be the driving force a lot of the time. Everyone seems to have an immediate need for it. Nanjo looks suspicious on the basis of alibis, and he's also the person we see right in the intro pressing Kinzo to make a will; it's possible that he has access to a secret will nobody knows about now, given he's spent a lot of time alone with a demented old man. Krauss is also a strong suspect right now from the perspective of motive; since he didn't die this time and, he's right in line to inherit. Obviously he might die in one of the later twilights, at which point that suspicion just follows down the line until we reach the person most likely to currently inherit the money. (Which might or might not be the oldest descendant, if someone starts throwing suspicion on someone else. Getting somebody convicted of murder is a good way of taking them out of the running too.) If the adults were really all in a conference room all night, he couldn't have done it personally, but he might have made an arrangement with someone else to help. (It's also possible that further examination of their conference will show that there was some gap where they weren't together, but for now we can't assume that.) So let's look at everyone who is still alive: Krauss: Strong motive, but almost certainly would be in that conference all night. No opportunity to do anything himself. Natsuhi: At the conference? Doesn't she sometimes get kicked out of these things? She might have had opportunity. And she's got loads of motive, both financial and emotional. Jessica: In the guest house. Almost certainly has opportunity. Unlikely to have killed Kanon - possibly someone else did and she set this up as revenge? Maybe she was forced to, because he caught her killing someone else? Doesn't seem to have a strong financial motive, but might have wanted to kill Kinzo to escape him, or out of revenge for him loving everyone up. Asked to see the bodies, which might have been an attempt to tamper with evidence. Eva: Strong motive if she can later eliminate Krauss. Very unlikely to have ever left that conference. Probably lacks opportunity. Hideyoshi: Same deal as Eva, but also just seems less inclined towards forceful action in general. George: Basically a saint aside from his occasional desire to "tease" his girlfriend. Very unlikely to have killed Shannon. On the other hand, also did ask to see the bodies, and might have been forced into it the same way Jessica might have been. There might also be another side of him we haven't seen. Rudolf: One of the instigators behind the conference plot, unlikely to have left the conference room at any point. Kyrie: Like Natsuhi, could potentially have been kicked out, although I would not like to be the person who tried to do it. Could potentially be desperate over money. Overall seems like an unlikely fit for murder, but if it's her plot everyone else should probably just give up. Battler: has opportunity since everyone was asleep, and the narration seems a bit less centered on him so far this time around as well. Dubious motive but maybe he's after revenge or something rather than money. Nanjo: currently the best suspect. Not clear why he'd need money yet, but we also haven't explored his deal as deeply as some other people. Conducted the examinations of the bodies, so he's also capable of concealing any sneaky causes of death, like poisoning-with-post-mortem-stabbing (a more likely scenario for someone of his age). Could be working with or for someone else, especially the people in the conference. (Someone in that room keeping everyone there with arguments provides him with time to work.) Rosa: Unlikely this time around, because there are way too many people between her and the money. Unless her motivation is revenge against Psycho Dad, but if that's it, why kill the servants? Probably no opportunity anyway since she's unlikely to leave the conference. Maria: absolutely physically impossible for her to commit these crimes. Various witches and animes: don't exist. Did I miss anything? (Incidentally, Kyrie's "maybe it isn't Kinzo" theory isn't totally off-base, either. I don't think it contradicts anything red, even, because a dead body Kinzo smuggled onto the island isn't a "human".) idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Dec 17, 2016 |
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Dec 17, 2016 17:00
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If someone died of natural causes, that would work, but that could only possibly apply to Kinzo unless further trickery is happening. (See below, though.) The burning could happen post-mortem via an automatic timer, as you say, if he were in there. Which he might well be, if he was hiding from a murderer. It's also possible for one or more of the victims to have been killed by some nonhuman agency. ...witches? No, don't be absurd. But if someone is killed by a horse, nobody calls it a murder. Murder requires understanding that we don't impute to animals. It's not exactly an accident, either, though, if the animal intended to do it. Here's an alternative scenario: put a snake into any of those rooms. It bites someone and poisons them. It's not a suicide. It's not an accident. It isn't a trap, or at least not by the definition Beatrice advanced. After all, an animal acts of its own will and has its own plans; it might be arguable that the human planner is required there, but you could also say that the snake wasn't introduced by anyone apart from the person who was in the room and that they presumably were not intending to be killed by it. (They could have used it to commit some of the other murders, for instance.) Now, of course, the question becomes, if they were killed by a snake, what's with the wounds the family discovered them with? Well, all that requires is for one of those wounds to be in a place you couldn't see it from the door. Nanjo is doing the examinations and we're suspicious of him already. If he has some object concealed on him that could make a wound like that, he could have carved one surreptitiously during the post-mortem. If the person who died in this way were one of the conspirators, it might make sense to do this to make his death look like the others; the identity of that person and their different method of death might have offered a clue to the nature of the conspiracy. The snake, of course, could still be in the room, concealed; we know there are no hidden people in the room, but a snake is not a person.
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Dec 18, 2016 21:47
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Oh my God, that is amazing. I almost wish witches were real so that could have happened.
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Dec 19, 2016 02:32
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Whatever these things are, they all have to be on the island, or else metaphorical objects, or else only need to be examined remotely; if the people in the house are meant to solve the riddle before the morning comes, they have to have access to everything they need to do it. (So, for instance, if the town is a literal place, you might be able to discover the key by examining it on a map.) It's possible that the key is literally a key, but it could also be a code phrase, as has been suggested. The word "key" is also used to refer to cryptographic keys, symbol-bearing buttons on a keyboard or typewriter, and to musical keys, any of which could work in this case depending on how the rest of the riddle works. I'm guessing it's something less directly related to the word, though, especially since those probably aren't all the same word in Japanese. Like, some kind of information that makes it possible to access the Golden Whatnot later on. Edit: 1. Maybe there's a reason so many of the kids have ridiculous names? Does that play into it, if it's a family tree thing? 2. What does the extra character in the last repetition of the Golden Land mean? If it really translates to "no", I usually see that meaning "belonging to X", but I'm just working from random anime tidbits here. Does anyone know if there's more to it? Edit 2: Found an article on it: http://blogs.transparent.com/japanese/japanese-grammar-the-no-%E3%81%AE-particle/ Also potentially helpful: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%AE idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Dec 20, 2016 |
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Dec 20, 2016 01:09
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Tender Child Loins posted:Instead of using 里 in "ougon no sato," Kinzo uses 郷, which has the same reading in this case, but different associations and compound readings in other cases. According to the online kanji dictionary, 郷 can also specifically mean a "rural township (of China)." So it could be that the use of this particular kanji is meant to draw attention to a location in China? There's been no mention of China in the story at all, so I'm not sure this is relevant. I went looking through the text so far to find any mention of a hometown besides Odawara, and there's nothing. And anyway, how can China point to a location in Rokkenjima? Judging from the IRL location of Niijima, it looks like Rokkenjima is on the opposite side of Japan from China. This sounds interesting, especially with the other stuff about Odawara. Specifically, he wouldn't be thinking of that place, and wouldn't call it beloved, because of his relationship with the main family. The branch family is said to be far away; could they have been living in China? Would that make sense for the era? Are there any prominent Chinese places with literal or metaphorical rivers running through them? If the key is text, which this update definitely implies, it might be that you can find the right text by following the river down a map, rather than by physically going to wherever. Also, an alternate way of spelling things that uses six characters? Maybe spelling it in another language, like Chinese? (Of course, it could also be one of those things where you can spell it in Japanese using an alternate alphabet, or even English.) Hrm. Probably getting too far ahead of where we are to figure that one out. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Dec 21, 2016 |
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Dec 21, 2016 02:54
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CottonWolf posted:What time frame are we looking at here? The Japanese held Manchuria from 1931/1932 to 1943, so it seems unlikely that there'd be a long running family out there. Do we know how old Kinzo is? The story is set in 1986, and Kinzo is old. Do we know exactly how old? I didn't see that quickly riffling through, but he's got adult children that have almost-adult children. He's got to be 60-80. So he's born sometime between, say, 1905 and 1925. That makes him too old for the timeframe you suggest, although according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territories_occupied_by_Imperial_Japan, Japan held both Taiwan and the Kwantung Leased Territory during that period. Shandong is also a possibility; that seems to be in exactly the kind of weird grey-area status that would work. (It's times like this that I wish I were better at geography, in general.) The fact that this lines up actually makes me more enthusiastic about the idea - it's not a place an old established family ought to be, but it's exactly the sort of place a bunch of outcasts from the shittiest part of a branch family might have ended up trying to seek their fortune. Does anyone know if there are particularly famous or interesting rivers in Shandong, Taiwan, or Kwantung? (If we're talking about maps, it seems more likely to be an actual river.)
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Dec 21, 2016 04:25
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According to http://fishbase.org/country/Country...&vhabitat=fresh sweetfish were native to Taiwan, then destroyed, then reintroduced specifically from Japan. That kind of pattern would be appropriate. So, potentially along that river, shore + village + two = key? I doubt I can be much help with this part, since I don't know dick about this region and don't speak Chinese or Japanese.
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Dec 21, 2016 05:16
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I can't be any help with the geography, but in terms of the chapel door, George's reference to "m, b, t, q" probably means "million, billion, trillion, quadrillion". Combining that with Battler's earlier partial translation, the inscription probably just says 'This door will open only with a probability of one in [some obscenely high number]'. For reference, according to wikipedia, one quadrillion is about the number of ants that are currently alive on the planet. So if it's one in a quadrillion, the odds of that door opening are roughly equivalent to the odds of me selecting an ant, among all the ants on the planet earth, and you being able to pick that same ant by random chance.
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Dec 21, 2016 06:18
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Well, I'm glad that Aunt Eva's psychotic break has been documented for everyone.
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Dec 23, 2016 00:33
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Well, of course the murders will continue. I mean, they weren't committed by a witch to begin with, so whatever weird daydreams Eva is having have no bearing on it.
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Dec 23, 2016 18:40
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Eh, wake me up when we get back to reality.
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Dec 25, 2016 22:12
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Kyrie's chessboard thinking has an error here. The goal is not to say that someone shouldn't have done what they clearly did, it's to figure out why they might have done it. So why wouldn't you take a gun? One option would be that you were already armed. Another, though, would be that you might be caught with it. If anyone were to turn up with Rosa's gun, or to have it found among their possessions, that person would instantly be outed as the murderer. Since suspicion is high right now, that's something that needs to be avoided. Also, isn't it just super convenient that these "witches" can only murder people in ways that could be explained non-magically and are only witnessed by dead people? To be expected, of course, since they're only an elaborate fantasy. That said, if Beatrice really exists at all apart from as a fantasy of Battler's, and actually believes herself to be a witch, it would make sense for her perception of death to be different. It'd be more like killing people in Skyrim when they frustrate you, knowing you can just reload the game to put things back the way they were.
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Dec 26, 2016 19:35
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ProfessorProf posted:
You can tell this is an anime fight, because right after she says this, Kyrie has time to tell her life story before Leviathan even notices something's wrong. (This is also how you know it's fake, of course, like all things relating to witches.) ProfessorProf posted:
ProfessorProf posted:
I almost wish these were real, though, because god drat. I mean, these people are still totally dead, but really, good show. bman in 2288 posted:But regardless, this really puts her relationship with Battler in a new (horrifying) light. She seems to realize that it's not Battler's fault. It's just that on some level, it's hard not to remember the history when she sees him. Frankly, I'm impressed their relationship isn't much worse.
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Dec 28, 2016 18:33
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"...So when I see you with a single ally who's completely trustworthy, I feel the strongest envy... Aaah, that confident expression of utter belief in your husband...! I can feel it giving me power...!! I might even exceed it. The speed of sound!!!"
"...Th-That's right..."
"...S-Spectacular..."
"Don't hate me for it. I planned to resign if you noticed it while you were taking those three steps."
"...You added those three steps... out of consideration... for me, didn't you...?"
"...I didn't even try to think about it. I... was... lazy..."
"...You were a good woman. Go to heaven before me and get yourself all made up. I'll definitely come and chat you up."
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Oh, yeah, Kyrie's version here is skewed as hell. The facts appear to be that Rudolph got two women pregnant at the same time and married one of them. The rest is her interpretation of those facts. Kyrie even said that Rudolph would "run to her rescue" even when his wife was still around; in other words, he basically had her as a mistress the whole time (regardless of whether they were actually officially having sex, although the implication I get from this is that they were). Nobody seemed to be happy about this arrangement except Rudolph. It's understandable why Battler hates his guts now, assuming he found some of this out. Of course, Kyrie has to blame Asumu rather than Rudolph for all this, because if she doesn't do that she can't stay with Rudolph. It's amazing what people will do and how they'll rationalize everything to keep the universe inside their heads the way they want it. (And the author appears to have a good understanding of how it works; maybe the social work experience people mentioned coming in again.) It's also weird how many people on this loving island think they're witches.
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Dec 28, 2016 18:58
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My theory on this one would be that they all went in and shot each other. I mean, we have three people with guns, it's easy enough for them to get into a fight that nobody survives. If Eva and Hideyoshi had been working together, for instance, he might have killed the other two, but suffered a fatal wound in return.oath2order posted:BTW Newbies, Umineko has a 2D fighting game. We should show that off at some point. wait what
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Dec 29, 2016 22:56
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Happy New Year! May we have some actual locked doors next time!
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Jan 1, 2017 15:18
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I just can't reconcile Eva as the murderer with George as a victim. It doesn't make sense, from her motivations; she wants to take over the family and supplant the real heirs. It isn't just about money, it's about needing to prove herself as the most worthy to be the head, and part of that is having a child to carry on the family. Even if it were an accomplice of hers, that person ought to know better. Maybe Nanjo is/was acting without her, though? Possibly they were separate murderers rather than him being her accomplice, or he decides to make a power play at this point for some reason? And then Eva kills him in retaliation, as I suspect we're about to discover. Edit: Tender Child Loins posted:OK, that's kind of silly, but could we consider that this loophole works in this game? Is that actually a legitimate workaround for "X is dead" in red? I guess it makes sense... like in the sense of alter egos. For example, Chris Gaines could "die" while Garth Brooks lives. (uhh I just spent my Christmas with my country relatives so that's all I can think of.) Actually, this is really clever. This could explain how we end up with a Shannon resurrection and re-murder easily; if she were really someone else, but dressed up as a fake person named Shannon and pretended to be dead, then reappeared, it's almost like she was resurrected. And it provides a super convenient way of busting the chain of locked rooms early on, as long as we're okay with Nanjo being a suspect (which we definitely are by this point). If real-Shannon wasn't dead then, but Shannon-the-persona was, it seems to satisfy all conditions while also allowing her to lock the door behind herself after committing several other murders. Edit 2: Shannon is the first one that gets found and George asks to see her corpse, but is refused. And they're all left alone for the cops, which means that her body could have vanished back then and absolutely nobody would know. Edit 3: This also would raise the question: who the gently caress is Shannon? Just a random person pissed off by being made to be a servant in this crazy place? Kinzo's accomplice? Some other weird poo poo? idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Jan 3, 2017 |
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Jan 3, 2017 21:37
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Tender Child Loins posted:edit: But she's definitely, undeniably dead in E2, and early. So how could she be the culprit then? Why would she kill herself? We don't necessarily have the same murderer(s) in each version of Rokkenjima. It seems like that would be one of the big differences between "games". It might be she just wasn't involved at all in episode two's version, whatever her deal is. Or had a more minor role; it wouldn't surprise me if she were the one dressing up as Beatrice early on, and then the real murderer could have disposed of her once she stopped being useful. Edit: Tender Child Loins posted:editedit: Also, how can we be sure that she's dead RIGHT NOW? If Shannon is alive and unaccounted for, she free to kill Nanjo while Eva is off with Battler. Conceivable, yeah. Having an extra person wandering around really does make a lot of these mysteries easier, and if fake personas count as deaths we don't have to violate the red text about there being 18 people on the island. Incidentally, her real name is supposedly "Sayo" according to an earlier update. That could be a lie too, though. But it works for now. So using the Chris Gaines example, it could be that "Shannon" is dead but "Sayo" is still alive. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jan 3, 2017 |
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Jan 3, 2017 22:39
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Hopefully this is the point where Battler starts busting out the deductions so we can see what the hell is really going on here and how close we might have gotten. Also, hopefully, he really does grind Eva into the dirt because I would prefer we go back to original-style Beatrice as the opposition for the remaining episodes. (How many more are there?)
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Jan 5, 2017 01:42
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This is only three out of eight and we're not even done yet? Holy poo poo. No wonder nobody has LPed this thing before.
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Jan 5, 2017 02:29
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resurgam40 posted:Hm, maybe it's because Evatrice is specifically using magic as an excuse? Meaning that any Devil's Proof will bew countered by the magic claim, and since Battler's side is denying magic, the burden of proof is on him to explain it. It's seems a bit like a court case; Battler is prosecuting magic, and therefore the burden of proof rests with him whenever the subject of magic specifically comes up, but not otherwise. The court analogy is apt, since that's where the concept of "the devil's proof" comes from in the first place; probatio diabolica means, basically, asking someone to prove something that is impossible to prove, and is deliberately avoided by any reputable legal system. It's why the burden of proof is on the prosecution in criminal cases, because proving that you DIDN'T murder someone could well be impossible if you didn't happen to be on live television at the time of the murder or something. Whereas if you did murder them, the evidence to prove it ought to exist (and if we're going to make things impossible for one side or the other, our system errs on the side of letting guilty people go as opposed to convicting innocents, or at least it tries to). It's still bullshit in this case, though; all Battler should have to say is "so she lied about why she went, but she must have had some other reason than magic to go, gently caress you". I guess we can let it slide for the convenience of the author, though. bman in 2288 posted:So, if I'm gonna stick with my argument (and Battler's) that Eva was the main culprit for most of the murders, then perhaps Kyrie caught on to Eva's scheme, and moved to look for clues in the mansion about her movements. I don't know if Eva smokes, but Hideyoshi does, so Eva has easy access to cigarettes. Important to recognize: Rudolf smokes too, but I can't think of anything he'd have to do with the murders right now. This is undoubtedly correct. Kyrie wanted to go to collect evidence about the murders, because she didn't believe there was some maniac wandering the island killing people; she assumed that someone from the family was doing it. She might even have specifically suspected Eva, because she's not a damned idiot. The food thing was a convenient excuse. By bringing Hideyoshi but not Eva, they might have been trying to force him into a confession; I mean, they outnumber him two to one. I would guess that she snuck out after them, there was a gunfight, and three of them died during it. Afterward, Eva could have planted the stakes on them to preserve the theory of a witch and/or crazed killer, then snuck back into the house. The stake holes would cover up any bullet wounds, and if Nanjo is on her side that wouldn't matter anyway since nobody else is going to examine them. As to where she would have gotten it, either using it to ignite Kinzo's remains or just dropping it idly in a suspicious spot (any room with a non-smoker locked in it) would work. Don't underestimate the compulsion smokers have; I've seen friends light up automatically when walking outside even knowing they'd have to go into another building less than thirty seconds later, meaning they'd waste the majority of the cigarette. A habitual smoker barely realizes they're doing it unless you point it out.
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Jan 5, 2017 18:04
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little_firebird posted:You all listened to this one, right? It's kind of like Tubular Bells got mugged in an alley by Cornered and had its statement taken by O Fortuna.
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Jan 5, 2017 20:53
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Man, just blowing up our old theories left and right here. I think this basically confirms the idea of Shannon (or Kanon, but more likely Shannon) having multiple identities - Battler even brings up the concept, and notice that instead of denying that that was a factor, Eva sticks with Jessica's body not being involved (despite going out of her way to deny robots and things like that). I assume she'd have a lot of resentment towards the family after being their servant for so long, and Eva has a big thing to hang over her head with George - she might have killed George once she realized Eva was never going to let her marry him, or something like that. So she kills Nanjo. No witches required.oath2order posted:Man, the cigarette button thing is such an unholy cliche. Early mystery writers who wrote down the rules of the genre straight up banned it as disqualifying for any mystery novel of merit. Van Dine's rules are just way, way too elaborate and I disagree with about half of them. (Particularly the idea that a mystery MUST be a murder mystery. Several Holmes adventures don't involve murders and they're all good.) I much prefer Chandler's set, although Knox's isn't terrible either. In fact, Knox's list is one of the reasons I was so tickled with the idea that Kinzo might have grown up in China, because then it means the story includes a (sort of) Chinaman. (For those not in the know, another early mystery writer had a rule that no Chinaman must figure in the story - he wasn't being racist, he was protesting the "yellow peril" stuff that had infected a lot of stories back then.) Chandler's rules are my favorite, though: Raymond Chandler's Mystery Rules posted:It must be credibly motivated, both as to the original situation and the dénouement.
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Jan 6, 2017 17:32
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I really like the idea that she might have revenge-killed him for killing George. That seems like a plausible motivation. Is Nanjo in a good position to kill George at any point? (It's hard to say WHY he would have done that, but we don't know a lot about his motivations at this point anyway, aside from possibly "money".) Shannon's body is in there with George when the room's opened, but she could have come in after (and then had to pretend to be dead again when everyone else showed up). Edit: Also, credit where credit is due; it's EagerSleeper's theory, I just like it. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 17:55
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bman in 2288 posted:Holy poo poo, I'm always surprised to see this thing pop up. I feel like I'm the only one I know who's ever those books. poo poo no, those books are amazing. I would also like you all to know that on the way to a show tonight, I ran across a fresh cigarette butt on the sidewalk, still smoking, and actually caught myself wondering if I could figure out what brand it was if I picked it up. This is your fault, thread.
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Jan 7, 2017 02:24
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That's exactly why Taran is so amazing. He doesn't just get handed his magical destiny on a silver platter, he becomes a great man because he makes himself great, and because he is constantly faced with hard decisions with terrible consequences that forge him into a better person.
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Jan 7, 2017 02:59
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I'd probably be annoyed at the witches if witches actually existed, but since they don't, who cares about that. The new character is clearly Ange. Are we not supposed to know that? Her name is right there in the credits. It's the first item if you don't count non-existent people! bman correctly identified her already. Ange being an adult is interesting. In fact, it It offers new context to the meta-room scenario which allows us to deny magic even more fully. All of the stupid non-existent crap about witches and magic only has psychological meaning, so now we can explain it - it's a series of what-if scenarios come up with after the fact trying to expose, as she says, the truth of the Rokkenjima incident. Battler, her brother, is simply the avatar of her belief in a mortal culprit. That's why she's an adult and refuses to let him give up. Boom. gently caress witches.
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Jan 8, 2017 19:06
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MonsterEnvy posted:Also it appears that Eva did indeed survive this round. Yeah, that part is interesting too. Given the police report stuff in the first episode, it's likely everyone actually died. Eva getting through it might be part of the theory - like, she did the murders, but then snuck off the island later and secretly survived somewhere.
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Jan 8, 2017 19:27
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In case you don't want to watch a video: it's one of Aesop's Fables. The story goes roughly like this: The North Wind and the Sun are arguing about who is stronger. They see a man walking on the road, and agree that whoever can strip him naked first is the stronger. The wind tries to blow all his clothes off, repeatedly, but is unable to do it - in fact, the harder the wind blows, the more the man wraps himself up to keep warm. Eventually, the wind gives up and lets the sun try. The sun warms the area up, and the man voluntarily removes all his clothing and gets into a river to stay cool. The parallel here is that Beatrice has been unable to get Battler to accept the existence of (totally fake) witches by assaulting him, but she might be able to accomplish it by being nice to him instead and making him WANT to believe in witches. He almost did, too, but he never will, because witches are 100% fake. EDIT: Oh, yeah, modern versions usually just have it be a coat or something, probably because we get a lot more freaked out about naked people culturally. Sometimes it's also a cloak. General idea remains the same. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 20:01
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oath2order posted:I'm pretty sure based on episode 2 battler accepting the existence of witches does lead to him stripping naked, though. Hey, what goes on between Battler and an imaginary witch and a bunch of goats is none of our business.
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Jan 8, 2017 20:41
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curiousCat posted:Okay. I think there's a way to put this scenario together. If we combine theories we've already been floating around here. Everything except for... whatever those numbers are. Whatever a "small golden land" is. Let's separate out the twilights. I'm pretty mystified by those numbers, which probably means they relate to the epitaph somehow because I lost track of that whole thing a while back and because that's supposed to be the thing that shows you where the golden land is. Maybe some of the gold was moved from the main vault to somewhere else? Could the numbers be some fractional longitude and latitude or something? (It would be a weird coincidence if part of that was Battler's birthday, though.) Maybe George figured it out, and that's why it says his soul was traded for it? curiousCat posted:Fourth-Sixth Twilights: It's certainly the guns. I think I mentioned earlier, but all you have to do at this point is imagine that Eva jammed stakes in the bullet wounds after the fact. I don't imagine that if a fight broke out, BOTH sides were armed with some kind of stake-shooting device; Kinzo is a loving weirdo, so it's possible that there is such a device on the island, but the idea that there are two and that they get hold of both of them before the fight starts and they both vanish without a trace afterward is stretching things a bit. It's much easier to imagine Eva trying to muddy things up by desecrating some corpses. Now, there's no way this would fool a modern pathologist, but a) this is a long while ago, when things were less sophisticated and b) the after-action police report from episode 1 suggests that there was nothing left afterward but random body parts. I mean, they talk about identifying Maria from a piece of her jawbone; you don't do that if you have anything else recognizable left. (It's specifically noted that they couldn't tell if any of the children were there at all, which, brrr.) That's why the murders can vary so wildly from episode to episode, probably; if the murderer went back and just chopped everyone up after the fact, it might be hard to determine how they were killed initially. This is also probably why you have to posit a survivor of some kind, since somebody has to go back and chop up those bodies, although honestly after doing that it wouldn't be too shocking if the murderer committed suicide, especially since you probably don't get to inherit all the money if you're the sole survivor from a massacre like that. (If the murderer jumps into the ocean at the end, there's no body, or if they sneak off the island, ditto.) I assume that wasn't the original plan, but things clearly went off the rails at some point during the evening. When I was double-checking this, I also was reminded that we're told the first version of this story was told by a literal message in a bottle that was fished up out of the sea. I assume it was the fake version with the witches, although I have no idea who had time to write that during all this poo poo. Maybe the murderer did it after the fact, before escaping or dying. It's attributed to Maria, but anybody can write a name on a note. curiousCat posted:Seventh-Eighth Twilights: Probably doesn't need a cart. If the theorizing up to this point is correct, she has 1-3 collaborators to help her kill people and move bodies, depending on their current positions and statuses. (Nanjo, Sayo, and K.) curiousCat posted:Ninth Twilight: I like the theory that Nanjo did it, because it explains why he gets killed later. Look at it like this: maybe he spots George sneaking out and follows him. They get to the room and George realizes that Shannon's body is not there. Nanjo appears and George realizes that he must have been in on it, since there's no way he would have said Shannon was dead if she wasn't. They argue and Nanjo kills him, then runs off back to the guest house because he knows he's in the poo poo. Sayo arrives and hangs around the room grieving, since she probably wasn't in this to kill him. Then: curiousCat posted:Battler, Nanjo, Eva, and Jessica storm the mansion. S and K lay in wait. Eva blinds Jessica in her very real freakout. The two pairs split. S confronts Nanjo outside of the servant room. They have an argument that Jessica hears -- and then Jessica hears Kanon's voice. It's K, guiding her around away from "the witch" while S kills Nanjo. If Nanjo killed George, that explains why Sayo kills him here. That wasn't part of Eva's plan, and presumably she doesn't like it either. curiousCat posted:Eva and Battler eventually return and stumble upon Nanjo's body. Both immediately assume the other must, in fact, be the murderer. Battler accuses Eva, Eva says that it "took him long enough to notice", notably not confirming she killed all of them or anything of the sort. Eva survives. S, K, and possibly even Jessica leave the island through alternative means (?). Alternatively, S, K, and Jessica stay in "the Golden Land" (that other bedroom) until the story is over. That would cover how they reunite, if that counts as true. As for chewed to bits by demons... thrown off a cliff and dashed against the rocks? I don't know. Probably Eva kills everyone that's left. They can all provide evidence against her at this point. The nibbling could be the aforementioned corpse mutilation. Which, sure, could involve just hurling bodies into the sea and letting them get dashed to pieces on the rocks. Since Eva's noted to have survived here, she probably sneaks off the island before the ferry arrives - there could easily be a boat somewhere on the island, and there's probably time between when the weather clears up and that happens. That might even provide a motive for the mutilation, to fake her own death. Most likely this isn't the way things were supposed to go - Eva's original plan probably would have had her husband and son surviving, and they might have been able to create reasonable doubt or blame things on the servants with all three of them working together. (George probably doesn't know anything during the story, but could be brought in as an accomplice after the fact, or even had his innocence used as a tool to make the alibis more believable.) Now that everyone else is dead, the plan is in the shitter.
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Jan 9, 2017 11:00
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Tender Child Loins posted:tl;dr: Bato x Beato 4eva This is some interesting stuff. Particularly when you consider that Beatrice is very openly a reference to Dante; Dante, like Kinzo, was obsessed with Beatrice, his first love, even after marrying another woman and having children, despite her being dead. (Thankfully, Dante just wrote some fictional representations of her rather than going crazy and starting to believe in fake magic powers. Well, okay, he did the "going crazy" part.) Beatrice, in his fiction, is the exact opposite of a female horror - a female ideal to be aspired to but which can't be attained in reality. She never had to be a real person to him, because she married someone else and died after only meeting him twice, so he was free to invest her with whatever characteristics he wanted, and those manifested directly in his work. Of course, Kinzo's obsession with Beatrice is ALSO about as far from an ideal situation as you can get; creating a fake woman who is the ultimate realization of your idea of perfect femininity is no better than creating a fake woman to embody all your fears. It just causes a different kind of problem. ProfessorProf posted:If you mean the Umineko Motion Graphics, there is indeed one for every episode except for the last one Without episode 3 being finished, it cannot etc.
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Jan 10, 2017 01:24
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So the bodies were unrecognizable, and it's commonly believed that Eva did it, but the official word (based on whatever evidence) is that there was an accident. Maybe a fire? If the killer piles everyone's bodies in the mansion and sets fire to it, that could result in there being little to no physical evidence left, and it could be claimed that the fire was accidental. (Today, I would expect even that to fail, since we have lots of ways of examining bones, but back then it might have worked.) It definitely couldn't just be a bunch of intact bodies with, like, stakes stuck into them or whatever, even the worst cops would probably realize that involved a little murder. That would also explain the references to people going to hell (since, commonly, hell = fire). That would also explain why you might distribute corpses around in a bunch of different rooms, so it would look as much as possible like a bunch of people just doing whatever in different places just got caught in the fire unexpectedly. Eva can claim she was taking a walk at night looking for Crazy Old Kinzo's Gold and that's how she survived. Now I'm wondering what the gently caress is up with episodes one and two, where Eva clearly died, if she's alive after the fact. I didn't expect there to be a survivor for real, that kind of blows the whole mystery open, in a way, since at least she ought to know what happened. (But if she refuses to tell anyone and is about to die in the hospital, I guess that hole is about to be closed back up.) I suppose if episode one is the story told in the bottle note, it could be, although why would Maria (or someone impersonating her) write a story where Eva was murdered? Episode two has the Halloween Murder and she's definitely dead there too, and we don't get an explanation for that story that I recall, so what the hell? I mean, I guess if this is all Ange thinking about what happened, maybe it's just a "what if my terrible aunt was horribly murdered" thing before she gets down to the business of actually thinking about how it might have worked. Maybe the bottle thing is just a misdirect, and that's part of what Ange is imagining.
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Jan 10, 2017 19:43
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Eva's genocide route, Ange is the surprise boss at the end.
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Jan 11, 2017 05:14
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:But anyway, rambling aside, could someone more familiar with the logical symbols in symbolic logic define what Λ Δ symbolizes? We've got a capital lambda, which is conjunctive, and capital delta, which is change, but I've never actually seen them side by side in any of my courses that touched on logic. I'd like to understand the symbolism of Lambdadelta's name a little better. In logic? A lambda can also symbolize a set of logical axioms. An axiom is a statement that is taken as true without evidence (a red truth, one might say) in order to form the basis of an argument; it might be that the axiom is unprovable, or it might be that the proof is assumed to make the argument more concise. Lambda specifically refers to the logical part of those axioms (that is, related to rules of logic, like, if A and B, A); there is also a Σ which is the non-logical portion of the axioms. You combine those with rules of inference in order to prove or disprove the other parts of the argument. That means that a lambda forms part of a deductive system in mathematical logic, used to demonstrate proofs. I have seen Δ used as a symbol to indicate the current state of determined by a rule of inference, but usually you don't see both symbols at the same time. (And I fear it might be difficult to get any further into these explanations because it has been a LOOOONG time since logic class.) As for witches, who have been and remain completely fake, it seems that the definition for people who refer to themselves as witches is "someone who has separated themselves from humanity and no longer has any human limitations on their actions" or, in standard parlance, a sociopath. I will keep this in mind as the story goes on.
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Jan 12, 2017 22:31
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