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Yeah, there's no need to get het up about non-existent witches. That scene is a perfect example of the metaphorical way they're used in the narrative; it's not that Battler literally jumped out a window and had Beatrice jump down to him, it's that by demonstrating that Kinzo's status is unknown, he preserved the possibility of Beatrice. (I mean, he may have literally jumped out a window to do that, but I'm not sure.) Her entrapment in that room was by mystery logic made manifest as lightsabers, not by any real means. If it were proven that Kinzo was dead: to begin with, all possibility of him engaging in magical tomfoolery is eliminated, which in turn weakens the position of magic on the island, represented by Beatrice. Of course, the other thing this does is allow him to preserve the idea that Natsuhi isn't trying to fool anybody; remember that Battler cares about his family, to the point where he went an entire two episodes trying to imagine that none of them had committed murders that one of them must logically have committed. We, as the audience, know that Kinzo is dead and witches aren't real, but Erika is so annoying that we're okay with Battler putting one over on her this time.
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Apr 7, 2017 19:14
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We've got at least one more murder to go - Hideyoshi has to get found with a stake in his back.
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Apr 8, 2017 16:12
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So, it gets a bit inconvenient to constantly prefix or suffix everything I say with "except none of these people exist". In order to simplify this post, and some future ones, let me suppose the following: Bernkastel, Lambdadelta, and Erika only exist as characters in a story being told inside the story, and their interactions only affect that second layer of reality. This story might be a bottle story, a representation of someone's suppositions of the crime, a delusion, or some other thing. So when I'm referring to any of them, I just mean the story representations of them and am not in any way acknowledging their reality in the primary story. We got hit with a one-two punch here of Erika being a douche and then an explanation of why she's such a douche, namely that if anything gets screwed up she's going to be banished into nonexistence. So it's a bit hard to hate her even when she's acting like a total wad. As for the mystery, let's see if we can summarize: 1. Erika, George, Jessica, Maria, Nanjo, Gohda, and Kumasawa went to the Guesthouse before the conference. 2. Krauss, Natsuhi, and Genji went to the second floor. 3. All other characters are in the dining hall. 4. None of Krauss, Natsuhi, or Genji touched the letter. 5. Not a single person in the mansion (everyone except the people in statement 1) placed the letter. 6. Neither Krauss, Natsuhi, nor Genji knocked on the door or in any way generated a knocking sound. 7. None of the people in the dining hall knocked on the door or in any way generated a knocking sound. 8. At midnight, only the people who started in the mansion (statements 1 and 2) are in the mansion. 9. It is impossible for any character in the mansion to be the source of a knocking sound. 10. No-one in the mansion placed the letter in the hallway. 11. At midnight, only Erika, George, Jessica, Maria, Nanjo, Gohda, and Kumasawa exist outside the mansion. 12. The letter touched neither the ceiling nor the serving cart. 13. It was impossible for anyone outside the mansion to influence anything inside the mansion around the time of the family conference (which includes midnight). 14. None of the characters misidentified something other than a direct knock on the door as a knock. Knocking is defined as someone standing in front of the door and hitting it with their hand. My thoughts: 1. Krauss, Natsuhi, or Genji could have touched the ENVELOPE to deliver the letter. It was not stated in red that they didn't touch the envelope, only the letter itself. This also applies to the letter touching the ceiling or cart. That's just a quibble, though. 2. Not a single person in the mansion placed the letter, but multiple people could have placed it at the same time. Therefore any two or all three of the others could have placed the envelope outside the door. Again, mostly a quibble. 3. All we have on the knock is confirmation that nobody misidentified it. If nobody misidentified it and nobody could have made it, the obvious conclusion is that it never happened to begin with. Rudolf, Shannon, and Kanon are the only ones to react directly to the knock, so if they has prearranged it, it would be simple enough to for Rudolf to say "oh, come in" and the other two to talk about the knock they heard, and everyone else in the room to just assume the knock happened and they just hadn't heard it. There never was a knock in the first place. 4. Similarly, we don't have confirmation that the letter was placed in the hallway at all. Kanon opened the door and "found" it, but he could have just had it in his pocket and pulled it out at the appropriate moment. It has not been confirmed in red that he didn't touch the letter. So he just had it in his hand, and said he found it in the hallway, and everyone assumed it was true. This seems to be a weakness of Erika's, in general. She's relying too much on what others have told her instead of investigating herself.
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Apr 10, 2017 15:15
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I wasn't given a Battler avatar, though, was I?
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Apr 10, 2017 15:57
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tiistai posted:I could easily smash your blue if I was allowed to use red of my own :^) but this'll have to do instead: Knox's 8th. It is forbidden for the case to be resolved with clues that are not presented. If you're pulling a Rudolf-Shannon-Kanon conspiracy out of thin air, don't expect me to take it any more seriously than small bombs. Knox's 8th is a bit tricky to apply to me, since I'm not a detective in the story and can't uncover additional evidence on my own. The story isn't complete yet, so it is entirely possible that evidence of such a conspiracy will appear in the next post, before the conclusion is reached. Nevertheless, let's say that this isn't going to happen. In that case, I'll use Occam's Razor to amend my conspiracy: Only Kanon and Shannon are involved. Rudolf's reaction is secondary; he only reacted because those two identified a knock even though one didn't exist. We already have been shown that those two will conspire with each other, so Knox's 8th doesn't apply. I can even offer a conjecture as to motive; if Kanon is, as I believe, the child that was supposed to have died, he would be interested in frustrating Natsuhi's inheritance in vengeance, and the letter is directly aimed at destroying it. (Unanswered question: how did he live? Was Nanjo on hand even back then? Kinzo has known him for a while. Why wouldn't he be returned to Natsuhi? That one's easier - Kinzo was a loving maniac and taking the opportunity to sneak the child away from him was probably best for everyone.) Shannon is simply helping him with his revenge plot; it has already been well-established that those two are close and that neither of them is particularly happy with their lot in life. (In case there is someone unfamiliar with the term, "Occam's Razor" is a statement that one should tend to pick the idea that involves the fewest unknowns, often interpreted as the smallest number of people, moving parts, etc.) Cyouni posted:That one is simple, however - there's an hour gap between when Shannon/Kanon came in to serve tea, and when the knocking happened. Anyone in the guesthouse could have placed it between those times, and left before 24:00, thereby fulfilling the red truth about "no one in the mansion" and "at 24:00, these people were in the mansion". I thought about this one a bit, but unfortunately, the statement you're alluding to is no one in the mansion placed the letter in the hallway. It doesn't say "nobody I said was in the mansion before", just nobody in the mansion, and it doesn't say "nobody placed it between time X and Y or at time Z", and it is further clarified to mean that they didn't do it at all, in any way, even accidentally. Combine that with It was impossible for anyone outside the mansion to influence anything inside the mansion around the time of the family conference. and the result is that neither anyone IN the mansion nor anyone OUT of the mansion could have placed the letter. This is what caused Erika's brain to blow a fuse. The only conclusion we can reasonably come to is that the letter was NOT placed in the hallway, and any appearance that it was is some sort of sleight of hand; the exact nature of that trick is debatable, of course. Simply by the failure of this letter to exist in the hallway, etc.
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Apr 10, 2017 19:34
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Sure, I get what you're saying, and you're probably right that I didn't sufficiently establish WHY I thought Rudolf might be involved (spoilers: I thought money). It's more a matter of caution against future stuff; if they'd asked us to solve this mystery before the last entry, without the benefit of all that red text, we would have come up with something totally different and, speaking for myself, I don't feel like I could be blamed for doing so. I don't think the presentation of the clues has stopped yet; I assume we'll get more red text about the murders, if not this, so please have a little mercy on those of us groping around for the truth. Without resorting to witches, we have to take a harder road.  (That said, and maybe this is an example of the game having no love or honor, but this red text doesn't even seem to allow for the presence of witches; it doesn't specify humans or anything like that when it says who couldn't place the letter. Phooey.)
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Apr 10, 2017 19:55
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tiistai posted:Nah. The logic is that if it's impossible, it's because a witch did it. Sure. Beatrice tended to be more careful about saying "no human" rather than "nobody", though. Although maybe that's just a translation thing since we switched translators? Or maybe I'm just remembering it wrong. Cyouni posted:There were two sets of knocks, and it appears as though everyone heard the second one. Hmm. Let's see: ProfessorProf posted:
The wording is a bit deceptive here, of course. A knock "could be heard" (but by whom?). It's said to be reserved, like a servant, but I think there's enough weasel room in these words to propose it was imaginary. Cyouni posted:I'll also note that it's impossible for anyone in the dining hall to have made the call - we have a specific time for that (12:07 according to Natsuhi's clock), and we know everyone was there at that time. BurningStone posted:I'll note that Natsuhi's caller produces much the same problems, because of red 13. The caller was on the line when everybody inside the mansion was grouped together, and now we're told it couldn't be anybody from the outside. The only holes I see there are for Genji himself to be the caller (he's inside the mansion and alone when he answers the phone), or an extra person hiding in the mansion, since we don't have red 9's sweep to include people who sneak in. Hadn't thought about the caller, but yeah, that's a thing to ponder. If I proceed on the assumption that Kanon was the child, he'd have to have enlisted help from someone else outside the room to make the call happen at that time. Of course, I don't think anything about the call has been said in red, so we might be deceived about the precise timing by, e.g., a clock whose time had been adjusted. BurningStone posted:* Your very user names say you don't like peas, and I call you peas. My apologies. Ha. It's the typical abbreviation; don't worry about it.
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Apr 11, 2017 00:46
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"...Who is it? It's not locked. Just come in."
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Another thing to keep in mind is the temporal aspect. These corpses are dead right now, but that doesn't mean that they were dead when they were seen in bed before; it's possible that one of them faked their death to help dispose of the other bodies, then was later killed by a confederate, leaving nothing but corpses. I'm less keen on the culprit being Krauss, although it would solve a number of problems. The main issue there is that it seems like the goal of all of this is to put pressure on Natsuhi, and Krauss is the only person in the family that doesn't want to do that. In fact, he wants the opposite of that! Natsuhi is his only ally in trying to keep the Legend Of Kinzo alive for one more year. It's hard to say what happened in this scene, because Natsuhi didn't see it, and since we were following her point of view, neither did we. Even the stuff after is a bit muddled; it talks about "everyone" and some people are here, but were all of them together in the hall? Could someone have been hidden elsewhere in the room (under the bed, say) and managed to inveigle themselves into the group in the confusion? Did it mean literally everyone alive, or just everyone in a certain area? Erika's arrival is announced, so we know she wasn't with the group, which means it can't have been literally everyone on the island. (The locations of our suspects are important for obvious reasons.) Speaking of following her point of view, if Knox's rules are being followed for the mystery portions of the story, this excludes Natsuhi as a culprit.
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Apr 12, 2017 19:49
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What does "yami wo kirisaku" mean, anyway?
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Apr 13, 2017 01:19
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lotus circle posted:It's a lyric from the Umineko Anime Ending song, which became associated with Kinzo. "Yami wo Kirisaku OH DESIRE" more or less translates to "Oh desire that cuts through the darkness" Yeah, someone posted that song in the first thread (although I am in no way objecting to listening to it again, because it is bangin'), was just curious what that phrase actually meant. Is there actually any reason for us not to watch the anime at this point if we have the opportunity, apart from it being bad?
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Apr 13, 2017 04:00
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Huh. So we're not even getting the rest of the murders? That's it? Oh, well. If everyone was really together right before Hideyoshi was killed, it does make Natsuhi look suspicious. That hasn't been declared in red, though, so maybe there's a hole in it. Of course, it's a bit tricky for someone to secretly pop out from under the bed when everybody's on high alert. Do we know for sure that the chain was really on? Natsuhi didn't put it on, and it's not clear that everyone in the hallway witnessed it, just some of them. It would require Eva to be in on things, though, since she tried the door herself and that seems unlikely. Although I suppose it could be secured by some other means, and Gohda made a show of cutting the chain while simultaneously unblocking those? That one's a bit of a puzzler. I can see why they want to start with the first twilight.
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Apr 14, 2017 00:45
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tiistai posted:Shame on you, anyone who even thought she might have been. Nappi would never kill anyone. Tch. ProfessorProf posted:
Of course, I never considered her seriously as the culprit on this particular occasion. I think my earlier theory doesn't contradict anything that's in red. (At least) one of the cousins faked their death. After the bodies were discovered, that person (or people) cleaned up. Later, once there are fewer seals on every goddamned thing, that person is killed by their confederate. Of course, what Battler's saying is true, isn't it? It's not enough to just say "some person", we really need to be advancing specific theories. So let's do that. What I've been trying to figure out from this particular entry is: why the gently caress is Eva involved in this? She's not going to just randomly tape up a door because some arrogant idiot in a weird dress asked her to. It's one thing to be allowed into various crime scenes by the authority of the detective, but inducing someone to actually help you investigate? That's another matter. This is obviously an attempt to frame Natsuhi, but to what end? Who wants that, and why? RIght now, there are two parties that specifically are out for Natsuhi's blood, and we've been introduced to both of them: one, the mysterious person from nineteen years ago. That person has a perfectly understandable desire for revenge. Two, the handful of adults that believe that Kinzo is dead need money. If they can get Natsuhi to admit that Kinzo is dead, they can inherit right now and solve their problems. They may be able to achieve this by isolating Natsuhi and pressuring her; once she's broken, they can demand the truth. For the moment, I'll proceed on the assumption that the child is Kanon. Let me posit the following: Eva created a plan to discredit Natsuhi and regain the headship for her family. She enlisted Shannon and Kanon to help. Kanon has motivation of his own and Shannon seems to be willing to help him out, in general. Shannon also might be motivated by currying favor with Eva. Kanon could have revealed Kinzo's death himself, but that wouldn't satisfy his need for revenge, so he went along with Eva's plan but planned to commit more murders than she intended. Eva pressured George into assisting with the plan. He's in the cousin room, so he can murder everyone else and pretend to be dead. Not every corpse has been guaranteed to have been a corpse at the time of discovery, nor every corpse to have been fully inspected by anyone at that time. George killed the others, pretended to be dead, then helped with the cleanup. He also pretends to be the voice on the phone, using a disguised voice, whenever Kanon isn't available to do it. He is later murdered by Kanon, which satisfies the condition that all of the apparent victims are dead. Hideyoshi also faked his death after chaining the door. The "nobody would mistake a corpse on examination" rule doesn't apply because Eva ensured she and Nanjo were the ones who "checked" the corpse, and then they moved it out of the room. Eva secured Nanjo's cooperation through bribery. Later, Hideyoshi is genuinely killed by Kanon too. Erika is incompetent. The only thing that feels iffy is George's participation, but remember that we were shown back in episode four that he would, if pressed, make the choice to take everyone's life but Shannon's (although he also tried to get out of that choice afterward). He might be pressured into agreeing to this if his marriage to Shannon was okayed. And in general I've been trying to find another side to him for a couple of episodes, so what the hell. Fabulousvillain posted:I like to think she does things like this everyday. Putting seals on doors to stores she goes to and listening through walls of hotel rooms instead of sleeping in them. Public bathrooms must be a nightmare. She and Kinzo would probably have gotten along. He can jump out a third-story window and she can seal it up afterward with tape with an elaborate signature on it. I like that Erika refers a couple of times to the old Murder, She Wrote joke; everywhere Jessica Fletcher goes, someone dies, no matter how unlikely it is. In the real world, nobody would ever invite her anywhere!
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Apr 15, 2017 19:53
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"...So you have finally... shown yourself. I still can't believe... that something like you really exists...But that isn't a problem. Both I, bearing the title of representative to the Ushiromiya family, and you, the one who claims to succeed the head of the Ushiromiya family, are here right now. At this point, whether you are a witch or not is a trivial problem!"
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ZiegeDame posted:Further proof that the Mystery side has utterly failed in their job to disprove witches. Calling the trial finished here is a total farce. It's a logically valid proof. 1. Several people were murdered. 2. Nobody, no entity, and no force aside from one of the people in the mansion or the guesthouse committed the murder. 3. All the murders occurred between times A and B. 4. All people in the mansion and guesthouse who were not murdered in item 1 have their whereabouts accounted for between times A and B, except one. 5. None of the people whose whereabouts are accounted for were in a position to commit murder between times A and B. ∴ The remaining person is the murderer, QED. The only reason we can't run trials like this in the real world is that we don't have witches to guarantee stuff like item 2 (and if we did, we'd consider them untrustworthy - the red text gets us out of all that because it's a condition of the story that it is always 100% accurate, if sometimes deceptively worded). You can't attack the structure of this argument, you have to attack one of the premises. Battler has been going after 4. We have confirmation of 1 and 2 in red. Assuming Battler didn't miss anything on the alibis, 3 is the only one we can reasonably attack, because the red text surrounding it allows wiggle room. I assume that Battler will realize that while he's slowly dying here or something. Or maybe someone will bust in and save him again. Oh, on the topic of the ages, since I missed that discussion: I'm assuming Kanon is older than he appears/was represented as, as part of the theory about him being the presumed-dead baby. A childhood injury such as he might have acquired from that incident could explain him not growing properly (and he's specifically pointed out as being a bit frail early on).
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Apr 17, 2017 18:38
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oath2order posted:You know, Peas, you're still missing the obvious solution. In this particular case, that could actually be done, if Battler were willing to make that argument and if witches existed, which they don't. Magic lets someone bypass one of those seals to murder someone remotely by, e.g., summoning ridiculous bunny girls who can shoot magic arrows through solid objects. Except that Dlanor might still deny it: Knox's 8th states that clues must be presented. Have we seen any evidence that Beatrice summoned bunny girls to murder people, or can we suggest a reasonable motive for her to do so, especially given that the epitaph's conditions were successfully satisfied this time? Even in the fantasy segments she just sends Gaap to tidy up after the actual murderer. I'd actually like to see a version of a magical solution to this crime that still conformed to the red text, including the specific Knox rules that have been stated so far, just as a logical exercise. You know, to pass the time while we wait for Battler to see the actual solution. EagerSleeper posted:I'm pumped about this. I wouldn't mind seeing a detective series about Erika where she almost gets everything right except one tiny fuckup that pins the murder on the wrong person. Actually, I recall an Ellery Queen story in which he did something like that. He does the whole parlor scene and everything. Except there's one more chapter after that, where a tiny bit of additional information shows that he got it wrong, and he finds the real criminal; it was a nice break from the form. (I won't name the story, to avoid spoiling it.)
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Apr 17, 2017 19:16
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tiistai posted:That's not a red that has been said in the story and I don't understand why you guys keep repeating it. Probably my fault. I posted the original version of Knox's rules, and that particular rule is part of the first commandment. Umineko's version conveniently omits that part. I'm still willing to use it as a conjecture for the purposes of considering solutions, of course, but we can't use it as evidence in situations like this. Tender Child Loins posted:Then how did Natsuhi enter the guesthouse without being noticed? I feel like the circumstantial evidence against her only applies if she is a literal ninja. Assuming I believed in her guilt, which I don't, it looks like this: 1. Until 24:00, Erika is with the cousins in their room playing cards, and therefore they are alive until that time. 2. At 24:00, Erika goes downstairs to the lounge and remains there until 3:00 with Nanjo. 3. Between 24:00 and 1:00, Erika is discussing mysteries with Nanjo and not paying attention to the door of the Guest House. Her seals remain in the place on the windows. 4. Natsuhi receives her phone call, then immediately goes to Genji's room and kills him. 5. Natsuhi leaves the manor and goes to the Guest House. Once there, she either immediately murders the cousins or hides in the room waiting for her chance (probably the latter). 6. Rosa arrives at 1:00 and goes upstairs. 7. Natsuhi murders Rosa and anyone she didn't murder in step 5. 8. Natsuhi hides out elsewhere on the second floor of the Guest House until Battler screams. 9. While everyone is investigating the murder scene, Natsuhi returns to the mansion. The timing is tight, and it relies on people being distracted at the right moment, but it's not impossible.
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Apr 17, 2017 23:18
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Amidiri posted:But honestly even if we get Natsuhi off the hook, won't we just be proving that witches are real? I thought that was like, the anti-goal? Battler's goals have shifted lately. He wants to be the one to disprove the witch; he won't let anyone else do it before he does. I mean, unless they do and he ends up impaled on a stake or something. Of course, our goals remain constant.
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Apr 17, 2017 23:38
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For the purpose of the game, disproving her simply means showing how the crimes could be committed by a human being. Battler seems to believe that'll show him the truth about Beatrice, too, and there's likely something to that.
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Apr 18, 2017 00:12
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Battler definitely screwed up, but I don't see any way that this story advances if he doesn't come back and turn it around somehow. So don't worry so much; he'll get a moment of some kind, I'm sure. As for the most recent update, Jesus Christ. As far as I can tell, Erika's main failings as a detective are her arrogance and her vindictiveness, and we're getting a real showcase of both of those here. This whole extra thing is totally unnecessary.
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Apr 18, 2017 16:25
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I think the main thing in this story is that everyone is both a colossal rear end in a top hat and kind of a nice person once you get to know them. Sort of like real people; they aren't strictly divided into good and bad, they just have good parts and (sometimes serious) problems and weaknesses. Except George, apparently, at least unless I manage to pin something on him.
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Apr 18, 2017 17:26
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Battler has produced red truth of his own before, so it's not so much that it's off-limits for him. It seems like it's a question of which side is being argued and what method they're using. Battler is arguing for the human side, or, if you like, the mystery side, so he has to solve the problem using human methods - it's no good saying "I know witches don't exist, because a witch told me and magically guaranteed that it was so". A different standard applies. Erika actually did all this bizarre poo poo with tape and crawling up the walls and listening to Battler breathe like the creepiest fucker ever; if all she had to do was ask for Bern to say a bunch of things in red, why would she have bothered? Even in this last stupid round of bullshit, she's going through the motions of searching the house. The arguments of both sides can be accepted as truth, but they have to get there in different ways. Edit: Actually, there's an analogy here to human courts. There are things that are true that aren't admissible in court - more policy applies to determine the use of evidence in court than just it being true. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Apr 19, 2017 |
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Apr 19, 2017 01:35
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So, since the consensus was that the anime was spoiler-free (with one thing you might notice, and at least one thing that might be wrong), I went ahead and acquired a copy. I asked in the first place because I had an idea for a project, which is now complete. I don't generally do this kind of thing, so apologies if it isn't good: https://polsy.org.uk/play/yt/?vurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D5TWRvn91lvA (Warning: contains copious quantities of Umineko.)
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Apr 19, 2017 06:53
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havenwaters posted:Somehow that video's already blocked in the USA so oh well. Yeah, looks like it got auto-hit. If you're still curious, you can get it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4vbWbHpBrhqd3VmZHB1X3hCTTQ Just click the download link in the upper-right.
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Apr 19, 2017 07:10
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So, here's another way Natsuhi is lovely: actually killed at least one person! I mean, it's definitely an in-the-moment kind of thing, but murdering an adult as a means of murdering a baby you don't want to take care of is about as bad as it gets. I admit I hadn't figured that she'd done it on purpose. That would make it more likely that others would take the baby away instead of giving him back to her, though.tiistai posted:Shame on you, anyone who even thought she might have been. Nappi would never kill anyone. Man, I'm glad we didn't fall for this. Tender Child Loins posted:Yeah, YouTube link is a no-go in Mexico as well, if anyone's counting. Really awesome montage with the lyrics though! I haven't seen the anime but it looks DEEN as gently caress. Yeah, I expect it won't work anywhere. I probably have a reasonable fair use case, but I'm not going to court over a lovely AMV, and I doubt a lot of folks are going to want to bother to pull it out of a zip on google drive. Ah, well. I'll have to languish in obscurity.
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Apr 19, 2017 14:25
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I'm still pretty sure it's a double plot here. I've been trying to avoid the idea that literally everyone is part of the conspiracy, but it would certainly make aspects of this case easier. (Particularly things like who called Natsuhi - George isn't a GREAT suspect for that and he's the best one I've found so far.) But I definitely believe it's one conspiracy to frame Natsuhi for fake murders and one actual murderer (Kanon) taking care of people behind the scenes, using that conspiracy as cover. Incidentally, if that is the right structure, that means Eva beat Natsuhi up for no goddamned reason, since she'd know already she hadn't murdered anyone (recently). Eva is terrible.
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Apr 20, 2017 03:21
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Here's another way you can be a bad detective: become a witch. I assume all the talk about vessels is "what real world thing was the fanciful concept constructed on". I kind of like the idea that Crazy Old Kinzo bought a bunch of random sharp objects from some dude in New York and believed they were genuine occult artifacts. I do have to wonder who decided that they would be represented as anime girls, but that doesn't seem totally out of line for Kinzo, either. All of this makes more sense if the baby, who I'm going to start referring to as X, is actually one of the people on site. Since X knows the story, he likely is aware that Kinzo is his dad. You can kind of draw a line here - Kinzo's interest in the occult inspires X, who plans the Beatrice Murders with occult trappings. If X is Kanon, it explains how, or at least why, he also ropes Shannon into it. The two of them then spend time with Maria and teach her about the occult as well, which is why her personal cosmology (as related to us by Ange) uses the same symbols as Beatrice's and possibly Kinzo's. It makes sense that a person who was abandoned as a child would sympathize with Maria's situation and maybe even crave the company of someone who could understand it, and teaching her how to play make-believe might be the only way they understand how to help her. Virgilia is Kumasawa because X looks up to her as a mentor, and probably learned a lot of the Beatrice Island Folklore from her. Genji is reimagined as Ronove. The Secret Guns become soldiers of heaven. The Special Stakes become instruments of vengeance. It's all in the way a child sees the world; when I was a lad, I remember being really impressed by a shelf of old books my parents had. I wasn't allowed to touch them, of course, because I was tiny and had no self-control and I probably would have destroyed them. I always imagined there might be any kind of secret in there; they looked impressive (they weren't bound the way modern books are normally bound), they were heavy and had cool little designs on the covers. They even smelled interesting. But, of course, as I grew up, I discovered that they were just ordinary books that happened to look old for reasons of style; I could probably buy similar ones on Amazon right now if I wanted to. "Magic" is what we call something when we don't know how it works or what it is, and when you're a child that applies to basically everything.
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Apr 20, 2017 15:28
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That only applies if the detective has said they're about to show us the solution, since until that point we might expect new evidence. Of course, that did already happen, didn't it? The fact that the detective was wrong doesn't change that.
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Apr 21, 2017 16:01
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I'm willing to say that isn't the case, from a meta-perspective. Regardless of the attitudes of the non-existent witches, I believe that Ryukishi07 would want to give us a solvable mystery. He seems to be trying to keep it balanced enough that fans of both fantasy and mystery genres can participate.
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Apr 21, 2017 19:02
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Isn't Dlanor also a witch that goes around destroying any other evidence of magic? Of course, there's another way to look at this. Battler has realized the unreality of everything around him; notice that he mentions the bottle story specifically, which is something that happens outside of the context of any specific game, in the "real world". Knowing that it's all a story gives him power over it, because he can use the rules of storytelling, in this case Knox's rules (as well as some others, presumably) to take it apart. He's been told the story many times, with many variations, and by examining those variations he should be able to determine some things about the true nature of the story, and the nature of the events that happened in the real world, as we've been trying to do. What's most interesting to me here is that everything he says about Beatrice in the early part of the entry actually applies to the story's real author, Ryukishi07. Didn't I just say a few posts ago that I trusted he wouldn't give us an unsolvable mystery? If I say that, I'm counting on the love of the author for his audience. In fact, all along some of us have said things like "that doesn't make sense because it isn't how mysteries work" and "X can't be right because it isn't dramatically appropriate, it must be Y instead". That's leaning on Knox's rules, or something like them, even if not by name, because we already know the author loves his audience and wants us to be able to find what we're looking for in the story, so he must be following some rules that will let us find it. Of course, that brings up something else: one has to assume he loves his fantasy fans, too. And if that's the case, it means he can't ever deliver the final blow to fantasy inside the confines of the story. If that's true, we'll have to do the last bit of reasoning ourselves, even if he gives us all the pieces. Which is fine by me; that just gives us mystery fans another chance to show off.
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Apr 22, 2017 14:50
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tiistai posted:Oh how I laughed Well... he is kind of a bad detective, right? Oh, well.
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Apr 22, 2017 21:22
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thetruegentleman posted:The truth of this game is that Battler committed all the murders so that he could obtain enough magical power to banish pants from all the pretty girls who aren't directly related to him; the reason the reason Cornelia and Gertrude appeared in Battler's thoughts is because they're already part of his pantless furniture. Now that Lambdadelta has acknowledged him, not even the witches can stop this madman and his anti-pants crusade. We know that can't be it, because he wouldn't exclude his relatives.
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Apr 22, 2017 22:57
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This entry pretty much cements the following, in my view: 1. Battler is absolutely not the child from nineteen years ago. He might have made some of the calls, though. He's a more likely suspect than George, and all it requires is that everyone be in on the conspiracy. 2. Yes, literally everyone was in on the conspiracy, except Erika and Natsuhi and some of the servants. It's the only way you can do things like having the entire cousin room be alive. The adults presumably pressured the children into participating. Their goal is clear, to get Natsuhi to crack and admit Kinzo is gone. And then the actual abandoned baby starts murdering people using that as a cover. "Take that, dead people!" is my new motto. ProfessorProf posted:
This line is pretty likely to be a Black Butler reference. Both the manga and the anime would be contemporaneous when these stories were being written. It's about a butler who is a demon, and at least in the anime, he is very prone to saying "Yes, my lord" in English, usually right before some kind of asskicking occurs. Am I supposed to be a little mystified at this point about exactly what the gold truth is? Because I admit that I don't understand it. It's something only the gamemaster uses, and sometimes is better than other kinds of truth and sometimes worse? It doesn't explain a lot. Is this like someone who already read the book giving you hints about the ending? ProfessorProf posted:Erika cried out in pain. It wasn't the pain of her body being pierced. It was the pain of her own theory being defiled...! Bah. A real detective just makes a new theory. Zack Ater posted:Apparently you can (try to?) murder a servant and child and still be pure? She may be a murderer, but at least she never had sex with anybody but her husband.
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Apr 23, 2017 15:49
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"<Yes, your majesty>."
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So basically this all played out exactly the way you'd expect it to.
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Apr 27, 2017 13:12
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I'm pretty sure you're right and she isn't dead. This is all symbolic; we need to switch to Ange eventually because everyone else actually is dead. The future is really the present and the story has been periodically lying about its point of view. She might be injured and having a bit of a hallucination, though. It's interesting that we now know the provenance of stories 3-5 in the real world; there's some kind of web author that knows more about the mystery than ought to be the case.
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Apr 29, 2017 19:11
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CottonWolf posted:Unfortunately, I think I'm not right. This Ange knows about being hamburgered, which only makes sense if we hypothesise the entirety of the meta is Ange's hallucination, which seems unlikely. That is literally my hypothesis. Well, "hallucination" might be putting it a little strongly. Imagining, symbolic representation of her thoughts, something like that. I think i said as much partway through the last Ange chapter. It's the only way I can make the meta make sense without magic. it's a representation of the nature of stories, and it's Ange's representation of that. Battler is the central figure because he's the one she wants back most desperately. I was a bit worried when she vanished for a chapter, but her coming back here makes me feel a lot more comfortable about this, and about the canonicity of Eva as the sole survivor.
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Apr 29, 2017 19:38
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ZiegeDame posted:Also, I think trying to deny the existence of the meta-world is pointless, because Bern and Lambda show Higurashi is canon, and magic is 100% real in Higurashi. Eh. Perhaps Higurashi being canon just means that literally Higurashi is canon, and someone played it, and imagined characters from it as terrible lolis or whatever. It may be that this is a fool's errand, but I'm going to stick with it as long as possible.
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Apr 29, 2017 20:11
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So, in terms of murder mysteries, we have basically zero movement here. But it feels like we just got a bunch of useful information. Why would George need to accept "all of" Shannon? Why is it that Shannon would never see Kanon again if she left with George? Why do they have to compete; why can only one of them have what they want? This update is a huge shot in the arm for the idea that they're the same person, because it answers all of those questions. I may have been wrong about that after all; maybe George really HASN'T gotten to second base with his girlfriend. If they're the same person, they're more likely to look like Kanon, and George might not be so accepting of that. (And maybe that's why he ends up dead in some earlier routes?) If they're the same person, they can't both go off with different Ushiromiyas. I mean... they could, but it seems unlikely that would work with this particular group of people. She would abandon one disguise and live in the other. If that same person is also Beatrice, we have an explanation for the second part, too. The thousand years isn't real, it's just how it FELT when Battler went away. Beatrice is the face she wants to show to Battler, the same way the other two work. Beatrice-as-spirit-of-vengeance is only created when Battler reneges on his promise. At the point the story is talking about, she might not even be aware that Battler is coming back. So Beatrice only emerges when that happens, upsetting all their other plans.
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May 5, 2017 15:40
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That should be obvious from previous stories, but if Sayo (I guess I'll stick with Sayo for now?) is Beatrice, she's also solved the epitaph and been to the golden land. Where else would she get that money? Maybe that's how she gets the other servants on her side, too. She's technically the head of the family, since Kinzo is dead. That seems like the sort of thing that would matter to Genji, for instance.Qrr posted:Another question, if they're the same person (or share a body, whatever), will we get red decrementing the total number of people or will we get more "unknown person X"? Probably the Decalogue says no unknown person X allowed, if Battler is going to follow it. The number has always been "no more than". We have not, that I can recall, seen a red text that says "the number is exactly X". So no modification needs to be made; there are no more than that number, but there might be fewer.
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May 5, 2017 22:33
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curiousCat posted:The only "other servants" in this case would be Genji and Kumasawa -- two people we already are assuming are close to Beatrice. So I absolutely agree with you, the servants minus Gohda have always been with Beatrice. Yeah, there are some other servants, but they're not on the island and probably aren't part of this. I was counting Nanjo, too, although he's not technically a servant. He's also not a murderer, per the red text, but I suspect he is frequently a conspirator. oath2order posted:Why is everyone neglecting poor abused Gohda? Gohda is just too pure to be part of a murder conspiracy. ZiegeDame posted:Not necessarily Sayo, but whoever the culprit is solved the epitaph but for whatever reason did not step forward to claim their prize, at least not publicly. If the solver is a servant this course of action makes total sense, as it's not like the family is just gonna accept this unrelated commoner taking all their inheritance. I've been sure of this much for a while now. OK. There's a theory that I've been hanging onto for a long while, and maybe now is a good time to get into it. What you seem to be implying here is that in the canonical world, the world of the actual events that really happened in Rokkenjima, not in any of these bottle stories, Sayo might not be the culprit, but the culprit has found the golden land. I think Sayo definitely found the golden land... but almost certainly isn't the culprit. Sayo planned the murders. The first two bottles are evidence of that; she is the only person that could reasonably have written those before the murders, including Beatrice as they do, and that's the only time they could have been written. Someone was jotting down fake stories during the actual days of the murders? There's just no time to write this amount of text, and everyone's going to be too busy even if they could otherwise have done it. She, as Maria's friend (we have copious if indirect evidence of this), is the most likely person to sign Maria's name to those stories. If she found the gold, she had the means to pay off the families of her future victims. If she's also the child that got pitched off a cliff, that provides a hell of a motive as well as a reason to be a little screwed up in the head. I think it's therefore established, at least provisionally, that she planned to kill everyone. But there is one piece of evidence that has been bothering me about this. Specifically, this: Eva did not reveal the identity of the killer, and refused to discuss the events on Rokkenjima. She refused to do this even though suspicion would naturally fall on her. Why? For what purpose? If the murderer was a servant that was actually an abandoned child from years ago or whatever, it might be embarrassing to the family, but much less so than the living head being considered a murderer. She would have told the truth in that case. Instead, she said nothing. If she didn't know who the killer was, she would have said that, instead. She didn't do that either. For dramatic reasons, I do not believe that Eva was the killer. Eliminating her as a suspect, there are only two plausible scenarios I can construct that make this evidence make sense. The first is if a member of her own family is responsible, since she wouldn't want to tarnish their memories. I have seen nothing that suggests to me that Hideyoshi can or would plan murders without getting her involvement, and frankly I don't think he'd stand much of a chance of succeeding without her help. George has the aptitude, but despite my best efforts I have been unable to get him on any murders, or figure out a way he can fit into that role. He may actually be the slightly weird but genuinely well-intentioned person he appears to be. That brings us to the other possibility. If Eva isn't trying to protect her own memories of her dead family... what if she's trying to protect Ange's? What would it do to Ange to know that her family was involved? How could you lay that kind of burden on a tiny child? Eva's silence makes perfect sense in that case. Ange is incapable of recognizing that Eva loved her, in her own screwed up way... without understanding love, she can't see the reason. So I'll put down some money on this roulette square. The real killers are Rudolf and Kyrie. I don't know how exactly Sayo's plot went wrong, or if it just collided with theirs, but I'm sure of it. This is what this means: Imagine having that kid hate you every day, but never telling her the secret that would destroy her. That's love, right?
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May 5, 2017 23:29
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Cyouni posted:An interesting hypothesis, though I personally like where it's going. I must ask: you argue that Rudolf and Kyrie are the killers in the third episode, then? No, I think it's Eva in that one. I mean, we (probably) have different murderers in different games, so they can't all be the canonical murderers. At least half of the reason I like this is what it means about Ange's Road Trip. She's on a journey to discover a truth that will wreck her life if she actually finds it! It's so good. Edit: Yes, I was thinking of that scene too, although I didn't dig it up to quote it. loving imaginary Bern.
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May 5, 2017 23:46
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ZiegeDame posted:You're using Sayo as interchangeable with Kanon here, right? Otherwise I'll need some explanation of this evidence of being friends with Maria. Correct. I have (reluctantly) accepted the theory that Shannon and Kanon are the same person. This is also why we never see Kanon's body. There's only one body to find, and it's usually Shannon's. ZiegeDame posted:Rudolf and Kyrie both die at the start of the first two games. Their death is even confirmed in red for the first game. But I can counter this twisted logic that even lead you down this path. The reason post-Ep-3 Eva won't talk about what really happened on that island is whatever else happened, she absolutely detective-saw-it-for-sure shot Battler dead. She is a murderer. If she tried to tell a mostly true story about what happened, but lie about the bit where she killed her nephew in cold blood, there's always the chance some evidence will be found that contradicts whatever story she told, raising suspicion. Better to not say anything and wait until the cops find something to worry about lying to cover your rear end. In every different universe, different people die. Knox's 2nd. It is forbidden for supernatural agencies to be employed as a detective technique. Multiple universes are supernatural, whether you believe in them or not. Eva's guilt or innocence in one timeline can't be used to determine her guilt or innocence in another. The universe I am referring to as "canonical", the one that leads to Ange's world, has not yet been seen. The stories so far were written by Sayo (the first two) and a web author (the latter three). They are not true. You can certainly theorize that Eva did it. As I said, my objection there is purely dramatic; the entire world of 1998 thinks she did it, including Ange. After all that, having her actually be the murderer would deflate the entire story. Keep in mind, the story claims the witch of theatregoing to be the most important; while witches don't actually exist, one could see that inclusion as symbolic of the importance of drama to the narrative.
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May 6, 2017 03:14
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