[Renall]

Originally Posted by Kylon99

False dichotomy? Are there no other possibilities?

Perhaps. Do you have one?

Also, in the case there are three personalities, it does not follow that any or all of them can't be 'dead' at all. Personalities can be dead, just perhaps not in the way you expected them to be.

Once again, because this doesn't conform to a detective novel 'dead' does not mean it can't be a mystery in the genre sense. Nor does it immediately follow that this allows the author to do anything he wishes.

"Death" in its ordinary meaning carries a particular notion of finality. Unless you are H.P. Lovecraft, most people do not believe that dead things can stop being dead at some point. It's fine to use "dead" to refer to an unorthodox existence, so long as it refers to the ordinary notion of permanent departure and nonexistence in some recognizable way. If it doesn't refer to that idea, the onus falls to the person rendering the description to properly define "death" in this context.

And what everyone seems to be forgetting is that we're never given context for any declaration of death, making it entirely possible to believe that no one ever physically died even when the red claims they did. After all, the only explanation of death we've actually seen alluded to by the author is a death of personality which is inherently temporary. Why shouldn't we just believe every use of "dead" in red refers to temporary personality death? To muddle the story in this fashion is a serious error.

As Ryukishi said in his own interviews, it is possible for one of the personalities to act even though they're dressed up and have an outward appearance of the other personalities. (But yes, Ryukishi did play a dirty, dirty trick on us. From his own mouth, he admitted this in one of his interviews, though he was being coy about what the trick was at the time.)

Yes, but that's philosophically worthless. If someone looks like Shannon but clearly by action isn't Shannon, that's one thing. However, if a character looks and acts like Shannon or Kanon, but can't reliably be said to actually be Shannon or Kanon (because they may just be Beatrice posing as them), then we've entered the territory of allowing the author to do whatever he wants whenever he wants by merely refusing to acknowledge or display any sort of internal logic which will permit us to know the difference.

It's more than a mere "dirty trick," it's effectively outright cheating. "This looks, speaks, and acts like Shannon, but at any given moment it might not actually be Shannon and I am under no obligation to provide any comprehensible mechanism by which a reader could know the difference. Also, I will make the life-or-death status of Shannon something I can and will codify at particular moments in the story, even though it doesn't mean anything because of the way I've set up this situation."