Quote:
Originally Posted by Renall
While it's possible there is "no Prime," all that would do is make all Rokkenjima stories equally fictional; were that the case, we could still garner some use from it (for example, the meta-world can now be folded wholly into the fictionverse), but I think Ryukishi's intent is that there is an R-Prime in which something akin to the Rokkenjima Incident did happen. While the resolution to ep8 could very well not be in R-Prime (and there is at least one piece of evidence in favor of such a conclusion), I get the sense that it was intended that such a first-order fiction layer exists.
Understand that R-Prime itself need not necessarily be the top-level fiction. To use your example, you could have something like:
Story Some Girl Wrote In Class > "Rokkenjima Prime" & Meta-World > Rokkenjima Stories > Embellishments of Stories
In your example of a "no Prime," R-Prime is not a developed universe, but more of a template in which the girl writing the story is drawing from. People, places, and events are all the same, allowing the Rokkenjima Stories to pull things from them (Battler and Yasu, Kinzo's mysterious condition, the Ushiromiya family and their business problems). It "exists," but the girl writing the higher-order fiction isn't concerned with fleshing it out, opting instead to use the Meta-World as a bridge layer where she'll develop her characters.
Of course, this could go on forever; you could insert an additional heretofore-unseen fictional layer above that one, and another above that, and perhaps a meta-reality layer on top of ours. But they're not as strongly supported as an R-Prime is by the Rokkenjima Stories, which is why I think a "no Prime" ordering is unlikely but not impossible.
It's very much a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude thing.
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Just to clarify what I was trying to say, I am basically saying that "Rokkenjima Prime isn't any more necessary then the girl writing in class".
It is normally a given that you do not see the author within the fiction. However it is very normal that you can still learn a lot about an author from their work. Ryuukishi is not a Umineko character. Also, normally authors aren't trying to make anyone find anything about the "real world". If they did, I'd at least expect it to be a bit more direct then Umineko. Generally speaking, I do not see outside of Ange an interest in finding a "single truth" about what "really happened" (if that means anything).
To me your order of things is almost the other way around.
<Author Level, whatever it is> obviously would be the highest level of reality, wether or not we actually see it within Umineko.
That produced arc 1, a fictional story that is intended to be discovered that is such.
At the end of arc 1 instead of having everyone visually dying, instead the scenes change to a "breaking the fourth wall" event where we see the characters talking about the story they were just in, fully aware that it is a story and wondering about it's genre.
That in itself isn't very uncommon. Many stories showed us, especially at the end, scenes with the characters breaking the fourth wall completely and talking about the story they were just in.
However in Umineko, these scenes actually become part of the story, and a story on their own. That is the meta-world, the world of breaking the fourth wall (except it's the fourth wall of the fiction within fiction they are breaking it seems). Obviously a "breaking the fourth wall level" cannot exist without the story it orriginates from.
As thus to me, the Meta-World is a third and much lower level then the main story. It does affect back however the main story.
Then the final and lowest level to me would be that so called "Rokkenjima Prime". To me it's like a byproduct of "the rest". It is only because we were gradually showed all the other levels that we wanted to find out an "absolute level" and that's Rokkenjima Prime. To give a very simple example of what it can mean, is that to me Yasu's personality is that of an author of a mystery story in relation to their work. She does things for reasons normally author woulds, but normally authors aren't in their fiction. As thus I am lead to believe that Yasu's backstory is only born out of trying to make sense on "how could a human being actually have the same personality as an author toward their work". (If you don't get what I mean by an author in relation to their work, well author make murders in their story cause it makes them more interesting, they don't have hatred or vengence etc for their "victims").
So to me it's like...
Author Level - Fictional Level - Breaking the Fourth Wall (meta world) - Rokkenjima Prime Byproduct of the rest.
Tho if I was to actually explain my thoughts concerning this and why I came to believe this, I'd write like 2-3 pages of stuff per point I made in this post.