Quote:
Originally Posted by Wanderer
But, the thing is that the "answer" to any mystery novel is whatever the author made up. In that sense whether the reader gets it right or wrong isn't so much a measure of their deductive capabilities using the facts from the story, but their ability to understand how the author's mind works. And it's this particular concept that RK07 is pushing with Umineko's metafictional format. Understanding Beatrice (the "gamemaster") herself is the true cornerstone to understanding the answers to her puzzles (see Battler's "chessboard thinking" and his final epiphany about Beatrice at the end of EP5; also see Williard's approach to solving Beatrice's mysteries and how he presents his conclusions).
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I agree with you that in any mystery what you really try to understand is what the author is going for. However that's still deduction you use, and your main source of informations is still the story as it is narrated. And to be honest in an ideal situation a reader shouldn't have any other element at his disposal apart from the book he's reading. And even if he had other info (for example previous works) the mystery should be solvable without that.
So in the end the two situations you're talking about should be one and the same. And in fact Beatrice could have more easily made Battler understand her heart by talking to him directly, instead she wanted him to understand just using the facts from her mystery and his memories.
However, ironically, I'm not sure that this is actually what Ryuukishi believes. Because from one side we have Higurashi's last commentary were he stated that you beat him if you found a
better solution than what he wrote.
and then we have his essay on the "later queen problem" that invalidates the whole assumption of "understanding the writer's heart", because you can't possibly understand what the writer himself didn't decide yet.