[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by chronotrig

I'm not sure where you're coming from here, maybe you could clarify. Yes, the author can decide what the narrator sees. However, the author knows both what the narrator sees and the truth as a whole. The narrator can see and believe something that isn't true, but the author always knows the truth. I don't see what exactly you're disagreeing with here...

In my theory, the author is limited by many rules, including the gold text, the laws of physics, the state of the world before the game starts, and simple cause and effect. They can only "choose" kakera which satisfy those strict conditions, so every single game has to have some basis in reality at the deepest levels.

I agree with that you said except the part where you compare the author's work as "choosing a kakera". This kind of interpretation gives the idea that the "story" already exist, and the author is simply choosing one among the infinite already existing stories. My opinion differs from this because I think the author creates a story and can, at will, modify the parts, set up roles, create scenarios and such.
If you look at how Beatrice described her work behind the games, you'll notice that she always implied such a control over the gameboard.

This kind of interpretation affects the role of narrator. In your case the narrator has a will of his own (although manipulated by the author), while in my case the narrator is just an alias of the author's will (although the author can willingly make it so the narrator doesn't know the whole truth).

I guess the difference is very subtle, but still (imho) substantial.

EDIT: well I guess the main difference is that with the kakera interpretation you can only choose between "possible" kakera, and you are bound to reality rules. while with the creation interpretation you are only bound to literary novel rules and you can insert even things that are not possible in the real world. Of course your interpretation still allow for fake scenarios to be displayed as "fantasies" of the real persons involved. My interpretation gives a more direct explanation.

Right now I cannot say which interpretation is right, I think there's pro and cons with both of them. The pro of my interpretation is that it is consistent with what we are shown (see my response to Renall below), no need to think that Beatrice Lambda and Bern are lying. The cons is that, as you said, if everything that we have seen is a fictional world in its entirety, what's the point? Well I think there's still a way to make it worthy if there are precise rules to make it so the fictional world is relevant to the real world, but your point is still valid.
Your interpretation has the advantage of mediating with reality and the fiction it's been shown under our eyes. However this kind of approach becomes hard and harder each episode. The explanations to all these strange events become more and more convoluted. In the beginning you explained it by saying "everything that has magic events involved is fake". Then by episode4 this explanation doesn't work anymore, so even scenes that aren't suspicious at all can be fake. In the ep5 the metaworld and the gameboard are so intertwined that you can't tell them apart. Erika who is supposed to be the detective can talk about knox rules as if they apply to the real world, she claims to have detective rights, despite her being a little girl, and she can even call Bernkastel's name inside the gameboard as a piece. In other words at this point you can't even assume the existence of (at least) one reliable narrator, which was a cardinal point of the anti-fantasy approach so far.

Your theory is in the end a version of the classic anti-fantasy approach who has reached an higher level of complexity in order to explain all these things, because the old approach doesn't work anymore.

Um... okay. Bern and Lambda lied. Why is this surprising? Erika said she helped Battler solve the epitaph too and she barely helped at all. Bern can say she helped piece Battler all she wants, it doesn't mean she did.

Can't counter that because this is a "braun tube", we won't be able to know if it's true or not until we look inside. Personally I don't think they lied.