[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

Beatrice's message bottle stories don't describe an explosion at the end, only a serial murder. The explosion was mistakenly added by future observers who conflated the stories with the real event.

I did not say explosion. I used the word "disaster" because it is ambiguous. I consider a two-day serial murder to qualify as a disaster. So your blue does not address the problem I put forth. Whether the stories ended with an explosion or not, they still predicted a serial murder, which somehow coincided with an explosion on Rokkenjima-Prime. It's a very strange coincidence.

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

Is this really so unreasonable? The story actively acknowledges that the Witch's Illusion would not have come into popular existence except for an unlikely confluence of events -- the message bottles were miraculously found, and Eva auctioned off the Ushiromiya occult library.

In Ange's case, she only sporadically attended to begin with because of her stomach problems, so getting her real attendance correct by accident would be something like a 50/50 chance, right?

It's very unreasonable. The witch's illusion is not a coincidence. It was created by someone who has an agenda for which the illusion has purpose. And I don't want to think that Ryukishi relies on convenient coincidence to explain how his story works. However, the alternatives (post-event authorship, as-the-event-happened authorship) are also very unreasonable. This is why I raised this discussion in the first place, to see if people can help me sort this out.

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

Question. Why is "a maid with no demolitions experience blew it up with old WW2 explosives" somehow more plausible than "a storm caused it to slide into the sea and there was some lightning"? In the first place, what's the reason for testing explosives on the shrine (during a violent rainstorm with the explosives exposed to the rain!?) instead of doing it on the other end of the island?

Of course it wasn't a weapons test. That's retarded.
Yasu-Beatrice had already been doing inexplicable acts on Rokkenjima for years in order to convince people that Beatrice existed. Her destruction of the shrine was role-fulfillment for Beatrice; in other words, to strengthen the legend of Beatrice. The how part of your argument is effective though. Then again, GENSAWAJO could help with that.

Originally Posted by Renall

Finally, Battler culprit is acceptable as a theory on the basis that it is totally awesome and means Battler was such an amazing culprit he even managed to dupe himself. It's literally the perfect crime. Only Kinzotrice approaches it for sheer trollish delight, and Battler culprit is actually kind of plausible and textually supported. Also, "the reason Battler didn't come back in Lion's world is he felt no need to murder his entire family in that universe" is just kind of badass.

EDIT: Note that the logic has a sort of twisted amazement to it:

• Beatrice was created to love Battler.
• Battler kills everyone.
• Beatrice, out of love for Battler, takes the blame for Battler.
• Beatrice torments herself over doing this.
• Battler vows that he and Beatrice will torment each other forever.
• Battler realizes Beatrice was tormenting herself by covering for him and he made it worse by attacking her for leading him away from the conclusion that he did it.
• Battler torments himself over doing this.

Come on, that's the most metal thing ever.

This is awesome, and makes a lot of sense in many ways. The main problem is that the stories being written pre-event indicate premeditation. If Battler premeditated the murders, it doesn't make so much sense for him to have PTSD amnesia.