[Used Can]

Thinking about it, the whole deal about humans and non-persons went too above my head, since Shannon and Kanon, just as Beatrice are quite likely played by Yasu.

So, taking back the last couple of paragraphs in the previous post, I think it'd be easier to say that there are characters like Shannon, Kanon and Erika who add up to the head count, because they are supposed to be human, as opposed to Beatrice who is supposed to be a witch.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

No shit sherlock. I'm demonstrating that it's so easy to justify Battler's absence it's really not worth doing so. It's not some big mystery that will give us insight into new information.

Just because we can find justifications to Battler's absence doesn't make taking another approach worthless.
We can find thousands of reason why his absence was unrelated to the mystery, and all of them could be wrong.

I really don't see why we're discussing about this point to be honest, since both points are equally valid.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

I wouldn't say so. Ikuko has no access to Toya's subconscious knowledge which seems to leak through in his writings. She can only infer from the surface text.

That's assuming she hasn't got the full story directly from him.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

And since EP6's 1998 is clearly not real due to being an 'impossible memory', Toya probably wrote it, putting BATTLER above Featherine by technicality. Nener nener.

Not necessarily so, and this brings another idea of mine. As you put it, EP6 could have been another novel written by Tōya, in which he depicted himself as a woman (namely Ikuko). One thing that most people realise about EP6's Tōya/Featherine, is that it screams of author's self-insert. So, EP6's Featherine could be as much of an R07's self-insert as Tōya's.

I think this makes sense considering Hachijō Tōya != Ushiromiya Battler. So, BATTLER could be there to represent his past self and Featherine to represent his current self. And well, the one writing the story is Tōya and not Battler.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Pardon me, but where is it stated that a Gamemaster has to have solved the mystery?

Pretty much EP5, isn't it? Well, "solved the mystery" may be the wrong term, but it must be someone who knows the truth. EP1-4's GM was Beato, EP5's was Lambda and after reaching the truth, Battler gained the right to become a GM.

It also makes sense. How could you be a GM for Beato's game when you've got no idea how it works and even less its solution?

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Moreover, Bernkastel doesn't even consider EP7 to be 'real Gamemastering', so it's irrelevant.

Which part of it, though? The first one or the Tea Party?
And this is just assuming she said she wasn't the GM during the Tea Party simply to screw with Ange - which she admitted in EP8, but that could have been a lie.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Featherine asks her to do a game, but Bern doesn't need her permission.

Is that so? By the end of EP6, Bern seemed extremely butthurt, and then Featherine came up with the idea of a new game which Bern took massive delight on, as we saw in EP7.

Had Bern been able to do it before, don't you think she'd have done it? It'd have given her the perfect chance to screw with Battler in EP6.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

No, you're not following what I'm saying. I'm saying an Author can be ignorant of a fanfiction, but that doesn't mean that, if an author is made aware of a fanfic, that they're powerless to do something about it. He can use Word of God to shoot down everything, or just call Copyright and have her website taken down lolol.

There's a minor problem here, though, and its that Tōya cannot simply retcon the events of the story as he pleases, because in the end, these are supposed to have been based on real events, which he cannot change. So, he cannot contradict Bern if she's stating facts. Furthermore, if we go by the idea that everything we saw in EP6 was written by Tōya, then so has to be the part in which Featherine had Bern host the new game.

Also, in terms of Copyright, that cannot go, since the first two novels were not done by him and the story is based on real events and real people. So, that's a big nope.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Battler was also sucking up to Bern and trying to establish a friendship with her. That's a bit different from tolerating her explicitly torturing his wife and trying to tear down any hope of her ever being happy ever while insulting everything she's ever believed in.

She wasn't torturing Beato, since Will had already killed Clair. You could say, though, Bern was desecrating her corpse by exposing a bunch of truths. Well, not that he'd have liked that anyway, but in the end, who knows what he was doing during that time.