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Old 2010-06-16, 09:59   Link #11098
Oliver
Back off, I'm a scientist
 
 
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: In a badly written story.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jan-Poo View Post
This kind of pattern can be seen everywhere in umineko. Ryuukishi doesn't reveal things out of the blue. He first slightly hints them, then he heavily hints them, and only after they have been speculated over and over again he confirms them.

The lack of information about the incident in EP4 can be just a narrative expedient created for this end.
You see, this is one case where it's not very expedient. It's a linguistic problem.

When I want to talk about subway bombings, I will say 'subway bombings', not 'incident' or 'accident'. When I want to talk about the time when my neighbour's house blew up because he left the gas open, I will say 'gas leak', not 'accident'. The usage of the unspecific 'accident' in such cases is restricted to fairly narrow cases:
  • When I need to clearly delineate 'accident' from something deliberately premeditated. Then it's 'accident' once and 'subway bombings' from then on. I may say 'My neighbour has an accident', but then I'll add 'he had a gas leak', and when anyone asks me 'where were you when your neighbour had an accident', I will normally respond with 'huh, what accident?' because internally it's filed as a gas leak.
  • When I don't know what the hell happened and assume it was an accident. But if I don't know anything about it, I don't say things about it, I ask questions about it.
  • When the event is complicated and involves a lot of things that happened in an extended stretch of time, such as a 'hostage incident'. Some qualifier will still normally be present and having a 'murder accident' would be problematic.

What in particular Episode 4 does a lot is omitting any qualifiers as long as possible even when the result is a statement that makes no sense. Certain anime and manga series loved to play with this, defining some 'kono hito' early on and then using it as it it were the name of some completely undefined character which, supposedly, attracts mystique along the way in this manner. It has been many years since this stopped working and even jokes about this are going out of fashion -- people don't really talk that way. This is not narratively expedient, this looks silly, there have to be limits. It's like trying to write a book without using the letter "e" - possible, but gruesome.

Which is why I feel that it may well be that Ryukishi really wanted to tell the story of Ange's pity party, but realised that giving us the police incident report in any serious detail would amount to giving the answer away, because with everything else we already know it's enough. That would really spoil the crowning final puzzle of Ep4!

So he just concentrated on Maria's diary and censored over any other characters who would otherwise want to talk about the incident report.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jan-Poo View Post
But let's just suppose that it's as you say and there's a deeper reason for all this. How exactly knowing the kind of incident that happened can give us hints about Beatrice's nature? I can't even imagine a scenario where I could get some relevant information. Maybe you can help with that?
Stop thinking of plausible things and you'll immediately start finding things that could work. For example, very few people had a chance to play on the island as kids unattended, and that would be Rosa and Jessica. If what blows up is a secret underground military base with a remaining stockpile of explosives, so that the plateau the mansion is on just implodes, only Rosa, Jessica and Kinzo are likely to be able to do anything to trigger it and Kinzo is dead.

Is it plausible? Not really. Would telling us that be a huge gamebreaking hint? Oh yes, I'd tell you where Kinzo got his gold then.

Let us continue thinking backwards. If my guess is true, then the endgame event mechanism fits the following conditions:
  • First, what we already know about it:
    • It's catastrophic enough to change the landscape.
    • It always happens on the same time.
    • It happens regardless of who is alive or dead.
    • It can be thought to be an accident.
    • It is probably deliberately generated anyway.
    • It probably can be disarmed.
  • Only a very limited number of people have the means to cause it, rather than motive. I.e. it can't be that character X has prepared the bomb which multiple characters can trigger, even if 'Beatrice' didn't make the bomb, she is the only one who can trigger it and thus be considered the 'killer'.

This way any scenarios where anyone can cause an explosion are declared unfitting. Only those remain:
  • Based on things only a few people could have a chance to know. (Secrets, special expertise)
  • Based on resources only a few people can have access to. (Large sums of cash, unique objects)

Any ideas, beside scrapping the whole chain of thought, ofcourse?
__________________
"The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes."
— Paul K. Feyerabend, "Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge"

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