[Game] Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru - Ep. 6 Dawn of the golden witch

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

That wouldn't render the red useless, though. A statement like Alice and Bob are dead might not confirm that Alice and Bob are dead in reality, but it might confirm that they're supposed to be pretending to be dead, potentially in contradiction with some clue the detective found. Rather than discarding information, looking at the red this way changes the kind of information that it provides. If the idea is correct, there should be some reds in EP1-4 that are useful to interpret as applying to the fiction...

I couldn't dare to say it... but it's been a while since I thought about this possibility. I also came up with an explanation at least for what concerns the "dead" part.

Basically if tell you... "yesterday I died ten times"
Would you automatically think that I'm lying? If you lack imagination probably yes.
Now let me clarify this "I'm not talking about some metaphorical stuff like I died inside or such."
Confused?

But of course "I was playing a paintball match!"
In that kind of game the definition of "dead" refers to a player that has been hit by a paint bullet. And of course "A dead player is unable to act until the end of the match!" Doesn't that remind you something?

At any rate now that you know what I'm talking about can you really say that I lied when I said that "yesterday I died ten times"?

Now before you say "hey! nobody told me this was game!"
Think twice, can you really say that? Can you really say the witch never mentioned that?


Okay, I admit it, the idea that no murder occurred in the first place would be a terrible plot twist! But everytime I follow some kind of reasoning to explain what happened on Rokkenjima I keep on hitting that wall and I cannot proceed further. If no murder never occurred I could make sense out of everything, I could explain every single mystery and trick and I could explain almost every action taken by the adults. Every scene.

So either there's a way to get around that wall which I've yet to find, or that wall is just an illusion.

[Renall]

Well, one of the Author Theory ideas was that nobody actually died on Rokkenjima Prime, but that leads to all sorts of weirdness with respect to Eva and Ange.

Unless, of course, that was all a story too. Or an act in and of itself. Seems a bit much once you get to 1998 though... of course, if the "real world" differs from Ange's 1998, you can dispense with that notion outright.

[m0h]

Potentially true. I like that interpretation. But that would make the whole game structure, based on the assumption that a dead piece cannot be reused in the same game, crumble. Think about Zombie Kanon.. that would lead us or to a logic error, or to the assumption that every piece can break the rule and be used infinite times.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Renall

Was Beatrice the one who died?

It doesn't sound very likely, considering that Beatrice-2 has to have been considerably older than Rosa at the time, and a swap would not pass unnoticed. Unless they were by some chance twins, but there's no hints suggesting that in particular...

However, Rosa's insistence that it happened "19 years ago", when she initially agrees with Rudolf's "20" estimate keeps feeling fishy to me. She actually knew whom she "killed", didn't she. Could she possibly imagine that she now has to become the next "Beatrice" to replace the one she eradicated, in essence if not in name?

There's one other phrase in Ep5 that I think may be a hint in this direction. Bern says, among other things, "...This plot twist is truly laughable...!! I'd expect nothing less from a plot twist by a demon!!"

Now, whom is she talking about? Featherinne is a witch, not a demon. There are, in fact, only two characters identified as 'demons' at this point in the story -- Ronove and Gaap, Zepar and Furfur aren't around yet. And I've already suggested that it is likely for Rosa to be represented as Gaap...

I don't have a coherent theory segment to go with this, and people have ignored it the last couple of times I said that, so I guess I'll stop until I do.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Renall

Well, one of the Author Theory ideas was that nobody actually died on Rokkenjima Prime, but that leads to all sorts of weirdness with respect to Eva and Ange.

No real murder happened doesn't mean that no accident happened.

The way I can make it work assumes that while the serial murder is fake, the final accident is real. Which in a certain way means that Beatrice isn't totally innocent, since she must know what's going to happen.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Okay, I admit it, the idea that no murder occurred in the first place would be a terrible plot twist! But everytime I follow some kind of reasoning to explain what happened on Rokkenjima I keep on hitting that wall and I cannot proceed further. If no murder never occurred I could make sense out of everything, I could explain every single mystery and trick and I could explain almost every action taken by the adults. Every scene.

So either there's a way to get around that wall which I've yet to find, or that wall is just an illusion.

Yeah, I think I remember you posting that idea before, actually. What I'm saying is a little different though... If "all red is true in ground reality and the murders are real" is one extreme that interferes with our reasoning, then "all red is true in fictional reality and the murders are fake" is also an extreme. There might be some value in taking a middle ground where some red is fiction truth and some is ground truth, with the distinction being made based on evidence gathered by Battler (who doesn't participate in the fiction in EP1-4). Since there's a relationship between the two realities, you can extract some information on both sides of the fence.

For example, take Kanon died in this room from EP2. Battler observed that Kanon's body wasn't there and there was no sign of blood from his death. Since the physical evidence doesn't align with the red, we can determine that the red was fictional truth. Then this follows: Kanon died in Jessica's room in the serial murder story, which means he should have been playing dead there. Since Battler observed that he wasn't there, Kanon must have deviated from the plan for some reason. And so on.

Also, if no one is play-acting after a given time, then any subsequent red ought to be ground truth since there's no fiction for it to refer to. Then it would become really important to keep track of who hasn't realized that murders are occurring in each game.

[Smeckledorf]

Originally Posted by Renall

Well, one of the Author Theory ideas was that nobody actually died on Rokkenjima Prime, but that leads to all sorts of weirdness with respect to Eva and Ange.

Unless, of course, that was all a story too. Or an act in and of itself. Seems a bit much once you get to 1998 though... of course, if the "real world" differs from Ange's 1998, you can dispense with that notion outright.

Well, my thought was there was no culprit but to erase the evidence of the fake deaths so people like Krauss can sneak off and live a new life, they explode a bomb. I can't think of a reason why everyone would forget about a bomb if it was part of the plan.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Smeckledorf

Well, my thought was there was no culprit but to erase the evidence of the fake deaths so people like Krauss can sneak off and live a new life, they explode a bomb. I can't think of a reason why everyone would forget about a bomb if it was part of the plan.

Obviously, a bomb everyone thinks killed everybody would be a very interesting twist, but there are several problems with this, at least with the evidence we presently have:

1) The Maria's jaw thing in the ep1 endscroll. It's hard to fake that without Maria actually dying, and nobody would just leave her.

2) Ange (and Eva). Even if she knows about it, she can never be seen with her family under any circumstances lest people find out. Besides, if anyone survives, the creditors could still go after that person to get their cut. I'm also unconvinced Battler would permit himself to be in on any such plan and just abandon Ange, to say nothing of Rudolf and Kyrie.

[Kylon99]

By the way, the Author Theory doesn't refer to Rokkenjima Prime, where there may or may not have been any murders. It refers to the actual written episodes where there must be an internal logic to the story. So if the story calls for a murder then a murder really happened in the story.

For example you could say that in Amadeus, Salieri killed Mozart. In real life he didn't. But Amadeus is a play and movie where the murder really did occur. This murder must occur according to the play/movie's own internal logic.


Anyways, having said that, we already are pretty confident that people are faking the first twilight. There's evidence that the Beatrice action/servants continue on to fake even more twilights. For example EP2 Nanjo and Kumasawa's 'murder'... and EP4, Gouda and Kumasawa's 'hanging.' (But not their shooting.)

It is not 'inconceivable' that this really was a game to start, albeit some kind of serious game that must be seen to the complete end. After all EP6 did say, "as if it were some kind of prank." Although we know it wasn't just for laughs...

Ok.. Kanon's been shown to have 'died' and kept having the ability to act. And of course we suspect other people have as well, especially the servants.

What I want to know is, can this answer some of the problems we've been having? Is there some kind of game where Shannon or others can 'play' as someone else? Maybe related or not but, is there something to why Kanon is the 'sacrifice' (i.e. 'Yoshiya') in the game? Does that mean anything?


EDIT: Oh also, if the first twilight fakery is part of a game, then there should be some kind of system of rules for the game, right?

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Kylon99

For example you could say that in Amadeus, Salieri killed Mozart. In real life he didn't. But Amadeus is a play and movie where the murder really did occur. This murder must occur according to the play/movie's own internal logic.

I don't necessarily disagree with the rest of your points, but Salieri doesn't kill Mozart in Amadeus; he just leaves a fake confession to make everybody think he did. And it doesn't even work.

...which may not be as off-topic as it sounds, actually.

[Smeckledorf]

Originally Posted by Renall

Obviously, a bomb everyone thinks killed everybody would be a very interesting twist, but there are several problems with this, at least with the evidence we presently have:

1) The Maria's jaw thing in the ep1 endscroll. It's hard to fake that without Maria actually dying, and nobody would just leave her.

2) Ange (and Eva). Even if she knows about it, she can never be seen with her family under any circumstances lest people find out. Besides, if anyone survives, the creditors could still go after that person to get their cut. I'm also unconvinced Battler would permit himself to be in on any such plan and just abandon Ange, to say nothing of Rudolf and Kyrie.

I didn't say they succeeded in their plain. But that is the problem, if the bomb was planned then it shouldn't have hit everyone but I think it did hit everyone and that it was planned. I am just trying to think of a good reason why that might be. Maybe Battler's sin was changing the time on the clocks, lol.

[Kylon99]

Yah, I was just using it as a cheap and dirty metaphor since I'm pretending to--I mean working really hard right now.

EDIT:
Oh, further evidence that it's a game is the Witch's Ending Game Record. In EP6, Battler is declared 'dead' at the first twilight when we clearly know that he was not. So the 'Game Record' doesn't reflect true life or death status but the life or death status of... well.. the Game. That's why it's a record of the game. 8)

The others were aruguably not dead at the First Twilight either since I wouldn't personally consider Erika's actions as part of that plan... but we have Battler at least.

EDIT2:
The end roll seems to just be called an 'end roll.' That's it... At least on the umineco site: 第四話エンドロール文章 . No evidence that the roll itself calls itself a game...

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

Yeah, I think I remember you posting that idea before, actually.

Man... I don't even remember anymore what I wrote and what I just thought...

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

What I'm saying is a little different though... If "all red is true in ground reality and the murders are real" is one extreme that interferes with our reasoning, then "all red is true in fictional reality and the murders are fake" is also an extreme. There might be some value in taking a middle ground where some red is fiction truth and some is ground truth, with the distinction being made based on evidence gathered by Battler (who doesn't participate in the fiction in EP1-4). Since there's a relationship between the two realities, you can extract some information on both sides of the fence.

For example, take Kanon died in this room from EP2. Battler observed that Kanon's body wasn't there and there was no sign of blood from his death. Since the physical evidence doesn't align with the red, we can determine that the red was fictional truth. Then this follows: Kanon died in Jessica's room in the serial murder story, which means he should have been playing dead there. Since Battler observed that he wasn't there, Kanon must have deviated from the plan for some reason. And so on.

Also, if no one is play-acting after a given time, then any subsequent red ought to be ground truth since there's no fiction for it to refer to. Then it would become really important to keep track of who hasn't realized that murders are occurring in each game.

The way I've always seen since I thought about the author theory is that red truths only work in respect of what happens in the fictional stories.

I think it is somehow confusing to talk about "what really happened in a story" and "what didn't really happened in a story", but we are dealing with multilayered stories where there's a hidden core truth and a layer of fake scenes to cover it.

Fictional stories are of course not real, but "fake scenes" are fake even inside those fictional stories. A player is meant to find the truth of the games with the help of the red truths.

So let's say the red truth Kanon is dead, means that Kanon is dead in the story, but it doesn't mean that Kanon is dead in reality.

After all we have many different red truths about how people died, but according to the author theory there's only a single reality.

Basically red truths do not tell us anything about what really happened in Rokkenjima. We can only suppose that somehow the fictional stories are meant to give us some kind of insight about what happened in the real world, but we have zero guarantees about that.

That's the way I see it.
The way you see it is not something I follow, because your vision hasn't fully accepted that the games are totally and completely fictions. Whether the detective observes something or not, it's still fiction. The concept of detective itself can only exist in fiction in the first place. But mind that "fiction" and "fake" are not the same thing according to my pov.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

That's the way I see it.
The way you see it is not something I follow, because your vision hasn't fully accepted that the games are totally and completely fictions. Whether the detective observes something or not, it's still fiction. The concept of detective itself can only exist in fiction in the first place. But mind that "fiction" and "fake" are not the same thing according to my pov.

It seems like our models aren't really that different from each other. I also think that there's a distinction between "fake" and "fiction", but in terms of your model, I'm rejecting the idea that there is only one valid fiction at a time. Here's a crappy diagram:

---- Witch's Darkness ----
| Possibilities
|
| Perspectives: observer claims and beliefs
|
| ---- Reality ----
| | Consensual fictions: murder game, Golden Land, meta-world
| |
| | Ground reality: the "real world" for an episode, whatever that means
| -----------------
-----------------------------

Whether ground reality for each episode is a parallel universe or just a story someone wrote is pretty much just a matter of labeling. Fictions and ground reality are the same sort of thing in the model, so if you want to consider ground reality just another fiction and say that there's a Rokkenjima Prime outside the whole system, there's no real problem with that. The important part is maintaining a distinction between the various things in the "Reality" box and being able to state truth about them separately.

That said, while I agree that the idea of a "detective" only makes sense within a fiction, that doesn't necessarily imply that the individual episodes are entirely stories. For the first four episodes, Battler is totally out of the loop about the serial murder act, but that doesn't mean that he can't be assigned the role of "detective" within that fiction in the eyes of the participants. The role just doesn't do him any good because he isn't participating in the fiction where it applies.

That does mean we can't rely on Knox to verify his perspective, but that was never really necessary to begin with. We trusted his viewpoint from the beginning because he clearly didn't know what was going on and had no reason to lie, not because we had some red text proving he was trustworthy. Since he was out of the loop for the first four games, all his observations apply to ground reality (or ground fiction if you like), so you don't even need to change how you deal with those.

[Kylon99]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Okay, I admit it, the idea that no murder occurred in the first place would be a terrible plot twist! But everytime I follow some kind of reasoning to explain what happened on Rokkenjima I keep on hitting that wall and I cannot proceed further. If no murder never occurred I could make sense out of everything, I could explain every single mystery and trick and I could explain almost every action taken by the adults. Every scene.

What do you mean by a wall? Like it would be too cheesy a story if there were no murders at all?

Actually, can you still explain everything if there WAS a fake murder that established all the closed rooms then followed up by a real murder that didn't care about closed rooms?

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Basically red truths do not tell us anything about what really happened in Rokkenjima. We can only suppose that somehow the fictional stories are meant to give us some kind of insight about what happened in the real world, but we have zero guarantees about that.

By the way, I want to expand a bit on what I wrote about the red truth earlier, that non-contexed red truths are true for all games.

When I developed my final version of the Author theory, I also included the ideas about where the red/blue/gold text comes from. For red text especially, I was thinking that it actually came from the Author level. Here's why I think so.

Spoiler for Dammit, typed out a novel again. Spoilers for long.:

The meta world characters are the ones who can use the red text. It's explained to us as magic, and most likely from Lambdadelta's powers of certainty. As Judoh said, Beatrice is not psychic, so how can she speak a red truth that holds for the future? Well, the way I think it works for this level is that they simply speak it without knowing 100% that it will come out in red. We've had instances where Battler chokes trying to speak false with red. In addition, there's a possibility that Beatrice also choked when she tried to declare Sakutaro unique in EP4. So this shows us that they don't know whether things will be successful in red or not; of course Beatrice can guess most of it since a lot of the gameboard was of her making.

So if this is a written story though, where does the red really come from? The answer must be that it's the author(s) who is/are taking account of the red. They are the only ones who can plan for it in the first place. Technically speaking if you don't believe in the author theory then for sure Ryukishi is the one keeping track of the red text. 8) Either way, because that one red text held for a future episode, then something on a higher level must be keeping track of it.


So what I really wanted to get at is... where does the Gold text comes from? Of course like the red it's the characters who speak it.. but what makes it effective?

I subscribe to Judoh's theory of the gold text, sorta like a final judgement on non-objective observers. But.. I just had a thought. Is it JUST the character's observations? Or...

Does gold text come from the readers themselves? In other words, could they be text that confirms what the readers have suspected all a long anyways? At the Author level, of course...

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by Kylon99

Does gold text come from the readers themselves? In other words, could they be text that confirms what the readers have suspected all a long anyways?

That doesn't sound like a bad idea...Well I wonder... if the blue is just a guess from the readers I wonder if a gold is a sort of criticism against a narrative or the fanbase. Maybe the gold isn't just an opinion maybe it's like a critic saying what he thinks after he's heard a theory he doesn't like. Literary critics certainly have a level of judgment in the author world.

If it confirms something we suspect though how do we explain how it says the tea cup thing was magic then?

[Kylon99]

Originally Posted by Judoh

That doesn't sound like a bad idea...Well I wonder... if the blue is just a guess from the readers I wonder if a gold is a sort of criticism against a narrative or the fanbase. Maybe the gold isn't just an opinion maybe it's like a critic saying what he thinks after he's heard a theory he doesn't like. Literary critics certainly have a level of judgment in the author world.

Yah... of course it would be the author's estimation of what the critics would think. Like the author's estimation of what possible blues the readers would come up with.

I do have to say that this would be true for both the Author Theory and for Ryukishi, so I'm not sure how useful this line of thinking is...

Originally Posted by Judoh

If it confirms something we suspect though how do we explain how it says the tea cup thing was magic then?

- Using magic, you created a golden rose petal underneath the cup. It was a magnificent display of magic.

... ok, I have no idea. Because is this even plausible to the readers at this point? 8) I don't think it was to me at least... ah well.

[Judoh]

Well this is Beato talking so instead of readers I guess we can take it as the character's criticism then.

I guess I'll give some examples using the Dine rules.

http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost...ostcount=13467

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Kylon99

What do you mean by a wall? Like it would be too cheesy a story if there were no murders at all?

No I meant... I can elaborate a theory explaining everyone's motive for doing what they do, just by imagining some kind of game, and almost every scene fits in, but then I hit the wall of:

"If people are actually dead, the farce would stop."
or
"If there were murder involved it's impossible that so many people could take part of such conspiracy."

This is the "wall", and as I said: either there's a way to get around it (but I've yet to find one that is really satisfactory) or the wall doesn't exist (there are no dead people until the final accident).

Originally Posted by Kylon99

Actually, can you still explain everything if there WAS a fake murder that established all the closed rooms then followed up by a real murder that didn't care about closed rooms?

Unfortunately no, that's the point. The theory of "fake murder followed by real murder", doesn't really explain everything. There are still things that are way too odd.

[Smeckledorf]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

No I meant... I can elaborate a theory explaining everyone's motive for doing what they do, just by imagining some kind of game, and almost every scene fits in, but then I hit the wall of:

"If people are actually dead, the farce would stop."
or
"If there were murder involved it's impossible that so many people could take part of such conspiracy."

This is the "wall", and as I said: either there's a way to get around it (but I've yet to find one that is really satisfactory) or the wall doesn't exist (there are no dead people until the final accident).




Unfortunately no, that's the point. The theory of "fake murder followed by real murder", doesn't really explain everything. There are still things that are way too odd.

I agree, that's why I'd like to think that there is a plot to fake deaths, well I know this part I just don't know why, and then there is a murderer. I just can't figure out why the first twilight differs so much. Even if you make people fake their deaths, if your plan is to not kill them then I still don't see a point. Even if you plan to kill them, there is no point in faking their deaths first. The big mountain in any theory is to explain the faked deaths.