[Game] Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru - Ep. 7 Requiem of the golden witch

[chounokoe]

Originally Posted by Renall

Nobody's gonna go looking for a bunch of stake-like paperweights if they don't already know it exists. If we're going to reject 1), how'd they get the stakes for 2)?

And it's rather unlikely that they just incidently happened to preexist in Kinzo's collection if they weren't intended to be used in a similar fashion. The coincidence of having (at least) 7 paperweights shaped like instruments used for a satanic offering is too much, even for someone of Kinzo's strangeness. Why having 7 paperweights modeled after the demon-representations of the Seven Cardinal Sins anyway?

The stakes must have been prepared in full intention to use in the scheme (if they were intended to be used for murder is another thing...), but something drove the person holding the stakes to not use them properly under certain conditions.

The funny thing is, Episode 3 offers us an explanation for that Episode. The person taking up the murders after the 1st twilight held no interest in following the plan of making it appear like a ritual, but prefered to make it as gruesome as possible. The question is in how far we can trust that part.
We have no clear explanation for anybody messing up in Shannon's case during Episode 2, because she was the only one who was not staked properly.
Episode 4 seems to suggest that things were done hastily and the culprit might not have had the time to properly fix the stakes to the bodies...but that would leave us with the question why he was able to fix it into Kyrie's forehead and into Krauss's...was it his head also?!...but just placed it beside Shannon's and Nanjo's head.
Okay maybe the stakes placed into Shannon and Nanjo were blown off when their face was destroyed...but then again, why destroying half their face when they're already dead?!

[Helmet-kun]

Originally Posted by cmos

"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life".

Something similar to this, found in Kinzo's TIPS in EP4:

His body was found burnt to death inside the incinerator in the underground boiler room. Because there was no evidence found inside the incinerator, it is probably appropriate to think that he was burned after he was murdered. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. The dead to the dead.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by chounokoe

I think we can assume that the most common bullets were used in such a weapon, meaning the ones that were also implied by the TIPs. To use another kind of bullet would fall under certain tropes of mysteryrules as 'unpresented hint', as most readers cannot be expected to be experts on bullet use. It at least had to be foreshadowed in a way if the bullets were different from the ones normally used with those weapons...was it anywhere? I never payed that much attention to the guns usage...

But that's exactly my point. ".45 Long Colt" is just the size and type of cartridge. It doesn't specify the particular kind of bullet inside, and in fact there's no such thing as a "normal bullet" for the cartridge. You always pick a specific kind of bullet depending on the kind of shooting you intend to do. The TIPS give no information about what Kinzo used, so we have to infer it based on what he did with the guns.

A .45 cartridge is too large for shooting small wildlife unless you think disintegrating rabbits is fun, so that means Kinzo was probably only using the rifles for target practice. I consulted several friends of mine who are knowledgeable about guns, and the consensus was that the most appropriate type of bullet for that would be solid lead of some variety. Hollow points in that caliber would only be used for hunting much larger animals and killing humans, which means Kinzo had no reason to keep any of them around.

I was also informed that a .45 Mare's Leg would generally have no problem punching all the way through a skull at point-blank range, if it was fired directly into the forehead. The angle of entry seems to have a great effect on the bullet's behavior because a) some types of bullets are prone to glancing off the inside of the skull and b) hollow point rounds for hunting don't always have enough time to expand completely when they hit a human.

Originally Posted by Renall

The culprit isn't going to use the stakes unless one of two things is true:

1) He/she is intending to fake the epitaph.
2) He/she happens to have the stakes on hand.

Nobody's gonna go looking for a bunch of stake-like paperweights if they don't already know it exists. If we're going to reject 1), how'd they get the stakes for 2)?

Since we have at least two instances of different people trying to fake their deaths with stakes, how about a combo? Various people intend to fake the epitaph by leaving stakes near their own "corpses". The culprit was going to kill everyone no matter what, but all these stakes are just lying around, so why not mess with the survivors a bit?

[cmos]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

But that's exactly my point. ".45 Long Colt" is just the size and type of cartridge. It doesn't specify the particular kind of bullet inside, and in fact there's no such thing as a "normal bullet" for the cartridge. You always pick a specific kind of bullet depending on the kind of shooting you intend to do. The TIPS give no information about what Kinzo used, so we have to infer it based on what he did with the guns.

That's actually irrelevant, because unless you can definitely prove that the more powerful bullets (that will certainly leave an exit wound) were used, you can't claim that such suicide was impossible. By the way, the detective didn't find any bullet holes in the room.

The crimes in EP3-4 show that the culprit simply isn't all that concerned about the stakings being accurate. Some victims were staked in the wrong location, or weren't staked at all in spite of there being stakes to spare.

We're going in circles there. We have already discussed this. The culprit in ep1-3 definitely cared about the wound locations and the presence of the stake in those twilights, where it's required.

Originally Posted by chounokoe

Why having 7 paperweights modeled after the demon-representations of the Seven Cardinal Sins anyway?

Maybe they aren't representation of anything and that interpretation was created by Maria, during her meetings with Beatrice along with demons' names and other furniture. And it's her knowledge of the occult and religious texts that is an interesting thing, actually.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by cmos

the detective didn't find any bullet holes in the room.

-No hints of bullet holes in any crime (with one exception - EP4 Kyrie. And only the holes were found)
-No sing of any bullet case, nor any bullet
-No gunshot related to a crime has ever been heard by a detective (with one exception - EP1 Natsuhi)
-No sign of struggle in any crime (with one exception - EP2 Natsuhi's room)
-No scream from a victim has ever been heard by any detective
-No hint of any blood trail or any kind of blood traces "out of place"


The killer must be a very discrete person with a mania for tidiness.

Now... that reminds me of someone...

[cmos]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

The killer must be a very discrete person with a mania for tidiness.
Now... that reminds me of someone...

And quite experienced shooter. Did the Master let this someone shoot a lot of guns, by any chance I wonder?

[Renall]

We can somewhat reconcile this with the Fiction Metaparadigm, but you're not gonna like it:

• The ep1-2 author has personal knowledge of the existence of the stakes. She knows that they exist. They were novelties purchased by Kinzo and are not capable of doing what they do in the stories.
• However, she knows nobody knows this, and chooses to write them as if they were sharper and more capable than the real ones were. In the stories they are deadly weapons. In reality they were not, except in Maria's imagination (perhaps Beatrice brought them downstairs to show off to Maria, who wouldn't know they're just paperweights Kinzo liked).
• This propagates to subsequent stories.
• Ange was actually in possession of one of the stakes, at least in her fiction. It at least appears to have never been used in any stakings, and the police do not consider it evidence for some reason.
• The ep1-2 author is also aware of Kinzo's gun. He only had one, and she incorporates this into her stories.
• The ep3-4 author expands the number of guns because he/she is not aware of this. Later authors take this information and it is now assumed there were more than one (alternately, ep1-2's author only ever saw one, or wanted one in her story, but other authors knew Kinzo had a larger collection).
• The lack of bullet holes, penetration, unusual deaths not intended to play out by the killer, overheard shots except when dramatically necessary, and missing are all conceits of fiction. In reality there would indeed be bullet holes all over the place, but in a mystery story the killer is as expert and meticulous as the writer wants him/her to be. He doesn't miss unless it's important to the story that he misses. The detective doesn't find bullet holes unless it's an important clue (and apparently it wasn't). People die the way the author wanted them to die (the half-smashed faces can't possibly have symmetry with each other unless the killer is absolutely perfect, the smashing is makeup, or the story is fiction).

EDIT: Notice this in Bern's Tea Party. The guns go off by mistake, don't fire properly, have troubles reloading (where a freaking child can reload one in ep2), aren't sighted properly and miss (Rudolf has to shoot George several times and Kyrie doesn't manage to "properly" kill Jessica, then misses Eva in their final showdown), and fail to produce fatal injuries (Eva survives being shot with a minor injury, which is possible with a real gun but not very good in fiction).

EDIT EDIT: Compare Kyrie and Eva's duel to the Love Duel. Kanon only misses because he miscalculates and Shannon dodges; the notion, from a fictional standpoint, that either of them would simply miss at 36 paces with flintlocks is not even considered, when in "reality" you'd be lucky to even hit the other person at that distance. But of course the Love Duel is fiction and metaphor, so we know somebody isn't going to miss unless there's a reason. Then you have Eva and Kyrie pulling guns on each other and firing at a much shorter range but only one of them dies, and even if Eva were to be shot twice she's still capable of walking off. One of these is clear fiction, one is fiction aping "reality" instead of a mystery story. Note that this doesn't make it reality necessarily.

[chounokoe]

Originally Posted by Renall

[*]The ep1-2 author is also aware of Kinzo's gun. He only had one, and she incorporates this into her stories.

Well, there have to be at least 2 guns or else the murder of Natsuhi in Episode 1 would not be possible. And I think as long as there are 2 of them it does not really matter how many there are in the first place, as long as the culprit has one and a suspect has one.

[*]The lack of bullet holes, penetration, unusual deaths not intended to play out by the killer, overheard shots except when dramatically necessary, and missing are all conceits of fiction. In reality there would indeed be bullet holes all over the place, but in a mystery story the killer is as expert and meticulous as the writer wants him/her to be.

While that could of course be the truth for the real events on Rokkenjima, many readers (me included) have the hope that each Episode is a solvable event in itself and not only a crazy recollection of metaphors that somehow lead to a possible event when combined.
I often notice that this is the biggest problem I have when searching for an overarching explanation, as soon as I try to expand something on every Episode, something seems to get in the way. But I don't want to write the stories of as just fiction...that would be boring.

[Renall]

Well, the first hurdle you need to get over is the notion that if the stories are "just fiction" they need to be "written off." Did we not, through Battler, grapple with the same series of problems with fantasy?

• It's impossible, I don't get it.
• I see it, but I can't believe it.
• It's not true! None of it happened. Say whatever you want!
• Maybe there's something to it, if I don't think of it as the "truth..."
• Then again, what is "the truth" anyway?

If fantasy elements can still lead us to truth, why can't a wholly fictional story as well? The authors are clearly not writing patently absurd deviations (short of, perhaps, Erika's introduction, and even that was vaguely respectful of mystery conventions). It's not a question of "it's fiction, so it can't help us." It's all about "it's fiction, so if I can get inside the writer's head, what can what they're thinking tell me in order to get to the truth?"

Battler wanted to know what Beato was thinking, so he looked at her game. He only understood when he did this. It's not just what she showed. It's how she showed it, but more important, what her choices to show him meant. Whether she spun him a mystery, a fantasy, a sci-fi space opera, it shouldn't matter if he got to the right place by thinking about her as a writer.

[Used Can]

So far, I've been wondering if the stakes have any special meaning. I think that, for quite some time, it's been rather clear that the stakes have not being used to kill anyone, but they've been used after the victims were killed.

Of course, the immediate idea would be that they were used to emulate the epitaph. But then, why the seven deadly sins connection? Sure, there's the whole Divine Comedy reference, but is that all there is to it?

Anyway, can you guys help me out with something? Was it ever said which stakes were used in EP4 and on whom they were used?

[Kylon99]

Originally Posted by chounokoe

But I don't want to write the stories of as just fiction...that would be boring.

In addition to Renall's explanation, I'd like to point out my Historical Method Theory, in my signature as a theory that simply prevents us from saying 'fictional == false'.

Spoiler for Wrapper for size since people have seen this before:

Historical Method Theory
The trap to the Author Theory is that knowing the episodes are fiction, one might be tempted to think that they are all useless. But since the Author has added what she knows of the truth of the story AND is intending for us to solve the mystery, the episodes are actually used to find the real truth and the real culprit, even if we are never told of what happened on Rokkenjima Prime.

The way this works is similar to the Historical Method, where historians use Secondary and Tertiary sources to point back torwards the presence of a primary source even though it has been lost to history.

In other words, if we are to trust that Beatrice (or Ryukishi) intends for us to solve the mystery, then even if what she tells us contains lies, fantasy and fiction, she has intended for us to use the fiction to portray the real events, even if it's not exactly an exact copy of the events.

For example, the Apollo 13 film was based on the true events of the Apollo 13 missions and even though it contained several differences from reality, it still was able to convey the main story of the real events. We don't say, "Ah, well, they made some stuff up. Whatever we learn from it is 100% false."


This is more of an aside, but I'd like to point out that deciding that things in the game are 'fantasy == ignore' was probably the fanbase's greatest error. It seems like even the fantasy scenes are real in some scene. For example, Star Wars is obviously not real; there are no jedi or lightsabers. But to us it's a real story/movie/script. In the same way, I proposed a couple of months ago that the fantasy scenes (on the game board at least, if not even the meta world) are 100% real in the same way. All that remains is to decide who's making them up and for why.

Anyways... nevermind me. I'm still stuck in the middle of EP7... it feels like it's going so slow...

[Renall]

Fantasy == Ignore was a trap Battler himself fell into, so I think people can be forgiven for arriving at that because it appeared to be where the protagonist's reasoning was going.

[Jan-Poo]

About the guns.... I think we have reached the conclusion that the 4 rifles would just create a hole in the people's head and depending on the kind of bullet they might or might not create and exit wound. At any rate as far as I know even in the case of high caliber weapons the entry wound is usually small, smaller than the exit wound. You'd need to get a very powerful weapon to completely destroy half of someone's head, certainly you need a bigger caliber than a .45
Right?


So what exactly caused the smashed heads? If it was a shotgun you'd have to see a lot of other small bullet holes around. No shotgun was ever hinted to exist, no hints about shotgun pellets exist. There is absolutely nothing that can suggest the existence of any kind of gun other than the 4 mare's legs replicas.

So what exactly could have caused those wounds? Small bombs?

Even with a blunt weapon it'll take while before reaching the desired result and only a very strong person could do it.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

About the guns.... I think we have reached the conclusion that the 4 rifles would just create a hole in the people's head and depending on the kind of bullet they might or might not create and exit wound. At any rate as far as I know even in the case of high caliber weapons the entry wound is usually small, smaller than the exit wound. You'd need to get a very powerful weapon to completely destroy half of someone's head, certainly you need a bigger caliber than a .45
Right?

Yes, but see below.

So what exactly caused the smashed heads? If it was a shotgun you'd have to see a lot of other small bullet holes around. No shotgun was ever hinted to exist, no hints about shotgun pellets exist. There is absolutely nothing that can suggest the existence of any kind of gun other than the 4 mare's legs replicas.

There sort of is, but it's a very weak argument-by-inference which would argue that some of the gunshots should have been overheard but weren't, meaning there must be some other gun that doesn't make a recognizable sound. Again though, that's very weak.

So what exactly could have caused those wounds? Small bombs?

Never countered in red!

Even with a blunt weapon it'll take while before reaching the desired result and only a very strong person could do it.

Moreover, with a blunt object I highly doubt a person could get perfect half-smash symmetry on not just one, but a dozen people's faces.

Makeup could, but then you're assuming Battler is a complete idiot not to poke at least one person's head and notice it.

The other option is simply "the person writing ep4 has no idea how strong a Winchester actually is and thinks it capable of such wounds." If the ep4 writer read ep1 and thought "I wonder how those faces got torn off. Maybe with one of the guns?" and didn't understand that the replicas are not capable of producing such gore, it makes a sort of twisted sense. After all, ep1 makes no suggestion as to how the injuries actually happened, but also gives a much longer span of time for the killer to do it. In ep4, you practically have to be shooting people quick, or else you'll run out of time before Battler shows up.

Hard to say.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

So what exactly caused the smashed heads? If it was a shotgun you'd have to see a lot of other small bullet holes around. No shotgun was ever hinted to exist, no hints about shotgun pellets exist. There is absolutely nothing that can suggest the existence of any kind of gun other than the 4 mare's legs replicas.

So what exactly could have caused those wounds? Small bombs?

Originally Posted by Renall

Makeup could, but then you're assuming Battler is a complete idiot not to poke at least one person's head and notice it.

Well, here's a thought I had yesterday...

What if the victims were first made up to look as if their heads had been smashed in order to fake their deaths, and then the culprit shot them in the head with one of the Mare's Legs? Depending on the angle of entry, a single bullet could probably at least make a mess of part of the victim's face, so the real gore would mix in with the makeup. That would have an interesting effect, depending on what the viewing character thinks is going on.

• If the character is a faker, then large fake wound + small real wound = illusion of a really awesome large fake wound. They get an inflated impression of how good the person who applied the makeup is, so later deaths are more likely to be written off as excellent tricks.
  
• If the character isn't a faker, then large fake wound + small real wound = illusion of a large real wound. The real gore lends authenticity to the fake, so the possibility of makeup never enters the character's mind.

I think the only smashed heads that this would have trouble explaining are 6-8th twiights of EP1, since it would require somehow getting all the way to the end of the game without any surviving fakers realizing that there's a killer on the loose. It's possible only if they can be fooled into thinking Eva and Hideyoshi's stakings were faked somehow.

[Leafsnail]

Stupid theory - the stakes are candles. I've seen candles sortof like them before. That way you could easily break part/ melt part of one and fake it...

Although then you need a Devil's Proof on how you can not notice that while picking one up :P.

[Used Can]

By the way, what have you guys thought about the guy who was blackmailing Natsuhi in EP5? I'm sure of you guys too noticed that person used 2 pronouns (Ore and Boku). What do you make out of that?

Personally, I think that may be an indication that someone is aware of the incident from 19 years ago, know who the baby is and is using Yasu. No, in fact, there must be 2 people, due to the 2 pronouns used. These people are also probably aware that Kinzo is dead. Whether they know about Yasu knowing the key to the Epitaph, I don't know.

What do you guys think?

[chounokoe]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

Stupid theory - the stakes are candles. I've seen candles sortof like them before. That way you could easily break part/ melt part of one and fake it...

Although then you need a Devil's Proof on how you can not notice that while picking one up :P.

Wouldn't really work with me, because it would need us to assume that every account of a stake being removed from a body would be purely fictionalized.
While that could be the fact with Kanon in Episode 1 (because he did it himself), it would be rather difficult with for example Kyrie in Episode 4. Battler removes the stake and comments how it seems that it was stuck into a bullethole after Kyrie's death. So we would have to assume that this whole event was made up, which is of course possible but too far into the realm of guesswork for my taste.

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

What if the victims were first made up to look as if their heads had been smashed in order to fake their deaths, and then the culprit shot them in the head with one of the Mare's Legs?

But then again, why would they disguise themselves as disfigured corpses?!
Okay, many theories for that have been already made and I don't need a full rundown of all of them again.
What is more interesting is, if we were to assume that it was a staged death, why aren't the people who fall victim to the disfigurement fixed?! Even in the Episodes that we assume to have been written by the same person there seems to be no necessity to smash in the faces. So the question remains why people do that on one occassion and not on another...

Oh and some pages back someone said that there was never a bloodtrail which is not fully correct. In Episode 1 there are several small bloodstains on the floor of the dining room, so unless they were planted it is not impossible to assume that they died in there, especially because in Episode 4 they were killed in the dining room as well.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Used Can

By the way, what have you guys thought about the guy who was blackmailing Natsuhi in EP5? I'm sure of you guys too noticed that person used 2 pronouns (Ore and Boku). What do you make out of that?

That's still bothering me, because one would have to assume that Natsuhi wouldn't notice a changing voice, even if it's an altered voice somehow.
Well, it either implies that there were actually two people involved into the plot, which is of course not impossible, but one would have to think of a person that would actually refer to himself as 俺 (ore). Or we could also assume that the person on the phone is acting out a role that is starting to disolve (either due to stress or something else) and he has difficulty to hold up either the 俺 or the 僕 personality.

[Used Can]

Originally Posted by chounokoe

That's still bothering me, because one would have to assume that Natsuhi wouldn't notice a changing voice, even if it's an altered voice somehow.
Well, it either implies that there were actually two people involved into the plot, which is of course not impossible, but one would have to think of a person that would actually refer to himself as 俺 (ore). Or we could also assume that the person on the phone is acting out a role that is starting to disolve (either due to stress or something else) and he has difficulty to hold up either the 俺 or the 僕 personality.

I think there's about 3 people who use Ore: Battler, George and Rudolph. I'm not sure about the other men.

As for this person having difficulty holding up to the role, I thought of that possibility. However, the use of Ore is rather consistent. It's only at the end that this person uses Boku and no longer Ore.

[LyricalAura]

Originally Posted by chounokoe

But then again, why would they disguise themselves as disfigured corpses?!
Okay, many theories for that have been already made and I don't need a full rundown of all of them again.
What is more interesting is, if we were to assume that it was a staged death, why aren't the people who fall victim to the disfigurement fixed?! Even in the Episodes that we assume to have been written by the same person there seems to be no necessity to smash in the faces. So the question remains why people do that on one occassion and not on another...

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "fixed". Basically what I'm proposing is that Person A got the victims to play dead using stage makeup for whatever reason, and then later Person B took advantage of them playing dead to shoot them without a struggle. The actual form of fake death is up to Person A's muse and varies from one game to the next, so Person B doesn't actually have any control over whether the heads are smashed or not. He/she has to tune the form of the murder to Person A's fakery in order to avoid being discovered.

For instance, EP2's first twilight victims were all pretending to have their guts ripped out. If Person B wanted to disguise the murders in a way that wouldn't be spotted immediately by Person A's allies, it would be necessary to do something like stab the victims instead of shooting them in the head.

Originally Posted by Used Can

By the way, what have you guys thought about the guy who was blackmailing Natsuhi in EP5? I'm sure of you guys too noticed that person used 2 pronouns (Ore and Boku). What do you make out of that?

Personally, I think that may be an indication that someone is aware of the incident from 19 years ago, know who the baby is and is using Yasu. No, in fact, there must be 2 people, due to the 2 pronouns used. These people are also probably aware that Kinzo is dead. Whether they know about Yasu knowing the key to the Epitaph, I don't know.

What do you guys think?

If I remember correctly, the Man From 19 Years Ago didn't really say anything concrete about the incident. Natsuhi filled in most of that herself with her internal monologue. When the blackmailer's dialogue is taken alone, it actually sounds pretty generic, like something you could probably freak out anybody with. Maybe the alignment with the actual event 19 years ago was a total coincidence, and that's why everyone was caught off guard when she confessed to killing the servant and the baby?