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Old 2010-05-23, 00:54   Link #10501
Judoh
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Or there is another possibility since she's Frederica Bernkastel's piece. Ange died because of another rule where if she told Battler her real name she'd die and she gets completely destroyed. She wasn't denied out of existence she was destroyed because she broke a rule with the red. What if it's forbidden for anyone to say Erika is the 18th person?
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Old 2010-05-23, 00:57   Link #10502
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I think it would be a bit lame for there to exist a rule that nobody in-story has actually been told. We know Bern has threatened Erika, but it doesn't seem as though she specifically told her not to do anything (other than lose).
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Old 2010-05-23, 01:07   Link #10503
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Well those were my first few guesses. Beyond that the only thing I can think of for why she would purposely give up is that maybe she didn't want to live while Battler was in love with Beatrice. She probably committed suicide in the real Rokkenjima because of her getting cheated on by her boyfriend anyway.

As it is above so it is below.
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Old 2010-05-23, 03:52   Link #10504
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Linkin Battler, do you think that this "human Beatrice" is Manon or Renon ? They come fromthe Fukin house so it would be normal that she calls Kinzo "Grandfather".
Manon got killed by Natshui and Renon is Beatrice ?
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Old 2010-05-23, 03:54   Link #10505
Oliver
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Originally Posted by Renall View Post
But, if Erika doesn't exist, I think it's very important to ask all the questions that would arise from this. Does Meta-Erika know? Do Bern and Lambda know (one would think they'd have to, but...)? Why are they doing this? What benefit does Meta-Erika gain from believing she exists, and why have her there in the first place? How much of what she "sees" accurate? How is this "illusion of the detective" instructive to us with respect to Beato's games? Can we learn anything useful from them, or is this just a big red herring (which would either be a sign of bad writing, or a theory that is simply there to mislead).
Well, here's my point of view, take it for what you will:

Erika is a reader who wanted to be a character. A literal Mary Sue from somewhere inside the complicated existence assembly that is Bernkastel, something like a subordinate self from within numerous possibilities, one of the numerous Rikas that could be Bernkastel but never became her. The truth about Erika is that she does not really exist on the board, and she knows that -- there is Meta-Erika, present in the magical scenes, but a Piece-Erika does not exist as a separate entity. She can imagine herself there all she wants, but she does not actually have her own eyes on the board, only assertions, that, when elevated to the level of the red truth by the grace of the gamemaster, become 'as if she saw it' -- even though the things she would have to do to 'see' it are not very possible. She can partake in the illusion created by Lambdadelta that she is actually there, but a girl named Erika never stepped on the shores of Rokkenjima, even though someone - or something - may be loaned that name for a while to further support her illusion.

Bern obviously knows, because she found a 'double of herself' that wanted it, and Lambdadelta knows, because she has to support the illusion (anything to keep Bernkastel interested) and so does Meta-Erika... but she forcibly deludes herself and avoids thinking about it, because her ultimate desire was to be that 'magical detective' solving the biggest serial murder in the world. Not necessarily correctly, dazzling everyone with 'intellect' is enough! She is aware that Lambdadelta and Bernkastel hold her position on the board in their hands and will go out of her way to please them and anticipate their wishes, whichever truth she needs to weave her way around to do that. She is only faced with the fact that her existence on the board is a delusion when the exact people count is dropped on her in red, in a way that she cannot continue to deny.

Bernkastel did this not to discover the real truth, (though somewhere along the way she apparently did, or she couldn't be the gamemaster for Ep7) but purely for entertainment in annoying and torturing various pieces and Battler, which is currently her major interest in the story -- basically, what she wants is to force further plot twists by the invisible author of the story (I don't think that's Featherinne, but that's another discussion) as she pokes holes in it and watches it squirm like a worm under a heel.

To put it shorter, Erika is the detective who does not possess an impartial and reliable viewpoint at all, simply by not having been there for the events to happen and only viewing it through gamemaster's retelling, that deliberately includes her as a character. Kind of like Father Brown in several of his stories, or like Ange, viewing the story from a distant time and place. But unlike either, Erika desperately wants to be there for everyone to see how cool she is for solving it -- even if it means her solution actually being wrong -- and imagines herself being there and is supported in that by Lambdadelta, who is actually showing us and Erika these scenes.

This whole mess is instructive to us because we the readers are in a similar position - there is no reliable viewpoint that we can undeniably trust, and with pure red the mystery is not solvable. Basically what it says is that it's not a classical mystery but more of a riddle, that is, a problem which is expressed in allegorical language, and magical scenes are the allegory.
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Last edited by Oliver; 2010-05-23 at 09:16. Reason: that was a very silly misspelling.
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Old 2010-05-23, 06:44   Link #10506
Linkin Battler
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DgBarca View Post
Linkin Battler, do you think that this "human Beatrice" is Manon or Renon ? They come fromthe Fukin house so it would be normal that she calls Kinzo "Grandfather".
Manon got killed by Natshui and Renon is Beatrice ?
I also thaught that but I think it is impossible: in the place where she lived she was called "Princess" and I don't think in an orphanage they would call you princess. And from Beato's dream we also know that there were other servants in that place. Moreover I remember Beato saying about Virgilia that she was a servant under grandfather's house...
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Old 2010-05-23, 07:39   Link #10507
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Oliver View Post
To put it shorter, Erika is the detective who does not possess an impartial and reliable viewpoint at all, simply by not having been there for the events to happen and only viewing it through gamemaster's retelling, that deliberately includes her as a character.
What about Dlanor's red:

Knox's 8th, it is forbidden for the case to be resolved with clues that are not PRESENTED! Until now, you have been the DETECTIVE! Was it ever shown that you were not the detective this time, and that you were an observer with a subjective VIEWPOINT?!! Unless it was, you do not have the right to falsify your point of VIEW!!

Dlanor here heavily implies that the detective is not allowed to have a subject viewpoint. And she does that with a bright red truth.
It is also implied that a proof of an unreliable pow is by extension a proof of "not being a detective".
However Erika detective status on EP5 has been confirmed in red, both at the very start of the game and at the end. Therefore even the chance that she lost her detective status midway like in Ep6 shouldn't be possible.
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Old 2010-05-23, 07:53   Link #10508
Oliver
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jan-Poo View Post
Dlanor here heavily implies that the detective is not allowed to have a subject viewpoint. And she does that with a bright red truth.
It is also implied that a proof of an unreliable pow is by extension a proof of "not being a detective".
However Erika detective status on EP5 has been confirmed in red, both at the very start of the game and at the end. Therefore even the chance that she lost her detective status midway like in Ep6 shouldn't be possible.
Simple. Erika doesn't have a body. She's not here. There's Meta-Erika, but no Piece-Erika. It's not that she has an unreliable POV or a subject viewpoint. It's that she doesn't have a point of view of her own at all, and what we think is her viewpoint simply isn't. She has a detective status, but that only translates into her ability to pose questions to the gamemaster, who responds by moving pieces to comply and telling her what they say. What we see as 'Erika seeing X' is actually Meta-Erika getting someone's testimony about them seeing that X.

Which, as a side note, might have been the 'very poisonous' thing Ryukishi wanted to use in Ep3 but didn't -- kill Battler off early, pretend he's not dead for the rest of the episode.
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Old 2010-05-23, 08:13   Link #10509
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So as erika doesn't exist, her position as detective is flawed despite it being in red. Her position as detective is correct but as she herself doesn't exist on the game board we cannot 100% trust her perspective?

Am I understanding this right?
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Old 2010-05-23, 09:10   Link #10510
Oliver
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Originally Posted by NarkNarks View Post
So as erika doesn't exist, her position as detective is flawed despite it being in red. Her position as detective is correct but as she herself doesn't exist on the game board we cannot 100% trust her perspective?

Am I understanding this right?
Yes. She got the detective status, but detective status alone is not sufficient to solve the mystery if you don't have your own eyes to see and ears to listen with, but instead have to solely rely on the information gamemaster gives you.

Just like the blue text, detective status allows one to compel the gamemaster to do things -- like elevate the assertion 'Door X has not been opened between time Y and time Z' to the status of red text, or cause the characters to assemble for a theory presentation, or force the characters to answer questions... but in the end, with no senses of your own, however faulty those might be, you're stuck trusting the white text gamemaster gives you about what 'you' see.

The red about Erika being the 18th character on Rokkenjima is true -- if one doesn't exist, because there's exactly 17 people. She's the 18th nonexistant person.

Mind you, all of that is just my opinion, but I think it works.
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Old 2010-05-23, 11:05   Link #10511
Renall
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Originally Posted by Jan-Poo View Post
However Erika detective status on EP5 has been confirmed in red, both at the very start of the game and at the end. Therefore even the chance that she lost her detective status midway like in Ep6 shouldn't be possible.
There's also the issue that "Erika," whoever she may be, is engaging in actions in ep6 through Meta-Erika. Whether Piece-Erika is actually Furudo Erika is irrelevant, there's some kind of body. Would that body not have a perspective?
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Old 2010-05-23, 11:11   Link #10512
Oliver
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Originally Posted by Renall View Post
There's also the issue that "Erika," whoever she may be, is engaging in actions in ep6 through Meta-Erika. Whether Piece-Erika is actually Furudo Erika is irrelevant, there's some kind of body. Would that body not have a perspective?
It would. But it's just as free to lie to the attached Meta-Erika as anyone else.
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Old 2010-05-23, 11:51   Link #10513
Ronove
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Question: With the inclusion of Erika as of EP5, does the result of the whole game change? If we're ignoring the 24:00 Trial, (assuming they actually beaten Natsushi to a pulp), do they still all die at the 10th Twilight?
The ending messed me up a bit .
I would imagine Erika being killed right after her 'assumption' that Natsushi was the culprit. Then again, bomb theory. o_o;;
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Old 2010-05-23, 12:25   Link #10514
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Oh, another question:

Knowing that Kinzo was dead since the beginning of the game, is there any time between his death and the family conference where someone can steal the ring and make those envelopes? (Unless those envelopes were made prior to Kinzo's death!)

However, the person who stole the ring would know of Kinzo's death. Unless the servants have taken it to clean it ._. ;;
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Old 2010-05-23, 13:04   Link #10515
Oliver
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Knowing that Kinzo was dead since the beginning of the game, is there any time between his death and the family conference where someone can steal the ring and make those envelopes? (Unless those envelopes were made prior to Kinzo's death!)
Well over a year.
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Old 2010-05-23, 13:06   Link #10516
Shiro Kaisen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronove View Post
Question: With the inclusion of Erika as of EP5, does the result of the whole game change? If we're ignoring the 24:00 Trial, (assuming they actually beaten Natsushi to a pulp), do they still all die at the 10th Twilight?
The ending messed me up a bit .
I would imagine Erika being killed right after her 'assumption' that Natsushi was the culprit. Then again, bomb theory. o_o;;
Unless of course, she doesn't exist!
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Old 2010-05-23, 13:06   Link #10517
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Originally Posted by Oliver View Post
It would. But it's just as free to lie to the attached Meta-Erika as anyone else.
Exactly how does that work? Hypothetically, let's pretend I'm the killer in ep6.

Okay, so my intent is to go after the six First Twilight "victims," because for whatever reason I know they're faking (or I suspect they might be and want to make damn sure of it). As I commit these acts and go from place to place, what am I thinking about? What am I doing? My thoughts will be pretty focused on killing these people, and probably on why I'm doing it. If Kanon is out and about, I either am or am not aware of him, and of what he's doing, and I might even be the one who kills him.

But those thoughts and reasons would be entirely at odds with what Meta-Erika believes she's doing. She has a totally different reason for knowing they're faking, a totally different objective in getting at Battler, and so forth. It's essentially like Erika is saying she knows she did it without any scenes or perspectives that show she did. Indeed, she and Dlanor basically declare it by fiat. By your argument, Erika never saw the five victims being murdered at all. If she didn't see it, how does she know that it happened confidently enough to say she (whether her "I" refers to her own actions or the actions of the piece she believes is her) committed the acts?

That leaves us with basically three seemingly irreconcilable problems:
  • There is a killer that may or may not be Erika, but Erika believes it's herself. She is so confident in this that she can proclaim what she did.
  • There is no evidence of the killer actually striking. Like the deaths in ep5, there's no evidence we were ever shown the killings. If Erika has no perspective, she can't have seen the killings occur, because we couldn't either.
  • Yet Erika is capable of knowing ahead of time that the five victims were killed and declaring such, which suggests she has a perspective. However, her perspective cannot be the Game Master's alone, because the GM never showed the killings (and if you believe the meta-story, Battler didn't know they'd happened).
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Old 2010-05-23, 13:46   Link #10518
Judoh
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Originally Posted by Jan-Poo View Post
What about Dlanor's red:

Knox's 8th, it is forbidden for the case to be resolved with clues that are not PRESENTED! Until now, you have been the DETECTIVE! Was it ever shown that you were not the detective this time, and that you were an observer with a subjective VIEWPOINT?!! Unless it was, you do not have the right to falsify your point of VIEW!!

Dlanor here heavily implies that the detective is not allowed to have a subject viewpoint. And she does that with a bright red truth.
It is also implied that a proof of an unreliable pow is by extension a proof of "not being a detective".
However Erika detective status on EP5 has been confirmed in red, both at the very start of the game and at the end. Therefore even the chance that she lost her detective status midway like in Ep6 shouldn't be possible.
Well if you read what I said I think the idea that the detective's perspective is impartial might be the dirty trick in land of the golden witch. It certainly is venomous. It is very much implied by this red and a lot of white text that the detective is not supposed to be able to do that. But it is only implied. It's never outright said. There are a lot of times when the detective might bluff to add evidence against what someone else said. Which isn't being impartial or objective at all because, if you were obligated to have the kind of perspective they say the detective has, you shouldn't be able to biased towards a certain idea or your point of view is partial to that personal opinion. Battler and Erika have had many biases and they are both partial to personal ideas. Battler is more so than Erika in the question arcs, but this shows that the detective is not completely impartial.

Last edited by Judoh; 2010-05-23 at 14:09.
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Old 2010-05-23, 14:04   Link #10519
Oliver
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That leaves us with basically three seemingly irreconcilable problems:
  • There is a killer that may or may not be Erika, but Erika believes it's herself. She is so confident in this that she can proclaim what she did.
  • There is no evidence of the killer actually striking. Like the deaths in ep5, there's no evidence we were ever shown the killings. If Erika has no perspective, she can't have seen the killings occur, because we couldn't either.
  • Yet Erika is capable of knowing ahead of time that the five victims were killed and declaring such, which suggests she has a perspective. However, her perspective cannot be the Game Master's alone, because the GM never showed the killings (and if you believe the meta-story, Battler didn't know they'd happened).
Not quite. Let's look at Ep3 for an example. Piece-Battler is completely unaware of the magical battle between Beatrice and Virgilia, but Meta-Battler is acutely aware of it and is faced with somehow explaining what he has just seen. What did he see? What Gamemaster-Beatrice chose to show him. Did it really happen? Well, something did happen, but Gamemaster-Beatrice was very liberal with the details. Meta-Battler has his own Piece-Battler to be the source of his unambiguous perspective on the board, so beyond the scenes shown by Gamemaster-Beatrice and the red text divulged by same, he also has his own experiences.

Meta-Erika does not have a perspective belonging to her only, because a Piece-Erika does not exist. But Meta-Erika sees a Piece-Erika doing things because that is what Lambdadelta chooses to show to Meta-Erika. Meta-Erika then just accepts that it is she who is doing that, because that's her only ticket to stay in the story. That we don't see it on screen is of no consequence because our camera follows other characters at the time and there's lots of things that happen even though we don't see them on screen in any fashion.

The real problem in what you brought up is why would Battler be showing that to Erika when he's supposedly unaware of it happening. But it is solved easily if he isn't the only one with the power to show meta-characters what happens on the gameboard, (note that in earlier episodes, Battler repeatedly requests 'reconstruct scene X!' from Virgilia and Ronove) -- then, Lambdadelta could still be working as Erika's 'board view window' and would still be able to paint over anyone she wished with Erika.
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Old 2010-05-23, 14:20   Link #10520
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There's also the Battler Masterstroke perspective that he totally allowed all of this to happen, but nobody seems to have as much faith in Battler as I do to buy that.
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