Quote:
Originally Posted by k//eternal
I'd been thinking more along the lines of the fact that Battler's actions in the early portion of EP5 are no longer trustworthy (since Bern was controlling his piece), or what the hell Erika was doing in a swimsuit on the deck of a boat during a typhoon. Both kind of sketchy, although I get the feeling the real trick may be even more so...
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I had an idea about this. One of the concepts that keeps popping up in the story is the "witch's darkness", the parts of the game board that aren't being observed. We know that Beato's power lets her use the witch's darkness to present false scenes, so long as they're consistent with any witness testimony, but maybe you can also think of the other witches' powers in those terms as well.
We're told that Bernkastel has the power to make any event happen, so long as it has a non-zero probability of occurring. Those events are exactly the ones that could be stated in blue text without being denied, so they're constrained by the amount of witch's darkness surrounding the event in question. We are also told that blue text becomes effectively true if it isn't denied, so in a way you can think of the blue as a weapon that arises directly from Bernkastel's power (or maybe vice-versa).
So what can we say in blue about Erika's actions in Episode 5? Since she's the detective, scenes shown from her point of view are unassailable, but there aren't very many of those. You could reduce the witch's darkness around her using testimony from people who were with her, but there isn't very much of that either since Erika does all of her evidence gathering alone and completely unobserved. And if you're unobserved,
you can claim you were doing almost anything, and no one can refute it. Consider all of the cases where Erika did something strange or absurd:
- Surviving the typhoon and washing up on the island
- Climbing the guesthouse walls in a swimsuit to seal the second-floor windows
- Listening to Battler's room all night without sleeping
- Conducting a CSI investigation to pinpoint Genji's movements
In every one of them, she was all alone, in a state of maximum uncertainty, and left no evidence of what she was doing. The important thing from the perspective of Bernkastel's power is not what Erika was actually doing during those periods.
She could have been drinking tea in the parlor all night. The point is that Bernkastel claims
there is also a possibility that she really was listening to the wall of Battler's room, and since no one can disprove that possibility, she can treat it as if it were the truth.
If this is how Bern's power works, then it's a really nasty weapon. Battler's biggest problem in Episode 6 might be keeping an eye on Erika so she can't go off alone and then introduce false evidence.