[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

So you're saying that Tooya is unconsciously writing Banquet and Alliance to be ShKanon-compatible stories? Until he stops at End for some reason? It seems weird that he would do this.

He's not unconsciously writing the first two to fit the Shkannon theory, he merely molded them very closely after what he read in the message bottles. Naturally they would be as much Shkannon-compatible as they are incompatible...they just allow that theory.
Basically in EP1 and 2 the murders more or less center around Shkannon:
EP1: Shannon is "among the 1st twilight witnesses". Kanon is the one who discovers the crime scene of 1st and 2nd twilight. Kanon opens the room with the 2nd twilight. Kanon runs ahead to the room that holds Kinzô's corpse. Kanon is mysteriously never seen again after his "death".
EP2: The whole Shkannon vs. Beatrice plot.

In EP3 and 4 they are more or less removed from the active part of the plot. EP3 only makes them necessary once you include the fact that Beatrice is also a part of what they are part of. And EP4 basically makes them into nothing more than removable pawns unless you recognize that everything that happens around them is fake...and even then you have to know it's them.
Those two stories need no knowledge of Shkannon or Shkannon-culprit as all murders including their own can be solved without them being the culprit.

At End he suddenly switched perspectives...maybe because he thought the subjective, emotional perspective (Battler) he had so far was too involved and he needed an objective, rational point of view (Erika)...and that is when he ran into the problem of arriving at a dead end with the way he approached it. At the end of End he realized what the root of the problem and the solution to the mystery was and that is why he inserted Shkannon as the central device into his next story.

I think much more than him not recognizing Shkannon until that point it is much more of a stretch to believe in a reasonable explanation that explains sans-meta-world why Tôya suddenly switched his detective.

And how well did Twilight confirm that Tooya/Ikuko wrote Banquet and Alliance in the first place?

I think the only novels we know for sure to be written by Hachijô Tôya were Alliance, Dawn and Twilight. Banquet and End were implied but never proven I think...Requiem never had Ikuko, just Bern (implied-)reading to Featherine. But whatever novels they wrote, it was always the couple Ikuko/Tôya...maybe Ikuko added certain parts, but she only stumbled upon the "legend of the occult island" when researching for her 黒首島奇譚 on the internet and that was what triggered Tôya's memory to return.
You could just as well make a theory that Banquet was written by Eva for example. And there is the theory that Turn was a 偽書 as well and we only ever got to read one of the message bottles...though I think it doesn't make much sense to mention two messages and only portraying one...it's overly confusing (even for Umineko).

Legend has no hints about ShKanon (whatsoever as far as I can remember). Shannon and Kanon never appear together in front of Battler, true, but since Shannon "dies" so early I would call it such a reasonable coincidence that it doesn't qualify as a hint. Actually, I would even say that ShKanon makes Legend more complicated.

It depends on what you consider a hint and what you consider an insert that you only get when you return to it later. Actually the way the two are handled in the story is very indicative and there is also Kanon's speech in the basement where he says that he decided to go against Beatrice's roulette if Shannon should die, implying a certain bond. There are small things, but as with most things EP1 is more like a "go back to it and see how much I messed with you" story...similar to Onikakushi.

Legend has practically no magic and what little it does is vague and abstract. Turn, Banquet, and Alliance have lots of magic.

Though it is still questionable how much of that magic is actually in the stories and how much of it was inserted by Tôya's way of reading/imagining the stories.
I find it easier to believe that the original stories go without the over-the-top magical scenes.
If we take the Tea Party of EP1, it was just Beato's and Battler's argument that created the magical scene in which Beatrice shot the stakes of purgatory into Eva's and Hideyoshi's locked room with her magic...or if we de-metaphorize the scene, it was Tôya thinking about what he just read and imagining what "the witch" would have done. Only from that point on did we have magical scenes.

And I still stay with my point that the fact that we were told the message bottles were written in diary style, and that they were believable except the signature being forged and their creation being dated before the incident, implies that most parts are imagined inserts created by an implied reader and not part of the actuall narrative.

It's not like Legend had no magical scenes...they just weren't marked as being magical. They were more like...delusional. There was Kinzô talking to people and being shown weeping and throwing his ring to Beatrice. The golden butterfly chasing Shannon and the ones appearing in the basement before Kanon. The whole scene after 24pm on the 5th/6th.
Those scenes aren't any less unreal than Beatrice storming into a room with an army of goat butlers and summoning cute girls who turn into stakes...they're just less obvious.

Originally Posted by Renall

This is basically the Fictional Shkanon theory. I think it makes the most sense, but I don't think it's provable. Or disprovable. Or much of anything really.

Well, that's the problem with most if not all theories...we can't prove them one way or the other. And going by what Ryûkishi said, it's what he wanted it to be...even though it drives us crazy. Though Umineko is not the only mystery-story doing that to its readers.

Originally Posted by cronnoponno

Am I making more sense?

I think it does make sense, yes.
It's a question how you'd like to approach the stories. I only think it's difficult to say that there is never any direct mention of Kanon and Shannon being seperate even if we perceive them as such, because at some point they have to be portrayed as both being present within the stories.
But I think the fact that you are able to draw such a theory is because Shkannon is inserted in the stories, because you immediatly notice that something is off with those two.