[Renall]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

He's not the Game Master. The GM is the arbiter of what gets accepted as red truth, so in the end everything would have to fit Beato's interpretation.

Once again, you are admitting that the only standard that matters is "what the GM wants." If that is the standard, and subjectivity rises to the level of objectivity (red), any GM who wields their subjectivity to intentionally mislead the player(s) (and failing to make it obvious that they are presenting their subjective interpretation is misleading, full stop) is dishonest.

Originally Posted by haguruma

Though you could argue that this could have been the subjective memory triggered by what he read as the content of the message bottle. It is a good point though.

Or a fabricated one...

...what? You never know. Recovered memories are a stone's throw from junk science. I suppose that would go with the Touya != Battler thing, but I don't care about that.

Originally Posted by haguruma

These are two different things. Battler was not "given life from the womb of Ushiromiya Asumu", but Kanon "passed away in Jessica's room". It's something that you can consider...killing a part of yourself is not a complete redefinition of death, it's one of many meanings that this word can hold.

Children are shaped as adults by the influences of their parents. For example, Asumu and Battler share a fear of traveling in vehicles. Without that guidance, a person would become entirely different. One could say that the adult a child becomes is "born" from the influence of his or her parents. Therefore, Ushiromiya Battler was born from Ushiromiya Asumu. EDIT: And by the way, this metaphorical definition of being born is used in ep6, so I'm not pulling this from my ass.

Oh. Snap. Now what? Oh, it's in the GM's hands? So Beatrice can tell Battler whether he can say he was born from Asumu. Could she subjectively make it so he can't say he's Rudolf's son, too? Apparently! Oh, and by the way... how did she know he wasn't born from Asumu, again? In fact, at what point anywhere in the text do we see anything to suggest anyone other than Rudolf knows this? And if she didn't know it, did she just arbitrarily decide to restrict that red solely to mislead Battler? Oh dear, I do believe she may have done precisely that. You know, if the red is wholly subjective.

Admittedly, there is another way to read that scene, but then it merely becomes confusing and somewhat nonsensical. Better that than destroy Beatrice's credibility, I suppose.

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

But by the end of EP5, Battler was able to figure it out. In other words, Beato put enough information and hints in her stories that she didn't NEED to tell him directly.

She didn't need to tell him. Battler is not the reader. Most people, even people who kinda thought they had an idea what was going on, did not understand what it was Battler realized. In no small part because Battler was privy to information that the audience did not get until after ep5. Battler knew something we couldn't possibly have known ourselves. Oh, we could have guessed Shkanon, we could have guessed she was behind this or that, we could've even guessed Author Theory (and did), but "I suspect this person is important and central to the story" is a far cry from "And then I knew everything about this whole affair."

So... again, it's an admission of a serious literary breakdown.

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

Where exactly is the promise that "trusting the author" means that they must have exactly the same worldview as you do? Trust is about believing that the author is trying in good faith to communicate with you, it's not a guarantee that you'll automatically start out understanding them or even that they'll communicate in a clear and straightforward manner. The author might have a good reason to be roundabout while still wanting you to understand.

Are you seriously trying to argue that Ryukishi is acting in good faith? Dude. The things I could tell you about bad faith...

Now true, I suppose no judge would hold him in contempt for it, and no contract written with that mindset would be considered to have been done in bad faith. But although the law assumes a binary state, the mere fact that something isn't exactly done "in bad faith" doesn't mean it was done "in good faith."