[AuraTwilight]

The point "dead languages" is an intriguing argument to me. Kylon99 is right in that "dead" is proven to have multiple meanings in the real world, but AuraTwilight is correct in saying that Ryukishi's usage of the word "dead" is unfair in the novel, if for no other reason that we have no way of reasoning that an alternate interpretation is possible in the case of Kanon and Shannon.

Especially since they're given in the exact same context as other characters, such as the end of EP3.

Saying Natsuhi is dead! Hideyoshi is dead! Rosa is dead! Maria is dead! Shannon is dead! One after another like that doesn't make me think in any way that Shannon is somehow special. I don't know how anyone could without using banana logic.

Maybe this is a better analogy. My Betsy died on the way back from work. It was truly a horrible experience.

But I called mechanic and he got it working again. (Note it doesn't have to be 'alive' after it died...) 8)

This IS a dirty trick though, if I made you think my wife died or something. 8)

But it's not actually dead; it's just stalled. Moreover, the context of the statement INTUITIVELY allows the reader to know that you're talking about a machine, not a person. The novel never comes out and says that Shannon and Kanon are not people until ages later. Sure, they're called furniture, but whenever they do they also go "But we're human/can become human" and we're given no indication it's not just some Fantasy thing.

Well, I know that they kept going over and over how they were furniture and we all seemed to refuse it like we thought they were talking about how they were slaves. But Jessica made that point to Kanon and he kept saying it was something different. So there were these vague hints that they two had some sort of unnatural 'exception' to death and life.

Yea it also says they're homunculi created by Kinzo, except they're not. How are we supposed to differentiate this single kernel of information out of all the bullshit?

Plus also they had memories of prior games so that was a huge red flag.

Kumasawa can turn into a witch and cast magic, too, and was the original Beatrice. It was a HUGE RED FLAG that Kumasawa was the original Beatrice Kinzo fell in love with, which many people speculated.

Except she wasn't.

I'm not entirely disliking the idea that Beatrice was a dishonorable cheater in this one instance though. Like, I don't need her to be a totally fair game player for the narrative to be enjoyable. Having a character who plays fair and noble until it hits upon something dear and then changes their style of play can be very enlightening. Basically, I'm more of the opinion that a deception, obvious as it was, tells me more about a person than the simple truth sometimes.

Possibly, and I'm willing to give Beatrice a pass on this considering how personal it was to her, but that doesn't help Ryukishi, who has NO excuse. So it kind of trickles down the layers of narrative and kind of makes Beatrice look shittier because Ryukishi is a shitty game-player who doesn't respect his audience enough to be straight with them when the situation calls for it.

And like I said, she said the truth, but she failed to context it so we ended up being deceived. I remember we got warnings where Ryukishi said "women cannot say what they want sometimes and need to resort to doing things to get you to do it." Rather than 'women,' I get the feeling now he means 'woman' or 'Yasu' specifically.

I still say it's not the truth, however, since Shannon and Kanon don't die in any meaningful way. They just step off-stage.

Yeah, I'm thinking that it's unfair like you guys, but now... unfair for a reason. Or purposely unfair, sticking out like a sore thumb because this is what she wanted to bring attention to. What do you guys think? (Seeing as this is only the EP5 thread...)

I don't think so. Countless people guessed Shkanon WITHOUT those reds, and those reds infact kept some stubborn people from reaching the Shkanon conclusion. It does nothing but impede people's reasoning, it does not HELP it. And the Red Truth exists to HELP us.

No matter how I slice it, this situation is a failure of the Red.