[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Renall

What you continue to attempt to dodge is the point that, if we were shown a scene that showed only two people present, and got a red that said everyone on the island is in the parlor, the fact that Piece-Erika would in fact have perceived more people than that yet Meta-Erika does not question the fact that only Natsuhi and Erika are shown as being there is a serious issue that you are unable to address.

"RMP"="Relevant Meta-Perceiver(s)"; it refers to whoever is responsible (Battler/Meta-Erika/Bernkastel/whoever) for the Meta-World's perception that there were 18 people in the parlor.

But we would never be shown only 2 people. If we were shown only 2 people, that would be because the RMP for some reason assumed that "everyone on the island" consisted of only 2 people (which is nonsense by any stretch). We were shown 18 people in the room because the RMP assumed that "everyone on the island" meant 18 people. The only reasonable possibilities that the RMP might assume are 17 or 18 (I would even argue that 18 is the more reasonable option with the RMP's knowledge up to that point, since ShKanon is pretty dumb).

Originally Posted by Renall

Your theory is seemingly "the reader is stupid and made a mistake of perception, it's not an error, the characters aren't mistaken." Except some readers are not stupid, some wouldn't make that mistake, the characters appear to be making mistakes, and all readers are being apparently misled. Your entire notion of the structure of the game being a two-way street falls apart miserably when you then turn around and say that Ryukishi basically assumed the reader would make an idiotic decision about who he or she believed would be in the parlor and then wrote ep5 such that all readers will see the result of that idiotic decision. If you stand by this argument, you also stand by Ryukishi patronizing his entire audience with assumptions about what they would believe, or you're filtering the audience's perception through the mistaken assumptions of a higher-order character with absolutely nothing to distinguish what we're supposed to believe and what is higher-order "reader tricks."

This is a mechanically accurate description to of my theory, but I just don't see it as RK07 projecting a certain interpretation on all of us readers and implying we are all idiots. It's more like if your idiot friend reads a story and tells you what happened in it... poorly (which may give you the wrong impression of the story, but doesn't make you an idiot). Or it's like if the only witness you have of a crime is an idiot and you have to glean the truth as best you can from his crappy testimony.

Originally Posted by Renall

Nothing you say is doing anything to dispel these issues, which suggests to me that you should revisit your theories and ask why you came to believe them. I'd start with actual facts and evidence contained in the text, and not vague assumptions about Umineko being a two-way process when it demonstrably isn't.

Then demonstrate...? Because I haven't seen it.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Even Mystery stories have deceptions in the narration, brosef. Moreover, even without distorting facts, a tale can be distorted by having a narrator's personal thoughts about their observations cloud their narration. For instance, even if Erika doesn't perceive any INCORRECT INFORMATION, she can be misleading by narrating things with inordinate amounts of purple prose, or using unflattering and concise language to direct the reader's attentions to different points of data.

This is all significantly different from anything you're suggesting

I'm not sure how so. I'm basically saying that Lambda is the "narrator" in EP5 and that what we see on the Game Board is the RMP's mind's eye.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

, and it's all stuff completely absent from Bern's game because there's no narrative framing device, just characters spouting off facts like puppets with no expository prose or descriptors.

Right. Because there's no Reader.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

I'm merely exposing holes I see in your ideas as I see them. If you can repair them and fill them, your idea is all the stronger for it, and if your idea can't stand up to it, it's an idea you should move on from. For that purpose, I'll attack as strongly as I'm able, and we'll both be the better for it. If you're going to shy away from my criticisms, it indicates that you don't have a very strong faith in your theory's ability to stand on it's own ground.

Yes, yes. Criticism is good, I just feel like you are framing it as a competitive debate and don't like it. It gets me to focus on "proving" (proof? In Umineko? Ha!) every last little detail so that I don't "lose", when what I really would rather focus on at this point is the viability of the general idea.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

By the way, Readers and Players are not the same thing in Umineko. The only time that any characters were described as Readers (ANGE and Clair), they were not serving as Players in any capacity. Any supposition that a person can be both a Reader and a Player is 100% fanfiction. To say nothing of the Readers not being involved in a Game. Nothing Clair does is a Game, and Ange isn't involved in a Game. She is reading a story ABOUT a game.

Isn't it Bernkastel who is the Reader in EP7?

Anyway, it's a valid point that may warrant some reassessment of my theory. But regardless of whether "Player"="Reader" or not, it's plainly shown that the Meta-Character with the role of "Reader" influences what we see on the Game Board.

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

Even a simple interpretation can distort a story severely. For instance, take this sentence: "The culprit stood over Natsuhi's body and giggled." If I don't write a single other thing about the culprit, what is your first impression of their gender?

Honestly, I have no particular impression of the culprit's gender, but I do wonder whether Natsuhi is about to be killed or is already dead.