[Kylon99]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

There are no suicides. And, as Renall already brought up, there is no way to demonstrate or prove that the personalities are actually dead, as they keep coming back whenever it's convenient. And what's the discernable difference between a 'dead' personality, and a 'sleeping' one? They can't permanently die unless the body dies. Are you paying attention at all? You're just making points Renall and I already covered and addressed.

I'm not paying attention to both your points because I'm not arguing whether this writing this is honest, dishonest, or a crime against humanity. In fact, I generally agree with you two that this is not author honesty, but I'm not willing to use the hyperbole that's been flying around to describe Ryukishi. This is because I ended up figuring out Umineko from the clues presented anyways.


As for suicides,... I'm pretty certain Shannon shot herself in the head in EP2. But, that's beside the point you were making I think.

From my re-play through of EP1 and EP2, I'm getting the feeling that when Beatrice decides the future for a personality is cut off, that personality is dead. So, the conditions for when Shannon and Kanon's future is cut off either the end of the epitaph ceremony, where they are freed, or they are killed as one of the sacrifices. Shannon thought she had a possible future with George but then she realized that it wouldn't work out.

Beatrice's termination of her future seems to only be if someone solves the epitaph. She does her job in giving up the gold, the headship rings and probably the guns. Then she ceases to be.

I don't think Beatrice is a candidate for any murder though, so it's really just Shannon and Kanon we're talking about.

So basically, when a personality's future is dead, they are dead to her. And that's her definition. Is this a crappy definition? Yes. But I'm trying to understand what's going on here and not throw up my hands and say that everything's useless just because it feels like cheating.

It's like the discussion about lying we had awhile ago. Figuring out why someone is lying can be just as interesting. Well, why is someone cheating? It usually involves some sort of inadequacy, maybe? At this point, I'm saying that Ryukishi had Beatrice be very coy with her problem to the level of cheating for a reason. What is that reason? Is it just because she didn't want to tell, but wanted someone to figure it out? I don't know yet for sure.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

That's all well and good, but that's not 'solvable'. It's dishonest and unfair and Ryukishi claims that it's valid when it isn't. He had his character cheat in order to protect his twist, and made Beatrice uncharacteristically dishonest in order to mindscrew an audience she didn't know was there.

Well, which part is not solvable? If the red text purely describes Beatrice's POV and condition, and her condition and basically the last mystery of Umineko that Ryukishi wanted us to solve, then its solvable. Plus that and the quotes I provided. What you seem to be saying is that the detective/closed room parts of each episode is not solvable, right? But...

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

I think it was LyricalAura who made a document going through all the Twilights and basically proving that only Shannon and Kanon could do it, and since there can only be one culprit...

Wait, where did that red truth come from? There were certainly more than one culprit, considering Eva murdered some people in EP3. There can only be one *mastermind*, which is Beatrice herself; that I can agree to. If that's the case, then figuring out her POV and condition leads you to figure out that she's the mastermind, even if other people commit some murders.

It feels like he provided a path to the solution not through detective mystery means, but through understanding motive of the culprit first. I remember some people on here speculating that this was the intent, that detective novels usually lack a worthy motive. (Not that I'm saying whether this is worthy or not.)

Anyways, if someone can find it, I'd like to see that document that analyses all the twilights.

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Beatrice isn't some insane schizophrenic who doesn't understand that other people don't have the same definitions of words as she does, and she rationally understands that Battler has missed out on a huge chunk of her life. She WANTS him to see through her deceptions, so why is she doing her damndest to protect this huge obstacle that gives her no benefit?

Just as an aside: From EP1-2, I get the feeling she did have a time when she couldn't understand normal humans. Or rather, when she was younger, she thought her mode of existence was normal. Then she found the gold, was traumatized and the changes in her made her think she was an 'adult.' It is here in the text of EP1-2 where it seems she started to think about how other humans had multiple personalities as well, although they handled them differently. So she went from thinking everyone's like her, to thinking she's retarded and not normal, to realizing that she's not THAT different from other humans too.

Beatrice's character arc is distributed in random order throughout the episodes and that makes it very hard to follow. 8)

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

BECAUSE SHE WANTS SOMEONE WITH A RATIONAL, COMMON-SENSE POINT OF VIEW TO UNDERSTAND HER. It is completely out of character with Beatrice's motives if she's straight up fucking with Battler about one of the most core parts of herself while giving him no clues to the contrary, all the while using language she KNOWS will trip him up due to his preconceived notions of what her terms mean.

By all means, yes, present a difficult puzzle to Battler and make him struggle to overcome it. I understand that part, but don't give him a rubix cube with some of the stickers switched and get pissed off when he can't solve it.

Well, Battler, or rather Tooya did solve the mystery through understanding Beatrice herself. He says that he did so after EP1-2 only. And after going through the episodes myself, I can understand how he did it. *We* may have a very difficult time though, and needed a boost from EP7, but I think if we read through EP1-2 and taken her words at face value we would've be the few people Ryukishi said had hit on the answer. (I, unfortunately, was just as unwilling to believe anything I read at the time... heh.)

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

No, man, it's literally cheating. "Ryukishi redefined terms and gave no one any indication that he had done so, thereby deceiving everyone." My god, do you not know anything about semantics, or are you just blindly loyal? Why is it so hard to accept that Ryukishi, as a mortal, flawed human being, has done something less-than-perfect?

"Ignorant on semantics or blindly loyal." Wow... another false dichotomy. I believe you have no clue about my position, especially when I've been saying I generally agree with both of you. I remember a super hot flame war we got into because you couldn't read that I was AGREEING with you too. FFS, if I'm asking what MORE things can be or how else can we think of things, I am not automatically disagreeing with you!

Just because someone wants to argue against with you... and in my case, I am agreeing on some things and also asking for more ideas, do not label us as "Ryukishi Apologist Zealots!LOL!" Might as well call me a, ' dirty socialist' as some people from not my country are apt to do these days...