Ever since EP3 or so, I've been wanting to 'pierce' the meta world. In other words, find some explanation that, it too, isn't true; that there exists a real world theory. This theory is the result of that desire.
But it might be best to show how I arrived at this theory...
If you will, here's my theory on the red/blue/gold text as this will be important later. Each text color corresponds to Lambda's, Bernkastel's and Beatrice's power. The way the text can be presented also corresponds with what we've been told is their power.
Lambda - Witch of Certainty: Therefore her red text is absolute and cannot be denied once it's been presented. Perhaps this one is the most obvious.
Bernkastel - Witch of Mircales: Her power is to constantly try again and again and eventually succeed. We've been told this in EP6. The blue text, once presented can become reality, as this is how the game is fought. Unless it's denied it can stand true. However, if it's been denied you can try, try again.
Beatrice - Endless Witch: This one is perhaps the hardest one to see. We've been told her power has the ability to trap Bernkastel because no matter how you present the blue, she can shift the story around. Bernkastel said the game was like a maze with shifting walls. What this means for the gold text is that once the game is set up, you can declare 'truths' like Battler did but it's only relevant for this episode. The gold has been said to be the gamemaster's privilege; it's what went on in this episode.
Finally, it was said that Beatrice's Endless shifting can be defeated by Lambda's Certainty, like all three form a rock-paper-scissors trio. Well, no matter how you shift the game around Lambda can present red truth and pin you down. For example: "This is Kinzo's body!" in one game.. "This is not Kinzo's body!" and so on. However once the red has been presented, "Who cares, Kinzo was already dead," your shifting around has no meaning any more to whether Kinzo was in the study or sneaking around, etc. You can arrive at the truth with the red despite the gold.
Ok...
It was because of this power of the red that I started to question how to read the red. Like most of us, I believe it would be cheap for Ryukishi to get around the red by doing things like, "
Nanjo is dead, but I really mean Nanjo Bunyu." At the same time a lot of us were unsure that whether the red text specified one game or all games. For example,
All of the master keys were under Rosa's control! or
Rudolf is dead. Or whether they specified a certain time, or no time, etc, etc.
However, I felt this was cheap too, if they could be made to say that they were ALL only specific for one game. But here is the problem:
In EP5, Battler's huge linchpin to declaring that he wasn't the detective was that,
No person would mistake Ushiromiya Kinzo by sight. But this was declared in EP4. So we have an example of a red truth that jumped episodes. What other red truths have jumped episodes? After going back to review the red text it's clear that some can and yet some are specific to episodes. It seemed that unless the red text was given context by red or white text it has the ability to hold for all episodes. So things like, "Genji, Nanjo and Kumasawa are not murderers," I now suspect hold true in all episodes.
Aha, but the most troubling red seemed to me to be,
No more than 17 humans exist on this island!! in conjunction with
This applies to all games!!! And yet in EP5, we were told that, "Ok there were 18 now." Or so I thought I had remembered. But if we look carefully at the red introducing Erika:
Furudo Erika only increases it by one person.
Besides her, the number of people on this island is exactly the same as it was in the previous games.
In other words, the number of people in this parlor now is equal to the total number of people on this island.
I thought this was suspicious how the red kinda dodged around and didn't outright say, "Ok, there are 18 now." It seemed like it was still trying to hold to the number 17. So when the ending to EP6 hit I wasn't really surprised. 8)
Anyways, all these ideas of the red truth led me to one meta-world piercing theory that was suddenly validated, I thought, by a scene in EP6.
Based on previous games I believed that the structure of the world was like this:
Ryu and us --> Meta world (Battler, Beatrice, Lambda, Bern) --> Gameboard (what we thought of as the 'REAL' Rokkenjima)
My problem was this: If this is 'real' Rokkenjima... how can they keep coming back alive? Furthermore, we knew from EP5 that the stories conform to Knox rules... since when does 'reality' conform to Knox rules?
So my idea was that these were all writings from the message bottle... (and that Shannon was the writer since there's a hint in that scene where Kinzo told Shannon to write down his will.) But at the same time that seemed like a crazy idea because then "Everything would be fake!" This would just be as bad as if Ryu ended the story with, "And it was all a dream..."
What happened in EP6 to trigger it was this:
At the beginning we were shown that Featherine AND/OR Hachijou Tooya (the author) were observing the meta world. So it seemed like the layers were this:
Ryu -> Hachijou or Featherine -> Metaworld -> Rokkenjima board
However, Moemoe Beatrice (the cute one--who I will now refer to as Moetrice) needed to visit Featherine's study to read up on older episodes, which Featherine had supposedly written. Since when do written characters visit their authors' study? Not to mention Erika who already violated the Piece vs. Meta world by seemingly acting with Meta-world Knoweldge, in both episodes. It seemed like the layers turned into this:
Ryu --> One huge jumble of meaningless story.
I don't think Ryukishi would write a meaningless story. And I certainly don't believe Ryu collapsed these layers without purpose. So what is the compromise?
My theory is that the layers after EP6 are like this:
Ryu --> Hachijou + Mysterious writer of EP1/2 --> Meta-world and Rokkenjima story.
The reason these stories are not just "all made up!" are exactly as Hachijou said. Each writer must know the Core Truth before being able to write a valid Rokkenjima story. And that each episode, 1-6 was written with Core Truth in mind. This is how they can conform to Knox rules. Each episode presents a spin on the events of the day and yet also presents some Core Truth. Like Hachijou/Featherine said she researched some things about Kyrie's pregnancy (I believe it was that) and inserted it into the story.
My basis of this theory is an analog to the Historical Method. For example suppose there were only two biographies of Caesar, written 150 years after his death and all we have are copies of these biographies. Historians don't go, "Oh, we have no primary source, it's all fake!" They indicate that these copies point to two original biographies, which in turn point to the original Caesar. Sure, there are some exaggerations and we can't ever know the absolute truth, but the idea that they were made in the first place is in indicator that Caesar was alive and he did conquer.
In the same way, EP1-6 are just like secondary and tertiary sources. The Core Truth they present all point back to some primary source. This isn't the Historical Method exactly since that doesn't apply to fiction, but it should be similar in methodology.
My theory is that the Core Truth is the settings, the particulars, the reason why everything occurred; everything we've been searching for. The rest is what I called Author's Flavor. Incidentally, what *really* happened on Rokkenjima? Did Natsuhi run around with the kids waving a gun in the air? We may never know. But perhaps the reasons why she did, if she did, were more important (which may have been presented in EP5.)
Here's an example of Core Truth:
Kinzo is dead at the starting time for all games.
Here's an example of Author's Flavor:
This is Kinzo's body. In other words.. sometimes his charred corpse is his body.. sometimes it's not burned.
In other words; and this is why I presented my theory about the red before... Red reaches right into the Core Truth. Gold is this particular author's take on the story.
Ultimately our strategies haven't changed. Red truth is still what we're looking after. We know the author is obeying Knox rules so detective viewpoint is important. We know that the lies are also important because they seem to hide some horrible truth. But I gotta say, coming up with this theory kept us from going, "WTF? It's all going crazy!" in EP6.
Here are some more thoughts to consider.
1. Featherine is Hachjou's self-insertion character. Yes, she's writing a self-insertion fan-fic. Let's hope she doesn't turn out to be a Mary Sue. 8)
2. This explains Erika's existence and non-existence on the game board. As it says in the TIPS when you execute Erika, her family claims there was a chance she would've drifted ashore and gotten involved in Rokkenjima, but that there was nothing to indicate her existence there. The writers of the mysterious messages used this theory to add to the 'illusion,' so say the TIPS.
http://umineco.info/?%E7%AC%AC%E5%85.../TIPS#yc88f1ea
3. Shannon and Kanon's unstable existence is a hint, perhaps that they were never even there on the day of the massacre. The ones we see are fictional characters written into the story. In fact, there's red that says that no one has different names, which means Sayo and Yoshiya could be different people entirely. It could be those were the people George and Jessica were dating outside of Rokkenjima and they were written into the story as fictional characters!
4. Even though this the episodes are so-called 'fake', I believe Ryukishi really did have all the tricks thought up beforehand. I think he will tell us how they were done eventually, but this is a different story than finding the Core Truth. Sorta like, how the Epitaph was solved isn't integral... but he'll tell us eventually.
What else is there? I have a ton more to say, but I fear this message is getting quite long already. I'll leave that up to everyone else...