[Game] Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru - Ep. 6 Dawn of the golden witch

[UsagiTenpura]

Trying to make the gameboard into a perfectly realistic tale without thinking about the implication that a gameboard has players, and players control the actions of pieces is very much deciding on your own that arcs are the absolute reality and disregard what's been said about it being a game since early question arcs. Those who disregards all evidence that the gameboards are games certainly are the ones who decide things arbitrarily. Among thing it creates for them the problem of explaining how simultaneous worlds are possible without relying on magic, basically proving Jan-Poo's point. Any attempt to make perfect sense out of boards end up creating more nonsense.

It's like trying to imagine a game of chess without players, where pieces moves on their own. How does that work?

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

It's like trying to imagine a game of chess without players, where pieces moves on their own. How does that work?

Like a cellular automata system with defined random rules, why not? Ever heard of Langton's Ant? Very very simple rulesets may produce extremely complicated systems and series of events.

[Renall]

Pieces cannot act against their nature. It is within the ability of the "players" to make any move which is in character for the pieces in question. However, they cannot do things the pieces cannot or would not do. The follow-up to this would be that if we observe a board in which a certain action is undertaken, that action must be in the nature of at least one of the pieces on the board.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Renall

Pieces cannot act against their nature. It is within the ability of the "players" to make any move which is in character for the pieces in question. However, they cannot do things the pieces cannot or would not do. The follow-up to this would be that if we observe a board in which a certain action is undertaken, that action must be in the nature of at least one of the pieces on the board.

I used to fully agree with that, however I do not anymore. Not after they talked about being able to throw the pieces at your opponent. Meaning as long as it's not completely impossible you can make pieces do whatever you want.
Example: Rudolph cannot fly no matter what.


Edit : @ Olivier
Sorta interesting. I am not certain I would call this a game however.
Still, it did make me realize my example was actually wrong. Proposing that the gameboards are reality is actually like proposing this:
A game where the players' actions are guided by the pieces.

[Oliver]

Let me actually put it this way.

Is Umineko itself a "game"? No, it is a book, a very long one, but there is nothing at all gamelike about a visual novel by itself, and I wish people would stop saying that they "played chapter X". Visual novel is a medium of presentation, through which a narrative may be offered which does not oblige it to have any gamelike qualities. Visual novel may be used as a medium of presentation of a story that forms part of a proper game -- like a dating simulation strategy game -- but Umineko definitely is not it.

Is there a "game" going on though? Unambiguously yes. The author of Umineko, Ryukishi, is attempting to play a game against his readers by challenging them to solve puzzles and presenting iterative instalments of the larger narrative reacting to the reactions of his audience.

Now what is the "gameboard" of Rokkenjima?

[UsagiTenpura]

But I must insist.

Originally Posted by Ryukishi

If this tale were to tell you the answer so plainly that you didn't have to think about it, it would no longer be a game.

It is a tale.
It is also a game.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Sorta interesting. I am not certain I would call this a game however.

A "game" exists between players. Having any pieces to it is not actually required.

For example, it is not proven mathematically that the canonical Langton's Ant will always build a highway. Imagine that two people encounter an infinite chessboard with randomly coloured squares and drop a Langton's Ant on it. Then, one bets that a highway will be built in N turns. The other one bets against it.

Is it a game? Yes.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

It is a tale.
It is also a game.

Movable pieces and actually affecting the outcome is not a requirement to be defined as a game. A game is a relationship that exists between players. We can pick a random tale and then have a game about it, but that does not necessitate us being able to affect how the tale unfolds.

[Renall]

We also cannot actually prove that the pieces are being moved. Ep5 and ep6 have unreliable Game Masters who, for all intents and purposes, could have set up their entire "games" such that it it appeared that the pieces had autonomy. The idea of trying to find a "reading" of ep5 and ep6 which do not rely on pieces being manipulated by any active hand is essentially an attempt to demonstrate that this is so.

I think giving up on these stories making sense is giving up on the reliability of the game board. Pieces cannot merely do anything that is physically possible. They also have mental and moral limitations. Battler will not murder someone in cold blood. If he is portrayed as having done so, we might question why Battler is being portrayed as doing it, but we don't have to throw our hands up and say the story no longer makes sense because somebody exists in the cast of characters for whom that act (and perhaps framing Battler) is characteristic.

[UsagiTenpura]

I basically understand what you're saying but there is nothing that suggest that this is the relation between the meta world and the gameboard, and plenty that suggests otherwise.
At best it could be argued that the gamemaster has completely written the tale first, which doesn't change that someone controlled the pieces.

[Renall]

The writer controls the pieces. One could argue the writer exclusively controls them.

I see no reason to believe that there is any actual "game" going on. The boards should function if the meta-layer is stripped away entirely. To the extent they do not, I think there's metaphor at work, nothing more.

If you honestly believe characters in the meta-world are able to directly and actively influence events... well, they're only given the appearance of doing that to the extent the writer permits them to. Heck, if we go strictly by what's presented in ep6, Hachijou Touya, and no one else, is responsible for every act undertaken in Dawn. That actively contradicts the notion of any sort of collective construction.

If you believe it.

[Oliver]

Ok. Try to write an Umineko fanfic that will describe Battler sadistically murdering Shannon explicitly for his own amusement.

Can you? Yes, you can. Will it be a fanfic that "rings true"? Definitely not, it will feel like you're substituting Battler-everyone-knows with some kind of Evil Twin and everybody will tell you so.
While technically you can control the "pieces" in your fanfic, you basically would need to "scribble on the gameboard" to make that fanfic even possible.

And this is exactly what "pieces cannot be made to act against their nature" means. I suppose a set of circumstances may be imagined where any piece can co any required action -- but the cutoff is when the required transformations imposed on the piece by external circumstances will make the idea too complicated to bother.

[Judoh]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

I used to fully agree with that, however I do not anymore. Not after they talked about being able to throw the pieces at your opponent. Meaning as long as it's not completely impossible you can make pieces do whatever you want.

I don't think that's what that means at all. It just means it's possible to dishonorably play chess. (I'm paraphrasing Ronove). You still have to put the pieces back where they were eventually to continue playing the game.

As an example even if you could throw peices and scribble on the board you also still can't move rooks diagonally or move pawns backward. It's against the piece's nature to make those moves. But throwing pieces at your opponent is technically not against the rules it's just something common sense says not to do.

[UsagiTenpura]

Even if I'm to take your example as the absolute.

Why did Ryukishi make Erika do all these things in arc 6? Was it for a gameboard reason? No it was for a meta-reason. I'm pretty certain you're going to say this is wrong and I can't prove that so I'll stop there, but it goes back to my original point.

Edit : My understanding is that yes the pieces have some limitations within the gameboard. The main one would be knox 8th suggesting that if they do something that has a role in the story there has to be hints toward why they did it/that they did it. My general understanding is.
Arc 1-2-3 : Makes probably full sense.
Arc 4 : Start to stretch it but still makes sense.
Arc 5 : Battler's actions makes less sense then usual, Erika's actions only makes sense if she believes this is all a game. Which doesn't make much sense in itself.
Arc 6 : Erika's actions doesn't even try to make sense on the board.

[Judoh]

No actually I agree with you. Erika has no gameboard motive that I can see. Even while looking at it from the perspective other characters it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's like they introduced a checker piece on the chess board and said "since this piece is from outside the board it can move anywhere, make any number of moves during a turn, check any piece it wants, and it doesn't break any of the rules because it's not a chess piece.".

[Qaenyin]

Originally Posted by UsagiTenpura

Even if I'm to take your example as the absolute.

Why did Ryukishi make Erika do all these things in arc 6? Was it for a gameboard reason? No it was for a meta-reason. I'm pretty certain you're going to say this is wrong and I can't prove that so I'll stop there, but it goes back to my original point.

Edit : My understanding is that yes the pieces have some limitations within the gameboard. The main one would be knox 8th suggesting that if they do something that has a role in the story there has to be hints toward why they did it/that they did it. My general understanding is.
Arc 1-2-3 : Makes probably full sense.
Arc 4 : Start to stretch it but still makes sense.
Arc 5 : Battler's actions makes less sense then usual, Erika's actions only makes sense if she believes this is all a game. Which doesn't make much sense in itself.
Arc 6 : Erika's actions doesn't even try to make sense on the board.

I agree with your analysis of the games, however I try to view the board from multiple perspectives and layers. Essentially I feel there's 3 aspects of the games.

The Mystery Layer: The events which really happened. All things accomplished through human means. What the Meta references and Illusion of the Witch are all metaphors for.

The Fantasy Layer: The Illusion of the Witch and the Meta-World. Essentially where the Red Truth is the literal truth and the Blue Truth is the purported truth(What really happened and what may have really happened), the Fantasy Layer and Gold Truth are what people believe to have happened. Where Beatrice killed everyone using magic. Where Virgilia and Beatrice fought a magical battle in the garden. And where Erika and Dlanor exist.

The Game Layer: This is the aspect of the game as a flowchart or outline. Essentially the way things are layed out to be solvable by the player. Things being metaphors, things being structured as hints. Arcs 1-4 being seperate from arcs 5-8.

Essentially the game can theoretically make sense on all 3 of these layers by the time Arc 8 is out. Supposedly.

On the third layer the way I look at it is that each Arc from 1-4 are meant to be mysteries we are layed out to solve(much like Higurashi Arcs 1-4). Arcs 5-6 are meant to give us hints and partial explanations towards tools or theories we can apply to arcs 1-4 to solve them(Say, arc 6 presents us with hints towards Shkannon, which can then be applied to 1-4 to help solve some of the mysteries). Much like Higurashi arcs 5-6.

Arcs 7-8 are meant to be solutions to the overarching storyline, giving everything away rather than hints, and concluding the plot with a resolution. Much like Higurashi 7 and 8.

Layer 2, the Fantasy Layer, is the overarching plot, the meta world(also see, Rika+Hanyuu's story in Higurashi).

Layer 1, the Mystery Layer is several variants of individual plots, meant to be solved independently using the same "game format" or rules. Much like how Higurashi 1-4 can be solved as individual mysteries using the general knowledge of the games as a collective item.

[Pika_power]

Does Shkanontrice violate Knox's 4th?

To use DID seems a bit of a cop-out as far as it goes.

[Used Can]

I don't think multiple personalities is that hard to understand.

Unless you mean the whole deal about creating and killing personalities at will, or them being accounted by the Red as people, then that may be a different thing.

[LaplaceNoMa]

Yeah. I honestly don't have any problems with DID itself. I have one huge problem with the usage of red regarding 'people/humans/persons/corpses'.

[chronotrig]

Originally Posted by Used Can

I don't think multiple personalities is that hard to understand.

Unless you mean the whole deal about creating and killing personalities at will, or them being accounted by the Red as people, then that may be a different thing.

To be honest, I don't see how Shkanon could possibly work with DID. It would mean that the personalities "switch" just in time for the person to take the jobs assigned to them, and that they change outfits with each switch for some reason. No, if Shkanon is going to work, it has to be a deliberate deception, with the help of at least Kumasawa and Genji.