>>16
It's as I said before: all of the fantasy characters were fictional. Yet their characterization remained constant throughout the series. Ronovoe, Virgilia, the stakes, etc. Your suggested argument doesn't really hold water.

>>20
>>17
Ryu likes those open endings alright. I believe even Higurashi did that. Of course he basically tells you the answer anyway.

Semi-related, we should probably move this thread to /theories/.

https://archive.seacats.net/gameboard/res/7708.html

>>21
But those characters don't really have a concrete existence beyond simply being Beatrice's imaginary characters. If one were to strip away the 'fantasy layer' from them, they would simply fade into nothing...or in the stakes' case, they'd just turn into inanimate objects. If Bern and Erika had had their way, that would probably have actually happened, but the fantasy was permitted to remain.

On the other hand, the whole game was about finding the truth hidden behind the illusion of the fantastical witch Beatrice. It would have been quite an anticlimax if the character behind Beatrice acted exactly the same as Meta-Beatrice, because in the end the only thing that would have been accomplished would be that we'd stop seeing her as a maniacally evil witch and instead see her as a maniacally evil human pretending to be a witch.

It seems far more interesting to me to look into the psychology of WHY someone would need to put on the facade of the confident all-powerful witch, and to expose a quite different person once that facade is seen through. But it's all opinions in the end.

I'm genuinely curious as to how you would have liked to see Beatrice's character pan out over the course of the core arcs, though. What were you expecting to happen with her after the fourth tea party? Did you think it was another 'North Wind and the Sun' strategy? You obviously seem to have had your expectations betrayed regarding her character, so it would be interesting to know what you WERE expecting.

>>27
Your argument still doesn't make much sense to me. If the other fantasy characters can maintain their personalities then I see no reason why Beatrice cannot. For the record, I thought the sheer number of different Beatrices in the core arcs was distracting and tacky. Claire for example was completely pointless and unnecessary, "Moetrice" was an insult to the character, only the "witch of Rokkenjima" Beatrice seemed to have any place, along with of course "Bea" from Kinzo's tale.

I don't think there'd be an anticlimax in continuing to portray Beatrice as she was. I'd rather her personality wasn't a facade, that would make things more interesting. Well, reading the phone book is more interesting than Yasu, so that's not much challenge, but you get the idea. You seem to have this shallow idea that people can be fully portrayed and fleshed out in as short a span as the four original arcs, to which I say bunk, people are more complicated than that. There was plenty left of the original Beatrice to explore--I mean, I would've liked to see her reasons for doing what she did, but done in a way that was different than Yasu. Show something in a way that's truer to her character, without the cheap Shkannon tricks and "pity me" sob story. Pathetic.

How would I like to see her in the core arcs? I would've liked to NOT see a shallow impersonation of her via these ridiculous other characters they introduced to portray her. Just keep her personality the same. Don't make her "Lord BATTLER's wife." You know, there's more to the TIPs entry than just cramming a lot of characters--Beatrice's TIPs entry was actually erased. That means the individual stakes had more of a TIPs entry than she did at that point--at least they got a full blurb of text about themselves, even if you had to click the icon a few times to get an individual stake! I think you missed my point entirely earlier, it's the fact that Beatrice pretty much only exists as Battler's wife in episode 8 that serves as the final insult to me. She's shown no longer as her own person, her own character, that's been trampled and beaten into the ground over the core arcs and now she's just some fantasy of Battler. Maybe that was intentional, but it's an injustice to easily the most entertaining and engaging character in Umineko.

There is nothing interesting about Yasu and its story. There is nothing interesting about Lion, Moetrice (aside from otaku pandering), or whatever that was that appeared at the end of episode 6. R07 didn't have to write it this way, try to make Yasu appear as the "real" Beatrice. If the illuson is far more entertaining than the reality, then what use is there for the reality? Was there any purpose in revealing Beatrice's heart? It didn't change anything. The family's still dead, we don't even know how it "really" happened, and all we managed to learn is that Beatrice is a lot more boring than we might've originally thought. Wow, big revelation. When writing, you're supposed to give your audience a payoff after you lure them in. Presenting them with a solution that is far more boring than what they expect is bad form. Now I see R07 as a hack because of the mess he made of Umineko, and I don't think I'll be able to trust him again anytime soon. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, as they say. He had a great story going here and decided to ruin it by ruining the best character in the series. Way to go.

>>20
He's not going to forgive her for ACTUAL MURDER, though. For setting a tragedy in motion out of desperation while somebody else was ultimately responsible for actual crimes, sure, but not for active culprititude.

>>23
I see a significant difference between an "open ending" and "I ain't tellin' y'all shit," personally.

I'm all for an ending that's open to interpretation, but "I can't figure out what the fuck happened and the author doesn't even seem to want to present a unified thematic and factual basis for different thoughts" isn't open to interpretation. It's just not telling the readers enough and hoping they'll guess forever.

It's rather like "The Lady, or the Tiger?" only we're never told what's behind either door, merely that ladies might exist somewhere, and at the end of the story the author asks us "So hey, what was behind that door anyway?" How the fuck am I supposed to know, and what difference does it make? It means a lot to have our understanding narrowed to that set of choices (does the princess give away her man to another woman forever, or let him die?) without a definitive answer as to which choice actually happened.

The thematic meat of the story is in being able to definitively narrow down an ambiguous ending to a handful of possibilities and then have that be the nexus of discussion. That does not happen in Umineko. Literally every character could still be blamed or exonerated in some fashion, and even if we knew the who, we know nothing of anything else that happened beyond a broad series of things that we speculate could have gone on. Was there a fake murder game? Maybe. Did someone solve the epitaph? Possibly. Did somebody flip out over the gold? Who can say, really. Shit, Eva doesn't even survive half the time, so we're interpreting the possibilities exceedingly loosely even now because we just can't know.

Given that he wanted us to make a Magic/Trick choice, it seems like the interpretive universe he was going for was going to come down to that dichotomy of personal belief, but it ultimately failed miserably to establish that. Had it done a better job of that, certain missing facts wouldn't really be that big of a deal, but as it is the facts are all we've really got left to mull over.

>>16
It's really hard to tell.
>>17
Yes, that's probably the most interesting part about it. Does Eva book really contains the real truth? I mean, unless she directly saw every murder being committed she would have to assume some things. Personally, I have always wanted to see Beatrice as innocent of the murders, but that extra story where we see her starting the "fake murders" and then actually killing the servants make me wonder. It at least shows the family might have been involved as well.
>>20
Something like that could have happened.

>>32
Yeah, well, if you wanna see at least one good thing about it, /gameboard/ would have probably not get any games after EP8 if Ryukishi had revealed the truth, not that really comforts most of the fanbase, though.

>>37

I dunno about that. It wouldn't have stopped me from writing, just forced me to adjust appropriately (which I've been doing with the damn thing since ep5).

Admittedly, I've had to change much less than I expected. Because I am awesome.

>>38
Sorry, I meant complete games~

>>37
>/gameboard/ would have probably not get any games after EP8 if Ryukishi had revealed the truth
I really, really doubt that.

>>23
>shitty poem
>false roleplay

Kill me already

>>40
Trust me, theorizing would be not as fun if we knew the exact culprit and how did everything happen. I have always thought of gameboards as a way for people to express their own ideas of an answer, just as Kinjo did in his third fangame. Just making random closed rooms gets old after a while, the who and the whydunnit are in my opinion more interesting.

>>31
You seem to have this shallow idea that people can be fully portrayed and fleshed out in as short a span as the four original arcs, to which I say bunk, people are more complicated than that.

But see, Beatrice as presented in the first four arcs is not actually a "person", by the normal definition. "Her reasons for doing what she did" is a rather ambiguous statement because 'Beatrice' never did anything - a human calling herself Beatrice did. The simple fact that Beatrice is NOT a thousand-year-old witch, something that had to be the case from the start if one believed in an anti-fantasy solution, that alone makes it very hard for her true nature to be the same as the person who was portrayed in the first four arcs.

Just saying, based on what we knew about Beatrice from the first four arcs, her true nature being something like Yasu seems to be a logical expectation to me. What kind of person would present themselves as a thousand-year-old, all-powerful witch? The obvious answer is someone who doesn't have any actual confidence in themselves or any actual power, and feels the need to project this fantasy. Well, they even talked about exactly this in the very first episode, when discussing Maria's reasons for putting on the 'creepy witch' act. That seems like very effective foreshadowing for Beatrice's true character to me. In the end, witches in Umineko are quite pathetic, pitiable beings. Which makes sense, really, because those are the kinds of people who would need to escape from reality by pretending to be witches in the first place.

In the end I'm afraid I just can't see how continuing to portray Beatrice in the way she was portrayed would have been at all in keeping with Umineko's themes.

But all in all...correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm getting the impression that the issue here is more that you simply don't like where Ryukishi went with the series and with Beatrice. You would have preferred him to go somewhere else. So for me to provide you with examples of how Beatrice's true nature is well foreshadowed and consistent is probably a futile effort, since I don't think that's really your issue; your issue is simply that you found the character interesting before, and in the core arcs you no longer did. I personally did, but it's a matter of taste, and no amount of argument is going to change the fact that you were disappointed by it - nor is it going to change the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed it, much more than I would have enjoyed what you're proposing.

So in the end it all comes down to taste, and we're probably both better off just accepting that we each have different opinions. I find it quite offensive that you say things like "There is nothing interesting about Lion, there is nothing interesting about Yasu" and so on, as if they are factual statements. I personally found them very interesting, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I think you should probably just accept that it isn't so much that Ryukishi failed than that he just didn't go in the direction that you wanted him to - which is perfectly understandable, and I can totally see why you would have been disappointed. If I'd put so much effort into the mystery side of things, I'd have been disappointed too, so I'm glad that I came into the fanbase when I did. Likewise, I myself probably need to accept that Ryukishi's work is far from flawless, and that my love for it is more due to the fact that it means so much to me on a personal level. I am probably over-defensive of Umineko simply because I love it so much, but I understand that my reasons for loving it aren't really things that anyone else could understand.

Apologies for the wall of text, I tend to get carried away with things like this.

>>43
I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. Not everything is a duality of opposites. A confident person can have as their idealized form an even more confident person.

The issue most people have with Yasu is that the pull was so strong in the opposite direction that a fundamentally dreary person was being contrasted against a dynamic, exciting, multifaceted one, and the two did not reconcile for a great many readers.

Yasu should've been differently engaging and dynamic, but not exactly as Beatrice was. She has hints of it, but they're buried in mountains of annoying self-pity. Part of the problem with the characterization difference is that notion that she somehow projected onto Beatrice all the things she couldn't be and then actually wasn't, instead of merely thinking she had but failing because you can't project a part of yourself you don't actually already have.

Basically, Yasu should've been Beatrice without even realizing it. That just didn't click at all for me, and I ended up not so much hating her character as finding it simply didn't stack up as being worthy of the character she allegedly created. Actually, "not believing Yasu is the sort of person who could create Beatrice" and "not believing Yasu is the sort of person who could commit the murders" kind of go hand in hand for me. If that was intentional (and I suspect it was in the latter case), great I guess... but what then?

Lion was actually interesting BTW. Wish we'd gotten more of that. Lion has a lot of personality in very little characterization, and comes closer to the notion of "in another life, I could've become Beatrice" than Yasu (who actually did become Beatrice) does.

>>31
> Maybe that was intentional, but it's an injustice to easily the most entertaining and engaging character in Umineko.

I believe it was intentional, and I'm going to have to agree with Rika here on pretty much all of this post: >>43

>There was plenty left of the original Beatrice to explore--I mean, I would've liked to see her reasons for doing what she did, but done in a way that was different than Yasu.

Then go write a fanfiction about it. No, really, that's the whole point. That's why Ryukishi left things so open-ended. If you don't like the truth he's giving you (which was intentionally supposed to be disliked) then go make your own. That was the theme of EP8.

The whole point of the first four arcs was to build up Beatrice's character and the whole point of the last four arcs was to tear it apart. This is not the only work of literature to do something like this and it won't be the last. Remember Battler's chessboard thinking? Umineko itself was a chessboard turned upside down. You're supposed to root for the mystery but by the end hoping that the fantasy will win. You're supposed to switch sides just like Battler did.

Of course there are plenty of people who don't switch sides and as a result come to the conclusion that Ryukishi wrote a really bad story. I don't know what they were expecting though. To understand the story you would need to be able to look at it from a different perspective (as Ange told Battler in EP4). Looking at it from the perspective that Beatrice was anything OTHER than a pathetic servant trying to be more than she really is would definitely give off the wrong (unintended) feeling. Beatrice was killed off in order to demonstrate a point.

Umineko has always been about the meta-world, not the gameboard. It's just that EP1 started us out on the gameboard and we were eventually supposed to realize this on our own as each game got progressively more meta than the last, with the final episode not even having a real gameboard at all. So what happened on the island was never relevant to the point Ryukish was trying to demonstrate; what was relevant was the building up and destruction of Beatrice's character. Even if you call Yasu's background a "sob story" , that is in fact the whole point. Not that I like it either, but you aren't SUPPOSED to like it. And that should send you a message as a reader.

"There are some things that are better left unsolved" is the message of this tale.

>>43
Well, yes, I have been saying that I didn't like the direction R07 took the character because it rang hollow and uninteresting to me. That's really what I've been saying all along. And I think it's well-represented by how the core arcs unfolded, and no, I do not deny the amount of foreshadowing that hints at Shkanontrice. The fact of the matter is that Beatrice is entertaining in the first four episodes, then she ceases to be so. Whether or not that was intentional isn't really the issue, though I have to say if it was intentional it was definitely a bad move on R07's part. Hoodwinking your audience with one concept and then suddenly switching it around is awfully bad form, especially when the first one is interesting and the second one is not.

I get that Beatrice had an inferiority complex deep down and that's why she portrayed herself as she did. I still don't buy that means we need to cut the old Beatrice out of the picture completely--the transition is jarring and it hurts the series as a whole, as facetime is stolen by less interesting and meaningful characters who have no relevance to the story. Beatrice is the centerpiece of Umineko, and I can't accept the core arcs' take on her as legitimate. If, as suggested at the end of episode 6, that Beatrice still existed in some form (you can argue this either way, I say it's possible to interpret the ending as saying that much), then it should have been shown more. Instead, all we got in episode 8 is "Lord BATTLER's wife," and episode 7 was just flat-out the worst one in the series. Frankly I felt a bit betrayed, but mostly just let down.

>>46
First off, assuming your reader will do something as drastic as "switching sides" in this case is probably a bad move. I had an outline for a story in which two characters were intentionally made to be sympathetic, yet at odds. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say, I operated under the assumption that the reader might support either of them. I made no presuppositions about my reader's tastes, and I feel this is the right way to do it. If you make two equally valid sides, I think it's folly to expect the reader to take one of them--or moreover, to pressure them to take one of them. I, as a reader, tend to be a bit contrary. If I feel like the author is using cheap tactics (like sob stories) to make me feel a certain way, I tend to react in the exact opposite manner the author intends. In other words, if you wanna make me feel sorry for a character, you better damned-well do it right. And for as bad as R07 tries to make the "mystery side" appear in the core arcs, consider that Battler would've never reached Beatrice's heart unless he had doubted her fantasy--but getting someone to understand her is what Beatrice wanted all along.

>"There are some things that are better left unsolved" is the message of this tale.

Then it wasn't the tale I wanted to hear--or rather, I would've liked to have seen it told in a different way.

Oh, and Renall brings up some good points in his post. There's not just one way to tell this story, and to present it like R07 had to tell the story this way is folly. If anything, I feel he chose one of the worst ways to go about it.

>>46
"Some things are better left unsolved" is a morally repugnant thing to conclude, however, and goes against a lot of the themes of the story. I think that argument was used to defend the unresolved nature of it but wasn't terribly well thought-out, because I don't see how an ethical person could ever agree with that statement on its face. I'm just going to assume that's not quite what the author meant, and I have plenty of reason to think he didn't but maybe couldn't phrase his point quite as he wished.

I'd ask you though, if the goal was to make us interpret the story as we will, why go through the Yasu story at all? To make us go "You know what? That's not good enough?" To make us think "I don't believe a person like you could have done it?" I thought both of those things without that. I've always, always believed the person behind Beatrice a scapegoat, as I just couldn't come up with any explanation that worked otherwise.

It's not a matter of "switching sides" (and if you think I'm not on the fantasy side, hoo lordy). It's a matter of dissatisfaction with a weird message and a very bizarre and unsatisfying approach to that message.

I mean yes, if you want to say "Well if you don't like it, make your own, that's the point," I suppose all I'd say is that I am. Maybe that's what he wants, but I think there were better ways to approach something like that than the way he did.

I mean, there's some serious mixed messages coming from ep6 and ep8 in particular. You throw in ep7, and shit just gets more confusing. Who is an Endless Witch? Who is a Goat? What does it take to be compassionate like Will as opposed to a point-pushing dick like Erika? If the former is "respect the author's intentions" and the latter is "do whatever the hell you want," how does the moral of the story not essentially conflate the two as being one and the same if indeed Ryukishi wanted me to write my own interpretation with only so much guidance?

Hm...The more I read of your opinions, the more I see that ultimately, whether you enjoy Umineko in the end comes down to whether you can really forge an emotional connection with Yasu or not. I'm starting to see how much of my love for Umineko really comes down to just how similar I am to Yasu in general, which gives me an empathic link that the majority of people wouldn't have - and wouldn't really be able to understand without having felt it themselves.

It really does seem that Umineko is something that only one in a thousand people can truly comprehend.

>>50
That's kind of an arrogant dick way of saying you don't think somebody's opinion is valid. A literary interpretation is valid as long as it's supported. I'm not defending anyone but myself here, but I can tell you why I was disappointed and even where I think some parts of the series were wrong and yeah, even how I'd do them different. That doesn't mean you have to agree, but acting like someone who disagrees just doesn't get it is the height of assholery.

I mean, supposing that I do understand Yasu... and decide that Ryukishi is portraying her as the killer, for lack of evidence to point to anyone else and her own repeated claims that she's confessing... and decide she is a horrible, immoral person for doing what she supposedly did? I can understand her. I can pity her. And I can also condemn her for her actual crimes.

Mind you that's hypothetical; I believe Yasu to be incapable of such things save perhaps as an accidental enabler. Her sin parallels Battler's, it's a sin of inaction. That's my personal opinion. If you want to say I couldn't form an emotional connection to her and thus didn't get it, then (1) you're a dick, and (2) how do you know I didn't form an emotional connection, but just had a different reaction to that connection?

>>51
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give that impression at all. I don't mean to say that anyone is "wrong" for not reacting the same way I did. I was just trying to pin down the reason that I feel so differently to everyone else about it.

As I said, I completely understand why people were disappointed, and I can see that I would have been disappointed had I been in the same situation. That will not change the fact that I still love Umineko as it is, but Ryukishi could have done it in a way that wouldn't alienate such a large portion of his audience. Although I have the feeling that he knew full well he was doing that, that doesn't necessarily mean it was a good idea.

>>49
Fair point, Beatrice did want someone to understand her. It adds up with the sob story we're presented, right? Anyone who's had a traumatic life would want someone to understand them. And anyone who is saying "Yasu's backstory is boring/terrible/etc" is clearly NOT understanding her.

Is it really a bad move to force the reader to believe one thing? I think there are a lot of books which try to persuade the reader into a certain set of beliefs. Are those authors wrong for not including the opposing argument and taking into consideration the fact that the reader may not want to side with them?

Anyway, the way R07 presented the story is a matter of taste. Personally I would've done it differently as well, but again, write a fanfiction about it (or not if you've lost interest).

>>49
Right, I myself have a hard time accepting that you should RUN AWAY FROM THE TRUTH and go live in a happy fantasy land. And it does contradict the whole "don't stop thinking" mentality Battler constantly says. And the fact that ceasing to think is the same as death in the meta-world.

But at the same time, remember EP7 and EP8 where Ange sees the horrible truth and dies. I'm actually very confused on how Ange kept dying and reviving, so if someone could clear that up for me I'd be grateful.

Anyway, this is why I said "SOME" things as opposed to "all". Ever had something happen real life that was so upsetting you'd rather have not known the truth? Or rather, where you're constantly presented a mystery that cannot be solved no matter how much you think. Is it a good thing to keep thinking, if it will only result in a very disappointing conclusion? Or would that make it bad, and thus would you be better off to just stop thinking entirely? It depends on how you weight truth vs. happiness, and that in some instances it might be better just to forget the truth and move on(like Umineko's solution).

Anyway, that's getting more into a philosophical debate than an Umineko one. But as far as R07's intentions go, I'll admit it and say that he really was not being clear, and that's kind of the thing I was disappointed most with EP8. I can agree with you that he could've sent his message a little bit clearer, but as far as I can tell this is what he meant to say. If I'm misunderstanding it then either I'm at fault for not thinking hard enough or he's at fault for not being clear enough. Most people hop on the latter bandwagon.

I mean clearly I'm tsundere for the series if I'm writing a 12+ hour fanfic about it, but I don't think it's a failure of a person emotionally not to sympathize with a person who is not inherently sympathetic to everyone. If Yasu were, she'd be quite a horrible caricature and everyone would laugh about it, but the mere fact that she's not doesn't mean an emotional connection is guaranteed, let alone what kind of opinion that connection will foster.

And that's fine. That's how we interpret characters. In all honesty it doesn't even bother me that "variant" Beatrices existed in Chiru, I just... really liked ep1-4 Beatrice. She was a really good character, arguably the best Ryukishi has ever written.

You don't always lead with your best foot when dancing, but you want to make sure you rely on it when you need to and don't tie it up behind your back and hop around on one foot either. Chiru didn't need Beatrice proceeding unchanged from the first half, but it didn't need to all but excise her either. I'd have been more forgiving had there been a Beato-replacement I liked as much as her, but there wasn't. Maybe if they'd done more with the Elder version. Maybe if I had felt more passion from Yasu.

It doesn't help that the Battler/Yasu romance is one of the single weakest too. The best romances in the series were the ones with the adults, and the bits and pieces of their great relationships that did appear in Chiru (Krauss and Natsuhi's loving and devoted but deeply troubled marriage, Kyrie's awkward position as the victor in a struggle that nearly destroyed her, etc.) are far, far more engaging and always were. Battler/Beatrice got close though, thanks to that sexual tension. It got lost somewhere along the way, and that's too bad.

I laughed a lot when Jessica acted like her love-suffering was worth half a shit compared to Kyrie's in ep6 though. Little girls need to know their place in a woman's world. Shame she haxed her way to winning anyway.

>>53
>Is it really a bad move to force the reader to believe one thing? I think there are a lot of books which try to persuade the reader into a certain set of beliefs. Are those authors wrong for not including the opposing argument and taking into consideration the fact that the reader may not want to side with them?

I used qualifiers in there--if you present two sides, both with plenty of merit, then yes, I think it's bad form to expect the reader to take one of them, or to try and force them to do so. When you have, say, the evil empire against the good rebel alliance, or the Lord of Darkness against the last hope of the world, well, it's a little more reasonable to expect your readers to root for the side you want for them to root for. But for all the demonizing of the "mystery side" in the Core arcs, I can't buy that it's all bad, for the reasons stated previously. It certainly has its perversions which are represented in Erika (albeit in a ham-fisted manner), but I don't agree that you have to buy into the author's intent or follow along with everything they say in order to see "the heart." I feel I understand the character of Yasu-Beatrice quite well, yet I still hate it. This is why it irritates me when some say "only certain people can comprehend it" or blah--maybe only certain people can appreciate it, and that'd certainly be a more accurate term, but I think I understand full well what he was doing with Beatrice in the core arcs. I just didn't like it. And if that was the point, then yes, I'll stick to my opinion that he went about it the (very) wrong way.

So no, I don't think saying "Yasu's backstory is boring/terrible/etc" means I don't understand it.

>>54
Yeah, I pretty much agree with you. I feel like we're probably both saying similar things, just coming from different standpoints.

Like you say, I don't think that an emotional connection with Yasu is guaranteed (well, of course not, just look at what so many people are saying!), and I don't think it's a "failure" not to sympathise with her. My point was that she is inherently sympathetic to me - and I don't expect anyone else to be able to have that same understanding, because in the end that understanding is something personal that can't really be effectively explained in language that others would understand.

Again, I am myself glad that Ryukishi wrote her the way he did, but he did have to sacrifice the support of much of his audience in order to do so.

I'll also agree that the adults' romances are generally portrayed much, much better than those of the children. Although I would say Battler/Yasu is still much, much more genuine than George/Shannon or Jessica/Kanon; so much time was spent on them but I never felt that their love was at all genuine, meaningful or even realistic. Well, in the end, that was kind of the point, I suppose. I get the impression that Yasu cared more about the simple fact that "someone loves her" more than the exact nature of that love, or even whether she really returned their feelings in the same way. Well, that's a feeling I can certainly understand, but that's going into personal things that I really wouldn't want to talk about here.

I'm probably failing to put my point across properly at all, but this is something I have complicated feelings about in general, so I apologise if I'm not being clear enough. I suppose that in the end, what it comes down to is that Umineko was ultimately meaningful for me. That doesn't necessarily mean it was meaningful for everyone, or even anyone else - and it doesn't mean that the fact that it wasn't meaningful for you indicates some kind of failure on your part either. I'd just like to make the point that there is at least one person who felt that the work did succeed for them, and that ultimately means more to me than any kind of intellectual argument about the quality of the series does.

>>56
>Battler/Yasu
What is this crap? Battler/Yasu romance all took place in fantasy land. IE it never really happened.

Here is Battler and Yasu's relationship: they spent like two days together, max. Then Yasu pined over him for an inordinately long amount of time in a creepy obsessive stalker kind of way, and Battler didn't even remember it when he returned. Then they died.

To be honest, I could never buy into the Battler-Beatrice romance because it wasn't real. Of course, as long as it only impacts the Meta-World it's fine, but I think it's rather unfair to compare it to say Jessica-Kanon and George-Shannon because those actually happened, like, in reality. All of the Battler-Beatrice stuff is just an illusion.

It's a bad thing for an author to "force" the reader to take a certain position, by the way. I'm assuming you didn't mean it like that and meant more "persuade" the reader to take a certain position. There's nothing wrong with having a point you wish for the reader to agree with. However, you must always consider two things:

1) Your argument must be convincing on its face, such that a reader could indeed be persuaded of your point; and

2) You must be prepared for the possibility that, even in the face of your argument and all you've presented to support it, the reader will take a different position. It need not be a contrary one; they could just think of things a slightly different way (e.g. "I do agree that Bob was the killer, but I think it's because he felt deeply scorned by Frank's lack of affection and not because he wanted Frank's money").

As the author you have something of a bully pulpit and can make your point more strongly than your readers or critics generally can (as you reach a wider audience than they). You have to be careful not to try to abuse this, and respect and even confront dissenting opinions. Where Umineko failed in this respect is that it was very, very confused at times about whose opinions it was respecting, whose it was disagreeing with, whose it was outright mocking, and whose it was strawmanning.

I won't touch on whether it was appropriate to do this thing or that thing, just that it was very odd to have a clearly intentional contrast between characters like Erika and Will and not properly flesh out their distinct approaches, how they might conflict with Battler's or Ange's, and why they might be as much right as wrong. Likewise, it was hard to make sense of Battler's conversion when he refused to disclose so much of his own thinking to us, so it was hard to tell if we were supposed to still be his allies or not, and if so, what we should do next.

>>55
>So no, I don't think saying "Yasu's backstory is boring/terrible/etc" means I don't understand it.

...Er, while that wasn't exactly what I meant to argue, your post did sort of refute my actual argument anyway. I don't know how else to write this so I'll be saying "you", but I'm not trying to put words in your mouth or anything. Just to illustrate a point.

What I meant (and this could be going off track a bit) is that, say, you're introduced to Yasu, and have a conversation with her. She tells you about her really crappy life, about all of the bad things going on, and asks, "Do you understand?"

Now, this gets iffy, because we need a consistent definition of "understand". In the way your post used it, you WOULD in fact understand her. You just don't like it. So, in a sense, you might actually be supporting Yasu by saying "Yasu's backstory is so pathetic; I feel sorry for her. What kind of author would do this to a character?"

Whereas the "understand" I was thinking of was more along the lines of "I sympathize with how you feel". So saying something like the above might also be the same as saying "I refuse to accept what you told me is true; you're lying about your backstory, and do not deserve my sympathy because I don't believe in such poorly-written stories." in which case Yasu is shunned for being Yasu, something she can't really help. In other words it's like denying Beatrice is real, only Yasu IS real and has feelings that have been hurt by denying her terrible past.

When someone asks you to understand them it's usually to gain sympathy. In Beatrice's case she wanted Battler to reach the truth and sympathize with her for having a crappy life as Yasu. Trying to say that the author should have written Yasu with a better backstory INITIAlLY appears to be saying that you're not sympathetic toward (and thus don't understand) Yasu. But really, the one who caused the problem of the backstory is the author, R07. So Yasu had a crappy life and couldn't help it, well, you think it's crappy too, and the one at fault for writing it is R07.

If it was his intention to stir up feelings of loathing toward himself then he was successful; otherwise he wasn't. I don't really know what he wanted, but since Featherine is so conceited at times it makes me think he did want to incite some rage in the readers.

>>32
I barely remember EP8, but from what I do I always assumed his feelings were along the lines of "Well everyone already knows the answer. I might as well do this" If I remember correctly he said something alone the lines of "You can't solve it? Wow you suck" and I'm not talking about EP3. So I can see the lack of compassion to the people who didn't understand, and why people can call him a bad author is that is the case.

>>37
Considering I believed Shkannon was confirmed long before I created any games I would have to disagree. Of course you never know.

>>58
>>55
>>53
All of this talk about the author making the reader think in a certain way is basically Umineko in a nutshell. That was what Ryu had been doing through EP1-4; Schrodinger's cat, Devil's proof, Chessboard thinking, Hempel's raven, etc. The reader's side during this portion was mostly made up of anti-fantasy. Sure some people were trying to solve the whole crime, but that pesky Shkannon theory kept coming up.

Then Chiru came into the picture and took on a pro-mystery approach. That is basically doing a 180 for the readers who had not yet adjusted to that thinking, but it also reassured the ones who had and were honestly trying to solve it like a mystery. He gives us rules and ideals that a mystery must have a logical answer. So when Shkannon continued to get pushed in our faces no wonder why so many disliked it(none of this is really directed at anyone in particular btw).

>>61
Oh and just in general:

Kinjo had to force me to finish the Yasu back story because he wanted me to read the teaparty. I found it rather boring myself. Whether that was because it was something we already knew I don't know.

>>57
Here is Battler and Yasu's relationship: they spent like two days together, max. Then Yasu pined over him for an inordinately long amount of time in a creepy obsessive stalker kind of way, and Battler didn't even remember it when he returned.

Yes, and I'm saying I find that more believable and human than the stereotypical Romeo and Juliet romances we see with George and Jessica. At least we are (to me at least) given a genuine idea of why Yasu would have become so attached to Battler and we are also shown what their relationship was built on (discussing mystery novels). Furthermore we see Battler talking about how the culprit's heart matters more to him than figuring out a clever closed room trick, which shows us why Beatrice was so hopeful that he would be able to understand HER heart - and so disappointed when all he did was halfheartedly try and break her closed rooms. All of this is much more than we get for either of the other two main couples, despite the huge amount of time spent on them. But your mileage may vary, of course.

>>68

Here's the thing though: That isn't a relationship. It's the start of one, but then it kinda doesn't go anywhere. Yasu actually has very few developed human relationships, but it's mostly for apparent lack of trying. It gave me the sense that Yasu wants to be miserable, and doesn't want to try very hard to avoid that fate.

Which is odd because this is also the person who resolved to solve the epitaph and commit (at least in prose) a bunch of murders. It bothers me somewhat that Yasu'd get discouraged that easily in one case and be persistent in others. It's a bit more understandable if it's a passing dream, the genesis of something that never happens, but then it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to pine over it for six years and then impose some kind of dire responsibility upon Battler for it. If you're not gonna take love seriously, it's unfair to tell other people they have to.

It also bothers me that Battler's good qualities rarely seem to be much on Yasu's mind. There are things to really like about him, granted, but it's not as clear as what Beatrice likes about him. You can argue they're the same thing, it just doesn't quite feel that way.

That said I agree with you that the Shannon/George and Kanon/Jessica relationships are cute at best, gag-me-with-a-spoon saccharine at worst. Neither feels very genuine, but at least Jessica's isn't skeezy.

>>70
I think it's more that she's just really, really shy, has absolutely no self-confidence at all, and can't believe that anyone would ever actually love her. She feels like her relationships with George and Jessica aren't genuine since they're based on the false facades that she presents to them (neither Shannon nor Kanon is who she truly is), and is absolutely terrified of the prospect of revealing her true self to either of them.

In her head (regardless of how shallow or even non-existent it probably was in reality), Battler was the only person who ever loved her for who she really was, and that's why she's so eager for his return...but as soon as he IS going to return, she's suddenly even more conflicted. Now there is no choice which doesn't involve doing what she fears the most, actually exposing her true self to one of the people she loves - exposing the fact that she has BETRAYED the people she loves.

You say Yasu never focuses on Battler's good qualities? Well, that is completely accurate, really. As I said before, she wants someone to love her for who she is, and it really doesn't matter who. She would love them for the simple fact that they love her; that is sufficient for her. (It's also worth pointing out that she honestly has no idea what Battler's actual good qualities are given that she hasn't seen him for six years, and didn't really know him all that well even then.)

Basically, to me anyway, Yasu's lack of self-confidence is entirely to do with her interactions with others; doing purely intellectual things such as resolving to solve the epitaph isn't really a problem for her. Being less afraid of committing mass murder than of just confessing to someone how she truly feels may seem absolutely ridiculous to you, but I think humans really can be that contradictory in reality. Well, I can certainly see myself resorting to suicide if I was in Yasu's position, which is probably a testament to just how healthy my state of mind is. Mass murder is a stretch, but I can't say I don't understand what would lead her to that in her particular situation. I don't think that I could relate that feeling in a way that would make any sense to anyone else, though.

>>72
Yeah, I'm just saying it's very shallow and superficial. That's not a flaw of characterization; being shallow or hypocritical can be a great character trait if it makes the character more interesting, and it's better than Yasu being perfect.

On the other hand, it makes me skeptical of a lot of the "love" talk, and it creates problems for me - to get back on topic - with the portrayals of Beatrice in the meta-world.

Basically the issue is twofold:

First, a lot of "love" talk gets bandied about and the relationships Yasu cultivated are particularly prominent in this discussion. But they're... not really love at all. I'm not sure Yasu even really understands what love actually demands. She has very childish and simplistic ideas of what it is, and what it means to her, and very little apparent understanding of its difficulties and needs.

That is to say, I'm not sure Yasu understands that she owes Battler (or George, or Jessica) something if she wants his love. It's not that it's an exchange, it's that it's a mutual undertaking. Love is Natsuhi putting up with Krauss's incompetence and the way he marginalizes her and the way he and Jessica upset her pride because she loves them both so deeply. Love is Kyrie being able to to be friendly with Battler, who essentially symbolizes over a decade of suffering for her, for the sake of her husband and daughter. Love is Hideyoshi being willing to calm his stronger, more ambitious wife when she gets caught up in her own anger and try to serve as a peacemaker between her and her hated older brother.

These are things that Yasu has never built, and I don't know if she entirely understands them (she might given her interactions with Natsuhi to some extent, but it's unclear). She's very selfish about that. I'm not saying she doesn't deserve love, but the thing is she'd get it from Battler if she made even the slightest effort to reciprocate.

The problem with this isn't this attitude in itself, but that it never grows anywhere. As far as we know, she goes from this sort of person to either a suicidal depressive or some kind of promise-driven mass killer, neither of which is really character-salvaging positive growth.

I realize it's a tragedy, but in tragedies one usually falls from a height. Love has to be won before it can be tragically lost. Yasu appears to go from "no gain" to "still no gain, plus I'm spitefully ruining the lives of everyone I claim to love, or accidentally enabling someone's terrible ambitions because I'm too afraid of doing anything." It's pitiful and sad, but perhaps not in the way the author intended.

Second, the Meta-Beatrice of ep1-4 does cultivate a relationship with Meta-Battler. It's a good, if certainly strangely-founded one, and it works quite well. Theirs is an adversarial relationship founded on a mutual thirst for intellectual stimulation with an undercurrent of sexual tension.

So the problem I had is that I expected this to be more than just the fantasy of the relationship that the two could have. It outright suggests the two might well be right for each other, but the fact of the matter is that none of it "actually" happens. That disconnect between Yasu-as-Beatrice and Meta-Beatrice makes it difficult for me to accept that the former is the genesis of the latter, and it makes me wonder what the point is of the Meta-Battler/Meta-Beatrice romance at all.

I mean, so what, the hyper-idealized imaginary forms of each hooked up and lived happily ever after? Okay, so? What about the real Battler (a person we arguably never met)? What about the real Beatrice? If you're going to make me feel the sting of their separation, I have to believe there's something there besides a brief meeting and a single promise. As it is, I barely know who these characters are and where their relationship would go beyond their mutual appreciation for the same literature.

>>73
>it makes me wonder what the point is of the Meta-Battler/Meta-Beatrice romance at all.

>I realize it's a tragedy, but in tragedies one usually falls from a height. Love has to be won before it can be tragically lost.

>the Meta-Beatrice of ep1-4 does cultivate a relationship with Meta-Battler. It's a good, if certainly strangely-founded one, and it works quite well.

Maybe the meta-world is where the REAL tragedy takes place.

>>73
Yeah, I can't really disagree with any of that. Again, I think that we both pretty much have the same understanding of Yasu, for the most part. The difference is that the character presented works for me, and is evidently not satisfactory for you. In the end that isn't something that any amount of discussion can change, so I don't intend to try to dispute any of those points.

As for Battler and Beatrice's marriage in Episode 6, to be honest, it doesn't mean that much to me either. I love the core arcs in general but even I would concede that Episode 6 was rather weak.

However, if I had to give an interpretation...given that the scene is very quickly followed by Ange and Featherine reminding us that the reunion in the Golden Land is just a happy story and that it doesn't change the fact that everyone did die in 1986, it seems to me that the whole Meta-Battler/Meta-Beatrice relationship is probably something that doesn't really exist outside the Forgeries.

Meta-Battler and Meta-Beatrice's "marriage" seems to me more to suggest that Tohya did understand and accept Yasu AFTER her death; how their relationship would have panned out had Yasu survived is really something that can never be known. The fact that Beatrice is given a funeral in the next episode seems to back this up.

So yes, if I had to say exactly what Meta-Battler and Meta-Beatrice's romance means, I'd say it's more Tohya's reflection on what could have been than anything concrete or 'real'. The entire tragedy is that he never WILL know how things actually would have turned out, because in the end Yasu didn't have the courage or even the sense of self-worth that would have been needed to make it happen. The tragedy is in the end not of "something great that they had being lost" but of "something great that was never even given a chance to come to pass". That's how I see it, anyway.

>>75
Is it really a tragedy if everybody dies multiple times and Gets Better(tm)? I think that's technically a farce.

>>76
Battler/Beatrice's marriage didn't do much for me either. But this is going back to the root question of "Core Arcs Beatrice." I liked ep1-4 Beatrice, but once she stopped being antagonistic in nature (even if she wasn't Battler's enemy), the relationship lost too much.

ep6 Beato being his daughterwife kinda made it a bit too weird for me too. And then Beatrice dying and un-dying another couple times over ep6-ep8 just made the whole thing silly.

EP6 is not about battler and yasu.
EP6 is methaphorical of Kinzo and Beatrice Castiglioni.
Battler is trying to revive Beatrice, like Kinzo did. Battler creates a riddle that Beatrice has to resolve to revive (the logic error), the same way Kinzo-sama created the epitaph. And Erika is like Kinzo's wife, trying to trap Battler in a relationship he didn't want. So, EP6 is not about Battler and Beatrice, it is all a big hint at Kinzo's past. After all, Umineko is solvable without EP7 and 8 (if you are fucking smart). So, somewhere before EP7 you should be able to find out the hints to understand Kinzo's past.

Personally, I thought Umineko's ending was fantastic. What else were you expecting? Umineko was always some sort of weird trippy rollercoaster ride starting from EP1, adn Ryu wasn't going to spoil it by giving some generic ending like 'oh look, here's the culprit, heres what happened, k thx bye.' Honestly, if Umineko hadn't ended the way it had, it wouldn't be half as talked about as it is now.

Anyway, about Yasu. I'd have to disagree that she is a boring character and defies what everything Beatrice stands for, etc, etc. For me, at least, I don't see EP7 Yasu as the definitive guide to what she is. It shows the 'core' of her character, you could say, but Yasu isn't just EP7. Yasu is EP1, EP2, EP3, and everything else. Yasu is the entire Umineko. The entire series is geared towards understanding her heart. If you felt sad at some random point in the fantasy narrative, say, the Golden Land in EP4 being destroyed, that you're feeling sad for Yasu. Because what happens there is what Yasu went through in one sense or another. She's a very complicated character.

Btw, Yasu is totally capable of murder. Remember Clair going 'fuck humans' and scooting off to live in her own la-la land? Remember Kanon saying 'Madam and Gohda should just go burn in hell'? Remember Eva Beatrice acting all confused and moe one second before slaughtering millions the next? Yasu's a few cents short of a full dollar, and some part of her mind the murders of the Ushiromiya family were trivial compared to the fantasy romance she was having with Battler inside her head. But yeah. That's one interpretation. With Yasu it's hard to pin anything down concrete, which is what makes her so beautiful.

I think it's a bit lazy. The inability to pin down a character can be interesting if there's nuances to them, but not if there's just big gaps in everything. Characterization being inconsistent at times is also problematic. Inconsistency isn't complexity, and even where genuine complexity exists Yasu comes up short. If anyone expects me to buy both that she's a good character and that she's the culprit, they'd better show me a better justification than "my (perfectly livable) life sucks and I want to die (but won't do anything to help myself); time to murder everyone I claim to care about (but don't actually, or I wouldn't murder them)."

Also, the idea that she was just crazy and immoral and it's not her fault and oh well everybody died what can you do is bullshit. I'm sick of works with tragedy boners, and if that really is all that there was to this story then it just isn't a good story. It's a bleak and meaningless exploration of a pathetic mentally ill loser who committed an act of pointless evil that we can't even adequately condemn because she was crazy, and the lives she destroyed out of selfishness. Everything was meaningless, over a dozen people died for nothing, and we're supposed to forgive and embrace this person who was so sick as to think murdering a nine year old was the solution to Maria's life being bad?

Personally, I think if that's as far as you're willing to go then it's you who has no faith in Yasu as a character. What about her miracle? What about the chance that someone would save her, or help her save herself? Just because the island still blew up doesn't mean things went the way she was expecting them to. If that were true, I don't think Bernkastel would've been the villain and I don't think they would've defeated her, but they did.

Besides, George is totally the culprit, not Yasu.

But Kyrie and Rudolf killed everyone. They flat out tell you that in EP7.

I mean, it's kind of funny to see people still fall for the whole "truth comes from an unpleasant source so I'm going to ignore it" trick but come on.

>>171
Um...Yeah, no. Bernkastel told Ange in EP8 that her red statement about that being the truth was effectively meaningless, and it was heavily implied that the game was intended to prepare Ange for the worst and show her how horrible the truth could be, not to actually show her the truth itself.

If anything, the fact that she was so shocked upon reading the diary would suggest that the truth can't possibly be the same as the EP7 tea party, because she had already seen that and thus wouldn't have found it so surprising.

...There's also the fact that the EP7 tea party scenario has a lot of really unrealistic elements and turns everyone (Kyrie especially) into an idiot, but I'm sure Renall could explain that better than me. It also doesn't match up with the EP8 ending (where Beatrice survived), for what it's worth.

>>172
Yeah, Ange's reaction really makes you wonder what was actually written in the diary.

Even a Gohda culprit is predictable, so maybe it was really Hideyoshi pulling all the strings?

Oh, don't mind me guys. I'm just standing around in the middle of the tragedy.
Please ignore the fact that I'm the only human presented in the whole story with the means to get into Rokkenjima. Yeah, I have been working like all of my life in this place, I knew about the secret mansion and probably about Beatrice II too. I definitely never found the military base entrance and the gold, even if my only job is to drive this damn boat. Yep, I'm pretty innocent.

I would also be glad if you could forget about EP8's trick end. Yeah, that scene in which Ange kills an innocent boat driver (yours truly) just after reading the truth from her Auntie's book. Notice how this murder was completely unnecessary and it even leaves her with no sure way to go back. You know what would be pretty funny? Ange actually managing to fulfill her revenge and then killing herself, but R07 would never do something like that, right?

Remember, you didn't see my sprites until EP4 or so. I'm pretty sure Knox 1st completely denies me as the culprit, even if we were already shown a similar wordplay with Van Dine 11th. Anyway, a pleasure to meet you guys, I gotta polish a few gold bars before selling them at the black market.

Yeah, the issue with the ep7 TP is that basically everyone has to be incredibly stupid for it to work.

The gold only works from a game theory perspective if everyone keeps their mouths shut about it and doesn't do something like, oh, escalate a few shootings into a mass murder. Because it has to be converted into cash before it's of any value, anyone remotely intelligent (like Kyrie, say) will wonder how they'll get the gold out of the tunnels and convert it. Doing so while also dodging a police investigation will be hard, as there's no guarantee the tunnels won't be found before the gold can be moved.

"But Renall, the bank card!" you say. Well shit, where's the nearest ATM on Rokkenjima? Oh there isn't one? Well then I guess that card could be a piece of fucking plastic scrawled on with magic marker for all Kyrie or anyone else knows, because they have no way of checking it. Kyrie and Eva are not gonna fall for that shit (and Eva almost doesn't, but then does); Kyrie is not the sort of character who just accepts a claim at face value. Think back to ep2: Kyrie made Beatrice prove her point before accepting it and was one of the last to concede.

Similarly, the bomb exists and is relied upon by Kyrie to cover up the crime because an insane robotic maid-witch tells her it exists. Right. I always trust people dressed up like witches who say they were going to kill me when I encounter them in magical underground bedrooms filled with a 10t stack of gold that I found when me and my brothers and sisters and their spouses solved my dead dad's riddle. I certainly wouldn't find credulity stretched nearly to its breaking point and think that sort of shit could easily be a bluff, or at least not rely on it to cover up an aribtrary mass murder not knowing that the mechanism will function.

Speaking of which, since when is Kyrie portrayed as arbitrary? This is a woman who took twelve years to decide to murder someone she'd hated for much, much longer. This is someone who would wait that long just to get her man. This is someone who wanted to trick and trap Krauss into an admission about Kinzo instead of just calling the cops or barging into his study. Kyrie plans shit out ahead of time. She does not decide "Welp, time to go shoot Gohda to death even though he has no fucking idea what's going on."

Also Battler just sort of... disappears in the ep7 Tea Party. Where'd he go? How would he have known about the tunnels, did Kyrie or Rudolf tell him? Did he decide to ignore their instructions and just go there? What else did he do? Wouldn't Eva want to kill him or at least detain him?

The ep8 ending suggests an amicable parting with Eva, or at least something to that effect. And a living Beatrice apparently. So while it could follow from the ep7 Tea Party, it would require that:

1) Eva does not hold Battler responsible for his parents' actions.
2) Beatrice survived being shot.
3) Battler figured out how to get into the tunnels and never decided to go back into the blast radius, despite probably not knowing the danger.

>>180
>Yeah, the issue with the ep7 TP is that basically everyone has to be incredibly stupid for it to work.

I fail to see the problem with this.

The Ushiromiya Adults were never exactly portrayed as stunning bastions of confidence. The moment things start to go really south it's time to just clean the slate as much as possible.

It'd also like to point out that Ange remembers getting one of Yasu's bribery letters. In other words, Rudolf or Kyire were already in on it. So there's a good reason to believe her.

Last edited at 13/07/05(Fri)21:37:03

>>189
Then you are dumb, because the adults aren't stupid and they are INCREDIBLY stupid there.

Ange also never actually read that letter. And we don't ever learn the purpose behind it. You could use it to say Kyrie/Rudolf, Kumasawa, and Nanjo were "in on it," but then you won't be able to defend what they were in on or why they were being compensated in that particular fashion.

And plus, you know, if Kyrie was already going to get paid quietly in an untraceable manner, WHY GO ON A KILLING SPREE? She's rational enough to pick a sure thing over a messy potential... unless she doesn't trust Yasu, in which case why does she trust her about (1) the alleged bomb, (2) the bank card, (3) the gold, (4) that nobody else is gonna find out about this.

>>191
Because Kiyre wasn't really that smart?

She's kind of a sociopath who thinks everyone thinks like her. Once the shooting started she immediately interpreted it as "kill everyone before they kill you first."

As to why Beato was believed... Why wouldn't they? They had already found out that Kinzo had actually built an elaborate system of secret passage ways to hid his 10 tons of Nazi gold, revealed to them by the Witch who Kinzo had spent ages ranting about after sending them a letter. "I wouldn't put it past Kinzo" is a constant refrain because the man was such a nutter that him doing absurd things like this was perfectly believable.

It's not exactly pleasant, but pretty much the entire story was saying that a lot of times people want to hide unpleasant facts because they're painful to themselves or others.

It's the only one that fits because it's the only "fact" painful enough that the survivors would want to hide it.

>>192
She's only "kind of a sociopath" in situations that are engineered to deliberately portray her as the killer. Natsuhi is also "kind of insane" in ep5, but she can be and is portrayed as considerably more grounded at other times.

The rest you're just completely incapable of grasping the point. You can't bring up the payout boxes (assuming for the moment they are what you believe them to be, which we've never really had confirmed) AND suggest Kyrie would decide to go ahead and kill everybody when much better options are available knowing that your financial situation is already squared away (such as killing just Yasu and then pinning the deaths on her).

If, however, you don't trust Yasu to hold up her end of that bargain, that might be a motive to betray her. But if you don't trust her there, you can't trust her about everything ELSE she says. She tells you there's a bomb that can wipe the whole island out. What happens when you use that information to kill everybody and use the bomb to cover it up and the bomb... doesn't work? Congratulations, the cops have now nailed your ass on Monday. If you think Yasu's going to betray you, why wouldn't she betray you about that other shit? Maybe she broke the mechanism. Maybe it doesn't work anymore. Are you seriously going to just take her word for it when you already distrust her?

The ep7 Tea Party simply cannot work as anything even remotely close to a solution. One way or another, things don't add up. It's missing something thematically essential in the form of Beatrice's active agency and forces most of the adults but especially Kyrie wildly out of character. It may have grains of truth in it, but it's not the answer.

Honestly, do people just ignore everything about Kyrie except the ep7 TP and Bern's game in ep8?

>>193
Tea party 7 made Kyrie act completely out of character. She was calculating and cold,sure, but she was also warm towards others at times. She never shown signs, other than that magic scene in ep 6 which didn't even happen, to be a sociopath or have murderous intent towards anyone.
Not to mention Kyrie dies in almost the gameboard within the first twilight, except for ep 4 unless someone solves the epitaph, which I find hardly a coincidence.

People give tea party 7 as an explanation for what happened in Prime as an easy solution when it is complete fabrication.

My personal belief is that Kyrie being the culprit with her husband is the commonly accepted theory for what happened on Rokkenjima between the mystery fans in the real world (future).
I find it hardly surprising that when Bern construct her own story/mystery, she places the same culprit as in Tea party 7 but with the addition of Battler, who completely dismisses it after solving it.

Accepting the last few episodes really makes people ignore the entirety of the story beforehand.