The blood is fake, as is the reaction to it. Everyone who “discovered” the FT knew exactly what they were going to find and where they were going to find it. Kumasawa’s reactions are highly suspect at basically all times ever.
There’s a technique in stage magic (and con artistry) called misdirection. The point is to create a situation that appears to match obvious conclusions so that people don’t notice what’s really going on. The “discovery” of blood in the dining hall after the discovery of the FT literally leads Battler to the conclusion the six must’ve been killed there the night before. So we don’t realize that’s not the way they were killed (if they were killed at all). You said yourself you believe it was poison (from somewhere or other); obviously there are not going to be blood puddles in the dining room if people were poisoned. It’s a plant. Nobody walked in there and shot five people. Didn’t happen. Couldn’t happen.
George is not a POV in that scene and most certainly is not a reliable POV, and he never sees Hideyoshi (no one sees Hideyoshi except allegedly Natsuhi/Kanon/Genji before the cousins even show up; the shower is off and the door is shut). And yes, there is every reason to doubt a story of a scene that was allegedly discovered by the supposed culprit and which Battler barely experienced before everyone was hustled out. This is elementary stuff. If you have any suspicion of Kanon at all then everything supposedly seen from his perspective should be viewed as little more than it almost certainly was: A story.
My point is it’s not a story about how they were killed, but a story that they were killed at all.
So you admit that you do not have textual evidence from Legend to demonstrate that the culprit possesses a gun in Legend. Wounds are questionable if they exist at all, supposedly necessary gunshots go unheard, “Beatrice” does not appear to be in possession of a weapon at the end. Why should your take on events be treated seriously? You’re materializing poisons and guns out of thin air. My solution is simpler: There was no need for them (in Legend anyway).
I don’t think it’s as easy as you’re making it out to sound, particularly given the state of the scene. Your logistics are hard to swallow. Even something like “they pretended to fake it and Nanjo got taken out first and the other two accepted it” is more reasonable than this notion (but still unreasonable). I think if you’re going to lean on the “not killers” red you’re going to put yourself in a really uncomfortable place by using Genji as a get-out-of-rational-physically-possible-explanations-free card. Genji is not actually a suicidal robot; that’s his character, but we know it isn’t his true and full self (based on Yasu’s observations of him and Ronove’s characterization).
Maria is also not a freaking robot and she does get scared and doubtful at times. She’s trusting and a little naive, but there has to be a limit and this would be it. You cannot with a straight face attempt to argue that you can be in the same room as somebody firing no fewer than 6 rounds of live ammunition and messing up a body in some fashion and not be unsettled by this even a little bit. Or that the culprit, being the witness’s ostensible friend, wouldn’t stop and think this might be taking things a little too far.
Gross details like that are among the easiest things to fake because they create a sense of revulsion. Totally reasonable if you can accept the premise, and the onus is frankly on you to explain how in a series where basically every FT appears faked why this one wouldn’t be (HINT: Because this one is also faked, at the very least in initial premise; if nothing else it’s the easiest way to get everyone to the shed).
And again you’re dodging the question of why this keeps being repeated. Themes do not exist in isolation or for no reason. The magic symbols don’t repeatedly get referred to as a “weird paint” or “blood-like substance” if they’re just blood. They’re almost certainly not blood anyway – did Kanon meticulously drain blood out of people into a bucket to paint stuff with? – so we have evidence right in our faces of blood-like fakery going down. You can’t find an extra gun, but I can find “blood makeup” right there in the text painted on the shutter.
[quote=“Karifean, post:27, topic:26”]In response to the progression of the meta story, I’d rather leave that for the Episode 2 Tea Party.
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I think it’s fairly important to consider Legend and Turn together when looking at the progression of the meta-plot. I think you’re not giving enough credit to the idea of what things were “supposed” to be like in the original (i.e. Yasu-authored) stories vs. what the stories of Rokkenjima became under other authors, and how this influences the development of the Meta-Battler/Meta-Beatrice interaction.
Yeah that wouldn’t make any sense if they all knew Kinzo was dead and were working off some kind of script. Wait no that’s exactly the sort of situation that would arise if they were doing so.
She never wants to be “stopped by somebody.” She wants to be “stopped” by Battler. The entire thing is for his sake. She claims she will leave this to fate whether “somebody” stops her… just like Beatrice claims that fate chooses her victims. Guess what? One of these statements was definitely bullshit. The other one… well, what do you think I think? There’s a reason one of Beatrice’s patrons is a Witch of Certainty. Creating a “certain miracle” is a thing Battler does in EP6 to demonstrate his understanding of her game. Battler heavily employs a misdirection to create that miracle, and was actually doing the whole thing for Beatrice’s sake and not the sake of the witches.
The intended miracle was that Battler would appear to beat the odds. Appear to. The deck was supposed to be stacked in his favor but look like everything was against him. The Battler of the stories (and/or Meta-Battler) failed at this for a long while. The Battler of reality (probably) succeeded, but other factors complicated the outcome (as suggested by episodes after Turn).