LogFAQs > #959001488

I went through the non-key related decisions that I previously didn't make, and nothing was ultimately useful, though I did find it interesting that when I chose to persist in victory at the end of this past route, that the Hisa and Rika's plan was to claim that they were the wolves to get Meiko to side with them.

I try to balance re-telling of events and my personal reactions/insights because if it would be unrealistic to expect people following this to know the precise context of everything I talk about. I bring this up because using the #20 key in both situations that had new choices unlocked were basically large exposition drops that I won't bother going into and instead talk about my thoughts about the combined info.

The lack of spider gods in local mythology is probably important, but the comparison of dreamcatchers to spider webs is what I am focusing on. Rika is the last remaining member of her family, one whose guardian is the spider. I wonder if the fact that her family adopts people into it and thus does not have the long lineage blood ties of the other three families signifies that someone very important or even sinister came to become an Uematsu, or however it is spelled. The dreamcatcher bit I think can be interpreted differently. They can filter the dreams. Theoretically, that would mean that the good go through and bad stay stuck or whatever. I don't know anything about the purpose of actual dreamcatchers, so I apologize if I am being dumb. Anyway, if Rika were the dreamer, she could pick and choose which dreams (aka loops/paths/routes) go through, or rather become reality.

This would mean that Rika is the prime villain candidate. Hisa did say that spiders in mythology often depicted them as women who manipulated/trapped/seduced or specifically Hisa said "did things" to men. Seeing as she was prominently featured on the cover art, that would check out. It could also mean that she's actually protecting the village/world and could in some way trigger loops when things go amiss. Curiously, Rika has never been killed by the wolves. She has turned into a Yomi, been hung to her presumed but unconfirmed death, or had the unusual hanging of a different kind in the second route ending. Maybe Rika is actually a (benevolent) god or something. The major knock against calling RIka the villain or a god of any sort, is that she has died well before the loop was triggered. It was established that since Chi also experiences looping (which calls into question if everybody is experiencing it or if they just chose Haru M and Chi to force some romantic crap angle), their deaths do not trigger it but likely the dreamer/villain's death/failure.

Again, the convience store employee could be a dreamer candidate, but the way the sheep spoke at the third ending when the monster showed up, I am convinced that they are the sheep/dream wielder, and they purposely had Haru M go to the village to disrupt the dream/loops. The likeliest candidate though is Meiko. She has never been confirmed to die. I struggle to think how the monster wasn't triggered in the second ending but did in the third. The only thing that I can think of is that Meiko had to be the badger, and the wolves had to win, but I digress. Anyway, since Meiko has not been confirmed to die, her death could never trigger the loop, but if whatever set of circumstances needed to trigger the monster didn't happen, that would mean failure, and she would start over again. When Chi was describing her numerous loops, she said that Meiko entered starting on the 58th or so loop for inexplicable reasons. Maybe Meiko felt that she needed to include herself to allow a new set of data points, thus more possibilities and maybe additional chances/higher odds to trigger the monster. Of course this could also implicate the convenience store employee for adding a new player to the mix, but I'm convinced of my sheep theory.

Just a note about the monster, but from what I can see from that still image, it possesses many what I would call legs. Could it be eight, thus an arachnid/spider? Is the trigger to get Rika to absorb enough corruption to turn into that thing? And not just any corruption. Chi explictly mentioned and inconveniently chose to hold back details that there are multiple kinds of corruption. Perhaps one type of corruption turns Rika into a Yomi like she did in the first route, which was caused by her taking in Chi's corruption when Chi killed Tom after Tom killed Kamo. Maybe it is this one of these mystery corruptions that she needs to take in. I could be mistaken, but I believe she absorbed some corruption from Haru M in the third route after believing him to be human. Perhaps she needs to absorb corruption from the wolf team? I mean, Rika was alive in the route the monster showed up, and she conveniently chose to hole up in her home, so I think that has to mean something.

I don't really understand the ghost leg lottery, or rather I should say that it is a new term to me, and I don't understand how the dreamer had no control over guardian assignments since it was believed that they are handed out due to housing assignments. Does that mean the dreamer isn't a god or maybe I am just coming into this with much more elevated thoughts about a god's capability than is warranted.

The final thing that I have to say before I eventually start using the #3 key that I acquired is that I have long been aware of Haru M's evasiveness regarding discussions about himself prior to this, specifically his education/area of study. He talks about his ex-girlfriend, friends, family, and where he's from, but when he talks about him being a grad student, he doesn't go into detail, and when someone asks if he's in sciences or whatever subject, he basically just says, "Yeah, something like that." They put that on the forefront toward the end of the Chi conversation when she noted that he said, "Umm" before telling a lie, and one of the examples was his education/area of study. I don't know what to exactly take from that, but it is probably the key to why he got caught up in all of this/is capable of looping and retaining memories.
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KCF can't actually be a real person but he is - greengravy
If you smell what the rock is cooking he's cooking crap - ertyu