Thank you for clearing that up, that line confused me a bit quite as well, but the few added words make it more sensible.

I think that’s just a bad choice of words on the localization team’s part though, “May have” refers to a present tense. “Might had” would have been better.

Also, has anyone else noticed what appears to be another secret door between the Library and the Sewing Room in the Orphanage? You can clearly see it in some of the chapters.

I’ve been looking for this, and finally found what I think you are referring to. During the daytime, in “The Funeral” chapter, there are a couple of panels with a color that is distinctly more brown in tone. It does seem to give the impression of a secret door, especially near the top of the panels. I haven’t seen this in other chapters however.

It is quite interesting to look, with the secret door idea in mind, at a map of this area of the orphanage:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/file/930042/45843

Notice that there is an unaccounted for space between the sewing room and the library which certainly seems as though it could be a secret room. I wonder if there could be a passage behind a bookcase of the library too.

And what, I wonder, might be in the secret room, if there actually is one? Meg’s laboratory?

I disagree. Jennifer can’t change the past. That advice from Bucket Knight would ONLY be helpful if Jennifer COULD change the past… which she can’t.

Bucket Knight’s main concerns have been (1) helping Jennifer recover her memories and (2) giving clues to Jennifer which help the player of the Rule of Rose videogame to play the game. I don’t see how the advice, which you propose that BK is intending, by warning Jennifer not to be “ruled by falsehood”, relates to either of these goals.

But if the clue IS related to Jennifer’s need to un-warp her memories, then it fits in with both (1) and (2) above.

How it relates to (1) is self-evident.

It relates to (2) when it comes to the player of the Rule of Rose videogame (and thus Jennifer) figuring out to give the pistol to Gregory rather than trying to defeat him in battle. The player of the videogame should have learned from the newspaper article in the Smoking Room of the airship that Gregory ends up shooting himself after killing the orphans. The player of the videogame should use this “memory” correctly to break out of the normal expectations (i.e. kill the boss) of the boss-battle (which is a warping of her memories—surely Jennifer never battled mano-a-mano with Gregory in her forgotten past) and correctly decide to give the pistol to Gregory so that this memory can be fulfilled (which results in the “good ending” and the clearer and fuller recovery of Jennifer’s true memories).

I must admit that I’ve had that fantasy… only in it they say: Yay! Somebody bothered to put in the thought and effort to figure it out the story and see how clever we were in writing it!

And I hope that if, one day, some of the game creators DO come to this site, they will find that we have figured things out correctly. To me, figuring out the game correctly means figuring out the backstory that the game’s authors had in mind, and have given us clues about. If we don’t manage to that that, I lose the game. That’s how I feel.

Thus, it does me absolutely no good if, by force of deceptive persuasion, I convince a lot of people to accept my interpretation of the game. If my interpretations don’t match the backstory that the game authors had in mind, I lose. So I try not to be closed minded, or get too attached to any theory.

I would rather find out that I am wrong about something I’ve written, and thereby get the chance to BECOME right, than to just have a lot of people THINK I am right, even though I’m not. This is the philosophy that I try to abide by with this blog.

I thought about that as well, but I don’t really see WHY Jennifer would distort the image that way. I might be wrong, but I do not remember any evidence of her knowing either that Wendy was “training” Gregory or that he was the “Stray Dog”. As such, why would she picture him fighting like a dog if that was not how he was actually behaving?

“Also, is it just me or does Gregory seem larger in his Stray Dog appearance than he does normally? I guess it partly shows how helpless Jennifer must have felt against him.”

On that I agree completely.

Also, PN, congratulations, because this series of posts has been one of the better ones you have written yet. Let us hope you will get even better, ja?