Rule of Rose Mysteries

As Jennifer enters the room with the boarded up door, we are given the following subtitle:

Climbing through the window, the girl found herself in a room full of floating toys. The toys wait patiently for their master, even as they slowly decay.

If Jennifer is seeing this room as she saw it at sometime during her stay at Gregory’s house, and if no more than seven months maximum had past between the time of her seeing this room and Joshua’s death (assuming Joshua’s death at the end of June 1929—extrapolating from Gregory’s mention of Joshua in his diary—and knowing that Jennifer left Gregory’s house at the end January 1930), why are we told that the toys “slowly decay”? Isn’t it rather soon to be speaking of unused toys decaying?

I think that the subtitle about the toys slowly decaying may fit in with the apparently very aged photo, of Gregory with Joshua, as a clue that tells us that Joshua has been dead for a long time.

Yet another indication of this might be the very bad condition of Gregory’s house. Certainly some of the bad condition of his house is due to violent acts of destruction by Gregory (perhaps connected with drunkenness). But I also get the impression, from the extent of the run-down condition of the house, that Gregory’s house has been neglected for a long time.

Does this support the idea that the Joshua of Gregory’s diary was not the original and true Joshua?

Could the original and true Joshua, Gregory’s son, have already been dead for a long time as Gregory wrote his diary?  Could the Joshua written about in Gregory’s diary actually have been Wendy?

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In “The Gingerbread House” chapter of Rule of Rose, one can find a photo of Gregory and (what appears to be) Joshua.

In Gregory’s Study, if you press “x” twice at the writing desk you get the subtitles:

Books… Ink… Cigarette butts…  These are some of the things on the disorganized desk, along with a picture frame.

Press “x” a third time and you are shown a photo, and given the subtitle:

…It’s faded in spots, but the picture is of a happy family.

In the photo, Gregory is standing and appears to be holding Joshua in the crook of his (Gregory’s) left arm, so that Joshua is in a sitting pose with his arm on Gregory’s shoulder and his head a little bit higher than Gregory’s head. The shirt, string tie, and shorts are the same items of clothing which are always associated with the Joshua identity.

Is this a photo of the true and original Joshua Wilson, Gregory’s son?

The photo is more than just “faded in spots”, as the subtitle describes it. The photo also has a lot of discoloring. A brown spot makes Joshua’s face difficult to see clearly. By looking at the face, I don’t think that we can say with confidence that this is the original Joshua and not Wendy or Jennifer dressed as Joshua… the face is just too unclear, in my opinion.

So why do I propose to you that this is, in fact, a picture of Gregory with the true and original Joshua?

~

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In the table of contents of Meg’s Notebook is a section called “Findings on the Land of the Imps“.

Inside Meg’s notebook is also a torn page of which only the heading remains: “Secrets of the Land of…”

What might have been written on that page?

An idea I have about the possible contents of that missing page is that the page might have functioned sort of like a GM’s, or player’s, notes in a role-playing game. The orphans pretended that they were imps when they wore bags on their heads, so perhaps the notes were supposed to help them in the role.

The word “findings”, however, suggests that the information on that page was not from the imaginations of the orphans but rather was somehow found by Meg’s research. Meg might have researched the subject of imps from books in the library, but there were other possible sources for Meg’s information about imps: Hoffman and Martha.

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I’ve long wanted to find some clever significance to the phrase “from the sky” other than having it merely be a reference to the cellar window.

Granted, whenever Jennifer would look out the cellar window, high above her, she would very likely see nothing but sky. And I suppose that Wendy could realize this and therein find some appeal in saying “I always watch you from the sky.”

But I confess that I would like to somehow find some some connection between “from the sky” and the sky wallpaper in Joshua’s bedroom.

Could it have been Wendy, I wonder, who was the one who had opened the window to Joshua’s bedroom? Did she open that window so that she could play with the toys there during her visits to Gregory’s house? Or perhaps reminisce about her lost friend (or her lost love?) Joshua?

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The exchange of letters between Wendy and Jennifer, while Jennifer was living in Gregory’s cellar, began with this letter from Wendy to Jennifer:

10 November

To Mr. Joshua, the bear in distress,

My name is Wendy. I always watch you from the sky. Mr. Joshua, why are you trapped down there?

(Found in the “Gingerbread House” chapter, inside of something that sort of looks like a cradle in the cellar bedroom.)

Wendy tells Jennifer, in the letter, “I always watch you from the sky.” The word “always” seems to me to convey the idea that Wendy had NOT just discovered Jennifer, but rather had discovered her some time earlier and then watched Jennifer regularly over a period of time WITHOUT ever making contact.

This always struck me as sort of creepy.

If jennifer arrived at Gregory’s house at the end of June 1929, that means that Jennifer had been living with Gregory for more than four months by the time of this letter. For how much of this time had Wendy been watching Jennifer before finally making contact?

Had Wendy been making visits to Gregory’s house even before Jennifer’s arrival?

Had Wendy been friends with the original Joshua, coming to the house to visit him?

Could it even be that the original “Joshua” had died earlier than June 1929 and that Wendy had actually been the “Joshua” of Gregory’s diary entries?

~

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In Part 1, I argued that, in the Dormitory, each orphan probably had their own bunk bed pair (upper and lower bed) all to themselves.

Now I want to determine exactly which bunk bed pair in the Dormitory was assigned to Jennifer.

In part 1, was able to narrow down the possibilities to two candidates.  A bunk bed pair by the windows, and a bunk bed pair away from the windows.

First, let’s look at the bunk bed pair by the windows.

If Jennifer’s bunk bed pair is one of the two bunk bed pairs to the side of the central table and by the windows, then Jennifer’s would be the one on the right (looking from the table). In other words, the bunk bed pair immediately to the right of the bunk bed that has red-ish colored shoes in front of it.

There appears, to me, to be nothing remarkable about this candidate bunk bed pair.  There is a pillow on the top bed and something yellow-ish next to the pillow that I can’t identify.  On the bottom bed there is another pillow, and what appears to me to be white-ish blankets that are carelessly folded.  On the floor, partly under the bottom bed, is what appears to be a metal box (about the size of a metal-lunchbox).

But there is something remarkable about the candidate bunk bed pair (and surrounding area) on the other side of the room (the side without windows).  So let’s take a close look there.

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The orphanage dormitory is transformed (by dream-fantasy) into “Sector 10 Crew Cabin” in the airship.

One of the the bunk beds in Sector 10 Crew Cabin is marked by a black arrow drawn on the wall and black lettering that reads “NEW GIRL” Surely this marks the bunk bed that was assigned to Jennifer.

The arrow may indicate that Jennifer had the top bed, but considering that there are twenty pairs of bunk beds it seems to me there were enough bunk bed pairs for each orphan to have had an entire pair (upper and lower) of beds to themselves. This may be supported by the situation that we see in another transformation of the dormitory: the cabins in the 1st Passenger Corridor that have orphan’s names on tags near the doors. These cabins have a bed-over-bed arrangement, like bunk beds, and from that I infer that each of these airship cabins is a fantasy transformation of a bunk bed pair in the dormitory of the orphanage. So I am going to further infer from this that each orphan had both the top and the bottom bed of a bunk bed pair for their own individual use.

I was interested to see if I could use the black arrow, and “NEW GIRL” message, in the airship Crew Cabin to determine which bunk bed pair in the orphanage dormitory had been assigned to Jennifer. And if so, see whether I can learn anything by knowing which of the beds belongs to Jennifer.

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In the corner by the window there is a non-functioning (at this point in the game) Rubbish Bin. Pressing “x” by it, we get the subtitle:

There’s a rubbish bin tied tightly with rope…

We encountered the same thing in the small hallway downstairs near the Reception Room.

As I said when discussing the downstairs Rubbish Bin, I don’t think that the tied aspect of the rubbish bin has any significance in terms of Jennifer’s forgotten past. I think that this is just an issue of gameplay. I think that the author(s) of the Rule of Rose game want us to wait until Rubbish Bin is introduced in the “Unlucky Clover Field” chapter before we use the Rubbish Bin feature, and this is a way to block the function while still showing us where we will find a Rubbish Bin later.

But I DO think that the location of this Rubbish Bin is significant in terms of Jennifer’s forgotten past.  By symmetry of location, we might expect that the Rubbish Bin that we find inside of the Filth Room should be out in the small hallway, as is the case with the Rubbish Bin downstairs.

Also, it seems odd that the smelly laundry baskets and rack have apparently been moved out of the Filth Room into the hallway, but a potentially smelly rubbish bin (Jennifer tells us, in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, that the rubbish bin is “detested”) is NOT out in the hallway.  The rubbish bin easily could be placed in the hallway, and it would be a much more natural place for it if its purpose is, as I suspect, to service the rubbish disposal needs of the entire floor.

So why is the Rubbish Bin located in the Filth Room (despite the Filth Room having been converted to a nice bedroom)?

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There is a suitcase on the rug. The suitcase belongs to Jennifer. Is it the same one that she left on the bus at the beginning of this chapter? I don’t see why not… this is Jennifer’s dream and dream events need not follow the “rules” of the real-world. But the significance of the suitcase being here is not a significance for the dream-plot but rather for the story of Jennifer’s forgotten past. In Jennifer’s forgotten past, this room was at one time Jennifer’s bedroom.

In the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, Jennifer tells us, when “x” is pressed near this suitcase:

“When I came here, this suitcase was the only luggage I had… I lost everything in the accident. My mother, my father, all my possessions, and even my memories.”

It might seem that this implies that the Filth Room was Jennifer’s bedroom when she first arrived at the orphanage during her forgotten past. But I don’t think that it happened that way. In the airship chapters, we see a bunk bed in “sector 10: crew cabin” marked with an arrow and the words “new girl“. I interpret this as an indication that Jennifer was placed in the Dormitory with the other orphans when she first arrived.

I think that the Filth Room was a Filth Room when Jennifer first arrived, then it became Clara’s bedroom later, and then, after Clara “disappeared”, it became Jennifer’s bedroom.

See my blog-post: The Mysteries of Clara’s Cabin (Part 3): How Did Jennifer “Inherit” the Filth Room After Clara’s Disappearance?

But why would Jennifer’s suitcase be seen in the Filth Room at all if Jennifer was not given that room as her bedroom when she first arrived, but only “inherited” the Filth Room as her own bedroom much later? Shouldn’t that suitcase have been stored away somewhere?
~

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Now we will have Jennifer enter the door just to the left of the laundry basket rack.  There will be a brief cut-scene, which will give us a close up view of a large “doll” tied to the central pillar of the room.  A subtitle tells us that we have entered the “Filth Room”.

We will get another good look at the “doll” when we stand closer and press “x”, but let’s not do that yet.  We’ll get to the doll before we leave the Filth Room in this walkthrough.

For now, let’s look around the room.  Notice that it is a pleasant room and not filthy, despite the name “Filth Room”.

To Jennifer’s left there is a save point.

Walking Jennifer deeper into the room from the save point one finds a bed.  There is a patterned rug next to the bed and a small dresser-drawers serving as a nightstand with a small lamp and a potted plant on top. This room is a bedroom.

Why call a bedroom a “Filth Room”?

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