Wow!

I should do something special over the next thirty days to pep things up before then. I’ll have to start thinking about that.

As usual, the comment-thread of the latest month-iversary post is the place to put any off-topic remarks, or on-topic comments that you don’t know a better place for.

The House 1 is only about 10 minutes long. The House 2 is also short.

If you like creepy and scary, I think you’ll have fun. I did.

I changed my original post to include The House 2, and so that the links are to the game-maker’s site (Sinthai Studio). I didn’t know about these until Lussh pointed them out to me. Now you don’t need to watch a 30 second ad, as you did before this change, and you also get to see a little introduction added too.

Here are the links:
The House 1: http://www.sinthaistudio.com/thehouse1/
The House 2: http://www.sinthaistudio.com/thehouse2/

So imagine that you are the game-maker and have just completed the making of this intentionally mysterious game. Here is the problem: How do you advertise it?

The norm in advertising a game is to give a description of what the game is about. To give the concept of the game, the setting, the set up of the plot, etc. There is a whole industry of reviewers, and such, set up to disseminate such information about a new game.

Uh, oh…

That information is precisely what we want to keep a mysterious secret for the player to unravel for herself/himself!!!
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So we have the problem of advertising. How do you advertise such a game without major spoilers? How do you promote the game without explaining away the mysteries that you want to keep mysterious?

It is my hypothesis that the game-maker’s solution to this problem involved misrepresenting the game so as to avoid giving away spoilers.

In subsequent blog-posts of (or related to) this series, I want to examine some of the ways that I think that promotional misrepresentation of the game has created confusion for the interpretation of the game’s legitimate mysteries. In particular, I want to address the question: Is there bogus information from the advertising that is not really relevant to the mysteries of the genuine game-plot?

In that light, let’s consider this paragraph from the “Story” section of Atlus’s official Rule of Rose website:

Jennifer pretends to abide by the “Rule of Rose,” a class system established by the children, but meanwhile, she’s desperately searching for a way out of this world.

Does this paragraph misrepresent the game? I think so.
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A. Does Jennifer only “pretend” to abide by the Rule of Rose? I can’t think of any indication that Jennifer is ever only pretending, can you?

“The Little Princess” storybook tells us:

The girl obeyed the Rule of Rose, but the Countess refused to like her. The girl obeyed the Rule of Rose, but the Baroness punished her still. The girl obeyed the Rule of Rose, but the Duchess taunted her anew. And yet the girl and her friend were still faithful to the Rule of Rose.

People sometimes wonder, during their first play-through, why grown-up Jennifer is letting a lot of small children boss her around. Maybe they wonder if Jennifer is just pretending to submit. The truth is, as I see it at least, that Jennifer is just re-living, in her dream, distortions of memories of events and situations belonging to her younger days. She submitted then. So she re-lives that submission now.

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B. Does Jennifer ever desperately search “for a way out of this world” during the time when she is following (or pretending to be following) the Rule of Rose? I can’t think of any example of her doing so, can you?

When Jennifer first enters the orphanage, the door locks behind her. And Jennifer tries the locked door and fails to get it to open. But she is not yet concerned with the Rule of Rose. And I hardly see this as justification—by itself—for claiming that Jennifer is engaged in a desperate quest to escape. Does the idea of escape from “this world” ever arise again during the game?

Jennifer expresses an interest in riding the bus away from the orphanage when she is at the bus stop during the final (“Once Upon A Time”) chapter. But she is no longer concerned with the Rule of Rose, nor is she desperate to leave: she decides that she wants to see Brown again before she goes.

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I don’t think that there are many clues to find in the Rule of Rose game that address this question. But I think there are at least SOME clues for us to consider.

Clue #1:

Eleanor : Greetings, Princess Jennifer. From now on, you’ll be our new Princess.

Meg : Now, Princess… Please think up a new game.

Eleanor : Please lead us.

Diana : We are yours to command, Princess.

Amanda kneels on the ground.

Amanda : Princess, go ahead! Guide us! We need you! We don’t know what to do!

What is NOT made absolutely clear, in this scene, is exactly what the old game was (or what the old games were, if multiple), why the old game no longer serves, and exactly why it is important that there be someone to lead in “a new game”. If we knew more about the function(s) of the game(s), we would know more about the functions of the Princess. And that would help us to understand why Wendy was the Princess.
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Clue #2
During the above scene, we can see this written on the blackboard: “STRAY DOG LEGEND / THAT IS JUST WENDY’S LIE” (see the beginning of my You Tube video “Legend of Stray Dog” Drawings in Rule of Rose for a closeup of the blackboard). Is the implication that Wendy was deposed because the other orphans came to believe that Wendy lied about Stray Dog? I think so. For more on this see my blog-post Why Was Wendy Deposed As Princess?
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Clue #3
To what extent might tales and activities related to Stray Dog have defined Wendy’s role as Princess, or even have been responsible for Wendy’s ascendancy to the rank of Princess? The Stray Dog and the Lying Princess storybook (see my blog-post The “Stray Dog and the Lying Princess” Storybook Mystery (Part 1)) tells us, about Wendy:

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who told lies.

She liked to scare the other girls by screaming, “Stray Dog is coming, Stray Dog is coming!”

But soon, everyone stopped being scared. They hated the way that she lied.

Could it be that Wendy became the Princess because she scared the other orphans with tales of Stray Dog? Could it be that Meg investigated the “evidence” of Stray Dog (see my blog-post Documents of “The Goat Sisters” chapter) because she thought that Diana—whom Meg loved—should rightfully be the leader of the orphans, rather than Wendy, but that Wendy held on to the position of Princess because of the Stray Dog Legend?

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Clue #4:
Wendy was deposed shortly after Jennifer rebelled and said:

Jennifer to Wendy : Liar! Go away! Just go away! I’ll never forgive you! Not ever!

Jennifer to the other girls : And as for the rest of you, how could you believe all those lies? “Aristocrats”? You’re just the opposite! I hate you! And I hate you! And you! And I hate myself the very most, for playing YOUR stupid games and not having the strength to stand up to you! It’s all just hideous!

Did Jennifer undermine the others’ satisfaction with Wendy’s games, and therefore their satisfaction with Wendy as Princess, by calling those games “stupid”?

Did Jennifer, by openly accusing Wendy of being a liar, open the door for Meg to finish off Wendy as the Princess with the “results” of her investigation into the Stray Dog Legend?

At any rate, we again seem to have “lies” and “games” connect with the function of the Princess.

In future blog-posts, I’ll discuss possible functions of the games, and of the Legend of Stray Dog, within the Red Crayon Aristocracy. And then I’ll attempt to tie these discussions (in Part 2 of this series of blog-posts) back to the question of: Why was Wendy the Princess?

I mean to say that, is the hierarchy ranks important? o_O;;
like, how is it important for that person to have that rank— what does it do, and how it benefits her?

There isn’t much evidence, that I can think of, upon which to base speculation about this.

If we consider the hierarchy that we see in the game before we discover that Wendy must be placed into it, the ranking seems quite understandable. Diana (Duchess) outranks Eleanor (Countess). Both outrank Meg (Baroness). Diana is the tallest, and seems to be the oldest (she is the only one of the three girls with obvious post-puberty physical features). And Eleanor is taller than Meg. Age and height are rather common factors of dominance among children, I think, so this “pecking order” isn’t surprising. The older and taller girls will generally tend to dominate the shorter and younger girls, all other factors being equal.

Amanda, although heavy and broad of girth, appears to be shorter than Meg (see the scene by the coffin in “The Little Princess” chapter), although Amanda’s hunched-over posture is a factor that lowers her height below what it would be if she stood up straight. And whatever Amanda’s age actually may be, she acts far more immaturely than Diana, Eleanor, or Meg. Also, it may be that her awkwardness and lack of beauty may be important factors working against Amanda with regard to gaining respect from other girls. Perhaps some of my female readers will have more insight than I to share about how social dominance arises among young girls.

If the Prince and Princess were only figureheads, only dolls (Joshua-the-bear and the Little Princess doll), then it would be Diana who was truly at the top of the hierarchy. And this seems to be the position that one would expect of Diana.

So far, I am suggesting that the Aristocrat Club hierarchy just seems to reflect the natural factors of social dominance among girls.

The effect of this ranking upon the day-to-day lives of the girls, upon their duties and privileges, is not something, however, that I’ve found the game to show us. [edit: I now think that there is something about this that is shown to us in the game, and will address this in Part 2 of this series of blog-posts]

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When we factor in Wendy as Princess, the hierarchical order is harder to understand.
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Wendy is not as tall as Diana, nor as old. Wendy is sickly, and so probably not very physically strong. I find it hard to imagine why Diana would allow Wendy to be Princess and out rank her. Because of this, I have wondered if the apparent absence of Wendy from the hierarchy throughout most of the story of Rule of Rose was perhaps not—contrary to what most people seem to believe—really just a trick of Jennifer repressing her memories of Wendy’s royal rank. Might it be that Diana, as Duchess, actually ruled throughout most of Jennifer’s time at the orphanage?

Whether or not Wendy ruled all along, or only at the end, there still remains the question of how she managed to get herself ranked above Diana.

I’ll give some of my ideas about this in my upcoming blog-post: “Why was Wendy the Princess?”

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By the way, the Game Script of TheSinnerChrono (see my page labelled “Important Resources”) has the order wrong when it designates Eleanor as the Baroness and Meg as the Countess.

In the meantime, why don’t you check out an article at Chris’s Survival Horror Quest called “Interestingness Increasing” which not only talks some about Rule of Rose, but was also gracious enough to refer to my humble blog as a “high quality fan site” and link from there to here in that article. Chris’s site is a must for people interested in survival-horror, in my humble opinion. Have you visited there yet?

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As usual, please use the comment thread of this month-iversary blog-post for random communications, or non-Rule-of-Rose-related topics, or Rule of Rose topics for which you cannot find a place that seems appropriate.

If you attempt to post a comment anywhere on this site, but it doesn’t post, and you had links, or something, in it that might have gotten it snagged by my spam filter, you should quickly make a comment about that (without any links or unusual features) which hopefully I will see before deleting the contents of my spam folder (which I now do every day). I used to always check my spam folder for genuine comments that got snagged by mistake, before doing a deletion, but the quantity of spam comments that arrive each day has grown so large that it has become too tedious for me to want to invest time skimming through all of them (we’re talking about hundreds every day). It is rare to find a genuine comment in there, but it DOES happen on occasion (usually when links are included in the comment).

Madisson said one must have a pixiv account in order to see the art in full-size. So I decided to see if I could manage to get an account.

I succeeded!

Here are the steps I followed:
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Step One: At pixiv.net look for the orange box which says, in English, “Sign up for pixiv” and click on the orange box.

Step Two: In the middle of the new page, there is just one large box for filling in. Fill in your email address and press the yellow/orange box beneath.

Step Three: Look for the Japanese email sent to your email inbox. Click on the link that email provides.

Step Four: Rather than me giving you instructions for filling out the form that presents itself when you follow the link of Step Three, what I recommend that you do is to “copy” the url of the page on which the form exists and then open up a new browser page at http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ and put the url of the Japanese page in the slot that says “translate a web page” and where it says “select from and to languages”, by a drop-down list select “Japanese to English” (or to whatever language you prefer if not English) from the drop-down list. Click the button that says “translate” immediately to the right of the drop-down list, and you will get an English translation of the form that you need to fill out.

Step Five: I don’t know if it causes a problem to fill out the translated form itself, so, to be safe, I filled out the untranslated form and just used the translated form as a reference.

Step Six: Fill out every space marked with * The only problem I faced was with the “occupation” space. It wouldn’t allow me to use “–” (the blank drop-down) so I had to pick an answer. I wrote something in English in the box for introducing myself (as it was marked with *).

For the nickname space, you must not exceed 15 letters.

That worked!

Although I’ve read them all, at one time or another, I certainly don’t remember them all… even clever comments that deserve to be remembered.

Those reading through the comments may do a service for the rest of us by quoting, in the comment-thread here, any of the clever quips that you find and like.

All of the comments in a thread are numbered, so please include the comment-number with the blog-post title, and of course don’t forget to tell us the name of the commenter who made the quip. See my first comment, in the thread for this post, for an example of what I have in mind.

In the up-coming month, I intend to discuss: Jennifer’s first day at Gregory’s house.

And, I intend to advocate for what I now think is the best answer to the question: “Was Wendy the Joshua of Gregory’s Diary?”.
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It also wouldn’t surprise me if I start making more Rule of Rose Mystery videos this month.
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So… you might wanna check back some.

Just sayin’.

Another text for which, it seems to me, that verification of the accuracy of the translation might be extremely important is the line that Wendy writes in her first letter to Jennifer: “I always watch you from the sky.” It is the word “always” that that particularly interests me.
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The complete letter reads:

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?

For Wendy to be able to say, in the letter in which she introduces herself to Jennifer for the first time, “I always watch you from the sky“, suggests to me that Wendy has been observing Jennifer for quite a while—secretly?—without making contact. Is this the same impression one would get from reading the Japanese text? I would very much like to know.