[Okay, I'm making this public because this fits right into my character interpretation essay series.
How to portray unwillingness? Well, how do most people act when they don't want to do something? Aside from flat out not doing it, all of their work is usually very halfhearted. Drag things out. Slip in messages with double meanings. If B. Battler wants help, he would likely try to solicit help from everyone he meets, even if he can't outright say it because of his pride.
Does anyone who really doesn't like what they're doing really want to be the best? Beatrice wouldn't want a human to be the culprit. Evatrice gets away with this because she acquired the name Beatrice and became a Witch, but B. Battler is just a very angry human. While he is a fantasy character, he's still when it comes down to it, mortal. Beatrice had a central theme, and B. Battler doesn't even have a reason. He just has an endgame and halfheartedly goes along with it, so most likely him saying that he wants to be the best is just him lying to himself and trying to convince himself what he's doing is right.
Paint the truth black -> corrupting the truth. In other words, the black truth isn't the truth at all, just some lie made up. Of course B. Battler isn't connected to Battler- Battler would never kill anyone outright! B. Battler is a manifestation of the Battler culprit theory, but just like Evatrice, once that veil is torn away a little, part of what makes him Battler would probably come out. Evatrice is nice to Ange, for example, so B. Battler would likely show his humanity once nobody important is looking. Anyway, the Battler Culprit Theory, which Ryukishi points out is completely ridiculous, is meant to be satirical. So yeah, you could take anything B. Battler says seriously, but anyone in the Catbox isn't likely to view him as a serious person.
Shannon (Yasu) was his conspirator in Ougon. It's highly implied that she lead him along the whole time so she could achieve death at his realization of this trick (which is exactly what happened). However, B. Battler figures out the reason for Yasu becoming Beatrice on his own, and after he kills her, he has a mental breakdown. Now, isn't that some uncanny timing? It happened in succession, so to think that the events were unrelated is a little ridiculous. Most people don't have mental breakdowns unless they suffer something extremely traumatic, and this reveal clearly had enough of an impact on him to cause such a thing. So to trivialize their relationship as simple hate and make it that B. Battler torments Shannon and Kanon for the sake of torturing them seems really, really out of place.
Yeah, that's what I have.]
