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crossposting from higurashi gou thread since it's not really on topic for that threadIrony Be My Shield posted:I think Umineko's theme is correct and you'd probably agree with it if you understood it properly. This conversation should be had in the VN thread though. I don't think there's any ambiguity whatsoever re: Umineko's definition of what "magic" is or that the VN portrays it in a positive light, and at least one of those things would have to be wrong for what you're saying to be correct. But I'm listening if you want to elaborate. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 02:21
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Irony Be My Shield posted:I'll try and write up a detailed response tomorrow. As a starter I'll ask you to reconsider what Erika represents, as that seems like the most obvious issue with your reading. In episode 5, is she interested in whether or not Natsuhi actually committed the crime? When she followed her boyfriend around for weeks collecting random circumstantial evidence, did she ever consider that her boyfriend may not have been cheating on her? When Ange is confronted with evidence that her parents were responsible to the massacre what was her reaction? Erika's behavior is inconsistent with a pure drive to discover the truth, yes. But she isn't fully aware of this and, moreover, she's Bernkastel's piece. The former is important because the reasoning is basically "Erika is deeply insecure and craves validation of her intelligence/usefulness" -> "Erika became obsessed with ferreting out the truth" -> "faced with a situation where she can either prove her worth or pursue the pure truth, it doesn't take much of a push for Erika to do the former." She doesn't, by herself, stand for the proposition that seeking the truth is always wrong or dangerous, but she does stand for the proposition that your motives matter re: whether you should seek the truth or not. She may not have considered that her boyfriend or Natsuhi were actually innocent, but (unlike Bernkastel, who is fully self-aware and consciously choosing to repay humiliation in kind) I don't think for a moment that she realizes she's settling for falsehoods. Even her "intellectual rapist" speech, as self-condemning as it is, still frames it as a thrill at outing the truth. Her final conversation with Ange in the library is getting pretty close, but she's had a lot of time to reflect by then. Ange's reaction to evidence that her parents were responsible for the massacre is denial and then despair. Of the two despair is presented as the greatest danger. To my mind, though, all of this is pretty peripheral. Much more important is the part where Ange predicts that, because Maria can lie to herself about her life with her mother being a happy one, she probably won't grow up to perpetuate Rosa's child abuse. This seems completely backwards to me; it's essential that you understand that what was done to you was wrong, if you want to avoid doing it to others. And above all there's the incredibly long sequence in chapter 8 where a whitewashed, obviously fraudulent version of the Ushiromiyas is paraded in front of Ange. Ange's dissatisfaction with this obvious lie is presented as a moral failing. The "trick or magic" prompt is a simple question with an obvious correct answer: it's a trick. It's not a question of not investigating sufficiently as with Natsuhi. It's either swallow the lie whole or deny it, no other options. The actual "trick" ending has Ange acting with a willful disregard for the truth, yes, but she got there by choosing the true answer, and the scene has to be interpreted with that context in mind. In other words, "the truth is unbearable, and you won't be able to sustain an uncompromising drive towards it without either drifting off the path and/or self-destructing anyways, so it's better to just lie to yourself from the start." Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 03:34
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MegaZeroX posted:First of all, I don't reay get what you mean by the fact that Angie acts with a disregard of the truth in the Trick ending. Amakusa was pretty much clearly stated to be doing exactly as Angie described in the ending, and the captain was a real possibility, and given a priority of survival, she acts in her self interest. When she kills the captain she says something like "I don't know if he betrayed me or not, but the simplest solution is to make the question moot by killing him." That's not what someone who cares about the truth would say. There's a disconnect in that both endings present someone who has given up on the truth, but one of them follows from choosing truth over lies; an interpretation that doesn't address that disconnect is incomplete imo. MegaZeroX posted:The moral of the story I would say is to ask "why do you seek the truth" and honestly take a real clear look at how it is effecting your mental health and the rest of your life, which is something we often fail to consider when evaluating what we should do. "She shouldn't be required to" rings pretty hollow when the trick ending really explicitly compares her to a character whose entire role in the story is being gratuitously cruel to others and to herself. I think it's pretty clear that the Trick ending condemns Ange's actions. e: Also, to be honest, I just categorically reject the notion that lying to yourself is a valid coping mechanism -- we're over here splitting hairs over how critical or hostile Umineko is to stubbornly persistent truth-seeking, and it's an interesting question, but it's not strictly relevant as long as the VN is saying it's sometimes okay to lie to yourself and I'm like "lol absolutely not, not ever." Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 04:43
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rko posted:Tuxedo Catfish, you might consider checking out the manga for Episode 8. Many of the people I’ve known to be frustrated by the VN’s ending prefer it, as it adds a few scenes that contextualize things in a slightly more tied-together way and makes some of the subtext you’re missing into text. Notably, following Ange’s suicide in the City of Books, a full, first-person “confession” covering 1984-1986 from Yasu’s perspective appears, and when Ange reappears in the Golden Land, an extended sequence of the Ushiromiyas coming to terms with their sins is shown. There are also a number of scenes that are substitutes for the minigames in the original VN that give some character threads more closure. I'll check it out eventually; someone had actually told me in advance to read the manga versions of episodes 7 and 8, I just wasn't really feeling up to it immediately after, you know, an 80-hour VN whose ending I hated. 
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Mar 19, 2021 15:23
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