[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Renall

Ryukishi gave us an interesting, but flawed conversation piece. It is not itself a meditation on many of the themes people here try to stick to it; those themes are indeed things we're talking about, but many of them are either not in the work or just not in the work as anything more than an introduced and unexplored concept. The act of exploration is the audience's.

But isn't the act of raising these questions an act instigated by the text in the first place. That's why I'm referring to Umineko with the term text and not work. A work is what the author creates, what we the audience perceive is the text from which we draw our own conclusions based on our own knowledge...we basically never have access to the work of the author.

I'm still waiting.Yet you completely ignore the notion that a person could disagree with the conclusion of an author because it's hypocritical, at odds with the themes of the work, or reaches an incoherent and morally unjustifiable conclusion without clearly explaining the purpose behind such an ending. Which is what people are saying about Umineko, because Umineko does all of those.

Does it? I'm still interested where exactly that is, because all you claimed so far is that it does not have a coherent ideology of truth and is therefore hypocritical. You have so far given me no reason to actually even consider that because I don't see a point where the plot ever actually broke away from the theme it set at the beginning.
You seem to be convinced that the pursuit of truth was painted a the ultimate good at one point, which I say it was not because we were never given any higher evaluation on Battler's standpoint beside him featuring as a protagonist we are lead (or maybe mislead) to cheer on. His deconstruction of the value of truth was fairly elaborate and I'd say he merely shed light on different views of it. The question whether you agree with that concept or not is a whole other question and is highly dependent on your individual moral viewpoint (one which we obviously don't share completely).

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

If I say, for example, that "if there's no answer, you can't get any joy out of reading the book of riddles", on what basis you can claim that is my personal taste rather than an objective fact?

Because you would claim that there is an objectively measurable way to reach the status of joy. Emotional reactions are highly subjective and (at least so far) not reproducable for anybody in the same way.
The fact alone that somebody could disprove your claim simply by enjoying a book of riddles without the answers given makes it subjective.

How can you prove that the "checkov's gun" is an objective rule?
How can you prove that a "deus ex machina" is inherently wrong?
How can you prove that lack of character development is an objective flaw?

The first two are terms that are applied to certain mechanics in storytelling. You can make objective OBSERVATIONS about them and then draw your conclusion from there. The deus ex machina in itself is not a flawed concept in itself, it is the absence of foreshadowing towards such a plotelement that is frowned upon. Basically all that can be objectively criticized is the lack of narrative cohesion which then again has to be evaluated on the larger scale of the narrative as a whole. You can't dissect a proper critique and make the individual parts work on their own...they might as well not make sense out of context.
The claim "the absence of characterization in Hideyoshi is a flaw" in itself doesn't hold up, it has to be backed up by reasons why it is a considerable flaw in contrast to other things.

At the very instant you claim that the manipulation of truth is justifiable, you create the ground for such abominations to exist. You can claim that there are different truths and some can be justifiably hidden and some cannot, but that means you are assuming that there is someone who has the right to decide what is wrong and what is right for other people. Which is by itself morally wrong.

I'm not saying anywhere that I would morally agree with what you just said. And I would further claim that Umineko didn't do so either, but that might be what I personally took from the text. No side, especially not Battler in EP8, is painted as the ultimate champion of what is morally good and right. They represent viewpoints that clash with each other and lead to emotional struggle. Sure there is a moral ranking, but I'd say while the text pointed in a direction of what is better and what is worse, it never pointed in a direction that had to be taken.

And again I have to press on the impression that you misunderstood me. Truth is not manipulated in my personal view, truth does not even exist without our observation because truth is merely our reconstruction of what is real or what we perceived as real. You cannot hide truth, you can merely hide what is real by creating a story that will maybe be accepted as truth. This then forms the reality of those people, but that reality does not have to be real.

However if a critic was limited to state the facts without attaching any value to them, critique alltogether would cease to exist.
Your claim that people are mixing personal tastes with objective facts, therefore, to me makes absolutely no sense, because it is inevitable for any critique to be based at least partially on personal tastes.

Please read again what I actually wrote. I never said that personal taste should be avoided. People should simply think harder about where they start getting into the area of pure personal taste and leave objective reasoning behind.
You and Renall trying to convince people that there is an inherent, objective flaw within Umineko because you don't find your own moral worldview in it, is personal taste but it's hard to see if you even consider that. Unless of course you really do believe in something like a preexisting truth and it's indisputable moral value...which would make any attempt to discuss this point futile and we can only agree to disagree.