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Old 2009-08-21, 03:44   Link #1878
MeoTwister5
Komrades of Kitamura Kou
 
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Age: 39
Quote:
Originally Posted by MeisterBabylon View Post
True... But that's the fantasy view-point and not the anti-fantasy one, which would dictate that time still holds true in some sense even in the meta-world.

I would elaborate, but Chaos, despite some flaws in his theory, described my approach to the problem very eloquently:

Bravo, Chaos, you hit my theoryworking on the nail.

I quote Battler on this: "Let's turn the chessboard around."

You must be puzzled as to why I find this to be our crucial clue to breaking the Umineko Code. Take for example, a game of chess. It's played by 2 parties using pawns on an arena. We are conscious of the pieces, and all actions are directed by us. But look from the chess-pieces' perspective: Are they conscious of us? When a pawn takes out a knight, does it think that someone compelled it to vanquish a knight, or did it actually think that it was charging across a battlefield and striking a killing blow to a servant of an enemy king?

A chess piece can only be conscious of its own world, the chess board, and not the outside world that controls it. Likewise, the people of Rokkenjima are not conscious of the meta-world that is playing them.

And so, shall I say, that Beatrice and Battler are not conscious that they are being played by Ryukishi?



Whether we are conscious of it or not, we are now playing a metagame with Ryukishi. We want to guess the ending of Umineko, and Ryukishi wants to keep us enthralled to the end. He wins when at the end of the game he pulls off an explanation so stunning and unpredictable that we would be hailing him a genius that made Higurashi. I don't know how we would win, but I'd like to think that it is to guess the ending Ryukishi has planned.

So let's turn the chessboard over and think from his perspective. With Beato and Meta-Battler as his chess pieces, Ryukishi is playing the role of the Golden Witch, moving the Umineko game in certain ways that give us hints and red-herrings at the same time. The longer he keeps us confused, the more he leads us away from the truth, the closer he is to winning. At the same time, he cannot violate his own rules, or we would call him a cheat/copout, and he loses. We of the meta-meta-world take on the role of Battler, trying to make sense of the scenario RyuBeato is portraying and coming out with our own theories to solve this mystery. We win by demonstrating that this game's outcome is predictable.

With this in mind, I'd say that this should be the way we should approach Umineko (and it's a hell lot more fun!) and how we should approach his clues. Chaos used this perspective, and created his own theory. But thus far, we have been dancing to Ryukishi's tune and trying to read into his clues, but we haven't really explored reading the implications of those clues. At the moment, all his clues lead us to think everything is solved within the game-world and the meta-world, but at the same time, it creates an opening where we assume a lot of things about the meta-world.

I'm still in the midst of ironing out my own case (it's got to do with the time of the meta-world, since all mentions of time seems to only apply to the Games being played) but I'd like to just highlight this in the meantime.

Think about it.




EDIT: Just want to add on, that this game we Battlers and RyuBeato are now playing is fun either outcome as long as the game was enjoyable. I'm just a Bernkastel, wanting to ease my boredom and make this game the most enjoyable.
I highly doubt that the pieces are incapable of such a line of questioning. Such a line of questioning is the nature of the metaphysical inquiry itself. Given the fact that they are experiencing events that from their POV are almost unreal and unimaginable they would be expected to react in ways real people would.

This is how metaphysics was born: the inquiry into the nature of our current reality and it's possible links to any meta-reality that may be possible. In more detail, when one finds current reality to be insufficient, man points is questions to a possible other reality that may hold the answers that he seeks, thus a meta-reality because it is a reality he cannot exactly access. At least as far as we know.

The characters are put into a problem that makes them question just WTF is going on. They are arguably pieces in the game of Rokkenjima held by Beato and Meta-Battler. While their consciousness are limited to their own world, it does not mean they cannot question the possibility of a higher world or a higher power at work. Same goes for Battler and Beato: who knows if they are thinking that a higher power lording over them may exist (Ryukishi).

I've kept you're and Chaos' ideas in my mind for a while after completeing Ep4 since I had come to the conclusion that we have become bound to Ryukishi and have entered the arena of perhaps reaching the conclusion before even he does. If that's possible anyway.

The problem I approached however is this: which are clues and which are red herrings? To this day, even with red text, there is still the matter of ironing out what to consider as empirically valid and which can be taken with a grain of salt. As you have said, we must dance to the tune of Ryukishi's clues, but that's more of necessity than habit or somesuch. As of Ep5 I still have no idea which to take as trues clues and which must be tossed out. With that in mind, I still find it difficult to seek the implications of his clues when I still don't know which are clues with vital implications.

This is why I'm willingly letting myself be led by the nose. As it stands I find that there is still not enough to go on, very few clues who's validity can be ascertained. I cannot as of yet seek the overaching implications of current information because we'd have an assload, then the problem of sorting them out from the false ones. With what we have we still need to stick to our metaworld assumptions because that is all we have to go with as of now.

In my opinion, seeking the implications of what Ryukishi is giving us is premature because... well he hasn't given us enough to work with yet. We are still dependent on what he brain produces, and we haven't been given enough definitive content to work it out.
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