[Chaos2Frozen]

Originally Posted by frivolity

Now, I'm not talking about actually creating a character here. I'm talking about projecting our views from the theoretical construct of such a character so that we can have rigorous debate while being on the same page. The purpose is not to create a perfect character with no flaws, but to have the same base from which we can debate.

The concept of an ordinary reasonable person is borrowed from a legal concept of the same name. Without delving too deeply into legal principles, the reason why such a legal concept exists is for objectivity. So when interpreting a contract, a judge will not decide a matter based on what either party thinks the means, since both parties will argue that the contract should be read in a way that benefits themselves. Neither will the judge decide based on what he himself thinks the contract means. He will decide based on what he thinks a reasonable person would interpret the contract to be. By doing this, the system removes as much of the judge's personal bias as possible.

As I've said in my previous post, we obviously should not debate based on real-life standards. That's equivalent the judge deciding based on what he thinks is right, and personal biases start coming in, such as people who have been bullied before will feel strongly about Yozora's actions. For this reason, we should not assess the story based on what we personally think to be right or wrong, but based on what an independent party would view it to be.

The simplest explanation I can give you as to why we should not look at the story from any of the characters' perspectives is the concept of the unreliable narrator. When we're reading stories with an unreliable narrator, the author will often leave clues for the reader that the narrator or protagonist would not become aware of. Authors will generally not write their protagonists to be all-knowing, and many things in the story have to be inferred by the reader. In making inferences, we are already recognising the fact that we're not looking at it strictly from the character's perspective, but incorporating some other element that the character has not observed. This is why I recommended looking at it from the reasonable person instead.

This is just another way of using real life standards that you said we shouldn't because we have no view on the regular people of Haganai.

Any 'ordinary reason person' would then be a product of the viewers ideas and belief, that's bias right off the bat.

Originally Posted by frivolity

Now, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at with regard to being judged by someone who doesn't understand the finer points. For the sake of clarity, let me repost what I said earlier:


So we are readers looking into Haganai. We should not be explicitly imputing our personal beliefs into whether the character's actions are wrong or right, but neither should we simply accept the character's own opinions. Just because the protagonist thinks his actions are right doesn't mean that they are.

By incorporating things such as other characters' reactions, and making inferences, we are thinking about a reasonable person's view, and not the character's own view. And by looking at it from the view of a character in the story as opposed to from our own view, we are in effect attempting to cast aside our personal biases. This is what I'm getting at.

You're essentially going, "Nope, I don't agree with these characters, I want someone that I can agree with to prove that I am right."