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Old 2012-01-23, 06:32   Link #27256
Toku
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Join Date: Dec 2011
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wanderer View Post
That scene bothered me for a similar reason when I read it the first time. When I read it the next time I was seeing Lambda and Bern as metaphors for metaphysical forces, gods, if you will. "Praying" to Bern is hoping things outside your control will go your way, while "praying" to Lambda is believing your efforts will be rewarded.

Meanwhile, the conflicts and alliances seen in the Meta-World are metaphors for things happening in the real world. Lambda and Bern, doing what they do, mean different things to different people in different situations. In this way they can play various roles (ally, villain etc.) in various circumstances. Neither Lambda or Bern are inherently good or evil; after all, they are just metaphors of (meta)physical forces.

Now, gods like Lambda and Bern are only influential in so far as they and their power is believed in. Lambda's death symbolized a destruction of the belief that persistent effort would certainly yield success, and Battler beating Bern represented a rejection of her power to control his fate. It's basically a matter of willpower; Bern tried to make everything go wrong for Battler's real world goals, but he just refused to let that discourage him.

Of course these ideas are highly abstract. I probably didn't explain my thoughts in a way that's very easy to understand...
Interesting theory. I wouldn't have thought of it this way.

Quote:
I got one: Furudo Erika only increases it (the person count) by one person.
One person, yes. One human, not necessarily.

It seems to have been made clear that, including Erika, there are 17 people, even though Erika is somehow the "18th human."

It's easy to explain the 17 people by saying that Kanon and Shannon only count as people when they're being used. However, the number of humans is not so easy. If it really is the number of human bodies, then that would mean that there is a body without a personality, wouldn't it? And that makes no sense at all.

So if anyone has theories on this, feel free to share them.

Quote:
I thought the Reds at the beginning of EP5 about Erika made it clear that she was an exception who actually increased this maximum by 1.
This 18th person X does not exist. This applies to all games.
How can you get around that?

Actually, wait. This 18th person does not exist?? If we say that only that last sentence about the 18th person X applies to all games, then that makes things easy.

In short, even with Furudo Erika, there are (1<x<17] people in all games. That is, if "people" and "person" are defined in the same way.

But, the number of humans simply cannot exceed the number of people, because humans are not counted once they are confirmed dead. And it wouldn't make sense for a human to not possess a personality while still alive. So if Erika is the 18th human while there are 17 people, that still makes 0 sense.
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