[haguruma]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Excuse me Haguruma, I'm not sure I followed all of your reasoning and maybe I missed your point, but from what you write it seems to me that your line of defense is basically:

"this is the intended and precise will of the author and therefore you have no right to say he's done something wrong just because you disagree with his ways."

Well no, that is not the point I was trying to make at all
What I was trying to say is that many people seem unable to seperate their personal taste and objective observations in this discussion. Both are equally valid but applicable at different points in a discussion.
Well, I'd say you got partly what I wanted to imply, which is that I think many people are trying to prove that Ryûkishi wrote a mystery the wrong way out of the wrong reasons, mainly because they didn't like his approach because of personal taste. There is nothing like a "precise will of an author", maybe an intended one, but because we are not one with the author we are bound to make up our own mind about any given text. That is the problem with contemporary criticism, it has to be valid and very well structured in order to be useful. A critic has to be very careful in making it clear where objective analysis ends and where personal taste ends. If a story fails to give a proper characterization for a bunch of characters for no given reason (like Umineko did) that can be objectively criticized, but if simply didn't like how a part of the plot turned out because of personal taste it has to be made clear because it is something that people will and are allowed to disagree on.

Now I'll make an extreme example. We've been talking about the ideology of "truth" or the moral view of Ryuukishi. Well let's say an author writes a book that is openly racist. Is it okay because that's the author's intended view? shouldn't I not judge it because I don't agree with its theme? I think I'd have the right to do so and it would pretty normal if one said he couldn't appreciate the work because of themes.

I'd say the two are hardly comparable, but let's try to compare them. This is my view so you're allowed to disagree.
Truth is a moral concept that is basically only accessible through language and is merely a fraction of an observation about reality reconstructed by language.
Racism is an ideology that tries to construct a social reality based on such a (though outdated) constructed truth. By todays standards the "truth" of being able to differentiate the value of people by their ethnicity has been proven false therefore racism is, by todays standards, objectively wrong.

For example you can construct the truth that "Tom was in his room from 9 to 5" because you were sitting in front of it the whole time. But it could be (though unlikely) that he went out through another way, so it is simply true for you, not necessarily reality.
The racist claim that "I am better than Tom, because I am white and he is black" relies on much more than that, because it is first linked to the necessity of constructing the socially accepted "truth" that white people are inherently better than black people. By todays standards that cannot be proven, therefore the idea falls flat from the beginning.

The same could be said for the storytelling or art.
[...]
People have the right to judge negatively or positively a work on the basis of their personal tastes, there's no need to adhere to some kind of objectivity which I even doubt it could be defined.

But it can be, at least for the moment. There are definitive traits of what makes up storytelling as well as art, but again you have to differentiate between objective traits and personal taste.
Like I mentioned above you could say that he did not develop character X or did not finish plot-thread Y, which is an objective flaw. You can even reason why that is, be it because he ran out of time or forgot about it, it is a measurable flaw.
Then there comes the personal taste if this is actually crucial for the overall impact of the story and for that to be valid you have to again use proper criteria.

I'm not trying to claim that people are wrong in disliking Umineko or certain parts of it, they are free to do that just like I am free to dislike things they might think is the greatest piece of art ever. But people are mixing personal taste with an objective discussion about certain elements of Umineko, which makes it hard to actually discuss.
I for example am not really fond of Spielberg's JAWS, for me the mix of different genres didn't work out and the arc of suspense was too drawn out to pull me in. That doesn't keep me from discussing the way it portrays the social anxiety of the US in the 1970's on a broader scale than just "a shark attack".
And I would say that it is a well made movie, it just doesn't work for me because it's weakpoints weigh stronger for me than it's merrits.