2011-02-28, 21:27 | Link #22081 | ||
The True Culprit
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Magic is putting human emotional interpretation to a coldly neutral event, even if that means hiding details, but not exclusively for that purpose. It's the power to forgive someone and accept the facts without judging someone as "evil." It's also the power to paint someone as evil simply because they are suspicious, even if there's no solid proof. Illusion is illusion,and truth is truth, but magic is when they come together, and that coming together need not be deceptive or a lie. Quote:
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2011-02-28, 21:49 | Link #22083 | |
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
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No you got it all wrong. Magic is at best an embellishment nowhere it was said that magic uncovers the truth.
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2011-02-28, 22:13 | Link #22084 | |
Member
Join Date: Dec 2009
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What do you think should be done with the dead? Should we have a funeral for them and try to remember the best parts of who they were? Or should we tear out their guts, read their diaries, and expose everything bad about them to the world. EP7 is probably a pretty good idea of what happened. The background scenes from the diary hint that its not too far off. Bern literally exposes all of a corpses insides to the world and shows the worst parts of each of the character. That's the kind of justice you want, the guilt and onus of crime to rest on a pair of shoulders. As Kyrie says to Eva "You're just a murderer who didn't get the chance." That can be said of most of the characters on Rokkenjima. If we want to go with the "truth" we get a family of murderers who would kill each other for greed. And a tormented soul, with a broken body, divided love, surrendering his/her will to fate because they were dealt a hand they couldn't handle. That's the story. So, what we get offered, is the chance to say "They may be that... but they are also this" and show the best of who they are rather than the very worst. The only people who seem to really be under suspicion for the crime are the Ushiromiya family. Nanjo's son doesn't seem to worry about his family. The same probably applies to Gohda's family. And it seems like Kumasawa and Genji really only had the Ushiromiya family. So that leaves Ange as the only living person with a real stake. It's her family. So she can either watch their guts and lies exposed, or she can have the knowledge that they weren't all horrible and so that she can get the closure she needs to stop searching for the Truth and to instead move on with her life. No one can be put on Trial or made to answer for the crime-- they are all dead. There is nothing dignified about reaching into opening the coffin that is Rokkenjima and there is no justice to be had. The desire to punish evil is no more noble than the desire to spell "Murderer" in piss on one or more of the graves of the dead. |
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2011-02-28, 22:29 | Link #22085 | ||
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
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btw Quote:
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2011-02-28, 23:06 | Link #22086 | |||
The True Culprit
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And, you know, Erika's kind of a hypocrite in more ways than one, but in this case she describes that she hates everything that hides the truth in any way. Quote:
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2011-02-28, 23:47 | Link #22087 | |||
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
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You have a mass murderer from one side but... alas poor scrappy... On the other side you have someone who wants to expose the truth of that crime... what a heartless bastard! I don't think there are words to express how much wrong this is. The fact that there are people that actually buy this and that redirect their contempt from the criminal to the one that wants to expose the crime... is simply terrifying...
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2011-02-28, 23:50 | Link #22088 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Meta-Meta-Meta-Space
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For example it could be that Kyrie did go around shooting people in Rokkenjima according to Eva's diary. But (if the EP7 TP is to be believed) Eva seemed to have made up some ideas that Kyrie was psycho and that's why she did it. Or in EP8 people concluded that because she had some shady connections that she and Rudolf were psycho killers. This part isn't really about finding out the truth, but forcing the facts to fit the ideas. It'd be just as sick if you write a sugary-sweet story about how the whole family loved each other and everything was just awesome as Battler almost did at the beginning of EP8. (I guess he was trying to fight Ange's biases by going to the opposite end... heh) We were just as pissed off at Erika when she did this to Natsuhi. It was true (in the the EP5 story at least) that she hid Kinzo's death and went around suspiciously when the 'murders' occurred. This is the truth. But the reading of the diary and the accusations that she was Kinzo's lover were ideas that Erika forced the facts to fit. I believe what Ange decided to do at the end of EP8 is very similar here, that it was best to let the dead rest. I personally don't 100% agree with it but I can appreciate this point of view. Even if a crime had been committed, especially a murder-suicide, that in the end (as long as there were no more culprits to apprehend) it may be better to just let it go... |
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2011-02-28, 23:53 | Link #22089 | |
Senior Member
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In the end our so called justice systems in the world are nothing more than organized revenge and retribution justified by a self-constructed moral. Somebody has been wronged so the culprit must be wronged in return to make it right again. In the end locking somebody up or sentencing him to death is not about any kind of natural justice, it is about revenge and is done for those who feel wronged. I myself would want the murderer of my relatives to be punished, as long as it is somebody I don't have a probably even stronger relation to. If your father murdered your mother, would you want your father to be punished? Maybe, but what if your mother was a terrible woman who threatened to kill you but you cannot prove it? Your father would have done something good, but he would have to be punished because of what...justice?! Of course we need that justice or else we wouldn't be able to uphold states and nations, not even families. But that does not mean we shouldn't question them from time to time and accept their flaws in individual places. Some people here also talk about the innocent victims of Rokkenjima. But I am let asking myself who was really innocent in the end? Dr Nanjo? The one who probably delivered the baby and knew all about the girl kept prisoner on the island? Genji? Who was basically Kinzô's right hand and had the heir of Kinzô and Beatrice Castiglioni be put into the house as a servant to reinact his masters delusions? Kumasawa? Who idly stood by while one girl was kept prisoner on the island and another was unhappy her whole life? Or Gohda? A pathetic coward who wouldn't even start to question the obvious problems at the house in favour of money and fame? There were no innocent people on Rokkenjima, probably, in a judicial sense there were only guilty people on Rokkenjima...but does that mean there were no good people on Rokkenjima?! |
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2011-03-01, 00:02 | Link #22090 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Meta-Meta-Meta-Space
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Like people who want to watch snuff movies with the excuse that they're 'researching' for the sake of hunting down the culprit. HERP DERP. The only person in the whole Rokkenjima Prime world who is not an unconcerned third party is Ange, who does deserve to learn the truth. Despite the attacks on Battler's methods here, I remember very clearly that Battler both gave her the key to unlock the diary and said that in the end he would've let her have it. (Of course, Ange just started screaming like a little brat about how Battler was only interested in feeding her lies. I'm sure we're not supposed to agree to that extreme view of events... right?) And in the end, she did learn the truth, despite Battler thinking she wasn't ready for it. And she wasn't ready for it; she got turned into Ange burger again. It seems like THAT's the message to me. That there's truth that you can not be ready for because your mind has been poisoned with bias. But if you look at the story Ange eventually recovered from it and was able to understand it. |
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2011-03-01, 00:21 | Link #22091 | ||
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
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Some people see justice as nothing but revenge, but that's not how justice should be. There's a reason we don't have death penalty here in Europe. However that's a long shot from saying that one shouldn't get punished at all. If my father killed my mother I'd want him to be punished? Imagine what Battler would answer if you asked him that question. I think he's never been really forgiving to his father. The other example you made wasn't a good one. If someone kills in self defense or to protect others he's not accountable of murder. If someone who did that still gets incriminated for lack of evidence, that's simply not justice. As for the list of guilts, you are perfectly right on those, but then do you think they deserve to be remembered as perfectly good and honest persons? I don't see anything wrong in exposing their crimes, that might be degrading for their memories, but that's their damn fault! If you want to be forgiving, forgive them after you know what they did. Not knowing what they did isn't being forgiving, it's just being ignorant. Quote:
The way I got it, Battler gave her the freedom to use her key on anything except that diary.
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2011-03-01, 00:31 | Link #22092 | |||||
The True Culprit
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While condemning all of the truth seekers is wrong, Erika herself sort of deserves it. Quote:
Ange is the only surviving character who tried to discover the truth. Quote:
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2011-03-01, 00:38 | Link #22093 | ||
別にいいけど
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: forever lost inside a logic error
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Anyway this has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about: the choice between "magic" and "trick". That "magic" has absolutely nothing to do with red truths. Quote:
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2011-03-01, 01:07 | Link #22094 | ||
The True Culprit
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It's the power to push pain onto another. It's the power to wash hatred away and turn monsters into pitiable persons. It's the power to see anything that you couldn't see before; sometimes that is a delusion or an embellishment, but sometimes it can be as divine revelation. This is all shit said in the novel practically word for word. Quote:
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2011-03-01, 01:23 | Link #22095 | |
Senior Member
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There is more than one character in search of truth. Battler, Ange, Featherine, the Witch Hunters, Bernkastel, Erika, they all search for the truth and they all have different approaches. The important that that has been pointed out by AuraTwilight several times is, that Erika does not search for the penultimate truth, she searches for truth in the sense of indisputable evidence. As long as something cannot be disproven it becomes truth. Erika does not search for the truth, she creates truth from evidence. How is what Ange did in the trick end connected to gaining the truth?! She decides to pass judgement because of the evidence she found, okay. We already disclosed that in the case of Amakusa it was probably even justified to kill him out of selfdefense. But the captain?! There was no sufficient prove that he has not been bought by her enemies therefore his innocence is more unlikely than his crime...that is the reason why Ange killed him. She created the truth that Amakusa and Kawabata sold her over to be killed from evidence she found, but does that make it the truth?! I also wouldn't characterize Erika as the antagonist of Umineko, she is just the opposing force to Battler's approach. I found both his ear-covering, song-singing ignorance towards the possibility of his relatives crimes, as well as Erika's ruthlesness and incapability to look beyond the mere evidence to be insufficient to reach the truth. With both you can reach a truth - Like Battler's truth that an additional person who is pure evil killed all his loving relatives or like Ange's truth that her evil aunt Eva killed her innocent family - but the truth is something that exists on more layers than just rationality or emotionality. |
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2011-03-01, 02:11 | Link #22097 | |
Dea ex Kakera
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Sea of Fragments
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2011-03-01, 02:23 | Link #22099 | |
BUY MY BOOK!!!
Join Date: May 2009
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I would just say that if one truly believes the sole purpose of a justice system is socially-mandated vengeance and retribution, one has an incredibly immature (but regrettably incredibly common) view of what justice is and why it is virtuous to pursue it.
That aside, no retribution is even possible in the Rokkenjima scenario, as the culprit (if any) is (probably) dead. The reasons for their condemnation would have nothing whatsoever to do with the retributive properties of justice and everything to do with addressing a wrong with truth, preserving social order and public morality by proving that there is no perfect crime, exonerating innocent victims, and granting closure to those tangentially affected. Not one of these things requires that anyone be punished, but they all demand truth for justice to be done. Quote:
Besides... what if it really, truly, genuinely was just an incredibly tragic freak accident? Then everyone is innocent... and all speculation to the contrary ought to be put to rest for good. Otherwise we're punishing the memory and families of those who did no wrong. That too is wrong and unjust. Truth is no one's enemy but a culprit's, and the culprit gave up the right to slink off into uncertainty when he or she resolved to murder innocent people.
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2011-03-01, 02:46 | Link #22100 |
Dea ex Kakera
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Sea of Fragments
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In the spirit of abusing quantum physics terminology, are you familiar with the idea of "multiple histories"? For a closed cat box, you can either to take the view that there was always only one history hidden inside, or you can say that all possible histories existed inside the box until the moment you opened it and observed one. Are you really sure that the former is how Umineko's universe works, from a meta-world perspective?
Of course you want to punish the culprit, but which history are you looking at to make the accusation? Isn't that like taking a room full of equally suspicious people and arbitrarily throwing one in jail because you needed a conviction?
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