(L) Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? [WN]

[heroeric]

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

Shiro otoh has none of that. And she doesn't plan on taking responsibility of her next big action of genocide. Sure, she doesn't HAVE NEED to, but if genocide is necessary, then I think you should have the courtesy to do it swiftly, looking at their face. And if the survivors are not likely to live long after all this then killing them as well would be mercy. Truly it's this part of Shiro I like the least, she wants to have cake and eat it too.

It can be argued from Shiro's perspective she's doing the whole world a favor so there's no reason for her to take responsibility.


I don't think that personally killing them would actually be any swifter then them dying due to the system being shut down.
I don't think that Shiro would actually care if she had to personally killing anyone who is of a high risk of being killed when the system shuts down besides possible laziness and pragmatism. Actually figuring out who are all of the people mostly likely to die when the system and personally killing them would take a lot of time and effort and she doesn't care enough about them to do that. On the pragmatic side though she needed she originally wanted to complete her plans without the pope or kuro knowing so she can't do anything too suspicious. She also has relatively little energy for a god so going out of the way to kill people across the world would likely be a fairly large energy drain that she can't afford.

Also what do you mean that survivors are not likely to live long. Do you mean after the system is shut down? Since I don't think that survivors are going to quickly die once the system is gone.

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

And this kind of mental gymnastics is what I meant by the story bending over backwards to make Malthusian line of thinking appealing. It just masks it with fancy terms like souls and reincarnations and such but it is still a Malthusian genocide wet dream at its core.
Also, I did say that Shiro's better off killing everyone rather than just most of them right?

I looked up what Malthusian I don't think it really applies to this situation. The situation has nothing to do with overpopulation or running out of food. People dying isn't actually Shiro goal just a side affect of it.

I think a more accurate description of what's happening is that basically everyone is sick and there are only two cures. One that can be done quickly but is dangerous and has a high mortality rate. Or one that is safe but so slow that people are likely to die from the disease before they are cured.

Originally Posted by Huh...?

What about the possibility that, Dustin plans to use the Reincarnators, as a link or bridge to connect to different world (aka., Earth in this case), and then try to sacrifice it (or soul's from there) to harvest energy from it to power the System.

If the Soul's can't directly be incorporated from outside, as they won't work with the System without the [ｎ％Ｉ＝Ｗ] Skill, but it should still be possible to harvest energy in some way from their (even if the energy conversion is imperfect with lots of wastage and and low in quantity).

I remember reading that, when the Dragon's left that World, they took majority of the Energy of this World with them. So, i was thinking that, if its possible to take Energy out of the System, it should be possible to insert Energy from outside the System to power it as well (aka., rather that bringing in Soul's from outside the System into it to try to harvest Energy, which would fail; it should be more possible to harvest the Soul's outside the System itself, and feed the Energy from that to the System directly).

The system need a huge amount of energy to completely repair the planet. I can't imagine human souls would have much energy in comparison. Also transporting souls from another planet probably wouldn't be cheap either. They would probably need million or more souls to get enough energy.
Also I don't think they can just insert energy directly. Remember that D states that the original plan of Sariel sacrificing herself so that they could use her energy to repair the planet would have failed since the energy of the planet and her own energy were different.

[Rasty]

Lol, I love how the latest episode of anime was handling in a splendidly misleading way. Also sorry for commenting on anime there, but I can't with good conscience post anything in the anime thread now.

[kagato3]

So many fell for the author's troll. Surprised no one spotted how Wrath looked sounded and acted like someone from last episode.

[erneiz_hyde]

Hi again, been busy with life so put all of these at the back burner and simmer a bit in my mind pot. Just gonna share what rambling thoughts I had in the past week.

About Malthusian and why humans should, or should not care about their souls. First off, unless you are like Dustin, chances are for the average people they start fresh after every reincarnation. Even if the soul is the same, they are for all intents and purposes two different people, strangers to each other. The soul then, is just a natural resource that is used to fuel the continued existence of an individual, and right now, that natural resource is in short supply and is unable to provide enough for the "population", which is humans. So Shiro's plan to save those souls, isn't out of consideration of the human's continued well being, but to not waste resources. She views the human souls as farmers view their cattle drinking water, a resource to be managed. Shiro now has a drying spring and too much cow, so she's butchering them, which is indeed logical because if she maintains that number of cows, the spring dries faster (and all the cows die, but she's more concerned about the spring right now because she needs it for something else). But as I said before, for most of the humans, their current life is normally all they have and will ever knew (though apparently D messed with that), sacrificing your life so another human might live is indeed noble, but it's not something that should be forced on, even if that other human is in a way their own self. For the average humans, normal death is just as severe as soul death, so they need not care as much for their own souls.

[kagato3]

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

Hi again, been busy with life so put all of these at the back burner and simmer a bit in my mind pot. Just gonna share what rambling thoughts I had in the past week.

About Malthusian and why humans should, or should not care about their souls. First off, unless you are like Dustin, chances are for the average people they start fresh after every reincarnation. Even if the soul is the same, they are for all intents and purposes two different people, strangers to each other. The soul then, is just a natural resource that is used to fuel the continued existence of an individual, and right now, that natural resource is in short supply and is unable to provide enough for the "population", which is humans. So Shiro's plan to save those souls, isn't out of consideration of the human's continued well being, but to not waste resources. She views the human souls as farmers view their cattle drinking water, a resource to be managed. Shiro now has a drying spring and too much cow, so she's butchering them, which is indeed logical because if she maintains that number of cows, the spring dries faster (and all the cows die, but she's more concerned about the spring right now because she needs it for something else). But as I said before, for most of the humans, their current life is normally all they have and will ever knew (though apparently D messed with that), sacrificing your life so another human might live is indeed noble, but it's not something that should be forced on, even if that other human is in a way their own self. For the average humans, normal death is just as severe as soul death, so they need not care as much for their own souls.

Really this whole argument has become moot. If we go by Areil's statements sacrificing all of one of her armies would be enough that the war was not needed. They chose not to. But the war itself is pretty much unneeded now because of the mass invasion Dustin is trying and even if this hadn't happened he was planning to start a religious war among the humans if there isn't enough energy. Dustin plan never had less death than Shiro's. The death toll would be as bad or worse than the war would have been.

Your analogy is completely off base. Shiro isn't going out to kill souls. The souls that are destroyed are because the system collapses and they are too weak to survive it. The system will collapse regardless of what Shiro does and in many ways her plan lessens the number of soul deaths and it pretty much guarantees the planet is restored. Both plans will end in the systems collapse because Dustin has no idea what's really going on because he's working off what Kuro has told him which seems to be very little as from what I can tell he doesn't know how bad the souls in the system are. Going by the student roster the system will collapse in less than 2 years as it showed all the reincarnates dieing from skill loss until Shiro set up protection on their souls. The only question is the system broken which will fix the planet now but kill a bunch of people and destroy a number of souls or lock the system were it will eventually collapse causing the same amount of deaths but it will continue waring down everyone's souls resulting in a higher amount of Soul deaths possibly up to everyone with only a the chance that the planet is healed.

The only way the souls can heal is while they aren't being incarnated to save the souls while they are in the system you would need to massively lower the amount of births which would require a death toll that was far beyond what Shiro planned.

[shmaster]

Erneiz, now you are sounding hypocritical here. What you accused of Siro applies to Dustin too. Have you forget he started religious war here and there to control the population and get rid off people that don't believe in his view?
And you truly think no innocents are killed in those war? Do you even know why Sophia sides with Ariel?
You said Dustin is somewhat respectful because he realizes himself to be a piece of shit. But no, it is the opposite. He is a irredeemable man for he never try to correct his mistake but rather keeps on doubling down on it whenever he faces obstacles in his plan.
It is all talk and this man never took any consequences for his action. Who died for his plan? Average people in those religious Wars! And who is going to die next? Sariel, who be have been exploiting since the beginning!

Shiro at least has the decency to fight in person against the obstacles in her plan, even if the obstacle is stronger than her.
Dustin? That guy is sitting at the back giving orders.

[Huh...?]

@erneiz_hyde: Reading your comment reminded me of a story that i had heard when i was a kid.
It was about how Whale Hunting was going to make the them go extinct.

Not sure if it was talk as a humor/joke or something that happened in reality. But it said that,

"Some people asked the people in the business of Whale Hunting, about how they would feel if Whales went extinct because of what they did, and their Grandchildren or many Generation later descendant never managed to see those wonderful creatures alive, and would probably blame their ancestors for it.
And the answer those Business man would give was that, its not a problem if Whales go extinct, because they didn't really care about the future. Whale Hunting brought them profit now, so they only care about cashing in as much as they could now, and let the future generation worry about what went extinct or what was lost. Since for the Business man, they only cared about the present and the life they lived. What happens in the future after they die didn't matter to them."

[erneiz_hyde]

Originally Posted by shmaster

Erneiz, now you are sounding hypocritical here. What you accused of Siro applies to Dustin too. Have you forget he started religious war here and there to control the population and get rid off people that don't believe in his view? And you truly think no innocents are killed in those war? Do you even know why Sophia sides with Ariel?

Yes, from that contemplation I have realized Dustin is as guilty as Shiro in that matter. He's already above average humans so his perspective already differs from them. But you can't fault the average humans for trying to not die (and in extent Shun that is trying to make them not die), and from their perspective, the god that have been declared trying to kill them is much less favorable than the one that is opposing said god.

You said Dustin is somewhat respectful because he realizes himself to be a piece of shit. But no, it is the opposite. He is a redeemable man for he never try to correct his mistake but rather keeps on doubling down on it whenever he faces obstacles in his plan.
It is all talk and this man never took any consequences for his action. Who died for his plan? Average people in those religious Wars! And who is going to die next? Sariel, who be have been exploiting since the beginning! Shiro at least has the decency to fight in person against the obstacles in her plan, even if the obstacle is stronger than her.
Dustin? That guy is sitting at the back giving orders.

The impression I have of Dustin from memory and what you said is like Kiritsugu from Fate, Hodaka from Tenki no Ko, or Homura from Magica. I may not agree with what they did but I can respect them for having the conviction to go through that. As for Shiro, I have realized that I don't really care about the rights or wrongs of her plans, I just want her to show a little more conviction in her actions somehow, be it sacrificing herself or do the extra mile or whatever. I just don't like how she's thinking of washing her hands clean after all this. Her confession monologue for Ariel and Oka-chan was a great start, but I felt it isn't quite yet enough for the scale of things she's doing, she needs a character growth episode soon.

[sierra117]

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

The impression I have of Dustin from memory and what you said is like Kiritsugu from Fate, Hodaka from Tenki no Ko, or Homura from Magica. I may not agree with what they did but I can respect them for having the conviction to go through that. As for Shiro, I have realized that I don't really care about the rights or wrongs of her plans, I just want her to show a little more conviction in her actions somehow, be it sacrificing herself or do the extra mile or whatever. I just don't like how she's thinking of washing her hands clean after all this. Her confession monologue for Ariel and Oka-chan was a great start, but I felt it isn't quite yet enough for the scale of things she's doing, she needs a character growth episode soon.

Conviction for what exactly? She has absolutely nothing to gain from this, she only does what she did because D forced her to and her sympathy with Ariel, and she at least willing to get her own hand dirty to that, she already gone extra miles when she did that. What about Dustin? All he did was sit comfortably behind the scenes to manipulating people to do his biddings, or try to use other unrelated people(Sariel, the reincarnators,...) to clean up his own mess for him.

[heroeric]

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

The impression I have of Dustin from memory and what you said is like Kiritsugu from Fate, Hodaka from Tenki no Ko, or Homura from Magica. I may not agree with what they did but I can respect them for having the conviction to go through that. As for Shiro, I have realized that I don't really care about the rights or wrongs of her plans, I just want her to show a little more conviction in her actions somehow, be it sacrificing herself or do the extra mile or whatever. I just don't like how she's thinking of washing her hands clean after all this. Her confession monologue for Ariel and Oka-chan was a great start, but I felt it isn't quite yet enough for the scale of things she's doing, she needs a character growth episode soon.

How does Shiro not have conviction. Shiro could have always taken the easy way out by abandoning her plan. This way Kuro and Dustin would have no reason to oppose her.

Fighting Kuro from her perspective puts herself at a great risk. From her perspective he should have much more power then her while also being much more experienced and skilled when it comes to fights between gods. She only has one card that she's not even sure would work and is aware that Kuro already know about so has time to develop a counter. And believes that if said card doesn't work that she would have no chance of winning.

[Znail]

Originally Posted by kagato3

Really this whole argument has become moot. If we go by Areil's statements sacrificing all of one of her armies would be enough that the war was not needed. They chose not to. But the war itself is pretty much unneeded now because of the mass invasion Dustin is trying and even if this hadn't happened he was planning to start a religious war among the humans if there isn't enough energy. Dustin plan never had less death than Shiro's. The death toll would be as bad or worse than the war would have been. (...)

If you are refeering to the recent anime episode so is that only the early parts of the war that was to help with the imidiate need of energy. To solve the entire problem, about half the population needs to die.

[Rasty]

^ Also Ariel had no idea how bad the current situation is (because Shiro feared her plan leaking to Kuro) so her judgment of the current situation is wrong anyway.

Btw. am I the only one who thinks Kuro is too cool in the anime? Such an ultimate hetare has no business being the coolest character to appear in the show.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

About Malthusian and why humans should, or should not care about their souls. First off, unless you are like Dustin, chances are for the average people they start fresh after every reincarnation. Even if the soul is the same, they are for all intents and purposes two different people, strangers to each other. The soul then, is just a natural resource that is used to fuel the continued existence of an individual, and right now, that natural resource is in short supply and is unable to provide enough for the "population", which is humans. So Shiro's plan to save those souls, isn't out of consideration of the human's continued well being, but to not waste resources. She views the human souls as farmers view their cattle drinking water, a resource to be managed. Shiro now has a drying spring and too much cow, so she's butchering them, which is indeed logical because if she maintains that number of cows, the spring dries faster (and all the cows die, but she's more concerned about the spring right now because she needs it for something else). But as I said before, for most of the humans, their current life is normally all they have and will ever knew (though apparently D messed with that), sacrificing your life so another human might live is indeed noble, but it's not something that should be forced on, even if that other human is in a way their own self. For the average humans, normal death is just as severe as soul death, so they need not care as much for their own souls.

Nah, not really. If they reincarnate, it's for all intents and purposes falling unconscious and waking up with total amnesia becoming essentially a different person. Their minds still get to experience full range of possibilities in their new life. Way better than perma dying and having all potential snuffed out. After all when you get down to it, a person is really bare consciousness or experience anyway


(I totally agree with your point Shiro gets way too much free pass though. Although she's by far not the worst offender here)

[Znail]

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

Hi again, been busy with life so put all of these at the back burner and simmer a bit in my mind pot. Just gonna share what rambling thoughts I had in the past week.

About Malthusian and why humans should, or should not care about their souls. First off, unless you are like Dustin, chances are for the average people they start fresh after every reincarnation. Even if the soul is the same, they are for all intents and purposes two different people, strangers to each other. The soul then, is just a natural resource that is used to fuel the continued existence of an individual, and right now, that natural resource is in short supply and is unable to provide enough for the "population", which is humans. So Shiro's plan to save those souls, isn't out of consideration of the human's continued well being, but to not waste resources. She views the human souls as farmers view their cattle drinking water, a resource to be managed. Shiro now has a drying spring and too much cow, so she's butchering them, which is indeed logical because if she maintains that number of cows, the spring dries faster (and all the cows die, but she's more concerned about the spring right now because she needs it for something else). But as I said before, for most of the humans, their current life is normally all they have and will ever knew (though apparently D messed with that), sacrificing your life so another human might live is indeed noble, but it's not something that should be forced on, even if that other human is in a way their own self. For the average humans, normal death is just as severe as soul death, so they need not care as much for their own souls.

The main problems I see with this anology is that Shiro is not a farmer that owns some cows as she have no personal stake in the "spring" or "cows" future. Shiro is trying to save the "spring" so that not all the cows will die out because it's the right thing to do.

[kari-no-sugata II]

Originally Posted by Znail

If you are refeering to the recent anime episode so is that only the early parts of the war that was to help with the imidiate need of energy. To solve the entire problem, about half the population needs to die.

Strictly speaking, they don't have to die. If there was a way to get about the same amount of energy from them without them dying while also still removing skills from the System then their deaths could be avoided. Their deaths are really a side-effect of removing their skills/energy. Is there such a way though?

Well, there's the fan theory involving "skill erasure" but without some in-world analysis of it it's hard to say how practical it is. Even if it was practical, it would almost certainly involve trying to persuade the population to get and use the skill themselves and not everyone would do that, so there'd still be some "unnecessary" deaths but it would be on themselves rather than Shiro and Ariel.

Dustin rather reminds me of Kiritsugu Emiya from Fate/Zero. Tries to put aside his personal emotions and takes the "best" short term solution. However, that doesn't always give the best long term solution. For example, Dustin decided that the people couldn't cope with the situation they were in and rather than trying to help them cope he decided to hide the truth instead. Which made it much harder for him to counter Potimas. I dunno how realistic it would have been for Dustin to kill Potimas but if he had achieved that then he would have saved the world long ago.

[kagato3]

Originally Posted by Znail

If you are refeering to the recent anime episode so is that only the early parts of the war that was to help with the imidiate need of energy. To solve the entire problem, about half the population needs to die.

No about half the population will die because of skill removal after the system breaks. Which it will do regardless of what Shiro does, the system itself projected it would collapse within 2 years per the student roster skill which would kill all the reincarnators even though most of which had few skills and strong souls compared to those from the world.

[Rasty]

^^ It would be impossible. From the moment Potimas got the barrier working there was no realistic way to kill him as that would necessitate breaking the barrier which has power over the system threshold. And Potimas also had half a dozen functioning laboratories capable of producing superpowered robots, armies of robots in the village, and even weapons capable of endangering the gods (though actually inefficient, still more than mortals could handle).

The only one who could have stopped him (and easily thus saved everyone) is Kuro, but he is too much of hetare for that.

[kari-no-sugata II]

Originally Posted by Rasty

^^ It would be impossible. From the moment Potimas got the barrier working there was no realistic way to kill him as that would necessitate breaking the barrier which has power over the system threshold. And Potimas also had half a dozen functioning laboratories capable of producing superpowered robots, armies of robots in the village, and even weapons capable of endangering the gods (though actually inefficient, still more than mortals could handle).

The only one who could have stopped him (and easily thus saved everyone) is Kuro, but he is too much of hetare for that.

Dustin didn't even try though (that we've seen) and basically gave up on dealing with Potimas. He could have tried to make the world as hostile to Potimas when he had a chance. He could have tried to rally the people of the world to kill Potimas. He could have asked Gyurie to at least take care of the barrier and any robots and then Dustin could have carpet bombed the area with Abyss Magic.

Dustin was stuck in his short term thinking. He only decided to help kill the elves when Ariel and Shiro essentially took on all the risks themselves.

[Znail]

Originally Posted by kagato3

No about half the population will die because of skill removal after the system breaks. Which it will do regardless of what Shiro does, the system itself projected it would collapse within 2 years per the student roster skill which would kill all the reincarnators even though most of which had few skills and strong souls compared to those from the world.

While both refeer to half the population so are we not talking about the same thing as I am talking about how many needs to die to provide the energy needed to fix the world. The world of this novel is broken and the system is designed to fix that, but it's running out of energy. If the system crashes, that would kill half the population, but then the planet would collapse killing everyone. Only if the energy, provided by the death of the population, is shunted into the system, will the planet survive.

[kagato3]

TL;DR…

The plan

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

Note the above was years before the war started. They knew how much energy was in the system. It was never critically low on energy it is going to fail because its core is going to give out. The war is solely for filling up the system so it can be broken hence why it doesn't need to happen if an entire army sacrifices itself. Once it is broken a lot of.people will die because of skill loss Shiro estimates between 25 to 50%