Oh, yeah, another example of this that's already in the franchise is the whole concept of Primordial Runes, which is taken from the Armanen runes (a.k.a. Guido von List's delusions).Originally Posted by SirGauoftheSquareTable
- - - Updated - - -
Though I suppose those show up more with Servants than magi.
I know old scientific theories are magic
The electric one has come up explicitely, not sure about others
Phlogston?
This is news to me, since I thought that was based on the Elder vs Younger Futhark distinction.
Also, what I mean by "conspiracy theory foundation mage" is a mage who makes use of an IRL conspiracy theory that is also an in-universe conspiracy theory to create a new Mystic foundation as opposed to conspiracy theories being incorporated into the actual moonlit world.
Also mentioned alongside Galvanism:
Geocentrism also shows up in the Case Files anime.
Yeah, I remember the Fargo episode, and I do think the idea was interesting.
There's a reason that the Fate/ series iterates time and time again that it's fundamentally improper for Servants (dead dudes) to dictate the future (living/yet-to-be living dudes). This line of thought is certainly not without reason, for even though Servants are/were human and capable of being affected by the era/society they're summoned into and interact with, they're still fundamentally copies of what was, far less malleable than a living being, and some Servants boast mindsets that can be very much at odds with those eras and societies they get summoned into
Nevertheless, a Servant that wishes for incarnation, humanity, personhood, is granted human rights when they do so. It is then that their motivations, drives, worldviews are allowed to be acknowledged—compared to, contrasted to, and to be tested against the living world they are now a proper resident of. Their actions shall be judged not as that of a Servant's, but as a fellow human's.
So, I judge. Amakusa had a point. His motivations were commendable. But, his methods were too drastic, too risky. There's no guarantee that the world would become a pruned dead end as a result of his doing, but the risk associated with it was understandably far too great.
On an aside, the Human Order sure is fascinatingly oppressive against anything pre-maturely, drastically post-human. An interesting representation of sorts of the "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down" mentality, applied to a setting-wide scale. The Human Order both keeps and oppresses. At least, in worlds where it's strong enough, and even then...
My Fanfics. Read 'em. Or not.McJon01: We all know that the real reason Archer would lose to Rider is because the events of his own Holy Grail War left him with a particular weakness toward "older sister" types.
Totally agree with you there. I think the fact that the Human Order fastidiously prunes all but a specific type of progress says a lot about Nasu's views on what is "human" progress. As for Amakusa's plan, I've kinda softened up to it, since I now see that it's not too far from Kirschtaria's plan, at least as far as I can tell. If it's more like Code Geass' Ragnarok Project, then no, I'm not pro-Amakusa.
On a semi-related note, I think the fact that Nasu thinks it's a given that humanity will eventually consume and outlive the Planet itself is proof that despite his belief in human progress, he has a terminal case of capitalist realism poison/liberal mind poison, since he seemingly cannot envision an alternate means of progress that isn't inherently consumptive and exploitative in a capitalist sense, and he accepts the logical conclusion of such a system as inevitable.
Would the world of Notes be pruned, since Human Order is basically non-existent there? Or do Rays and Liners count enough?
Binged All Of Gundam In 4 Years, 1 Week and All I Got Was This Stupid Mask
FF XIV: Walked to the End
Started Legend of the Galactic Heroes (14/07/23), pray for me.
Because thousands upon thousands of years have shown this to be the case, and every other attempted system went down awful enough roads that no amount of excuses and "No True Scotsman" fallacies can cover them up.
No amount of lies from people who claimed those in the past were somehow "purer" or "more in tune with nature" can hide how often we were driving species into extinction through rampant overuse even when the most amazing technology of the time was lashing a sharpened stone head to long piece of wood.
Was wondering how clearly it's supported that Servants are bound to the mindsets they had in life, and I do think that's a fair point. Using the original game as example Cu Chulainn is a cool and friendly bro, but he's still willing to kill innocents only saying that it leaves a bad taste in his mouth and is an aggressive flirt to the point where Shirou has to warn girls to shut him down. Medusa, Medea and Hassan go without saying as having values at odds with the modern age. Heck with what we know of him in later stories Gilgamesh is a great example of someone who was actually a good person in life (his Babylonia self being a good indication), but becomes horrible as a Servant since he resolutely refuses to change his views and acknowledge the present era as having value. Arturia is the main exception (not counting Archer whose from the future), which could be because she's from closer to the present when "heroes" were defined as following universal moral principles rather than just being personally strong and brave. All in all even the "good" Servants are generally shown as somewhat amoral and having extremes of good and evil in them.
F/Z's Iskandar is also a good example, a cheerful boisterous guy whose a genuinely good role-model in many ways... yet his ultimate goal is starting WWIII basically for fun and shows absolutely no qualms as to the massive loss of life that would surely ensue. It does feel like you're meant to judge Servants with a certain "distance" that's different from present-day characters.
On the other hand there are cases of Servants outright overcoming their tragedies from life (like Boudica putting aside her hatred of Romans to defend human history, nevermind how often her character is criticized for that reason) so that's clearly not an absolute rule. And many Magi have pretty "backwards" and inhuman mentalities as well (Altram gathering orphans to use as mass-sacrifices for Mana which even Medea was disgusted by, Cu killing Shirou was actually just enforcing the War's rule of leaving no witnesses), which muddles the comparison a bit. But I can see what they're going for.
Last edited by RoydGolden; January 28th, 2022 at 01:39 AM.
I think it'd be less an issue of pruning and more tied up in the notion that humanity simply has been usurped, which throws everything we currently know about the metaphysics of this setting into question given that it's as human-centric as it is.
- - - Updated - - -
How Notes came to be is radically different from any of the scenarios that've resulted in pruned worlds/Lostbelts that we know of.
My Fanfics. Read 'em. Or not.McJon01: We all know that the real reason Archer would lose to Rider is because the events of his own Holy Grail War left him with a particular weakness toward "older sister" types.
I submit that humans have had a pretty exploitative relationship with our ecosystems for thousands of years, but that's no reason to think humans can't change the way we live. After all, the current order that Nasu, and it seems you, accept as natural has only really come about in the past 200 years, and before then, there were multiple ways in which different human societies interacted with the environment of varying levels of exploitation. To say that all human interaction with the environment was exploitative is fairly Eurocentric or Old World centric, because native peoples in the Americas, Australia, and numerous other places had a relatively more mutually symbiotic relationship with the land and a deep cultural affinity for it, and when the Europeans came and asserted their dominance over the land and people, ecological devastation followed. That's not to say premodern societies were perfect, obviously. There were a ton of extinctions before 1800 that are directly attributable to our activity, after all.
Still, we can learn from premodern societies and their more communal ways of living, combine that with our greater understanding of the biosphere and new technology, and we might be able to live in more sustainable ways. It sure as hell won't be easy, and we'll never be able to truly restore what we took away, but we can make up for it and help the world get back on it's feet so to say once the worst of the climate crisis has passed and a new equilibrium is reached.
- - - Updated - - -
Chaldea and its mission seems to cause many Servants to reevaluate their priorities, so I'm not sure how representative it is of a Servant's moral framework.
Death of the Earth or not, Nasu's worldview of humanity and how that's reflected in the Human Order/Counter Force is, I'd say, inherently moreso geared towards (at least, when T-M's more recent/up-to-date works are taken into account) a Childhood's End mentality. Humanity will either die on Earth, or it will become something beyond humanity and leave the planet, expand out into space.
Whether this leaving behind of humanity is a cause or side effect of this depature/expansion is up in the air.
Planetary/species death is inevitably part of this, but it's not the be-all end-all of Nasu's overall thesis for the setting.
My Fanfics. Read 'em. Or not.McJon01: We all know that the real reason Archer would lose to Rider is because the events of his own Holy Grail War left him with a particular weakness toward "older sister" types.
There was a actually a great growth of forests in the American continent post-conquest due to the collapse of native civilizations.
Spoiler:
True, because their controlled fires were no longer being set, and again, I'm not saying those societies were absolutely perfect with regards to living with the land. Also, since they were there for several thousand years, it could be argued that they were a keystone species of the pre-Columbian era, and that opens up several questions about what is the "natural" state of ecosystems, when is it natural, and who gets to be apart of that? I think our society's typical answers have been skewed and polluted by early white environmentalists like John Muir, who viewed the natives as artificial spoilers of the land's inherent naturalness and advocated for ethnic cleansing.
Gau seems to be under the euroreactionary mindset. This is also about the worst path you could take this discussion into.
Call me 想φαγω.
Spoiler:
I see your point there, but I do feel that whenever the concept of humanity versus nature is brought up, Nasu never seems to bring up the possibility of humanity working alongside nature or living equitably with it, and if so, he reserves that for his visionary villains, especially Kirschtaria. He truly seems to view the two as separate once Humanity became the Prime Species, and any human progress as adversarial towards the planet as we grow beyond it.
- - - Updated - - -
Where do you think it can be taken, then? Any bright ideas?
Inside of Nasu there are two wolves. One is, one ishistorical progress understood as a terminable processHegel. The wolves are constantly fighting. Which wolf wins? Depends whether he's writing Extra or not.historical progress understood as an infinite taskKant
かん汗ぎゅう牛じゅう充とう棟
Expresses the exceeding size of one's library.
Books are extremely many, loaded on an oxcart the ox will sweat.
At home piled to the ridgepole of the house, from this meaning.
Read out as 「Ushi ni ase shi, munagi ni mitsu.」
Source: 柳宗元「其為書，處則充棟宇，出則汗牛馬。」— Tang Dynasty
More likely than not, he'll combine the two into an unholy chimeric abomination and keep it together through sheer force of will.
As has been stated before, Childhood's End. Man's eternal struggle with nature, both in its influence as one of the defining traits of man as man and not as animal, both in its restless, unsustainable coexistence, and the question of man's identity as man when completely removed of nature.
Call me 想φαγω.
Spoiler:
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
