I'm still not comfortable calling Kirsch a pro-humanist any more than Amakusa is (in the sense that they care more about the idea or potential of humanity than they do about the actually existing humanity and are willing to sacrifice too much for a questionable payoff that may very well be more than what they bargained for), but I'm fairly sure I still have a thread elsewhere about that subject and don't feel like explaining further right now.
Well, that's fair - was more talking about Kirsch's own brand of pro-humanism, frankly.
I'd call it more transhumanist than pro-humanist, really. Just replace all the mentions of gods with robots or "the Singularity" and he'd fit right in with Ray Kurtzweil or the other prophets of the rapture for nerds. (He'd also run directly into all the other philosophical objections against transhumanism, but as I said this isn't quite the place to go into detail about that.)Originally Posted by PossiblyATrout
Kirschtaria comparisons to Zeus run deeper than what the characters making them think. Both of them have very different personas in private vs when they have to keep appearances. Their relationship is one of two men pretending to be almighty (Kirschtaria for his greater cause and Zeus for his pride) while they've actually been on their last legs since long before the whole thing started. The disconnect is very intentional. Dioscuri’s presence does that for both of them.
Also, Kirschtaria showed up in Atlantis when Caenis was about to get killed, with the immediate purpose of preventing Caenis from being killed.
And that's true, but I've always been mystified by how Kirsch follows on from that. Olympus establishes that he's, indeed, rather fatally naive about the whole concept of humans being inherently inclined towards acts of goodness and charity, but he knows what the Dioscuri are to him and he knows that they and Caenis loathe each other...and yet he orders the former to 'take care' of the latter in a way that really can't be read as anything else other than a thinly-veiled death threat, unless he is so trusting or naive or both that he simply thought that giving them that order would just make them take Caenis away and not also try to kill them.
How else are you gonna interpret his surprise when he heard Caenis joined Chaldea?
I mean, is that in favour of me thinking Kirsch wanted the twins to kill Caenis? Because if it is, that's a bit of a problem.
The latter part of your post actually. It's about him surprised that Caenis suddenly betrayed him, and seemingly not connecting the dots.
But I thought that somehow that was accounted for - didn't Kirsch specifically say he was surprised by how easily Caenis joined Chaldea, not the act of joining them itself?
Doesn't sound like that to me.
The way he worded it implies the thought that Caenis joining Chaldea doesn't even cross his mind.
I also remember his confessing that when he heard about it he almost dropped his tea
Then well, if that's the case, what exactly did Kirsch expect to happen after he rescued them? Chaldea picked them up and all, but he used a Command Spell after the twins did what they did.
I don't think it's really about what he expected to happen. Olympus makes it pretty clear that he implicitly trusts that whatever Caenis does, it'll be something to his advantage. He didn't expect them to join up with the Chaldeans necessarily, but he expected them to be a spanner in the works for the Olympians that he knows he'd have to deal with eventually in order for his plan to succeed. He wasn't expecting the Chaldeans to be able to get around Caenis' kind of finicky personality (at least while under the effects of Mad Enhancement,) but he also trusted that Caenis would find their way back to him eventually because they know enough about Kirschtaria's plan (and his general dislike of the Dioscuri) to trust him in spite of what happened in Atlantis.
And a lot of Caenis' more aggro moments in Atlantis are likewise less about them being aggressive (although they definitely are) and more about trying to avoid Kirschtaria having to get involved in the confrontation with Chaldea because they're well aware of how fragile Kirschtaria actually is beneath that air of invincibility and how he needs to conserve his strength for the final confrontation with Zeus. It's almost like a particularly violent protector instinct.
I suppose maybe that's what it ties back to for me - perhaps I'm just stupid, but part of me just can't reconcile what happens to the two of them in Olympus with what happened to Caenis in Atlantis. Unless Nasu has commented on the matter or something similar.
I mean anyone remember how like he had a augur/seer servant and like that got handwaved in a blog or some supplementary as him like lying? or something
He was dying the whole time and knew he could only fight 3 more times. One asker was like "Sure, we know what that was about, but what did Zeus think that was about?" and Nasu answered that Kirsch was pretending his 3rd Servant was an oracle and predicted the number.
Kyokutei Bakin:
STR:C
END: C
AGI: B+
MAG: B+
LUC: C-
NP: A
Spoiler:
"Its simplicity was very simple. It’s impenetrable."
Amazing.
"Though it was a simple plot, it was precisely because of its simplicity that it was impossible to circumvent."
You can thank me later.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
