Spoiler Latest Chapter Discussion Thread for Death Mage Raws

Discussion in 'Spoilers' started by FussyBadger, Nov 25, 2017.

  1. jemini

    jemini Well-Known Member

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    Well, we are never told the finer points of exactly how the power works, but we did get to hear that he was planning on using it as part of the delivery of his "nuke the demon king" plan. Apparently, Bellwood's power was to copy another champion's power. He wanted Bellwood to copy his power and then hand-carry in the nuke and set it off while making himself immune to nukes.
     
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  2. kari-no-sugata

    kari-no-sugata Well-Known Member

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    Really late reply time...

    I've debated with myself about continuing this discussion but while I have some concerns I also couldn't stop thinking about it. So this post is more of a random set of thoughts on the subject to get it off my chest, rather than something particularly coherent. History is a subject I found boring in school but something I find quite interesting now and it's certainly worth discussing.

    I could say that the Cold War comparison is an "apples to oranges comparison" but actually they're both fruit and have far more in common with each other than any two random objects...

    Yeah, I like the Lenin comparison more than Stalin. I can't say I know that much about the two but Stalin does strike me as much more of a pragmatist and Lenin much more of an idealist. I dunno Lenin's thoughts on the subject but I believe that Stalin was very strongly in favour of rapid industrialisation, which hardly makes for a good comparison with Bellwood or Alda. On the other hand, yeah, the Bellwood fanatics were a damn creepy bunch and you could compare it to the creepy stuff going on in communist Russia (as well as other times and places).

    On a different note, one thing I find compares very badly is just how big a gap there is between Alda (and the gods on his side) and the mortals on the ground to anything from human history. It's a huge disconnect. It's as if the pope (and whole Vatican) during the middle ages hardly communicated at all and when they did it was little more than a SMS to a single person with a bunch of emoji characters. Somewhat tangentially, it occured to me today that in the bible (what I vaguely remember of it), god often didn't communicate that directly and generally the mortals didn't get more than signs and portents, particularly in more recent times. Bellwood did leave behind specific words but there's not much directly attributed to Alda by the mortals IIRC. It's hard to overstate just how bad Alda is at communicating even with those on his side and just how different this is to any "insert dictatorship here" regime from human history.

    I might well get yelled at for bringing it up but I'll say it anyway - if I was going to make a comparison with any "insert dictatorship here" from human history it'd be with Hitler. If we combine Bellwood's rabble-rousing charisma with Alda's idealism into one person, maybe it'd be more obvious than what we see in the story. Though equally obvious is that there's a LOT of differences. One particular reason why I bring up the Hitler comparison is that he saw things as a "racial" struggle while the communists saw things as a "class" struggle. Hitler's idea of "national socialism" (as in the "National Socialist German Workers' Party") was very race centric and he saw communism as a Jewish plot to take over the world and he felt he had to preemptively attack to stamp out the threat (and also because he feared that an industrialised Germany would be too dependant on foreign food and various other things). While the WW2 era German army treated prisoners from Western countries fairly well, they saw people to the east of them as sub-human and were deliberately starving captured prisoners to death right from the beginning of the war. In the millions. Of course, making the comparison in this way casts Vida's side as communists and/or Jews which is hilariously wrong, but never mind. One thing I like about this comparison is that Hilter's opportunity for a big preemptive power-grab stemmed directly from "The Great War" (WW1), though that war didn't feature a Demon King from another planet in our case. In his own mind, it's likely that Hitler thought he had a "moral imperative" to do all the things he did, despite the suffering caused to the whole world. Just about everything else about this comparison is different though. For a start, Alda actually won his preemptive war.

    Where your comparison with communist era Russia works well from a narrative perspective is the overall arc of "bloody civil war" to "ideological driven revolution" to "lengthy and self-destructive dictatorship" to "inherent failings exposed during competition/conflict with opponents following a more 'Western' ideology" to "eventual and overdue collapse". (Side note: some might object to casting Van's approach as 'Western' but it's certainly 'more Western' in comparison to Alda). The underlying details are quite different but the narrative is much closer. While there's plenty of "rise and fall of Empires" in Earth history those empires were rarely driven by ideology. There's few ideological wars as well. I guess the most famous would be the Crusades? (Though that's more of a "religious war" than an "ideological war").

    Hmm. Random thought I just had: there's a saying that "generals are always fighting the last war". That's kinda what Alda's side are doing, except they're combining the war with Vida and the war with the Demon King.
     
    Last edited: Aug 13, 2019
  3. hillo315

    hillo315 Intact but Tactless

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    I wanna sig this.

    I'd argue that the Alda/Vida war never actually ended. Alda thought he won, but only because Vida was patiently biding her time for reincarnated reinforcements.
     
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  4. jemini

    jemini Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, actually, you can stop right there. This is not meant to be a tribute to a specific war. Therefore, a narrative perspective is actually all that matters.

    In actuality, the narrative here is against totalitarian dictatorships and how they fall in general. As such, WWII Germany is not a good comparison, because WWII Germany actually fell to a land offensive. Alda is in the middle of falling to a war of ideas and breakdown of social cohesion. That's the way that Venesuella is falling right now. Another good comparison would be North and South Korea, taking Amed as North Korea, and Orbaume as South Korea. It strikes me that Densuke just mixed in aspects of several different communist dictatorships in various ways. As such, no one dictatorship can be used as the perfect example.

    The reason I keep bringing up the Cold War is because Van's active tactics that he's using against Alda are almost identical to the tactics the United States used against Soviet Russia. Even the power struggle between the Alda and Vida factions within Orbaume Kingdom can be seen as analogous to the paroxy wars in Africa, South America, and the Middle East that were going on as part of the Cold War. Meanwhile, he's spreading evangalism about the Vida faction similar to the United States spreading democracy and capitalism during the Cold War. About the only real difference between this and the Cold War is that the USSR was significantly more competent than Alda. Alda and his regime seems far more analogous to Kim-Jang-Yung. (and, once again, this seems like a little bit of a mix-and-match, so that's fine. Especially with the north and south Korea aspect already being notably present in the mix.)
     
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  5. kari-no-sugata

    kari-no-sugata Well-Known Member

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    Go ahead :aww:

    WW2 directly followed from WW1 in certain ways but they're considered separate wars. Then there's the "Hundred Years' War", which actually lasted 116 years. So yeah, it's not like there's a strict definition of what a "war" is. In Alda's case, he couldn't actually kill Vida and he also hoped that she would reform. Also, Alda was quite well aware that the overall situation that Vida started wasn't over which is why he persecuted the Vida races. In Van's case though, he would have fought against Alda even without Vida being around so it's not so much a direct continuation - it's a separate but related conflict. On the other hand, you could say that from Alda's point of view, it's a continuation of the last two wars - the war against the Demon King and the war against Vida.


    With respect to the above, one interesting thing about Alda's response to Van so far is that he's specifically has no intention of trying to one-up Van or even match him on the social side or prosperity side. The communists in the Soviets era felt the need to show that communism could match democracy/capitalism in terms of prosperity, technology, arms etc but Alda has no interest in doing that as he specifically wants a static society.

    If we focus on this angle, another comparison we could make would be Japan during the Tokugawa Shogunate (1600-1868), during which the society was quite static/rigid and development was limited and it could be said that their attitude was one of blissful isolationism.... until the "black ships" arrived. Some argued that the way forward was to modernise so that they could deal with the foreigners on equal terms and some argued that the old ways were best. The difference being of course is that instead of modernising like Japan did, Alda completely rejects the concept.

    I also came across this video a while back and thought it was interesting in the context of how Alda was the aggressive/pro-active one 100,000 years ago but is quite passive by contrast in the current situation and it's Van that's the aggressive/pro-active on:
     
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  6. canuto95

    canuto95 Well-Known Member

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    Hey everyone, have we got a confirmation on what's the advantage of being a full spiritual god instead of a demigod? If not, what are your theories? Because iirc, demigods have been shown capable of doing everything a god can, except maybe support the attributes for the world
     
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  7. ImanotherGuyFroyou

    ImanotherGuyFroyou Well-Known Member

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    Except for getting strength by being worship nothing really.
     
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  8. kari-no-sugata

    kari-no-sugata Well-Known Member

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    Van is an outlier but I dunno how much, making it hard to use him as a reference. So ignoring Van, my impressions are as follows: demi-gods are basically physical gods who can sustain themselves physically (don't need worship) but can also physically die. Normal gods, ie spiritual gods, can only sustain themselves spiritually (through worship) that we know of but can't die normally. It seems possible that a spiritual god could die "permanently" if they lost all their energy and had no worshippers left. However, worship/belief can create new gods out of nothing so perhaps the only way for a spiritual god to truly die permanently is if a death mage destroys/eats their soul.

    Side note: I wonder if "titles" in the status system are a bit related to how spiritual gods gain power. Basically, titles are caused by belief, as are gods. At the least it does demonstrate how others can affect an individual through belief. It's probably reasonable to believe that worshipping demi-gods could affect them as well (including making them stronger) but the only example we have is Van.

    At the moment, we don't really know what sustaining/managing attributes actually involves. It's something specific to Lambda though as on Earth and Origin the people can first and then the gods formed their the beliefs of the people while on Lambda the gods came first and created people.

    Spiritual gods are also much more... flexible. Their very form and powers can change depending upon how they are worshipped. They can also merge with other gods for example.
     
  9. canuto95

    canuto95 Well-Known Member

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    Demigods get power from worship just like spiritual gods, Talos' resurrection was accelerated thanks to Van's efforts in restoring talosheim. Also I thought that when a demigod dies, they can turn into a spiritual god or something similar (probably a lot weaker though), at least that's what I understood from the one demigod van didn't eat from the botin defense force.

    And then there's Van...
     
  10. toxinpsd

    toxinpsd Well-Known Member

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  11. ImanotherGuyFroyou

    ImanotherGuyFroyou Well-Known Member

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    So Van don't/can't use God Decent because no god is compatible and stronger with him right? So how about this, Van have Gods of Origin Divine Protection right? What he use God Van? God Van is stronger and fully compatible to him.
     
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  12. FussyBadger

    FussyBadger Well-Known Member

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    Is the author taking another break?
     
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  13. mai.rain

    mai.rain Well-Known Member

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    yeah he will be back on the 20th tho
     
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  14. hillo315

    hillo315 Intact but Tactless

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    That's not a bad idea. The problem is that Van may never consider invoking his other half. Because reasons.
     
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  15. Reman Scimitar

    Reman Scimitar Princess Zadiris Faction

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    Any bets being taken Van will run into his 'uncle' in the future by chance (Esp from Puny God's hands)?


    Kinda wanna see/read the reject soul demolished tbh.
     
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  16. anteopta

    anteopta Well-Known Member

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    he knowes about the situation of his uncle on earth and in order to not be noticed by rod he decided to not curse his uncle, so no actions from van. As for rods side, his angels stopped that already.
     
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  17. mai.rain

    mai.rain Well-Known Member

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    nice to get a update on the Amid empire, i think it likely means they will have a civil war at some point but the kidnapping could lead up to the massive war we have been waiting for.
     
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  18. hillo315

    hillo315 Intact but Tactless

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    I didn't understand much of what MTL spat at me today. A summary would be nice...
     
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  19. heiro001

    heiro001 Well-Known Member

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    "the Storm of Violence and the Emperor, and the APPROXIMATELY same aged boys and girls."

    Lol, years of fighting each other as secret enemies, of having a grudging respect for each other as equals, followed by one of them kidnapping the other after he is removed from the position he worked so hard for and running away together. Forget Lissana x Schnedier, Marshkuzarl x Schneider is the real OTP! :blobnosebleed:

    Uh, so Schneider's kidnapped Marshkuzarl to use as a figurehead for overthrowing the current Alda church led Amid government (Marshkuzarl amusingly thinks its under Van's orders, though Schneider reveals its more like Schneider asked Van if it was cool after he decided to do it anyway and Van basically went "eh, sure.")

    Also love the (state run, because Van is all the staff... and the rides... and the land itself) amusement park got the name "Heart-Pounding Wiggly Van Land". Is no one else going to tell Mei she has a problem!? :blobupset: Nice to see some of the kids from Talosheim (congrats to Braga, whose son was born and is apparently doing pretty well for himself).

    Also nice to check back in on the orphanage director vampire, who finally made a full recovery, faked her retirement, and went back to looking like her normal 20 year old immortal self than the older woman she disguised herself as while under Birkyne / Guduranis's control... which means it's time to dance and sing for Kanako now! :blobowoevil_horns:

    Finally another good illustration of how Van's about as far from a sociopath as you can get, as he has received Selen's 2nd letter and is fretting over how he should respond to her, while also cursing Heinz and the other 5 Colored Blades for not having any tact of their own (seriously, Van's actually been a much more polite arch-nemesis than Heinz at this point. Or maybe just a more self aware one?)
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2019
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  20. sjmcc13

    sjmcc13 Well-Known Member

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    She has a God Emperor personally entertaining her, and taking care of her every need, what could be wrong (other then the lack of Astartes)?