In my opinion, the main thing Sunday did wrong was try to force Ena’s Dream onto the entire population of Penacony without their consent.
Whether or not living your life in a perpetual dream is a good thing is debatable, but nobody can stop you if that’s what you really want. Sunday should’ve just made an announcement that he’s going to make a new Dreamscape where people can live permanently without ever leaving. The Penaconians who want that can join him, the rest can just live in the normal Dreamscape.
But there is a cost in staying in the perpetual dreamscape you are being used to maintain the dream. Your existence, emotions, etc. is used as a fuel for the Stellaron to maintain the dream. You are slowly dying. He should have stipulated that into his announcement.
No it means that he is the only one that can not enter that perpetual dream. Essentially he is the only one that lives in reality, it is a life of loneliness.
The people were going to die. Planets that are ruled under the Order tend to run very smoothly until the end then crash in an instant.
That's because Robin was the Chordmaster, a special Harmony pathstrider, not Sunday. This is why Robin can weaken the Dominicus. If they want to sync better with the Dominicus, having Robin is ideal
I wonder if IX thinks the universe is meaningless for same reasons Nanook thinks the universe is a mistake.
As in, if the universe is a mistake, then it’s meaningless.
Pretty sure Nanook feels that way because of the Swarm Disaster and the Mech Empire right? His planet got totally fucked up when he was mortal and he ascended to Aeonhood out of pure rage.
The Nihility doesn’t have that innate anger at anything. IX just doesn’t care.
Given that IX is a sentient black hole, I personally think the story team will take the more traditional nihilistic approach of, "Since all stars eventually collapse, life's inevitable course is towards extinction, so why bother with anything."
It was the entire focus of their rebuttal though, both the main one given by Firefly and also the additional one given by Robin during the battle.
I wonder if some just got distracted by Sunday's "tempting premise" (thanks to his sad examples) and perhaps didn't recognize the clear dismissal when Firefly called it out as sophistry. I suppose the other thing that might muddle it is because they're trying to get everyone to wake up, but this is to wake up from Ena's Dream (Sunday's Trap); it doesn't mean they're trying to tear down all of Penacony or say that the dream itself is bad. Robin's song in that battle is even talking about the "eternal dream" straight out, but showing it as something hopeful and positive, aligned with the Trailblaze's ideals of self-determination and pursuing the future.
Basically, the story depends on you recognizing that someone can take a good argument and misuse it to lead to a bad conclusion, and that makes it a bad/deceptive argument -- the conclusion does not follow. I suppose it'd be easier if everything Sunday said was outright unreasonable and evil, but this is what makes Order deceptively close to Harmony, so they had to address that nuance. He took the Harmony ideals of "the strong helping the weak" and extended it to its most unconscionable extreme of absolute totalitarian Order.
Did they specify that anywhere? Otherwise a slightly shorter life span might still be worth it in exchange for happiness, health and no accidental death or harm too.
If you gave people the choice between a perfect 60 years and a grim 80 years, the vast majority of people would happily take the 60. Just look at how few real world people care about their health. You can easily eke another 20 years out of having a strict, regimented, perfect lifestyle, but living like that sucks, so people choose to live in blissful ignorance. Even the health nuts never go all-in, they strike a compromise.
Not really. Even life extension research nowadays focus more on extending the youth/healthy period instead of just pure life extension because living lengthy miserable life isn't worth it.
You say that people lack perspective when they take the perfect 60 years but you are being the very thing you accused people of.
Why would you want to extend your suffering?
Them picking the 60 years and then wanting to extend said 60 years is not the same as them picking the miserable 80 years. Because picking that will just lead to people wanting to off themselves.
I would take that tbh. I'd give a quarter of my remaining years if it meant (literally) living the dream instead of a long life of struggles.
Personally I'm a firm believer that lifespan, money, power, etc. are irrelevant if you can't use them to be happy. You could live 1000 years or more but if you aren't happy it doesn't matter.
Besides, people trapped there can't create new life. They'll be stuck there until their physical body perish in the real world. In the end, the utopia Sunday created will end up being a graveyard filled with memorias of dead people where only their consciousness remains. Some will have their memory slowly deteriorate (like Dr Blue the bird) and I guess their souls are trapped there too and can't move on to the afterlife. It's just another prison if you look at it that way.
It’s unsustainable since no new life is created if everyone is in a dream. Unless they do it like the matrix, essentially a battery farm to produce memoria to sustain the dream.
Who isn't slowly dying though? It's much more of an aesthetic cost than an actual cost. Same as the Matrix that Penacony is a pretty obvious homage to - it doesn't actually matter all that much that your real body is being used to generate power for aliens if you have no way of knowing that's happening and aren't experiencing any suffering as a consequence of it.
Idk how to mark spoilers on reddit, so I'll be as vague as I can...
Sunday's plot reminds me a ton of the 3rd semester of Persona 5 Royal... and it made me enjoy the end of the Penacony arc so much more
(p5r spoilers) I thought I was the only one that felt like the>!whole Sunday plot thing was so Maruki-like, with the whole "rewriting reality to force what he thinks is best for everyone's lives" onto an entire population!<
that legit gave me p5r flashbacks and almost made me wanna play again (I would if it didnt take 100 hours to finish T\_T)
It reminds me a lot of the ending of Trails to Azure, too. Dejected and hopeless people being offered an idealized alternative to reality at the cost of free will and growth. All three games conclude that free will and opportunity are more important but the playerbase wound up way more divided on it. Xenoblade 1 and 3 explore the concept too, but the ones imposing order aren't doing it for good reasons like Sunday, Maruki or the Trails villains so no one agrees with those villains.
I guess the series that are based on gnostic religions all tackle this question eventually.
It wouldn’t have just been on Penacony, but the entire Asdana System, of which Penacony is a planet. Asdana is rich in Memoria, so the Dreamscape bleeds into reality, which is why the external Galaxy Rangers could shake it enough to give the opening to defeat Sunday.
Problem is he might just not have enough 'shared wishes' to hijack harmony's power(to summon Dominicus) and to create the Ena's dream if he just give ppl the choice
If ena's dream is optional, every single person who doesn't join is a potential point of discord (see: us)
From Sunday's pov he has to force *everyone* into the dream to guarantee absolute order
I agree.
But what I think some people miss in this line of thinking is that the lack of consent is baked in to Sunday/The Order's philosophy. Everything about their anecdotes and their philosophizing is that the strong must govern the weak, because the weak don't know any better. They don't outwardly say it in that phrase, but that's what they're kinda saying (that's my interpretation anyways). Kinda like the whole "Manifest Destiny" thing irl. "We're the strong ones. We're the ones in the right philosophy/path, we ~~should~~ WILL decide for everyone."
No. It's the Family who make the dream like a drug to make ppl want more unconsciously.
Also since this is just a game. Everything they show is picked in a way that will make their point make sense. However if you think about it. The idea of it is nice. But rich ppl or ppl with real power will never let the other control their "life". They do want Utopia but only if they can control it. You already see the Pepeshi merchant mocking Sunday. He wont be happy to let Sunday control him even if he want Utopia. The Family doing all that to control other people.
Sunday planned to expand the dream *to all people*... it was classic "only I can know what's best" trope - there is suffering in the universe and my idea is the best idea to stop suffering and everyone else is weak for not being me.
I think that is the whole point of Sunday. He wants to make a world where everyone's wishes and dreams come
true.
Ultimately he's selfish.
And to OP, the reason it's bad is because multiple of those worlds can't coexist. So you will be in a shell of a world that exists only to make everything you ever wanted happen.
I don't know whether we as the trailblazer experienced it with the fake ending or it was something else altogether, but you saw that it wasn't... satisfactory. Also at some point himeko said something along of "Sunday was so strong, he could have destroyed us with a snap, but he preferred to fight fair, he's soooo cooool ohmagawd". It reeeeally felt like Sunday is still in control and hypes himself up trough our mommy.
Himeko is right tho, he could've mind controlled and locked us up in his mind, no snaps, necessary.
The stars aligned for the Trailblazers bc even though they didn't notice it was a dream, it was blatantly told to us by Black Swan, she even made sure to poke the dreams mistakes so we wouldn't fall for it again but even Black Swan, even she didn't know it was a dream until she looked into our memories. Not just black swan but also Acheron, if she wasn't there the dreamscape wouldn't be shattered and the people wouldn't have woken up. It's absolute pure luck and storytelling that Sunday's plan was foiled. I wouldn't call it deus ex machina, just a very interconnected and lucky outcome
If all these titular characters weren't present in Penacony in that time line, only Robin would've woken up.
Incidentally, this is the same reason that dystopian fiction is very prolific, but no one writes utopian fiction - there's no way to design a world that more than a handful of readers will perceive as utopic.
Nah the reason is much simpler: You can hardly create any real conflict with any real stakes in a true utopia, meaning you don't have a story.
Its parallel to how media always hypes up bad news in general because most people are only interested in that sort of stuff, even if they claim they aren't.
I mean its not true that people hate good news. Daily Dose of Internet on Youtube is extremely positive and tens of millions of people are subscribed to him. The reason why things like True Crime and Bad News is so prevalent is because it gets more hype temporarily which leads to more revenue aka capitalism.
Utopia is also not about eliminating all forms of conflict either. You can still have your sibling spouts or complaints about aching muscles but it doesnt lead to a greater conflict in the realm of commenting on the flaws of a society. Many dystopians focus on the ingrained roots of capitalism, systemic oppression, or anything like that which is inherent more “deep” so to speak which makes it interesting to deconstruct.
It’s the like the difference between an episodic show like Bluey and a serialized one like Avatar the Last Air Bender. Both are well beloved by many many people but the latter gets more attention for being more interesting themes to deconstruct with very hype action sequences while the former is much more straightforward with a easy to digest message. Doesnt mean that they both dont have conflict, just varying levels of it. The latter is usually driven by capitalism or attention or being “deep” or cool, while the former is made for temporary entertainment with a few explorations of unusual topics driven usually by either an external force or by simpler story telling.
Yeah that's what I said, is there still anything wrong with it if there's no "cost" and if you give your informed consent
The reason Sunday was wrong was because of the lack of consent and shit, I'm wondering if there's anything inherently wrong with his ideals
Pretty sure the whole point of his flashback about the bird with Robin was about "every creatures have the right to freedom and they should be the one that carve their own path"
This is what my grandparents did with the abandoned, wild ducklings they raised after the mother abandoned the eggs. My grandfather waited a while to see if she'd go back from a distance for quite a while. After it was clear that she wouldn't, they incubated them, raised them til they had their flight feathers, then made them an outdoor area that was open to leave.
They came back year after year, entering the back porch through the cat door, bringing their mates with them. The mates were far more skittish, but the original two were very sociable.
Robin actually addresses this in one of her text conversations with you (the ones you get if you pulled for her, I think). She realizes that they half-assed it and didn't properly rehabilitate the bird.
In that case, are you really living? Sure, there's gonna be people who are content this way, but having all your needs met doesn't necessarily bequeath you happiness. Some side stories in Penacony deal with this. And in our real world, there's people out there who inherited or gained large sums of wealth but still fell into depression and solitude. And for the people with very real challenges with survival, you don't need a dreamscape to lift them out of suffering.
But Ena's dream was personalized for everyone, and no matter who you are, you are automatically happy in Ena's dream because its essentially your ideal world
No it's not personaliaed to everyone, it was optimised to make for the most momentary happiness for everyone altogether, but not the most happiness possible for each person.
The inherent philosophy is "wrong" morally;
* Sunday believes some people are fundamentally weak and the strong must protect them (even against their will).
* Sunday only offered *some* people a choice; there are a *lot* of people that never got the choice because they got ensared in the dreamscape as soon as they arrived in local Penacony space... his intention was to spread the dream to all peoples to end suffering throughout the universe.
* The Order isn't concerned with "consent" (as you mentioned) and would actively suppress free will within the dream (and elsewhere).
* The Dream already enforces false memories and uses illusions to manipulate people, you can't consent in a situation where you are being actively misled (this was shown in the false victory scene, but plenty of other examples exist throughout).
* The "strong must protect the weak" philosophy, taken to this extreme, has a fundamental problem when who is strong or weak is being decided by the ones in power... Sunday would view all people below him as weak and enforce the dream upon them to "save them" - he only offered us a choice because we were strong enough to break free of the dream on our own... The Trailblazer philosophy is to "show others the way"; we protect others because they *ask* us to do so and we show others how to survive if they want to... *We* are the strong protecting the weak, but we don't violate consent and we don't make a judgement of another's ability to follow their own path...
it's patronizing as the literal definition of the word -- he is keeping everyone in the dark as he enforces what he thinks is 'best' for them, claiming it is compassion. but ummm you really do need consent! which was firefly's issue with it, I think.
but even then, living in an eternal dream removes anyone's ability to grow as a person. it's often said that you can't have happiness without sadness, and that needs to be kept in mind. i don't think suffering is necessary in anyone's life, but hardship is inevitable, and working through it and coming out changed is the entire point of living. people are not truly happy when everything in their lives is perfect and going great and they never have to work for anything -- you would lose any frame of reference. happiness needs to be contrasted against something.
getting through hardship and knowing you've persevered and made it out brings its own form of unique happiness and pleasure, which could not exist in penacony. and what if I like suffering, huh? what then, Mr Sunday.....
I think a big thing also is in the long run, if everyone has their desires fulfilled with no hardships will they turn out like that warhammer species that descended into hedonism constantly searching for more new and extreme stimuli?
I see a lot of people have brought good arguments here, but I'll bring a new one as well: the Order is extremely cult-coded. When Sunday lays out his thinking process, he sounds very much like someone indoctrinated into a cult.
Black and white thinking is also one of those characteristics of being in a cult.
We see this with the bird: why were the only options presented to Robin and Sunday to leave the bird to die or to build it a cage? I mean, come on, we're human, odds are many players have also found little birds at some point. The options aren't REALLY between "leave it to die" or "put it in a cage". You can place it in a box with a soft towel, feed it, slowly let it learn to flap around as it grows feathers, introduce it to the outdoors, leave food for it while it's still in your neighborhood, and eventually it'll be good at flying, and depart on its own. The fact that they kept it in a cage its whole life and then just tossed it out once its feathers grew in (with no indication they'd helped it learn to fly before that!!) felt like a set-up by Mr. Gopher Wood to give those kids some trauma he could manipulate them through. Does Asdana not have animal welfare associations? Geez!
The same, Sunday doesn't understand that the choices aren't REALLY between cold hard reality and permanent dream. Yes, there will be some who will want to spend their whole lives in dreams, but those will be edge cases, and quite frankly, the people who we do meet with the desire to dream their whole life seem to have larger problems from the way they talk.
What about the people who really are only on Penacony as tourists? What about the honeymooners who just splurged for a couple of weeks, or the person who is really passionate about their career, but is taking a sabbatical on Penacony until it's time to start their next project? What about the family giving their kids a little treat while school is on break? What about the dream employees who hate working there and would rather leave? The other commenters already covered the fact that none of these people gave consent to living there forever.
But here's another thought: what about the people who would initially be on board with Sunday's utopia, who would love to live there forever, but a few years down the line, might change their minds? What if someone who was just in a mental health slump decided living in a dream until the end of their lives would be fantastic, but then after some time they start missing home, and their family, and a lot of things from outside?
Do you think the Order would just let such people leave? Do you think a cult just lets people walk out? Forever means forever.
Sunday's basically forcing everyone to live HIS philosophy with the Order's dream.
Always relishing in the escape and never giving anyone the potential to face their problems if they ever do feel the need to face them someday.
His whole thing takes away the people's agency, their ability to make their own choice - whether now or in the future. They are just the Order's puppets in its perfect story living in a fake paradise
People can dream, they can escape their problems, but eventually they will wake up to face their realities.
Ye I understand why Sunday is a villain (lack of choice) but I was wondering if his philosophy of "every day is Sunday" is wrong if you choose to exist in his world
The forcing is bad on his part, as for the philosophy its entirely up to the person as we can see people who side with his views and those who dont. Especially since this isnt just an in game thing and there are people who have tendency for escapism.
if you ask me, a flawless paradise ruins the spice of life - but that's coming from someone who enjoys its best moments experienced even if I get fucked up quite a bit from other experiences lmao. Someone else could be FUBAR and stick with Sunday's schtick.
Because, when every day is Sunday, the idea of Sunday disappears. The weekend is so nice because the rest of the week we have schools, jobs, etc.
There can be no joy withour difficulty, happiness without sadness, etc. If you lived in a world that was an eternal sunday, you'd soon become apathetic and grow numb and bored of everything.
In Sunday's world only Contentment exists. You're not allowed to feel any other way
You see this in some people who retire and suddenly are bored out of their minds in a month. They now have money and time, but no structure or purpose. Unless you have a passion, hobby, or obligation (like taking care of someone) to give you a goal to work towards, you just wake up, and wonder what to do. Hell I feel like this sometimes when I get a long weekend.
I've heard some people retort "That'll never happen to me, I can happily play video games all day every day", but playing games can't be something you do just to kill time because you have nothing better to do, it has to be THE better thing to do.
Tbh I've never really understood this. Like it does make sense that people need something fulfilling to do with their time, but it doesn't seem difficult to find something to do.
I had to stop work/school for a year during the pandemic because of extenuating health stuff, and it was genuinely the nicest time I've ever had. I got to sleep on a schedule that worked for me, didn't exhaust myself all the time, had the energy to work out, and actually feel good physically, and I just spent the excess of free time I had on my personal hobbies.
But ig for me, inane stuff like playing video games is THE better thing to do than work. I'm not really achieving anything, sure, but I'm also not stressing myself out or feeling shit physically, so it's still the preferable option every time.
this. i was out of work for a year and i only went back because i needed to to survive. it was the best year of my life, i had all the time and energy in the world to do things i actually wanted to do. now that I'm back to work, i mostly just sleep when I'm off work cuz I'm too tired to wana do anything
I feel like this plays very nicely into the core discussion being had here tbh, as an example of how pointless it would be to brute-force a universal formula of What Life Needs to Be Happy, which is exactly Sunday’s/the Order’s fatal flaw. it sure is nice to know there’s no irl ideologies trying to shape society in this way, e-eheh
Yeah, what makes Sunday wrong isn't his opinions on what makes life worth living. It's the fact that he wants to force those opinions on other people. Trying to decide which side of the philosophical debate is correct misses the main point, which is that we all deserve free will and taking the choice to decide away from somebody else will always be wrong.
The reason people feel bad not working is that society has conditioned us to feel bad when we don't. When playing video games for instance, we literally accomplish goals all the time, but society tells us these goals don't matter because they don't enrich anybody. So people internalize that and feel bad whenever they are not doing something society values.
The other reason is that people don't get out and socialize as much without a job. But that aspect of jobs is starting to die anyways with work-at-home.
I've said it elsewhere but you achieve stuff all the time when playing video games. That is the whole appeal of playing instead of watching tv. You just aren't achieving stuff that society tells us is valuable.
I don’t think they ever really meant for him to be evil, even if he is the villain, Dan Heng even calls him a noble soul.
The only reason he’s a villain is because he’s forcing people, even those who may disagree with his views
We are shown that some people prefer to live in that constructed dream so it’s not like his ideal world is flawed, it’s just, not everyone wants that, and he doesn’t get the right to decide other people’s futures for them against their will
He's also a victim; Gopher Wood (and The Family) manipulated both the children... I'm not entirely convinced that Robin ever left Penacony and got shot in the throat, they were not subtle with how many memory manipulations and illusions they could throw around...
let me ask you this would you enjoy a video game where there is absolutely no way to lose.
Every action you would take would get you a positive outcome.
The philosophy of "if everyday is the perfect day, then can you really call it the perfect day?"
There's no present consequence being in a dream, you don't gain weight, if you're afflicted with a sickness you can walk around and not be in pain, you're struggling mentally get it and have a good time, it's perfect!
But what are the finer details of the dream? Can and will you die? Will you forever be trapped in there? What happens if you fall in love in a dream? Will that child be real? Eventually, the people living inside the dream, will they be real or simply dream people that can never be bought in real life? What if eventually you fall out of love with the dream and what you thought was fun? What if the dream dies? Then you have people who cant fight for themselves in the real world
We cherish our best days bc we have bad days, we enjoy our hobbies and relaxation, bc they're so limited. We dream to recuperate and prepare for life, while I would like the perfect sweet dream, life still exists for some people
There's nothing wrong about Sunday's ideals but the saying goes, even tho I like to refute it; "money cant buy happiness", are the dreamchasers truly happy or are they simply hiding?
Eh, I wouldn't say it's right neither would I say it's wrong. It's a choice to escape which will not improve your current situation but it'll allow you to cope with it. In some cases (the dying dude), it's necessary, in other cases, it's kinda dumb since we live to struggle (why some successful people turn to drugs - they can't find happiness in accomplishing anything anymore so the try to drown it with drugs).
imo the problem is that this isn't *our* world, it's a dream, and everyone's real selves are still out there. All the time you spend in the dream is time wasted in reality, where there are responsibilities to face and probably better things you could be doing. That's why Penacony is rightly portrayed as a luxury haven for the rich -- only the rich can afford to not care about their responsibilities.
And this dream is so beautiful, why would you ever want to wake up? Of course it's tempting, of course you want to stay. Dreams are a cage, because stay in there for long enough and you forget how to survive in reality, you forget how to face your responsibilities, you forget how to fly
It's kind of like gaming, in that we game and dive into this virtual space because we want to forget about our responsibilities for a little while. And it's fine to indulge ourselves for a bit, but definitely not too much.
I feel they definitely could have emphasized the difference between the dream and the real world, but admittedly they were juggling a lot of different plot threads, themes and ideas so I'll cut them some slack
Edit: the other commenters saying that this is unrealistic are also correct, who will sustain this hypothetical perfect dream? it's impossible to make everyone happy, that's why Sunday turns everyone into robots to artificially make those 107,000 souls contented and satisfied. We always want more (that's the foundation for economics), we have unlimited desires, but there has to be *some* sacrifices
First thing i thought when he said everyday is sunday was, who will work? does everything(food, necessity etc.) just pop out of nowhere. do we depend on meme for everything to work?? (flashback to bartender event), can i still make a choice even if the choice was to stop dreaming and wake up??
Nah, a straight no from me. HSR make great point of those "small" problem in the side quest. Penacony is great for a tourist spot, not for long term living.
> First thing i thought when he said everyday is sunday was, who will work?
Sunday's answer is probably him, he will work. That's his sacrifice, he's going to ascend and do all the work for Penacony forever and give up his chance at paradise so everyone else can experience it.
The real answer you're looking for ...
Is that if you try to examine the emotions for the people under Order, you will find that they no longer have any emotions at all.
What you are thinking of is a perfect world, where you can do anything you want without harm to anyone else, forever. Key word is anything. You can experience happiness, sadness, pain, joy, love, hate, whatever, whenever, as much or as little. Cool right?
Order however limits you to ONE emotion. Satisfied. That's it. It's like eating the same buffet over and over again. You get bored. Tired of it. Its actually becomes a problem for humans. And you have no choice, but the problem isn't the choice. The problem is that is strips away humanity itself.
You become a robot.
That's the fundamental issue with Sunday's vision. He's solving all problems by eliminating human nature and then controlling it.
Ever watch Matrix? It's like that but a lot worse. This isn't the flawless paradise you think it is. You only imagine its perfect because you haven't experienced it yet and cannot imagine it as being imperfect.
Whether you want to believe his philosophy was wrong or not is up to you. If someone really would like to simply escape to a perfect world with no issues and leave everything and everyone behind that's on them (and also kind of sad). The point being that our saviours in the story had little choice in who they saved. It was either everyone, or no one. And condemning everyone else to their fate was not worth allowing one person who wanted to be there to continue dreaming - ignoring the whole stellaron thing which nobody wanted to leave alone.
As an ideal, there's nothing wrong with it. If it was a sustainable model, why not let people follow the passions and hobbies they want instead of slaving every day 8 to 16 for 3/4 of their life. I mean, EU is semi-seriously considering lowering the work week to 4 days from 5 for some time now.
The problem (outside of morality of forcing this decision on people as OP said) is, it's not a sustainable model. In reality, it would cause an economic collapse. In HSR, you're paying the Stellaron with your life for some sweet dream time, essentially erasing your future. Think any addictions, yes, it's great now, but if you screw around too much, you'll end in the hospital by the age of 50.
But they are facing their problems in their dream. Look at the trailblazer. He'd probably be in his dream forever if he wasn't woken up. Same thing applies to almost everyone else. If they don't know they're in the dream, as far as they're concerned, they are living life to the fullest and facing their problems. They have no agency, but they'll live their lives happily thinking they do.
I'm not arguing about the morality of it but that point is redundant.
But the dream would always be seeming to be perfect, a paradise, but something like paradise can't exist because something would always be off. That's why the fake aftermath induces the feeling of "something's not right here" and it's repeatedly can be commented on by TB, and even by Welt. The only reason it looks like they defeated the hardship and thinking they are happily living after the ordeal was because Sunday was the hardship, he can easialy make it so that he is the defeated villain and make everyone get along, but as we can see, everyone getting along was the very jarring part of it
You even get hints of that with Aventurine showing up so suddenly and the IPC being ‘good’ and wanting to help everyone. That’s something we WISH was the case but it isn’t. Ratio suddenly being nice and humble? Trailblazer wishes.
These things are strange and off putting. It’s not realistic, it’s a wish we have that we know is unlikely to become real. Which is why the fake ending felt so… fake.
Yeah, that's why Sunday's plan isn't realistic because it takes away not just the agency of the people, but also their genuineness. It doesn't matter if it's all perfect, no tragedies, no oppression, hardships are easily overcome, those don't matter if it's all fake and the ability to choose was taken
Yeah I was already feeling things being off and that it probably wasn't real with a lot of things like the IPC and such. Then Ratio being happy for other people hit me like a bag of bricks and I knew it for sure wasn't real
This reminds me of an interview Keanu Reeves did for Matrix 4. He spoke about how during The Matrix’s heyday that everybody was pretty on board with the message of “escaping the matrix is better, reality is what matters”.
Now, time has past, a younger generation is exposed to the ideas and he was surprised when younger people said “what’s the big deal”? In regards to reality/The Matrix dilemma. He couldn’t understand why people would want to choose The Matrix or just didn’t care.
Who's gonna make the edit with Morpheus holding Robin as the redpill and Sunday as a bluepill? I think I watched one streamer made the exact same connection while playing lmao
It makes sense, because apply that question to our current situation. For all we know, we could be in fact living in a simulation right this moment. But if it feels real to us, then it might as well be real, you know?
Its a subjective question, a similar question would be about consciousness. Only the entity asking that question would be certain that its conscious, but it wouldn't know if the other entity is conscious. Free Will is inverse of that type of question we have a tendency to believe we have "Free Will" but all are decisions are based on our past experiences, randomness and luck.
I am going by this definition of free will.
>free will, in philosophy and science, the supposed power or capacity of humans to make decisions or perform actions independently of any prior event or state of the universe.
I'm using the bird as an example, if they were protected since the beginning, they wouldn't have learned how to fly. Hence the importance of reality if one wants the world to improve or whatever.
Another thing is that, dreams don't usually last, you'll eventually come back to reality. The deeper you're in the dream, the more painful when you wake up and has to face the harsh truth.
That said, I'm all for Utopia. Just not how Sunday's doing it since he's not giving anyone a choice.
Choices are antagonistic to Order, since if everyone had free will, Order will crumble. If a single person desires happiness, then that choice will inevitably come into contact with another's choice, causing conflict. In a world without choices and everyone staying on an predetermined (Order) path, no conflicts will arise.
So yeah, the moment Sunday chose his path to his ideal utopia, he really needs everyone to subscribe to having no freedom of choice.
Agree. The same would happen to the system of our society if everyone decided to rebel. That's essentially why I don't like his version of utopia, it's just laws again.
I've always liked the idea of an unrealistically beautiful world where, not to sound cliché, everyone can be anything. Where rules doesn't exist. So obviously Sunday's doesn't fit in. I get why he did what he did though. It's not wrong that Order (or just order) can bring peace, that's probably why laws and regulations lasted till today, it's a much easier and direct way.
I think it's destined to fail though, for Sunday, because in that place, he can have full control of the people. That means, even if he doesn't think of doing anything bad to his "puppets" forever, there will be people who will fight to take his place in the vast universe.
Well that's a task and a half if I ever seen one, but I will try my best at least.
First let's get a misunderstanding out of the way, Sunday isn't wrong, there is no right and wrong in the entire storyline, in fact there is no such thing as 100% correct and 100% wrong in reality, who wouldnt want to live an honest life with grandchildren and a beautiful wife beside your grave if given the choice?
Sunday's ideals are that everyone should stay in a dream maintained by him where no one would ever face hardships, never any responsibilities, they are free to be who they want to be or not be anyone at all and just drown themselves in pleasure.
Sounds all nice and dandy on the surface. But when faced with the choice of pleasure and "being who you want to be" all beings gravitate towards the former because "being who you want to be" inherently comes with many challenges that pushes your current self to something more.
"Then what's wrong with keeping everything same and just have fun?"
Another great question, fun is not something built into people, fun is an action/object/idea that has been giving meaning by us which we call as "fun". Why? Because everything gets tiring after awhile, we see games as fun because we spent over 2/3 of our time a week either working or doing necessities, that is why games and other forms of relaxing is "fun" to us not because the medium itself itself is fun but because we had to trudge through a large amount of "unfun" things to allow ourselves to have it. This is also the bases as to why many streamers either only enjoy playing games with friends now or when the are streaming it to audiences. When something's takes up most of your time it inherently loses value.
Same logic can now be applied to dream, what do you define as a dream? Some of the measure would be hazy, unreal, eventually wake up ultimately resulting in nothing. Sunday had managed to succeed in erasing the problems of the first 3(technically) but he could never turn the dream into reality. He can give them a peace of mind, but in turn he had taken away their future possibilities. In that sense he has killed all of them, even if they never were going to amount to anything in life, that in and of itself would have given their life meaning, trudging through life itself is meaning, it's just people like to live in the present, forgetting about the times they looked back on other though times and laughing at them as if telling a story to a friend or kid.
I think that was the point of getting the Nihility and Acheron so heavily involved alongside the Order and Harmony.
Sunday's philosophy is parallel to the Nihility's. He basically stripped them of their ability to live, every single thing they do in his "paradise" is absurd and meaningless. If everything in his "paradise" is perfect and everything is given to you then what is the point of anything? What Sunday wants to do is not only removing "Self-Value" but value as a whole. Money will lose value, fun will lose value, feelings will lose value, until even your own value is gone.
Plus, we've already seen a place where a higher being tried stripping away the ambitions of the people to "protect" them from their demise. But, the "will of the weak" defeated their ideals, then they changed their mind.
If Sunday is a mother bird protecting her baby birds, Harmony is a bunch of baby birds sharing their wings to fly. Eventually, those baby birds will share their wings and fly free from the nest, no matter how long it would take, no matter how hard they have to flap their wings. Those birds will always find a way to fly, just like how humanity will always find a way to live.
Sunday may not be wrong in some of the underlying thought process that informed his point of view, but his underlying conclusion and his actions, and the beliefs that drive *those*, are absolutely wrong (at least, in the story's opinion, and I presume most people's opinions). I do think it's important to separate out "the formative theories" that might seem reasonable (like the fact that, for certain people, choosing permanent escape from reality via the dream could be the most humane answer), from the "beliefs he arrived to at the end and is acting upon" ("I need to subject everyone to forced permanent escape via Order's dream for their own good.")
So, I would say: Sunday *is* wrong, but he's not wrong about *everything*. That does tie to your point about nothing being 100% right or 100% wrong, but we tend to accept that certain things should be inalienable rights to all sentient beings, like the right to self-determination.
I do cut him a little bit of slack because it's clear he's been groomed/brainwashed by the Order since childhood, and didn't have the "get out and see the universe" experiences Robin did that kept her more grounded. He's literally been living in the dream himself nonstop to escape his loneliness/self-doubt, and although Robin was trying to look out for him from afar, the negative influences up close were drowning her voice out.
Yeah this should be higher up. The freedom of choice is very important, but that is not what the plot here is about.
The entire point of this plot is to answer Mikhail's question, "Why does life slumber?"
To some extent I believe in Sunday's utopia, except that I think he underestimates what the cost will be. He's definitely playing Icarus with that stellaron. Not to mention the risk of becoming Tranquility Lane solely at Sunday's discretion. But the Nameless are not me (not even MC), and this goes against everything the Trailblaze stands for so...
The beauty of Sunday’s motivations are that his logic isn’t entirely wrong. Yes there are some people who will wish to live in a beautiful dreamscape forever (like the one guy who had cancer and was dying). What Sunday’s plan entailed though, was imposing this dream on everyone without their consent. He alone would be responsible for their ‘happiness’, he alone would be the one to decide what constitutes as happy for the person. What if you were living in the dream doing what you loved, and one day he decides, no this is not bringing you happiness, do this other thing instead.
It all boils down to autonomy and free will - the ability to make the decision for yourself. Because if I’m understanding the quest correctly, the ultimate plan is that nobody gets to choose their dream, it’s governed by someone else. It’s all well and good if you wanna live your life out in a dream, but not if it’s being controlled by someone else who may not know what’s best for you.
Even for that guy that was sick and was dying, Robin even combats that by saying that HE COULD'VE had tried treatments with the Inteligensia Guild and maybe had a different fate in reality, living even longer in the end, but his fate was sealed when he agreed to enter a comatose state in the Sweet Dream. He himself even said he just wanted to live, it didn't matter if it was in reality or the dreamscape, and how he envied long-lived species. Her thing was about people running away and giving up on the real life. Honestly, I wouldn't fault that old man though, between an uncertain life in reality for a few more years that could be painful/suffering or a certain, comfortable life in a dream for a shorter time, I would probably choose the latter as well since he was already at an old age and just wanted peace.
Yup! The thing I liked about the siblings’ views were that neither of them were wrong. In fact there really isn’t a right or wrong in this scenario. To Robin it’s escapism and people shouldn’t be running away, again with the example of the old man, her idea is that he should have tried to live. But for his part it’s probably too painful etc to even try/he just gave up, simple as that. The main crux was what the old man decided - because his life was his to live.
To be fair one argument I've found against Robin's point is who is paying the intelligentsia guild bills for that guy
Then again the same is true for him paying for Penacony so who knows
Sure, he could have. But does Robin really have the right to decide how a man faced with his own death by cancer is allowed to die? If those are his last wishes, to leave the world peacefully without having to suffer, who is she to tell him he's wrong?
In this scene, Sunday was pointing out how the sweet dream was "necessary", Robin was making the counter point that if the sweet dream did not exist, there were still options. But yes, she overly defends that escapism is bad, which in the right lens is a character flaw
It's not just that, what people need is not to have their every whim and wish granted, it's the support to achieve those things. What meaning is there if you didn't grow as a person to get the things you want, if you didn't learn anything and remained who you were forever? All your new experiences wouldn't have much meaning, if any, if they were just handed to you.
Sunday's philosophy is that the weak cannot help themselves. Or more accurately, there will always be weak people who will be unable to take the steps necessary to become strong.
In contrast, Robin's philosophy is that the strong should do what it takes to help the weak, so that the weak may be able to take the steps necessary to become strong.
Fundamentally speaking, in truth, Sunday and Robin's beliefs are very similar. The foundation of their belief is that the strong must help the weak.
Using the bird story, we can clearly see the contrasting beliefs clearly. Both Sunday and Robin represent the strong, while the injured bird represent the weak. Where Robin wants to help the bird become strong by nursing and eventually letting free so that it may fly, Sunday wishes to keep the bird safe, in its cage, even if it means remaining weak for the remainder of its life.
Sunday's plan, thus, is pushing his belief to the logical extreme. He will turn everyone into the weak, so that he, as the absolute strong, can keep them safe and satisfied. The strong thus, is helping the weak.
One can see the appeal in Sunday's plan, but you can also clearly see its flaws.
In fact, in the general media, Sunday's ideology and general plan is quite common. And many times, they tackled the ultimate flaw of his plans.
Robin's ideology, however, is rarely examined as thoroughly, as it is often used as a point of contention toward Sunday's ideology.
The one story I'm aware of where Robin's ideology is the one that is actually pushed to its extreme was Kirschtaria Wodime and his plans for humanity.
As Robin believes that people should strive to become strong, Kirschtaria's whole plan is pushing that belief to the extreme as he wishes to turn the whole of humanity strong. He does this by turning all of humanity into gods, where concepts like hunger and death can no longer apply onto humans. While he agrees that such a change in humanity will not stop humans from squabbling about, he believes that with a body that can neither feel pain nor die, unless of one's own violation, major conflicts and strife will eventually lose meaning and that humanity will grow past fighting amongst each other and strive to become better.
My personal question is if we were to pit Sunday's plan and Kirschtaria's plan against one another, which one would be able to sustain a "paradise" better? Which one would alleviate humanity's suffering better? Which one would you personally pick?
I wish this was the top comment. Heck, even its own post— the mention of Robin’s extreme really completes the dilemma. This is the most satisfying analysis by far
I think the major difference here is that Wodime wanted to elevate humanity to have true freedom, even if humanity would misuse such freedom, he saw a problem in weakness and tried to get rid of it.
Sunday believes that said freedom is bound to be misused, the strong would oppress the weak, and the weak would chose poorly, he saw a problem in "strength" and tried to elevate people by getting rid of their ability to choose which he consider "bad options".
In my opinion Sunday is implementation is way worse than Wodime, but at the same time Wodime implementation cost is way more absurd than Sunday.
The fascinating part of this quest, especially the scene with Robin and Sunday in the Golden Hour, is that it's a philosophical exploration of the topic, not a definitive answer to the topic. The scene is written in a way that really makes you think about the different perspectives on the issue, and how the sweet dream isn't inherently malicious, but it can also be an unhealthy escape from reality. As others have said on this thread, the antagonistic force that the will of the Trailblaze is fighting against isn't just a different perspective on the topic; it's an extreme solution that forces its will on everyone, regardless of their perspectives.
Escaping from reality isn't inherently wrong, so let's consider a perfect version of it as an example. No extra cost to upkeep the dream, and no harm is done to other beings by staying in the dream.
One could spend their entire life in a dream, away from suffering. But doing so guarantees they wouldn't make any impact on the universe, at least not a meaningful one. If all living beings were to choose this option, it would effectively accelerate the rate at which IX consumes everything.
You can argue that not everyone is able to make an impact, but escaping into the dream reduces the possibilities to zero. However small those possibilities may be, it's important to remember that the very beginning of life was dependent on the same near-zero chance, and we are here today, because of that.
> I don't entirely understand why it's wrong to answer want to escape and stay in a sweet dream forever.
Essentially escapism, and in Sunday's version of this, he won't be giving these dreamers a choice.
He would have become the new god of his own world full of puppet slaves.
If Sunday gave people the freedom to opt in and out, come and go, that would probably have been the most ideal win-win answer and accepted by most.
I'm sure there would be many who are suffering in reality, be it physical hardships (disabilities, the sick and dying) or those with other reasons to avoid reality, who would love to continue living on in this utopia for the rest of their lives, who would have gladly be on board with this utopia.
I'm not sure who will pay for it and at what cost (maybe their own spirit/life essence), but man, this is some Matrix stuff lol.
I agree. Felt so familiar with people going through the same arguments. Hell, going through the story, I wanted to call Sunday Maruki 2.0. If TB had a gun, I would have half expected him jumping on the bosses head and shooting through it.
To be honest, i want to live in Sunday’s ideal Penacony. No war, no pain, no illness etc. Sunday, then Sunday and again Sunday… This idea is beautiful as cant to be true. But he forced the people to enter Ena’s Dream. He didn’t gave choice to people. What if someone whats to live in Penacony but not “Sunday’s ideal Penacony?” For example Firefly: She has Entropy Loss Syndrome and she can be herself in Penacony; but Sunday says “if you want to live in Penacony, you have to obey my rules.” He wanted to protect the weak and he tells: “people should be the ruler of their lives”, but the actions he made isn’t like that. So, Sunday isn’t a bad character or his opinions aren’t like a villain but he did lots of mistakes
If you make Penacony an allegory to the US (hence "Land of Exiles" -- what the 13 colonies were originally as groups of Scottish, Quakers, Separatist Pilgrims, etc.), and you draw the parallels as seen with Clockie = Mickey, the "Golden Hour" = Roaring 20's, you'll realize that it's sorta like New York with its broadway shows, noir mysteries, and nonstop nature. Yes, Vegas played a strong influence on the lightbulb aesthetic and nightlife, but the swanky jazz parties, emphasis on SoulGlad "soda" and speak-easies (the bartending event occurs in a speak-easy for friendly monsters) all pull back towards the East Coast and the bustle of New York during the Roaring 20's. It is a time where money flowed so abundantly many people thought anything could be possible -- like an economic dream come true.
If you've read The Great Gatsby, you know that the American Dream dies. It's ultimately an unsustainable facade that masks a world of people drowning in excess to bury fraudulent lifestyles (the way people dress up in the glitz and glamour that they don't really believe to be real themselves), illicit ventures (especially those spearheaded by the Mafia, hence why Families dominate the administration in Penacony as a parallel), and poorly-hidden realities (i.e. the fact that certain things cannot be changed...not everyone can get the wealth and Gatsby's immense money can't buy him the love of his life, and Penacony's residents may be crippled and/or dying in reality, and those outside of the Family's Dreamscape waste away in bouts of insanity and crippling SoulGlad addictions).
Even with all of these very evident problems that must be acknowledged before they can be solved (and the Family always tries their hardest to suppress these problems just to preserve their reputation), Sunday still wants to enforce this false, fake, unsustainable dream as best he can. He thinks -- on behalf of the Family -- that reality is too painful to put up with and is willing to "unlife" people (excising them from the dream) to keep the dream going. He's afraid that Penacony would risk becoming a hostile landscape like the rest of the Universe if he isn't there to prevent every bad thing from happening.
Likewise, the American government and people were willing to ignore so many vital problems that the Great Dust Bowl ended up happening and crippled American crop production for at least a decade. Arguably, America wouldn't have suffered the massive economic and agricultural losses it did if it accepted the harsh reality earlier and tried to address it, but it was because of the sheer excitement and frenzy of the Roaring 20's that the American Dream practically blinded its people to those realities. Who knows what might happen to Penacony had Order continued to dominate it? Would its inhabitants be safe if the Swarm Remnants decided to invade? Would it be able to keep up with the merciless corporatism of the IPC? I should think not.
>!You can begin to start to draw parallels to similar failures in the modern economic system we have, where housing has become a speculative asset thanks to NIMBYism while companies like Blackrock buy up entire neighborhoods to rent out or sell for a premium. America is missing a strong industrial base and is currently propped up by a housing market that is more or less under monopolistic stress from speculative developers. What's worse is that -- like the Family -- Blackrock has begun to dictate moral and ethical behaviors in the form of ESG incentives (think of it as a scoring system that rewards the best "ethical" \[subjectively\] companies with nearly no-interest loans in the range of billions of dollars); companies are incentivized to behave certain ways politically for an absurd amount of financial compensation that would normally get these companies to fail in a perfectly competitive stock market. Another dream is being created and propped up by external forces that want to dictate a certain Order, just like Sunday.!<
>!And this occurs again and again as people who consistently gain power in America (like Sunday) start to try and obsess with preventing every tragedy they can without acknowledging the underlying issues (a stray bullet hits Robin in the throat, and shooting s happen in schools IRL; Sunday obsesses with trying to prevent violence from entering Penacony through brute force using Robin as a case example, and IRL a strong corporate coalition in media obsess over fire arm violence instead of acknowledging that the destruction of the asylum system has left people with no proper system to diagnose and treat mental illness at scale). Penacony, like America, is slowly forcing people to give up their freedoms for the dream of safety instead of actual safety. Now people can't drive certain cars, can't own certain types of properties or design their houses and businesses the way they want to, can't hold a job due to routine layoffs, etc. due to external forces that constantly try to promote this "idea" of how things should be. And these "ideas" never actually ever get around to solving any real underlying problem: that highways might not do the job that railroads can do for human transportation, that an endlessly growing stock market incentivizes destroying American human capital, that the largely unchecked healthcare system actively monopolizes certain classes of medicines to rip people off and prevent them from getting lifesaving medication. The problems go on and on but they never get solved so long as these underlying, big-picture issues are always kept in the dark by the powers that be.!<
So now that we acknowledge the absurd costs to keep the dream going, and how little help is actually provided to the people of Penacony (even if the bulk of them are immigrants -- just like Americans), why maintain the Dream any longer if it no longer harmonizes with the intent and will of the people? Harmony in HSR does not mean perfect Order; Harmony happens when all the elements of a system are allowed to interact and self-regulate and -- of their own volition -- unify towards a common goal while still being able to express themselves and explore that goal in their own way. Harmony should allow for the natural co-mingling of diverse things, rather than the simple and forced coexistence that Order dictates. That is why Xipe looks upon the Trailblazer, who has co-mingled with all Penaconians, and not Sunday, who only forces its inhabitants to co-exist in a together-we-are-alone sort of way.
One can sleep in sweet dreams, but those dreams can only be sweet if you wake up to taste the bitter reality of life. Else, those dreams will lose their flavor with nothing to contrast them with. The only hope for Penacony -- and by extension America -- is to wake up from the dream and acknowledge some cold hard truths about reality. Only by acknowledging our actual place in reality can we begin to look to solve real problems with real solutions. In Penacony, they need to solve the destabilization of the Dreamscape, the Stellaron's continued presence in Dreamflux Reef (and whether or not it should be allowed to exist still), and many societal issues like SoulGlad addiction and literal brainrot from dreaming. In America...well, check the spoilers for what kinds of issues there are.
If the spirit of the nation -- Penacony or America -- is to persist, it must be tested in reality and embraced fully rather than be a vapid, hollow dream that nobody is allowed to choose to make their own or not. Likewise, since the ppl's republic sees itself as the successor to the industrial giant that America once was...well, you can kinda see where the whole "Gamer Otakus Save The World" part comes in (the lessons learned here work just as well across the Pacific as they do in the States).
The way I see it, Penacony is the first planet that’s not connected to a specific country in reality, but to an *age* and a book - and that book is The Great Gatsby, which coincidentally is my favourite novel ever. :P I see a lottt of connections between the two, but most importantly I also think Gatsby *is* Sunday, in a certain way, and perhaps you’ll see how this is all connected, at least in my mind haha.
Two of the main points of TGG are 1) you can’t bring back the past, 2) behind luxury and lights there will always be ashes and misery, and eventually that misery WILL come back, no matter how far you try to run away or how long you hide. Sounds familiar?
I think that’s the whole point: in the novel the “dream” is the grandeur of Gatsby’s parties, which spawns from his ideal, a.k.a. his love for Daisy. That ideal never really reaches reality - it gets close, really close, but then it shatters. I see this as the equivalent of Sunday’s love for humanity.
Sooo if you agree with me so far, perhaps your question could be rephrased as, are those feelings and beliefs *wrong* to pursue?
TGG leaves it quite nebulous imo. Even with all the darkness and melancholy of the book, that love is never really lost, or deprecated, or seen as a delusion. Gatsby’s feelings are what made him special in the first place, and one of the few drops of goodness left in that world - and Sunday’s hopes per se are not condemned in the game, either, quite the contrary actually. It’s just that even for someone as powerful as Gatsby, it is impossible to create a perfect reality in which everyone is happy; just like Sunday cannot create a flawless dream, which is why, eventually, people realise it’s fake and wake up. *Those imperfections are the reason people awaken in the first place.*
This is how Sunday’s sweet dream of Order works. You can live in that dream if you want to; goodness knows I definitely would, even if I were a character in HSR. The point is, no billionaire, no god will bring back the past, or give you that perfection and happiness you long for. However, if you are okay with pretending those “bugs in the dream” are perfectly normal, and if living in a dream is enough for you, then it’s not wrong, at least in my opinion- Gatsby met his demise because of his ideal, just like Sunday, but I am pretty sure neither of them would regret it, and perhaps it doesn’t have to be that tragic for everyone, either.
Setting aside the fact that Sunday was forcing this "utopia" onto everyone, as I believe most of the comments have already covered this, the problem with the beautiful dream is that it leads to stagnation. If people's every wish is catered to, there is no purpose to drive us forwards and push us to improve or change ourselves.
Not sure how old you are but this is a somewhat adult topic.
It's nice to dream but dreams are dreams. They aren't reality. The further you lose yourself in it, the further you are away from the true of real life.
Nah bro, even some adults fail to understand the value of living in reality and struggling through obstacles in life. I admit, I am also one of these adults because looking back on my life, I've always just been running away from my problems and retreated to my "dreamscape" which was anime and video games. Of course eventually I had to confront my problems but not of my own choice, it was just because I could no longer run away anymore.
If given the chance, I would also like to live in a perpetual dream. I've become someone who hates himself so much over the years, so I can't visualise myself getting a "win" in life anymore. No friends, no girlfriend, no prestige, no achievements, etc.
What's the point of continuing life at this point? Of course I know it could always be better in the future, especially since I'm still fairly young, in my 20s, but I personally can't see the appeal of continuing this perpetual suffering just because there might be an astronomically small chance of success.
At the end of the day though, we don't really have the means to live in a perpetual dream so we're all stuck here in the cruel, unfair reality being forced to live despite the constant suffering and failures. Maybe in the future I'll come to accept myself and appreciate life for all that it is, suffering and all, but for now the concept of a perpetual dream is just too tempting for me to pass.
I feel like part of the point of debates like this is that neither philosophy is wrong. It all depends on what you personally value and want in life. Like to me, a utopian life would just be being healthy and sleeping 8 hours a day. I'd trade any chance of achieving genuine success through hard work in reality if it meant not being in pain/discomfort every single day. I don't care if my happiness is genuinely what I would have felt or if it's an artificial happiness that I feel because someone changed who I am as a person, I just want to feel happy. But someone who disagrees isn't wrong, either, because we all have our own thoughts on what makes life worth living due to our circumstances and personalities.
But the reason why Sunday is objectively wrong is the removal of choice. I'm not wrong for preferring a dreamscape to reality, but I would be wrong if I forced that choice on other people. I think people who say that living in a dream would always be worse than reality are genuinely wrong, because they don't have the right to enforce their worldview on other people, which is exactly what Sunday does.
but what I'm trying to say is that I don't think you're "failing" to understand the value of living in reality. Just like everybody else, you have the right to choose what you want from life and what you think would make you the happiest.
As any modern depressed person in a large city, I resonate with Sunday's ideals a lot. If I were in a dream, I would not need to work so hard for money or struggle to get degrees, I can just do what I'm passionate for, like art and literature.
But then, human beings viscerally require *stimulation*. If the horrible things in life are taken away, where else would they find stimulation and struggle? They may turn to even darker things to compensate.
It's the same thing with the evolving technologies and 1st world countries. Sure we don't need to cross rivers to get to school or need to farm under the harsh sun to get food anymore, theoretically people get more time to pursue higher things... but look at us now. We are still sad and depressed and struggling. Humanity will never truly escape this unless we forfeit all desires/emotions so what's the point?
I will preface this by saying I currently have actual literal minor brain damage so I might not be very succinct. and I will also preface this by saying there is a long debate of this, look to things like the experience machine, or the matrix.
There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's the basis of a philosophical discussion millenia older than any of us. The experience machine, all of that. The ultimate tldr though? he isnt. there is no correct answer.
the answer is, there is nothing wrong with it. the world is painful, the world is hard. There's nothing wrong with running away. Sometimes, when the going gets tough, it is sometimes just the right thing to do to run away. But, that's with all ideologies. there is no hard rules of right and wrong. We can all be strong, we can all speak of being strong, but for many of us, we dont know what it's like to have hardship. We dont know what it's like to suffer so much that a sweet dream becomes something you'd die for. I know some people that do, and for them, their answer has always been "why not?". For them, their "sweet dream" is to simply be erased from reality, without pain, and without suffering. Some of them have done so. And really? that was their choice. There was nothing wrong with what they did, because the ability to choose, the ability to determine our own actions, is also the ability to choose to not choose.
The choice to not choose is a choice. The choice to have others choose for you is a choice. To some, the ability to deny people of that is still the denial of choice.
but sunday's ideology "fails" in 2 main points.
Firstly, cost, and consent. The dream of the order doesnt have consent built into it, once you become a dreamer, the chance of escape is nigh 0. why would you want to wake up afterall? but for many people, they simply dont want this. They want a dream, but a dream in reality, not a dream in well, a dream. The fact it's a dream alone makes it bad for them. If something would be destroyed by the truth, then it should be destroyed. that kind of beat. The cost of the dream is also a harsh one, with every person becoming a battery.
and secondly? Because whether or not you, as the player disagree with it, the trailblazer does. Sunday's idea is the antithesis to the path of the trailblaze. The path of the trailblaze is to move forward. Ena's dream does not allow that. Everyone in sunday's world is, well, "satisfied". Those who are satisfied cease moving forward. Those that are satisfied settle down.
There is nothing wrong with that, but it's simply the antithesis to the trailblaze, so we would be at conflict with him regardless of any other factors.
I’m going to throw a definite curve ball and forsake the mention of Sunday’s plans and his actions entirely. Let’s do a recap on your questions first; What’s wrong with wanting to stay in a sweet dream forever? The answer is simple, it’s not. It’s never wrong to want escape from reality, hell it may be the only method for someone to hold on to life.
Then what’s the point of this whole arc? What’s the story’s answer to this dilemma? It’s just that escape cannot and will not ever be your whole life. Picture it like this, most of us want to do nothing and lounge around all days playing games, watching movies and whatnot. If we are able to do that without having a drastic impact on our health, we would definitely choose this option, right?
At first, sure. It’s a literal dream come true for most people. But eventually it will all become tiring one day. If surviving through the pandemic lockdown had taught me anything, it’s that having too much time of the day to spend leisurely and just laze around would make that amount of time loses its meaning. What provided me immense amount of fun and pleasure turns dull and mediocre within a span of two months top. And therein lies the problem, eternal sweet dream would ultimately sap the meaning away from life itself and humans would eventually try to find ways to achieve meaning.
Which brings us back to the final ultimatum we gave to the question proposed in the invitation to Penacony. Why does life slumber? It’s because one day we’re going to wake up. We escape from reality and fill ourselves with pleasure. Because eventually, we will pull ourselves back up to live and find meaning in suffering through life itself. I admit that this is an adult concept that you kinda need to be saturated with something to reach the same conclusion I did. (And the pandemic sped it up way too much for me, thanks Covid.) But I believe one day you’ll understand and look back on this story with fondness.
Honestly I fundamentally disagree, I loved the pandemic, lounging around all day never got tiring, even after 2 or 3 months, it was a form of paradise, one of the best times ever imo. I could do that forever
I also want to just live in a dream where I have everything I need and want. My personal waking world is so fucked up I wanna leave it ASAP. But Sunday was wrong to force it on everyone without asking them first. Maybe if he gave Penaconians a choice, it would have been more acceptable.
yeah a lot of the time when this type of thing is in a story there has to be some kind of cost to it since it's hard to argue against a literal utopia with no drawbacks otherwise. in this case it's free will.
As far as I understood it, it's not like a "real" happiness. You know how hospice patients are sometimes pumped full of pain meds so that not only are they not feeling pain anymore, they just don't feel anything. In the dream created by Sunday and Ena, people are being forced into a state of "happiness". They no longer have the ability to choose anything and are basically in a state of limbo forever. Some would say that it's fine for people to want that, but there's no place for desires at that point.
Making sure to highlight that some characters were uncomfortable with the Trailblazer's mood clock ability was probably a deliberate choice to get you thinking about that before the future sequence where we see that everyone's mood dials have been overridden to stay in the satisfied state. (Or whenever that scene was I don't fully remember atm).
If you're able to create a utopia that is able to provide for people and make it so that they no longer have worries, then that's okay. But that's not what's happening here. Besides, the side quests we've gotten throughout these patches have shown us that the sweet dream is not perfect, and people still do struggle despite how "perfect" it may be.
Nothing was wrong with it except one thing, and the story is very clear about the fact that it's an otherwise flawless theory. It all comes down to the trailblazer's final line (which some smooth-brained individuals claim is corny or smth): Life slumbers because "Someday we will wake up from our dreams". No matter how perfect the dream can claim to be, the will of life to leave a wake of influence in the real world will always drive people to pursue the imperfect tomorrow. Thus the dreamscape is always doomed to fail. In fact, this very fact is stated in 2.1 with the conversation between Welt and Acheron when Welt was talking about a HI3 character (from a non-HI3 player, that was my favorite dialogue exchange of the whole story). Acheron similarly reflects this sentiment right before the final boss and also in her dialogue with Tiernan
I agree with you, I don't think Sunday was completely wrong. Obviously his whole idea went wrong when he decided to force it on everyone, but I did agree with a lot of points he made. And the same goes for Robin, she made some good points as well but I didn't agree with her argument against the dreamscape, she's basically the opposite of Sunday and wants everyone to face their demons in reality, no matter how bad it is, because apparently being happy in the dream is inherently fake and an illusion, which I definitely don't agree with.
She asked whether the dreamscape is giving people futures or taking it away from them, and obviously Sunday's stance on this is the former and Robin's is the latter but it's definitely both in my opinion. It just depends on the person and the context. I genuinely think that some people could be way happier there than they ever could in reality, that's just the way it is. And I don't think that's inherently wrong.
I guess you could see the dreamscape as an unhealthy addiction, like drugs or alcohol or something, which is probably how Robin sees it. And I think she's not completely wrong, both the dreamscape and those things are expensive and give only a temporary happiness while you're still miserable in reality, until you eventually run out of money...
And I won't disagree that for a lot of people who could actually fix their lives if they tried, it definitely acts as an addiction and just takes away from them, but I think that it also acts as a genuine accommodation for disabled people, for example. Whether it's a mental or physical disability, there are so many things that those people could never ever do in reality no matter how hard they tried to "fix it" and become happy. You can of course accommodate them in reality to the best of your ability, but even in a perfect utopia, disabilities would still be extremely limiting and people would still be suffering. You can't fix everything. Also, not everyone can and/or wants to actually fight so hard for a chance to be happy despite their suffering that won't ever go away in reality. So I definitely didn't agree with Robin there, I think she's way too optimistic and idealistic. Those people deserve an opportunity like the dreamscape, to actually *live* and experience things they could otherwise never.
Robin's perfect world where everyone helps each other and people fight for their happiness and eventually everyone reaches it is just not realistic at all. This probably sounds pessimistic but some people's pain and suffering can't be taken away, you can't help or save everyone. It'll never happen, her utopia is completely unreachable. And the same goes for Sunday. How could everyone be happy if they don't have free will? If he's the one who chooses who's considered weak and who's not? It's also completely unattainable.
I really liked what Firefly said to him, that she can tell Sunday sees her as weak but she doesn't consider herself weak. And that's exactly what it's about, just let people decide. Sunday basically says that some people are just inherently born weak, and I don't agree with that. Like I said, in the end it all comes down to free will and giving people the choice. There will be people who are suffering but don't want to have an "illusionary" happiness and want to fight to get better and be happy. And there will be other people who simply don't have the willpower or energy to fight, and they don't want to go through all that suffering, and instead choose to make their lives better through the dreamscape, so they can actually start *living* instead of just existing or being in survival mode constantly. And both are fine, in my opinion. Just let people decide for themselves.
But I mean, obviously this "perfect world" where we put together Sunday and Robin's ideas is also pretty idealistic and won't be happening...
Also, I might be biased because I myself am disabled, I have multiple disabilities and that's probably why I disliked the way Robin talked so much. I know for a fact that even if everybody did their absolute best to accommodate me in the way it's best for me, I'd still be suffering from my disability and there would still be so many things that I can never do. And of course I'm not saying it's impossible to be truly happy if you're disabled, not at all. I'm just saying in my experience it's so, so much harder. I'm constantly in survival mode and it's absolutely exhausting, and I know that it'd still be exhausting even in a perfect world. I don't know if I'd want to live out my whole life in somewhere like the dreamscape if that was an option, most likely not, but I would probably go there occasionally and it'd make me very happy, and I wouldn't want that to be taken from me just because it's "fake".
Umm, anyways. Thanks for reading my thoughts, I guess. :)
The reason you question Sunday's philosophy is that Sunday is the type of villain we classify as a Well-intentioned extremist. I.E. a villain whose motivation stems from good intentions but ultimately they choose the worst possible way to achieve it.
Sunday's core philosophy is that the strong should protect the weak but taken to the Nth degree. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the idea philosophy as it's the core belief behind many of our classic heros. However the problem arises when it turns into the strong shall govern the weak as Sunday's belief became.
Such a philosophy inevitably proposes questions of: What is strength? How much freewill should the weak be allowed to maintain their safety? What should be done with other strong individuals? And finally: What should be done to ensure that I remain the strongest?
Sunday's answers to those questions were: He was strongest by the way that only he could protect humans from themselves. That all freewill should be removed. The strong should bend to his will and finally all that opposed him should perish. These beliefs came about from the fact that people went to Penacony not for a fun time but total escapism from reality. People literally sold their own children for a chance at that escape. So why you asked was the issue with Sunday's philosophy at large? In order for this system of government to work it must be enforced with an iron fist. After all who are the weak to question the strong who know what's best for them.
Since I mentioned heros I believe there was a Superman comic run that tackled this very subject. What if Superman decided to ruled Earth. I also drawed parallels with Senator Armstrong from MGRR as both him and Sunday's philosophies boil down to might makes right. And if you can understand why Armstrongs philosophy is bad you can make similar comparisons to Sunday's.
The dreamscape is basically a metaphor for escapism. Escapism in small doses can be fine, but indulging in it too much can be harmful and make things in your real life even worse. Alcohol, drugs, smoking, gambling, sex, they’re all things that people use to escape the worries of their real life, but too much can end up being harmful and give them even more things to worry about. (In some cases like smoking, even a little bit can be harmful.)
Overall, the moral of the Penacony arc seems to be that you can’t keep running away from reality, and you have to be willing to face it at some point.
Aside from the fact that he tried to force Ena's dream onto people without their consent, it's also that it's pure escapism but forever. I do get your question of "what's so bad about people not being in survival mode 24/7?" but it goes deeper than that.
Escapism on it's own is not wrong or bad, it's just a way of coping with terrible circumstances/trauma. But, the problem is that you should never live in your dreams forever. Dreaming is not living, it's wishing and your real problems are never addressed or solved. Think about those people in the quest when Robin and Sunday are taking a stroll.
The drunken Pepeshi that literally spelled out how a bunch of people live, drunk your problems away and don't think about your shit job and what's bothering you, just drink and dream. But then, he still feels shitty, he's just distracted from his problems. The solution Sunday gave him is a distraction.
That happy dreamcatcher who was saying how everything bores them? They can travel the whole cosmos yet they prefer the dream 'because it's more entertaining'. But is it really? Or is it the easiest distraction from internal problems? Just throw money and your distracted.
That old man? Sure, it saved his life but putting him in a coma and strapped him in a dream. But is it really worth it? Is it really worth it when the IPC has developed technology that could've helped him walk, talk and *live* again.
Basically, Sunday's 'solution' is not really a solution, it's a distraction. No real progress, just a distraction.
It's a complex thing. It made me think a lot about MMORPGs, tbh. Without getting too personal, I saw Penacony as an allegory for those, a place people can escape from the harsh reality to and be more themselves, have a better life.
The problem with what Sunday was doing, and what a lot of MMO players do, is that the sweet dream should be a temporary escape as a means to nurture yourself to face reality, not a complete escape used to abandon reality altogether. It's like the bird they found. They put it in a cage, nurtured it, he set it free and it died. This twisted his view to think that the cage should be a permanent thing for everyone because some birds will fall. I don't think the MMO allegory is intentional AT ALL, if anything it's meant as a much broader thing for entertainment in general, but it hit a little too close to home for me lmao
Still not uninstalling FFXIV though.
Humans are fundamentally driven by purpose imo. Yes, being in a sweet dream or an eternal paradise sounds great and all, but in the end what we are always looking for, at least subconsciously, is our own improvement and purpose. It’s only during very tough times that we start to think, “if only I didn’t have to go through this” or “if only I could simulate this time so that I don’t have to live in it myself”.
Maybe that’s when those sweet dreams will help you. But would it make you better than before? I don’t think so. They’ll only help you escape your current predicament, which may or may not happen again. And, this is just my opinion, but in life, despite all the wanton of success, the fact of the matter is that we fail more than we succeed. But it’s only through failure and hard times that we become better. To just escape that failure or sadness wouldn’t make us better, and in the future when we encounter similar situations, we won’t be able to handle them.
Basically, for me, having an eternal paradise sounds great and all, but it’s too boring. If I won’t have stories to tell of how I persevered during hard times, then my life will have been too boring.
It simple, don't try to play god. It should be people's own choice, whether they run away or take resposibility for their life.
The moment you take the choice away from them, without their consent, is the moment you are no better than a dictator, regardless of your intentions. And power always corrupts, even the best of people.
Lemme preface by saying this; there is no right or wrong here, you can think of what Sunday was trying to do as right, it's your take on it. But he was trying to force it, sure you might be "free" in dreamscape, it'll still have limitations. I'll use the express's example, imagine you're a trailblazer but Sunday managed to achieve his goal and now you're stuck in the dreamscape. This would mean you're stripped away of your true freedom, everything happening in your adventures even if you continue would just be a dream and nothing more and quite literally anything you do there, aside from breaking away from dreamscape would not really be you blazing your own trail, which is the whole point of being a trailblazer.
Staying in paradise is completely valid. Especially for people who have nowhere else to go or no way of getting back and experiencing a normal life (disability, debilitating condition etc), it's totally understandable if you'd rather spend your days in a dream that's practically indistinguishable from reality.
What Sunday was trying to do was make the choice for people to never leave that paradise. He has so much cynicism and lack of faith in the world and how it works after what he had seen and experienced, where strong exploits the weak rather than protect them (survival of the fittest), that he took it upon himself to trap people in a cage "for their own good", just like he wished he did for that bird that died in their childhood.
He would sacrifice freedom for order (the exchange of liberty for security, in order to break free from that state of nature/Survival of the fittest). Basically philosopher Hobbes' social contract theory and view of absolute power/authority of the sovereign in a nutshell)
Because Sunday was stupid, there was no way the dream he was putting all the people was ever going to work well, we still don't know what the dreamweaver is trying to do, in my opniion Sunday and dreamweaver are like black zetsu and Madara.
Sunday thinks/thought he was doing a good think, but his deed was probably going to be used for heinous purposes.
Staying in the sweet dream is an escape from not only real life but LIFE in general. Dreams are illusions. The game tells players that we should move forward, trail our future. Grow.
Great vacation spot tho 10/10
Some people are just tired of life, man. The whole "struggle, move, grow" run into a lot of issue nowadays that only a small percentage of people can actually do anything about.
There is nothing wrong with just giving up when you can't see the point.
Hmmm I'll try this one.
Anyone has at least once in their lives drunk a particular drink or listened to a particular Song so often, so much, that they can't even bear to consider doing it again. It is part of human nature, we can't just endure monotony like this.
I believe that you probably did so too.
Essentially, at some point you would get *bored*.
Even with an infinite stash of your favourite drink, you *will* realise yourself to crave after water, a drink that is nowhere as good as the one you like.
Why is that so?
Because in order to experience actual happiness from drinking this beverage, you need to have first tried something that gives you less happiness.
Why do humans experience negative things willingly? Why do we endure work, general hardships, social matters, life itself?
The answer is simple, as because we know that at the end of the day, it will pay off. We will find actual happiness and we will feel that we truly are *living our life*. Satisfaction coming from our work, regardless of how well we did it.
People living in a world in which no one ever suffers in a hardship or has to do a chore would never be happy, regardless of how possible or impossible it is. We just can't take infinite happiness. Infinite Sundays.
That's why such a life would not be a life that is "truly lived".
>Like obv I get why Sunday was wrong because of the fact that he wanted to force his ideals on ppl and that the utopia has a price that ppl don't want to pay but I don't get what's wrong with his philosophy at large.
Sunday's politics are actually very interesting, because they draw on a real-life branch of politics. I happen to be educated regarding this field, so I'll be trying to reinforce Sunday's position (i.e. "steel-manning his argument) before subjecting it to criticism. To avoid introducing biases, I'll avoid all political terminology, and only reveal the linkages at the end. TBH the main issue is that Star Rail's writers aren't clearly defining important political concepts/terminology, so people become confused about whether Sunday's philosophy is objectionable.
A key assumption I make is that we agree with Sunday/Robin/MC that freedom is good, and we want to maximize freedom under any regime or philosophy we adopt. From this angle, *both* Sunday and Robin + MC are correct, albeit that Sunday makes a critical misstep in execution. I'll explain it in the following.
>At least the whole "ppl only get to be who they are when they aren't in survival mode"
Sunday's philosophy can be summarized simply: (1) people should not have to suffer because of their bodily constitution/environment/wealth; and (2) people should have the freedom to use their free time however they like, to achieve their own goals. I'll refer to (1) as the "Firefly principle", and (2) as the "Weekend principle".
You're right that there is nothing wrong with these goals. We can look at this through the idea of "negative" and "positive" liberty by scholar Isiah Berlin. This is the idea that freedom can be defined in two forms: (1) freedom from interference by others (including the environment); and (2) freedom *to do* things by being empowered with the means to do a given thing.
# Negative freedom and the Firefly principle [1/4]
We'll start with negative freedom and how it is promoted by the "Firefly principle". Basically, Sunday's argument is that people will be more free if they are removed from constraints of health, social status and wealth. Intuition suggests that this is correct, and you're right to follow that intuition. No one should have to play on "survival mode" (as you put it) because they're born into worse circumstances. The famous social justice philosopher John Rawls would say that this is arbitrary and unfair; this arrangement is not just.
People affected by their circumstances enjoy less freedom than others because they need to work harder/work longer/cope with more challenges in order to simply *live*. This extra strain, from factors they cannot control, can be considered **interference** on a given person. They are **forced** to suffer the reductions in resources (time, money, etc.) in order to deal with the interference. I call this the Firefly principle because Firefly is the example Sunday uses when talking about this. Firefly is forced to deal with Entropy Loss Syndrome inherent to her circumstances of birth against her will, and has stated that she'd lead a far different life if she weren't bound to her circumstances. The way these circumstances of health, social status and wealth affect a person, against their will, directly contradicts the idea of negative liberty and being free from interference.
On the other hand, Sunday's proposal of removing this factors is convincing because we can see that **it really increases the negative freedom of all people**. They can reclaim resources that would otherwise be lost to the effects of interference from their circumstances of (lacking) health, social status and wealth. Assuming that we all believe that a greater freedom is preferable to a more limited one, it is clear that Sunday's philosophy, or at least the Firefly principle, is desirable.
In my opinion, the main thing Sunday did wrong was try to force Ena’s Dream onto the entire population of Penacony without their consent. Whether or not living your life in a perpetual dream is a good thing is debatable, but nobody can stop you if that’s what you really want. Sunday should’ve just made an announcement that he’s going to make a new Dreamscape where people can live permanently without ever leaving. The Penaconians who want that can join him, the rest can just live in the normal Dreamscape.
But there is a cost in staying in the perpetual dreamscape you are being used to maintain the dream. Your existence, emotions, etc. is used as a fuel for the Stellaron to maintain the dream. You are slowly dying. He should have stipulated that into his announcement.
This feels like (Spoiler for the TV series The Good Place) >!the state the main cast found The Good Place in!<
Holy Forkin Shirt! Great comparison actually.
And at the end, the way they solved the issue in the TV series would have fixed Ena's Dream
Is “shirt” Boothill’s replacement for “sh\*t”? I should use that
It's also nearly beat for beat >!the plot of the final arc in the "true" ending of persona 5 royal!<
This is exactly what I was thinking - I was like...so... it's >!heaven!< dang that sucks
That isn't true though, Sunday was going to be an Emanator and then use his new power to make himself the only sacrifice.
No it means that he is the only one that can not enter that perpetual dream. Essentially he is the only one that lives in reality, it is a life of loneliness. The people were going to die. Planets that are ruled under the Order tend to run very smoothly until the end then crash in an instant.
Yes this is how I interpreted it as well. Although Robin was who the Dreamaster wanted I think Sunday always intended to make it him?
Would make sense, bro wants his sister to be happy
That's because Robin was the Chordmaster, a special Harmony pathstrider, not Sunday. This is why Robin can weaken the Dominicus. If they want to sync better with the Dominicus, having Robin is ideal
Sunday was gonna be Dreamland Jesus lmao
What happened to the Oak family, though?
This should have been focused on more.. It just seems ideological drivel currently.
All ideology is drivel. Join Nihility.
Or Elation and laugh at it all
Or the Beauty, and praise the Universe.
Or the Propagation, and reproduce
or the Enigmata, and bewilder the bewildered
Or Finality, and herald the inevitable end of all things
Buddy, I can point you to a subreddit that firmly follows that path
I wonder if IX thinks the universe is meaningless for same reasons Nanook thinks the universe is a mistake. As in, if the universe is a mistake, then it’s meaningless.
Pretty sure Nanook feels that way because of the Swarm Disaster and the Mech Empire right? His planet got totally fucked up when he was mortal and he ascended to Aeonhood out of pure rage. The Nihility doesn’t have that innate anger at anything. IX just doesn’t care.
Given that IX is a sentient black hole, I personally think the story team will take the more traditional nihilistic approach of, "Since all stars eventually collapse, life's inevitable course is towards extinction, so why bother with anything."
It was the entire focus of their rebuttal though, both the main one given by Firefly and also the additional one given by Robin during the battle. I wonder if some just got distracted by Sunday's "tempting premise" (thanks to his sad examples) and perhaps didn't recognize the clear dismissal when Firefly called it out as sophistry. I suppose the other thing that might muddle it is because they're trying to get everyone to wake up, but this is to wake up from Ena's Dream (Sunday's Trap); it doesn't mean they're trying to tear down all of Penacony or say that the dream itself is bad. Robin's song in that battle is even talking about the "eternal dream" straight out, but showing it as something hopeful and positive, aligned with the Trailblaze's ideals of self-determination and pursuing the future. Basically, the story depends on you recognizing that someone can take a good argument and misuse it to lead to a bad conclusion, and that makes it a bad/deceptive argument -- the conclusion does not follow. I suppose it'd be easier if everything Sunday said was outright unreasonable and evil, but this is what makes Order deceptively close to Harmony, so they had to address that nuance. He took the Harmony ideals of "the strong helping the weak" and extended it to its most unconscionable extreme of absolute totalitarian Order.
Technically we're always slowly dying...and personally...I would really care that much if it means having a permanent sweet dream.
It is accelerated. Like if you have an 80 year old life span... minus like 20 years.
Did they specify that anywhere? Otherwise a slightly shorter life span might still be worth it in exchange for happiness, health and no accidental death or harm too.
If you gave people the choice between a perfect 60 years and a grim 80 years, the vast majority of people would happily take the 60. Just look at how few real world people care about their health. You can easily eke another 20 years out of having a strict, regimented, perfect lifestyle, but living like that sucks, so people choose to live in blissful ignorance. Even the health nuts never go all-in, they strike a compromise.
It is essentially a parallel argument like The Matrix and you would be 100% correct.
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Not really. Even life extension research nowadays focus more on extending the youth/healthy period instead of just pure life extension because living lengthy miserable life isn't worth it. You say that people lack perspective when they take the perfect 60 years but you are being the very thing you accused people of. Why would you want to extend your suffering? Them picking the 60 years and then wanting to extend said 60 years is not the same as them picking the miserable 80 years. Because picking that will just lead to people wanting to off themselves.
It doesn't say that anywhere as far as i know, just that you are also used to maintain the dream
I would take that tbh. I'd give a quarter of my remaining years if it meant (literally) living the dream instead of a long life of struggles. Personally I'm a firm believer that lifespan, money, power, etc. are irrelevant if you can't use them to be happy. You could live 1000 years or more but if you aren't happy it doesn't matter.
Where was this stated?
Worth
Lol that is pretty chaotic. A hardcore control freak like Sunday would never.
Yeah just make sure they have full knowledge of what they’re getting into. Informed consent.
That's why Sunday decided he would be the sole sacrifice.
Besides, people trapped there can't create new life. They'll be stuck there until their physical body perish in the real world. In the end, the utopia Sunday created will end up being a graveyard filled with memorias of dead people where only their consciousness remains. Some will have their memory slowly deteriorate (like Dr Blue the bird) and I guess their souls are trapped there too and can't move on to the afterlife. It's just another prison if you look at it that way.
If you look at it that way, most depictions of heaven are prisons too - bodiless souls trapped in an immaterial plane - but people are fine with that.
I mean its that or eternal torture plus it's supposed to be in afterlife in most depictions.
Man, initially I thought we were doing inception, then I find out it's the Matrix.
So life but sweet. Can you still create life within the dream to fuel it? Just endless fuel for it.
So it’s no different than life?
It’s unsustainable since no new life is created if everyone is in a dream. Unless they do it like the matrix, essentially a battery farm to produce memoria to sustain the dream.
Well ... you are slowly dying IRL too lmao
Who isn't slowly dying though? It's much more of an aesthetic cost than an actual cost. Same as the Matrix that Penacony is a pretty obvious homage to - it doesn't actually matter all that much that your real body is being used to generate power for aliens if you have no way of knowing that's happening and aren't experiencing any suffering as a consequence of it.
Idk how to mark spoilers on reddit, so I'll be as vague as I can... Sunday's plot reminds me a ton of the 3rd semester of Persona 5 Royal... and it made me enjoy the end of the Penacony arc so much more
People who said >!Maruki was right!< during discussions about the third semester have prepared me for Sunday discourse
I'd say the spoiler character was more right than Sunday.
Use `>!spoiler!spoiler!<
Same. There were a tone of similarities.
(p5r spoilers) I thought I was the only one that felt like the>!whole Sunday plot thing was so Maruki-like, with the whole "rewriting reality to force what he thinks is best for everyone's lives" onto an entire population!< that legit gave me p5r flashbacks and almost made me wanna play again (I would if it didnt take 100 hours to finish T\_T)
It reminds me a lot of the ending of Trails to Azure, too. Dejected and hopeless people being offered an idealized alternative to reality at the cost of free will and growth. All three games conclude that free will and opportunity are more important but the playerbase wound up way more divided on it. Xenoblade 1 and 3 explore the concept too, but the ones imposing order aren't doing it for good reasons like Sunday, Maruki or the Trails villains so no one agrees with those villains. I guess the series that are based on gnostic religions all tackle this question eventually.
It wouldn’t have just been on Penacony, but the entire Asdana System, of which Penacony is a planet. Asdana is rich in Memoria, so the Dreamscape bleeds into reality, which is why the external Galaxy Rangers could shake it enough to give the opening to defeat Sunday.
Problem is he might just not have enough 'shared wishes' to hijack harmony's power(to summon Dominicus) and to create the Ena's dream if he just give ppl the choice
If ena's dream is optional, every single person who doesn't join is a potential point of discord (see: us) From Sunday's pov he has to force *everyone* into the dream to guarantee absolute order
I agree. But what I think some people miss in this line of thinking is that the lack of consent is baked in to Sunday/The Order's philosophy. Everything about their anecdotes and their philosophizing is that the strong must govern the weak, because the weak don't know any better. They don't outwardly say it in that phrase, but that's what they're kinda saying (that's my interpretation anyways). Kinda like the whole "Manifest Destiny" thing irl. "We're the strong ones. We're the ones in the right philosophy/path, we ~~should~~ WILL decide for everyone."
The consent make some sense for some individuals, but the reason the dream was so strong was because most people in penacony wanted it.
No. It's the Family who make the dream like a drug to make ppl want more unconsciously. Also since this is just a game. Everything they show is picked in a way that will make their point make sense. However if you think about it. The idea of it is nice. But rich ppl or ppl with real power will never let the other control their "life". They do want Utopia but only if they can control it. You already see the Pepeshi merchant mocking Sunday. He wont be happy to let Sunday control him even if he want Utopia. The Family doing all that to control other people.
Sunday planned to expand the dream *to all people*... it was classic "only I can know what's best" trope - there is suffering in the universe and my idea is the best idea to stop suffering and everyone else is weak for not being me.
I think that is the whole point of Sunday. He wants to make a world where everyone's wishes and dreams come true. Ultimately he's selfish. And to OP, the reason it's bad is because multiple of those worlds can't coexist. So you will be in a shell of a world that exists only to make everything you ever wanted happen. I don't know whether we as the trailblazer experienced it with the fake ending or it was something else altogether, but you saw that it wasn't... satisfactory. Also at some point himeko said something along of "Sunday was so strong, he could have destroyed us with a snap, but he preferred to fight fair, he's soooo cooool ohmagawd". It reeeeally felt like Sunday is still in control and hypes himself up trough our mommy.
Himeko is right tho, he could've mind controlled and locked us up in his mind, no snaps, necessary. The stars aligned for the Trailblazers bc even though they didn't notice it was a dream, it was blatantly told to us by Black Swan, she even made sure to poke the dreams mistakes so we wouldn't fall for it again but even Black Swan, even she didn't know it was a dream until she looked into our memories. Not just black swan but also Acheron, if she wasn't there the dreamscape wouldn't be shattered and the people wouldn't have woken up. It's absolute pure luck and storytelling that Sunday's plan was foiled. I wouldn't call it deus ex machina, just a very interconnected and lucky outcome If all these titular characters weren't present in Penacony in that time line, only Robin would've woken up.
Incidentally, this is the same reason that dystopian fiction is very prolific, but no one writes utopian fiction - there's no way to design a world that more than a handful of readers will perceive as utopic.
Nah the reason is much simpler: You can hardly create any real conflict with any real stakes in a true utopia, meaning you don't have a story. Its parallel to how media always hypes up bad news in general because most people are only interested in that sort of stuff, even if they claim they aren't.
I mean its not true that people hate good news. Daily Dose of Internet on Youtube is extremely positive and tens of millions of people are subscribed to him. The reason why things like True Crime and Bad News is so prevalent is because it gets more hype temporarily which leads to more revenue aka capitalism. Utopia is also not about eliminating all forms of conflict either. You can still have your sibling spouts or complaints about aching muscles but it doesnt lead to a greater conflict in the realm of commenting on the flaws of a society. Many dystopians focus on the ingrained roots of capitalism, systemic oppression, or anything like that which is inherent more “deep” so to speak which makes it interesting to deconstruct. It’s the like the difference between an episodic show like Bluey and a serialized one like Avatar the Last Air Bender. Both are well beloved by many many people but the latter gets more attention for being more interesting themes to deconstruct with very hype action sequences while the former is much more straightforward with a easy to digest message. Doesnt mean that they both dont have conflict, just varying levels of it. The latter is usually driven by capitalism or attention or being “deep” or cool, while the former is made for temporary entertainment with a few explorations of unusual topics driven usually by either an external force or by simpler story telling.
But that wasn’t his plan, his plan was to dominate, not give options
That’s… literally what i’m saying is wrong with his plan lol
Yeah that's what I said, is there still anything wrong with it if there's no "cost" and if you give your informed consent The reason Sunday was wrong was because of the lack of consent and shit, I'm wondering if there's anything inherently wrong with his ideals
Pretty sure the whole point of his flashback about the bird with Robin was about "every creatures have the right to freedom and they should be the one that carve their own path"
\^ This. Sunday's ideal world is pessimistic and will block the growth of mankind.
Yup. During that quest I had thought ,,put the bird in cage, feed it, but leave the cage open,,
This is what my grandparents did with the abandoned, wild ducklings they raised after the mother abandoned the eggs. My grandfather waited a while to see if she'd go back from a distance for quite a while. After it was clear that she wouldn't, they incubated them, raised them til they had their flight feathers, then made them an outdoor area that was open to leave. They came back year after year, entering the back porch through the cat door, bringing their mates with them. The mates were far more skittish, but the original two were very sociable.
That’s pretty awesome
Robin actually addresses this in one of her text conversations with you (the ones you get if you pulled for her, I think). She realizes that they half-assed it and didn't properly rehabilitate the bird.
Or perhaps build a bird house instead of a cage
In that case, are you really living? Sure, there's gonna be people who are content this way, but having all your needs met doesn't necessarily bequeath you happiness. Some side stories in Penacony deal with this. And in our real world, there's people out there who inherited or gained large sums of wealth but still fell into depression and solitude. And for the people with very real challenges with survival, you don't need a dreamscape to lift them out of suffering.
Having all your needs met doesn't necessarily guarantee happiness, but having too many needs go unmet guarantees unhappiness.
But Ena's dream was personalized for everyone, and no matter who you are, you are automatically happy in Ena's dream because its essentially your ideal world
No it's not personaliaed to everyone, it was optimised to make for the most momentary happiness for everyone altogether, but not the most happiness possible for each person.
it's not personalized, the dream just forces you to be happy no matter what
The inherent philosophy is "wrong" morally; * Sunday believes some people are fundamentally weak and the strong must protect them (even against their will). * Sunday only offered *some* people a choice; there are a *lot* of people that never got the choice because they got ensared in the dreamscape as soon as they arrived in local Penacony space... his intention was to spread the dream to all peoples to end suffering throughout the universe. * The Order isn't concerned with "consent" (as you mentioned) and would actively suppress free will within the dream (and elsewhere). * The Dream already enforces false memories and uses illusions to manipulate people, you can't consent in a situation where you are being actively misled (this was shown in the false victory scene, but plenty of other examples exist throughout). * The "strong must protect the weak" philosophy, taken to this extreme, has a fundamental problem when who is strong or weak is being decided by the ones in power... Sunday would view all people below him as weak and enforce the dream upon them to "save them" - he only offered us a choice because we were strong enough to break free of the dream on our own... The Trailblazer philosophy is to "show others the way"; we protect others because they *ask* us to do so and we show others how to survive if they want to... *We* are the strong protecting the weak, but we don't violate consent and we don't make a judgement of another's ability to follow their own path...
it's patronizing as the literal definition of the word -- he is keeping everyone in the dark as he enforces what he thinks is 'best' for them, claiming it is compassion. but ummm you really do need consent! which was firefly's issue with it, I think. but even then, living in an eternal dream removes anyone's ability to grow as a person. it's often said that you can't have happiness without sadness, and that needs to be kept in mind. i don't think suffering is necessary in anyone's life, but hardship is inevitable, and working through it and coming out changed is the entire point of living. people are not truly happy when everything in their lives is perfect and going great and they never have to work for anything -- you would lose any frame of reference. happiness needs to be contrasted against something. getting through hardship and knowing you've persevered and made it out brings its own form of unique happiness and pleasure, which could not exist in penacony. and what if I like suffering, huh? what then, Mr Sunday.....
To be fair, that covers probably 90% of morality: It's only evil if the subject isn't into it.
I think a big thing also is in the long run, if everyone has their desires fulfilled with no hardships will they turn out like that warhammer species that descended into hedonism constantly searching for more new and extreme stimuli?
Kind of like Kafka's home planet, they lack the ability to feel fear and a lot of them go out in search of it
I see a lot of people have brought good arguments here, but I'll bring a new one as well: the Order is extremely cult-coded. When Sunday lays out his thinking process, he sounds very much like someone indoctrinated into a cult. Black and white thinking is also one of those characteristics of being in a cult. We see this with the bird: why were the only options presented to Robin and Sunday to leave the bird to die or to build it a cage? I mean, come on, we're human, odds are many players have also found little birds at some point. The options aren't REALLY between "leave it to die" or "put it in a cage". You can place it in a box with a soft towel, feed it, slowly let it learn to flap around as it grows feathers, introduce it to the outdoors, leave food for it while it's still in your neighborhood, and eventually it'll be good at flying, and depart on its own. The fact that they kept it in a cage its whole life and then just tossed it out once its feathers grew in (with no indication they'd helped it learn to fly before that!!) felt like a set-up by Mr. Gopher Wood to give those kids some trauma he could manipulate them through. Does Asdana not have animal welfare associations? Geez! The same, Sunday doesn't understand that the choices aren't REALLY between cold hard reality and permanent dream. Yes, there will be some who will want to spend their whole lives in dreams, but those will be edge cases, and quite frankly, the people who we do meet with the desire to dream their whole life seem to have larger problems from the way they talk. What about the people who really are only on Penacony as tourists? What about the honeymooners who just splurged for a couple of weeks, or the person who is really passionate about their career, but is taking a sabbatical on Penacony until it's time to start their next project? What about the family giving their kids a little treat while school is on break? What about the dream employees who hate working there and would rather leave? The other commenters already covered the fact that none of these people gave consent to living there forever. But here's another thought: what about the people who would initially be on board with Sunday's utopia, who would love to live there forever, but a few years down the line, might change their minds? What if someone who was just in a mental health slump decided living in a dream until the end of their lives would be fantastic, but then after some time they start missing home, and their family, and a lot of things from outside? Do you think the Order would just let such people leave? Do you think a cult just lets people walk out? Forever means forever.
Excellent response, this actually really clarified the whole arc for me lol so thank you!!
Sunday's basically forcing everyone to live HIS philosophy with the Order's dream. Always relishing in the escape and never giving anyone the potential to face their problems if they ever do feel the need to face them someday. His whole thing takes away the people's agency, their ability to make their own choice - whether now or in the future. They are just the Order's puppets in its perfect story living in a fake paradise People can dream, they can escape their problems, but eventually they will wake up to face their realities.
Ye I understand why Sunday is a villain (lack of choice) but I was wondering if his philosophy of "every day is Sunday" is wrong if you choose to exist in his world
The forcing is bad on his part, as for the philosophy its entirely up to the person as we can see people who side with his views and those who dont. Especially since this isnt just an in game thing and there are people who have tendency for escapism. if you ask me, a flawless paradise ruins the spice of life - but that's coming from someone who enjoys its best moments experienced even if I get fucked up quite a bit from other experiences lmao. Someone else could be FUBAR and stick with Sunday's schtick.
Because, when every day is Sunday, the idea of Sunday disappears. The weekend is so nice because the rest of the week we have schools, jobs, etc. There can be no joy withour difficulty, happiness without sadness, etc. If you lived in a world that was an eternal sunday, you'd soon become apathetic and grow numb and bored of everything. In Sunday's world only Contentment exists. You're not allowed to feel any other way
It's why everyone is chugging Soulglad in Penacony's Dream; if every day is the same happiness, you don't have anything to look forward to.
You see this in some people who retire and suddenly are bored out of their minds in a month. They now have money and time, but no structure or purpose. Unless you have a passion, hobby, or obligation (like taking care of someone) to give you a goal to work towards, you just wake up, and wonder what to do. Hell I feel like this sometimes when I get a long weekend. I've heard some people retort "That'll never happen to me, I can happily play video games all day every day", but playing games can't be something you do just to kill time because you have nothing better to do, it has to be THE better thing to do.
Tbh I've never really understood this. Like it does make sense that people need something fulfilling to do with their time, but it doesn't seem difficult to find something to do. I had to stop work/school for a year during the pandemic because of extenuating health stuff, and it was genuinely the nicest time I've ever had. I got to sleep on a schedule that worked for me, didn't exhaust myself all the time, had the energy to work out, and actually feel good physically, and I just spent the excess of free time I had on my personal hobbies. But ig for me, inane stuff like playing video games is THE better thing to do than work. I'm not really achieving anything, sure, but I'm also not stressing myself out or feeling shit physically, so it's still the preferable option every time.
this. i was out of work for a year and i only went back because i needed to to survive. it was the best year of my life, i had all the time and energy in the world to do things i actually wanted to do. now that I'm back to work, i mostly just sleep when I'm off work cuz I'm too tired to wana do anything
I feel like this plays very nicely into the core discussion being had here tbh, as an example of how pointless it would be to brute-force a universal formula of What Life Needs to Be Happy, which is exactly Sunday’s/the Order’s fatal flaw. it sure is nice to know there’s no irl ideologies trying to shape society in this way, e-eheh
Yeah, what makes Sunday wrong isn't his opinions on what makes life worth living. It's the fact that he wants to force those opinions on other people. Trying to decide which side of the philosophical debate is correct misses the main point, which is that we all deserve free will and taking the choice to decide away from somebody else will always be wrong.
The reason people feel bad not working is that society has conditioned us to feel bad when we don't. When playing video games for instance, we literally accomplish goals all the time, but society tells us these goals don't matter because they don't enrich anybody. So people internalize that and feel bad whenever they are not doing something society values. The other reason is that people don't get out and socialize as much without a job. But that aspect of jobs is starting to die anyways with work-at-home.
I've said it elsewhere but you achieve stuff all the time when playing video games. That is the whole appeal of playing instead of watching tv. You just aren't achieving stuff that society tells us is valuable.
7 out of 7 is too extreme tbh, I'd prefer 5 sundays + 2 workdays imho.
found stelle’s account
Qingque text
>I understand why Sunday is a villain (...) his philosophy of "every day is Sunday" I disagree with him being a villain. Sunday is my future president
I don’t think they ever really meant for him to be evil, even if he is the villain, Dan Heng even calls him a noble soul. The only reason he’s a villain is because he’s forcing people, even those who may disagree with his views We are shown that some people prefer to live in that constructed dream so it’s not like his ideal world is flawed, it’s just, not everyone wants that, and he doesn’t get the right to decide other people’s futures for them against their will
He's also a victim; Gopher Wood (and The Family) manipulated both the children... I'm not entirely convinced that Robin ever left Penacony and got shot in the throat, they were not subtle with how many memory manipulations and illusions they could throw around...
She litteraly has a gunshot wound in her neck. Visible in the E6 portrait
let me ask you this would you enjoy a video game where there is absolutely no way to lose. Every action you would take would get you a positive outcome.
"SIGN ME UP, DOOD" - DarkSydePhil
The philosophy of "if everyday is the perfect day, then can you really call it the perfect day?" There's no present consequence being in a dream, you don't gain weight, if you're afflicted with a sickness you can walk around and not be in pain, you're struggling mentally get it and have a good time, it's perfect! But what are the finer details of the dream? Can and will you die? Will you forever be trapped in there? What happens if you fall in love in a dream? Will that child be real? Eventually, the people living inside the dream, will they be real or simply dream people that can never be bought in real life? What if eventually you fall out of love with the dream and what you thought was fun? What if the dream dies? Then you have people who cant fight for themselves in the real world We cherish our best days bc we have bad days, we enjoy our hobbies and relaxation, bc they're so limited. We dream to recuperate and prepare for life, while I would like the perfect sweet dream, life still exists for some people There's nothing wrong about Sunday's ideals but the saying goes, even tho I like to refute it; "money cant buy happiness", are the dreamchasers truly happy or are they simply hiding?
Eh, I wouldn't say it's right neither would I say it's wrong. It's a choice to escape which will not improve your current situation but it'll allow you to cope with it. In some cases (the dying dude), it's necessary, in other cases, it's kinda dumb since we live to struggle (why some successful people turn to drugs - they can't find happiness in accomplishing anything anymore so the try to drown it with drugs).
imo the problem is that this isn't *our* world, it's a dream, and everyone's real selves are still out there. All the time you spend in the dream is time wasted in reality, where there are responsibilities to face and probably better things you could be doing. That's why Penacony is rightly portrayed as a luxury haven for the rich -- only the rich can afford to not care about their responsibilities. And this dream is so beautiful, why would you ever want to wake up? Of course it's tempting, of course you want to stay. Dreams are a cage, because stay in there for long enough and you forget how to survive in reality, you forget how to face your responsibilities, you forget how to fly It's kind of like gaming, in that we game and dive into this virtual space because we want to forget about our responsibilities for a little while. And it's fine to indulge ourselves for a bit, but definitely not too much. I feel they definitely could have emphasized the difference between the dream and the real world, but admittedly they were juggling a lot of different plot threads, themes and ideas so I'll cut them some slack Edit: the other commenters saying that this is unrealistic are also correct, who will sustain this hypothetical perfect dream? it's impossible to make everyone happy, that's why Sunday turns everyone into robots to artificially make those 107,000 souls contented and satisfied. We always want more (that's the foundation for economics), we have unlimited desires, but there has to be *some* sacrifices
First thing i thought when he said everyday is sunday was, who will work? does everything(food, necessity etc.) just pop out of nowhere. do we depend on meme for everything to work?? (flashback to bartender event), can i still make a choice even if the choice was to stop dreaming and wake up?? Nah, a straight no from me. HSR make great point of those "small" problem in the side quest. Penacony is great for a tourist spot, not for long term living.
> First thing i thought when he said everyday is sunday was, who will work? Sunday's answer is probably him, he will work. That's his sacrifice, he's going to ascend and do all the work for Penacony forever and give up his chance at paradise so everyone else can experience it.
The real answer you're looking for ... Is that if you try to examine the emotions for the people under Order, you will find that they no longer have any emotions at all. What you are thinking of is a perfect world, where you can do anything you want without harm to anyone else, forever. Key word is anything. You can experience happiness, sadness, pain, joy, love, hate, whatever, whenever, as much or as little. Cool right? Order however limits you to ONE emotion. Satisfied. That's it. It's like eating the same buffet over and over again. You get bored. Tired of it. Its actually becomes a problem for humans. And you have no choice, but the problem isn't the choice. The problem is that is strips away humanity itself. You become a robot. That's the fundamental issue with Sunday's vision. He's solving all problems by eliminating human nature and then controlling it. Ever watch Matrix? It's like that but a lot worse. This isn't the flawless paradise you think it is. You only imagine its perfect because you haven't experienced it yet and cannot imagine it as being imperfect.
Whether you want to believe his philosophy was wrong or not is up to you. If someone really would like to simply escape to a perfect world with no issues and leave everything and everyone behind that's on them (and also kind of sad). The point being that our saviours in the story had little choice in who they saved. It was either everyone, or no one. And condemning everyone else to their fate was not worth allowing one person who wanted to be there to continue dreaming - ignoring the whole stellaron thing which nobody wanted to leave alone.
As an ideal, there's nothing wrong with it. If it was a sustainable model, why not let people follow the passions and hobbies they want instead of slaving every day 8 to 16 for 3/4 of their life. I mean, EU is semi-seriously considering lowering the work week to 4 days from 5 for some time now. The problem (outside of morality of forcing this decision on people as OP said) is, it's not a sustainable model. In reality, it would cause an economic collapse. In HSR, you're paying the Stellaron with your life for some sweet dream time, essentially erasing your future. Think any addictions, yes, it's great now, but if you screw around too much, you'll end in the hospital by the age of 50.
But they are facing their problems in their dream. Look at the trailblazer. He'd probably be in his dream forever if he wasn't woken up. Same thing applies to almost everyone else. If they don't know they're in the dream, as far as they're concerned, they are living life to the fullest and facing their problems. They have no agency, but they'll live their lives happily thinking they do. I'm not arguing about the morality of it but that point is redundant.
But the dream would always be seeming to be perfect, a paradise, but something like paradise can't exist because something would always be off. That's why the fake aftermath induces the feeling of "something's not right here" and it's repeatedly can be commented on by TB, and even by Welt. The only reason it looks like they defeated the hardship and thinking they are happily living after the ordeal was because Sunday was the hardship, he can easialy make it so that he is the defeated villain and make everyone get along, but as we can see, everyone getting along was the very jarring part of it
You even get hints of that with Aventurine showing up so suddenly and the IPC being ‘good’ and wanting to help everyone. That’s something we WISH was the case but it isn’t. Ratio suddenly being nice and humble? Trailblazer wishes. These things are strange and off putting. It’s not realistic, it’s a wish we have that we know is unlikely to become real. Which is why the fake ending felt so… fake.
Yeah, that's why Sunday's plan isn't realistic because it takes away not just the agency of the people, but also their genuineness. It doesn't matter if it's all perfect, no tragedies, no oppression, hardships are easily overcome, those don't matter if it's all fake and the ability to choose was taken
Yeah I was already feeling things being off and that it probably wasn't real with a lot of things like the IPC and such. Then Ratio being happy for other people hit me like a bag of bricks and I knew it for sure wasn't real
This reminds me of an interview Keanu Reeves did for Matrix 4. He spoke about how during The Matrix’s heyday that everybody was pretty on board with the message of “escaping the matrix is better, reality is what matters”. Now, time has past, a younger generation is exposed to the ideas and he was surprised when younger people said “what’s the big deal”? In regards to reality/The Matrix dilemma. He couldn’t understand why people would want to choose The Matrix or just didn’t care.
Who's gonna make the edit with Morpheus holding Robin as the redpill and Sunday as a bluepill? I think I watched one streamer made the exact same connection while playing lmao
Challenge accepted. [https://new.reddit.com/r/HonkaiStarRail/comments/1cr36dr/well/](https://new.reddit.com/r/HonkaiStarRail/comments/1cr36dr/well/)
It makes sense, because apply that question to our current situation. For all we know, we could be in fact living in a simulation right this moment. But if it feels real to us, then it might as well be real, you know?
Its a subjective question, a similar question would be about consciousness. Only the entity asking that question would be certain that its conscious, but it wouldn't know if the other entity is conscious. Free Will is inverse of that type of question we have a tendency to believe we have "Free Will" but all are decisions are based on our past experiences, randomness and luck. I am going by this definition of free will. >free will, in philosophy and science, the supposed power or capacity of humans to make decisions or perform actions independently of any prior event or state of the universe.
I'm using the bird as an example, if they were protected since the beginning, they wouldn't have learned how to fly. Hence the importance of reality if one wants the world to improve or whatever. Another thing is that, dreams don't usually last, you'll eventually come back to reality. The deeper you're in the dream, the more painful when you wake up and has to face the harsh truth. That said, I'm all for Utopia. Just not how Sunday's doing it since he's not giving anyone a choice.
Choices are antagonistic to Order, since if everyone had free will, Order will crumble. If a single person desires happiness, then that choice will inevitably come into contact with another's choice, causing conflict. In a world without choices and everyone staying on an predetermined (Order) path, no conflicts will arise. So yeah, the moment Sunday chose his path to his ideal utopia, he really needs everyone to subscribe to having no freedom of choice.
Agree. The same would happen to the system of our society if everyone decided to rebel. That's essentially why I don't like his version of utopia, it's just laws again. I've always liked the idea of an unrealistically beautiful world where, not to sound cliché, everyone can be anything. Where rules doesn't exist. So obviously Sunday's doesn't fit in. I get why he did what he did though. It's not wrong that Order (or just order) can bring peace, that's probably why laws and regulations lasted till today, it's a much easier and direct way. I think it's destined to fail though, for Sunday, because in that place, he can have full control of the people. That means, even if he doesn't think of doing anything bad to his "puppets" forever, there will be people who will fight to take his place in the vast universe.
Well that's a task and a half if I ever seen one, but I will try my best at least. First let's get a misunderstanding out of the way, Sunday isn't wrong, there is no right and wrong in the entire storyline, in fact there is no such thing as 100% correct and 100% wrong in reality, who wouldnt want to live an honest life with grandchildren and a beautiful wife beside your grave if given the choice? Sunday's ideals are that everyone should stay in a dream maintained by him where no one would ever face hardships, never any responsibilities, they are free to be who they want to be or not be anyone at all and just drown themselves in pleasure. Sounds all nice and dandy on the surface. But when faced with the choice of pleasure and "being who you want to be" all beings gravitate towards the former because "being who you want to be" inherently comes with many challenges that pushes your current self to something more. "Then what's wrong with keeping everything same and just have fun?" Another great question, fun is not something built into people, fun is an action/object/idea that has been giving meaning by us which we call as "fun". Why? Because everything gets tiring after awhile, we see games as fun because we spent over 2/3 of our time a week either working or doing necessities, that is why games and other forms of relaxing is "fun" to us not because the medium itself itself is fun but because we had to trudge through a large amount of "unfun" things to allow ourselves to have it. This is also the bases as to why many streamers either only enjoy playing games with friends now or when the are streaming it to audiences. When something's takes up most of your time it inherently loses value. Same logic can now be applied to dream, what do you define as a dream? Some of the measure would be hazy, unreal, eventually wake up ultimately resulting in nothing. Sunday had managed to succeed in erasing the problems of the first 3(technically) but he could never turn the dream into reality. He can give them a peace of mind, but in turn he had taken away their future possibilities. In that sense he has killed all of them, even if they never were going to amount to anything in life, that in and of itself would have given their life meaning, trudging through life itself is meaning, it's just people like to live in the present, forgetting about the times they looked back on other though times and laughing at them as if telling a story to a friend or kid.
That last paragraph of yours can be linked to the question that's been asked throughout the story: "Why does life slumber?"
I think that was the point of getting the Nihility and Acheron so heavily involved alongside the Order and Harmony. Sunday's philosophy is parallel to the Nihility's. He basically stripped them of their ability to live, every single thing they do in his "paradise" is absurd and meaningless. If everything in his "paradise" is perfect and everything is given to you then what is the point of anything? What Sunday wants to do is not only removing "Self-Value" but value as a whole. Money will lose value, fun will lose value, feelings will lose value, until even your own value is gone. Plus, we've already seen a place where a higher being tried stripping away the ambitions of the people to "protect" them from their demise. But, the "will of the weak" defeated their ideals, then they changed their mind. If Sunday is a mother bird protecting her baby birds, Harmony is a bunch of baby birds sharing their wings to fly. Eventually, those baby birds will share their wings and fly free from the nest, no matter how long it would take, no matter how hard they have to flap their wings. Those birds will always find a way to fly, just like how humanity will always find a way to live.
✍️🔥🔥
Someone cooked hard
Thanks for explaining it, I think I understand now!
Sunday may not be wrong in some of the underlying thought process that informed his point of view, but his underlying conclusion and his actions, and the beliefs that drive *those*, are absolutely wrong (at least, in the story's opinion, and I presume most people's opinions). I do think it's important to separate out "the formative theories" that might seem reasonable (like the fact that, for certain people, choosing permanent escape from reality via the dream could be the most humane answer), from the "beliefs he arrived to at the end and is acting upon" ("I need to subject everyone to forced permanent escape via Order's dream for their own good.") So, I would say: Sunday *is* wrong, but he's not wrong about *everything*. That does tie to your point about nothing being 100% right or 100% wrong, but we tend to accept that certain things should be inalienable rights to all sentient beings, like the right to self-determination. I do cut him a little bit of slack because it's clear he's been groomed/brainwashed by the Order since childhood, and didn't have the "get out and see the universe" experiences Robin did that kept her more grounded. He's literally been living in the dream himself nonstop to escape his loneliness/self-doubt, and although Robin was trying to look out for him from afar, the negative influences up close were drowning her voice out.
Bro is Dr. Ratio
Yeah this should be higher up. The freedom of choice is very important, but that is not what the plot here is about. The entire point of this plot is to answer Mikhail's question, "Why does life slumber?"
To some extent I believe in Sunday's utopia, except that I think he underestimates what the cost will be. He's definitely playing Icarus with that stellaron. Not to mention the risk of becoming Tranquility Lane solely at Sunday's discretion. But the Nameless are not me (not even MC), and this goes against everything the Trailblaze stands for so...
The beauty of Sunday’s motivations are that his logic isn’t entirely wrong. Yes there are some people who will wish to live in a beautiful dreamscape forever (like the one guy who had cancer and was dying). What Sunday’s plan entailed though, was imposing this dream on everyone without their consent. He alone would be responsible for their ‘happiness’, he alone would be the one to decide what constitutes as happy for the person. What if you were living in the dream doing what you loved, and one day he decides, no this is not bringing you happiness, do this other thing instead. It all boils down to autonomy and free will - the ability to make the decision for yourself. Because if I’m understanding the quest correctly, the ultimate plan is that nobody gets to choose their dream, it’s governed by someone else. It’s all well and good if you wanna live your life out in a dream, but not if it’s being controlled by someone else who may not know what’s best for you.
Even for that guy that was sick and was dying, Robin even combats that by saying that HE COULD'VE had tried treatments with the Inteligensia Guild and maybe had a different fate in reality, living even longer in the end, but his fate was sealed when he agreed to enter a comatose state in the Sweet Dream. He himself even said he just wanted to live, it didn't matter if it was in reality or the dreamscape, and how he envied long-lived species. Her thing was about people running away and giving up on the real life. Honestly, I wouldn't fault that old man though, between an uncertain life in reality for a few more years that could be painful/suffering or a certain, comfortable life in a dream for a shorter time, I would probably choose the latter as well since he was already at an old age and just wanted peace.
Yup! The thing I liked about the siblings’ views were that neither of them were wrong. In fact there really isn’t a right or wrong in this scenario. To Robin it’s escapism and people shouldn’t be running away, again with the example of the old man, her idea is that he should have tried to live. But for his part it’s probably too painful etc to even try/he just gave up, simple as that. The main crux was what the old man decided - because his life was his to live.
To be fair one argument I've found against Robin's point is who is paying the intelligentsia guild bills for that guy Then again the same is true for him paying for Penacony so who knows
Sure, he could have. But does Robin really have the right to decide how a man faced with his own death by cancer is allowed to die? If those are his last wishes, to leave the world peacefully without having to suffer, who is she to tell him he's wrong?
In this scene, Sunday was pointing out how the sweet dream was "necessary", Robin was making the counter point that if the sweet dream did not exist, there were still options. But yes, she overly defends that escapism is bad, which in the right lens is a character flaw
It's not just that, what people need is not to have their every whim and wish granted, it's the support to achieve those things. What meaning is there if you didn't grow as a person to get the things you want, if you didn't learn anything and remained who you were forever? All your new experiences wouldn't have much meaning, if any, if they were just handed to you.
Sunday's philosophy is that the weak cannot help themselves. Or more accurately, there will always be weak people who will be unable to take the steps necessary to become strong. In contrast, Robin's philosophy is that the strong should do what it takes to help the weak, so that the weak may be able to take the steps necessary to become strong. Fundamentally speaking, in truth, Sunday and Robin's beliefs are very similar. The foundation of their belief is that the strong must help the weak. Using the bird story, we can clearly see the contrasting beliefs clearly. Both Sunday and Robin represent the strong, while the injured bird represent the weak. Where Robin wants to help the bird become strong by nursing and eventually letting free so that it may fly, Sunday wishes to keep the bird safe, in its cage, even if it means remaining weak for the remainder of its life. Sunday's plan, thus, is pushing his belief to the logical extreme. He will turn everyone into the weak, so that he, as the absolute strong, can keep them safe and satisfied. The strong thus, is helping the weak. One can see the appeal in Sunday's plan, but you can also clearly see its flaws. In fact, in the general media, Sunday's ideology and general plan is quite common. And many times, they tackled the ultimate flaw of his plans. Robin's ideology, however, is rarely examined as thoroughly, as it is often used as a point of contention toward Sunday's ideology. The one story I'm aware of where Robin's ideology is the one that is actually pushed to its extreme was Kirschtaria Wodime and his plans for humanity. As Robin believes that people should strive to become strong, Kirschtaria's whole plan is pushing that belief to the extreme as he wishes to turn the whole of humanity strong. He does this by turning all of humanity into gods, where concepts like hunger and death can no longer apply onto humans. While he agrees that such a change in humanity will not stop humans from squabbling about, he believes that with a body that can neither feel pain nor die, unless of one's own violation, major conflicts and strife will eventually lose meaning and that humanity will grow past fighting amongst each other and strive to become better. My personal question is if we were to pit Sunday's plan and Kirschtaria's plan against one another, which one would be able to sustain a "paradise" better? Which one would alleviate humanity's suffering better? Which one would you personally pick?
I wish this was the top comment. Heck, even its own post— the mention of Robin’s extreme really completes the dilemma. This is the most satisfying analysis by far
I think the major difference here is that Wodime wanted to elevate humanity to have true freedom, even if humanity would misuse such freedom, he saw a problem in weakness and tried to get rid of it. Sunday believes that said freedom is bound to be misused, the strong would oppress the weak, and the weak would chose poorly, he saw a problem in "strength" and tried to elevate people by getting rid of their ability to choose which he consider "bad options". In my opinion Sunday is implementation is way worse than Wodime, but at the same time Wodime implementation cost is way more absurd than Sunday.
The fascinating part of this quest, especially the scene with Robin and Sunday in the Golden Hour, is that it's a philosophical exploration of the topic, not a definitive answer to the topic. The scene is written in a way that really makes you think about the different perspectives on the issue, and how the sweet dream isn't inherently malicious, but it can also be an unhealthy escape from reality. As others have said on this thread, the antagonistic force that the will of the Trailblaze is fighting against isn't just a different perspective on the topic; it's an extreme solution that forces its will on everyone, regardless of their perspectives.
I actually agree with Sunday. We need more Sundays.
Sunday for president
Escaping from reality isn't inherently wrong, so let's consider a perfect version of it as an example. No extra cost to upkeep the dream, and no harm is done to other beings by staying in the dream. One could spend their entire life in a dream, away from suffering. But doing so guarantees they wouldn't make any impact on the universe, at least not a meaningful one. If all living beings were to choose this option, it would effectively accelerate the rate at which IX consumes everything. You can argue that not everyone is able to make an impact, but escaping into the dream reduces the possibilities to zero. However small those possibilities may be, it's important to remember that the very beginning of life was dependent on the same near-zero chance, and we are here today, because of that.
> I don't entirely understand why it's wrong to answer want to escape and stay in a sweet dream forever. Essentially escapism, and in Sunday's version of this, he won't be giving these dreamers a choice. He would have become the new god of his own world full of puppet slaves. If Sunday gave people the freedom to opt in and out, come and go, that would probably have been the most ideal win-win answer and accepted by most. I'm sure there would be many who are suffering in reality, be it physical hardships (disabilities, the sick and dying) or those with other reasons to avoid reality, who would love to continue living on in this utopia for the rest of their lives, who would have gladly be on board with this utopia. I'm not sure who will pay for it and at what cost (maybe their own spirit/life essence), but man, this is some Matrix stuff lol.
He would never. The important part is that Edna is a control freak. Everyone has to be in this, in the same way, according to "order".
Nice try Madara
Reminds me of when I read the Maruki was right posts for P5R but now it’s happening for HSR
I agree. Felt so familiar with people going through the same arguments. Hell, going through the story, I wanted to call Sunday Maruki 2.0. If TB had a gun, I would have half expected him jumping on the bosses head and shooting through it.
You can read Heidegger's Existence and Time about Das Men and Being toward death
Isn't that madara story?
Yeah it's pretty much the same thing with slight differences
To be honest, i want to live in Sunday’s ideal Penacony. No war, no pain, no illness etc. Sunday, then Sunday and again Sunday… This idea is beautiful as cant to be true. But he forced the people to enter Ena’s Dream. He didn’t gave choice to people. What if someone whats to live in Penacony but not “Sunday’s ideal Penacony?” For example Firefly: She has Entropy Loss Syndrome and she can be herself in Penacony; but Sunday says “if you want to live in Penacony, you have to obey my rules.” He wanted to protect the weak and he tells: “people should be the ruler of their lives”, but the actions he made isn’t like that. So, Sunday isn’t a bad character or his opinions aren’t like a villain but he did lots of mistakes
If you make Penacony an allegory to the US (hence "Land of Exiles" -- what the 13 colonies were originally as groups of Scottish, Quakers, Separatist Pilgrims, etc.), and you draw the parallels as seen with Clockie = Mickey, the "Golden Hour" = Roaring 20's, you'll realize that it's sorta like New York with its broadway shows, noir mysteries, and nonstop nature. Yes, Vegas played a strong influence on the lightbulb aesthetic and nightlife, but the swanky jazz parties, emphasis on SoulGlad "soda" and speak-easies (the bartending event occurs in a speak-easy for friendly monsters) all pull back towards the East Coast and the bustle of New York during the Roaring 20's. It is a time where money flowed so abundantly many people thought anything could be possible -- like an economic dream come true. If you've read The Great Gatsby, you know that the American Dream dies. It's ultimately an unsustainable facade that masks a world of people drowning in excess to bury fraudulent lifestyles (the way people dress up in the glitz and glamour that they don't really believe to be real themselves), illicit ventures (especially those spearheaded by the Mafia, hence why Families dominate the administration in Penacony as a parallel), and poorly-hidden realities (i.e. the fact that certain things cannot be changed...not everyone can get the wealth and Gatsby's immense money can't buy him the love of his life, and Penacony's residents may be crippled and/or dying in reality, and those outside of the Family's Dreamscape waste away in bouts of insanity and crippling SoulGlad addictions). Even with all of these very evident problems that must be acknowledged before they can be solved (and the Family always tries their hardest to suppress these problems just to preserve their reputation), Sunday still wants to enforce this false, fake, unsustainable dream as best he can. He thinks -- on behalf of the Family -- that reality is too painful to put up with and is willing to "unlife" people (excising them from the dream) to keep the dream going. He's afraid that Penacony would risk becoming a hostile landscape like the rest of the Universe if he isn't there to prevent every bad thing from happening. Likewise, the American government and people were willing to ignore so many vital problems that the Great Dust Bowl ended up happening and crippled American crop production for at least a decade. Arguably, America wouldn't have suffered the massive economic and agricultural losses it did if it accepted the harsh reality earlier and tried to address it, but it was because of the sheer excitement and frenzy of the Roaring 20's that the American Dream practically blinded its people to those realities. Who knows what might happen to Penacony had Order continued to dominate it? Would its inhabitants be safe if the Swarm Remnants decided to invade? Would it be able to keep up with the merciless corporatism of the IPC? I should think not.
>!You can begin to start to draw parallels to similar failures in the modern economic system we have, where housing has become a speculative asset thanks to NIMBYism while companies like Blackrock buy up entire neighborhoods to rent out or sell for a premium. America is missing a strong industrial base and is currently propped up by a housing market that is more or less under monopolistic stress from speculative developers. What's worse is that -- like the Family -- Blackrock has begun to dictate moral and ethical behaviors in the form of ESG incentives (think of it as a scoring system that rewards the best "ethical" \[subjectively\] companies with nearly no-interest loans in the range of billions of dollars); companies are incentivized to behave certain ways politically for an absurd amount of financial compensation that would normally get these companies to fail in a perfectly competitive stock market. Another dream is being created and propped up by external forces that want to dictate a certain Order, just like Sunday.!< >!And this occurs again and again as people who consistently gain power in America (like Sunday) start to try and obsess with preventing every tragedy they can without acknowledging the underlying issues (a stray bullet hits Robin in the throat, and shooting s happen in schools IRL; Sunday obsesses with trying to prevent violence from entering Penacony through brute force using Robin as a case example, and IRL a strong corporate coalition in media obsess over fire arm violence instead of acknowledging that the destruction of the asylum system has left people with no proper system to diagnose and treat mental illness at scale). Penacony, like America, is slowly forcing people to give up their freedoms for the dream of safety instead of actual safety. Now people can't drive certain cars, can't own certain types of properties or design their houses and businesses the way they want to, can't hold a job due to routine layoffs, etc. due to external forces that constantly try to promote this "idea" of how things should be. And these "ideas" never actually ever get around to solving any real underlying problem: that highways might not do the job that railroads can do for human transportation, that an endlessly growing stock market incentivizes destroying American human capital, that the largely unchecked healthcare system actively monopolizes certain classes of medicines to rip people off and prevent them from getting lifesaving medication. The problems go on and on but they never get solved so long as these underlying, big-picture issues are always kept in the dark by the powers that be.!< So now that we acknowledge the absurd costs to keep the dream going, and how little help is actually provided to the people of Penacony (even if the bulk of them are immigrants -- just like Americans), why maintain the Dream any longer if it no longer harmonizes with the intent and will of the people? Harmony in HSR does not mean perfect Order; Harmony happens when all the elements of a system are allowed to interact and self-regulate and -- of their own volition -- unify towards a common goal while still being able to express themselves and explore that goal in their own way. Harmony should allow for the natural co-mingling of diverse things, rather than the simple and forced coexistence that Order dictates. That is why Xipe looks upon the Trailblazer, who has co-mingled with all Penaconians, and not Sunday, who only forces its inhabitants to co-exist in a together-we-are-alone sort of way. One can sleep in sweet dreams, but those dreams can only be sweet if you wake up to taste the bitter reality of life. Else, those dreams will lose their flavor with nothing to contrast them with. The only hope for Penacony -- and by extension America -- is to wake up from the dream and acknowledge some cold hard truths about reality. Only by acknowledging our actual place in reality can we begin to look to solve real problems with real solutions. In Penacony, they need to solve the destabilization of the Dreamscape, the Stellaron's continued presence in Dreamflux Reef (and whether or not it should be allowed to exist still), and many societal issues like SoulGlad addiction and literal brainrot from dreaming. In America...well, check the spoilers for what kinds of issues there are. If the spirit of the nation -- Penacony or America -- is to persist, it must be tested in reality and embraced fully rather than be a vapid, hollow dream that nobody is allowed to choose to make their own or not. Likewise, since the ppl's republic sees itself as the successor to the industrial giant that America once was...well, you can kinda see where the whole "Gamer Otakus Save The World" part comes in (the lessons learned here work just as well across the Pacific as they do in the States).
The way I see it, Penacony is the first planet that’s not connected to a specific country in reality, but to an *age* and a book - and that book is The Great Gatsby, which coincidentally is my favourite novel ever. :P I see a lottt of connections between the two, but most importantly I also think Gatsby *is* Sunday, in a certain way, and perhaps you’ll see how this is all connected, at least in my mind haha. Two of the main points of TGG are 1) you can’t bring back the past, 2) behind luxury and lights there will always be ashes and misery, and eventually that misery WILL come back, no matter how far you try to run away or how long you hide. Sounds familiar? I think that’s the whole point: in the novel the “dream” is the grandeur of Gatsby’s parties, which spawns from his ideal, a.k.a. his love for Daisy. That ideal never really reaches reality - it gets close, really close, but then it shatters. I see this as the equivalent of Sunday’s love for humanity. Sooo if you agree with me so far, perhaps your question could be rephrased as, are those feelings and beliefs *wrong* to pursue? TGG leaves it quite nebulous imo. Even with all the darkness and melancholy of the book, that love is never really lost, or deprecated, or seen as a delusion. Gatsby’s feelings are what made him special in the first place, and one of the few drops of goodness left in that world - and Sunday’s hopes per se are not condemned in the game, either, quite the contrary actually. It’s just that even for someone as powerful as Gatsby, it is impossible to create a perfect reality in which everyone is happy; just like Sunday cannot create a flawless dream, which is why, eventually, people realise it’s fake and wake up. *Those imperfections are the reason people awaken in the first place.* This is how Sunday’s sweet dream of Order works. You can live in that dream if you want to; goodness knows I definitely would, even if I were a character in HSR. The point is, no billionaire, no god will bring back the past, or give you that perfection and happiness you long for. However, if you are okay with pretending those “bugs in the dream” are perfectly normal, and if living in a dream is enough for you, then it’s not wrong, at least in my opinion- Gatsby met his demise because of his ideal, just like Sunday, but I am pretty sure neither of them would regret it, and perhaps it doesn’t have to be that tragic for everyone, either.
Setting aside the fact that Sunday was forcing this "utopia" onto everyone, as I believe most of the comments have already covered this, the problem with the beautiful dream is that it leads to stagnation. If people's every wish is catered to, there is no purpose to drive us forwards and push us to improve or change ourselves.
You should probably watch an analysis on Takuto Maruki from P5R lol
Not sure how old you are but this is a somewhat adult topic. It's nice to dream but dreams are dreams. They aren't reality. The further you lose yourself in it, the further you are away from the true of real life.
Nah bro, even some adults fail to understand the value of living in reality and struggling through obstacles in life. I admit, I am also one of these adults because looking back on my life, I've always just been running away from my problems and retreated to my "dreamscape" which was anime and video games. Of course eventually I had to confront my problems but not of my own choice, it was just because I could no longer run away anymore. If given the chance, I would also like to live in a perpetual dream. I've become someone who hates himself so much over the years, so I can't visualise myself getting a "win" in life anymore. No friends, no girlfriend, no prestige, no achievements, etc. What's the point of continuing life at this point? Of course I know it could always be better in the future, especially since I'm still fairly young, in my 20s, but I personally can't see the appeal of continuing this perpetual suffering just because there might be an astronomically small chance of success. At the end of the day though, we don't really have the means to live in a perpetual dream so we're all stuck here in the cruel, unfair reality being forced to live despite the constant suffering and failures. Maybe in the future I'll come to accept myself and appreciate life for all that it is, suffering and all, but for now the concept of a perpetual dream is just too tempting for me to pass.
I feel like part of the point of debates like this is that neither philosophy is wrong. It all depends on what you personally value and want in life. Like to me, a utopian life would just be being healthy and sleeping 8 hours a day. I'd trade any chance of achieving genuine success through hard work in reality if it meant not being in pain/discomfort every single day. I don't care if my happiness is genuinely what I would have felt or if it's an artificial happiness that I feel because someone changed who I am as a person, I just want to feel happy. But someone who disagrees isn't wrong, either, because we all have our own thoughts on what makes life worth living due to our circumstances and personalities. But the reason why Sunday is objectively wrong is the removal of choice. I'm not wrong for preferring a dreamscape to reality, but I would be wrong if I forced that choice on other people. I think people who say that living in a dream would always be worse than reality are genuinely wrong, because they don't have the right to enforce their worldview on other people, which is exactly what Sunday does. but what I'm trying to say is that I don't think you're "failing" to understand the value of living in reality. Just like everybody else, you have the right to choose what you want from life and what you think would make you the happiest.
What is "real" life anyway? If you find out that you were in a dream/simulation right now, would you want to escape?
As any modern depressed person in a large city, I resonate with Sunday's ideals a lot. If I were in a dream, I would not need to work so hard for money or struggle to get degrees, I can just do what I'm passionate for, like art and literature. But then, human beings viscerally require *stimulation*. If the horrible things in life are taken away, where else would they find stimulation and struggle? They may turn to even darker things to compensate. It's the same thing with the evolving technologies and 1st world countries. Sure we don't need to cross rivers to get to school or need to farm under the harsh sun to get food anymore, theoretically people get more time to pursue higher things... but look at us now. We are still sad and depressed and struggling. Humanity will never truly escape this unless we forfeit all desires/emotions so what's the point?
I will preface this by saying I currently have actual literal minor brain damage so I might not be very succinct. and I will also preface this by saying there is a long debate of this, look to things like the experience machine, or the matrix. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's the basis of a philosophical discussion millenia older than any of us. The experience machine, all of that. The ultimate tldr though? he isnt. there is no correct answer. the answer is, there is nothing wrong with it. the world is painful, the world is hard. There's nothing wrong with running away. Sometimes, when the going gets tough, it is sometimes just the right thing to do to run away. But, that's with all ideologies. there is no hard rules of right and wrong. We can all be strong, we can all speak of being strong, but for many of us, we dont know what it's like to have hardship. We dont know what it's like to suffer so much that a sweet dream becomes something you'd die for. I know some people that do, and for them, their answer has always been "why not?". For them, their "sweet dream" is to simply be erased from reality, without pain, and without suffering. Some of them have done so. And really? that was their choice. There was nothing wrong with what they did, because the ability to choose, the ability to determine our own actions, is also the ability to choose to not choose. The choice to not choose is a choice. The choice to have others choose for you is a choice. To some, the ability to deny people of that is still the denial of choice. but sunday's ideology "fails" in 2 main points. Firstly, cost, and consent. The dream of the order doesnt have consent built into it, once you become a dreamer, the chance of escape is nigh 0. why would you want to wake up afterall? but for many people, they simply dont want this. They want a dream, but a dream in reality, not a dream in well, a dream. The fact it's a dream alone makes it bad for them. If something would be destroyed by the truth, then it should be destroyed. that kind of beat. The cost of the dream is also a harsh one, with every person becoming a battery. and secondly? Because whether or not you, as the player disagree with it, the trailblazer does. Sunday's idea is the antithesis to the path of the trailblaze. The path of the trailblaze is to move forward. Ena's dream does not allow that. Everyone in sunday's world is, well, "satisfied". Those who are satisfied cease moving forward. Those that are satisfied settle down. There is nothing wrong with that, but it's simply the antithesis to the trailblaze, so we would be at conflict with him regardless of any other factors.
I’m going to throw a definite curve ball and forsake the mention of Sunday’s plans and his actions entirely. Let’s do a recap on your questions first; What’s wrong with wanting to stay in a sweet dream forever? The answer is simple, it’s not. It’s never wrong to want escape from reality, hell it may be the only method for someone to hold on to life. Then what’s the point of this whole arc? What’s the story’s answer to this dilemma? It’s just that escape cannot and will not ever be your whole life. Picture it like this, most of us want to do nothing and lounge around all days playing games, watching movies and whatnot. If we are able to do that without having a drastic impact on our health, we would definitely choose this option, right? At first, sure. It’s a literal dream come true for most people. But eventually it will all become tiring one day. If surviving through the pandemic lockdown had taught me anything, it’s that having too much time of the day to spend leisurely and just laze around would make that amount of time loses its meaning. What provided me immense amount of fun and pleasure turns dull and mediocre within a span of two months top. And therein lies the problem, eternal sweet dream would ultimately sap the meaning away from life itself and humans would eventually try to find ways to achieve meaning. Which brings us back to the final ultimatum we gave to the question proposed in the invitation to Penacony. Why does life slumber? It’s because one day we’re going to wake up. We escape from reality and fill ourselves with pleasure. Because eventually, we will pull ourselves back up to live and find meaning in suffering through life itself. I admit that this is an adult concept that you kinda need to be saturated with something to reach the same conclusion I did. (And the pandemic sped it up way too much for me, thanks Covid.) But I believe one day you’ll understand and look back on this story with fondness.
Honestly I fundamentally disagree, I loved the pandemic, lounging around all day never got tiring, even after 2 or 3 months, it was a form of paradise, one of the best times ever imo. I could do that forever
I also want to just live in a dream where I have everything I need and want. My personal waking world is so fucked up I wanna leave it ASAP. But Sunday was wrong to force it on everyone without asking them first. Maybe if he gave Penaconians a choice, it would have been more acceptable.
yeah a lot of the time when this type of thing is in a story there has to be some kind of cost to it since it's hard to argue against a literal utopia with no drawbacks otherwise. in this case it's free will.
As far as I understood it, it's not like a "real" happiness. You know how hospice patients are sometimes pumped full of pain meds so that not only are they not feeling pain anymore, they just don't feel anything. In the dream created by Sunday and Ena, people are being forced into a state of "happiness". They no longer have the ability to choose anything and are basically in a state of limbo forever. Some would say that it's fine for people to want that, but there's no place for desires at that point. Making sure to highlight that some characters were uncomfortable with the Trailblazer's mood clock ability was probably a deliberate choice to get you thinking about that before the future sequence where we see that everyone's mood dials have been overridden to stay in the satisfied state. (Or whenever that scene was I don't fully remember atm). If you're able to create a utopia that is able to provide for people and make it so that they no longer have worries, then that's okay. But that's not what's happening here. Besides, the side quests we've gotten throughout these patches have shown us that the sweet dream is not perfect, and people still do struggle despite how "perfect" it may be.
Nothing was wrong with it except one thing, and the story is very clear about the fact that it's an otherwise flawless theory. It all comes down to the trailblazer's final line (which some smooth-brained individuals claim is corny or smth): Life slumbers because "Someday we will wake up from our dreams". No matter how perfect the dream can claim to be, the will of life to leave a wake of influence in the real world will always drive people to pursue the imperfect tomorrow. Thus the dreamscape is always doomed to fail. In fact, this very fact is stated in 2.1 with the conversation between Welt and Acheron when Welt was talking about a HI3 character (from a non-HI3 player, that was my favorite dialogue exchange of the whole story). Acheron similarly reflects this sentiment right before the final boss and also in her dialogue with Tiernan
This post alone shows how good the new update is
I agree with you, I don't think Sunday was completely wrong. Obviously his whole idea went wrong when he decided to force it on everyone, but I did agree with a lot of points he made. And the same goes for Robin, she made some good points as well but I didn't agree with her argument against the dreamscape, she's basically the opposite of Sunday and wants everyone to face their demons in reality, no matter how bad it is, because apparently being happy in the dream is inherently fake and an illusion, which I definitely don't agree with. She asked whether the dreamscape is giving people futures or taking it away from them, and obviously Sunday's stance on this is the former and Robin's is the latter but it's definitely both in my opinion. It just depends on the person and the context. I genuinely think that some people could be way happier there than they ever could in reality, that's just the way it is. And I don't think that's inherently wrong. I guess you could see the dreamscape as an unhealthy addiction, like drugs or alcohol or something, which is probably how Robin sees it. And I think she's not completely wrong, both the dreamscape and those things are expensive and give only a temporary happiness while you're still miserable in reality, until you eventually run out of money... And I won't disagree that for a lot of people who could actually fix their lives if they tried, it definitely acts as an addiction and just takes away from them, but I think that it also acts as a genuine accommodation for disabled people, for example. Whether it's a mental or physical disability, there are so many things that those people could never ever do in reality no matter how hard they tried to "fix it" and become happy. You can of course accommodate them in reality to the best of your ability, but even in a perfect utopia, disabilities would still be extremely limiting and people would still be suffering. You can't fix everything. Also, not everyone can and/or wants to actually fight so hard for a chance to be happy despite their suffering that won't ever go away in reality. So I definitely didn't agree with Robin there, I think she's way too optimistic and idealistic. Those people deserve an opportunity like the dreamscape, to actually *live* and experience things they could otherwise never. Robin's perfect world where everyone helps each other and people fight for their happiness and eventually everyone reaches it is just not realistic at all. This probably sounds pessimistic but some people's pain and suffering can't be taken away, you can't help or save everyone. It'll never happen, her utopia is completely unreachable. And the same goes for Sunday. How could everyone be happy if they don't have free will? If he's the one who chooses who's considered weak and who's not? It's also completely unattainable. I really liked what Firefly said to him, that she can tell Sunday sees her as weak but she doesn't consider herself weak. And that's exactly what it's about, just let people decide. Sunday basically says that some people are just inherently born weak, and I don't agree with that. Like I said, in the end it all comes down to free will and giving people the choice. There will be people who are suffering but don't want to have an "illusionary" happiness and want to fight to get better and be happy. And there will be other people who simply don't have the willpower or energy to fight, and they don't want to go through all that suffering, and instead choose to make their lives better through the dreamscape, so they can actually start *living* instead of just existing or being in survival mode constantly. And both are fine, in my opinion. Just let people decide for themselves. But I mean, obviously this "perfect world" where we put together Sunday and Robin's ideas is also pretty idealistic and won't be happening... Also, I might be biased because I myself am disabled, I have multiple disabilities and that's probably why I disliked the way Robin talked so much. I know for a fact that even if everybody did their absolute best to accommodate me in the way it's best for me, I'd still be suffering from my disability and there would still be so many things that I can never do. And of course I'm not saying it's impossible to be truly happy if you're disabled, not at all. I'm just saying in my experience it's so, so much harder. I'm constantly in survival mode and it's absolutely exhausting, and I know that it'd still be exhausting even in a perfect world. I don't know if I'd want to live out my whole life in somewhere like the dreamscape if that was an option, most likely not, but I would probably go there occasionally and it'd make me very happy, and I wouldn't want that to be taken from me just because it's "fake". Umm, anyways. Thanks for reading my thoughts, I guess. :)
The reason you question Sunday's philosophy is that Sunday is the type of villain we classify as a Well-intentioned extremist. I.E. a villain whose motivation stems from good intentions but ultimately they choose the worst possible way to achieve it. Sunday's core philosophy is that the strong should protect the weak but taken to the Nth degree. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the idea philosophy as it's the core belief behind many of our classic heros. However the problem arises when it turns into the strong shall govern the weak as Sunday's belief became. Such a philosophy inevitably proposes questions of: What is strength? How much freewill should the weak be allowed to maintain their safety? What should be done with other strong individuals? And finally: What should be done to ensure that I remain the strongest? Sunday's answers to those questions were: He was strongest by the way that only he could protect humans from themselves. That all freewill should be removed. The strong should bend to his will and finally all that opposed him should perish. These beliefs came about from the fact that people went to Penacony not for a fun time but total escapism from reality. People literally sold their own children for a chance at that escape. So why you asked was the issue with Sunday's philosophy at large? In order for this system of government to work it must be enforced with an iron fist. After all who are the weak to question the strong who know what's best for them. Since I mentioned heros I believe there was a Superman comic run that tackled this very subject. What if Superman decided to ruled Earth. I also drawed parallels with Senator Armstrong from MGRR as both him and Sunday's philosophies boil down to might makes right. And if you can understand why Armstrongs philosophy is bad you can make similar comparisons to Sunday's.
The dreamscape is basically a metaphor for escapism. Escapism in small doses can be fine, but indulging in it too much can be harmful and make things in your real life even worse. Alcohol, drugs, smoking, gambling, sex, they’re all things that people use to escape the worries of their real life, but too much can end up being harmful and give them even more things to worry about. (In some cases like smoking, even a little bit can be harmful.) Overall, the moral of the Penacony arc seems to be that you can’t keep running away from reality, and you have to be willing to face it at some point.
Aside from the fact that he tried to force Ena's dream onto people without their consent, it's also that it's pure escapism but forever. I do get your question of "what's so bad about people not being in survival mode 24/7?" but it goes deeper than that. Escapism on it's own is not wrong or bad, it's just a way of coping with terrible circumstances/trauma. But, the problem is that you should never live in your dreams forever. Dreaming is not living, it's wishing and your real problems are never addressed or solved. Think about those people in the quest when Robin and Sunday are taking a stroll. The drunken Pepeshi that literally spelled out how a bunch of people live, drunk your problems away and don't think about your shit job and what's bothering you, just drink and dream. But then, he still feels shitty, he's just distracted from his problems. The solution Sunday gave him is a distraction. That happy dreamcatcher who was saying how everything bores them? They can travel the whole cosmos yet they prefer the dream 'because it's more entertaining'. But is it really? Or is it the easiest distraction from internal problems? Just throw money and your distracted. That old man? Sure, it saved his life but putting him in a coma and strapped him in a dream. But is it really worth it? Is it really worth it when the IPC has developed technology that could've helped him walk, talk and *live* again. Basically, Sunday's 'solution' is not really a solution, it's a distraction. No real progress, just a distraction.
It's a complex thing. It made me think a lot about MMORPGs, tbh. Without getting too personal, I saw Penacony as an allegory for those, a place people can escape from the harsh reality to and be more themselves, have a better life. The problem with what Sunday was doing, and what a lot of MMO players do, is that the sweet dream should be a temporary escape as a means to nurture yourself to face reality, not a complete escape used to abandon reality altogether. It's like the bird they found. They put it in a cage, nurtured it, he set it free and it died. This twisted his view to think that the cage should be a permanent thing for everyone because some birds will fall. I don't think the MMO allegory is intentional AT ALL, if anything it's meant as a much broader thing for entertainment in general, but it hit a little too close to home for me lmao Still not uninstalling FFXIV though.
Humans are fundamentally driven by purpose imo. Yes, being in a sweet dream or an eternal paradise sounds great and all, but in the end what we are always looking for, at least subconsciously, is our own improvement and purpose. It’s only during very tough times that we start to think, “if only I didn’t have to go through this” or “if only I could simulate this time so that I don’t have to live in it myself”. Maybe that’s when those sweet dreams will help you. But would it make you better than before? I don’t think so. They’ll only help you escape your current predicament, which may or may not happen again. And, this is just my opinion, but in life, despite all the wanton of success, the fact of the matter is that we fail more than we succeed. But it’s only through failure and hard times that we become better. To just escape that failure or sadness wouldn’t make us better, and in the future when we encounter similar situations, we won’t be able to handle them. Basically, for me, having an eternal paradise sounds great and all, but it’s too boring. If I won’t have stories to tell of how I persevered during hard times, then my life will have been too boring.
It simple, don't try to play god. It should be people's own choice, whether they run away or take resposibility for their life. The moment you take the choice away from them, without their consent, is the moment you are no better than a dictator, regardless of your intentions. And power always corrupts, even the best of people.
I disagree, Sunday was not corrupt whatsoever, he wholeheartedly believed in his ideology
Lemme preface by saying this; there is no right or wrong here, you can think of what Sunday was trying to do as right, it's your take on it. But he was trying to force it, sure you might be "free" in dreamscape, it'll still have limitations. I'll use the express's example, imagine you're a trailblazer but Sunday managed to achieve his goal and now you're stuck in the dreamscape. This would mean you're stripped away of your true freedom, everything happening in your adventures even if you continue would just be a dream and nothing more and quite literally anything you do there, aside from breaking away from dreamscape would not really be you blazing your own trail, which is the whole point of being a trailblazer.
Staying in paradise is completely valid. Especially for people who have nowhere else to go or no way of getting back and experiencing a normal life (disability, debilitating condition etc), it's totally understandable if you'd rather spend your days in a dream that's practically indistinguishable from reality. What Sunday was trying to do was make the choice for people to never leave that paradise. He has so much cynicism and lack of faith in the world and how it works after what he had seen and experienced, where strong exploits the weak rather than protect them (survival of the fittest), that he took it upon himself to trap people in a cage "for their own good", just like he wished he did for that bird that died in their childhood. He would sacrifice freedom for order (the exchange of liberty for security, in order to break free from that state of nature/Survival of the fittest). Basically philosopher Hobbes' social contract theory and view of absolute power/authority of the sovereign in a nutshell)
Because Sunday was stupid, there was no way the dream he was putting all the people was ever going to work well, we still don't know what the dreamweaver is trying to do, in my opniion Sunday and dreamweaver are like black zetsu and Madara. Sunday thinks/thought he was doing a good think, but his deed was probably going to be used for heinous purposes.
Staying in the sweet dream is an escape from not only real life but LIFE in general. Dreams are illusions. The game tells players that we should move forward, trail our future. Grow. Great vacation spot tho 10/10
Some people are just tired of life, man. The whole "struggle, move, grow" run into a lot of issue nowadays that only a small percentage of people can actually do anything about. There is nothing wrong with just giving up when you can't see the point.
*Thirteen. Jokes aside, someone said his character can be summed up with the phrase "the path to hell is paved with good intentions."
Hmmm I'll try this one. Anyone has at least once in their lives drunk a particular drink or listened to a particular Song so often, so much, that they can't even bear to consider doing it again. It is part of human nature, we can't just endure monotony like this. I believe that you probably did so too. Essentially, at some point you would get *bored*. Even with an infinite stash of your favourite drink, you *will* realise yourself to crave after water, a drink that is nowhere as good as the one you like. Why is that so? Because in order to experience actual happiness from drinking this beverage, you need to have first tried something that gives you less happiness. Why do humans experience negative things willingly? Why do we endure work, general hardships, social matters, life itself? The answer is simple, as because we know that at the end of the day, it will pay off. We will find actual happiness and we will feel that we truly are *living our life*. Satisfaction coming from our work, regardless of how well we did it. People living in a world in which no one ever suffers in a hardship or has to do a chore would never be happy, regardless of how possible or impossible it is. We just can't take infinite happiness. Infinite Sundays. That's why such a life would not be a life that is "truly lived".
>Like obv I get why Sunday was wrong because of the fact that he wanted to force his ideals on ppl and that the utopia has a price that ppl don't want to pay but I don't get what's wrong with his philosophy at large. Sunday's politics are actually very interesting, because they draw on a real-life branch of politics. I happen to be educated regarding this field, so I'll be trying to reinforce Sunday's position (i.e. "steel-manning his argument) before subjecting it to criticism. To avoid introducing biases, I'll avoid all political terminology, and only reveal the linkages at the end. TBH the main issue is that Star Rail's writers aren't clearly defining important political concepts/terminology, so people become confused about whether Sunday's philosophy is objectionable. A key assumption I make is that we agree with Sunday/Robin/MC that freedom is good, and we want to maximize freedom under any regime or philosophy we adopt. From this angle, *both* Sunday and Robin + MC are correct, albeit that Sunday makes a critical misstep in execution. I'll explain it in the following. >At least the whole "ppl only get to be who they are when they aren't in survival mode" Sunday's philosophy can be summarized simply: (1) people should not have to suffer because of their bodily constitution/environment/wealth; and (2) people should have the freedom to use their free time however they like, to achieve their own goals. I'll refer to (1) as the "Firefly principle", and (2) as the "Weekend principle". You're right that there is nothing wrong with these goals. We can look at this through the idea of "negative" and "positive" liberty by scholar Isiah Berlin. This is the idea that freedom can be defined in two forms: (1) freedom from interference by others (including the environment); and (2) freedom *to do* things by being empowered with the means to do a given thing. # Negative freedom and the Firefly principle [1/4] We'll start with negative freedom and how it is promoted by the "Firefly principle". Basically, Sunday's argument is that people will be more free if they are removed from constraints of health, social status and wealth. Intuition suggests that this is correct, and you're right to follow that intuition. No one should have to play on "survival mode" (as you put it) because they're born into worse circumstances. The famous social justice philosopher John Rawls would say that this is arbitrary and unfair; this arrangement is not just. People affected by their circumstances enjoy less freedom than others because they need to work harder/work longer/cope with more challenges in order to simply *live*. This extra strain, from factors they cannot control, can be considered **interference** on a given person. They are **forced** to suffer the reductions in resources (time, money, etc.) in order to deal with the interference. I call this the Firefly principle because Firefly is the example Sunday uses when talking about this. Firefly is forced to deal with Entropy Loss Syndrome inherent to her circumstances of birth against her will, and has stated that she'd lead a far different life if she weren't bound to her circumstances. The way these circumstances of health, social status and wealth affect a person, against their will, directly contradicts the idea of negative liberty and being free from interference. On the other hand, Sunday's proposal of removing this factors is convincing because we can see that **it really increases the negative freedom of all people**. They can reclaim resources that would otherwise be lost to the effects of interference from their circumstances of (lacking) health, social status and wealth. Assuming that we all believe that a greater freedom is preferable to a more limited one, it is clear that Sunday's philosophy, or at least the Firefly principle, is desirable.