I wouldn’t say that the demons are evil, they’re just different... They’re an entirety different race, the way they think is fundamentally different from humans and they should be treated as such. Maybe humans and demons could get along if they were changed in some kind of fundamental level but that wouldn’t make them truly demons anymore. Sometimes you just have to accept that some living things can never get along.
Sousou no Frieren - Vol. 2 Ch. 14 - Articulate Monsters
- Thread starter MangaDex
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Neat, they're basically very high-class mimics. Not unlike the eponymous Thing from John Carpenter's The Thing, just without the shapeshifting. Highly intelligent and capable of mimicking behavior, speech, and social cues but totally different on an instinctual level. Even if you implanted human memories into its brain a demon would have totally different thoughts.
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Hmmmmm i feel sad for the demon loli
Its quite clear for her situation she wasn't born evil but because of her environment she learned to do evil acts.
Maybe their is a plot twist somewhere idk that they legit want peace lets find out I guess.
Its quite clear for her situation she wasn't born evil but because of her environment she learned to do evil acts.
Maybe their is a plot twist somewhere idk that they legit want peace lets find out I guess.
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@greatninja3
Did you even read the chapter?
Demons are monsters that evolved into the human form and learned the human speech as a survival tactic as well as a hunting one.
If you want to go all philosophical they are not inherently evil, just like a lion is not evil for killing a gazelle, but clearly there can be no peace with them.
Did you even read the chapter?
Demons are monsters that evolved into the human form and learned the human speech as a survival tactic as well as a hunting one.
If you want to go all philosophical they are not inherently evil, just like a lion is not evil for killing a gazelle, but clearly there can be no peace with them.
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Another way to view the demons is that when people see cute animals. Yes, they are cute. But, fundamentally, they are from the wild. Life there is killed or be killed, more so for non-pack animals.
@Romanaire The meaning of the demon girl's intentions when she kills the village chief is a bit vague. Here, thinking of them as simple robots with the goal of eating humans and surviving, you can understand that they do not sympathize with humans or socialize in the truest sense.
1. She was about to be killed because she killed prey, someone's daughter.
1a. Saying "mother" and "it hurts" increases survival chances. Now, she can live.
The humans bring her to a building (house) with a daughter.
1b. The mother of the daughter does not approve of her.
2. By deceiving the village chief, the demon can get his daughter, hoping his daughter will satisfy the mother and let her be free
It is convoluted because we think that killing the chief would go against peace and survival, but she can't understand society.
Sure, demons represented here can live in a pack. But, she is a lone demon orphan.
@Lucrecia 👍
But also, people wanna to fuck and cherish cute demon gurl
@Romanaire The meaning of the demon girl's intentions when she kills the village chief is a bit vague. Here, thinking of them as simple robots with the goal of eating humans and surviving, you can understand that they do not sympathize with humans or socialize in the truest sense.
1. She was about to be killed because she killed prey, someone's daughter.
1a. Saying "mother" and "it hurts" increases survival chances. Now, she can live.
The humans bring her to a building (house) with a daughter.
1b. The mother of the daughter does not approve of her.
2. By deceiving the village chief, the demon can get his daughter, hoping his daughter will satisfy the mother and let her be free
It is convoluted because we think that killing the chief would go against peace and survival, but she can't understand society.
Sure, demons represented here can live in a pack. But, she is a lone demon orphan.
@Lucrecia 👍
But also, people wanna to fuck and cherish cute demon gurl
@geoxile
@equilibrium
you guys worded it wonderfully, thanks. they are acting as messenger of peace is one of their hunting tactics to eat humans. just like how predators learn to approach their prey carefully in order to not be noticed.
im curious to see if they will develop individual personality or not.
@equilibrium
you guys worded it wonderfully, thanks. they are acting as messenger of peace is one of their hunting tactics to eat humans. just like how predators learn to approach their prey carefully in order to not be noticed.
im curious to see if they will develop individual personality or not.
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@Pleppie
Demon's are raised to eat and deceive humans.
If they have any attachment to their ways, then forcefully raising them as humans is akin to cultural genocide, something which can never be justified.
The thought of Humans subjugating demons and forcing them into camps to "re-educate" them is incredibly problematic, it's no different to the establishment of Indian boarding schools in the United States to wipe out native culture. If demons are encroaching on human lands, then the only humane course of action is to banish them back to where they came from and raising a barrier to minimize contact between both races.
Demon's are raised to eat and deceive humans.
If they have any attachment to their ways, then forcefully raising them as humans is akin to cultural genocide, something which can never be justified.
The thought of Humans subjugating demons and forcing them into camps to "re-educate" them is incredibly problematic, it's no different to the establishment of Indian boarding schools in the United States to wipe out native culture. If demons are encroaching on human lands, then the only humane course of action is to banish them back to where they came from and raising a barrier to minimize contact between both races.
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Honestly, you would have to raise one from birth to possibly alter it's nature. Even then it's no guarantee...
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I see a lot of people using "evil" to describe the young demon girl, when it appears their species are simply amoral. The concept of what is innately "right" or "wrong" doesn't seem to exist for them, so for those with empathy they appear emotionless like a robot.
I'm quite curious as to how their society functions, as clearly the negotiator is using the ones accompanying him to appear as a family. Just how much killing did they have to do in order to learn this much about Human society?
@Ligerhero Children are abandoned, they don't raise them period much less to "eat and deceive humans" as they have no custom of "family" as Freiren said. Basically it's they mate with whom they fancy, and the offspring is left on it's own after the mother gives birth. Though, perhaps when a demon lord is chosen they begin to keep offspring to create and train as soldiers.
I'm quite curious as to how their society functions, as clearly the negotiator is using the ones accompanying him to appear as a family. Just how much killing did they have to do in order to learn this much about Human society?
@Ligerhero Children are abandoned, they don't raise them period much less to "eat and deceive humans" as they have no custom of "family" as Freiren said. Basically it's they mate with whom they fancy, and the offspring is left on it's own after the mother gives birth. Though, perhaps when a demon lord is chosen they begin to keep offspring to create and train as soldiers.
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Brings back memories from the "tasukete" monsters in Made In Abyss. That was fucked lol
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@zanonyn @SweatyBrie
True, we are accustomed to applying our ethics and our way of thinking to any other living creature (and even to natural events) cataloguing everything in the range between “good” and “bad”, when in fact good and bad are just our social inventions.
To give a simple example, the hamsters. Lovely and soft creatures that make us tenderness.
Hamsters, especially mothers, eat own puppies.
From our point of view, this is a terrible gesture; one of our worst taboos, which sends hamsters from the paradise of cute animals to the hell of bloody monsters. But that if we see it from a human ethical point of view.
In nature there is the principle of race balance. This one, in order to survive in a given place, must remain stable over time. So, if we put as life span of a hamster 5 years (they are not real data, I am using them to simplify it), at the end of this time there MUST be a pair of hamsters to take their place.
If there are too few of them the breed will die out, if there are too many there will be overcrowding and they will starve to death.
The problem is that hamsters have children all the time, and as many as 10,000 can be born to a couple in those five years.
But nature only needs two. And all the other 9,998?
Sacrificable among illnesses, accidents, becoming food for other creatures... and even for one's own parent, in order to recover the forces spent to give birth to them.
9,998 small and soft hamsters born only to make two survive. Does it look monstrous and unacceptable? And yet it works, it is the best possible method that nature has found to make its principle of equilibrium work.
(Often and willingly, indeed, it is the animals that we consider to be the sweetest and most innocent that behave as criminals; like hamsters other vegetarian animals eat their offspring systematically. The lovely doves, the very symbol of peace, if locked in a cage and unable to escape, are able to kill themselves by peck. In comparison predatory animals, having invested more on the quality of their offspring than on their number, have much more “human” behaviours - e. g. two tigers locked in a cage roar at each other and compete against those who are bigger and stronger, each remaining in their own corner, but will hardly reach the point of attacking. As if they knew that fighting against a mortal creature does not gain anything, even if they win)
Until a century ago, it also worked for us humans, among other things. They gave birth to six, seven children... even more, with the only hope that at least one or two would be able to reproduce themselves. Of course, with the development we have now seems a horror story more than the truth... but it was so (grandma gave birth to eight children, but only four became adults). Now practically every child (at least in the developed countries) born has the opportunity to grow and reproduce... and in fact now we are almost eight billion of us, with all the problems of overcrowding and sustainability that this entails.
What's wrong with that? Is Mrs. Hamster really a monster, or is she just doing what nature made her for?
As long as we use pareidolia for the behavior of creatures who are not human, it will seem wrong. As soon as we move away from this thread of thought (and the concept of abstraction is why we are hand beings, the ability to think as if we were someone else) we realize that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just like the demons aren't wrong... only dangerous to us humans.
True, we are accustomed to applying our ethics and our way of thinking to any other living creature (and even to natural events) cataloguing everything in the range between “good” and “bad”, when in fact good and bad are just our social inventions.
To give a simple example, the hamsters. Lovely and soft creatures that make us tenderness.
Hamsters, especially mothers, eat own puppies.
From our point of view, this is a terrible gesture; one of our worst taboos, which sends hamsters from the paradise of cute animals to the hell of bloody monsters. But that if we see it from a human ethical point of view.
In nature there is the principle of race balance. This one, in order to survive in a given place, must remain stable over time. So, if we put as life span of a hamster 5 years (they are not real data, I am using them to simplify it), at the end of this time there MUST be a pair of hamsters to take their place.
If there are too few of them the breed will die out, if there are too many there will be overcrowding and they will starve to death.
The problem is that hamsters have children all the time, and as many as 10,000 can be born to a couple in those five years.
But nature only needs two. And all the other 9,998?
Sacrificable among illnesses, accidents, becoming food for other creatures... and even for one's own parent, in order to recover the forces spent to give birth to them.
9,998 small and soft hamsters born only to make two survive. Does it look monstrous and unacceptable? And yet it works, it is the best possible method that nature has found to make its principle of equilibrium work.
(Often and willingly, indeed, it is the animals that we consider to be the sweetest and most innocent that behave as criminals; like hamsters other vegetarian animals eat their offspring systematically. The lovely doves, the very symbol of peace, if locked in a cage and unable to escape, are able to kill themselves by peck. In comparison predatory animals, having invested more on the quality of their offspring than on their number, have much more “human” behaviours - e. g. two tigers locked in a cage roar at each other and compete against those who are bigger and stronger, each remaining in their own corner, but will hardly reach the point of attacking. As if they knew that fighting against a mortal creature does not gain anything, even if they win)
Until a century ago, it also worked for us humans, among other things. They gave birth to six, seven children... even more, with the only hope that at least one or two would be able to reproduce themselves. Of course, with the development we have now seems a horror story more than the truth... but it was so (grandma gave birth to eight children, but only four became adults). Now practically every child (at least in the developed countries) born has the opportunity to grow and reproduce... and in fact now we are almost eight billion of us, with all the problems of overcrowding and sustainability that this entails.
What's wrong with that? Is Mrs. Hamster really a monster, or is she just doing what nature made her for?
As long as we use pareidolia for the behavior of creatures who are not human, it will seem wrong. As soon as we move away from this thread of thought (and the concept of abstraction is why we are hand beings, the ability to think as if we were someone else) we realize that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just like the demons aren't wrong... only dangerous to us humans.
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This tbh is an interesting take on the "predator of humans " trope. Usually in these depictions it tends to mirror human thoughts on eating intelligent creatures and sort of places primacy on the intelligence of both the predator and the prey. Here it is putting primacy in the fact that they are predators first and foremost, and their intelligence are just a means to an end. You can also argue that intelligence may become something larger than just a means to an end and then they can actually talk to each other but I would like to see how they take this
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Thanks for the chapter!
