I pretty sure per LordR WOG Shards accidentally discovered souls, they don't know "it's soul", but GU and Butcher use souls.
So, Wormverse was rewrited here. Yes, Shards are still mostly work on principle "ultra Clarketech", but "magic" is with Shards even without Aperion.
Well, I'm not gonna argue against it if it's WoG, and the actual difference it would have on the narrative is insignificantly minimal, but let it be known that my complainer's heart find this "kinda lame."
I still think people resurrected from Shards, at least without Joe's involvement, oughta come back fucked up though. The only changes to canon events (as opposed to elements of the setting) we've seen so far are ones brought about by Joe's action, and otherwise this story has been very attentive to even pieces of canon often ignored by the community. Changing whether or not people come back "right" could set off a lot of butterflies that have nothing to do with Joe.
I would like to point out that, while shards do store their host's soul, they are cataloging data on their host, and collecting their soul may simply be a byproduct of that. Thus, while it may be possible to fully revive someone using the soul from their passenger, no parahuman can do it as shards don't intentionally mess with souls, they simply use the faulty data collected by the shards.
I don't know if you've also seen the WoG mentioned in the previous quote, and whether or not it disproves this perspective, but I think I like this interpretation best.
Does anyone have a link to the original WoG from Lord, actually? Might as well take a look myself.
There is a part of me that wants him to go wild upgrading the city. I know he won't due to Ziz. Do you think that Joe can convince himself to merely only repair the city to its previous state? Oh, it would sting for him. He'd really want to make tons and tons of changes, but no, the only thing he can actually do is rebuild to existing specs. Ok, that rebuild would be of master work as new quality as well as all those style perks.
Folks have mentioned that Joe trying to help improve things might end up with sudden future shock. Joe is having it from the mere possibility of what he can do already.
I can see BB ending up sort of like Academy City. It's mostly a normal city that merely happens to have tech a few decades advance of everyone else and lots of plots going on in the background.
I think if Joe were to remodel the city with his own tech, even constraining himself to a more realistic "tech from decades in the future" level, he would be more likely to get BB quarantined then accepted as an oddly advanced place. No one in the government is going to trust a tinker tech town or a guy who decides to build one without telling anyone and is actually capable of doing so.
Collaborating with someone with a trusted reputation like Dragon to achieve such advancements for the world in general, like with that power source he showed to her, is a different story all together though. Maybe it could even start in BB then, cause Dragon is there and possibly has the clout to ask to use the suffering city as a test case for life improving tech.
I know i'm like mega late to reply to this, but i've been super busy with the Texas outages.
We share very similar beliefs here, as with Lightifiers post, so I'll comment on those places where we appeared to differ.
I even this that people who are seen a 'irredeemable' can be fixed. Though in that case it may be better to lock their memories, re-train them to be a new person (letting them know that their memories were locked for therapy reasons and that they could be unlocked anytime after 7 years when the patient requests it).
While the lofty near-utopian goals you've set out are something I agree ought to be strived for, specifics like this seem kind of arbitrary. I'm not a qualified psychologist and so can't say whether or not this method of therapy would be useful, but it would take me living in quite a different society for me to be able to trust some random official totally took away a majority of my memories for my own good. And even then, how could I trust in the memories of a society good enough to allow that if I also suspect they could have changed me to believe that in the first place?
This actually might be a process better suited for placement in an afterlife or reincarnation system, at least at the most extreme ends (dealing with people like the Nine and all).
Vaguely related, I also think that unless there is specific directed action by politically powerful people, we will never have a society that is 'ready' for immortality. People have been trying for decades to get the world ready for it, but none of the lawmakers are taking it seriously, possibly because they don't expect to be alive for it. We believe that immortality will be available here on our earth in the next 24-75 years, see the link below.
If someone has a viable method of immortality they should share it immediately. Many humans have gotten used to the idea of 'dying of old age', or are ignoring it, but if you have a way of healing a preventable disease (people don't really die 'of old age', they die due to pneumonia or heart failure or something similar) I think it is your obligation to share it and save lives rather than delude yourself into thinking that 'society is not ready'. Of course as you can see I am a very firm believer against the Star Trek's 'Prime Directive'. (as if the lives of people are worth less than keeping their culture, bah!)
A very fair point, though I will note that Joe may be able to exert more political influence then you imagine. He could dangle real present day immortality tech under the nose of all those disinterested politicians, and I'm sure quite a few would jump at the possibility to help Joe prepare in exchange for getting it. That's not even considering what more could be done if Joe were to eventually have someone like Contessa help him prepare society.
I just keep imagining scenarios like: everyone in power keeps immortality for themselves and away from the underclass; they stop breeding and we're ruled by the same people forever. Which I guess is more applicable to real life than a world where a single demigod is the one handing out immortality to everyone, but other such problems abound when immortal people are suddenly operating within institutional systems that expect them to die.
Whoa, neat. Out here in the real world, where souls aren't confirmed to be a thing, I'm not sure I'd go for brain uploading if some other form of immortality were available. But I guess if I'm gonna die anyways, letting a copy of me frolic around for the rest of time wouldn't be so bad. As long as it wasn't alive at the same time as me. Ugh, that'd be weird.
I didn't think that a discussion board about a fanfiction would get so deep and philosophical, but I guess it makes sense since we are seeing a theoretical world where a person has these powers and we can think of what he should/could do.
I too didn't really expect things to head in this direction, but I've had quite a fun time talking about it :^)
Jack Slash will rejoice in this chance of course, and might have a nice chat with Joe's would-be shard as well...to bad it isn't actually attached to him.
That's a very intriguing possibility, actually. Jack Slash's shard very well could start chatting up Joe's abandoned shard, whom I imagine would communicate something along the lines of: "Finally, yes, you there, check this dude out. What the hell is going on with this dude? I'm not in his head so I can't really observe closely, here's what I do know, but please, can you find out what the hell that thing that took my place is?"
Jack might find himself with some odder urges and intuitions than typical in Joe's presence.
