Warning: Massive cannon spoilers up to and including the resolution of the main plot of Shippuden.
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On the subject of the Akatsuki:
I'm fairly new here and haven't read thread backlogs, so I don't know if this has been brought up yet, but how do people feel about going with the Akatsuki's/Madara's (cannon) plans? Not just trying to join them in the near term?
FWIW, I always hated the cannon's immediate rejection of the idea of the Infinite Tsukuyomi ("It's 'just' a dream"/"It does disservice to the memories of those who have died"/etc). Yes, the ultimate goal of the one behind everything turned out to be evil, but that doesn't immediately preclude their methods.
This has some clear parallels to uploading/simulation. Handwaving a bit, but from a reductionist PoV, if we could recreate exactly all the behaviors of a person inside the dream, such that there is no evidence we know of that contradicts it (all living people's memories, historical documents, inference from physical evidence etc.), we're effectively pulling from a nearby branch of reality where that version of the person existed. One could make a strong moral argument for this plan to "resurrect" everyone, or at least those who are remembered by people who are still alive.
There is of course the issue of life after death in cannon. We don't really know much about that, except people seem to hang around a bit in a kind of purgatory, until others they care for have died or resolved their issues, before "moving on".
Even if "resurrect everyone in a Genjutsu world" doesn't work out, or isn't appealing or practical, I think there's still a strong argument for creating a Matrix of sorts that we control. The possibilities are endless. At the very least, we could create safer, more pleasant simulation world in Genjutsu where people aren't dying and killing each other left and right. Perhaps with the Tailed Beasts guarding the "real" one, or something.
Thoughts?
There are a number of issues here...
- We don't know in story if the Akatsuki is even active, or if they are what their goals are
- Same for Madara/Obito
- Same for Kaguya -- did she even exist? Is Black Zetsu around / still manipulating history to resurrect Kaguya?
- Could we even be of use to the Akatsuki? Why would they even talk to us instead of killing us on sight?
- Assuming we could join up, if their goals are different than cannon or at odds with ours, how probable is it we could ultimately defeat them or turn them to our side? (Noburi -- quick, dump everything into Diplomacy!)
- Would it be possible to solve some of the cannon issues with the Infinite Tsukuyomi?
- Link people's minds into a shared dream through chakra-something-or-other mumblemumble *waves hands around*. Wasn't specifically ruled out, butin the filler episodes everyone had their own dream.
- Maybe not turning people caught in the dream into zombie puppets
- Just another minor suggestion, but maybe also opt-in instead of seeking to destroy all opposition and mindrape everyone?
- Does any of this even work the same way in this AU? A lot of the heavy lifting in terms of computational work to create a full dream world indistinguishable from reality is sort of just glossed over. But then again, how does "gestalt field" / chakra work anyway?
- Assuming we wanted to go down this path, could we maintain relations with Jiraiya/leaf, somehow keeping from him that we actually and truly are planning on World Domination?
- Do we have any good IC reason for pursuing this at all? It is all very meta and feels kinda icky from that PoV
