Poll: Who Started the War? The Humans or the Aliens?

[+ILuvHats he/him]

I'm curious what everybody thinks.  We don't have much evidence so its all based on gut feelings, but I think the humans were the ones who first declared war.  What about you guys?

[+Invocation]

Humankind directly started the war, but with the way the other aliens were treating their own people, they deserved it, so I'd say both were at fault.

[RShara she/her]

Given that it's Brandon, it's not going to be as simple as "They started it!" I'm sure both sides share some blame and that there's a healthy degree of misunderstanding thrown into the mix.

Edited December 5, 2018 by RShara

[+Ark1002]

I'm going to vote humans, thought they both have some fault, humans are idiots, and destroy things a lot.

[Draigon]

I'm going to vote other since I think Brandon's going to make it a bit more complex than being able to point at who started the war. A fairly massive amount of time has passed since the original story. Enough time that Detritus was populated, contained in a dyson sphere, abandoned or wiped out, and is falling into ruins when the Defiant fleet first crash lands.

[king of nowhere]

Can I vote "it doesn't matter"? Everyone who actually started the war is long since dead, as are their immmediate descendants. even their cultures are either dead or radically changed.

[Draigon]

I'm not sure we know when the war started, just that it ended when GranGran was a child.

[Aeshdan he/him]

 

The impression I got was that it was a question of semantics. The Krell coalition basically declared that all humans needed to submit to their authority because they were scared of us, and the humans refused and used force to defend themselves. So you could say that it was the Krell that started it by making unreasonable demands, or that the humans started it by being the first to use force.

[+ILuvHats he/him]

I feel like I should have phrased things a bit differently for the poll.  A lot of people are saying they think both sides contributed to starting the war, which I totally agree with.  When I gave the poll options that humanity started the war vs the aliens, or vice versa, I didn’t mean to imply that one side was solely responsible for beginning the conflict, but rather that one side contributed significantly more to starting the war.  I didn’t make that clear though in the poll, though, unfortunately.  

[Govir]

I'm rereading Skyward, and there was a line about the "Human Empire". That swayed me to thinking that Humans started to take to the stars after Jason Write found out what he did at the end of DE. I don't think the Humans *started* the war, they simply wanted to expand and explore. The implication that I get is that the war didn't start directly after DE. It sounds more like humans spread out across the stars, and then later the Aliens attacked. Which raises the question of why the aliens waited. My assumption would be that they didn't have the technology to wage war immediately, but were able to develop it later by either playing ball with the humans to get their tech, or actually spending time developing their own tech due to what they perceived as a threat.

 

EDIT: ho boy. Apparently this was already brought up over in this post. It was my next tab to catch up on

 

Edited December 10, 2018 by Govir

[Iarwainiel I she/her]

I voted "Somebody else" - I'm thinking it was the "eyes."

[Argel he/him]

Seems pretty clear from DE. According to the aliens, humans are not considered civilized yet, but only civilized races are supposed to have FTL. So once the humans reveal they have FTL, the aliens have to contain the humans. Doesn't matter who fired the first shot, because the aliens set the parameters that triggered the war. That means the aliens in-effect started it.

The only way that's not the case is if there is someone else manipulating events (e.g. giving humans FTL before they were ready, or manipulating the aliens to use the "civilized" criteria). There are some hints this is possible (the eyes), but nothing substantial to support that so far.

[Sparkrunner he/him]

The aliens thought humankind was too uncivilized and powerful, and was expanding too rapidly, and thus becoming a threat. So they start the war, ja?

[Ethan_sedai he/him]

my opinion is mixed, because of how things turned out: some humans, (the aggressive ones) attacked some aliens, possibly as a response to something, and the aliens reacted to humankind as a whole, instead of as individual "countries." 

so, I think if anyone is completely at fault, it is mostly the aliens for escalating it so far, but it is possible that humans escalated something, too?

[HSuperLee]

If we're to take DE to it's logical conclusions, then I'm not even how sure you can call it a war. War implies commitment on both sides, and I don't think the aliens would have been commited to real violence if they all were like the ones in DE. However, I do believe they would have taken the first shot and humans would either be fighting for revenge or self-defense.

[Argel he/him]

Killing all humans or oppressing all humans? Either way, the humans fight back.

And the aliens started the war because they decided humans were not civilized enough for FTL.

[Rossamund]

The question is why would they wait? One explanation is that they tolerated the humans until some humans attacked them. Which made the aliens decide that humans needed to be contained.

[Borio Singaldi he/him]

Humans being the one to start an ancient war with another species is something Brandon has done before...

Spoiler

...in the Stormlight Archive, as revealed in Oathbringer. Humans started it, and look where it's gotten them.

And I don't think it seems all that logical that Brandon would use the same trope twist for another series as an example of "humans suck and are the cause of all problems but at least we can do better". It would actually be a nice subversion of expectations to me if it actually turns out how we thought it would and that the Krell started it. But since that doesn't seem all that likely, I just went with the "both at fault" option.

[Calyx]

Given that in "Defending Elysium" renegade aliens seem to be infiltrating humanity, its possible these rebels actually started the war. So... aliens, except they are humans... it could get confusing.

Regardless, I doubt humanity just decided "lets go conquer some stuff" - if humanity actually started the fight, it was likely in response to the aliens demanding humans that were not deemed to have "prime intelligence" be contained. In that case, I think its pretty hard to cast blame on humanity.

[John Flamesinger he/him]

On 12/29/2018 at 1:27 PM, Argel said:

Killing all humans or oppressing all humans? Either way, the humans fight back.

And the aliens started the war because they decided humans were not civilized enough for FTL.

 

I voted the aliens.

 

 

[+robardin he/him]

On 12/5/2018 at 2:24 PM, Draigon said:

I'm going to vote other since I think Brandon's going to make it a bit more complex than being able to point at who started the war. 

Brandon is contrarian, though. When you think zig, he's gonna zag. So I'm gonna go with the opposite: not only will it end up being clear who started the war, but it's going to be like one person who machinated it all! 

[Emily she/her]

Wait, I was under the assumption that’this was in the same universe as Defending Elysium, (or however it’s spelled lol.) Has this been refuted? If it is the case, the way it ended was

Spoiler

With aliens being basically evil ie, ignoring basic rights, and humans deciding to fight against that. It was unclear whether that meant war but I read it as war. 

 

[Govir]

On 8/31/2019 at 9:00 AM, Emily said:

Wait, I was under the assumption that’this was in the same universe as Defending Elysium, (or however it’s spelled lol.) Has this been refuted? If it is the case, the way it ended was

  Hide contents

With aliens being basically evil ie, ignoring basic rights, and humans deciding to fight against that. It was unclear whether that meant war but I read it as war. 

 

You are correct that this is tied to Defending Elysium. I'll continue precedence and spoiler tag this discussion. (Caveat: I haven't read DE since before Skyward came out, so my terms may not be specific to what is used in world)

Spoiler

At the end of DE, we discover that the Aliens are all suppressing dissidents, and this is what they mean when they talk about getting beyond violence and conflict. It is what they have determined to be a pre-requisite for FTL travel.

The humans find out about this, and do not agree at all. The few humans that know about FTL travel decide to share the knowledge with the rest of humanity. I think this was the only conflict we saw. Humans weren't actively going to the stars in order to explicitly stop "the aliens", they were going to the stars because they could.

So the conflict could have started two different ways:

1. Humans starting it in order to stop the imprisonment of dissidents
2. Aliens starting it in retaliation of Humans gaining widespread FTL, without becoming "peaceful"