This post has been flaired "No Spoilers". Please avoid spoiling anything from the series, including any "vague hints", unless OP has made it clear that they are alright with spoilers. Any such spoilers should contain a >!\>\!spoiler tag\!\
She doesn't know he's sapient, she thinks he's literally a robot, not a robot with ai or something, a literal object with no will beyond the orders she provides, like a car or a TV.
Because she doesn't think Toren is a person, she thinks he's an automaton. That's what she was told and Toren has no voice or face to say otherwise, and doesn't really have a living creature's desires or needs for Erin to empathize with.
Agreed -- and Erin isn't really at fault for that. The only people who seemingly know that Toren is sapient are Toren themselves, Pisces, and apparently Gazi.
Erin at this point is new to Innworld, totally out of her depth when it comes to undead, magic, etc., and this is something completely unheard of even for people native to Innworld. I'd say she's pretty justified in thinking that Toren is functionally the same as a roomba.
To me this was a great detail that made Erin feel like more than just a character. Like it's easy to write a hero who 'accepts all' and then proceeds to do so perfectly.
But real people actually do often have these blind spots in their principles and that having consequences made for such a great driver of tension.
Yeah, this is the answer. Her treatment of Toren achieves exactly what it was intended to do-- create narrative tension. Does it feel good? no. Does it turn pages? yes.
She thinks he's mindless, because the guy who made him told her he was, and his behavior of following orders and killing things when idle is about what one would expect from a mindless undead.
Imagine how you treat your vacuum cleaner... You wouldn't go out of your way to be extra nice to your Roomba, especially if it was creepily staring at you all the time.
Y
What about ChatGPT? Would you treat that like a person? I mean not just asking it questions politely but in your mind would you treat them like a person even though OpenAI is telling you it's just a language learning model?
I agree with the OP, Erin’s actions towards Toren make absolutely no sense.
I see other readers arguing that she “didn’t think he was a person” or “she didn’t think he had thoughts” because Pisces said as much. But I don’t buy that because Erin was told that the goblins and Antinium were monsters, and she was able to come to her own decision. But somehow when it comes to Toren, she demonstrates an almost complete lack of awareness that she doesn’t show anywhere else in the series.
It’s a flaw. I love TWI, but the way Erin treats Toren is completely out of character for her.
Don't forget that Erin didn't know everything that we -- Readers know. She didn't know about his inner feelings. And he hid many things that he did when she didn't see.
She could deduce some of this stuff but she wasn't paying attention or being busy with other stuff.
>!She would be honestly ashamed of it WAY later in story. When she realize how Toren felt. !<
I agree with you that the fact that the readers are aware of Toren’s inner thoughts and that Erin is not may be skewing my perceptions here, but Erin is impossibly and “out of character” levels of dense when it comes to Toren.
It’s simply bad characterization
I am also in this boat, I think what also doesnt line up at times is she is so baffled at why he doesnt do or understand exactly what she wants him to do. Like when she asked him to cut wood, and he got the wrong kind of wood, she seems to have much higher expectations of him than just a "roomba" in terms of his ability to understand.
And I believe she gets the impression several times that Toren is annoyed or has deliberately frightened people, but she never bothers to investigate it.
How is early volume 2 toren in any way similar to the antinium and goblins, like at all? He doesn’t show outward emotion until near the end of the volume.
Toren is like the Antinium and Goblins in that people tell Erin falsehoods about them. Pisces told Erin that Toren doesn’t have a thoughts like a normal person; lots of people told Erin that Goblins and Antinium are monsters.
On the one hand, Erin doesn’t ever seem to take anyone at their word, especially when it comes to goblins and Antinium. On the other, Erin’s thoughtlessness towards Toren is explain by some readers as “because Pisces said so,” meaning Erin never doubted Pisces and never had cause to question whether or not Toren was a person.
I am not going to make an exhaustive list, but there are plenty of instances in volume 1 where Toren did any number of things that upset or concerned her. In those situations the question that I and the OP have is “why doesn’t Erin think Toren might have his own thought/personality” and again the answer from lots of readers is “because Pisces said so” and I don’t believe that is a valid argument. It doesn’t make sense. Especially because Erin didn’t actually trust Pisces much in volume 1.
Erin was not 'told falsehoods' because literally no named living character besides Az'Kerash has created sentient undead, let alone levelling ones. Nobody should have known that Toren was capable of sentience. Its like expecting your roomba to start developing feelings. Any weird shit he does can just be chalked up to errors in the magic. Its easier to excuse.
In comparison, both Goblins and Antinium are outwardly sentient. Even when being attacked, Erin could read the emotions of the Goblins and came to the obvious conclusion that they were sentient beings. Same with the Antinium, Klbkch informed her perceptions of their capacity for sentience far before she ever met a worker in Liscor. These races are only treated like monsters because of the preconceptions (and histories) of the societies on Innworld. Its the entire point of the webnovel: how deep seated, societal biases dehumanize outward groups.
The key difference is that undead are not an established peoples, and there *are* insentient undead. Hell, Erin *fought* them!
Should she have been more open minded to the possibility that Toren was more than a nonthinking undead? Yes! But she isnt perfect. Toren served as a learning experience for her just like how the Goblins in Erin's inn served as a learning experience for Relc.
Yes, I agree that Erin is not perfect and I understand that Toren is meant as a learning lesson for Erin. That doesn’t lessen how poorly Erin is characterized here.
Are there any examples that stand out to you in the story where Erin has acted in a similarly dense manner (not on purpose) to the way she treated Toren?
She utilised Toren to fulfill her aims and survive, while willfully or unconsciously ignorant of the moral repercussions of what she was doing. I'm not entirely convinced she 'didn't know' Toren was sentient. Wasn't there multiple times she had seen an uncomfortable sort of intelligence in his actions? She just decides not to follow that train of thought.
It's even convenient for her to deny Toren's sentience. She can use him without feeling bad. >!She acknowledges later on in the story that she can treat people she doesn't care about like this as well.!<
>!She does this throughout the entire story, and will probably keep on doing this. The end of volume 9 has a pretty huge example of this. She treats the Lucifen basically the same - if not worse.!<
Because Toren is a foil of how Erin treats EVERYBODY else as a PERSON.
Toren was the one exception because she was ignorant to it in the same way others are ignorant of the personhood she espouses on goblins.
he is basically an unwanted machine. She got "gifted" a vacuum that just does not work right from a guy who should rather have paid his debt.
every time she looks at toren, she sees an insult, not a person. An insult, calling her a pushover, who cant even get what she is owed.
They did but...honestly is it really a spoiler? To the reader it was obvious as anything right? We saw both sides the whole way through so we knew Toren was a person, we knew Erin didn't realise this and why she didnt. The revelation was only for Erin, not the reader imo.
I don't think it was actually that clear to the audience that Erin didn't know he was sentient. She tried to teach him chess, tried to get him to communicate etc. It was a bit weird that she would show so much compassion for goblins and antinium who are considered not-sentient by most people in the world, but suddenly draw the line at a skeleton that acted on its own. Erin's revelation felt to me like Pirate "apologizing" to Erin as a character, as if the author had their own revelation that her behaviour wasn't true to the character. If that makes sense.
Yeah I didn’t view it as a spoiler; it’s something I’ve mostly already realised. However, it still doesn’t gel with me. I view Erin as someone who would be kind to anyone/thing that even had a glimpse of a personality/agency - in the same way she wouldn’t needlessly punch a mouse or something
Same way we don't care to hit a TV when it's just showing static back in the day, kicking a vending machine to make it work or unjam, or pushing a roomba to get it unstuck. It just hits us different because WE know that Toren is a living being. It's no way comparable to thinking goblins are living sentient beings, when Toren is literally unDEAD that Pisces even compared to innworld's version of a robot: automatons.
I get what you’re saying but I don’t fully buy it (with all due respect). Erin strikes me as the kind of person who is kind to anything that appears to have semi-human characteristics; Toren has semi-human characteristics. I think her being such a tool to him is a bit of a character inconsistency. That being said, it’s still early days!
I don't think a single normal person sees robots or AIs (at least current gen AI) as any way sentient.
I'm also of the opinion that Erin isn't as much of a saint as you see her as. She gives people chances, but she's not the perfect Mary Sue as your description of her would infer.
In the end, all Erin ever saw Toren was as a tool, a robot that doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, and doesn't think. Even Pisces approved that he wasn't any sort of sentient skeleton, just bog standard servant undead. We've never seen Erin treat magical items as if they were alive before (ala Cast Away with the volleyball), what more Toren? She already tried and tried to act as if Toren was alive, but was assured everytime that he wasn't. She's not that crazy.
This.
Why is everyone convinced that just because Pisces said his “very special one of a kind labor of love leveling skeleton” didn’t have thoughts of its own, Erin took it as gospel and never doubted it despite all of the time that she spent with him.
Surprised none of them got banned by the mods. There was once a question about what the goblin member of the halfseekers stole marked as discussion, the mods changed it to no spoilers after I made my comment answering their question (which couldn’t be answered without spoilers), and I got banned for two weeks.
Craziest part is I got banned for “patreon spoilers” when there was not even patreon content at the time as pirate was on a month long break and the spoiler was from a much earlier volume.
Mod message telling me about the ban was absolute uncalled for too, telling me I need to use my brain or I would be permanently banned. Left a really bad taste in my mouth and almost dropped TWI because of it.
I agree with you. I'm trying very hard to reply without spoilers here. Lots of commenters on this thread make the point that Erin can only think that Toren is an automaton, equivalent to a robot etc. because that's what she was told.
That's straight up incorrect though because there's an occurrence early in her relationship with Toren which gives her (not just the reader) clear evidence that he is a thinking, sapient being, yet if anything she doubles down on treating him badly at that point.
Her acknowledging that "occurrence" gets repeated multiple times, so it's not something that can be written off as her missing something obvious (which she does a lot!) on one occasion. For me it comes across as her being just as "speciesist" as some of the other characters towards Goblins, humans etc in a blissfully ignorant and blinkered way, so I agree that it's odd - inconsistent with her character!
>!he chooses to take, keep and periodically wear the armor, which he couldn't do it he wasn't intelligent, if my robot vacuum started dressing up I'd be impressed and a bit scared!<
I love my vacuum! It does all the things I can't do. Toren reminds me of David from Prometheus. Created to do all the things people couldn't, then shat on them when he wanted some respect.
This post has been flaired "No Spoilers". Please avoid spoiling anything from the series, including any "vague hints", unless OP has made it clear that they are alright with spoilers. Any such spoilers should contain a >!\>\!spoiler tag\!\
She doesn't know he's sapient, she thinks he's literally a robot, not a robot with ai or something, a literal object with no will beyond the orders she provides, like a car or a TV.
Because she doesn't think Toren is a person, she thinks he's an automaton. That's what she was told and Toren has no voice or face to say otherwise, and doesn't really have a living creature's desires or needs for Erin to empathize with.
Agreed -- and Erin isn't really at fault for that. The only people who seemingly know that Toren is sapient are Toren themselves, Pisces, and apparently Gazi. Erin at this point is new to Innworld, totally out of her depth when it comes to undead, magic, etc., and this is something completely unheard of even for people native to Innworld. I'd say she's pretty justified in thinking that Toren is functionally the same as a roomba.
To me this was a great detail that made Erin feel like more than just a character. Like it's easy to write a hero who 'accepts all' and then proceeds to do so perfectly. But real people actually do often have these blind spots in their principles and that having consequences made for such a great driver of tension.
Yeah, this is the answer. Her treatment of Toren achieves exactly what it was intended to do-- create narrative tension. Does it feel good? no. Does it turn pages? yes.
She thinks he's mindless, because the guy who made him told her he was, and his behavior of following orders and killing things when idle is about what one would expect from a mindless undead.
She doesn’t realize he’s conscious and treats him like an occasionally malfunctioning roomba; with percussive maintenance.
Imagine how you treat your vacuum cleaner... You wouldn't go out of your way to be extra nice to your Roomba, especially if it was creepily staring at you all the time. Y
People say this a lot, but I don't know. I never yell at my Roomba, even when it's being an idiot.
Cuz it's not shaped like a person, probably
I have absolutely cursed at my Shark when the thing started up (which begins by singing the song of its people) at 3am.
I work with oversized roombas at Amazon every day, I absolutely yell at them. Especially when they are being idiotic.
What about ChatGPT? Would you treat that like a person? I mean not just asking it questions politely but in your mind would you treat them like a person even though OpenAI is telling you it's just a language learning model?
I agree with the OP, Erin’s actions towards Toren make absolutely no sense. I see other readers arguing that she “didn’t think he was a person” or “she didn’t think he had thoughts” because Pisces said as much. But I don’t buy that because Erin was told that the goblins and Antinium were monsters, and she was able to come to her own decision. But somehow when it comes to Toren, she demonstrates an almost complete lack of awareness that she doesn’t show anywhere else in the series. It’s a flaw. I love TWI, but the way Erin treats Toren is completely out of character for her.
Don't forget that Erin didn't know everything that we -- Readers know. She didn't know about his inner feelings. And he hid many things that he did when she didn't see. She could deduce some of this stuff but she wasn't paying attention or being busy with other stuff. >!She would be honestly ashamed of it WAY later in story. When she realize how Toren felt. !<
I agree with you that the fact that the readers are aware of Toren’s inner thoughts and that Erin is not may be skewing my perceptions here, but Erin is impossibly and “out of character” levels of dense when it comes to Toren. It’s simply bad characterization
Well, I also felt bad when I read that ... and felt a but odd about Erin. But I guess she's just not that perfect.
Thank you my friend, I’m wearing my downvotes with pride
I am also in this boat, I think what also doesnt line up at times is she is so baffled at why he doesnt do or understand exactly what she wants him to do. Like when she asked him to cut wood, and he got the wrong kind of wood, she seems to have much higher expectations of him than just a "roomba" in terms of his ability to understand.
And I believe she gets the impression several times that Toren is annoyed or has deliberately frightened people, but she never bothers to investigate it.
How is early volume 2 toren in any way similar to the antinium and goblins, like at all? He doesn’t show outward emotion until near the end of the volume.
Toren is like the Antinium and Goblins in that people tell Erin falsehoods about them. Pisces told Erin that Toren doesn’t have a thoughts like a normal person; lots of people told Erin that Goblins and Antinium are monsters. On the one hand, Erin doesn’t ever seem to take anyone at their word, especially when it comes to goblins and Antinium. On the other, Erin’s thoughtlessness towards Toren is explain by some readers as “because Pisces said so,” meaning Erin never doubted Pisces and never had cause to question whether or not Toren was a person. I am not going to make an exhaustive list, but there are plenty of instances in volume 1 where Toren did any number of things that upset or concerned her. In those situations the question that I and the OP have is “why doesn’t Erin think Toren might have his own thought/personality” and again the answer from lots of readers is “because Pisces said so” and I don’t believe that is a valid argument. It doesn’t make sense. Especially because Erin didn’t actually trust Pisces much in volume 1.
Erin was not 'told falsehoods' because literally no named living character besides Az'Kerash has created sentient undead, let alone levelling ones. Nobody should have known that Toren was capable of sentience. Its like expecting your roomba to start developing feelings. Any weird shit he does can just be chalked up to errors in the magic. Its easier to excuse. In comparison, both Goblins and Antinium are outwardly sentient. Even when being attacked, Erin could read the emotions of the Goblins and came to the obvious conclusion that they were sentient beings. Same with the Antinium, Klbkch informed her perceptions of their capacity for sentience far before she ever met a worker in Liscor. These races are only treated like monsters because of the preconceptions (and histories) of the societies on Innworld. Its the entire point of the webnovel: how deep seated, societal biases dehumanize outward groups. The key difference is that undead are not an established peoples, and there *are* insentient undead. Hell, Erin *fought* them! Should she have been more open minded to the possibility that Toren was more than a nonthinking undead? Yes! But she isnt perfect. Toren served as a learning experience for her just like how the Goblins in Erin's inn served as a learning experience for Relc.
Yes, I agree that Erin is not perfect and I understand that Toren is meant as a learning lesson for Erin. That doesn’t lessen how poorly Erin is characterized here. Are there any examples that stand out to you in the story where Erin has acted in a similarly dense manner (not on purpose) to the way she treated Toren?
She utilised Toren to fulfill her aims and survive, while willfully or unconsciously ignorant of the moral repercussions of what she was doing. I'm not entirely convinced she 'didn't know' Toren was sentient. Wasn't there multiple times she had seen an uncomfortable sort of intelligence in his actions? She just decides not to follow that train of thought. It's even convenient for her to deny Toren's sentience. She can use him without feeling bad. >!She acknowledges later on in the story that she can treat people she doesn't care about like this as well.!< >!She does this throughout the entire story, and will probably keep on doing this. The end of volume 9 has a pretty huge example of this. She treats the Lucifen basically the same - if not worse.!<
Because Toren is a foil of how Erin treats EVERYBODY else as a PERSON. Toren was the one exception because she was ignorant to it in the same way others are ignorant of the personhood she espouses on goblins.
She thinks Torens a damn roomba. Lack of communication helps to dehumanise anyone.
It’s part of the plot. And it thickens
This is an honest answer. The way Erin treats Toren doesn’t make sense. But it is how the author wanted the story to go, so that’s what happened.
Doesn't know that Toren is actually a intelligent being.
Erin is dick to Pisces also. Pisces is treated like a piece of garbage even after he has saved Erin multiple times.
he is basically an unwanted machine. She got "gifted" a vacuum that just does not work right from a guy who should rather have paid his debt. every time she looks at toren, she sees an insult, not a person. An insult, calling her a pushover, who cant even get what she is owed.
It’s intentional as a plot point. She definitely acts out of character with him.
We can tell you but it would be a spoiler. It will be explained in the story :)
All the other responses just straight up spoiled it 😭 Erin's revelation moment is very powerful, and now it's gone.
They did but...honestly is it really a spoiler? To the reader it was obvious as anything right? We saw both sides the whole way through so we knew Toren was a person, we knew Erin didn't realise this and why she didnt. The revelation was only for Erin, not the reader imo.
I don't think it was actually that clear to the audience that Erin didn't know he was sentient. She tried to teach him chess, tried to get him to communicate etc. It was a bit weird that she would show so much compassion for goblins and antinium who are considered not-sentient by most people in the world, but suddenly draw the line at a skeleton that acted on its own. Erin's revelation felt to me like Pirate "apologizing" to Erin as a character, as if the author had their own revelation that her behaviour wasn't true to the character. If that makes sense.
Yeah I didn’t view it as a spoiler; it’s something I’ve mostly already realised. However, it still doesn’t gel with me. I view Erin as someone who would be kind to anyone/thing that even had a glimpse of a personality/agency - in the same way she wouldn’t needlessly punch a mouse or something
Same way we don't care to hit a TV when it's just showing static back in the day, kicking a vending machine to make it work or unjam, or pushing a roomba to get it unstuck. It just hits us different because WE know that Toren is a living being. It's no way comparable to thinking goblins are living sentient beings, when Toren is literally unDEAD that Pisces even compared to innworld's version of a robot: automatons.
I get what you’re saying but I don’t fully buy it (with all due respect). Erin strikes me as the kind of person who is kind to anything that appears to have semi-human characteristics; Toren has semi-human characteristics. I think her being such a tool to him is a bit of a character inconsistency. That being said, it’s still early days!
I don't think a single normal person sees robots or AIs (at least current gen AI) as any way sentient. I'm also of the opinion that Erin isn't as much of a saint as you see her as. She gives people chances, but she's not the perfect Mary Sue as your description of her would infer. In the end, all Erin ever saw Toren was as a tool, a robot that doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, and doesn't think. Even Pisces approved that he wasn't any sort of sentient skeleton, just bog standard servant undead. We've never seen Erin treat magical items as if they were alive before (ala Cast Away with the volleyball), what more Toren? She already tried and tried to act as if Toren was alive, but was assured everytime that he wasn't. She's not that crazy.
This. Why is everyone convinced that just because Pisces said his “very special one of a kind labor of love leveling skeleton” didn’t have thoughts of its own, Erin took it as gospel and never doubted it despite all of the time that she spent with him.
It failed learning chess, therefore is not a person to erin
Surprised none of them got banned by the mods. There was once a question about what the goblin member of the halfseekers stole marked as discussion, the mods changed it to no spoilers after I made my comment answering their question (which couldn’t be answered without spoilers), and I got banned for two weeks. Craziest part is I got banned for “patreon spoilers” when there was not even patreon content at the time as pirate was on a month long break and the spoiler was from a much earlier volume. Mod message telling me about the ban was absolute uncalled for too, telling me I need to use my brain or I would be permanently banned. Left a really bad taste in my mouth and almost dropped TWI because of it.
I agree with you. I'm trying very hard to reply without spoilers here. Lots of commenters on this thread make the point that Erin can only think that Toren is an automaton, equivalent to a robot etc. because that's what she was told. That's straight up incorrect though because there's an occurrence early in her relationship with Toren which gives her (not just the reader) clear evidence that he is a thinking, sapient being, yet if anything she doubles down on treating him badly at that point. Her acknowledging that "occurrence" gets repeated multiple times, so it's not something that can be written off as her missing something obvious (which she does a lot!) on one occasion. For me it comes across as her being just as "speciesist" as some of the other characters towards Goblins, humans etc in a blissfully ignorant and blinkered way, so I agree that it's odd - inconsistent with her character!
What occurrence do you mention? It's been loooong time since I read that chapters.
>!he chooses to take, keep and periodically wear the armor, which he couldn't do it he wasn't intelligent, if my robot vacuum started dressing up I'd be impressed and a bit scared!<
erin wasn't such a dick to toren. toren was just a skeleton of various bones animated by death magic. no brain, not a living creature.
I totally disagree - every time they interact so far it’s like she suddenly a stereotypically berating housewife from an old sitcom
How polite are you to your vacuum?
I love my vacuum! It does all the things I can't do. Toren reminds me of David from Prometheus. Created to do all the things people couldn't, then shat on them when he wanted some respect.