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White Luck Warrior VII


Curethan

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No worries, seraphimal. Just trying to make you as welcome to talk about whatever you like as you obviously feel we should be, no?

But the entire argument is about as meaningful as rabble-rousing about portrayal of blacks in Huckleberry Finn, and pissing about how Jim exists only as a "cipher" or "victim" to goad the actions of the white characters. You might have a point, but obsessing over it is sort of redundant, especially since Bakker's Earwa reflects historical patriarchal societies and Twain's story is set in the antebellum South. Soo. . . it's ultimately a big "meh" fest.
Yes, let's not talk about things like rape in popular culture. It's just not a big deal. Doesn't matter at all. It's far more important to talk about whether or not nonmen had weird polgyny relationships and extended families. I can totally see how the latter is far more important than the former.

And the comparison with Huck Finn is amusing, since Jim is a very well-realized character. He's not perfect, and he is a product of his time (as are most of the reactions to him) but he has his own dreams and ambitions and goals, many of which go into conflict with his friends and society. The comparison isn't really apt, and really what many of us want from Bakker are more characters like Jim.

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No worries, seraphimal. Just trying to make you as welcome to talk about whatever you like as you obviously feel we should be, no?

Hold on! You're talking too fast, I haven't written down what you said before yet!

Yes, let's not talk about things like rape in popular culture. It's just not a big deal. Doesn't matter at all. It's far more important to talk about whether or not nonmen had weird polgyny relationships and extended families. I can totally see how the latter is far more important than the former.

Oh, cool, glad you agree.

I'd say that Mimara is a pretty well-realized character that reflects and contradicts her imagined society. In terms of my opinion, the comparison is reasonable.

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I'm totally willing to start Bakker on Women 5 if anyone else is interested. I've drifted more towards Kal's position over the years, although I do think that Esmi and Mimara are strong, distinctive characters.

2.No it wouldn't be better, but it would be different from this series and similar to tons of wish fulfillment fantasy.

How would it be wish fulfillment? There's nothing great about being a priestess of Yatwer (unless you're Psatma and get the whole "demon-goddess possession" thing going). They're one-step-up from average beggars. But it would add an extra layer of animosity to the Yatwer Cult opposition to Esmi's rule, it would give Bakker a means of introducing the Cult of Yatwer early on in the series (instead of having them pop up in book 4), and it would defray some of the misogynism complaints.

Plus, you don't really need both a whore and a concubine to make the fact sink in that this is not a setting that's good to its women. Serwe's story alone has a great deal of emotional punch.

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At this point I could probably write is Frequently Asked Critiques for him.

Q: Why is Bakkerworld so sexist?

A: I desired to write a world where things were worse than they were historically in order to highlight the plight of women that live in a world which works like our ancestors actually thought it did. What is the place of women in a world where they are objectively inferior than men on a spiritual level? And more importantly, given that, does it change anything as far as what a woman can actually do?

Furthermore, I wanted to explore the notion of modernity as a foil to this method of thinking and a way to emancipate but not necessarily for the right reasons. If women are given all the rights of men but it's not because of equality or liberty but because of utility, is it still good?

Q: Why is there so much fucked up sex?

A: The antagonists in the novel needed to have some oomph, and there is very little more oomphy than a monster that can make orifices of your body, rape you, and make you want it as they're doing it. That's a general theme of many of the books I write - that humans aren't in control of their decisions and actions but desperately want to be, and anything that shatters that illusion is very horrifying. So mind control tentacle rape demons? Very scary.

Similarly, I wanted to demonstrate how some very base, animalistic things cause very odd reactions throughout a person's life, and there's little more animalistic than sexual urges. With the Inchoroi they are a species that has woven pleasure into every facet of their society, including their leashes on their slaves. With the humans this becomes very much the darkness that comes before for most of them. Cnaiur's homosexuality is a great example of this, where it was manipulated by someone else so deftly that he struggles with it for the rest of his life despite being a mighty warrior and one of the smartest people around. Note that I'm not saying homosexuality is fucked up, merely saying that Cnaiur's reaction to his urges causes him to view it as horrible, and that's a societal structure. Just like Esmi and whoring, just like Serwe as property.

Q: What is with "Death came swirling down"?

A: I wanted to give a shout out to my main man Homer. Also, I tend to write most of this on the toilet. :)

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what male character has agency?

I've never really gotten into the Bakker and women debate because I think it just because a war of attrition between competing selective perspectives. There's certainly some questionable aspects to his treatment of women and a tendency to reduce them to symbols. But on the other hand, I mostly disliked the series for the first two books because I felt that Kellhus was never anything more than a boring and blatent symbol with Kung Fu powers, a less interesting rewrite of Paul/Leto II. It tooks months for me to pick up TTT because I thought Kellhus being nothing more than a Christ symbol at the end of TWP was really frustrating, I wanted him to have more to him than be a hollow construct that allowed the author to pontificate on the folly of religion and belief in modern society. I actually would have never continued the series if it weren't for the discussions here, pre-Bakker/women threads.

That said, isn't it incredibly sexist on the anti-Bakker posters to presume that any of the male characters have any agency in his world? Female characters have neither agency nor the illusion of agency, male characters have no agency but do have an illusion of agency. Akka is a total tool. Akka, the poor fool, legitimately believes that he is resisting Kellhus' programming while Kellhus is programming him with every single bit of resistance Akka believes to be his own. Kellhus conditioned Akka's rebellion, and he conditioned Akka's hermitude. If we had any viewpoints from Kellhus during TTT we would have seen how he conditioned Akka to his long term ends. I think its foolish to believe that any male characters were able to resist Kellhus. The only character who has seemed to resist him is the synthese.

And as the heroic Nerdanel has pointed out, it may be foolish to believe Kellhus has agency if Moenghus is indeed pulling the strings of Kellhus even still. Which is not to say that Moe has agency.

And isn't agency in any work of fiction just a collective delusion we all agree to? No construct in any work of fiction has actual agency because characters only do what authors tell them. Some authors are just better illusionists, are better at manipulating readers' beliefs of agency. ;)

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I've never really gotten into the Bakker and women debate because I think it just because a war of attrition between competing selective perspectives. There's certainly some questionable aspects to his treatment of women and a tendency to reduce them to symbols.

That said, isn't it incredibly sexist on the anti-Bakker posters to presume that any of the male characters have any agency in his world?

And isn't agency in any work of fiction just a collective delusion we all agree to? No construct in any work of fiction has actual agency because characters only do what authors tell them. Some authors are just better illusionists, are better at manipulating readers' beliefs of agency. ;)

There isn't one, monolithic group of people who dislike Bakker's depiction of women. I think Kalbear and I are pretty close in our issues, but I am not 100% sure we have the same exact complaint. Some people dislike what they feel is the lack of female positive characters, or female characters capable of throwing off the shackles.

That, however, isn't my problem. My problem is the women cornered by the narrative into positions of helplessness, they shift from realized beings to becoming like the monkey that gets his hand stuck in the cherry jar. I think Bakker does this to say something about the nature of women, but I don't think he is successful in this.

Your last line gets to one of the hearts of my complaints - that the hand of the author as puppet master shows through, and that it shows through in glaring fashion when women come on stage.

Does Nerdanel still read the series, heck is there a woman left who reads these books?

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female characters capable of throwing off the shackles.

That's an awfully silly complaint since one of the major points of the series is that everyone is shackled. Proyas isn't any more free from determinism than Esmenet. And Esmenet is no more free than that whore she stays with in Momemn. Everyone is enslaved to circumstance.

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While I disagree with it, I don't think the complaint is "silly". Women are, at the least, far more chained to circumstance than men in the series. Not being a woman, it is hard to comment to the extent the female characters are caricatures of real women.

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Women are, at the least, far more chained to circumstance than men in the series. Not being a woman, it is hard to comment to the extent the female characters are caricatures of real women.

I disagree on the first half. Everyone is chained to circumstance. There no degrees of freedom when it comes to determinism. No-one is less-chained to circumstance - not even Kellhus.

That the female characters are caricatures is a different complaint that might have its own merits (I can't speak towards it because I'm sexist.)

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female agency and its relation to real women

How does a fictional rendition tie in to real women?

Q: What is with "Death came swirling down"?

A: I wanted to give a shout out to my main man Homer. Also, I tend to write most of this on the toilet. :)

win.

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Alas, I am not Dunyain to elucidate that darkness. Some degree of history, culture, genetics, environment, all the vagaries of circumstance, I imagine.

Nay! As soon as you became aware of sexist tendencies, you instantly mastered them all, utterly, surely?

And so no atrocity need remind you... ;)

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Awareness of darkness does not answer from where that darkness arises. I am wracked by desires, by thoughts, by drives that are not of my own origin. I am a ship in a storm of circumstance. Even if I can man the tiller and change the direction, I cannot calm the winds nor tame the seas.

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I think a major part of the complaint about the women is not so much that they are oppressed (the Bakkerworld is a horrible place in terms of women's rights, like the worst of the Ancient World IRL), but that every prominent* female character except possibly Serwa in WLW is defined by her sexuality. Esmenet and Mimara were whores, Serwe is a concubine, and Istriya is a perverted queen who sexually pleasures her son to get him to do what she wants. That's not to say that they aren't fully developed characters, but it is rather striking that Bakker did that when there were women in the RL Ancient World who were famous and handled power in ways that didn't involve sexuality - which is to say, it's a rather narrow view on women.

The other part, of course, is the vividness of many scenes involving sexual violence, which itself can be a major turn-off to women. I don't think Bakker was wrong to write those scenes (it adds extra power to Serwe's back-story IMHO), but it can be a turn-off.

* The key being prominent. I don't fault Bakker for not going into depth about non-POV women during the Holy War in the PoN Trilogy, simply because most of it took place in a series of military camps and conquests (where the "friendly" women are going to largely be camp followers).

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This is apparently what Bakker seems to think.

I thought it the opposite? That a media filled with Xena's does not mean sexism is solved. Indeed, just how rotten we can be is effectively plastered over with Xena and forgotten? And becomes stronger for being forgotten.

I'm probably overly influenced by watching monkey magic as a child, the one where Tripitaka denies his demons and...err, they get stronger as a result.

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There's a very distinct difference between agency and the illusion of agency, at least as far as Bakker is concerned. If you like we can clarify that agency in this case means what it does everywhere except when talking with bakker and means that the characters behave as if they can actually control their thoughts and actions. Yes, you can be really pedantic and exclaim that since Bakker is writing them none have any agency, but that's the kind of litcrit bullshit that I'd rather avoid, especially when discussing a book that has tentacle rape demons.

Another way to put it: the Bakkerwomen (especially in the first series) seem very similar to Sansa. They watch, they get rescued, they occasionally quip. They don't act. Now, this is all because they've been programmed not to act or decide, but the actual narrative reads 'women wait on more powerful men to help them'.

And yes, that is a simplification. But it's not a completely unfair one.

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If the series is predicated around determinism, i am doubly out. I have not been following the threads save for the last three pages that i've just finished reading, but the notion that things happen for a reason and so can never be altered smacks of cheap divine intervention, where the abilities of the invididual are subverted by the will of something greater. That every movement and action is set in stone. The notion of determinism is intellectually bankrupt.

I thought the the Judging Eye was the best of the books, as Bakker moved away from his preaching and went into telling a good tale. The White Luck Warrior was a decline in quality, in my opinion. Besides, the characters in his book are an endless parade of perverts and weaklings, none of whom have any qualities that i admire beyond the most casual inspection, and it is only a testament to the world that Bakker has created that i've read as far as i have.

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