Bakker XXIX: Erratics and Impossible Erections

[Larry of the Lawn]

Aurang's one weakness is that he could never turn left.

He's not an ambiturner.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Aurang's one weakness is that he could never turn left.

He's not an ambiturner.

Eta:

Aurang to Aurax: there was this moment when Mekeritrig was sandwiched between the Scylvendi and the three Sranc chieftains where thought "I could really spend the rest if my life with this nonman"

[Sci-2]

Why didn't they give chorae to the dragons? They're idiots. They didn't even think about it. They barely know what magic is and barely know how to use the Tekne. The advanced tactics of using dragons with magical protection? Totally beyond them.

Great post, but this one I just can't accept. It's too easy to realize you can combine dragons and chorae. Video gamers around the world can work that logic as shown in the varied Super Mario Bros games.

I mean...Aurang is supposed to be a master general...

[Kalbear]

I mean...Aurang is supposed to be a master general..

Sure. But think of him as an idiot gamer who masses zerglings and that's all he knows how to do.

He doesn't do APMs worth a damn. His synergy is horrible, and he only knows how to go to 6 pool. He only plays zerg. Sure, he brags how he's killed all these people - but he's playing with sci fi weapons against the Clash of Clans group.

Aurang is a n00b.

[Callan S.]

Great post, but this one I just can't accept. It's too easy to realize you can combine dragons and chorae. Video gamers around the world can work that logic as shown in the varied Super Mario Bros games.

I mean...Aurang is supposed to be a master general...

There's something weird about dragon souls and their all caps ways - might interfear with the effectiveness of the chorae. Never mind if they use magic to fly (which is probably likely)

Also don't know how many kilo's of material a chorae actually protects and how many would be needed to cover one dragon. Everyone grips chorae hard when they want protection - okay, so maybe a dragon can grip five of them (one in each paw and it's mouth)? So maybe it's mouth and paws survive?

As usual with fiction (and especially fiction+magic) it's easy to come up with rationalisation. Perhaps that writer guy can give a series of reasonings that make it all sit neatly together?

[Diziet]

The rest of their race is sitting at home, enjoying their constant clitoral orgasms and consensual relations with everything along with their immortality, thankful that they got rid of the hand sanitizer testers and birthers.

But this undermines the idea that to the inchoroi rape is only natural and they do not see it as a crime at all, given that they were "born for damnation's sake".

If there is a bigger Inchoroi civilization that remains now then they are probably damned as well, except they don't know it.

[Kalbear]

I don't think that to the inchoroi rape is only natural. They boast about how many they rape. Not fuck, rape. To the ones we have seen so far they don't appear to rationalize it as something okay - they instead revel in the transgression.

I would also think that those other inchies are damned too. However, they live forever and have multiple orgasms whenever they want. What does damnation matter to those people? No, it matters to the fanatics.

[Maithanet]

As usual with fiction (and especially fiction+magic) it's easy to come up with rationalisation. Perhaps that writer guy can give a series of reasonings that make it all sit neatly together?

Agreed, it isn't hard to come up with a reason why Chorae + Dragon wouldn't work, and it's not like there would really be any reason for someone to explain that fact to the audience in the novels, seeing how we only met a living dragon in WLW.

[Curethan]

Ciogli killed Wutteat with his bare hands, like a proper badass. See Four Revelations.

Akka and Cleric barely manage to injure Wutteat with the Gnosis. If he wasn't blind they would have been killed straight up.

Maybe Wracu do use chorae or maybe they can't because reasons involving magic realism. Maybe they won't use them because they are prideful. Maybe they just don't work like they do for humans.

Not that it really matters.

The argument about relative intelligence is one sided. Cortez crushed whole civilizations with 100 men, horses and muskets.

Taken as a super technologicaly advanced force in a sci-fi narrative, the inchies are so stupid that they wasted their amazing future tech to make impractical dragons, silly wings, immortal enemies and grafting on prosthetic penises instead of orbital lasers, smallpox, capatalism and drones with tac-nukes.

[Sci-2]

I don't think I posted this before -> On Ajokli and the references to the "joints of the world" found in the text:

Seven short essays on the ideas that organize Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World

Our word "art" comes from an ancient root that means "to join" and "to make." Many other modern words come from the same root, all of them having to do with joints in one sense or another. "Arthritis" is a disease of the joints; an "arthropod" is an insect with jointed legs. "Articulate" usually denotes clarity of speech, but one can also "articulate" a skeleton, which is to say, assemble it joint by joint.

Even when used to describe speech, "articulate" can mean "jointed": ancient script used to be written in one long line of letters; when writers began to break it into words, sentences, paragraphs, and so forth, they were "articulating" it, marking the logical joints in the flow of letters. In the same way we can speak of society as being "well articulated" when its joints are clear to everyone, which is to say, when everyone knows his or her place, and where the limits lie.

Tricksters are usually thought of as boundary crossers, characters who find the limits and violate them, or keep them lively. Lewis Hyde reimagines this function, saying that tricksters are "joint-workers." They seek out the joints of this world--sometimes to disrupt them, sometimes to move them, and sometimes just to keep them limber.

There is a trickster figure from the mountains of southern Russia, for example, who is known for having reversed the fortunes of the Sun God by attacking his knee joints. "If you want to wound an immortal, go for the joints," is the lesson, and all tricksters know it. Frederick Douglass knew it; his first book attacked the "joints" by which plantation culture articulated itself--especially the "joint" between black and white--and in so doing helped bring an end to the planters' world.Most tricksters are less direct than that; they like to toy with the joints of creation, and shift them around...

...Tricksters sometimes attack the joints of creation, and sometimes simply oil the joints with humor, keeping them flexible. All those who do so are artists in the most ancient sense, and their creations, no matter how unsettling, are the works of art that make this world what it is...

What's also interesting is the role of the Trickster in opening the way for new social conventions. In this sense Kellhus is a trickster figure as well, perhaps serving Ajokli without fully realizing it. Perhaps Bakker agrees with Hyde that "Trickster Makes This World", and the Four Horned god is actually in control of the modernity/feminism the Aspect Emperor has utilized for his own ends.

[Diziet]

Taken as a super technologicaly advanced force in a sci-fi narrative, the inchies are so stupid that they wasted their amazing future tech to make impractical dragons, silly wings, immortal enemies and grafting on prosthetic penises instead of orbital lasers, smallpox, capatalism and drones with tac-nukes.

They are a race of flesh. It's only natural for them to be more experienced in creating living abominations than nukes.

There's something weird about dragon souls and their all caps ways - might interfear with the effectiveness of the chorae. Never mind if they use magic to fly (which is probably likely)

Wutteat is probably unique in having hell sustain him from the inside. If the other ones are pure Tekne creations then they probably die just like the Sranc and Bashrag if they're killed.

[Kalbear]

They are a race of flesh. It's only natural for them to be more experienced in creating living abominations than nukes.

They have a heron spear and a spaceship. Let's not overstate how their tech is limited to biology. Creating living weapons would make sense if they were creating, ya know, biological plagues. Creating dragons though? Or mindless shock troops instead of very autonomous, brutal troops? It took them what, 4000 years to come up with skin spies; imagine if sranc were as powerful and intelligent as skin spies were?

Heck, they only turned to biological weapons after they were defeated technologically. That alone is pretty weird. Their first tactic was to use tech, but they lost. How do you lose with lasers and nukes and fightercraft? How is that even possible?

[Diziet]

They have a heron spear and a spaceship. Let's not overstate how their tech is limited to biology.

They had tech from before they came to Earwa, but everything they created since the crash is biological. We don't even know who made the Heron Spear or the spaceship which "mothered" them. We can't assume that they could have built another spaceship once the one they had was destroyed but decided not to because they are idiots. Or that they were capable of making more Heron Spears and lasers but made Sranc instead because of their stupidity. They made flesh because that's what they were prepared to do, it's their thing. That's what you'd expect from a race of flesh.

But the dragons and the sranc are things that Bakker needed in the series whether it made sense for the Inchoroi to make them or not.

Heck, they only turned to biological weapons after they were defeated technologically.

They turned to biological weapons once their non-bio ones (which they could not recreate) were depleted. They also turned to magic, which is what defeated them in the first place.

[Kalbear]

but everything they created since the crash is biological.

We don't actually know that. We know that they did create a whole bunch of biological things, but that was after they lost to the nonmen the first time.

And why is it harder to create a weaponized laser than it would be to create an entire new species based on alien DNA? In our world biology is significantly more complicated to work with compared to chemistry and computer tech. I'm from a race of flesh but I'd find it a hell of a lot easier to make a laser or a computer than I would make something that has hormonally locked slavery and the ability to mimic any face and voice it sees. I'd buy this argument significantly more if all we saw of inchoroi technology was organic - organic space ships, organic weaponry, organic devices, etc. We don't have that, however.

[sologdin]

y'all are funny. can't the inchies just simply be aliens who have not read or do not accept adam smith, clausewitz, et al.?

[Diziet]

I'm from a race of flesh

That's not what the Inchoroi mean by "we are a race of flesh" - as you know.

but I'd find it a hell of a lot easier to make a laser or a computer than I would make something that has hormonally locked slavery and the ability to mimic any face and voice it sees.

You would, but you're not Inchoroi. And you haven't inherited the Tekne and a once-living spaceship with who knows what's inside. The Sranc and SS are obviously not the first races the Inchoroi have ever created. Since they specialize in flesh, they probably made many more on their homeworld or elsewhere.

And we don't know exactly how they made them. They are advanced to a point where they probably have some sort of machine inside the Ark that automated the whole process. The Arc itself would be a more advanced version of that. Why can they make certain things that are way beyond our capabilities but can't make weapons that are readily available on our world? They didn't create anything from scratch, they used what was at their disposable.

This can be explained by analogy: what is more advanced from the perspective of someone living 4,000 years ago, a computer program or a knife? The program obviously. But if I told that person that I--and so many other people out there--can write a computer program but can't make a proper knife would they believe me or would they go "huh? That makes no sense??!?!!" It would seem crazy but only because that person has no understanding of computers the same way we have no understanding of whatever the Inchoroi used to create the Sranc and the rest.

[Curethan]

y'all are funny. can't the inchies just simply be aliens who have not read or do not accept adam smith, clausewitz, et al.?

No, they have to be stupiderer. Ignoring moral tactics is just the fundament of their stupids.

Their wings are the most egregious example.

Sil: I want to be able to fly!

Aurax: Oh easy man, I'll just graft some giant bat-wings onto you.

...later...

Sil: Dude, these bat wings are useless. I can't even glide and now I can't fit through doors.

Aurax: Oh, nevermind. I'll use our super advanced grasp of biology and physics to genetically alter you so you can ignore gravity and momentum.

Sil: Do we even need these wings?

Aurax: Not really, but we look pretty evil now eh? Btw, I thought of one simple trick that will increase your penis size!

Sil: Hmm, I feel like there might be some other use for this ignoring gravity and momentum thing.

Aurax: Nah, probably not.

Sil: Okay, lets get back to penises then.

[Kalbear]

Aurax: Not really, but we look pretty evil now eh? Btw, I thought of one simple trick that will increase your penis size!

Sil: Hmm, I feel like there might be some other use for this ignoring gravity and momentum thing.

Aurax: Nah, probably not.

Sil: Okay, lets get back to penises then.

:cheers:

[Anatúrinbor]

This can be explained by analogy: what is more advanced from the perspective of someone living 4,000 years ago, a computer program or a knife? The program obviously. But if I told that person that I--and so many other people out there--can write a computer program but can't make a proper knife would they believe me or would they go "huh? That makes no sense??!?!!" It would seem crazy but only because that person has no understanding of computers the same way we have no understanding of whatever the Inchoroi used to create the Sranc and the rest.

Good point. The Inchies probably had a 3D Printer with some templates in there. But I wonder if they had Bakker threads 4000 years ago.

As for Dragons and Chorae, I think it's a legitimate question. And if it's true that the two are not compatible then Bakker should provide an answer as to why given that other Tekne creations can wear it. Or at least give us more info on dragons so we can infer it ourselves.

General point on where the series is heading, I don't know the answer but supposedly (according to Madness) in all these years of speculation no one has guessed where the story is going - not even in broad strokes. If true then the most likely reason is that Bakker has not foreshadowed his story properly. And as we know if it is only after that we understand what has come before then we understand nothing. Thus, all this wanking is just pointless.

[Curethan]

Thus, all this wanking is just pointless.

Heresy to Inchoroi, heresy to me. Wanking is worship.