Goodkind 54: How to Revive a Dead Dick

[sologdin]

11 hours ago, Myshkin said:

In a way hasn't Ayn Rand cursed all our dicks?

au contrare!

Quote

 

For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is Ayn Rand? This is Ayn Rand speaking. I am the woman who loves her life. I am the woman who does not sacrifice her love or her values. I am the woman who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing-you who dread knowledge  -I am the woman who will now tell you.

You have heard it said that this is an age of phallic crisis. You have said it yourself, half in fear, half in hope that the words had no meaning. You have cried that man’s sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded. Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster.

Your ideal had an implacable enemy, which your code of morality was designed to destroy. I have withdrawn that enemy. I have taken it out of your way and out of your reach. I have removed the source of all those evils you were sacrificing one by one. I have ended your battle. I have stopped your motor. I have deprived your world of man’s cock.

Men do not live by the cock, you say? I have withdrawn those who do. The cock is impotent, you say? I have withdrawn those whose cock isn’t. There are values higher than the cock, you say? I have withdrawn those for whom there aren’t.

 

 

[SeanF]

18 hours ago, sologdin said:

au contrare!

 

 

She really was mad as a box of frogs.

[Maester Llama]

Previously on The Legends of Dick:

 

Since it's been years since the recaps of The Omen Machine and I don't think there've been recaps of anything beyond about the first half or so of The Third Kingdom at all, let's get ourselves up to speed on what's happened thus far in Dick's recent truthscapades, starting from the beginning of the current arc [no need to go further back than that; we all know the goat is noble and how evil football is.] More complete summaries of The Omen Machine, written by Goodkind recapper extraordinaire Tormund, are available in these threads, but back quite a ways:

 

Dick and Co are hanging out at Cara's [that's Leather-Suited Bodyguard No. 1] wedding to General Bernie or Benjington or something like that, when some cryptic little asshole child named Henrik shouts foreboding plotstuff at them, then scratches them like a psycho and runs away. People throughout the land start making prophecies, but Dick and Friends dismiss these, because prophecies are for weak death-choosers who run with the herd, not strong self-moving souls such as themselves. Kahlan and Nicci [who used to be a "Sister of the Dark," but got wind Robert Jordan's estate was finally planning to sue about the whole shameless ripoff thing, so allowed her appreciation of Richard's extreme hotness to sway her to the side of Dick] frighten the prophecy-makers into silence by straight-up inventing a prophecy of their own, because toying with people's firmly held beliefs is something you get to do when you are objectively better than everybody else. One of these people they screw with is Abbot Dreier, a representative of Hannis Arc, the new big bad. He's a "bishop," which I guess means there's some manner of institutionalized church structure, though I have seen no wider evidence for this in my limited exposure to the books, which when you think about it like somebody who isn't a basement-dwelling death-chooser is really a testament to Terry's genius, because world-building is for mouth-breathers. Dick finds a gigantic-ass machine in the palace he owns and has lived in for some considerable time. Said machine has freaky symbols on it, symbols which are the same as those used to translate the "language of Creation," only backwards. This machine is the source of the prophecies. It might be an AI. AIs are a thing in Dickland. I feel like this should be a big deal, but apparently not.

 

The scratch Cryptic Kid Psycho Henrik left on Kahlan's arm gets worse. Zed, who has not yet died, fails to heal it, because Zed can't ever do fuckall when the plot kicks in. Kahlan goes to take a rest, and when she wakes up HOLY SHITBALLS THERE BE FERAL DOGS AROUND HER!" [Don't blame me, man; it sounds like madlibs to me too; I just report the news -- "report the news" in this case standing euphemistically for "condense and snarkify the wiki."] She books it, but is captured by a "hedge-maid," a "macabre sorceress associated with necromancy." Richard enters the hedge-maid's labyrinth and rescues her, fulfilling the "rescue Mother Confessor once weekly and additional time every other Tuesday" clause of his Lord Rahl contract. The hedge-maid is wearing some kind of weird gag thing, and Richard has to cut the leather strips keeping it in place to kill her; as he does this he remembers the machine's final prophecy and protect's his and Kahlan's ears from the monster's terrible death-shriek. [So the prophecies were actually good? Or are they still bad lemming-esque death-choosiness? I'm confused about the thematic throughline at this stage.] Richard and Kahlan escape and are taken to the "Garden of Life" -- I forget if we knew where this was, but given that this is Goodkind it sounds a tad porny -- for healing by Nicci and Zed.

 

The Garden of Life is, however, apparently a total bust, because when The Third Kingdom picks up [or where the wiki for The Third Kingdom picks up -- I admit these things may not be precisely the same, but whatever] we find Dick and Klan stranded in the Dark Lands. The Dark Lands are apparently a mega shitty-ass place that is like right next to D'Hara only nobody goes there because it sucks so goddamn much, or at least I assume this is the case, since I don't think they've ever been mentioned previously. Whatever, though; to question the Yeard is to stare too deeply and too long into its majesty, and this we must not do at peril of our souls. These Dark Lands are super-important now, anyway, and oh my God there are cannibals there! Said cannibals attack Richard and Kahlan, who enlist the help of some local villagers and KILL THE SHIT OUT OF THEM. Turns out these villagers were sent by Cryptic Kid Psycho Henrik, to help Dick and Klan in their hour of oh shit there be cannibals. They lead the weary and oddly-hapless-for-seasoned-rulers travellers to a village / cave complex called Stroyza. Here they are reunited with Cryptic Kid Psycho Henrik, and a young sorceress who tries to heal the wounds Kahlan picked up from the hedge-maid [or some other goddamn place; it's a magical wound a minute for the protagonist's perpetually-imperiled love object over here in Dickland.] This young sorceress is named Sammie, because the Yeard's retirement fund is already secure and everything from here on out is gravy, so why even fucking bother? Instead of healing Kahlan, Sammie goes apeshit, because she detects a "morbid" influence in Kahlan that represents death. It's always hilarious when Goodkind tries to talk magic talk.

 

Instead of explaining why the fuck he scratched them and gave them magic scratch disease, Cryptic Kid Psycho Henrik catches Dick and Klan up on what happened to land them up in the Dark Lands, because they've gone and gotten amnesia a-fucking-gain goddammit guys we talked about this: So they were on their way back from the "Garden of Life" when they got ambushed by a mob. Since Dick and Klan were still not in top jaw-kicking shape, Zed, Nicci, Leather-Suited Bodyguard No. 1, and General Benjington -- oops, turns out it's General Meiffert, dunno how I fucked that up that badly in memory, but he's still gonna be General Benjington because I don't care and I like it more -- concealed them, and distracted the mob by fleeing. So the whereabouts of most of the Truthyfriends are currently unknown. CKP Henrik also reveals that Dick and Kahlan need a "containment field" in order to be healed, and that this can only happen at the People's Palace, for reasons. This fun exposition time is interrupted by a zombie attack. Richard rises up and lives life all over their reanimated opponents, but lapses into unconsciousness afterwards. When he wakes, Sammie explains WTF zombies? as well as proffering some more unwanted backstory, because we don't escape Exposition Time so easily: She tells him, and I want to remind everybody that this book came out in the Wall-and-White-Walker world of 2013 and to assure you that I am not making this weak shit up, that it is the duty of the people of Stroyza to guard the north wall "beyond which the world of life and the world of death are united." Beyond this wall there live a people with no souls, called the "half-people," who were created as a weapon of conquest in an ancient war by a guy named Emperor Sulichen or something. Since I'm not sure if I'm spelling his name right and I'm not gonna check I think I'll just call him ... I dunno, ... "the Dusk Prince." Or something else super original like that. Sammie informs Richard that her mother disappeared while fighting this ancient war. Terry has played the "missing / sacrificial parental figure" character development card. Please endeavour to care appropriately. Because Richard is a font of inspirational knowledge, he recognizes "Stroyza" as High D'Haran for "sentinel," which comes as a surprise because the people who've lived here for centuries don't know the meaning of their own goddamn town's name.

 

In an effort to locate and rescue the Truthyfriends, Dick and Sammie travel north to the non-legally-actionable-very-tall-wall-like-structure, KILLING THE SHIT out of several groups of half-people on the way. They get separated, so Dick has an additional woman to rescue later. Dick is captured by Bishop Hannis Arc, the villain who first poked his head into this incoherent mess waaaay up top, who it now emerges is trying to resurrect the Dusk Prince, lead the half-people over the non-legally-actionable-wall-like-structure in force, and break the burier between life and death, and whose name I have just decided to change to Rance Mayder, because I'm feeling creative like Terry is. Meanwhile, Kahlan the Capturable, who Dick left back at Stroyza like a fucking idiot, gets captured by Bishop Rance Mayder's guy Abbot Ludwig Dreier, who tortures people until they die slowly so he can extract prophecy from them as they expire. Both Rance Mayder and Abbot German, incidentally, have evil Mord-Sith goons, because it's been a while since Terry got to have leather-clad evil women with "pain rods" running around one of his books and he missed it, maybe, I dunno. Their names are Vika and Erika, almost like real people names, but with "k," so they're evil, or something. Oh friends, do I have the celery for this? Once, long paragraphs and two wiki pages ago, I was arrogant and brash, but now I know not whether I can summon the nobility of the goat and continue. No, no, we must press onward; the only way out now is through.

 

Where were we at? Oh yeah: So Dick finds Zed also imprisoned by Rance Mayder. Truthbros unite! Except, shit, Zed tells him that Rance Mayder is gonna bleed him, to use his super-special Seeker of Truth dickblood to resurrect the Dusk Prince. This Rance Mayder subsequently does, and he and the Dusk Prince lead the half-people out of the Third Kingdom and across the non-legally-actionable-wall-like-structure to wreck some shit. The Dusk Prince convinces Rance to kill Richard and Abbot German, to secure his status as the only person with evil torture powers and/or super-special dickblood, but psych! Sammie doesn't get rescued by Richard, but, in a stunning unpredictable plot twist, rescues him instead, and then he in turn rescues the rest of the Truthyfriends, who were also held by Rance Mayder, as well as Sammie's mother, a subplot about which I continue to urge you to care to the best of your ability. They all rise up and live life all over the half-people and escape, except General Benjington dies, sorry General Benjington, and they book it off to the abbey where Kahlan is being held. They conveniently arrive at the same time as the half-people Rance Mayder sent to off Abbot German, who incidentally escapes so Terry doesn't have to come up with another name for his next creepy torturer asshole, and Richard rescues Kahlan; he's just rescuin' up a storm today. Bodyguard No. 1 bids the rest of the Truthyfriends goodbye and rides off into the mopey sunset to grieve alone for General Benjington. Bishop Rance is all "fuck!" and sends an army of half-people off towards the People's Palace to deal with those meddling kids for real this time.

 

Goddamn; a lot more seems to have happened in The Third Kingdom than in the Omen Machine. That was one looong wiki. This "previously on" is getting kind of stupid. Sorry about that. We're closer to done than you'd expect, though, because apparently Goodkind fan enthusiasm doesn't extend to a detailed summary of Severed Souls on wiki. [I'm supplementing this a little with some of the points summarized over and over again in the first fifty pages of Warheart, which I have started]:

 

Led by Bishop Rance Mayder and the Dusk Prince, the armies of the half-people march into the heart of D'Hara. Dick and Kahlan search desperately but one-hundred percent ineffectually for a cure for that deathly taint they're still carrying around, the one Sammie went apeshit over back in The Third Kingdom -- oh, oops, I don't think I mentioned that Richard has that too, not just Kahlan; my bad. They consult a witch woman whose name is Red, not -- Goodkind hastens to clarify -- because she has red hair, though she does, but because she makes her mountain pass home run red with the blood of any who intrude there unasked. The floor of her valley is carpeted with skulls. I welcome this, because back in the day Goodkind could at least muster some over-the-top schlocky metal stylings and I was afraid he was losing his edge in this regard; I hope there are more skull-carpets in Warheart. Red, who sees the future, informs Kahlan that Nicci is going to kill Richard, and urges her to kill Nicci first. Kahlan, who knows that Nicci is super into Richard, as are all good folk, chooses to disbelieve the witch and ignore this warning.

 

Dick receives a message across the gulf of time from the first Confessor Magda Searus and her War Wizard Merrett, who, off in their own part of the timeline, are mounting a desperate last-ditch attempt to make their spinoff relevant. They tell him ... um, ... some stuff. Wiki is unhelpful here. I'm just gonna leave it here, on the off chance it comes up during Warheart and serves to make our journey through that book funnier.

 

Also it appears that Zed bites it at some point during Severed Souls, because when Warheart begins he is dead.

 

Ultimately, Kahlan is killed by the armies of the half-people. Desperate, Dick decides to sacrifice his own soul to bring Kahlan back, because the Keeper of the Underworld will take an even trade or something -- Warheart gets very earnest and wooden when it starts trying to explain magic in this universe but none of it signifies very much. Dick has Nicci stab him, thus fulfilling Red's prophecy, and returns Kahlan's "spark of life" to her in the Underworld. Kahlan watches his soul fall past her, dragged down by demons of the Underworld, as she herself rises back toward the world of the living.

 

Phew. Sorry for the length. Now we're all caught up, I'll tackle Warheart in a day or few, once I've recovered.

[MinDonner]

 Oh my. RIP General Benjington, we hardly knew ya

 

And Zedd's dead, baby? lolwtf. I almost feel sorry for Tairy; like an aging crooner who can no longer hold a note, but still feels compelled to go out on stage and humiliate himself in front of the handful of aging fans too loyal or deaf to put him out of his misery...

[SeanF]

On ‎12‎/‎03‎/‎2016 at 11:21 AM, MinDonner said:

 Oh my. RIP General Benjington, we hardly knew ya

 

And Zedd's dead, baby? lolwtf. I almost feel sorry for Tairy; like an aging crooner who can no longer hold a note, but still feels compelled to go out on stage and humiliate himself in front of the handful of aging fans too loyal or deaf to put him out of his misery...

We laugh, but he's the one laughing all the way to the bank.  His latest offering will probably still sell a million copies.

I find it very frustrating that people like Goodkind and Paolini massively outsell so many of the really good authors we discuss here.

[Maester Llama]

Min's aging crooner analogy feels to me like a very good one; this was almost exactly what going through the plots of the previous three felt like, and it increases ten-fold in the actual text of Warheart. Like this is really truly quite amazing. I almost feel bad ripping into any more of it [I still will.] I mean, of course we know why Warheart got published: As Sean says, Goodkind makes sweet dollar. But, at risk of being idealistic, I get the sinking sense when I read the opening section of the book not only that Tor does not edit Goodkind, which we knew, but that nobody even checked to make sure this fulfilled the basic requirements of a passably entertaining story. We're used to the Yeard being bad but entertaining; this is just dull, embarrassingly so.

 

Apologies for not updating with discussion of the actual book yet. It's coming, but it's so meh that I've found the celery difficult to muster. I'm about 90 pages in. I'll get there. Hopefully soon. A small preview: Kahlan spends the first 11 pages looking at Richard's corpse. Eleven pages.

[Jaxom 1974]

19 hours ago, Maester Llama said:

 

Apologies for not updating with discussion of the actual book yet. It's coming, but it's so meh that I've found the celery difficult to muster. I'm about 90 pages in. I'll get there. Hopefully soon. A small preview: Kahlan spends the first 11 pages looking at Richard's corpse. Eleven pages.

Only 11?  Makes me thing that even 'ole Tairy just don't have the celery to make things rise any more...

[sologdin]

but in which order are those 11 pages to be read?

[SkynJay]

19 hours ago, sologdin said:

but in which order are those 11 pages to be read?

A War Wizard figures out the order himself.

[Maester Llama]

Indeed! Running with the chronological herd is for death-choosers! [though there is of course an order intended by the text to maximize enjoyment of the Yeardly genius, an order in which Kahlan's endless repetitive lamentations become deeply profoundly something something.] That being said, any order at all that strikes your whimsy; all the pages say more or less the same thing.

[SeanF]

 

You all scoff and laugh at Terry Goodkind, but how many of you could write this?

 

"Hissing, hackles lifting, the chicken's head rose.

Kahlan pulled back.

Its claws digging into stiff dead flesh, the chicken slowly turned to face her. It cocked its head, making its comb flop, its wattles sway.

"Shoo," Kahlan heard herself whisper.

There wasn't enough light, and besides, the side of its beak was covered with gore, so she couldn't tell if it had the dark spot. But she didn't need to see it.

"Dear spirits, help me," she prayed under her breath.

The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart she knew it wasn't. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People's chickens. But this was no chicken.

This was evil manifest.

Her power, her magic, was also a weapon of defense. But it would only work on people. It would not work on a chicken. And it would not work on wickedness incarnate.

Her gaze flicked toward the door, checking the distance. The chicken took a single hop toward her. Claws gripping Juni's upper arm, it leaned her way. Her leg muscles tightened till they trembled.

The chicken backed up a step, tensed, and spurted feces onto Juni's face.

It let out the cackle that sounded like a laugh.

She dearly wished she could tell herself she was being silly. Imagining things.

But she knew better.

Kahlan frantically tried to think as the chicken bawk-bawk-bawked.

"Mother," the chicken croaked.

Kahlan flinched with a cry.

In the dark, the chicken thing let out a low chicken cackle laugh.

It hadn't come from where she expected the chicken to be. It was behind her.

"Please, I mean no harm," she called into the darkness. "I mean no disrespect. I will leave you to your business now, if that's all right with you."

She took another shuffling step toward the door. She moved carefully, slowly, in case the chicken thing was in the way. She didn't want to bump into it and make it angry. She mustn't underestimate it.

Kahlan had on any number of occasions thrown herself with ferocity against seemingly invincible foes. She knew well the value of a resolute violent attack. But she also somehow knew beyond doubt that this adversary could, if it wanted, kill her as easily as she could wring a real chicken's neck. If she forced a fight, this was one she would lose.

The chicken thing let out a whispering cackle.

[... she's trying to find the door, she's crying and panicking, she stubs her toe and falls down.]

With the next flash of lightning, she saw chicken feet standing between her and the crack under the door. The thing wasn't more than a foot from her face.

The beak pinched the vein on the back of her hand over her eyes. The chicken tugged, as if trying to pull a worm from the ground.

It was a command. It wanted her hand away from her eyes.

The beak gave a sharp tug on her skin. There was no mistaking the meaning in that insistent yank. Move the hand, now, it was saying, or you'll be sorry.

If she made it angry, there was no telling what it was capable of doing to her. Juni lay dead above her as a reminder of the possibilities.

She told herself that if it pecked at her eyes, she would have to grab it and try to wring its neck. If she was quick, it could only get in one peck. She would have one eye left. She would have to fight it then. But only if it went for her eyes.

Her instincts screamed that such action would be the most foolish, dangerous thing she could do. Both the Bird Man and Richard said this was not a chicken. She no longer doubted them. But she might have no choice.

If she started, it would be a fight to the death. She held no illusion as to her chances. Nonetheless, she might be forced to fight it. With her last breath, if need be, as her father had taught her.

The chicken snatched a bigger beakful of her skin along with the vein and twisted. Last warning.

Kahlan carefully moved her trembling hand away. The chicken-thing cackled softly with satisfaction."

 

[Jaxom 1974]

Oh you sweet summer child...

[Andorion]

What...... is that...... thing... posted upthread? Is this the fabled Goodkind chicken? (I never read more than book 1)

[Larry.]

13 hours ago, SeanF said:

 

You all scoff and laugh at Terry Goodkind, but how many of you could write this?

 

I don't need to.  I use semaphores instead.  Well, and squirrels too, but they mostly use semaphores as well.  And maybe an occasional Aldus lamp.  If only Tairy would have done the same.

[Darth Richard II]

Don't mock evil chickens til you've put a couple hundred hours into Hyrule warriors.

[sologdin]

just lemme lose an Ignatius Reilly style Oh my God! What is this obscene abortion? in response to that scene.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Behold! Tairy's upcoming masterpiece: Death's Mistress,coming in Jan 2017 from Tor.

You might've guessed from the title,a whole book about.....Nicci

Quote

The launch of an entirely new series built around Richard and Kahlan's friend and defender, the warrior woman Nicci

Onetime lieutenant of the evil Emperor Jagang, known as "Death's Mistress" and the "Slave Queen", the deadly Nicci captured Richard Rahl in order to convince him that the Imperial Order stood for the greater good. But it was Richard who converted Nicci instead, and for years thereafter she served Richard and Kahlan as one of their closest friends--and one of their most lethal defenders.

Now, with the reign of Richard and Kahlan finally stablized, Nicci has set out on her own for new adventures. Her first job being to keep the unworldly prophet Nathan out of trouble...

This will launch an entirely new series and cast of characters centered on one of best-loved characters in the now-concluded Sword of Truth.

 

[SkynJay]

Lost in Evil Chickens, Moonblood BJ's, and Clinton's are evil is perhaps the strangest story and it involves Nicci.

Long distance rape.

Nicci put a spell on Khalan in which any pain Nicci feels is passed along to Khalan.  She used it to ensure Dick doesn't defy her.  And when she decides to punish him she sexual assists him; which Khalan feels from hundreds of miles away. 

Luckily Dick makes a beautiful statue later and Nicci joins the side of AWESOME.

[Darth Richard II]

Statue of revolution + 1

[sologdin]

do we have a top ten most ludicrous goodkind bits?  i know that the statutes of revolution are on there.  the no-chicken.  the namble cock.  what else?