Bakker's TGO Excerpts II: Mining our Merest Fraction [Spoilers]s

[unJon]

So Kel probably tipped off the Inchoroi to the location of Ishual (easy enough to have some info fed to a skin spy at some point). And without really lifting a finger he gets both the Consult army drained and the Dunyain basically killed off. 

Also if we are going to brag about predictors look no farther than my handle that I've been using since I started on these boards. 

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, unJon said:

So Kel probably tipped off the Inchoroi to the location of Ishual (easy enough to have some info fed to a skin spy at some point). And without really lifting a finger he gets both the Consult army drained and the Dunyain basically killed off. 

That makes a lot of sense. I think that it risks the Consult and Dunyain joining forces, but that might be worth the risk.

Still think that the Dunyain left alive are also meaningful and deliberate.

3 minutes ago, unJon said:

Also if we are going to brag about predictors look no farther than my handle that I've been using since I started on these boards. 

What, last year?

[unJon]

Dp 

[Kalbear]

Also, apparently I am every single commenter on Bakker's reddit page.

[Sci-2]

6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also, apparently I am every single commenter on Bakker's reddit page.

yeah I really hope there's some kind of explanation in the book.

i'm beginning to think it might inch up toward Dragons and Chorae status...

[themerchant]

Did the Consult just assume they had everyone dead and just left Ishual? Something happened that stopped the complete destruction of all Dunyain. Did they just assume none were left.

The Consult don't seem to have too many reliable field commanders. Non-men might not be the best considering their mental state.

[jurble]

12 hours ago, Bastard of Godsgrace said:

" And for a heartbeat the proposition escaped him, and he thought only of the way the glacier reared like the back of a beautiful woman. "

 

Ha! This quote is from TDTBC, the scene when young Kellhus is training in Ishual. After he thinks that, the Pragma hits him for losing concentration, but the point is child Kellhus knows what a beautiful woman looks like (and finds it attractive). A continuity error or is Scott hiding something? Or is "a beutiful woman " supposed to mean a whale mother? 

 

 

 

The young Dunyainlings don't enter the Thousand Thousand Halls until after they've mastered the proposition, correct?  And the whale-mother room sits within the Halls.  It seems unlikely then that young Kellhus had even seen a whale-mother at that point, given their immobility and the lack of necessity in bringing a whale-mother to the surface of Ishual.   So, barring a continuity error on Bakker's part, Kellhus must have some other reference point for a woman beside a whale mother.  

 

But I'd favor continuity error.  I wouldn't doubt the whale-mothers were a late addition whim of Bakker's to further provoke his critics/get in another Dune reference.

 

On plot speculation:  Will Akka teach the Dunyainling and Korenghus sorcery?  Will Mimara's 'prophethood' be revealed as she heals Korenghus?  Does Korengus surpass Kellhus in Dunyainic abilities?

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, themerchant said:

Did the Consult just assume they had everyone dead and just left Ishual? Something happened that stopped the complete destruction of all Dunyain. Did they just assume none were left.

The Consult don't seem to have too many reliable field commanders. Non-men might not be the best considering their mental state.

Crackpot(ish): what made them leave was the Great Ordeal. Timing kind of works - it's been a bit over a year since that started, and I suspect a bit over a year or so since Ishual got blowed up. 

Quote

i'm beginning to think it might inch up toward Dragons and Chorae status...

I think it's a bit worse, since that is more of a construct due to the logical nature of the world and tactics (sort of like Maia pointing out back in the day why sorcerers weren't building roads and making perfect Valyrian pathways back in the day). This one is an insert that didn't actually need to be there, as far as I can tell. And as far as I can tell it's kind of a distraction at best. My suspicion is that it's another one of those Bakker and Women things, where the men are allowed to do plot-related stuff while the women are an allegory. 

It's a shame too, because now I kind of want the Dunyain to be whale mothers and ugly Shetland men. The idea of this small dude telling everyone that they are the scion of God and everyone believing him is kind of awesome. 

[themerchant]

6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Crackpot(ish): what made them leave was the Great Ordeal. Timing kind of works - it's been a bit over a year since that started, and I suspect a bit over a year or so since Ishual got blowed up. 

 

I thought to add that as well. I was thinking they don't have many commanders so maybe had to break it off to deal with the Great Ordeal.

The roads question is dealt with in the WLW i believe, some passage about to do as slaves is to be a slave, said by a Grand-master to some Emperor.

EDIT: When i say dealt with, i mean it has been spoken about. Everyone has their own credulity levels.

[Kalbear]

Just now, themerchant said:

The roads question is dealt with in the WLW i believe, some passage about to do as slaves is to be a slave, said by a Grand-master to some Emperor.

Right - that's exactly it, and it was put in specifically to address a concern that @Maiahad raised in the Bakker and Women (and several other Bakker) threads. Before that it was an open question - why wouldn't you use these sorcerers to demolish the hell out of the landscape and put in superhighways given how important overland travel was in antiquity? And the answer was that the moral importance is bigger of a deal than the utilitarian importance some times. I personally can buy that for something like the Scarlet Spires who are the rulers, but the Imperial Saik I would think would get used as builders for some grand imperial project from time to time. 

[themerchant]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Right - that's exactly it, and it was put in specifically to address a concern that @Maiahad raised in the Bakker and Women (and several other Bakker) threads. Before that it was an open question - why wouldn't you use these sorcerers to demolish the hell out of the landscape and put in superhighways given how important overland travel was in antiquity? And the answer was that the moral importance is bigger of a deal than the utilitarian importance some times. I personally can buy that for something like the Scarlet Spires who are the rulers, but the Imperial Saik I would think would get used as builders for some grand imperial project from time to time. 

For me it is a fine explanation. I had no idea of the backstory to it. I just remember it being in the book and thinking "ah right i did somewhat wonder about that"

The sorcerers thinking themselves above building roads seems fine to me. The Saik have been losing folk for centuries to the fanim, probably easy to get out of road building duties. Their dwindling numbers have been noted in the series. The Mysunsai might be the most likely for me. Being mercenaries.

[Kalbear]

Sure, but the Saik have also been around for a while. You can explain it as a matter of scarcity + deterrence; you can't keep sorcerers of rank out in the field, building roads, if you think that your enemy could hunt down part of your school and go kill them. Sorcerers appear to be significantly better en masse, too, so that would make sense. But, alternately, I could also see it being completely considered as a reasonable thing to do. Either way works, though it's nice to have some thought on it. (plus my personal view is that I like it when fantasy stories start thinking about their magical systems as beyond weapons and into the socioeconomic impact magic has - but I understand that's a me thing more than a universal every thing).

For the Wracu/Chorae, we've spent, like, a thousand pages wondering why that doesn't work. And haven't come up with a reasonable answer at all. But at least that was there by its absence. 

For the Dunyain feminine, we had actually guessed at the answer, though I don't think anyone thought that the women would be particularly grotesque deformities of the human shape, merely imprisoned and forced to be broodmares forever and ever. So we get that and are still trying to figure it out, especially since it seems so fundamentally implausible given the other data. 

[jurble]

6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

 you can't keep sorcerers of rank out in the field, building roads, if you think that your enemy could hunt down part of your school and go kill them.

But during the times of Cenei, with their Pax Cenei[insert proper Latin declension], with the entirety of the schools held under the Imperial Compact that only the Saik kept upholding, they probably could have spared some sorcerers of rank to build roads.   Cenei's only major rival was Zeum.

[unJon]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Also, apparently I am every single commenter on Bakker's reddit page.

And you apparently have written more words about one-upping Bakker and the series than the entire word count of the series.

He really can't help himself. 

[Kalbear]

19 minutes ago, Claustrophobic Jurble said:

But during the times of Cenei, with their Pax Cenei[insert proper Latin declension], with the entirety of the schools held under the Imperial Compact that only the Saik kept upholding, they probably could have spared some sorcerers of rank to build roads.   Cenei's only major rival was Zeum.

Yeah, probably. But I can understand that rationale, that fear. That we can't send them out no matter what. Especially if the emperor was paranoid or something like that.

Like I said, I think that the story would have  been more interesting if the world itself was more shaped by sorcery. Especially when we have things like witches producing prophylactics. it's not like utility doesn't exist. I personally think that it would make for a more rich, realized world. But I can reasonably justify why it doesn't, and it's not that big of a deal. 

That isn't the case with the whale mothers. And as pointed out, if you're wanting to go for maximum horror, this doesn't work either. People like me stop thinking about the horror and start thinking instead about the mechanics. If you don't make it a mechanical weird issue, that isn't a possibility at all, right? Heck, as we've seen you start getting into the case of justifying it. Why would they suffer at all when you can neuropuncture them into senescence? Why not just lobotomize them entirely? Why do they even need a brain, or at least a cerebrum? (those were my wife's ideas, btw). Certainly if they wanted to control the whales it'd be easier to feed them and keep them happy and docile without that stuff.

As soon as you stop talking about them as humans and make them inhuman it becomes a lot easier to treat them inhumanely. This is kind of the point of things like racism and sexism and bigotry. It's what we see in prison studies and in wars and in slavery. I guess you could say that the Dunyain bred the women to look like whales so that they wouldn't feel anything for them or could more easily justify their atrocities, but hard for me to buy that given what atrocities we see Kellhus willing to commit on normal humans without much in the way of sadness.

@bakkerfans, @Werthead - do we get any more information about the whales in TGO? Can you at least answer that?

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, unJon said:

And you apparently have written more words about one-upping Bakker and the series than the entire word count of the series.

He really can't help himself. 

Which is a shame, because I thought @Gormenghast made some reasonable points over at his blog, and it was was a lot more nuanced than 'hur hur Kalbear sucks'. In particular, I like the idea that this is basically a form of metatext over the text, and it is the writer making notes. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but it's a good idea to at least try instead of not try, even if you fail sometimes. That makes sense and is reasonable to me, though I still feel that in particular that line robbed the urgency of the moment.

Which kind of sucked for me, personally, because that was the first time that I could really feel the emotive import of something Esme was doing and sympathize with her. Until that line. 

[JGP]

14 minutes ago, unJon said:

And you apparently have written more words about one-upping Bakker and the series than the entire word count of the series.

He really can't help himself. 

Hahahaha... Oh, Bakker. Pass the yeast. 

On another note, and excuse me if I missed a post surmising likewise as you guys are fucking relentless, but would any of you agree it a safe assumption that there's more than a few Consult Quya presently wandering around the Thousand Thousand Halls? I mean, just by mere dint of probability, one or some of them would eventually resurface, no?

[Sci-2]

4 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Hahahaha... Oh, Bakker. Pass the yeast. 

On another note, and excuse me if I missed a post surmising likewise as you guys are fucking relentless, but would any of you agree it a safe assumption that there's more than a few Consult Quya presently wandering around the Thousand Thousand Halls? I mean, just by mere dint of probability, one or some of them would eventually resurface, no?

I just assumed they were all dead at this point? Could an Intact Quya, let along an Erratic, survive that long wandering in darkness?

[JGP]

Just now, Sci-2 said:

I just assumed they were all dead at this point? Could an Intact Quya, let along an Erratic, survive that long wandering in darkness?

Well for myself, I would assume it a given. Why wouldn't an immortal sorcerer, insane or otherwise, not be alive and just blasting away at the walls down there? I mean, Incariol can't be the only damned Nonman that has some of that dead-nonmen-ash sustenence. Hell, if there were a dozen or more lost in there, there's an almost equal chance they could crisp a corpse and replenish their stock right?  

[themerchant]

Didn't they die of thirst? Or bring the ceilings down on themselves? The little dude said so. Although he might be lying.

 “For all their might,” the boy continued in his monotone drawl, “the Singers were easily confused. They lost their way, wandered howling. Some perished for thirst. Others went mad, and brought the ceilings down upon themselves in their desperation to escape...”