Bakker LI - The Darkness That Lies Ahead (TUC Spoilers!)

[Cithrin's Ale]

1 hour ago, Hello World said:

Bakker commented that Kellhus was so focused on planning the assault on Golgotterath that he failed to notice anything wrong with Kelmomas and that he failed because he was just as blind to his darknesses. As H said, a lot of people thought there was no way Moe didn't foresee that Kellhus would kill him and must have planned something.

My guess is that whatever happened to Kellhus after he died was unintended by him... Possibly something that the Consult did. Maybe they have his soul trapped somewhere now.

I agree.

Bakker gets a kick out of humiliating his most powerful characters. Conphas, Eleazaras, Cnaiur and Moenghus all find ruin despite their best efforts to the contrary. Aurang was revealed to be nothing more than a complex Sranc and discarded like fodder.

I think Kellhus is now stuck inside the head next to Malowebi. I feel he will spend the next series reflecting on the failure of TTT as the Dunsult experiment on him. Like the Nonmen glorifying nothingness/Void/mu and Koringhus emphasizing zero, Kellhus may have to learn how to fade into oblivion in order to save himself both from damnation and the Dunsult's experiments. This might be quite the challenge for someone so attached to the world thanks to the TTT.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

11 hours ago, Cithrin's Ale said:

Finished TTT again. Really loved it; Conphas and Cnaiur's respective breakdowns at Joktha are great. I'm so damn curious about who talked to Kellhus on the Circumfix. Bakker says "Ajokli seems a safe supposition" in the AMA. Have a feeling this is a lie. Furthermore, how exactly would Ajokli know to quote the No-God if he's blind to him? This can't be true!

Agreed. Its more Bakker leading you to where he wants to lead you. Same reason we got in a argument a thread ago, I don't see why the AMA ruined anything. There are some truths in there and the rest is him jerking the readers this way and that.

It goes back to the haloes, methinks. At the recent Con, Bakker said absolutely no questions regarding Haloes, so their important. I like your idea that it can't be Ajokli because of him quoting the No-God, just fucking great proof. Me myself, have falling in line with @.H., that it's Kellhus himself, in the Outside. Two possibilities here. 1. He's in the other decapitant. 2. Kellhus created a niche for himself in the Outside via the Diamos for his soul if he was to die with the Ordeal. Both explain why Ajokli can't find him. And, it would be in line with the idea that (the Voice says) his war is with the God/Gods, not men. "Kellhus is dead...but not done."

[Cithrin's Ale]

30 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Agreed. Its more Bakker leading you to where he wants to lead you. Same reason we got in a argument a thread ago, I don't see why the AMA ruined anything. There are some truths in there and the rest is him jerking the readers this way and that.

It goes back to the haloes, methinks. At the recent Con, Bakker said absolutely no questions regarding Haloes, so their important. I like your idea that it can't be Ajokli because of him quoting the No-God, just fucking great proof. Me myself, have falling in line with @.H., that it's Kellhus himself, in the Outside. Two possibilities here. 1. He's in the other decapitant. 2. Kellhus created a niche for himself in the Outside via the Diamos for his soul if he was to die with the Ordeal. Both explain why Ajokli can't find him. And, it would be in line with the idea that (the Voice says) his war is with the God/Gods, not men. "Kellhus is dead...but not done."

At this point, my frustration over the AMA has cooled down a lot. There is some lingering annoyance with the fact that the AMA is so crucial to understanding TUC itself, though. It resembles an issue I have with Brandon Sanderson: to really understand his collected universe (he labels it the Cosmere), you have to dive deep into interviews that most readers will never hear about. It doesn't feel like readers get the full story when they pay for his works, in a way. Still, I've largely made my peace with Bakker's thread.

In regards to the halos, I feel that fandom discussions have drifted away from what the most logical explanation: the notion that beliefs impact reality in Earwa. Serwe believes Kellhus is divine, so he has halos when she sees him. Serwe believes the Kellhus skin-spy is divine, so she sees halos on it. Akka struggles with his belief in Kellhus, so the halos don't always appear for him. Did Bakker give a statement refuting the malleability of Earwa at the hands of belief?

[jurble]

19 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Just throwing it out there, but the Dunsult was totally banging Aurang and vice versa all the time, amirite?

Whence do passions and drives come from in Bakkerverse?   Do they arise from the soul or the brain?  The soul is apparently capable of feeling pain and pleasure and retains its identity and memory after death - yet the Dunyain breeding program not only bred passions out of the flesh but also made the Dunyain's own souls weak.  So somehow the soul is a reflection of the flesh.

But what happens when one who was once passionate possesses the passionless.  Does your soul retain passion or does the lack of passion bleed back onto the possessor?  We really don't know much about Shae's personality at all or the details of his possession.

Certainly Shae and Aurang enjoyed banging when he still possessed his own body, but their own romance likely cooled over the centuries.  Moreover, for all we know, Shae's own passions have ebbed over the centuries - the base desires and motivations and fears all gone.  He might be - and probably is since I can't imagine sustaining hatred and fear for millenia - something of a Bodhisattva.   His own animating passions are gone, the only thing that binds him to the world is his ideology, his personal Dharma.   He's Zaheer from Korra - enlightened but evil.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

Akka does so see the Haloes, along with Malowebi. I doubt belief has anything to do with it.

[Cithrin's Ale]

6 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Akka does so see the Haloes, along with Malowebi. I doubt belief has anything to do with it.

I know he does, but they're not constant, just as Akka's belief in Kellhus isn't that powerful. True believers, such as Proyas and Serwe, see them more.

"Several times now, Achamian thought he had glimpsed golden haloes around Kellhus's hands. He found himself envying those, such as Proyas, who saw them constantly."-TTT, chapter 6

Ajurbkli, are you saying Shae's husks didn't have a grand orgy with Aurang? 

 

[Darth Richard II]

Eh, I could be mis remembering so don't jump down my throat here, but I thught it was confirmed quite a a while back that what you believe in BakkerLand has 0 impact on anything.

[Hello World]

1 hour ago, Cithrin's Ale said:

I think Kellhus is now stuck inside the head next to Malowebi. I feel he will spend the next series reflecting on the failure of TTT as the Dunsult experiment on him.

I can see this becoming an info-dump tool for Bakker. I hope I'm wrong, though.

[jurble]

49 minutes ago, Cithrin's Ale said:

Ajurbkli, are you saying Shae's husks didn't have a grand orgy with Aurang? 

Nah, just saying it's an unknown and I'd personally lean towards no.

[Kalbear]

20 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Eh, I could be mis remembering so don't jump down my throat here, but I thught it was confirmed quite a a while back that what you believe in BakkerLand has 0 impact on anything.

Well...kinda.

What you believe doesn't change things like damnation. If you believe in Fanimry it doesn't make the solitary god more true, as an example. Belief in the 100 doesn't make the 100 real, nor do they sup on people's belief. It isn't like Small Gods, basically.

However, your desire does manifest things in Earwa. Earwa is maximally objective - meaning that it most complies to the belief of the objective god - but it isn't entirely objective. Sorcerers use their intent to manifest their desire via meaning, and while it's incredibly ugly and obviously not with the objective viewpoint of God it still happens. Bakker used the example of the Whale Mothers to handwave the genetics a bit, where he said something about how the intent of the Dunyain shaping what they were used for and what happened. One could say that because people wanted to see Kellhus have haloed hands, that intent shaped it somewhat. 

My honest suspicion is that the haloed hands were said to be subject non grata because they are totally meaningless and were just a cool thing Bakker threw in. They aren't consistent, meant to be consistent, and don't matter.

[Darth Richard II]

Maybe they just have bad cataracts.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

49 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Eh, I could be mis remembering so don't jump down my throat here, but I thught it was confirmed quite a a while back that what you believe in BakkerLand has 0 impact on anything.

Your correct. Insofar as that's the answer he gave me.

[Callan S.]

14 hours ago, The Prince of Newcastle said:

Does anyone else think Kellhus has a contingency plan for being salted?

 

That's the problem with the shortest path - it doesn't indulge redundancies like a plan B. As Monghus jr quips to Serwa about teleporting closer to their destination just to save them some walking, though it might get them killed.

[Callan S.]

7 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Akka does so see the Haloes, along with Malowebi. I doubt belief has anything to do with it.

Akka doubts. A lot. I think it's related.

Come to think of it, as Proyas is being broken in the great ordeal, there is no mention of the hand haloes.

[Hello World]

I thought the torch-like head was Ajokli's, as in Kellhus's head transformed and he didn't replace anything. 

[Callan S.]

I assumed just a bad ass ghost rider effect.

[Kalbear]

My suspicion is that Kellhus has an ability to transfer his soul between heads similar to Shae, and in the last minute he transfered his soul to the remaining head while the other swapped back - and died.

[Cithrin's Ale]

23 hours ago, Kalbear said:

However, your desire does manifest things in Earwa. Earwa is maximally objective - meaning that it most complies to the belief of the objective god - but it isn't entirely objective. Sorcerers use their intent to manifest their desire via meaning, and while it's incredibly ugly and obviously not with the objective viewpoint of God it still happens. Bakker used the example of the Whale Mothers to handwave the genetics a bit, where he said something about how the intent of the Dunyain shaping what they were used for and what happened. One could say that because people wanted to see Kellhus have haloed hands, that intent shaped it somewhat. 

The depiction of military tactics in the books supports this. Cnaiur describes battle as an argument between beliefs. The Inrithi belief in Kellhus leads them to victory at Anti-errr Caraskand despite their physical frailty after a famine. Conphas is probably the most successful non-Dunyain commander and insanely narcissistic; not only that, he commands the loyalty and faith of his soldiers in his capacity to achieve victory.

[Darth Richard II]

Well, then we get into the do we believe the text or the author, uh, debate.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

3 hours ago, Cithrin's Ale said:

The depiction of military tactics in the books supports this. Cnaiur describes battle as an argument between beliefs. The Inrithi belief in Kellhus leads them to victory at Anti-errr Caraskand despite their physical frailty after a famine. Conphas is probably the most successful non-Dunyain commander and insanely narcissistic; not only that, he commands the loyalty and faith of his soldiers in his capacity to achieve victory.

That's different from belief affecting wether your damned or what damns you. Belief down at effect the Gods was the specific question and answer from Bakker.