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Bakker XXXI: What Comes After


unJon

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Well, all Earva societies are patriarchal, so I don't see why Dunyain would be any different. While they cut their ties to outside world after they found Ishual, it's almost certain they still retained their old prejudices and social norms.

It's not certain at all. What do those social norms say about the Dûnyain's breeding program which is specifically designed so that they could escape tdtcb, which includes history, language, passion, and custom?

"And just what comes before?" Cnaiür asked, trying to force a sneer.

"For Men? History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang."

Such social norms go against their entire philosophy,

A severe monastic sect that has repudiated history and animal appetite in the name of finding enlightenment through the control of all desire and all circumstance.

Sure, they're susceptible to all those darknesses on a vestigial level, but the entire point is to rid themselves of those things.

isolated from the world to maintain control, with each prior generation training the next to the limit of their capabilities, the idea being that over the millennia they would produce souls that could climb further and further from the circle of before and after.

If they hope to train each generation to the limit then having the women as broodmares seems like a very bad idea. If anything, I expect it to be an inversion of Eärwa's patriarchy. That's assuming that there were human women in Ishuäl.

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Honestly, this insistence that there won't be any more info given about the Dunyain because 'we already know everything of value' is kind of baffling. Especially now since the only person here who read TUC has confirmed that there will be. Let alone the fact that Bakker has said outright.

Oh, I'm sure there'll be something to indicate women were in charge of the entire Dunyain operation because men are too biologically tied to lust and violence.

I guess if the only way to do this is living Dunyain, we might get a Dunyain child only half-conditioned surviving in the wreckage before finally passing on.

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Oh, I'm sure there'll be something to indicate women were in charge of the entire Dunyain operation because men are too biologically tied to lust and violence.

I guess if the only way to do this is living Dunyain, we might get a Dunyain child only half-conditioned surviving in the wreckage before finally passing on.

Perhaps some Dunyain escaped whatever happened at Ishual, and Akka/Mim encounter them later (like at Ishterebinth or on the way)

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I agree with @Voden, we will get some info on the Dunyain. I'm even of the opinion that even though Ishual was destroyed, that the Dunyain wasn't wiped out. I think they still have some role to play. As far as the Dunyain Feminine reveal, I think it gonna be nothing more than the Blood line of Esement. That Kellhus isn't the fufillment of the prophecy. Because, as others have pointed out, the Anasurimbor in the prologue is a bastard. My beliefnis Mimara is the fulfillment of that prophecy.

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Oh, I'm sure there'll be something to indicate women were in charge of the entire Dunyain operation because men are too biologically tied to lust and violence.

I guess if the only way to do this is living Dunyain, we might get a Dunyain child only half-conditioned surviving in the wreckage before finally passing on.

I think Mimara viewing a Dunyain with the Judging Eye would be a cool way for info about them to be revealed to readers.

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I agree with @Voden, we will get some info on the Dunyain. I'm even of the opinion that even though Ishual was destroyed, that the Dunyain wasn't wiped out. I think they still have some role to play. As far as the Dunyain Feminine reveal, I think it gonna be nothing more than the Blood line of Esement. That Kellhus isn't the fufillment of the prophecy. Because, as others have pointed out, the Anasurimbor in the prologue is a bastard. My beliefnis Mimara is the fulfillment of that prophecy.

One of Madness's arch comment after reading TUC was that he didn't know how Bakker was going to release the rest of the Ishual sample chapter as it amounted to a huge spoiler. So I suspect we'll be learning a good bit about the Dunyain there.

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I think Mimara viewing a Dunyain with the Judging Eye would be a cool way for info about them to be revealed to readers.

Good point. Might be one way of showing us something of the sin in Ishual even if every Dunyain were dead.

Of course why Ishual isn't a topos is another question that needs to be answered. Perhaps the defectives were too emotionally dead to register as victims in the eyes of God?

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What's crazy too is that they didn't supposedly just use defectives for the face reading room. They also weeded out all but the "quickest" of their kids in the labyrinth and whatnot according to Cnaiur.

Perhaps magic use is what opens the way for a topos to exist?

I also wonder the degree to which creating a topos and suffering damnation coincide. The Inchies apparently damned themselves to the point they live in a haunted house, and of all the characters they seem to deserve their damnation for reasons we'd agree with - they're sadistic rapists who were apparently damned for sadistic raping others. Same with the Nonmen who bred slaves in dark pits.

Yet there are apparently good people - like some sorcerers - who are also damned. So it's not just evil acts which damn you. In fact you might be damned until you either join the right faith* or understand the Gnostic prison your soul is now trapped in.

*By "right faith" I don't necessarily mean a particular religion. Rather, you have to believe in the right way - either comprehension of the God-as-Whole (Fanimry, Inrithism) or reject that abstraction in favor of gaining the mercy of a particular Demon-God (The assorted cults of the Hundred). Then again you may need to have an actual recollection of the Whole, or the direct patronage of a demon-god, which would mean the only possible characters who might be saved are Kellhus, Meppa, Mimara, Sorweel, and Psatma.

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Yet there are apparently good people - like some sorcerers - who are also damned. So it's not just evil acts which damn you.

These aren't good people. Sorcerors scribble with crayons on the walls of creation. My kids get time outs when that happens.

It might just be an evil act.

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These aren't good people. Sorcerors scribble with crayons on the walls of creation. My kids get time outs when that happens.

It might just be an evil act.

Time-out isn't quite the same as an eternal torture so mind-bendingly horrific that it gives people PTSD after experiencing it for a couple seconds.

I know that post was in jest, just to be clear. (;

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Time-out isn't quite the same as an eternal torture so mind-bendingly horrific that it gives people PTSD after experiencing it for a couple seconds.

let's be clear though, nothing in life is the same as that. Hence Pascal's wager.
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What's not good about scribbing on the walls of creation?

Nothing. As long as you have some imagination. Sorcerers can apparently only blow shit up. It's the equivalent of dick-pics or your ex-girlfriends number in a toilet stall.

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The Inchies apparently damned themselves to the point they live in a haunted house, and of all the characters they seem to deserve their damnation for reasons we'd agree with - they're sadistic rapists who were apparently damned for sadistic raping others.

I sound like a broken record, but: the Inchoroi are not sadists. They are hedonists. There has been plenty of opportunity to show Inchoroi taking delight in hurting others, yet the opposite has been shown: they go out of their way to make their victims enjoy. They are merely without compassion.

Painting the Inchoroi as sadistic rapists avoids a delicious moral conundrum (namely: is hedonism damnable?) and makes it small, trivial, and easy.

The skin spies and the sranc are sadistic rapists, and designed that way.

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I sound like a broken record, but: the Inchoroi are not sadists. They are hedonists. There has been plenty of opportunity to show Inchoroi taking delight in hurting others, yet the opposite has been shown: they go out of their way to make their victims enjoy. They are merely without compassion.

Ah, that's a good point.

Painting the Inchoroi as sadistic rapists avoids a delicious moral conundrum (namely: is hedonism damnable?) and makes it small, trivial, and easy.

Well, we don't know if hedonism is what the Inchies are damned for. (For that matter, we don't know what the Inverse Fire actually shows.)

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I sound like a broken record, but: the Inchoroi are not sadists. They are hedonists. There has been plenty of opportunity to show Inchoroi taking delight in hurting others, yet the opposite has been shown: they go out of their way to make their victims enjoy. They are merely without compassion.
Perhaps you sound like a broken record and keep repeating this over and over because you keep being shown that you're wrong?


Just a thought.



You've still not answered - satisfactorily or otherwise - why hedonists would have only penises as their sexual organs. Or why they would not have sex bots. Or why they brag about how many people they've raped. Or why they would cut a person that they're interrogating for no good reason.



We know that they claim that they are a race of lovers. A lot of rapists claim that too. Their claim does not make it truth.


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I sound like a broken record, but: the Inchoroi are not sadists. They are hedonists. There has been plenty of opportunity to show Inchoroi taking delight in hurting others, yet the opposite has been shown: they go out of their way to make their victims enjoy. They are merely without compassion.

Painting the Inchoroi as sadistic rapists avoids a delicious moral conundrum (namely: is hedonism damnable?) and makes it small, trivial, and easy.

Got me for a second there.

Painting the Ichoroi as hedonists avoids a delicious moral conundrum as well.

You managed to paint them your prefered way while dismissing others for painting them another way. You were fast, I'll give you that!

Or why they would not have sex bots.

To be fair, the skin spies probably ARE sex bots. In their original function, anyway.

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I don't think Ishual had enough suffering to become a Topos. It's just the defectives who suffer constantly and their only a couple of them. If to many Dunyain survived whatever happened at Ishual that will massively imbalance the story so I think by necessity there must be only a remnant or perhaps children.


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I don't think Ishual had enough suffering to become a Topos. It's just the defectives who suffer constantly and their only a couple of them. If to many Dunyain survived whatever happened at Ishual that will massively imbalance the story so I think by necessity there must be only a remnant or perhaps children.

Yeah can't see why Ishual would be any more of a Topos than a part of Momen or Carythusal that's had a long standing slave market or prison. Or an Imperial dungeon.

Kind of frustrating that Bakker hasn't provided us with some hardcore figures on deaths(sin)/time/geographic area that produces the threshold value for topos creation. :P

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