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


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1 minute ago, themerchant said:

A good way to avoid spoilers is to not ask questions about what happens in the The great ordeal to those that have read it.:)

Who said I wanted to avoid spoilers? I don't. I never have. 

I want people who do not want to see spoilers to be able to be unspoiled. That's why you mark a topic with (spoilers) - because in that topic, there will be spoilers. This doesn't make me a hypocrite - this makes me a person who respects  other people who don't want to get spoiled. There's a reason we haven't seen DR 2 in here - because he didn't want to be spoiled and we were talking about spoilers over and over. 

What kind of asshole would be happy about knocking people down a peg for wanting to warn others that there are spoilers? 

This is a spoiler topic (or at least was; the second iteration is missing it, but hopefully that'll be fixed). This is for spoilers. The notion I don't want them is obviously stupid.

1 minute ago, themerchant said:

Serwe in my opinion is just the first to succumb to his false divinity, that's what Bakker meant with her being the Cipher of the series.. As opposed to the interpretation Locke has taken over the years.

The haloe'd hands cast zero light. They make no shadows they aren't objectively Kellhus's, Serwe sees them on who she thinks is Kellhus, It's the "light of delusion" they aren't even the same colour/tone as what is ostensibly the god's view of holy/good halo's.

So why do they show up on the skin spy? That's the part that's really confusing to me. One of two things has to be the case - either Serwe's perception puts them in or they exist independent of observer. From Mimara we know haloes get shown via the Judging Eye. 

1 minute ago, themerchant said:

My feelings on the LOTR Homage is we might see Akka get to Ishterbenith and through some revelation, maybe Serwe pregnancy,maybe from wearing Nil'giccas's nimil robe. Which would then have the Nonman chariots riding to Dalgiash. To save or betray.

Ooh, good call on the Rohim/Nonman thing. 

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1 minute ago, Sci-2 said:

Didn't Kellhus - either personally or via the Traveller - talk to Cleric at some point?

Additonally, if he has access to Akka's consciousness* he would know by now that even the Intact of Ishterbenith   are in the thrall of Golgotterath.

*Again, William James idea seems to hint at the Bakkerverse ->

 

We have no way of knowing Traveller only spoke to Kosoter in the book. Cleric is sitting back and the third person mentioned earlier isn't brought up again.

If they have fires of any sort i imagine he can see what is happening.

Isn't that just a fancy way of saying we're all one soul projecting out so it looks like we're separate? As Akka points out in the book about madness and pin pricks in parchment? I'm pretty uneducated about a lot of the philosophy stuff.

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1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Who said I wanted to avoid spoilers? I don't. I never have. 

I want people who do not want to see spoilers to be able to be unspoiled. That's why you mark a topic with (spoilers) - because in that topic, there will be spoilers. This doesn't make me a hypocrite - this makes me a person who respects  other people who don't want to get spoiled. There's a reason we haven't seen DR 2 in here - because he didn't want to be spoiled and we were talking about spoilers over and over. 

What kind of asshole would be happy about knocking people down a peg for wanting to warn others that there are spoilers? 

 

No one that i am aware of. Although to be fair i haven't been tracking your wants. I merely gave advice on how to avoid spoilers in a thread, mainly by not inviting people to discuss the contents of the book people don't want spoiled.

Can you link the post where someone says you want to avoid spoilers? I think we have a case of westerosi Halo's here cause i can't find it. Can you? Or were you just asking a really weird rhetorical question?

Also this hypocrite thing? Where's the posts about that? Who said you were, can we see the post?

On the actual book halos they represent the delusion of everyone thinking Kellhus is holy? So she thinks she sees Kellhus so she sees the halos even though it isn't him.

 

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4 minutes ago, themerchant said:

No one that i am aware of. Although to be fair i haven't been tracking your wants. I merely gave advice on how to avoid spoilers in a thread, mainly by not inviting people to discuss the contents of the book people don't want spoiled.

Can you link the post where someone says you want to avoid spoilers? I think we have a case of westerosi Halo's here cause i can't find it. Can you? Or were you just asking a really weird rhetorical question?

Also this hypocrite thing? Where's the posts about that? Who said you were, can we see the post?

I guess that's where we should start with this, themerchant - what prompted you to tell people that they should not ask those who read the book about things if they want to avoid spoilers, like you did here?

Quote

A good way to avoid spoilers is to not ask questions about what happens in the The great ordeal to those that have read it.:)

I presumed you brought it up because I did. If you didn't, why would you bring it up? A lot of this is based on that assumption. If it isn't the case and you were just randomly talking to no one at all about how to avoid spoilers, well, okay. That's really weird, but that is possible. 

It is board policy that threads which discuss spoilers are marked clearly with spoiler in the title. That's the rules. If you're making fun of me for saying the board rules so that people who aren't expecting spoilers don't go into them, that sucks. If you're suggesting that people in a spoiler thread don't want spoilers, that's weird. 

4 minutes ago, themerchant said:

On the actual book halos they represent the delusion of everyone thinking Kellhus is holy? So she thinks she sees Kellhus so she sees the halos even though it isn't him.

But everyone shares precisely the same visual delusion? In an intentional world?

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23 minutes ago, Galbrod said:

Kal... themerchant... please stop taking up our time with misinterpreting each other. You both obviously have massive amounts of interesting ideas to share, Couldn't you perhaps focus on those :-)

Regards

G

Sorry. I'll try better to ignore it.

And hey, the title of the topic has been edited - thanks! 

On this topic - where do Akka and Mimara go next? Apparently thanks to wilshire over at TSA it is Really Meaningful that Mimara wants to go to Esmenet right away, but I don't know how on earth they'd get back any time soon or be able to affect anything there. From the map they're closer to Ish and Golgotterath than anything - but I don't know what would motivate them to go to either place.

Akka's motivations were to find the truth of the Dunyain and prove that to...hmm. Guess that's another confusing part. Akka got what he wanted. He was right. Who does he prove it to? Esme? The Nation? Who does he stop? I confess I have no real idea what Akka would want to do now. The Dunyain represent his proof and his prize of sorts - sort of like Cnaiur and Serwe - but he can't get back to the empire in any real time without knowing how to teleport.

So yeah, homework time - where is Akka going, and why? 

 

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48 minutes ago, Galbrod said:

Kal... themerchant... please stop taking up our time with misinterpreting each other. You both obviously have massive amounts of interesting ideas to share, Couldn't you perhaps focus on those :-)

Regards

G

No problem, I have no idea what's going on, i made a joke and now i have all this...

I'll just use ignore function and give everyone peace :)

Can't wait till the book comes out.

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2 hours ago, themerchant said:

We have no way of knowing Traveller only spoke to Kosoter in the book. Cleric is sitting back and the third person mentioned earlier isn't brought up again.

If they have fires of any sort i imagine he can see what is happening.

Isn't that just a fancy way of saying we're all one soul projecting out so it looks like we're separate? As Akka points out in the book about madness and pin pricks in parchment? I'm pretty uneducated about a lot of the philosophy stuff.

Good call on the fires.

Yeah I suspect in the Bakkerverse individual identity is, if not completely false, secondary to the truth that all entities are God. Basically the entire Bakkerverse is God's lucid dream where the characters in it are split entities but still aware of their core self [which is Unity]. 

Thus the problem with the Nonmen is they saw Oblivion in an anti-heroic fashion where the Few manage to sneak past the gods and escape damnation via True Death. But since this emphasizes identity ("I" escape these "Others") it fails.

The Cish OTOH recognize on an intuitive level their identities are what James calls "accidental fences" and thus explode into nacre halos rather than salt - a sign of their transcendence.

Or so the theory goes at any rate. About 30-40 days from now and we might find if any of this is true...

 

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I mentioned that the thing that struck me was after witnessing Mimara work through her "hatred" of her mother for two books. Once her other eye starts giving her new info the first thing she thinks is she has to warn her mother.

Akka heading back to the three seas though doesn't seem likely. So perhaps informing her using the eye is a possibility?  Akka could dream to Mandate headquarters? That'd be an awkward phone call.

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1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Sorry. I'll try better to ignore it.

And hey, the title of the topic has been edited - thanks! 

On this topic - where do Akka and Mimara go next? Apparently thanks to wilshire over at TSA it is Really Meaningful that Mimara wants to go to Esmenet right away, but I don't know how on earth they'd get back any time soon or be able to affect anything there. From the map they're closer to Ish and Golgotterath than anything - but I don't know what would motivate them to go to either place.

Akka's motivations were to find the truth of the Dunyain and prove that to...hmm. Guess that's another confusing part. Akka got what he wanted. He was right. Who does he prove it to? Esme? The Nation? Who does he stop? I confess I have no real idea what Akka would want to do now. The Dunyain represent his proof and his prize of sorts - sort of like Cnaiur and Serwe - but he can't get back to the empire in any real time without knowing how to teleport.

So yeah, homework time - where is Akka going, and why? 

 

Per Wert's review, their arc ends in a cliffhanger in the forests of Kuniuri.  At least that's my interpretation, given they're the only ones that seem likely to be ending an arc there.

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My thing with Serwe was that I don't start from the prior that Serwe is deluded. Perhaps she is. Perhaps she is not. Her delusion is not necessarily proven by observing halos around the no-kellhus skin spy given that observation and being observed are states that have supernatural correspondence within the mileau. 

Perhaps she's the head on the pole behind Kellhus and the key to how he navigates divine planes, and that is all that Bakker ever meant.

Perhaps she is a map--for the reader--to interpreting the Cnaiur/Moenghus relationship. All indications point to Cnaiur being profoundly distressed about the ways that Serwe's developing relationship to Kellhus mirrored the development of his own relationship to Moenghus. She is the lens by which we understand that Cnaiur has been sacrificed upon the metaphorical circumfix for the advancement of a Dunyain.

but I don't think Serwe seeing the halos is a simple thing to dismiss. When you simply dismiss it, you also miss all the other, troubling little supernatural things that Serwe does in relation to Kellhus.

 

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Wait, I'm confused. 

Where's all the text substantiating the different colors of the haloed hands, and Kellhus' and/or the skin-spy's casting/not-casting shadows? I don't recall reading anything about that in the books. 

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10 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Wait, I'm confused. 

Where's all the text substantiating the different colors of the haloed hands, and Kellhus' and/or the skin-spy's casting/not-casting shadows? I don't recall reading anything about that in the books. 

Kellhus haloes are gold and it's referenced several times they cast no shadow. When Mimara sees herself with the JE in the water, here are silver.

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Mimara sees a silver halo, everyone else sees golden halos round Kellhus. Casting shadows is when Kellhus meets Moe "the light of delusion".the skinspy is during the battle where Cnaiur is the General in TWP.

Sorry i keep forgetting it's a mixed ability thread. I've talked about this stuff so much a lot of the knowledge is axiomatic.

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21 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

My thing with Serwe was that I don't start from the prior that Serwe is deluded. Perhaps she is. Perhaps she is not. Her delusion is not necessarily proven by observing halos around the no-kellhus skin spy given that observation and being observed are states that have supernatural correspondence within the mileau. 

Perhaps she's the head on the pole behind Kellhus and the key to how he navigates divine planes, and that is all that Bakker ever meant.

Perhaps she is a map--for the reader--to interpreting the Cnaiur/Moenghus relationship. All indications point to Cnaiur being profoundly distressed about the ways that Serwe's developing relationship to Kellhus mirrored the development of his own relationship to Moenghus. She is the lens by which we understand that Cnaiur has been sacrificed upon the metaphorical circumfix for the advancement of a Dunyain.

but I don't think Serwe seeing the halos is a simple thing to dismiss. When you simply dismiss it, you also miss all the other, troubling little supernatural things that Serwe does in relation to Kellhus.

 

It was more reading all the theories and then picking the one i thought most likely, as opposed to dismissing Serwe seeing the Halos. I've been following your theory on it on both boards. I really like the her being the head on the pole.

I just feel Bakker meant what i said when he said she was the cipher. I've been proved wrong many a time on many a book on many a theory. Just what I think.

I think the Halo's are a sign of being wrong about Kellhus being the God. Serwe sees them first as she is the first to think it. They aren't even exclusive to Kellhus just who Serwe thinks is Kellhus, which questions there real world objectivity. They cast no light.

Maybe my theory is a product of my own banal imagination but it works for me. Nice and simple very few assumptions.

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1 hour ago, lokisnow said:

Per Wert's review, their arc ends in a cliffhanger in the forests of Kuniuri.  At least that's my interpretation, given they're the only ones that seem likely to be ending an arc there.

I was thinking that it might be Serwa's arc that leads here there, but that makes sense too. Kuniuri though - maybe they're heading to the Ordeal? But that's one hell of a trek.

Then again, they basically went from Sauglish to Ishual in like a blink of an eye, especially compared to how long it took the Ordeal to go anywhere.

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