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Bakker: The Great Ordeal SPOILER THREAD pt. II


kuenjato

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5 minutes ago, danylmc said:

Pg 310 of the Overlook hardback. 

I can see it that way; the Nonmen were described as "having lust in their eyes." That being said, Bakker usually isn't subtle about sexual assault (with the very notable exception of Conphas), so I'd be surprised.

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Yeah I didn't get the impression Serwa was raped at all.

And I am totally 100 percent on board with you on Esmi. pages and pages and pages of SHE IS A MOTHER. ShE MUST PROTECT THE CHILDREN CAUSE SHES A MOTHER AND A MOTHER IS A MOTHER TO MOTHERS and omg i get it she loves her kids, holy shit.

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2 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Pfft, if Madness knows anything I'll eat my hat.

 

As long as they're not on the goddamn holodeck.

You do realize Madness was mentioned twice in the acknowledgements of the book, right? He is a test reader for Bakkker and in the Q&A at SA was told he would be put to use very soon. I mean, yea he didn't handle the situation very well with TUC/TGO and all that. He has since explained and apologized. He is human you know. We all make mistakes, surely you do as well. Time to let it go, DRII.

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Quote

 

Yeah I didn't get the impression Serwa was raped at all.

 

I guess I just have a sick mind, and when the author talks about the Nonmen going to her 'with lust in their hearts' and she's tied up and naked except for a hood over her head and he writes 'they did not speak and she did not resist,' I just jump to the worst possible conclusion. 

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2 hours ago, Cithrin's Ale said:

I can see it that way; the Nonmen were described as "having lust in their eyes." That being said, Bakker usually isn't subtle about sexual assault (with the very notable exception of Conphas), so I'd be surprised.

That was supposed to be subtle?

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2 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

You do realize Madness was mentioned twice in the acknowledgements of the book, right? He is a test reader for Bakkker and in the Q&A at SA was told he would be put to use very soon. I mean, yea he didn't handle the situation very well with TUC/TGO and all that. He has since explained and apologized. He is human you know. We all make mistakes, surely you do as well. Time to let it go, DRII.

I wouldn't call deliberately lying in order to, "troll the fans" a "mistake" nut gave I seen any expiation or apology on these forums, which are the only forums i post in. Maybe he's done so on the Bakker forums but I have zero interest in posting there not do I think I would be welcome if I wanted to. You don't hype up/ talk about something fir almost two years and then get an easy pass when it turns out you were just full of shit the entire time.

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3 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah I didn't get the impression Serwa was raped at all.

And I am totally 100 percent on board with you on Esmi. pages and pages and pages of SHE IS A MOTHER. ShE MUST PROTECT THE CHILDREN CAUSE SHES A MOTHER AND A MOTHER IS A MOTHER TO MOTHERS and omg i get it she loves her kids, holy shit.

Trying to recall - how much had Cersei lost it in AFFC? Even in similar circumstances with regard to her children + going crazy there was at least something more to her?

The Momemn stuff was interesting in WLW because of Psatma, but then the tall blond supersmart philosopher puts her in her place by giving her a humiliating death.

Really...did Esmi accomplish anything in the last three books? Heck did Theli?

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Cersei was erratic and not particularly clever in AFFC, but she wasn't behaving super off. She was thinking a lot more about how clever she was and fearing a bit more about Tyrion, but she was never particularly manic. Basically she was the same save being less subtle. She surrounded herself with idiots and sycophants, she made thoughtless decisions with respect to history and she ended up pushing certain plots too far, but she wasn't particularly different.

For her, there was a lot more. She wanted to prove she could play the game. She wanted to crush her competition. And she held a grudge for a long time. She also still loved her brother, but that was not her be all end all. And she was worried about tommen being influenced by Margarey, but it wasn't only about her kids.

Esmi did end up killing maithanet and almost killing meppa. That's something, right?

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The character idea behind Cersei is that she's amazing at ruthlessly destroying her enemies as a means of achieving power, but totally incompetent at actually governing once she has power. Which is not an unusual set of qualities in a ruler, throughout history, and also a very effective device in moving the plot along. Esme's character is that she used to be a whore, but now she isn't, and she's a mother, and those don't really develop the plot at all; they're just things she thinks about maybe a hundred times (?) during the first three Aspect-Emperor books, while stuff happens around her. 

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The other important part to consider about cersei is that she more than any other woman in the books is expressly bothered by the oppression of women, and thinks several times on how shitty it is that Jaime was the man. That's kind of a big deal for her personally - that she balks at the gross unfairness of it all.

Which would be a pretty good thing for Esmi to think about too and would make sense, but she is a smidgen busy with all those kids.

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23 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Esmi did end up killing maithanet and almost killing meppa. That's something, right?

But that's all White Luck isn't it?

Even within the context of the timeline someone tells her about the divine assassins and she goes to hire one.

The Meppa thing would've been cool but nothing comes of it. The tall blonde guy who's super good at philosophy has to come back and stop Meppa and put that uppity slut Psatma in her place too.

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1 hour ago, R'hllors Red Lobster said:

That was supposed to be subtle?

Relative to Esmi and Serwe's rapes, I'd say so.

Continuing the Esmi/Cersei comparison, Esmi's love for her kids resembles Cersei's in that she seems to be pretty self-serving judging from Serwa's notion that Esmi wanted her children to feel helpless and needy.

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re: sexual offenses in ishterebinth--

S&M are to be 'apportioned,' 'divided as spoils,' to be loved,' 'then murdered' (254).

the harapior scenes are infused with unsavory tension, insofar as serwa sings dude's dead wife's songs in her voice (presumably from mandate memory), resulting in dude being the one 'who confesses' (259); he with perfect hegelianism 'warred with himself,' 'swayed and moaned for tides of disordered passion' (id.).  he threatens her obliquely in these scenes, but 'his will fell short of her skin' (id.).  the earlier scene however has him laying hands on her (195-96), 'brought his lips close to hers," &c. gross.

the ambiguity leans at times toward competed offenses: "and it cut her far more than any indignity she had so far suffered that [brother] might yet cry out his devotion thus, despite all the degradations, all the mutilations.  finding her body useless, the lord torturer had sought to make moenghus an implement of her torture' (310). i.e., they've already done everything that might done to her at this point, apparently, with no success; she had in fact mastered the confrontation with routine dunyain competence.  

on the other hand, her pre-oirunas reflection cuts the other way: 'very soon, they would become the plaything of some decrepit and inhuman will, something to sin against and so purchase some brief term of sanity' (329). the subjunctive grammar complicates it.

and then there's the conceptual question of what means it when the victim controls the offender via the offense? (control to the end that she was 'the masterstroke ... the monstrous cargo' (319).) is it a non-consensual act if it was the plan the entire time to incite the well-known addiction to atrocity with songs in dead cunuroi women's voices in order to seduce and then nuke the vile?

some corroboration found in the nastiness otherwise, such as sorwa on the cunuroi: 'even as a fraction of his soul recognized individuals, another fraction insisted they were just another breed of sranc--one framed, not as dogs or apes, but as strapping, catamite men' (204).  oinaral confirms this, regarding 'those who teeter upon the dolour' (205), instructing that sorwa should avoid contact 'because they would love you, if they could' (206).  sorwa then recalls the 'pathetic emwama child at the foot of the black iron seat' (id.).  this is a 'naked little emwama child at the foot of the lunatic throne' (198).  to outsider sorwa, the murals had been 'intelligible insofar as they offended, wholly debauched' (206) (though in the hat, immy interprets them for sorwa, of course).  

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On 7/23/2016 at 3:42 PM, redjako said:

The first trilogy, the Gods in general were very, very quiet. Besides Gilgoal "being present" in a few battle scenes (Saubon, Cnaiur), they were absent "direct" movements in the first trilogy. Even the Gilgoal references seemed not to have a "possessed" aspect, rather, just the interpretation of people who saw them. 

E.g., "he's a great warrior, wow, Gilgoal must have blessed him."

The larger shock for me reading The Aspect Emperor years ago, was that the Gods had more direct influence and actions.

At the battle at the port in TTT, we see from Conphas' POV that Cnaiur is literally possessed by Gilgaol, to the point where he physically changes shape.  

 

On 7/24/2016 at 0:02 AM, Damned with the Wind said:

Skimming through WLW, I noticed that he saw Esmi die in the Earthquake.  So in regards to the discussion in the previous thread of whether Esmi is dead, she is definitely dead. RIP.

Esmi died in the WLW's POV, which turns out to not be true.  We do not know if she actually died.

19 hours ago, sologdin said:

the ease of AK's disruption of the fayanal/meppa/psatma/malowebi axis suggests that he left it in place until the time of its dissolution intentionally.

what advantage gained for the ordeal by its existence?  why does the nuke terminate that advantage?

ETA--

to go with the troy stuff, supra, AK is plainly hektor as he should have been in that moment.

There was no advantage to Kell by allowing them to exist and conquer/destroy the New Empire.  We see in his POV that he intentionally discarded the NE and only decided to return later.

 

Edit: shit, board ate like half of what I wrote.  oh well.

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I think Kellhus' word choice is critical in understanding his decision to return to the NE.

Quote

"I have to come to save you," he said, "and to salvage what I might."

He's decided the Ordeal is a failure.  Remember, the NE is only useful to him insofar as it is an end, and not for its own sake.  Saving Esmenet and his children could be accomplished by teleporting in and out and ignoring the Empire, if he has no need for it.  But the Ordeal's failure requires the continued existence of the Empire's bureaucratic structure for the further battles against the Consult.

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20 minutes ago, sologdin said:

wrath, is there a textual locus for his reversal of opinion?  

Chapter 1, p 56 in the Nook version:

Quote

For twenty years now, he had dwelt in the circuit of his father's Thought, scrutinizing, refining, enacting and being enacted. He had known it would crash into ruin after his departure...

Known that his wife and children would die.

[....]

No flesh could be sundered from its heart and survive.  All of his empire was doomed--it was disposable. Kellhus had known this and he had prepared.  No...

It was the hazard of the converse that had eluded him ...

[...]

The fact that his heart would also crash into ruin.

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Goddammit I hate the new quote function.  I find it completely impossible to add anything after the quote.  In any case, I meant to say that Kellhus then preps Proyas to lead in his absence, a process he had begun in WLW.  I think that Kellhus never intended to return to the NE until he sees what happens in Momemn in WLW and realizes the effect it has on him.

 

Also, something else that just occurred to me.  Kellhus orders Proyas to leave behind anyone who is showing signs of radiation sickness, despite the fact that some 20,000 of the Scalded are still fit enough to march and possibly fight.  It seems obvious now that Kellhus does this because those men are not fit to be eaten...

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