Kalbear Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 21 hours ago, larrytheimp said: I mean me and my ex spent a lot of time on our own separate activities, but I'd be a bit hesitant to leave her with a legion of genocidal jihadis in the midst of a bloody crusade while I went book shopping hundreds of miles away. Come on man, it's books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 2 hours ago, Kalbear said: Come on man, it's books. Are they first edition hardcovers? With dust jacket? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Seswatha Jordan Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 So on the topic of morality, and I don't mean to go off topic, but has anyone read Red Rising Trilogy by Pierce Brown? I'm just starting Morning Star. And, I'd say there is more to learn about the morality of human beings in that book, more than any other I've ever read. Great series, by the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Callan S. Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 On 1/29/2017 at 7:58 AM, Let's Get Kraken said: It's not like he could have foreseen all of that happening though. As you said, he just wanted to go look at some books... What I find strange is that so much of his resentment is fixated on Esmenet and Kellhus. While the latter certainly did enough to earn his ire, where is his anger for Proyas who abandoned him? The Scarlet Spires who tortured him? The Mandate who made him complicit in the death of his beloved student? Achamian is almost starting to remind me of Cnaiur with his single-minded obsession (though a great deal less insane). That's still a ridiculous comparison to make, because Achamian really wasn't a victim of Esmenet. Being hit by a baseball bat and being slapped are essentially the same action with varying degrees of force behind them. The best you could say was that both Achamian and Mimara attributed their pain to the same person. But even that, while technically true, would be an absurd thing for Achamian himself to say or think. Mimara has much more rational reasons for blaming her mother for the state of her life than Achamian does. This whole conversation is starting to remind me of that episode of The Office where Michael burns his foot on a George Foreman grill, and then has a meeting where he publicly compares his situation to a paraplegic coworker. I presume the victim hood is not about rational, practical issues but about emotional connection (severed). It wasn't that Mimara was a sex slave, it was that her mother cast her out as a child. And Akka was cast out as well. If Mimara had been cast out and become instead a well treated house slave, it might be easier to see how the issue is one of emotional connections being severed. That's what I think is being referenced by the character. I could be wrong and he's referencing something else. That's the thing - ones reading of it could be wrong. And if there had been no famine, who knows... Quote What I find strange is that so much of his resentment is fixated on Esmenet and Kellhus. While the latter certainly did enough to earn his ire, where is his anger for Proyas who abandoned him? The Scarlet Spires who tortured him? The Mandate who made him complicit in the death of his beloved student? [Romanticism] Shows the level of his love, doesn't it? Bigger than all of that world [/Romanticism] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Callan S. Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 20 hours ago, lokisnow said: If the apocalypse is a dream of the future and never happened, then nau cayuti is a girl To be fair, Kelmomas has broken one prediction of the future and a prediction made by quite a powerful entity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 3 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said: See, if Akka had said that they were both "abandoned" or "cast out" or I would even accept "betrayed" by Esmenet, it wouldn't have made him seem quite so unsympathetic. I've never found Akka sympathetic at all. I don't think he's supposed to be? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 8 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said: And yet, your smart-ass comment has nothing to do within the context of my statement. You're fighting the good fight. I was trying to make a joke with someone else. Sorry that offended you. I know of people who would actually have a fairly difficult time deciding between abandoning the love of their life in a horde of hard-up soldiers vs. finding some rare books, and for them that would be pretty tough as a choice. Apologies that you didn't get the humor or thought that you were being attacked, again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 7 hours ago, Darth Richard II said: Are they first edition hardcovers? With dust jacket? They're special numbered editions with misprinted jackets. Esme is so fucking toast Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Callan S. Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 3 hours ago, Darth Richard II said: I've never found Akka sympathetic at all. I don't think he's supposed to be? You might be saying 'unsympathetic' when you mean 'unrelatable' - I mean, is there anything Akka does that you can relate to? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lokisnow Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 3 hours ago, Darth Richard II said: I've never found Akka sympathetic at all. I don't think he's supposed to be? Akka to me is basically the Ross Geller of the books, Ross is someone who believes himself to be a saint and therefore entitled to all the nice things he inherently deserves but Ross' actions always show him to be a profoundly horrible human, instinctively defaulting to selfish and self pitying behaviors to an extraordinary degree and capable of displaying breathtaking misogyny in an enormous variety of situations that are often deeply offensive and profoundly creepy. I've never been able to decide if all the writers were like Ross by default and his character was an accident or if they're genuinely critiquing that kind of person. A little of both I think, they were too like Ross to so nakedly reveal how repulsive and odious his behavior was but they also knew his behavior was unacceptable and often ridiculous. But that's part of the problem isn't it? Ross being a stalker, or Ross being controlling or Ross believing he deserves to be awarded Rachel any other misogynistic behaviors are usually treated as part of the joke rather than the core of the problem. i never watched friends in its original run, but have watched it all since because it's so important to my wife and I cannot stand Ross nor sympathize with him, but his complexity is often one of the best things a great show does best. i think the same is true of achamian, he's too much like the author for him to be deliberately such a bad person as he comes across on the page but some of the bad personal qualities are there deliberately for valid dramatic reasoning. and I think he is meant to be sympathetic, one of his first thoughts on screen is about how dumb and useless jocks like geshrunni are compared to smart nerds like himself, a pretty rock solid method to get your readers on a characters side, insulting Jocks. Of course Bakker upends this by immediately proving achamian wrong, and interestingly has achamian make mental progressions that mean achamian doesn't have to confront how wrong he was and gets to ignore his mistakes of intellect which at the core of his being he believes to be incapable of errors of intellect. Bakker, I think, wants you to sympathize with Achamian because he knows readers need to latch on to something or someone just to get oriented. But probably most important to Bakker is that he also wants you to be skeptical of Achmian more than he wants you to sympathize with him. so he's contantly undercutting Achamian by revealing the errors in akka's thinking and biases and bakker undercuts akka by making him have a reasonably odious past and series of onscreen behaviors. He wants someone that is blandly nice for the reader at first glance but makes the reader feel uncomfortable the more things develop. because he wants to make the reader feel skeptical and skepticism is I guess something inherently uncomfortable for the author to feel, so he presumes it is the only way it can be experienced by the reader. But he's too much like the author for Bakker to be so bold as to make Achamian a Norman Bates sort of character, he's never going that far, or at least hasn't yet. A much bigger question is does the author want us to be skeptical of Kellhus. I'm still not sure on that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 29 minutes ago, Callan S. said: You might be saying 'unsympathetic' when you mean 'unrelatable' - I mean, is there anything Akka does that you can relate to? Maybe? I don't think I know the difference and it's too late for me to look it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 I think the goal was to make Akka sympathetic and relatable - and still horrible. This is the goal of Lolita, and is realized brilliantly. Instead, I think most people don't see what Akka does as particularly horrible and is simply confused when it is brought up that some people see him as fairly bad. They don't just relate to him, they actively are happy for him and hope he does well in his quest to get revenge against Esme and her husband. They don't see a 20-year obsession with a woman who chose another man as anything particularly bad. They don't think it's supposed to frame Akka in a bad light when he hits Mimara with his staff. Given how popular Akka is, I think this is largely a failure of the writing rather than the readers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Seswatha Jordan Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 18 hours ago, Kalbear said: I was trying to make a joke with someone else. Sorry that offended you. I know of people who would actually have a fairly difficult time deciding between abandoning the love of their life in a horde of hard-up soldiers vs. finding some rare books, and for them that would be pretty tough as a choice. Apologies that you didn't get the humor or thought that you were being attacked, again. OK, itso just from earlier discussions way, way back in made a statement regarding 'its just a book" and was tore to pieces and the remark from last page. Let's just squash it all here I apologize if I've offended you and anyway and am sincerely sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Seswatha Jordan Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 2 hours ago, Kalbear said: I think the goal was to make Akka sympathetic and relatable - and still horrible. This is the goal of Lolita, and is realized brilliantly. Instead, I think most people don't see what Akka does as particularly horrible and is simply confused when it is brought up that some people see him as fairly bad. They don't just relate to him, they actively are happy for him and hope he does well in his quest to get revenge against Esme and her husband. They don't see a 20-year obsession with a woman who chose another man as anything particularly bad. They don't think it's supposed to frame Akka in a bad light when he hits Mimara with his staff. Given how popular Akka is, I think this is largely a failure of the writing rather than the readers. If we go by our moral compasses then, in this genre, what characters are left to like? Same as life if you think about it. Any great leader, somewhere if you dig enough, has their hands dirty. Fiction mirrors life in this way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 2 hours ago, Kalbear said: I think the goal was to make Akka sympathetic and relatable - and still horrible. This is the goal of Lolita, and is realized brilliantly. Instead, I think most people don't see what Akka does as particularly horrible and is simply confused when it is brought up that some people see him as fairly bad. They don't just relate to him, they actively are happy for him and hope he does well in his quest to get revenge against Esme and her husband. They don't see a 20-year obsession with a woman who chose another man as anything particularly bad. They don't think it's supposed to frame Akka in a bad light when he hits Mimara with his staff. Given how popular Akka is, I think this is largely a failure of the writing rather than the readers. I dunno, is he actually popular outside this forum? I mean, in all honestly, we're all pretty weird here(I include myself in said statement :P) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 Quote I dunno, is he actually popular outside this forum? I mean, in all honestly, we're all pretty weird here(I include myself in said statement :P) I think so? He typically is the character most talked about in other places I've seen. There are probably more Cnaiur and Kellhus fans than there are on these boards, but Akka's pretty popular - and usually considered to be an unequivocal good guy with basically no faults save being played by Kellhus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 Cnaiur fans scare the fuck out of me. 21 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said: If we go by our moral compasses then, in this genre, what characters are left to like? Same as life if you think about it. Any great leader, somewhere if you dig enough, has their hands dirty. Fiction mirrors life in this way. Well, I've never needed characters to like in order to enjoy a book, otherwise I wouldn't be such a big KJ Parker fan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Seswatha Jordan Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 10 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said: Cnaiur fans scare the fuck out of me. I am a huge Cnaüir fan. Now, I don't condone his rape and all that. But, there is so much more to Cnaüir than that. He is one of the best written characters I've come across in fantasy. I found myself, after reading TGO, that he might goes against the Consult, and he makes clear that they are not his rulers. I just think there is one thing only that he lives for....to kill Kellhus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 OK well, I don't mean fans in that way, but there are some who think hes just the best most awesome guy and we should all aspire to be like him. He's certainly a fascinating character. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 I think it's all relative. Akka is not so deeply likeable, but it's a series full of unsympathetic characters, so he benefits by comparison. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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