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Bakker XLVI: Make Eärwa Great Again


Rhom

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1 minute ago, LuckyCharms said:

Grimdark genre fare would usually have more humor. And be more banal in the quality of its grittiness.

Yes. Grimdark doesn't just mean dark. Dark fantasy  has been around for a long, long, long time.,  Grimdark, (imo, since no one an agree on what grimdark actually is anyways) needs a sort of self depreciating meta humor that Bakker lacks.

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11 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.

Well, that's one reading. I suspect context issues - if Akka shoved a old lady out of the way of a cart that would have run her down, the context focus would shift to merely 'Akka shoves an old lady to the ground'. Because I'm pretty sure being hit with a staff hurts less than fucking damnation. Shame Inrau wasn't so lucky. But actually this is what Bakker likes to do - make context traps. Ignore the broader context and someone is an asshole. We're primed to ignore broader contexts - especially the broader context of us ignoring broader contexts. It's just so easy to make a context trap.

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his quest to get revenge against Esme and her husband.

The what now?

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They don't see a 20-year obsession with a woman who chose another man as anything particularly bad.

Is it kind of like losing a running race? It's just sour grapes if you don't put not winning behind you?

And 'Chose'. Like Cnaiur chose Moenghus.

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On 1/30/2017 at 5:06 PM, lokisnow said:

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.

Reminds me of this

Love the line from it "Rachel, hell, I don’t know, Rachel likes to shop."

Not watched the show, I grant.

But it reminds me of Cnauir, being not of the people. Always one thought too many. The people can tell why he tries to be one of them, and he is not one of them simply for trying.

(Yes, some of you are now thinking of Ross, breaker of horses and men! That's kind of like a desert to go with the meal of thought above :) )

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1 hour ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

So nearly done with TWLW, and Achamian's "Slog of Slogs" has me thinking. Does anyone else find it strange that Kellhus didn't run into any Sranc the whole way south from Ishual until he ran into that tracker? As I recall it was mentioned that it was unusual for them to be that far south, so Kellhus would have been moving through the bulk of their territory before the Great Ordeal and scalpers started clearing them out.

Also, an unrelated question, does anyone think that, beyond the obvious symbolism, there's any plot significance to Cnaiur running the "Tear of God" down the side of Moe's face?

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but can't hurt to ask.

@lokisnow, has a great theory (and others I assume) that Kelhus's entire trip to sitting on Cnauirs father's burial mound was conditioned by Moe. Something had to happen that's for sure. Others say Mek cleared the way with his little scouting party, an abundance of theories on Kellhus even being able to survive.

As far as the Tear of God and Moe rubbing down his cheek, that's the first I've heard of anyone making the connection. That's brilliant, also, Cnauir says that, "He could see God staring back at him for the briefest of moments." (Paraphrasing)

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Yeah, lokisnow's theory about Moe having conditioned the entire path is great.  I love it but am not sure it's true.  I feel like the collective thread unearthed some evidence against that my brain can't recall at the moment.  

I cannot believe that we just got also from lokisnow a Drusas Achamian :: Ross Geller.  What a world.  

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2 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

The way I understood that scene, Cnaiur's insanity made him  hard to read. Remember how distraught he became when he realized that he killed Moe? He didn't even know what he was going to do until it was done, so how could Moenghus have sensed his intentions?

Remember he caught Kellhus off guard the same way when Kellhus was planning on killing on the beach

aye, even the Dunyain are blind to the madness that leaks in from the Outside

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On 1/30/2017 at 1:06 AM, lokisnow said:

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.

As a former fan of the show, Friends has aged terribly.  The show isn't that old, but when I watched a few episodes recently, it was obvious that Ross, Chandler and (later seasons) Phoebe are all pretty horrible people.  So much of the show and it's characters just don't work fifteen years later. 

Akka's woe-is-me shtick in Aspect-Emperor always struck me as more pathetic than heartwrenching.  It's been twenty years dude, get over it and live your life.  I feel like the only way I can really sympathize with him is if I assume that Kellhus has somehow conditioned him into a life-stasis, and he is utterly incapable of moving on.  Which, considering how likely it is that everything he does is conditioned into him, isn't out of the question.  But while that makes Akka more sympathetic, it also makes him even less interesting, because his entire life is just puppetry, and he is only whining about the strings.  Not a terribly compelling arc for one of your main characters.

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3 hours ago, Maithanet said:

As a former fan of the show, Friends has aged terribly.  The show isn't that old, but when I watched a few episodes recently, it was obvious that Ross, Chandler and (later seasons) Phoebe are all pretty horrible people.  So much of the show and it's characters just don't work fifteen years later. 

 

I wouldn't go that far, I think you (and me (and everyone)) has gotten older and we have realized that people in their twenties are sort of horrible as a general rule. We think we're awesome, but I mean I did my fair share of thinking I deserved a girl by virtue of being such a "nice" or "considerate" or "thoughtful" or "smart" person when I was twenty two and had just gotten dumped. I was probably just fairly terrible, overbearing and entitled. and I know I didn't really listen to her, I only heard what I wanted to hear in the context of how I wanted to believe things were going. So I was blindsided. It happens, we grow up and get experience, not characters on a sitcom though, because they're unable to grow or develop more than minisculy because the writers have to author 11 hours of content, 450 ish pages of  24 four act fully resolved short stories every nine months ad infinitum, and repetition and formula make that possible because it's pulp. the writers need them not to change, so they don't. :-p

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On 1/31/2017 at 2:43 AM, Let's Get Kraken said:

So nearly done with TWLW, and Achamian's "Slog of Slogs" has me thinking. Does anyone else find it strange that Kellhus didn't run into any Sranc the whole way south from Ishual until he ran into that tracker? As I recall it was mentioned that it was unusual for them to be that far south, so Kellhus would have been moving through the bulk of their territory before the Great Ordeal and scalpers started clearing them out.

Also, an unrelated question, does anyone think that, beyond the obvious symbolism, there's any plot significance to Cnaiur running the "Tear of God" down the side of Moe's face?

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but can't hurt to ask.

Yes. It's suspicious and utterly improbable. And also the text is littered with evidence that Kellhus' journey was observed, monitored and carefully crafted.

Particularly the choice of Leweth as his first encounter with a world born human. It was carefully orchestrated that Kellhus' first encounter with a world born human was a closed, simple isolated environment. Leweth was chosen and conditioned such that he would be easy for Kellhus to read, to dominate, to develop successful strategies and methods of manipulation and domination. In short he exists to be broken by Kellhus in order to salve Kellhus ego and bolster his confidence. Faced with the roaring complexity of an actual town like Atraithau, Kellhus might have come to doubt some of his conditioning or abilities, instead he locks in to a particular path of interpreting people based on his Leweth prototype and he stays completely locked into that fairly pathetic and limited path dependency approach to humanity for the rest of the series.

There's a ton of off-screen manipulation going on, certainly.

But some readers think that Kellhus is totally the awesomest Ender to ever Wiggin a Doc Savage and believe Kellhus was totally and completely within his own agency during that entire prologue* and just happened to get lucky with Sranc etc (because it makes total sense that Moenghus would rely on luck to get the crucial element to the TTT out of Ishual). they are deluded world born souls who don't know their own thoughts. ;););)

 

*this is the theory that kellhus has agency because he is so super-duper smart, and strong, and martial arts knowing and sword wielding, and all-knowing and such an infalliable awesome sauce archetypal genre hero and smart so smart so obviously the guy in charge of his own destiny, so obviously a hero who will tell the audience about how to find meaning in a meaningless world.

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7 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

It happens, we grow up and get experience, not characters on a sitcom though, because they're unable to grow or develop more than minisculy because the writers have to author 11 hours of content, 450 ish pages of  24 four act fully resolved short stories every nine months ad infinitum, and repetition and formula make that possible because it's pulp. the writers need them not to change, so they don't. :-p

But I think that the problems with Friends are a lot bigger than that.  In the late 90s, it wasn't a big deal that Chandler was transphobic and generally terrible to his father.  Or that Phoebe jokes about being abusive to Paul Rudd.  Or that Ross is totally jealous, insecure and controlling in his relationship with Rachel.  But watching that now is a lot more cringeworthy.  Both the Simpsons and Seinfeld have aged FAR better. 

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10 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

But I think that the problems with Friends are a lot bigger than that.  In the late 90s, it wasn't a big deal that Chandler was transphobic and generally terrible to his father.  Or that Phoebe jokes about being abusive to Paul Rudd.  Or that Ross is totally jealous, insecure and controlling in his relationship with Rachel.  But watching that now is a lot more cringeworthy.  Both the Simpsons and Seinfeld have aged FAR better. 

Chandler is such an interesting character, he was fairly profoundly damaged, psychologically, by his parents behavior before during and after their divorce. If that resulted in him being transphobic it is fairly logical, kids don't all just jump for joy when a parent changes genders. He also displays a fair amount of homophobia while also displaying quite a lot of stereotypically gay characteristics. I would guess that the character was initially conceived of as possibly gay, but when they finally developed backstory for Chandler they had his dad be gay instead (which they then later changed to his dad being trans), and were able to then able to run with the more interesting idea that Chandler is just a guy that doesn't act in traditionally masculine ways who is still heterosexual. The trend in the nineties was about coming out and not knowing one was gay before that coming out (that the gay person was just as surprised as everyone else when they discovered they were gay), for example Kevin Kline (in the film In-and-Out) not knowing he was gay until he listened to Barbara Streisand and danced and sang along which then proved to himself that he was gay (or something). I'm kind of glad the show did not go with the I-never-knew-I-was-gay trope for Chandler, as that is fairly dated as well. 

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2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

But I think that the problems with Friends are a lot bigger than that.  In the late 90s, it wasn't a big deal that Chandler was transphobic and generally terrible to his father.  Or that Phoebe jokes about being abusive to Paul Rudd.  Or that Ross is totally jealous, insecure and controlling in his relationship with Rachel.  But watching that now is a lot more cringeworthy.  Both the Simpsons and Seinfeld have aged FAR better. 

Oh God no, I can't watch Seinfield, all those people are terrible, terrible human beings who deserve death.

Although that was kind of the point, so maybe it has aged ok.

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Gods, this is just reminding me how unbelievably frustrating I find it that it appears that these theories about Moe are not true.  There's still some tiny hope we'll learn something big in the next book, but at this point it seems unlikely.  

 

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55 minutes ago, Triskan said:

Gods, this is just reminding me how unbelievably frustrating I find it that it appears that these theories about Moe are not true.  There's still some tiny hope we'll learn something big in the next book, but at this point it seems unlikely.  

 

Which theories would those be?

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