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The Unholy Consult post-release SPOILER thread III


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3 hours ago, odium said:

Re: Loki's last post on the last page, the piracy debate between RSB and MisterGuyMan on TSA was pretty cringy and offered some perhaps unwanted insight into the temperament of the author (insofar as the tone he took throughout that "debate").

Oh I looked that up, thanks for the reference. I'd forgotten Bakker has zero chill. Last time he went this ham was with the whole sexism thing, yeah?

1 hour ago, danylmc said:

I wonder if, somewhere along the way Bakker read Infinite Jest which - famously - has no ending or, rather 'the end of the story comes sometime after the end of the book', and then ran into trouble figuring out how to structure his own narrative and decided 'Fuck it. I'll be like David Foster Wallace and have no ending, and then I'll be a literary genius too!'

I'm not sure whether you're wondering if he read it, or if he got the idea. Because as it happens, he did read Infinite Jest along the way - he wrote a review a couple of years back.

Anyways onto the book itself. A lot of people here were saying how they felt the book had a number of flaws, but they ended up liking it. I am not in that camp, and I didn't like it. I said before the release, that my expectations were for this book to be like the fourth book of in the Book of the New Sun series. Not all answers clear, and not all of them explicitly there, but the series working well enough without a "clear" ending. This was not the case for TUC - not even close. But that was my bad, I should have managed my expectations better. I think the series could worked and have ended the way it did, if Bakker was better at his craft. I arrived at that last opinion after the AMA.

Other than that I don't have anything to say what hasn't been said, except that for me the flaws killed the enjoyment to the point where I can say I didn't like the book. I do have to reiterate though - omfg the dude actually included a battle between internet caricatures: the redpilled MRA asshole vs a teenage tumblr girl. Yeah, the last one is a bit of a stretch, since Serwa had some good parts, but Bakker honest to god has no clue how to write women, does he. He can say it was intentional all he wants, but until he proves he can write one, I'll simply consider his claims at them being bad as intentional as this (again, after the AMA).

I remember in the early-access threads, one of those privileged to reading the masterpiece before others said snidely something along the lines "in order to enjoy the books, some people need to know whether Kellhus pulled his heart out of his asshole on the cross". Boy o boy, must you feel like a total cunt right now. I didn't need any answers explicit.What I also didn't need was to know the author had no fucking clue what he was doing (Akka, Mimara walking around aimlessly, ending up completely useless), all the while claiming the series was to be a "metaphysical whodunit". Yeah, you didn't need a whole series to say answer the "who done it" with "ajokli done did it". Or did I miss anything?

This is very much an angry rant, but I am very salty. I loved the first series (I'd call it my favorite fantasy series). I loved parts of the second, although I hated a bunch of it too. And this is the ending?!

 

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3 hours ago, Ajûrbkli said:

Given his personality, I do think there's a non-zero chance he's trying to troll is and trying to make sort of statement about Death of the Author or something.....

 

1 hour ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

It would seem, to me, that we are being trolled by Bakker.@Ajûrbkli

 

Ah, so you poor suckers are hitting the denial stage of your grief.

Me personally im in the anger stage and i'm gonna stay there. I don't owe Bakker any more than I've given him and probably much less besides. Im not quite petty enough to change my score of TUC and write a scathing review, but im certainly not gonna make any excuses for him. To be honest we should have seen this coming, he's the guy that prides himself on "poking people in the eyes", was only a matter of time he did it to his fans.

Though who knows, maybe there are people out there that like this development. HE ? Madeness ? Whoever you are, if you can see anything redeemable in this state of affairs speak up now or Kalbear will finally have succeeded in his crusade.

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5 minutes ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

 

 

Ah, so you poor suckers are hitting the denial stage of your grief.

Me personally im in the anger stage and i'm gonna stay there. I don't owe Bakker any more than I've given him and probably much less besides. Im not quite petty enough to change my score of TUC and write a scathing review, but im certainly not gonna make any excuses for him. To be honest we should have seen this coming, he's the guy that prides himself on "poking people in the eyes", was only a matter of time he did it to his fans.

Though who knows, maybe there are people out there that like this development. HE ? Madeness ? Whoever you are, if you can see anything redeemable in this state of affairs speak up now or Kalbear will finally have succeeded in his crusade.

Madness is...not allowed on this forum currently. And just judging by a quick glance over at TSA their are plenty of people who seem thrilled with all this.

I think HE said he was done with Bakker at this point.

 

There certainly is a lot of denial going around.

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That is a bit melodramatic, haha. I think the only person who has succeeded is Bakker, in that he correctly realized he would divide his fanbase into people reeling in various kinds of disbelief at the revelations of TUC. I just think it cannot speak to the success of his vision that the people most alienated are those who have without a doubt peered deepest into his worldbuilding (seriously, how many of the big twists were anticipated? axolotl tanks and kelmomas as NG off the top of my head). At the same time, I think there are low-hanging metaphors for how our alienation is mirrored by events in the series.

Are we the Ordeal, and has this all been our arrival to Golgotterath?

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Quote

And this is the ending?!

 

No, it's not. The next series is called The No-God, anywhere from 2-4 books. Maybe, just maybe he'll redeem his self. But, I am highly skeptical. I don't need to know what meaning means to me, I want answers to the mysteries that made TSA so great.

I'll agree 100% PoN was and is still my favorite fantasy series of all-time.

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1 minute ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

 

 

No, it's not. The next series is called The No-God, anywhere from 2-4 books. Maybe, just maybe he'll redeem his self. But, I am highly skeptical. I don't need to know what meaning means to me, I want answers to the mysteries that made TSA so great.

 

That's another problem though. Bakker has been jumping up and down screaming THIS IS THE ENDING for over a decade now, and we get there and ...it isn't? I honestly remain skeptical that the last series will even be published.

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40 minutes ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

 

Ah, so you poor suckers are hitting the denial stage of your grief.

Lol. I'm neither in denial or have any feelings of grief. These are just observations, thats all. And, the hope that Bakker can fix his fuckups in the next series.

 

27 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

That's another problem though. Bakker has been jumping up and down screaming THIS IS THE ENDING for over a decade now, and we get there and ...it isn't? I honestly remain skeptical that the last series will even be published.

Who knows. All we can do is wait and see. I've got a huge TBR pile, so I'll be just fine. 

ETA: someone linked an article somewhere about how there was always supposed to be 3 series. Bakker never said it was the ending. He said this was his original vision when he was 18 years old. And, if nothing was written after this, he could die in peace.

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Yeah, I do recall hearing about TSTSNBN a long time ago as something Bakker fully intended to bring about one day. I don't think that's a problem, I just feel like TUC was a terrible ending to a series whose future was already in a delicate balancing act.

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5 minutes ago, odium said:

Yeah, I do recall hearing about TSTSNBN a long time ago as something Bakker fully intended to bring about one day. I don't think that's a problem, I just feel like TUC was a terrible ending to a series whose future was already in a delicate balancing act.

Agreed. And, that was what I was trying to get across. Its not that I didn't like the book or the ending necessarily bothered me, at all. Its having all these mysteries and different plot lines...that just go nowhere. We get nothing out of them. And that is the failure i see, and the only frustration i have. That being said, Akka and Mimara are both still alive and TNG will pick up a few weeks after the ending of TUC. Maybe their stories will become more complete and give some closure.

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6 hours ago, odium said:

But it just boggles my mind, as someone who has written a great deal in their spare time and thinks they understand the craft at least a little, that Bakker started all these plot threads and just did nothing with them. The dreams of Seswatha, for christ's sake!  It's almost aneurysm-inducing to then read that this is all because I'm conditioned to "balk at the absence of closure." 

Maybe it's the roleplayer in me, but to me Akka went to Golgotterath not because a plot made him do it, but because he wanted to witness it. It's exactly the sort of thing players do in roleplay with their PC. He decided, he went there. And my god some shit went down there, he didn't just go there and the great ordeal had been destroyed before he got there.

You seem to see in terms of plots, not people.

A guy did something, because he willed it. It wasn't a plot animating him along like a puppet that needs to be animated into some closure. This isn't a fantasy world of clockwork people, it's psychological realism (much like GOT) where people decide stuff and much like real life psychology, it doesn't necessarily get closure. And that's the freakin' hard difficulty of reading of the books - instead of it being a bunch of loose ends, we're dealing with dozens, hundreds, thousands of minds/people with their own little agendas puttering around the landscape. Without the contrivance of plot, it's maddeningly difficult to grasp that many souls at once as a reader. And indeed the whole idea of reducing the world population to a certain amount is (probably) a reference to that - to simplify the number of souls to an understandable amount.

Plots are so meta - unless you equate plot and fate as being the same, there is no such thing as plot in the fantasy world, so why insist not just on having it, but the plot has to be tied up neatly? Plot does not exist in the fantasy world!

Plot. It just seems a modern surrogate for God(s). A way of expressing a need while avoiding the modern casual chastising of anyone feeling a need for a deity.

[/Rant]

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@Callan S., no. Akka was going to Golgottereth to see Kellhus with the Judging Eye. Its in the plot of the two previous books. What I find amazing is that Akka wields absolutely zero sorcery through the entirety of the battle. I mean, come on. Akka is a badass dude, and the battle was ripe for Akka to do some Seswathing on some Consult ass.

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1 hour ago, odium said:

The revelation that no answers were ever intended. B)

Which I am fine with. Half anticipated. But to quote the gopher from Winnie the Pooh, "not in the book!"

which is to say if the revelation is that no answers were intended, execute that vision within the text, not within post release press.

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21 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Which I am fine with. Half anticipated. But to quote the gopher from Winnie the Pooh, "not in the book!"

which is to say if the revelation is that no answers were intended, execute that vision within the text, not within post release press.

Yeah finding out after all the years that all that background info and plot hints were just accidents kind of...rankles. a teeny tiny bit.

 

Edit: Also while I'm ranting for the love of God someone take away the mans italics function. Jesus balls.

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2 hours ago, Callan S. said:

words

I roleplay a lot too but I don't know if I understand. PCs are supposed to have "realistic" motivations for doing things that go in line with their personality, backstory, and even (if you're more of the D&D/Pathfinder tabletops) their alignment. Akka had a motive for going to Golgotterath beyond being there, it was to see Kellhus with the Judging Eye and maybe receive some closure about the cause he had basically dedicated his life to. If you meant play-by-post roleplaying on the internet, those tend to be even more skewed towards plot-based storytelling. But beyond that, I feel like maybe the deconstruction at play is not the one you're describing. Earwa is supposed to be the meaningful world, isn't it? 

 

1 hour ago, lokisnow said:

Which I am fine with. Half anticipated. But to quote the gopher from Winnie the Pooh, "not in the book!"

which is to say if the revelation is that no answers were intended, execute that vision within the text, not within post release press.

He appears to think he did execute that vision within the text: we were just telling ourselves that clearly all of these storylines were going somewhere.

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