Bakker LII: Ol' Golgotterath Blues

[Kalbear]

18 minutes ago, .H. said:

IIRC both The Road and No Country for Old Men have even less closure than Blood Meridian, for whatever that's worth (i.e. nothing), and I feel reasonably certain that he's probably read those too.

The Road had really good closure. 

18 minutes ago, .H. said:

I am the first to admit that the whole SA series is incredibly hard to sell in general though.  And proof positive that Bakker is his own worst publicist.  In fact, I'm ready to say that perhaps no publicity is better than what Bakker does for himself.

In theory, the second apocalypse series (sans Bakker interpretation) is really easy to sell as a concept and as a series.

Cue announcer voice:

"In a world...where damnation is real, visible, and eternal, factions vie to save their own souls and the souls of all humanity. An ancient race, perverse beyond imagining, seeks to stop damnation by stopping any soul from entering hell...or heaven. A group of monks, long trained and bred to be supremely intelligent sociopaths, try to save the world by becoming one with God and rewriting all the rules, even if it means making deals with the literal devil itself. Other factions simply ignore the fate of their souls and fight and war as humans have always done, while gods treat them as playthings and tools.

And in the middle of this, the prophet of a vengeful, ambivalent God emerges, able to cast judgment and forgiveness on anyone...assuming she can survive the Apocalypse.

[Maithanet]

19 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The Road had really good closure.

How do you figure?

Spoiler for The Road

Spoiler

The Road has only two real characters to speak of, and it ends with the boy either entering a new and better chapter of his life, or about to be murdered and eaten.  It is incredibly ambiguous, and could have been solved pretty easily by McCarthy, if he'd wanted to. 

 

[Kalbear]

Both are pretty good closure. At the end we know the fate of one character and have a pretty good idea of what happens to the other, or what will. 

[Hello World]

2 hours ago, .H. said:

Most stories do, some don't though.  I personally don't find that bothersome, but everyone's results are going to vary.

Personally, I don't find Bakker's take on closure jarring or surprising, since he likes McCarthy enough to tote Blood Meridian around with him all the time.

That's not a seven book epic fantasy series that was filled with questions and mysteries and an author promising that book seven would answer them, the expectations were different, from me at least. I'm not sure what kind of closure a book like blood meridian is supposed to have. Halfway through I knew that the narrative is probably not going anywhere. The only thing I was expecting is that the guy would die at the end.

I quoted Bakker before saying that TUC would end all the arcs established prior to TGO. And his real life doesn't have closure thing. I think he's very lucky that most readers aren't aware of those comments (if he hasn't changed his mind on this) and are expecting those plot lines to continue in the next series, otherwise the reactions would have been much worse. 

Quote

 

This is the no god.

Can a fantasy creature/object be so strong as to damage the very nature of the narrative - is that fair play, to write of a creature that powerful?

If you'd say no, then fair enough.

 

I understand that this is what Bakker was going for (since I listened to his recent podcast interview) and he conceded that some readers won't like it, and that's fine. The problem is I'm not aware of anyone who came to that conclusion prior to reading and listening to Bakker's comments. If anyone did I didn't see it mentioned here or in the handful of goodreads reviews I saw. 

[Hello World]

1 hour ago, .H. said:

since he likes McCarthy enough to tote Blood Meridian around with him all the time.

Yeah, it makes sense now. All the arcs established prior to TGO are done, Mimara, Esmenet, Achamian, etc, that's the last we've heard of them. Think Cormac McCarthy. This is what Bakker was going for. (Bakker said this after finishing the first draft of TUC/TGO btw). 

An idea so jarring that readers refuse to believe Bakker's own word on it. Including me until you mentioned blood meridian. If this was really his idea at first then I hope he doesn't cop out and change his mind. 

I'm not aware of any comments to contradict the above, except for the Kellhus comment. And I don't expect Kellhus to come back as a character in any real sense. That said, I haven't been keeping up so he may have given more info at Zaudunyanicon. 

[Darth Richard II]

Huh, he did go full McCarthy at the end, didn't he? Which, considering how much I hate McCarthy(ducks rocks and bullets) makes sense.

1 hour ago, Hello World said:

 

I quoted Bakker before saying that TUC would end all the arcs established prior to TGO. And his real life doesn't have closure thing. I think he's very lucky that most readers aren't aware of those comments (if he hasn't changed his mind on this) and are expecting those plot lines to continue in the next series, otherwise the reactions would have been much worse. 

 

A lot of the reviews I saw were from people who had no idea that there was a third series at all, and, well, some were more upset then others.

[Ser Bryar Ashford]

Blood Meridian has one of the best endings/closures in the history of writing, so...

[Lutarez]

I forgot, Did mimara see the no god with the eye? I know she saw trough the ilusion

[Callan S.]

12 hours ago, Dora Vee said:

But, then again, what IS worthwhile?

Well yeah, good question. I think a main character losing for a change counts as part of a worthwhile ending.

[Callan S.]

The end of the road is uncertain?

Spoiler

They put a blanket over the dad - instead of, like, eating him. What would be the point of any subterfuge at that point?

I remember (but cannot find a link for it) Bakker saying he felt McCarthy had betrayed the reader...I think the idea was it was because he gave the reader a semi happy ending.

 

[.H.]

12 hours ago, Hello World said:

All the arcs established prior to TGO are done, Mimara, Esmenet, Achamian, etc, that's the last we've heard of them.

I don't know if that what he really meant though.  Perhaps he meant their story arcs are ended, because what they were after simply does not matter any more.  Akka's need to prove Kellhus false: doesn't matter, Kellhus is dead.  Mimara's task to view Kellhus: doesn't matter, Kellhus is dead.  Esmenet's fight to be out from under Kellhus thumb: doesn't matter, Kellhus is dead.  I don't know if that means we don't see those characters again, or if we see them again in undertaking new roles in the post-No-God world.

[unJon]

1 hour ago, .H. said:

I don't know if that what he really meant though.  Perhaps he meant their story arcs are ended, because what they were after simply does not matter any more.  Akka's need to prove Kellhus false: doesn't matter, Kellhus is dead.  Mimara's task to view Kellhus: doesn't matter, Kellhus is dead.  Esmenet's fight to be out from under Kellhus thumb: doesn't matter, Kellhus is dead.  I don't know if that means we don't see those characters again, or if we see them again in undertaking new roles in the post-No-God world.

I agree. It’s round two of Bakker saying that Cnauir’s arc was finished after TTT. 

[.H.]

15 minutes ago, unJon said:

I agree. It’s round two of Bakker saying that Cnauir’s arc was finished after TTT. 

Good point.  When he says arc, I think he just means the direction of their narrative not them literally being in the narrative.  It's a confusing way to talk about it, but that's just par for Bakker comments...

[Hello World]

5 hours ago, .H. said:

I don't know if that what he really meant though.  Perhaps he meant their story arcs are ended, because what they were after simply does not matter any more.  Akka's need to prove Kellhus false: doesn't matter, Kellhus is dead.  Mimara's task to view Kellhus: doesn't matter, Kellhus is dead.  Esmenet's fight to be out from under Kellhus thumb: doesn't matter, Kellhus is dead.  I don't know if that means we don't see those characters again, or if we see them again in undertaking new roles in the post-No-God world.

Bakker comments are certainly confusing and lend themselves to a lot of interpretations. I think this was different from the Cnaiur comment where Bakker says the arc "has to end" but he's not sure. I think most people here read it the other way once they actually saw the comment and not just second hand reports. We went over this recently and people were upset that the comment was basically apocryphal. 

Quote

TUC wraps all the arcs established through the series thus far – brings me to the end of my original story idea, way back when.

I think you're point of view is valid. But with Bakker saying the next series is going to be more like Atrocity Tales with the boy starring in the first one, his blood  meridian obsession, and his comments about closure and the no god, I think it's likely that he just means what he says above. 

[.H.]

15 minutes ago, Hello World said:

I think you're point of view is valid. But with Bakker saying the next series is going to be more like Atrocity Tales with the boy starring in the first one, his blood  meridian obsession, and his comments about closure and the no god, I think it's likely that he just means what he says above. 

Sure, I'm willing to buy that as the most probable.  Maybe we see Akka as a sort-of Seswatha, an off camera presence to the story of whatever it is.  Perhaps Mimara too.  I can buy their role in the narrative ending, but I still feel like, at least, Mimara still has a role to play in what happens next because she is pretty unique in having the Judging Eye.  Perhaps she too would be outside the actual narrative though.

[Latan]

On ‎11‎/‎26‎/‎2017 at 5:58 PM, Kalbear said:

I'll go into it because it's been a while.

• What Kellhus' actual plan was.
• What the point of Mimara being at Golgotterath was. Or really, her entire journey.
• What Akka's quest was about, and what point it had.
• Why was it necessary for the Great Ordeal to go into sranc-fueled madness.
• Was Kellhus actually caring about Esme?
• Did Psatma and Yatwer oppose Kellhus because he was Ajokli, or because he was just a bad dude?
• Did Shae get killed?
• Did Shae take over the Dunyain?
• Why was Mimara being followed by the Consult?
• What was the 'respect the prophecies, both false and true' bit from Aurang?
• Why does an Anasurimbor need to trigger the No-God mechanism?
• Why did it take 2000 years for them to do that?
• What has the Consult been up to in the last 2000 years?
• Prior to the Dunyain, what was the Consult plan?
• Is Kellhus lying or telling the truth? Could he have saved everyone?
• Is Kellhus damned or holy?
• What does it mean to be holy?
• Is Mimara's eye actually accurate?
• Is Samarmas actually part of Kelmomas?
• Did Ajokli lead Kelmomas in any way?
• Did the Consult want to save Kellhus to use in the carapace? If so, why did they try to kill him with a nuke?\
• What was their goal with the nuke, anyway?
• How did the Consult ally with the Nonmen?
• Did the nonmen know about the Dunyain? What did they know?
• What actually happened with the Womb Plague? 
• How much of the first apocalypse actually happened?
• Who sent Akka his dreams?
• How accurate were his dreams?
• Was Nau-Cayuti actually not Celmomas' son? If so, why does he work in the No-God when he's not an Anasurimbor?

1. I think Kelhuss made a deal with Ajokli to give him the power to stop the Consult, and Ajokli being Ajokli played the long con on him.

2. Mimara is the prophet that Kelhuss pretended to be, she was there to witness the end of the world and potentially to be the Sarah Connor or even the John Connor of Earwa, as for her journey there she is now one of the few scions of the royal family left, I feel she is now the linchpin of humanities struggle during the Second Apocalypse.

3. Akka's quest was to protect the maturation of the worlds true prophet, his skepticism along with his heart ushered prodded her to come to terms both with herself and the power she had. He is the holy tutor as he has always been.

4. Why is anything in a work of fiction necessary? These are the straits that this world has presented the Great Ordeal, Agongorea is an utterly dead land and the Consult pulled the sranc and Bashrag from it for that specific purpose, the very world was the Consult's weapon.

5. Kelhuss has always cared about Esme, from TTT with Kelhuss's internal monologue he sees her walking across a ruined wall and when she seemingly slips Kelhuss catches his breath. During the conversation between Maithanet and Inrilatas the boy mentions that Kelhuss's treatment of his mad children is an arc instead of a straight line because he wished to mollify Esme's heart. He says as much during his flight back tot he Ordeal, but when a chronic liar finally speaks the truth none believe them. In a sense he is the ultimate cuckold of the series, the man who can anything and anyone only truly wants to end the Consult and wants Esmenet, and in the end he gets neither because he is just a man. When he speaks to Akka for the last time he tells him to return to his women, meaning Esme and Mim, he conceded that for all of his power they both chose Akka over him.

6.  Now that I cannot say, at first it seemed they simply were misguided worldborn and a jealous God that blindly sought to destroy a threat to their power. But with the ending they may have simply been the most wise after all.

7. No idea, the lack of the Consult was my biggest gripe with the series, the secrets of the Consult have to be front and certain in the No-God. That may be a mystery solved in the next series.

8. Possibly, but it would just be wild speculation either way.

9. She was being followed after the skinspy discovered her true name because she was Anasurimbor, the Synthese said it was right to protect her because all prophecies had to be respected the false as well as the true. She was a Anasarimbor by marriage not blood, the Celmomian prophecy that the Consult seemed to went all in on required an Anasurimbor to work. And they were not going to take a chance that it was her instead of Kelhuss, with something that important there was no reason to risk it just because you believe you are right, you are dealing with Gods, time loops and the Outside after all.

10. see above

11. There is no proof that they specifically needed an Anasurimbor, Nau Cayuti worked once before and the Celmomian prophecy hinted that one of his seed would return at the end, so they assumed Kelhuss was it. Bakker said Kayutas would not have worked, so it was something unique about those souls and not their blood.

12. They are using technology that they never truly understood and now could not repair, the Object seemed to be the center of their plans for disenchanting the world and even on previous worlds it could not fulfill its function. A soul is not something they could manufacture except by chance, for example the skinspy that infiltrated Atyersus. Now a machine that you do not fully understand and requires something that you cannot make forces you to try brute tactics, coupled with their lack of morality feeding whole nations into the Carapace until one fit was a sound strategy until the Dunyain latched onto the Celmomian prophecy.

13. I think they simply returned to their old ways except now that they decimated the North their are very view ensouled beings in their environs and the process has been much slowed from before the Apocalypse. And it seems to me that the Consult is not as great as it once was until the coming of the Dunyain, the Nonmen among them were erratic but it would seem that the Inchorio had a similar malady, Aurang seems to not be able to remember his past like ages were discarded as too heavy like old cassettes. And Shae was seemingly the only human to survive from the Mangaecca, he fought Seswatha in some form during the First Apocalypse. SO his mental faculties were unknown, but the injection of the dunyain may have saved a foundering ship.

14. I think it was the same plan as always, the Insertant into the Carapace was always the their greatest weakness, without their technology the No-God and its control of the weapon races was their only recourse. The Tekne was their only recourse and even the creation of the skinspies seems to be a last gasp of a spent cause. Although the skinspies seems to have believed the advent of the No-God was close during the Holy War.

15. I think he was telling the truth, he was no prophet, but I think he made a deal with Ajokli and he had plans beyond the Consult that would involve the Outside. Bakker hinted that Kelhuss believed that the God could be reached by going through the Outside, although he was wrong. Although I could be wrong about what exactly Bakker said.

16. No idea, that is a question still to be answered for the No-God.

17. No idea, but I suspect it has something to do with the God of God and its true motivations.

18. It would seem so, it has shown remarkable accuracy in showing the sordid details of a souls life, from seeing the damnation of the scalpers to the truth of Cnauir's life, and the way she could not stand to look at the Ark because of the crimes committed their. So something is looking through her and it allowed her to change the chorea in Cil-Aujus, but the ultimate end of that watcher is still to be determined, it may be the true Benjuka player of Earwa.

19. It looks to be that way, Kelhuss even comments about the way the souls continually switch positions with each other.

20. It seems that he could not lead him directly but he could obscure the true extent of their bond, so Kelhuss being a Dunyain would not think themselves deluded by someone else. So all events would inevitably lead them both to the Golden Room where he could possess the mark, but it also speaks to the strange nature of Ajokli. If the Gods are blind to the Ark but Ajokli had a loop to the heart of the Golden Room, then maybe the cryptic statement of the Narindar that the White Luck Warrior killed speaks to how he circumvented the limits of the other Gods. By making a deal with Kelhuss he could see some of the Consult.

21. I think for two reasons, the first reason is that they had Dunyain arrogance and believed that he would be able to survive the trap if not a good portion of his army. They had no way of knowing his plan for Dagliash and so he would simply need to be a Dunyain and find a way to survive. And the second is their reliance on the Celmomian prophecy, if it is truly from the Gods or the future then Kelhuss was fated to find his way to Golgotterath and fulfill his destiny. They were right about this but wrong on the subject as it was Kelmommas that was fated.

22. Simply to bloody the Ordeal so that it would not overwhelm them when they inevitably got to the Ark. Circumstance had to be managed as best they could, luck is skill mixed with preparation.

23. I think it was two ways, first one of the founding members of the Consult was Cet' Ingira a famed Ishoriol Quya hero. He never forgot what he saw in the Inverse Fire and s he could have been slowly turning some of his brothers as they succumbed to the Dolour. And secondly he stated that  the entirety of the Viri nation had turned to the Inchoroi during the Cuno-Inchori wars, and when they came to Ishteribinth seeking refuge they would still have been wedded to the Inchoroi cause, that may be why Nil' Giccas had ordered the death Nil' Ciljiras before they fled back to the Ark.

24. I think those in Nil' Ciljiras's inner circle knew something of the Dunyain, that is how they were swayed to send the Quya that destroyed Ishual. Harapior seemed to have some knowledge of the Serwa's abilities so the Dunyain that now controlled the Consult would have told them something about what Dunyain were capable of.

25. There is further writing in the expanded glossary about it but that story may be for the next series.

26. No idea, the Dreams would still seem to hold some secrets for the next series.

27. Seemingly Seswatha but the way they changed for Akka speaks of something deeper going on.

28. They seem to be very accurate so far, but they have only shown us limited information so far. Only those times when the Dreams change has some of their contents not been accurate.

29. That is still a mystery, it would seem if it is Seswatha's soul somehow sending the Dreams then their insistent focus on Nau-Cayuti could have been a father focusing on his only son. Or rather it could be Seswatha trying to give the Mandate a clue that it was Nau-Cayuti that now powered the Sarcophagus. I do not think it was specifically Anasurimbor blood that was needed, the fact that Nau-Cayuti and Kelmommas may not have even been distantly related speaks to this fact, only the dimensions of the soul mattered.

[Thoughtful Jake]

Wow. Great post, @Latan.

[Callan S.]

On 12/15/2017 at 9:22 AM, Hello World said:

I understand that this is what Bakker was going for (since I listened to his recent podcast interview) and he conceded that some readers won't like it, and that's fine. The problem is I'm not aware of anyone who came to that conclusion prior to reading and listening to Bakker's comments. If anyone did I didn't see it mentioned here or in the handful of goodreads reviews I saw. 

At times I think Bakker enters into stuff that feels like academic writing - the sort of thing he argues against, which is writing for a small in group. Ie, the people who would do some sort of thematic analysis as they are reading, because that's all they actually enjoy about books anymore due to academia.

To me, there should be some level of intuitive understanding of the no gods effects written into the text - even if the no god destroys intuitive understandings. It reminds me of Serwe's heart and how the section that gave more info on what happened there was cropped out - and it just leaves everyone swinging in the wind. Hearts from butts stuff.

I feel at times Bakker doesn't so much over extend as extend into the academic area - and they are not his audience, even as maybe he'd want to show to them he's a brilliant writer. On the plus side though at least he didn't go over to them entirely, or we'd get none of his writing (except hidden away in the 'fuck what everyone else likes' way that academia likes to write in and non distribute, to treat themselves as special)

 

[Darth Richard II]

Wait, Bakker argues against academic writing?

[Dora Vee]

I was under the impression that "left leaning" writers were often in the science fiction/fantasy section.