Bakker LIII - Sranc and File

[unJon]

[.H.]

On 4/13/2018 at 7:18 PM, larrytheimp said:

hy doesn't the Place called Kellhus use biological warfare?  Golgoterrath broke the WMD rule with the nuke, Kellhus should have had some kind of crazy plague ready to deploy against the sranc - or are they like nonmen and have a crazy good immune system? 

Why not make sranc immortal? 

Or are they?

What's the average sranc life expectancy?

I don't think we know, but since the Sranc genome is based off Nonmen and since the Inoculation had to be systematically given to each, I don't think Sranc would be immortal.  However, even before the Inoculation, Nonmen had long lifespans.  So, plausibly Sranc lifespans are probably greater than human ones, although maybe not vastly so.

I think though, because we are presented with Kellhus' "overwhelming" competence is some areas, we are apt of overestimate his capabilities.  I don't really think he'd be able to fashion some biological agent to kill only Sranc, at least not without a huge amount of time and resources that simply wouldn't have really been available.

It would also seem plausible that by the time Kellhus could get back to Ishuäl, it was already under siege by the Consult.  I don't know that he would have been prepared for such a large-scale conflict at that point.  Again, we are apt to overestimate Kellhus' power-level, because it's much higher than anyone else's, but millions of Sranc and thousands of Bashrags, along with a bevy of Nonman sorcerers, could wear him down.  We don't often see it, but Kellhus does have limits.

[Infidel]

I have only been following post-TUC discussions spottily, but if the last few pages are anything to go by....good GOD that book broke a lot of brains.

[Darth Richard II]

That's one way to phrase it.

[kuenjato]

2 hours ago, Infidel said:

I have only been following post-TUC discussions spottily, but if the last few pages are anything to go by....good GOD that book broke a lot of brains.

It was a vast disappointment, both poorly written in places and overall a shoddy climax to the themes woven throughout the previous six books. The Great Ordeal, flawed as it was, was still much more interesting and intellectual in specific segments. 

[Callan S.]

Making your climax be the coming of a being who kills climaxes, that's a fiddly one to write for. Not a lot of people feel sucked into the setting and experiencing the no gods meaning crushing effect almost at a personal level, they instead just kind of go 'where the fuck was the climax?'. Too immersed, perhaps?

Possibly needed more foreshadowing - stuff like examples of climactic endings dying out directly because of the no god, in advance of the ending.

[kuenjato]

14 hours ago, Callan S. said:

Making your climax be the coming of a being who kills climaxes, that's a fiddly one to write for. Not a lot of people feel sucked into the setting and experiencing the no gods meaning crushing effect almost at a personal level, they instead just kind of go 'where the fuck was the climax?'. Too immersed, perhaps?

Possibly needed more foreshadowing - stuff like examples of climactic endings dying out directly because of the no god, in advance of the ending.

That wasn't my beef - my beef was that the failure of TGO and the rise of the No God was the most predictable ending possible, especially for a gRiMdArK. Bakker had a chance to really write some strange, interesting, thought-provoking material, to bend shit upside down and around, given what was predicated and hinted at before; and instead he stuck with the idea he developed as a 17 year old. Epic fail.

[Larry of the Lawn]

16 hours ago, Callan S. said:

Making your climax be the coming of a being who kills climaxes, that's a fiddly one to write for. Not a lot of people feel sucked into the setting and experiencing the no gods meaning crushing effect almost at a personal level, they instead just kind of go 'where the fuck was the climax?'. Too immersed, perhaps?

Possibly needed more foreshadowing - stuff like examples of climactic endings dying out directly because of the no god, in advance of the ending.

I don't think this is even remotely close to the problems most people here have had with the ending, but ymmv.  

ETA:. I'd also argue your premise is completely incorrect and unfounded in the text 

[Hello World]

3 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

ETA:. I'd also argue your premise is completely incorrect and unfounded in the text 

I think he's basing that on Bakker's comments in the AMA and his other writings? I mean, the same thing can be said about Bakker's Ajokli/Kellhus comments.

[Darth Richard II]

Pretty sure people where upset it didn't have a climax cause it DIDN'T HAVE A CLIMAX. Last chapter was pretty much the game over screen of a video game.

[Callan S.]

2 hours ago, kuenjato said:

That wasn't my beef - my beef was that the failure of TGO and the rise of the No God was the most predictable ending possible, especially for a gRiMdArK. Bakker had a chance to really write some strange, interesting, thought-provoking material, to bend shit upside down and around, given what was predicated and hinted at before

As long as it also involved TGO succeeding?

I mean, if you wanted a really weird ending but didn't mind if the TGO failed or succeded, I could get that. Though the way Kelmomas interacts with possessed Kellhus I thought was interesting. And even the Dunyain basically infecting the consult like a zombie virus and turning them into the Dunsult, I thought was interesting. And really Kellhus was an OP mary sue - and lost, out of the blue. To me that was a surprise. And why Kelmomas is somehow outside of white luck warriors and the view of gods - well I guess Bakker doesn't discuss it much, because he is too secretive and mysterious. But surely that's an interesting question?

I mean in the end, armies don't matter. Armies don't matter for shit. Anyone who comes to the fiction thinking an army must mean a result in some way, well, welcome to fantasy fucking Vietnam. There was absolutely nothing culminating from the march during this whole time - no sort of inherent meaning to a bunch of dudes walking. Didn't matter if a massive army of men was marching. What we were always stuck with is actually just the interactions of a smattering of individuals. The great ordeal is just an extension or limb of those individuals. So TGO failing isn't the thing to look at - it's just a bit part player, it's not the main story. The apparently big thing is just bit part. Once you stop TGO from being the big deal of the books, then you're left seeing the interactions of a bunch of individuals. Which is where the interest lies, I'd think.

I mean, is there a lack of strange, or is there a lack of affirming strange things?

[Darth Richard II]

There's a lack of knowing what the fuck you are doing.

[Callan S.]

1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

I don't think this is even remotely close to the problems most people here have had with the ending, but ymmv.  

ETA:. I'd also argue your premise is completely incorrect and unfounded in the text 

People weren't expecting meaning from a fantasy novel?

No, I think I hit the nail on the head. Once the emotional carpet is pulled out from under a reader the intellect is left spinning. I'd get if anyone wanted to argue the books are too wanky in being an attempt to actually make the reader emotionally blind in much the same way as the gods are rendered blind in the setting. But really people keep expecting an emotional catharsis from the build up - I hit the nail on the head with this as people say things like 'But Akka went all that way and then it culminated in nothing! Mimara went all that way then didn't spy Kellhus with the judging eye!'. The reason I'd seem 'not remotely close' is because of the very emotional blinding that Bakker is attempting. The same type the gods of the setting go through when the no god rises, but are completely oblivious of going through. The gods of the setting cannot navigate the fantasy world without meaning when it is pulled out from under them. The complaining readers cannot navigate the fantasy world without meaning - all there is is that Akka went that far for nothing and Mimara didn't spy Kellhus with the JE. All there is is the absence of these things, with no way of grasping the current situation of the setting without them. A blindness. It's a deliberate effect in the writing.

Complaints that it's too wanky a public psychology experiment, that'd be fair. But most of the complaints are no better than taking down Capone on tax evasion. At least shoot it down on the public psychology experiment part.

Me, I think it's stupid as an author to really expect readers to not just read but at the same time observe their own reading pattern and expectations for reading, then arise from the text itself reasons to question that pattern and go 'Oh hey, you know, I think you may have said something about that, Mr/Ms Author!'. I wouldn't say it's like curling the tongue - ie, I wouldn't say many people just aren't capable of it. But I do think it takes training (or hapstance developed ability in it) and so Bakker is expecting a kind of academic responce. Perhaps catering too much to showing he is a real author to the literary elite rather than just f'n reaching his audience. It's like he put advanced algebra in a book as a way of conveying the actual climax of the book, but pretty much nobody gets the maths and so it has no climax for them. Sure, that'd gain cred with the math elites, but it'd fail to reach the audience - like, the people who actually matter. But the actual 'math' - it is doable. Don't shoot that down. It is possible to perceive ones own emotional expectations in regards to a fantasy world text and see them as expectations, rather than the only way of navigating such a text.

[Darth Richard II]

The stuff some of the fanboys come up with to defend TUC is actually better than the actual novel

[kuenjato]

2 hours ago, Callan S. said:

As long as it also involved TGO succeeding?

I mean, if you wanted a really weird ending but didn't mind if the TGO failed or succeded, I could get that. Though the way Kelmomas interacts with possessed Kellhus I thought was interesting. And even the Dunyain basically infecting the consult like a zombie virus and turning them into the Dunsult, I thought was interesting. And really Kellhus was an OP mary sue - and lost, out of the blue. To me that was a surprise. And why Kelmomas is somehow outside of white luck warriors and the view of gods - well I guess Bakker doesn't discuss it much, because he is too secretive and mysterious. But surely that's an interesting question?

I mean in the end, armies don't matter. Armies don't matter for shit. Anyone who comes to the fiction thinking an army must mean a result in some way, well, welcome to fantasy fucking Vietnam. There was absolutely nothing culminating from the march during this whole time - no sort of inherent meaning to a bunch of dudes walking. Didn't matter if a massive army of men was marching. What we were always stuck with is actually just the interactions of a smattering of individuals. The great ordeal is just an extension or limb of those individuals. So TGO failing isn't the thing to look at - it's just a bit part player, it's not the main story. The apparently big thing is just bit part. Once you stop TGO from being the big deal of the books, then you're left seeing the interactions of a bunch of individuals. Which is where the interest lies, I'd think.

I mean, is there a lack of strange, or is there a lack of affirming strange things?

the problem is, and I readily admit to it, that the theories generated across the last 10 years on this message board alone were much more interesting and thematically satisfying than the book itself. While that's not really Bakker's problem, in a way it is. He poses a metaphysical problem -- a world in which tapeworm gods/demons have hijacked the transit of souls for the purpose of consumption; this is acknowledged but never really expanded upon. Personally, going into the last two books I thought Kelly had some sort of plan to use TGO as a massive soul concentration to do something unexpected: challenge the tapeworm gods, or actually dominate the God of Gods, or become transcendent himself -- one of the concepts was the "disenchanted" world tossed around these parts, that would have been a very intriguing route to go. More importantly, it lended itself to some great potential, and might have made this series one for the record rather than, the general consensus, of "eh" or "wow, what a wet fart that turned out to be."

Even the concept of Ajokli and Kelly forging themselves into an Evil God that dominates Earwa and denies the tapeworm Gods their meals was pretty wild, and I could have ridden with that. Instead, (and I emphasize this), Bakker went with the path of least resistance, having the No God arise again, like a typical grimdark teenager's reversal of the Tolkien template -- which is exactly what it was, he's openly admitted this.

All the stuff you wrote about subverting reader's expectations/emotional needs, yeah, that can easily be seen as an explicit criticism of reader expectations in consuming traditional narratives. It can also be seen as lazy writing, poor storytelling, an inability to intellectually transcend what one thought was kewl 30 years ago, and an epic (and expensive, in terms of money and time devoted), troll. I don't tend to read books to be trolled, and if it does happen, it had better be expert. This was far from it.

Now, the scenes in the Golden Room and the arising of the No God were pretty cool, in execution--but a lot, and I mean a lot, of the last two books were not so well done. Ishterebinth, the Survivors of Ishual, and a few other bright & interesting concepts were isolated jewels in a grimdark sludgefest that wasn't particularly written well (in fact, in some sequences, flat-out poorly composed in terms of actual prose and conceptual execution), complete with rote battle sequences and character drama that pale significantly before the involving conflicts of the first trilogy. My major issue, aside from Bakker dropping the ball in terms of what he could have done to make this memorable rather than predictable, was that so much of the latter two books were frankly boring, excessive in verbiage, and gratuitous. I can consume grimdark all day, if it has nuance. Major parts of this were lacking that nuance, especially when you consider that Bakker has made a point of acknowledging the questions that have arisen on this board (sentient trees and sorcery not used for constructive purposes, off the top of my head), yet inserts a juvenile sequence with a redpill dragon just as a means of trolling certain critics; worse, it distracts and undercuts the climatic scene built up over seven books. I'd say this ranks more as incompetence than engaging critique.

 

[redriver]

Another two books to go.Amiright?

[Rhom]

8 hours ago, Callan S. said:

. And why Kelmomas is somehow outside of white luck warriors and the view of gods - well I guess Bakker doesn't discuss it much, because he is too secretive and mysterious. But surely that's an interesting question?

He is invisible because of the time wankery with the gods.  Kelmomas was always the No God and therefore had always been invisible.

[jurble]

Ya, Kalbear's analogy is to think of Bakkerworld as a book, but I was thinking diorama might be a better example.   The Gods see all of Creation as fixed without any Time.  They're looking down on a diorama, but a really messy 4D one to the human perspective.  At any rate, they think they see the totality of Creation, but Creation actually exists outside the diorama they see as well.  But the Gods don't understand this because the Diorama fills the entirety of their vision - they don't comprehend the 'edges' to it - if they scan their eyes all the way to the left it pops up on the right like a globe or the map on EU4.    But there are edges, and the No-God is that edge and Kelmomas is the No-God.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Ajûrbkli said:

Ya, Kalbear's analogy is to think of Bakkerworld as a book, but I was thinking diorama might be a better example.   The Gods see all of Creation as fixed without any Time.  They're looking down on a diorama, but a really messy 4D one to the human perspective.  At any rate, they think they see the totality of Creation, but Creation actually exists outside the diorama they see as well.  But the Gods don't understand this because the Diorama fills the entirety of their vision - they don't comprehend the 'edges' to it - if they scan their eyes all the way to the left it pops up on the right like a globe or the map on EU4.    But there are edges, and the No-God is that edge and Kelmomas is the No-God.

So was Nau-Cayuti, which is interesting. I wonder if that factors into anything going back to the First Apocalypse. The gods would have never been able to perceive Nau-Cayuti at all.

Aha, that's how Gilgaol was able to show Celmomas II an image of Kellhus, because he couldn't perceive Kelmomas but he could perceive Kellhus as the harbinger (father) of the No-God. Celmomas misinterpreted it because he was dying. And Gilgaol was an idiot.

[jurble]

Well if that was Gilgaol and not Ajokli or if they're even separate gods.  If they are separate gods, then I think the mere fact that God that appeared was able to recognize Kellhus as the thing nearest the eschaton, which none of the other gods could do, favors the idea that Ajokli was the one that appeared to Celmomas rather than Gilgaol.