JGP Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 Indeed. It seems somewhat apparent that Bakker was trying to build off the whole debauched base of women as objectively inferior and Dunyain as the height of men, ergo, seed so stronk it needs a physiological [et intellectual?] reduction in order to bear fruit? What? --- The reveal begged questions I didn't really care to have answered. Bloodlines, eugenics, how did the Anasurimbor line [as Dunyain] even come to be when their mothers had always been inferior before the advent of what, the Tekne I suppose [?] to gradually turn Dunyain women over time into whale mothers? Or was it a one off deal with the Inchoroi and this transition happened fast? Further, how do the whale mothers propagate, spit out one perfectly fine Dunyain son out of 10 [20? 30?] but every girl is a whale daughter? Fuck that. It wasn't that I thought it was a shit plot turn, Twink. It was disgusting. Unnecessarily. --- edit: I mean, how in the hell did the inhabitants of Earwa avoid breeding themselves into the stone age... lol It's just fucking stupid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jurble Posted June 23, 2020 Author Share Posted June 23, 2020 The Whale Mothers were created through breeding not Tekne, which is why they're an absurdity, at least on the timescale of the Dunyain, 2000 years. The necessary amount of evolution to create such a complex sexual dimorphism just isn't possible on that time-scale since it's not just a few mutations, it's an entire regulatory cascade. Bakker's retort to this criticism in particular - that intentionality effects reality in Earwa could speed up the process is, I suppose, reasonable. Kellhus being a supercomputer in 2,000 years of breeding is more realistic than Whale Mothers (it's still unrealistic... the Dunyain breeding program would need to have HUGE generation sizes combined with extremely intensive culling, there's no indication that Ishual could support tens of thousands, Kellhus' 'class' of fellow students is from context small, and there's no indication each Whale Mother was pumping out 1,000 kids, Bakker explicitly said Whale Mothers are NOT producing huge litters). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Twink in the North Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 4 hours ago, Kalbear said: Then you misread mine. Kellhus and the Dunyain are evil by the tenets of Earwa. And they were evil far before any conceit of the whale mothers. Again, their society existed by killing in brutal ways the ones who didn't make the cut, children. This is evil in Inrithism, its evil in fanimry, and its evil in the way Mimara sees things too. And all of that was known well before book 6 - we knew this in book one. So what is the value of the whale mothers? Theres more than enough without them for Mimara to condemn them all. Maybe I did then, my bad. Like I said I will post more on this when I get there and have the chance to read it again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JGP Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 4 hours ago, ير بال said: The Whale Mothers were created through breeding not Tekne, which is why they're an absurdity, at least on the timescale of the Dunyain, 2000 years. The necessary amount of evolution to create such a complex sexual dimorphism just isn't possible on that time-scale since it's not just a few mutations, it's an entire regulatory cascade. Bakker's retort to this criticism in particular - that intentionality effects reality in Earwa could speed up the process is, I suppose, reasonable. Which is why I presumed the Tekne was involved. Some way back Inchy corruption of the Dunyain perhaps, that in retrospect is likewise nonsensical else the Inchoroi wouldn't have been so blindsided by Kellhus and their skin spies so subsequently obsessed with sussing out Dunyain origins--- unless there was small Inchy faction that felt, I don't know, guilt or something. [the thought actually made me laugh] Having dropped all Bakker reading along with the series, the intentionality argument is new to me. It's got the same defensive post rationalization whiff to it that the objectified reality revelation did though. Earwa inhabits a pocket gaslit reality now? Yeah sure. Why not. It makes as much sense as anything else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sologdin Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 cetaceans certainly make out an overt equivalence between the inchies and the dunyains. that has a supplemental value--i don't think we were aware of the precise concordance before that. it was more a contrast between cold logicians and the race of lovers--superego made manifest against unrestrained murderous id. the implosion of the binary on the point of nonconsensual radical corporeal disaggregation makes the frankfurt/foucauldian argument that madness is the condition of possibility for rationality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arakan Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 Problem with TAE: the last two books are simply boring as a whole, and too self-consciously trying to be super edgy, super daaaaark and bleak. Sorry, I am not a 13 year old teenager. A good editor could have made one good book out of the last two. But well. Regarding whale mothers: never understood the outcry. So the Dunyan enslaved their women and reduced them to breeding cattle. That’s it. Evil for sure. But come on, we have a lot of Americans in these threads. Your country reduced people to exactly that, breeding cattle, not too long ago. Based on pigments. What I want to say: the concept of whale mothers is not so outlandish. It’s just lame and not even a good Hommage to Herbert. Just lame and crying for validation. Edgy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 2 hours ago, Arakan said: So the Dunyan enslaved their women and reduced them to breeding cattle. People are bugged not by the fact that Dûnyain females are breeding cattle, they are specifically talking about the grotesque sexual dimorphism that seems to violate any logic, which leads into questions of Bakker's intentions and rigor in presenting his own setting. It's no surprise that fans of the work don't like the idea of his just doing stuff to be "lame" and "edgy". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 56 minutes ago, Ran said: he grotesque sexual dimorphism Ran, having not read this second Bakker series (yet!), I'm curious: I know sexual dimorphism exists in nature, but what's the context of it being disputed within the confines of the book? (So that I can understand the problem at hand in this discussion.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 14 minutes ago, IlyaP said: Ran, having not read this second Bakker series (yet!), I'm curious: I know sexual dimorphism exists in nature, but what's the context of it being disputed within the confines of the book? (So that I can understand the problem at hand in this discussion.) The Dûnyain whale mothers are literally gargantuan in size, and yet their male offspring — those not born deformed or gibbering mad — are within the normal human range, while Kellhus’s own female offspring never seem to exhibit the grotesque size of Dûnyain females. Realistically, this makes no sense as others say, and even within the story there seems to be an inexplicable inconsistency. Bakker appears to handwave it with the focused intent causing the dimorphism, but that doesn’t explain why Kellhus doesn’t pass it on; instead it just make it look like Bakker wanted to be edgy at any cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 Here's the actual description, or at least pretty close. Spoiler She swallows against a nail in the back of her throat. Stepping across a shattered sword, she approaches the nearest pedestal to her right. Bones and dust, dimpled and ragged like sheets of rotted skin, crowd the interior. Jawless skulls tipped on their sides. Ribs like halved hoops, implying torsos far broader than her embrace. Femurs like clubs, still threading the iron straps that had once restrained them. Pelvises, rising like antlers from the detritus … The insect obscenity of their innocent forms. Bulbous, their flesh little more than quivering cages. Women bred into monstrous instruments of procreation, until they had become little more than pouches slung about their wombs. The misery. The huffing and moaning. The mewling screams. The inhuman men filing to their assignations, utterly heartless and insensate. The slapping of hip and genitalia. The animality of coupling stripped to its essential germ, to the milking pitch of insemination … She sees rolling heads, masticating mouths. The Whale-mothers, tongueless and screaming … The lean men arched like shitting dogs. Again, what strikes me about this is both the ridiculous forms they have, and the part that you actually have any empathy for as far as their actual being is the men having to mate with these things. They are described as monstrous and alien and insectile, instead of having any kind of human sympathy for these things. Hell, we debated whether or not they were even intelligent at all at birth. But we wouldn't know! Because we get the body horror of their existence, but nothing of their actual lives, and the only action we see them take is being raped by the men and a bit of screaming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 1 hour ago, Kalbear said: and the only action we see them take is being raped by the men and a bit of screaming. Wait, what? There's even more rape in this series? (Is this a thing I need to be aware of when reading the second trilogy?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 1 minute ago, IlyaP said: Wait, what? There's even more rape in this series? (Is this a thing I need to be aware of when reading the second trilogy?) Oh gods, there is so very much rape. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 36 minutes ago, Kalbear said: Oh gods, there is so very much rape. Uh, why? It's an awful, gross, violating thing. Why on Earth is Bakker writing about it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 6 minutes ago, IlyaP said: Uh, why? It's an awful, gross, violating thing. Why on Earth is Bakker writing about it? Kinda feel like you answered your own question there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 5 minutes ago, Kalbear said: Kinda feel like you answered your own question there The things I have to look forward to when I finally get around to reading this second series. What fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JGP Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 Ilya: Uh, why? Bakker's preoccupation with the slavering desire for domination, or something, but we don't understand! Every conceit to civility, our pretensions to civilization, it all comes swirling down... to the nut. [duh duh duuuuuuumb!] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 12 minutes ago, JEORDHl said: Ilya: Uh, why? Bakker's preoccupation with the slavering desire for domination, or something, but we don't understand! Every conceit to civility, our pretensions to civilization, it all comes swirling down... to the nut. [duh duh duuuuuuumb!] As in...Kashew? Pea? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inkdaub Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 Pine Nut...which is a nut but is also the name of a town. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sologdin Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 the world is a circle that possesses as many all natural white pistachio nuts as it does men? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maithanet Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 I wouldn't say the second series has particularly more rape than the first. Bakker is consistent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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