Bakker LVIII HITB: A Literalist Interpretation (Spoilers for all books)

[.H.]

On 7/3/2022 at 1:32 PM, One-Winged Balrog said:

Does the existence of Cishaurim imply the possibility of Transhaurim?

Unfortunately not, since it explicitly indicated the existence of the Indara-Kishauri.  C's and K's are always in an odd place for Bakker without much rhyme or reason.

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 hours ago, .H. said:

Unfortunately not, since it explicitly indicated the existence of the Indara-Kishauri.  C's and K's are always in an odd place for Bakker without much rhyme or reason.

I think it's a Sheyic vs Kuniuric(?) thing:

Eta: and apparently the trans-haurim came up 9 years ago.  

Edited July 5, 2022 by Larry of the Lake

[.H.]

18 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

I think it's a Sheyic vs Kuniuric(?) thing:

Ah, yeah, I do recall something like that.  But as was pointed out, I don't think that "rule" is applied consistently was all I was getting at.  This sort of thing does happen in real languages, I think, but I also recall Bakker once saying that part of the inconsistency just comes from moving from different versions of things in different drafts over the years.  Or, maybe I just imagine he said that, I don't know, I am old and can't recall things like I used to.

[JGP]

So… The Unholy Consult finally came out in Canada on Kindle [le lulz] and even though I swore I wouldn’t read it, I did. 

And you know what, unlike before, after the magnificence that was Serwa I’d loooooooooove to hear Bakker’s reasoning behind the Whale Mothers now.

[Lord Patrek]

Damn! I thought someone just announced that Bakker was writing again. . .

[Gaston de Foix]

Just this morning I was thinking, randomly, of Sorweel and trying to remember his fate in the books.  

[Rhom]

On 6/8/2023 at 9:07 PM, JGP said:

So… The Unholy Consult finally came out in Canada on Kindle [le lulz] and even though I swore I wouldn’t read it, I did. 

And you know what, unlike before, after the magnificence that was Serwa I’d loooooooooove to hear Bakker’s reasoning behind the Whale Mothers now.

I just named my Sorceress in Diablo 4 Serwa.

[.H.]

On 6/8/2023 at 8:07 PM, JGP said:

And you know what, unlike before, after the magnificence that was Serwa I’d loooooooooove to hear Bakker’s reasoning behind the Whale Mothers now.

Have you read the whole Dune series?  (As in, the one's written by Herbert.)

[JGP]

Yes, but the latter two didn’t stick like the first, especially God Emperor. 
 

Are you referring to the Bene Gesserit breeding program, or…

[unJon]

Just now, JGP said:

Yes, but the latter two didn’t stick like the first, especially God Emperor. 
 

Are you referring to the Bene Gesserit breeding program, or…

No the:

Spoiler

Bene Tlielax and the axolotl tanks

 

[JGP]

Ok, with you far.

Is this your [proverbial you] theorizing, or straight from Bakker?

[.H.]

Bakker has mentioned being inspired by Tolkien, then Herbert.  He's never, as far as I remember, explicitly called out the parallels, but it's a little hard to not find them really.  At least to me.

As for why to include them in the series?  Well, I think it's supposed to be some body-horror, plus it highlights just how monstrous the Dûnyain project really is.  And it likely is also meant to highlight how notional "intentionality" has demonstrable results on Eärwa (much like how sorcery does as well).

I'm still not sure just how well it "works," per se, but I think those are likely some of the points of it.

[Kalbear]

Yeah, we went into a lot of conversations about the idiocy of them a while back. It's...not super effective, especially when you put things like Serwa into the mix. 

[JGP]

1 hour ago, .H. said:

As for why to include them in the series?  Well, I think it's supposed to be some body-horror, plus it highlights just how monstrous the Dûnyain project really is.  And it likely is also meant to highlight how notional "intentionality" has demonstrable results on Eärwa (much like how sorcery does as well).

I'm still not sure just how well it "works," per se, but I think those are likely some of the points of it.

Exactly, Kal

and it's not like these books aren't up to the tits in body horror already

OK, Women in Earwa are objectively inferior to men for reasons [I thought to myself] trying to fathom why Bakker chose that the Dunyain would do that to their womenfolk, so, might go to reason why they'd cut that line in lieu of their men, but... but. Even by Dunyain logic, the Whale Mother shit falls flatter than a crepe.

Serwa negates it, and she's not even pure.

Edited June 12, 2023 by JGP

[Kalbear]

38 minutes ago, JGP said:

Exactly, Kal

and it's not like these books aren't up to the tits in body horror already

OK, Women in Earwa are objectively inferior to men for reasons [I thought to myself] trying to fathom why Bakker chose that the Dunyain would do that to their womenfolk, so, might go to reason why they'd cut that line in lieu of their men, but... but. Even by Dunyain logic, the Whale Mother shit falls flatter than a crepe.

Serwa negates it, and she's not even pure.

One way I can vaguely rationalize it is that it is a way to demonstrate how completely wrong the Dunyain actually were. How their supposed flawless logic was obviously stupid and wrong and even they were not immune to biases.

The books don't, ya know, actually say that or anything close to that, but one could decide the author was really dead and decide to do it that way in their own headcanon. 

It's also interesting to me to contrast to the Bene Gesserit breeding structure which was absurdly controlling in who could mate at all, looking back at thousands of years. That is BTW how actual animal husbandry works too, and the idea of stressing the breeding animals and giving them no exercise is one of the best ways to produce ridiculous rates of miscarriages and killing the breeding animals - which given their expense is not a good idea, especially if they're really good broodmares.

[Zorral]

Well, you have noticed that the latest monsters are determined that women get no reproductive health care -- or health care at all, since so much of what is considered abortion medications and treatments are essential for other conditions.  They also don't want any financial support for infant and child nutrition, or their mothers' nutrition either, or support for housing. They are also in favor of removing statutes as the age of sexual consent and marriage age, despite it haven been proven over and over that the survival rates of pregnancy and childbirth of girls that young is poor, as well as is her likelihood of carrying to term or baby surviving.  Yet They are determined that women are to breed constantly.  Same mentality, yes?  This is always what men in charge of these matters gets you.

[JGP]

5 hours ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

The books don't, ya know, actually say that or anything close to that, but one could decide the author was really dead and decide to do it that way in their own headcanon. 

If I had like 50 wishes, one might be that our author summon still worked on Bakker. I mean, The Unholy Consult was actually pretty good, but the Whale Mothers, whenever I think about them... I just got to know. Might even be able to forgive him if he can reconcile them and Serwa. 

[Darzin]

I think the whale mothers are likely something Bakker thought up when he first created the series and didn't revise but who really knows.

[Maithanet]

15 hours ago, JGP said:

If I had like 50 wishes, one might be that our author summon still worked on Bakker. I mean, The Unholy Consult was actually pretty good, but the Whale Mothers, whenever I think about them... I just got to know. Might even be able to forgive him if he can reconcile them and Serwa. 

Have you dug back through the forum to try and find the posts he made after TUC?  There were some, and I imagine the brood mothers would have come up (although I don't remember).  Overall, his posts were more frustrating than illuminating, because they showed some serious blind spots WRT his own work. 

[Ran]

Don't know if it was noted (I'm sure it was), but back in the day someone pointed out to Bakker that his "most loyal online community" (aka Westeros, apparently?) was talking about the whale mothers, and he replied along the following lines:

Quote

I get the idea of big picture credibility arguments, but these kind of disputes in fantasy fiction often strike me as opportunistic. You could argue the natural impossibility of any number of things in ALL fantastic narratives, so the question has to be why this one thing? If people buy skin-spies, why do they draw the line at whale-mothers?

I suppose I could just cook up a rationale: The Dunyain possess an artificially selected genetic mutation that only cues whale-mother dimorphism in the presence of estrogen in certain concentrations. After all, gender dimorphism is a characteristic of all species possessing gender (mammals included), in many cases far more radically than suggested here.

There’s better things to argue about, if you ask me. Such as the role played by the Logos, for one.

Doesn't feel like too much of an answer, but to be sure I do think people going on about the whale-mothers should consider that the Dunyain men themselves are really just as absurd. Pointing that out strikes me as a more analagous counter-argument than bringing up the skin-spies, who are the result of the Tekne.

I recall back in the day speculating that the Dunyain must have gotten ahold of the Tekne to tailor their genetics and accelerate their development to genuinely superhuman levels, but I gather the later books make it clear that that hasn't happened?