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

[Kalbear]

24 minutes ago, Ran said:

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:

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?

His 'relax, nerds!' comment is pretty hilarious:

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But why should anyone on earth care about this outside of hard SF? The easiest counterargument to make is an imperative: Relax! Try to enjoy a narrative that goes far greater lengths to be believeable than most any other epic fantasy out there. All this is interesting in its own right, but as a criticism it simply misses the point… the whole genre, you could say.

Either way, the assumptions simply do not hold. I’m sure in a purely causal universe very little about the Dunyain is ‘scientifically creditable.’ But as it turns out, intentionality objectively exists in the World. Wanting something to happen actually influences outcomes.

And yeah, there's not even a remote indication that the Dunyain had any access to the Tekne, especially given the ending. The rationalization is simply that in Earwa what people want does actually change what happens. Which is a very convenient way to explain all manner of plot holes and characterizations!

[Larry of the Lawn]

On 6/8/2023 at 10:27 PM, Gaston de Foix said:

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

This was my favorite arc of all the characters in TAE.  

Spoiler

He's the hottest piece of ass in Agongorea- both Zoronga and Serwa are all over him.  He gains the trust of Kellhus thanks to Yatwer, then becomes the WLW, he's about to kill Kellhus when Kelmomas intercedes and kills him in front of the Greater and Lesser Names of the Ordeal.  

 

[Maithanet]

Bakker's answer just feels clueless and unhelpful.  This isn't a complaint that the Bashrag should be blue or something.  Bakker made the conscious choice to have the Dunyain women be reduced to nothing but their wombs as deformed broodmares with no agency.  Why was that choice made and what purpose does it serve?  Does it make sense for the Dunyain to do this?  It is clearly an error in terms of furthering their overall goals, as eliminating half of the population of potential recruits is stupid and Serwa clearly demonstrated that even a half-Dunyain woman can be astonishingly powerful.  But is it presented as an error?  It doesn't come across that way in the text, it feels more like just random worldbuilding. 

Like a lot of Bakker's pushback against criticism, he seems to act like he is operating at some incredibly high level, but ignores the implications of what a simple reading of the text really means.   

[Gaston de Foix]

12 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Bakker's answer just feels clueless and unhelpful.  This isn't a complaint that the Bashrag should be blue or something.  Bakker made the conscious choice to have the Dunyain women be reduced to nothing but their wombs as deformed broodmares with no agency.  Why was that choice made and what purpose does it serve? 

As an authorial choice, to be shocking and provocative and horrific (and an obvious homage to Frank Herbert/Dune).  Does it fall apart on scrutiny? Yes. 

I was reading an article about legendary editor Bob Gottlieb and was struck by this quote"  "As you grow older you realize that there are bad lines in King Lear and it has survived."  (Link). 

I don't there's a meta-insight in here about the fallibility of the Dunyain or anything like that.  In many ways, Serwa and the witches are kind of an obvious post-hoc apology/adjustment to merited criticism.  Like a (lot) of literature, I think it's undeniable the books have misogyny in them.  Whether that's a deal-breaker for you as a reader depends on you.  

[Maithanet]

2 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

As an authorial choice, to be shocking and provocative and horrific (and an obvious homage to Frank Herbert/Dune).  Does it fall apart on scrutiny? Yes. 

But you can be shocking and horrific in any number of ways.  Why choose this way? 

 

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I don't there's a meta-insight in here about the fallibility of the Dunyain or anything like that.  In many ways, Serwa and the witches are kind of an obvious post-hoc apology/adjustment to merited criticism.  Like a (lot) of literature, I think it's undeniable the books have misogyny in them.  Whether that's a deal-breaker for you as a reader depends on you.  

Serwa appeared 3 books prior to the brood-mothers.  But yes, the original Prince of Nothing trilogy definitely got pushback on how Bakker created and portrayed women characters.  As I remember it, it was along two lines:

1. All three of the women POV characters use sex to get what they want.  This is common in sexist men's writing, but fairly uncommon in the real world.  If it was just one character doing it, that's fine (like Cersei) but if Arya and Brienne and Catelyn and Sansa all did it, that would be pretty awful. 

2.  Women are strangely absent in this series.  In PoN there's the three women POVs (one of them is technically a space alien monster), and then...not a lot else.  The next largest woman's part in the trilogy is like...a camp follower with just a handful of lines.  Why, in so many different locations, are women just...gone? 

 

Bakker did a bit better (still not great) on these two points in the second trilogy, but he also introduced a lot more problems, like the whale mothers. 

[Gaston de Foix]

6 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

2.  Women are strangely absent in this series.  In PoN there's the three women POVs (one of them is technically a space alien monster), and then...not a lot else.  The next largest woman's part in the trilogy is like...a camp follower with just a handful of lines.  Why, in so many different locations, are women just...gone? 

I think a reasonable defense of the first trilogy is that women were historically absent on the First Crusade.  

8 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Serwa appeared 3 books prior to the brood-mothers. 

Did she? God, I've forgotten so much of the books.  Did she appear as a badass character? I thought it was the second book in the trilogy where we saw her in action in Ishterebinth. 

8 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

But you can be shocking and horrific in any number of ways.  Why choose this way? 

Remind me what did Frank Herbert do in his novels? 

[Maithanet]

23 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I think a reasonable defense of the first trilogy is that women were historically absent on the First Crusade. 

But we see a lot of locations beyond just the First Crusade on the march.  We see inside a great many different cities, and surely there are women there? 

 

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Did she? God, I've forgotten so much of the books.  Did she appear as a badass character? I thought it was the second book in the trilogy where we saw her in action in Ishterebinth.

We meet Serwa in The Judging Eye.  It is certainly strongly implied that she's a badass in book 1 - she's the leader of the witches, and is one of only three sorcerers who can teleport. I'm not sure she does all that much badassery in the first two books.  I thought that the broodmothers were only revealed at the beginning of the final book?  They definitely weren't in the PON trilogy.

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Remind me what did Frank Herbert do in his novels? 

I cannot - I got bored halfway through Dune Messiah.

[Kalbear]

This reminds me of an argument I got into with Richard K Morgan about McCarthy's the Road - there's a part in it where:

Spoiler

The protagonists witness a woman giving birth along with a few other people and then after the birth they kill and eat the baby

And instead of being horrific to me it took me completely out of the story because of how utterly stupid it was. The argument leveled against me was that I was just trying to explain my disgust and how affected I was, but honestly I wasn't affected; I just thought it was stupid. 

Same thing happened with the whale mothers. It was just dumb and took me right out of the story. It didn't horrify me, it didn't make me think the Dunyain were even more evil, it just made me think that they were at best incredibly stupid. And in that respect I think that they were a major failure for whatever goal they were. I said at the time but I think it would have been far better to not have them be subject to weird genetic mutations and instead be normal, healthy humans being used the same way - if your goal is to illustrate both the myopia and the horror of the Dunyain. If you want to be edgy, make it clear that the Dunyain women chose to submit this way because with their intelligence they realized that this was the most valuable thing they could possibly do - that would have been an incredibly horrifying message and one that would have set the internet on fire.

But whale mothers? Nah.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

And instead of being horrific to me it took me completely out of the story because of how utterly stupid it was.

The group valued the woman's life, they didn't value the baby (the woman included, I expect). It's a cold and ugly calculus, but I'm not sure what's dumb about it.

The fact the perfectly passionless logic of the Dunyain still leads them to take the latent misogyny of humanity, which is turned into reality by the strange metaphysics of the setting where the sheer will of humanity makes something so, and then expand upon it to the point of abomination, seems okay to me as a horrible thing.

Still think the Dunyain should have found some Tekne that they used to manipulate themselves and cause this extremity of sexual dimorphism, though. I don't know why Bakker didn't go that route.

[Kalbear]

31 minutes ago, Ran said:

The group valued the woman's life, they didn't value the baby (the woman included, I expect). It's a cold and ugly calculus, but I'm not sure what's dumb about it.

It's incredibly dumb because there are so many, many, MANY ways to deal with an unwanted pregnancy that do not require protecting and helping that woman carry the baby to term. Heck, given the malnutrition issues that everyone was having simply being able to carry to term at all is almost absurd - but then to do THAT? Just very dumb. 

31 minutes ago, Ran said:

The fact the perfectly passionless logic of the Dunyain still leads them to take the latent misogyny of humanity, which is turned into reality by the strange metaphysics of the setting where the sheer will of humanity makes something so, and then expand upon it to the point of abomination, seems okay to me as a horrible thing.

Still think the Dunyain should have found some Tekne that they used to manipulate themselves and cause this extremity of sexual dimorphism, though. I don't know why Bakker didn't go that route.

It's...okay...as a horrible thing. It adds some weird inconsistencies - like Kellhus comparing things to how a woman looks when the only women he's seen are these whale mothers - but all of those things work better if it's just normal women. Making them idiotic monstrous things doesn't do anything other than confuse the issue, especially given we don't see anything like this anywhere else in the story. Somehow this weak-spirited group of people that are called out for not having any real soul or metaphysical presence later - and who have almost no actual population - are able to bend reality and change this small thing?

No, it's distracting from the overall point, and that makes it weaker as a horrible thing. 

The other part is that the sexual dimorphism only goes one way, and that's super odd too. Like, if the Dunyain are able to change the physical characteristics of the women through sheer will, why aren't the men changed more drastically too? Why not have literally huge-ass heads to hold their absurdly large brains at that point? That was another objection - that while sexual dimorphism exists, when you're breeding you get both males and females having different characteristics than the normal stock. And 'being traditionally hot and also looking like the author' is probably not going to be the main side effect of having women have massive procreative success.

[Ran]

6 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

It's incredibly dumb because there are so many, many, MANY ways to deal with an unwanted pregnancy that do not require protecting and helping that woman carry the baby to term.

Are there? We don't know when the woman realized she was pregnant, when she fell in with the men, whether her plans for the child changed at some point, etc. She could have been someone who had tried to keep the baby for 8 months, and finally broke and realized it was impossible, and that was certainly way too late to "deal with an unwanted pregnancy"... but there was still a baby at the end, and they were hungry.

6 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Heck, given the malnutrition issues that everyone was having simply being able to carry to term at all is almost absurd -

Children have been born to emaciated women in the midst of terrible famine in our world. 

6 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

but then to do THAT? Just very dumb. 

I mean, if the end result was a situation that they didn't value the child by the time it was born, then "THAT" seems natural in a world where everyone is slowly starving to death.

[Kalbear]

9 minutes ago, Ran said:

Are there? We don't know when the woman realized she was pregnant, when she fell in with the men, whether her plans for the child changed at some point, etc. She could have been someone who had tried to keep the baby for 8 months, and finally broke and realized it was impossible, and that was certainly way too late to "deal with an unwanted pregnancy"... but there was still a baby at the end, and they were hungry.

Sure, all of that's possible, but given the preparedness that they went through and the kind of ritual behavior they had it didn't seem like it. 

And the book certainly didn't set that up. That's a lot of fanwanking to justify a very small scene that I took as clearly going for edgelord status. 

9 minutes ago, Ran said:

Children have been born to emaciated women in the midst of terrible famine in our world. 

Yes, they have. But it's very uncommon. And there's a difference between emaciation and living in an apocalypse where food is almost non-existent and other services don't exist any more.

9 minutes ago, Ran said:

I mean, if the end result was a situation that they didn't value the child by the time it was born, then "THAT" seems natural in a world where everyone is slowly starving to death.

Again, not having a problem with the cannibalism. Having a problem with actually carrying the child to term. 

[Ran]

12 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Sure, all of that's possible, but given the preparedness that they went through and the kind of ritual behavior they had it didn't seem like it. 

What are you talking about preparedness or  ritual behavior? Are you confusing them with the cannibal group from earlier? There's almost nothing about these people, and certainly I don't recall any ritual behavior:

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He was almost asleep himself when he saw a figure appear at the top of the road and stand there. Soon two more appeared. Then a fourth. They stood and grouped. Then they came on. He could just make them out in the deep dusk. He thought they might stop soon and he wished he'd found a place further from the road. If they stopped at the bridge it would be a long cold night. They came down the road and crossed the bridge. Three men and a woman. The woman walked with a waddling gait and as she approached he could see that she was pregnant. The men carried packs on their backs and the woman carried a small cloth suitcase. All of them wretched looking beyond description. Their breath steaming softly. They crossed the bridge and continued on down the road and vanished one by one into the waiting darkness.

That's the only glimpse we get of them -- they're gone by the time the man and the boy get to the fire and the remains of the baby. They certainly don't sound particularly prepared from their appearance of wretchedness.

 

Edited June 15, 2023 by Ran

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

What are you talking about preparedness or  ritual behavior? Are you confusing them with the cannibal group from earlier? There's almost nothing about these people, and certainly I don't recall any ritual behavior:

That's the only glimpse we get of them -- they're gone by the time the man and the boy get to the fire and the remains of the baby. They certainly don't sound particularly prepared from their appearance of wretchedness.

 

It's been a while since I read it, but IIRC the remains seemed like they were not just making a quick snack. And I got the impression that they came out away from where they normally hang out to do this thing, instead of just doing it at home. 

[Ran]

Just now, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

It's been a while since I read it, but IIRC the remains seemed like they were not just making a quick snack. And I got the impression that they came out away from where they normally hang out to do this thing, instead of just doing it at home. 

Huh. I thought they were just other wanderers trying to survive. When they found the camp and the remains, there wasn't anything particularly ritual about it -- the body was headless, it was gutted and spitted, and was still cooking as they ran away when the man and boy approached.

If they were somehow wretches who had also developed a ritual, I will say then I really don't see what's so dumb about it. It explains everything as being part of a ritual behavior, and that they somehow have placed great value on eating newborn infants, so much so they'll go through the trouble...

Whereas with people just making the cold, ugly calculus that they don't care about the child and would rather eat it rather than let it go to waste, at least you need to suppose circumstances where it makes sense that this woman is pregnant and that far along, as I outlined.

Anyways, I don't know. In a book full of horrors, this was just another. Kind of the same with Bakker, my only real complaint is that he seems to have done it with little thought. I saw one person speculate that he'd had the idea and had intended to have it in another location like Golgotterath but then just decided to shift it to Ishual.

[Aurora Nights]

I've never read past half of the first book of the Prince of Nothing.  However the whale mothers concept sounds problematic if there isn't a balance of what women can do in a positive sense, you can't have the male Dunyain superhumans, and no female Dunyain equivallent superhumans (they don't actually have to be Dunyain.)  Equally you have to have the male equivalent to the Whale Mothers.  That's the whole issue with the books if correct, not the whale mothers existence.

Having read this forum for over a year, 'Kalnak' you are very problematic as you have an overwhelming amount of posts where you constantly position yourself as the 'defender of women'. This is very problematic as you are a white middle class male.

If you had other posts highlighting the differing challenges different people face then this shows intellectual and ethical character.  If I'm wrong link to the posts where you highlight the problems economically poor males face.

 

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

11 hours ago, Aurora Nights said:

I've never read past half of the first book of the Prince of Nothing.  However the whale mothers concept sounds problematic if there isn't a balance of what women can do in a positive sense, you can't have the male Dunyain superhumans, and no female Dunyain equivallent superhumans (they don't actually have to be Dunyain.)  Equally you have to have the male equivalent to the Whale Mothers.  That's the whole issue with the books if correct, not the whale mothers existence.

Having read this forum for over a year, 'Kalnak' you are very problematic as you have an overwhelming amount of posts where you constantly position yourself as the 'defender of women'. This is very problematic as you are a white middle class male.

If you had other posts highlighting the differing challenges different people face then this shows intellectual and ethical character.  If I'm wrong link to the posts where you highlight the problems economically poor males face.

 

 

Not weird at all, to join a forum after lurking for a year, and your first comment is going after the posting style of one specific poster.  

Have you been banned here before?

[unJon]

Maybe the summon author spell is working again after all. 

[Kalbear]

Okay, that was pretty hilarious

[Darzin]

Something something... all of this has has happened before all of this will happen again. What before determines what comes after and death came swirling down.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Darzin