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White-Luck Warrior IX


jurble

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IIRC, Cnaiur actually fucks it, so I assume that much at least. No argument there. Is it, though? All I remember is that the skinspies get aroused when touched by or in the presence of the Inch. I don't recall a clear indication that they want to fuck the Inchies.

Neither do I. I believe a skin spy would view actual intercourse with an Inchie as quite taboo. Theyā€™re still aroused by them.

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Cnaiur is at least bi; no reason that it needs a vagina for Cnaiur to fuck.

Demonstrably, CnaiĆ¼r needs a vagina even to fuck Earth, which has plenty phallic objects readily sticking out of it.

He beat the earth with his fists, stabbed holes with his knife, then fucked them. [WP XIII]

I think thatā€™s as close to a text-based argument as weā€™ll get with this topic.

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Skin spies can change their faces and, IIRC, their hair and eye color right? I suppose we don't know enough about how the skin spy that kills the emperor....it might have started off male then switched to disguising itself as the Empress?

Kal - I think the Bios is incredibly flawed and limited. It can in theory do amazing things, but the Inchie Brothers who are left have only one real talent, and that's apprehending the onta. Beyond magic, I suspect they can't do much else very well.

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Skin spies can change their faces and, IIRC, their hair and eye color right?

I may be wrong, but Iā€™m sure the Serwe spy looked for all intents and purposes just like Serwe. Tits, ass, face, hair. Granted, we have only CnaiĆ¼rā€™s POV, and heā€™s bananas at that time.

But Mimā€™s group also contains a skin spy who has replaced one of the scalpers. Most of their clothes have rotted by that time, so he must be able to emulate skin colour, muscle tone, build, gaitā€¦ Of course, the face is the hardest thing to get right because human cognition is insanely good at face recognition. But Iā€™m quite sure that skin spies can change their entire body quite flexibly.

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The Skin-spy can change skin-color, because the second Sarcellus turns into Kellhus to interrogate Serwe. Sarcellus, being Nansur, would be at least olive-skinned or brown-skinned, and Kellhus is white. Also black hair and brown eyes - > blond and blue eyes.

But then, in TJE, they find a Skin-spy that's Zeumi in appearance and apparently that's novel. So iunno.

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I may be wrong, but Iā€™m sure the Serwe spy looked for all intents and purposes just like Serwe. Tits, ass, face, hair. Granted, we have only CnaiĆ¼rā€™s POV, and heā€™s bananas at that time.

But Mimā€™s group also contains a skin spy who has replaced one of the scalpers. Most of their clothes have rotted by that time, so he must be able to emulate skin colour, muscle tone, build, gaitā€¦ Of course, the face is the hardest thing to get right because human cognition is insanely good at face recognition. But Iā€™m quite sure that skin spies can change their entire body quite flexibly.

We really need to have somebody who can draw depict the skin-spies and the Inchies.

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HE, you might find it shocking to note that not all holes in the human body are vaginas.

And yeah, figured skin spies could change almost every phenotypical value of their body save their expression of maleness.

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Posted this on Three Pound Brain, but doubtful of hearing an answer (admittedly retreads old ground):

Another thing about the books ā€“ Iā€™d love to see some explanation of the magical types, by which I mean your inspiration for the Gnostic/Agnostic/Aporos/Pushke/Daimos.

Something still feels off to me, the idea that the Gnosis can be used for summoning. Perhaps Iā€™m looking at it incorrectly, but Iā€™m thinking of the idea in Danteā€™s Paradiso that some things ā€“ essentially the Outside ā€“ can only be approached by simile and metaphor. As such, it seems the Agnosis would provide a way to grasp, almost by intuitive appeal, the bridle necessary to manipulate Ciphrang.

But if we look at the Agnosis as poetry ā€“ IMO justified by the Dragon Head and Fire Sparrow spells ā€“ then I would think the Aporos wouldnā€™t be so effective if Chorae were designed to counter mathematical magic.

All this makes me wonder if you are rooting all magic, including the Pushke in some ideas you have about linguistics. I suppose the Pushke, as recollection of the Whole, could be touching Chomskyā€™s ā€œlanguage acquisition deviceā€ but admittedly I havenā€™t really put much effort into unifying the magic of Earwa under these ideas.

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I'd like some clarification in the books on that too, and I'm also still very curious to see if we'll get a fleshed out answer on to what degree the Inrithi and Fanim are or are not correct about their beliefs about the gods and The God.

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fairly certain that the linguistics basis is axiomatic.

True, but the problem I have is Bakker seems to be saying Gnosis > Agnosis because mathematics/physics apprehends the world as it really is and poetry explains the world as humans see it.

But these are two very different ways of thinking, and when you throw in the Psukhe you have yet another way of describing/apprehending the world.

Now, it makes sense to me that the Gnosis should be better at manipulating the world, but the Agnosis seems better fit to manipulate something as subjective as the Outside.

Further, chorae which are created by the Aporos negate all three magical disciplines which indicates they have a common basis that the Aporos exploits.

The only thing I can see covering all three disciplines is language - think of equations broadcast as SETI signals, Dante using the Commedia to describe his visions, and the Psukhe as a sort of "telepathy" where, if you'll permit some sloppiness on my part, the distance between signifier and signified are closed.

The Mark is the result of the distance between the way mages talk/sing about the onta and what the onta really is. The sin of the Gnostic is using pixels to approximate smooth curves, the sin of the Agnostic is never being able to capture the reality of atoms in poetry.

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True, but the problem I have is Bakker seems to be saying Gnosis > Agnosis because mathematics/physics apprehends the world as it really is and poetry explains the world as humans see it.

No, the Gnosis merely allows more precision compared to the Analogies. Both describe, but Gnosis describes better.

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No, the Gnosis merely allows more precision compared to the Analogies. Both describe, but Gnosis describes better.

Then they'd be the same visually no? Seems to me the Gnosis relates to Plato's ideas about reality, what with the geometry and Forms. Agnosis seems to be something else entirely - see sparrows and dragon heads.

Of course, the superiority of the Gnosis is necessary for it to be used as Kellhus's carrot for the non-Gnostic schools. Though one does wonder about how those who survive the Ordeal will even make it back from Golgotterath with such secrets.

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It's about expressing intent.

The agnostics can only express what they want as analogy - I want fire as hot as a dragon. Their will can make it really hot, but they don't know how to be more specific about what they want.

The gnosis can express what they want with far more precision. It still isn't the same as the objective world, it's just being able to state things like "I want a beam of light one cm wide that lasts for this long". It still marks because it isn't the objective truth.

The cish act with the feeling of a real action - how te word of god sounds to them, but more importantly what it makes them feel like. In that respect it fits in the world as it sounds right - it must - but isn't perfect. It still fits in though, so no mark. It also isn't something analogous - they aren't asking for something that sounds like the word of god, they are speaking the word of god perfectly. Just not with as much volume and not quite the same control of voice.

The aporetics work with all of these, because they eradicate the intent. They state that you can't ask for those things because you'd also be asking for not those things, and you're not doing that, so wtf? Since you are establishing meaning in all three cases and something with meaning can't have a paradox, it ends.

Wonder how that connects to skin spies not being able to understand paradox.

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Then they'd be the same visually no?

No, I'm refuting the statement:

because mathematics/physics apprehends the world as it really is and poetry explains the world as humans see it.

Neither system describes the world as it really is, but both try to approximate reality (since they cant come close, the Mark forms.) Mathematics allows for greater precision in describing things than Analogy does - it doesn't mean Mathematics is more True than Analogy, but that it is a system with lower semantic density (and thus greater precision).

The Gnosis is Assembly and the Anagogis is Java, if that makes sense.

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