Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - The Spaces Between

Pages: [1]
1
General Earwa / Re: Mimara's abilities and status as a prophet
« on: July 24, 2020, 11:53:40 pm »
Well, in my current Hegelian paradigm, I tend to think of this mainly in terms of the sort of "reconciliation" the seems to run all through TAE.  Namely the notion of how the Eternal (the unchanging in Hegelian terms) could or would intersect with the temporal (the individual).

I don't know that there is a resolution to that paradox though, really.  The fact seemingly just is, more so, something self-consciousness has to sublate (overcome) and possibly that is part of the Dasein spirit (in essence, what it means to have a soul).  Or maybe that is the whole thing really.

To quote Titirga, you swim deep and i can only watch from the shallows lol

Putting it in more straightforward (albeit simplified), plot-related terms, the Judging Eye is an atemporal phenomenon. If it exists at one point in time, it exists always. Since Mimara will have it in the future, she does have it for all her life.


Yes that does seem the prevailing theory. Similar to kel being the no-god always, or the ark being invisible to the gods in the present because one day they win.


2
General Earwa / Re: Mimara's abilities and status as a prophet
« on: July 23, 2020, 12:09:53 pm »

There are lots of threads about the JE and Mimara. This post links onto a discussion about one so figured its as good as any to put in my two cents.

Since the eye is related to being pregnant and giving birth to stillborns it seems odd that she recounts having it all her life. There's a bit in the TJE where Akka wonders about Mimara not being aborted by her mother's whores shell.

Quote
For the first time, it seemed, he noticed how much lighter her skin was than his or her mother's. For the first time he wondered about her real father, about the twist of caprice that had seen her born, rather than aborted by Esmenet's whore-shell.

This makes Mim a bit of an inversion of the JE and its criteria. Where pregnant women get the JE and have stillbirths, Mim is an intended abortion that possesses the JE. Or at least that was my impression when i read the above statement and tried to resolve the paradox of Mim possessing the JE all her life.

3
Author Q&A / Re: Ancient. Deeper. New.
« on: July 10, 2016, 12:40:31 am »
The Spaces Between, are you a Bakker alt?

Haha nope. Just another fan waiting for TGO.  :)

4
Author Q&A / Re: How do Schools identify and draft students?
« on: July 09, 2016, 02:09:37 pm »
I assumed the few could see the onta and therefore the mark or bruise of sorcery but i dont seem to recall a kellhus pov that sees such a thing on akka, the non man he encounters in the woods or any other sorcerer. However, the talent of perceiving the onta and seeing the mark of sorcery can be developed which is why mimara or Maithanet can see it on sorcerers like akka. Conversely, akka seems shocked that kellhus is of the few suggesting there is nothing to mark people out prior to testing them.

The wathi doll is a makeshift test akka cobbles together while on the road. The real test is probably just as simple but innocuous enough to not feel heretical.

5
Author Q&A / Re: Ancient. Deeper. New.
« on: July 09, 2016, 01:00:59 pm »
Maybe far more ancient relative to the referenced cishaurim.

The dunyain are a new branch of human but they also descend from an Anasûrimbor. Hence the dual title of new and old foe


6
General Earwa / Re: The Womb-Plague (A new theory, perhaps?)
« on: November 10, 2015, 03:17:04 am »
Well, to me, "crushed into instants" speaks to the how Nonmen perceive time, flattened out and non-linear, in a fashion.  Like Auriga, says, I don't believe her face is literally crushed, more figuratively reduced.  Her, face, rather than being the flowing beauty of the living, is a face reduced only to glimpses of it's former self.  In other words, composed not in the now, but in memory, a collection of former instants.  This speaks to a lack of self-ness, which is actually set up by the context, I think.  Look at the whole sentence:

"Aisarinqu screams and Aisarinqu screams, again and again, not so much words as a storm of occasions, her delicate face crushed into instants and flayed across an age, for theirs had not been a happy union."

He, I think the crux is "not so much words as a storm of occasions" which is what "her delicate face crushed into instants and flayed across an age" is describing.  So, she screams, not in the sense of sound, but with her face showing all the anguish of all the instants splayed across the ages of their unhappiness.

The big question isn't, for me, whether they killed their wives and daughters, because I think it's clear they did.  The question is why?  It wasn't just some male caprice it seems, because we see both Aisralu and Aisarinqu goading him to do it.  In this sense, he seems reluctant and they seem determined on this outcome.  This seems to point to the fact that whatever the condition facing the Nonmen women, it was untenable to both the women and the men.

Also, consider this line, "The white spark of some faraway light refracts in her tears, so that her contrition seems holy, and his embittered and profane."  Both have contrition and considering Bakker's Cristian background, I think contrition here is the "the repentance of past sins during or after confession."  Here, context to the Aisarinqu scene, it is an act of confession.  He kills her, not for her sins, or his, but seemingly for both theirs.

Actually, now thinking on all this, what if you are right, with "Whatever gave them immortality must of drove their sexual craving crazy."  That would go right back to my hypothesis that spawned this thread, that the Womb-Plague wasn't a weapon, per se, but was an enlistment.  The Inchoroi gave them exactly what they had given themselves.  The result?  Wanton promiscuity.  The women, rather than be solely objects to be used, ask, nah, perhaps demand, for death instead?

I'm not sure.  Very interesting to think about though.


just read this part in TWLW and i couldnt help but be reminded of your post

Quote
"Do you remember your wife?"
"I remember all that I have lost."
She is beautiful. She knows she is beautiful because she so resembles her mother, Esmenet, who was the most celebrated beauty in the Three Seas. And mortal beauty, she knows, finds its measure in the immortal...
"How did she die?"
A single tear falls from his right eye, hangs like a bead of glass from his jaw. "With the others... Cir'kumir teles pim'larata..."
"Do I resemble her?"
"Perhaps..." he says, lowering his gaze. "If you wept or screamed... If there was blood."
She moves closer, into the smell of him, sits so that her knees brush his shins. His pouch hangs from his waist, partially hooked in a miniature thicket of stems. Vertigo billows through her, a sudden horror of tipping, as if the pouch were a babe set too close to a table's edge. She clutches his forearms.
"You tremble," she whispers, resisting the urge to glance at the pouch. "Do you want me? Do you want to..." She swallows. "To take me?"
He draws away his arms, stares down into his palms. Beyond him, clouds pile like inky flotsam beneath the stars. Dry lightning scorches the plains a barren white. She glimpses land piling atop land, scabbed edges, woollen reaches.
"I want to..." he says.
"Yes?"
He lifts his eyes as if drawing them against weighted threads. "I... I want to... to strangle you... to split you with my—"
His breath catches. Murder floats in the sorrow of his gaze. He speaks like someone marooned in a stranger's soul. "I want to hear you shriek."
And she can feel the musky strength of him, the impotence of her flailing arms, clawing fingers, should he simply choose...
What? a stranded fragment of her asks. What are you doing? She's not quite certain what she intends to do, let alone what she hopes to accomplish. Is she seducing him? For Achamian? For the Qirri?
Or has she finally broken under the weight of her suffering? Is that what it is? After all this time, is she still the child traded between sailors, weeping to the moan of timbers and men?
She glimpses herself climbing into the circuit of Cleric's arms, taking his waist into the circuit of her legs. Her breath catches at the thought of his antique virility, the union of her flower and his stone. Her stomach quails at the thought of his arcane disfigurement, the ugliness heaving against her, into her.
"Because you love me?"
"I..."
He grimaces, and she glimpses Sranc howling by the light of sorcerous fire. He raises his face to the vault of the night, and she sees a world before human nations, a nocturnal age, when Nonmen marched in hosts from their great underworld mansions, driving the Sons of Men before them.
"No!" Cleric cries. "No! Because I... I need to remember! I must remember!"
And miraculously, she sees it. Her purpose and her intent.
"And so you must betray..."
His passion blows from him, and he falls still—very still. Clarity peers out from his eyes, a millennial assurance. Gone is the bewildered stoop, the listless air of indecision. He pulls his shoulders and arms into an antique pose of nobility. He draws his hands behind him, seems to clasp them in the small of his back. It is a posture she recognizes from Cil-Aujas and its innumerable engravings.
The voices of the scalpers continue to feud and bicker. The clouds continue to climb, a shroud drawing across the gaping bowl of Heaven. The Captain is speaking, but low rolling thunder obscures his voice.
The first darts of rain tap across the dust and grasses.
"Who?" Mimara presses. "Who are you, truly?"
The immortal Ishroi watches her, his smile wry, his eyes luminous with something too profound to be mere regret.
"Nil'giccas..." he murmurs. "I am Nil'giccas. The Last Nonman King."


id be interested to know if anyone can interpret "With the others... Cir'kumir teles pim'larata..."

i think the theory that the nonmen murdered their women in a sexual-violence fuelled effort to remember their love for them after being granted immortality/erraticism is disturbing enough to just be true.

definitely an effective weapon to seal the world and damn the nonmen and get them onside with the inchoroi agenda.



7
General Earwa / Re: Crazy Ass Speculation Thread
« on: October 08, 2015, 12:07:55 am »
Quote
She dreams of her stepfather, wakes with the frowning confusion that always accompanies dreams too sticky with significance. With every blink she sees him: the Aspect-Emperor, not as he is but as he would be were he the shade that haunted the accursed deeps of Cil-Aujas...
Not a man but an emblem. A living Seal, rising on tides of hellish unreality.
"You are the eye that offends, Mimara..."
She wants to ask Achamian about the dream but finds the memory of their feud too sharp to speak around. She knows what everybody knows about dreams, that they are as likely to deceive as to illuminate. On the Andiamine Heights, the caste-noble wives would consult augurs, pay outrageous sums. The caste-menials and the slaves would pray, usually to Yatwer. The girls in the brothel used to drip wax on pillow-beetles to determine the truth of their dreams. If the wax trapped the insect, the dream was true. She has heard of dozens of other folk divinations besides. But she no longer knows what to believe...
It's the Wizard, she realizes. The damned fool is rubbing off on her.
"The eye that must be plucked."

8
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Wracu
« on: October 07, 2015, 12:16:24 pm »

yeah it could totally be retconned but i don't think it is necessarily so...

i don't feel entirely comfortable following the idea that 1 chorae matches to 1 oragnism.  i think the biggest organism on screen with 1 chorae has been a bashrag?  and i don't know that the reader was told that the bashrag was wholly covered?

3 chorae for the tree and 11 for Mog could be outliers to whatever principle is generally involved...

i think i follow you at the end --> if a higher # of chorae are required to protect inorganic things and if the dragons are inorganic (or are in inorganic shells?) then the # of chorae required would be too high to be worth it?  is that right?  interesting idea!  Robot-Dragons!!!  Ewracu!

-------


maybe dragons are like the Seal from the end of TJE.  dragons bring with them a tide of unreality from the Outside so that chorae are generally ineffective?

Mimara will kill Wutteat!!!  Mimi...THE SLAYER


yeah its hard to know whether one chorae per organism is a thing but it seems like when skin contact with a chorae is made it imparts protection to the whole body and not just a spherical region  of influence. mog's carapace is most likely an outlier that was just important enough to get 11. I just dont think the anti sorcery effect of chorae conducts along inorganic things very well. else u could attach it to a wall or an iron cage and the whole thing should be sorcery resistant. So yeah wutteats hide being inorganic doesnt allow chorae to function well at protecting them from sorcery is my main hypothesis.

but i do like the simple explanation that its a tide of unreality. if u can have an undead dragon at this point  it doesnt seem like a stretch to make almost anything possible when u invoke the outside. kinda annoying sometimes because it make a lot of the plot twist more deus ex machnina than something u actually predict based off everything you've read so far. like if the rules of chorae were more fleshed out we wouldnt be having so many competing but uncertain hypotheses 5 books in lol, which is kinda ironic for a series that emphasises cause and effect so strongly in its philosophy  :P




9
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Wracu
« on: October 07, 2015, 12:21:07 am »
we know chorae when touching skin (organic/bios such as men or sranc) impart protection to the whole organism from sorcery. there must be lines of conduction for the chorae effect that work to conduct the effect along organic tissue.

An example of chorae not touching skin but used to confer protection to an inorganic material are kells circumfrix which had three bound to the bronze ring

Quote
A great tree soared into the night sky, a hoary old eucalyptus, too ancient not to be named. His first thought was to set it alight, to transform it into a blazing beacon of his wrath—a funeral pyre for the betrayer, the seducer! But he could sense the absences that encircled the man, the three Chorae the Men of the Tusk had bound to his bronze ring. And he could see that he suffered . . .

and the no-gods carapace which is apparently an iron sarcophagus that legend states has 11 chorae bound to it, tho there is another quote that tells us the carapace is actually nimil and covered in choric script.

Quote
No-God—Also known as Mog-Pharau, Tsurumah, and Mursiris. The entity summoned by the Consult to bring about the Apocalypse. Very little is known about the No-God, save that he utterly lacks remorse or compassion and possesses terrible power, including the ability to control Sranc, Bashrag, and Wracu as extensions of his own will. Because of his armour (the so-called Carapace), which eyewitnesses describe as an iron sarcophagus suspended in the heart of a mountainous whirlwind, it is not even known whether he is a creature of flesh or of spirit. According to Mandate scholars, the Inchoroi worship him as their saviour, as do—according to some—the Scylvendi.
Somehow, his mere existence is antithetical to human life: during the entirety of the Apocalypse, not one infant drew breath—all were stillborn. He is apparently immune to sorcery (according to legend, eleven Chorae are embedded in the Carapace). The Heron Spear is the only known weapon that can harm him.

Quote
Secrets . . . Secrets! Not even the No-God could build walls against what was forgotten! Seswatha glimpsed the unholy Carapace shining in the whirlwind’s heart, a nimil sarcophagus sheathed in choric script, hanging . . .


going a bit off topic but assuming that the people werent just using a large number of chorae than necessary,then when chorae are used to protect relatively inorganic material there seems to be a need for an exponential number to impart protection from sorcery to these materials. How does this relate to wracu and why they dont just use chorae to protect themselves comes in how they describe their physiology

Quote
"FOOL. I AM THE FIRST. MY HIDE IS BRONZE. MY BONES ARE IRON!"

There must be a bios component to the wracu but if their physiology is primary inorganic particularly on their outside, perhaps it doesnt confer the protective effect of chorae very well and they would literally need to be covered head to claw in them and then some for it offer true protection


....or maybe its wracu-nature retcon [reasons] related :P

10
Introduce Yourself / Re: hey guys :)
« on: October 03, 2015, 03:30:27 am »
thanks for the welcome and the redirect for my Q's  ;D

11
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Collection of General Series Questions
« on: October 03, 2015, 03:22:32 am »
thanks for redirecting my questions here madness  ;D definitely more traffic haha

So the mark doesn’t equate to damnation since chorae have a deep mark and are sorcerous items but going by the JE they are god’s own tears though this doesn’t actually tell us if sorcerers themselves are damned. Guess we have to wait and see whether mimara glimpses a socerer that isn’t damned.

Yes, I believe you are right in the sense that the Mark is not strictly equal to damnation.  Recall that the Tusk is what damned sorcerers, the Mark presumably predates that.



how did the nonmen know they were damned in the first place. Titirga tells shau that the nonmen taught them how to hide their voices to avoid damnation....but the nonmen worship darkness, not the thousand gods which are the purveyors of the whole hells...unless they are just ciphrang of more power like meppa says then its just generally ciphrang.


Plausible.  I do tend to think of the Inverse Fire as something you see.  It does appear to predate the Inchoroi arrival on Earwa, so I don't think it is quite the same, since it must then be non-sorcerous.

good point!


The judging eye is a thing of women that will give birth to stillborn children….but mimara had the judging eye well before she became pregnant. Is this a result of mimara herself being born even tho esmi was using the whore’s shell.

Do we know this?  I don't recall that.  I'll have to dig in and see if I can find a reference.



here you go  ;D


Quote
"But I do know," Achamian hastily adds, "that the Judging Eye involves pregnant women."
Mimara gawks at him through tears. A cold hand has reached into her abdomen and scooped away all warring sensation.
"Pregnant..." she hears herself say. "Why?"
"I don't know." He has flecks of dead leaf in his hair, and she squelches the urge to fuss over him. "Perhaps because of the profundity of childbirth. The Outside inhabits us in many ways, none so onerous as when a women brings a new soul into the world."
She sees her mother posing before a mirror, her belly broad and low with the twins, Kel and Sammi.
"So what is the curse?" she fairly cries at Achamian. "Tell me, old fool!" She rebukes herself immediately afterward, knowing that the Wizard's honesty would wither as her desperation waxed. People punish desperation as much out of compassion as petty malice.
Achamian gnaws his bottom lip. "As far as I know," he begins with obvious and infuriating care, "those with the Judging Eye give birth to dead children."
He shrugs as if to say, See? You have nothing to fear...
Cold falls through her in sheets.
"What?"
A scowl knits his brow. "The Judging Eye is the eye of the Unborn... The eye that watches from the God's own vantage."
A cleft has opened about their path: a runoff that delivers them to a shallow ravine. They follow the stream that gurgles along its creases—the water is clear but seems black given the gloom. Monstrous elms pillar the embankments, their roots like great fists clenched about earth. The stream has wedged the trees far enough apart for white to glare through seams in the canopy. Here and there the water's meandering course has gnawed hollows beneath various trees. The company ducks beneath those that had fallen across the ravine, trees like stone whales.
"But I've had... had this... for as long as I can remember."
"Which is my point exactly," Achamian says, sounding far too much like someone taking heart in invented reasons. He frowns, an expression Mimara finds horribly endearing on his shaggy old features. "But things are always tricky where the Outside is concerned. Things do not... happen... as they happen here..."

"Riddles! Why do you constantly torture me with riddles?"
"I'm just saying that in a sense your life has already been lived—for the God or the Gods, that is..."
"Which means?"
"Nothing," he says, scowling.
"Tell me what it means!"


Quote
For the first time, it seemed, he noticed how much lighter her skin was than his or her mother's. For the first time he wondered about her real father, about the twist of caprice that had seen her born, rather than aborted by Esmenet's whore-shell.



In chapt 1 of the UC akka talks about how when souls are trapped into objects like wathi dolls etc
“ The intricacies of identity are always sheared away. Memory. Faculty. Character. These are cast into the pit... Only the most base urges survive in proxies.”
Just like the nonman revenant created on the topoi under the mountain dreaming he was a god but with a hunger and speaking through the unconscious akka etc
Just like the no-god created in golgotterath (known topoi according to akkas dreams) speaking through scranc, wracu etc. asking who he is

i.e. is the no-god a big ol soul trap.

Also is wutteat a temporary storage bank for souls of the inchora if hell sustains him from within and he refuses to die until salvation is achieved. (I’ve read some theories already but thought I’d remention)

We've talked a lot about the No-God before.  I'm with you on the soul trap, because I think that the whole idea is for the Consult's soul to go somewhere, not just into the waiting clutches of gods on the Outside.


yeah the whole idea of the inchorai even waging war if they feared damnation so much doesnt make sense, let alone them crashing their ship into the planet. i imagine if i were fearful of the afterlife id be much more subtle about my tactics or just blow up the planets from afar...or always just use souless agents



Halos first show up in book one, serwe sees them. Esme sees them in book two before the skin spy occurance, I think akka and proyas both see them too as does martemus, iirc.

Serwe probably sees them on the skin spy because she is the holy one and the source of kellhus divinity.  The halos she sees are not false because she did not know the skin spy was false.


Additionally, kellhus is briefly divine after her death and can do the heart trick since she did an Aslan for him.


interesting theory!



Excellent observation!  I'm kicking myself for not seeing the parallel between the Wathi Doll and the No-God.  But yes, the No-God seems to fit with Akka's description in TUC.

I agree that the No-God is a sort of soul-trap.  I've always figured that the line of prisoners that Akka dreams in WLW are "soul food" for the No-God and that it's brought to life when the number of souls consumed hits a critical mass.  Or maybe that the souls provide the energy it needs to fulfill it's greater purpose -- sealing the World from the Outside.



haha it seemed like a massive hint. yeah the line of prisoners does seem like food. an almagamated wathi doll. but bound to a sorcerous purpose

12
Introduce Yourself / hey guys :)
« on: September 30, 2015, 09:50:55 am »
Hey guys. Long time reader, short time lurker. Love the series. Already got two of my friends hooked on it. Thought id say hi and post some comments and questions ive tallied up during my readings. pretty aspect emperor heavy so i'll put a spoiler tag in case

(click to show/hide)

Anyways. that was a good rant of all my different theories. let me know what you guys think :)

cant wait for TUC. the delay is killing me lol

Pages: [1]