[TUC Spoilers]Deus Ex Machina - Implausibilities - Running out of Steam

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themerchant

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« Reply #90 on: July 31, 2017, 05:00:16 pm »
That's the greatness/weirdness of humans two people can look at the same thing and see "not the same thing".

Blacktone. Kellhus tells esmi this in the scene where he and Akka meet again, and during their "argument" Esmi appears and asks Kellhus what happened with Kel and where he is, and he says something like chained up in lords so and so's , dont go to him and if you do attend to his chain.

Now of course i could be wrong and Kellhus is blind to her (as he says) and motherly love might be beyond his knowledge, and i'm inventing this narrative.




Rots

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« Reply #91 on: July 31, 2017, 07:04:24 pm »
So ive now had several days to let TUC sink in and i am still of the opinion that its a massive let down. So much space dedicated to agongorea, i still cant get over that. I feel like that is a story line that maybe 16 year old RSB might have thought was transgressive and heterodox and is really just a slog and boring. Its the first and only time in reading the 7 books that i have ever thought about just fast-forwarding through it to get to the next chapter.

So many seemingly important story lines that were teased out for thousands of pages and are not even mentioned at all or barely touched upon. Im basically fine w/the ambiguity of the end - weve seen that before in the RSB playbook. The dues ex machina of the dunsult has been bandied about here for years but i am fine with that. however, the fact that the most devious and cunning minds of man, inchie, and non-man came together in the Consult and then had literally millennia to game theory TSA and they just get run over by Dunyain faster than Usain Bolt can run a 100 is a bit much.

Heres a thought: maybe spend a few hundred pages less repetitively illustrating mans inhumanity to man and give us some of those pages back as chapters on the Ark like were done for Ishterebinth. Or literally anything else. This is the first of these 7 books i will not recommend to anyone and the first that i will not buy in physical form. Ive been a 99% lurker but i go back to ZTS and have been avidly a reader and a fan of this series from day one and this is still, after 5 days of reflection, a real disappointment for me.

Wilshire

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« Reply #92 on: July 31, 2017, 07:09:52 pm »
I'm curious, nothing in the past decade has been interesting enough to spend time chatting about? Curious, I think, how misery loves company. Welcome (back) though.
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Rots

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« Reply #93 on: July 31, 2017, 07:40:40 pm »
I'm curious, nothing in the past decade has been interesting enough to spend time chatting about? Curious, I think, how misery loves company. Welcome (back) though.

Once upon a time i was an inveterate and deeply involved member of a lot of various boards in the net. Then, i realized that i value in-person communication more than 1s and 0s. So, i have vampire'd my way through the thought and dint of others while keeping my distance so i do not get sucked into writing thousands of words and spending hours of my time on 1s and 0s. I run huge networks that give voice/video/data access to millions of ppl as my day job. Mostly, i try and stay away from the day to day of boards and internet stuff when not working. Id rather be hanging out w/my gf, walking my dog, lifting weights, whatever, anything but the internet.

So, thats why i am 99% a lurker.

Wilshire

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« Reply #94 on: July 31, 2017, 08:43:39 pm »
Makes perfect sense. Thanks for the response.
That means your planning on coming to Zaudunyanicon right? I kid ;)
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boneclinkz

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« Reply #95 on: July 31, 2017, 10:05:37 pm »
Oh and we are all just pretending the pandering Cunny loving 100 foot Dragon dialogue wasn't there, right? Because it felt like Scott was talking to his critics from the first firestorm he became embroiled in, with the feminists.

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Dunkelheit

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« Reply #96 on: July 31, 2017, 10:17:35 pm »
Now of course i could be wrong and Kellhus is blind to her (as he says) and motherly love might be beyond his knowledge, and i'm inventing this narrative.

I don't think he claims to be blind to her, just to his own motivation when it comes to her. But I think he couldn't have predicted she would act the way she did. When he "armed" her against Inrilatas, he also armed her against himself. Like Moe sr. made Cnair hard to predict and control, Kellhus himself made her hard to predict and control. I don't think it's so much motherly love as being able to see through Dunyain manipulation making her actions unpredictable. But she has conflicting emotions about her kids probably also complicates things.

boneclinkz

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« Reply #97 on: July 31, 2017, 11:05:21 pm »
Now of course i could be wrong and Kellhus is blind to her (as he says) and motherly love might be beyond his knowledge, and i'm inventing this narrative.

I don't think he claims to be blind to her, just to his own motivation when it comes to her. But I think he couldn't have predicted she would act the way she did. When he "armed" her against Inrilatas, he also armed her against himself. Like Moe sr. made Cnair hard to predict and control, Kellhus himself made her hard to predict and control. I don't think it's so much motherly love as being able to see through Dunyain manipulation making her actions unpredictable. But she has conflicting emotions about her kids probably also complicates things.

In TPON, Kellhus reveals some of the Dunyain weaknesses when dealing with mortal souls. They do not assume they are dealing with rational actors; rather, they assume they are dealing with creatures that respond to stimulus that can be understood by those with the Dunyain gifts, while remaining unknown to the people themselves. In this way, the Dunyain can dominate them utterly and use them as tools.

Cnair is somewhat more difficult for Kellhus to control, and even surprises him at times, simply because his actions have become unfathomable. His detachment from reality means his actions no longer reliably follow the principles of the logos.

By the same token, I figured this was the reason Anasurimbor Serwe was not able to dominate circumstances at Ishterebinth. I mean, if anyone could rally the intact and bring the erratics to heel, it would be a Dunyain. She could have pulled the Tall from the Mere, and shown up at Golgotterath with a pretty fearsome army. But Kellhus would have known that their insanity could not be mastered, and Serwe learned during her, uh, time as a guest of the Nonmen that it was a lost cause and they had completely fallen from grace.

Of course, by that same token, I don't have any explanation why the nonmen showed up during the assault on Golgotterath. If they were hungry for glory and destruction, Serwe would have known and so controlled the circumstances, rather than the clusterfuck that happened once senile Quya found themselves on a battlefield with not one, but two different ancient enemies.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2017, 11:13:03 pm by boneclinkz »

littlegrice

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« Reply #98 on: August 01, 2017, 01:57:40 am »
Dunk, that's interesting, but seems complex- kind of like the multiverse theory- if every time the gods mess with time, another version of the outside pops into existence there would be a multitude of forces on the reality of Earwa. That being said, I can see that these splits in time don't happen often- 2x was the white luck stymied. Dunno, I just think it is overly complex. ::)

Yeah, I would like to simplify this theory a little:
So events in Earwa changes the gods. These new gods can and already have changed the past. So when (or maybe if) the world closes, presumably this too will change the gods and these gods will think the world has always been closed. But these gods can not change the past since the world is closed to them, which is why we don't hear from them.

Pretty sure Kellhus himself, when talking to Achamian, said that the Gods couldn't see the No-God because he existed after their end, and therefore out of their sight.  I took that to mean that should they(the Consult) succeed in closing off the world, the Gods would die, or end, or whatever.  So not really a paradox, or multiple realities, just the mind-bending fact that the Consult lies outside of the Gods' knowing.  Also, the Gods have to pick and choose when and where to intervene, because Kellhus said they must ration themselves throughout all of time, lest they be hollowed out(or something close to that).  That's also why they failed to kill him, because to step into his time would have wasted their God-hood, basically.

OH! Just had another thought on this!  In the Watchmen, the crazy powerful blue guy talked about seeing all of time like looking at a gem.  You have all of it in your hands at once, but you can only see the side you are looking directly at, and you CAN'T see anything else.  So you look at something else(time from another angle) and now you can't see what you were looking at before.  There was once or twice in that movie where he knew something, and then, like a minute later, he didn't know it anymore.  Maybe the Gods are like that?  And then, when the Unseen Hand(the No-God) manipulates some event,  or simply acts, it changes what they THOUGHT they saw.  I dunno.  I think I'm twisting my own brain, here.
Well, he no talkie good like me and you, so his vocabulistics is limited to 'TELL ME...' and 'WHAT DO YOU SEE?' and, 'WHAT AM I?' Exclusively in that order.

Madness

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« Reply #99 on: August 01, 2017, 12:13:06 pm »
...

Makes perfect sense. Thanks for the response.
That means your planning on coming to Zaudunyanicon right? I kid ;)

Not kidding, you should come to Zaudunyanicon, Rots!
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Cnaiür vs Karsa vs Drogo

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« Reply #100 on: August 02, 2017, 12:38:41 am »
Hmm. This seems like the best place for some questions. I had most of the same issues as OP, but still loved this book.

I didn't understand how Kel got to the top of the horn, but ok.

My questions are: if kellhus was so powerful, what even was the point of assembling the great ordeal? He could teleport there and dispatch everyone without a huge army, no? Hell, he even knocked down a horn. As someone above stated, it took more effort to deal with meppa than aurang and Mek combined.

Why did serwa bother with the dragon? It was an awesome sequence, definitely shes amazing, but why not just teleport to the top and help out? Awesome as it was, it didn't really seem necesary to fight that thing and die. She and others could have just gone around.

Why was aurax such a little whining bitch?

I just finished and these are the questions on my mind. I really enjoyed it though.



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The Sharmat

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« Reply #101 on: August 02, 2017, 12:59:52 am »
This may be an error on Bakker's part but it's also possible Kellhus was simply far stronger there than he was at Momemn because he had taken Ajokli into himself and they were sitting right on top of Hell.

Serwa bothered with the dragon because even in good condition she can't fight after a metagnostic cant of translocation, much less burned and bleeding to death.

Aurax was presumably tortured by the Dunyain into obeisance. I don't know how you torture an Inchoroi without just getting them off but hey Dunyain are basically magic.

Cnaiür vs Karsa vs Drogo

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« Reply #102 on: August 02, 2017, 01:19:26 am »
Ah, that makes sense about serwa being tired after teleporting, but still, killing the dragon didn't accomplish anything because they didn't need to storm the horn.  She was really awesome though and I love her. Did she die?

Its too crazy to me that kellhus died by ankle chorae. Cannot process that yet.
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Madness

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« Reply #103 on: August 02, 2017, 02:07:57 am »
My questions are: if kellhus was so powerful, what even was the point of assembling the great ordeal? He could teleport there and dispatch everyone without a huge army, no? Hell, he even knocked down a horn. As someone above stated, it took more effort to deal with meppa than aurang and Mek combined.

I've always thought he wouldn't want to risk the Chorae all alone. Kellhus isn't able to accomplish those highlights as the sole target of the various Hordes/Bashrags/Ishroi/Quya/Wracu/Inchoroi/Dunyain/Etc/Etc, right? He's able to accomplish them because his Enemy's attention is divided because he also happened to drag the largest army and sorcerous collective ever assembled (by about half again?) across the wastes of history.
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Frail

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« Reply #104 on: August 02, 2017, 02:25:18 am »
Why after feeling being in a room with 100 chorae attached skin spies Kellhus just decides to hang around? And since it takes Kellhus at least a second to teleport out, why would he risk overstaying his welcome when the skin spies have supernatural physical abilities?

If Kellhus had died to TWLW in TGO it would have at least had a decent buildup, and there would have be a finality to it.