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Topics - Cuttlefish

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The Unholy Consult / [Spoilers] Is the Consult doomed to fail?
« on: August 23, 2018, 01:20:09 pm »
A thought occured to me; Kellhus pretty much states that the hell witnessed through the Inverse Fire is something that's already happened/happening, because hell is outside the time spectrum of the world. He sees himself as something, while the Mutiliated and rest of the Consult (and I think, pretty much anyone who has looked at the Inverse Fire) witness themselves as being damned in hell.

So, my question is - if they're already in hell, then does that mean their eventual goal of shutting off the world is doomed to failure? Perhaps, not entirely, but they themselves will perish before they can escape damnation.

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The Unholy Consult / Two Questions
« on: August 06, 2018, 08:49:22 pm »
So, I've a couple of small questions, but lacking the time to read the books all over again, was wondering if anyone else had any answers to them.

1. Just who is it that tells Celmomas, that an Anasurimbor will return at the end of the world?

Pretty simple. Who is it, and how does he/she/it know? I recall him seeing Nau-Cayuti riding with the gods, and I think it was Nau-Cayuti who tells him this, but that makes things even more interesting - because wasn't it established now that Nau-Cayuti became the first incarnation of No-God (or something like that)?

It could just be the mad delusions of a dying man, but I feel like it's been a too significant plot point so far to just be that.

2. What is the purpose of the Dunyain?

Now, we know what they believe their purpose is... or was. But something doesn't add up on the way that they are.

This monastic order is blissfully isolated, only very rarely sending out their people outside to scout it out. It appears that they have no intention of ever abandoning their isolation for good and going out in the world (woe upon the world, if that ever happened) - and yet, for an order of people who've so obsessively bred out mimics and emotions, at least on the surfance level, they're also quite keen on researching the mimics of men.

I'm raising this point, because it factors into a theory of mine - the Shortest Path, manifestly proven false by the current point of the series, was never meant to lead the Dunyain to the Absolute, but to produce someone like Kellhus who could possess the World (though he appears to fallen short - but we'll see if the old fox has any schemes going on still!). Who could've devised this grand plan? It could've been Kellhus himself, when he finally reaches a point of existence where he is no longer a man (dare I say, a God), seeding the Shortest Path into the world to close the loop of his creation - hell it could even be that way with Celmomas's prophecy. It could alternatively be Seswatha, though I don't know if he is really the type; when you think about it, the Mandate's purpose has been to master the metaphysical aspect of the world, and the Dunyain's purpose has been to master the physical aspect; and the perfect union of these disciplines is Kellhus.


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The Unholy Consult / The Celmomian Prophecy
« on: December 13, 2017, 09:09:27 pm »
I've been thinking about the Prophecy lately, and two questions emerged. First of all - who was the Anasurimbor at the end of the world? Is it an Anasurimbor yet to "happen" like the crab handed boy or Kayutas; was it Kellhus, or was it Kelmomas?

Secondly, the Prophecy was told to Celmomas by his son Nau-Cayuti, who was IIRC "riding with the Gods". This is interesting, because the last book revealed that Nau-Cayuti was exposed to the Inverse Fire, converted to Consult and merged with the No-God. So who did truly give the Prophecy to Celmomas? Was it the No-God/Nau-Cayuti, was it the gods themselves or was Nau-Cayuti's soul ultimately saved and redeemed?

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Literature / Miles Cameron's Traitor Son Cycle
« on: July 21, 2017, 01:57:30 am »
Curious if anyone has read this series of books. Here's a link to the first one:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13616278-the-red-knight

I finished the third one day, after finishing the previous two a few years back. I am not recommending this series in any way, I have actually grown to dislike it, and the only reason I kept reading is because I'm kind of a completionist, at these things, not sure if I'll pick up the fourth book though.

Anyway, I hate every character (the lead character is a huge Mary Sue that excels at everything he does, and not in a übermensch Kellhus kind of way; various other characters have very weak and simple personalities, etc.), three books in and I am not even sure what the story is supposed to be about and, well, the setting. A lot of fantasy writers toil hard to create deep, engaging and rich settings; the author here has had the brilliant idea of just ripping off the real world, bending it slightly, adding magic to it and calling it a day.

To his credit, he knows the Middle Ages well; not specifically the politics of it, but the warfare and life style. Most of it reads as a filler, though; there is hardly any depth.

Anyway, why did I open this thread? Because I'm curious if anyone else has read it, and how they compared it to Bakker. Maybe five or ten years ago, I would've eaten it up, but nowadays, it is simply not very engaging at all.

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I wasn't sure where precisely to put this thread, but this felt like as good a place as any.

I think plenty of people have taken a different look to fantasy genre after Bakker, so I'm not exactly asking about that. What I'm asking about is, how has reading the Second Apocalypse novels influenced your life directly?

For me, I can give two examples:

I'm a law student, whose main interest lies in positive law. So philosophy of law classes didn't ever do much to interest me, particularly because I had a dry, old teacher. He was the kind of teacher who seemed to grade better, the more you wrote, the better grade he gave. So, to make the paper fuller, and generally sound like I have any idea what I'm talking about, I've more than once wrote Dunyain axioms in his exams, most notably "what comes before determines what comes after". Funnily enough, I've gotten good grades with little to no study, so the creative ways in which I managed to bullshit seemed to work!

Anyway, another, more substanial example would be the way the books influenced my general outlook on life. Before reading them, I was a believer in free will for vanity's sake, if nothing else. The Dunyain description of the worldborn, as being slave to their urges and outside influences without ever realizing it, made a lot of sense to me. I think I've become something of a determinist as a consequence of this.

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The Unholy Consult / [TUC Spoilers] The Thousandfold Thought
« on: July 09, 2017, 01:22:19 am »
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The Unholy Consult / [TUC Spoilers] Sorweel
« on: July 06, 2017, 05:45:46 pm »
So...

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The Great Ordeal / In the light of added knowledge, a few thoughts
« on: March 29, 2017, 03:51:13 am »
Hey, looks like I forgot about Bakker for a while, but doing a re-read of TGO made me think on several things. Rather than make a new thread for each, I thought a blanket thread would be better.

My first thoughts are on the Dûnyain. A practical question I'd have is, how do they avoid incest and its genetic ramifications for a thousand years, in a small community? Secondly, isn't it a bit suspicious that a sect so dispossessed of passions, particularly any facial gestures, and has no intention of actually interacting with rest of the world, is so obsessive in mastering them? A pet theory I have is that the first founders of Dûnyain, or perhaps a figure that influenced them, specifically influenced them towards their Shortest Path so that they'd create an individual like Kellhus that could possess entire nations, to the ends that he does.

A second thought that occured to me is; how close do you think the Anasurimbor conception of the Absolute is, to Fanimry? I am a bit too busy buried under studies to actually do a full re-read of the first trilogy, but as I recall, Fane alleged that there was a  Solitary God, and the idols the Three-Seas worshipped were demons - now, the Anasurimbor don't actually believe that the Hundred are demons (but then again, what precisely is a demon?), but their perception of God, at its essence, seems to be solitary. In fact, Kellhus's full blooded Dûnyain son (what's his name - I keep forgetting names in this series), without the prior knowledge of Three Seas religions, perceives the  Absolute as being singular. What are your thoughts? Do you think Fane was the true prophet, to begin with?

A third point I have in mind is about Kellhus himself. Being a fan of the character, I'm inclined to view him more positively (or at least, beyond good and evil), and I've been thinking about two things in particular. First is, his conversation in the original trilogy with Moenghus; basically, they're discussing the worldborn, and Kellhus asks (in relation to informing them) "But what about the Truth?", and Moenghus replies something like "they will never understand it, but you already know this, so why do you ask?". Now, the second thing is Kellhus's study of Proyas in the last book, where it is flated out stated that the purpose of the study is to discern the effects of the Truth on the worldborn. My thought is, maybe the twist of the story isn't that Kellhus is the bad guy, but that he is the (kinda, sorta, slightly, relatively) good guy, and that he seeks to share the Truth with the world. The Truth being, I suppose, that they are ruled by their inner urges, without free will, and that God does not have a personality like one that they ascribe to him, but is in fact beyond such things.

Actually, that raises another question - if the Absolute is indeed beyond care, beyond good and evil, then why does it create a code of morality? In fact, is the damnation that it brings even related to morality? Because I don't think we've yet seen a person judged by Mimara, and was not damned; the only thing I can recall as being judged to be good is the chorae.

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