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Messages - Parsh

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1
The Unholy Consult / Re: TUC Goodreads Giveaway!
« on: July 20, 2017, 02:47:34 pm »

Did you win an official copy or was it an ARC?

ARC. There are a lot of typos, but then, given what I've seen from Overlook, the name refers to their copy editing procedures, so most of them will still be in the official copy.

Anyway, inside the ARC I'll be reading about the ARK. It all fits together.



Lol, especially with Bakker, all those one-off sentences across seven books that add up to really interesting moments.

Definitely.

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The Unholy Consult / Re: TUC Goodreads Giveaway!
« on: July 19, 2017, 06:15:14 pm »

I'm glad for all parties involved that it worked out.

Also, tbh, probably WAY better to take your time and actually... 'read' ... the book we all waited all this time for. Not sure I understand speedreading it in massive sessions - that just leads to forgetting and/or missing crucial details.

Of course, you were summoned here by mention of your name, so its not your fault ;) .

Yeah, I'm not really a speed reader. My wife is, but then a month later she can't remember names of characters, the name of the book, the overall plot... you know, all those minor details.  :D 

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The Unholy Consult / Re: TUC Goodreads Giveaway!
« on: July 19, 2017, 05:53:34 pm »
Right, Parsh.

Whose name unfortunately reminds me of that South Park episode knocking on eighties ski movies. "Oh, hey there, Darsh."

Jokes, Parsh, if you're reading ;).

I wasn't, but now I am.  I wouldn't let myself even click on the folder for this forum until the book arrived, which it finally did yesterday. I'm just 100 pages in, and haven't found as much time as I want to read this (I mean, obviously not, because I've had the book 24 hours and I'm only 100 pages in).

And here I am complaining about time to read, so what do I do? Oh right, come log into the forum. Clearly, I am not a self-moving soul....

But anyway, yes, I won a copy on Goodreads. Which is good, since it meant I didn't have to argue with my wife about whether to buy a copy or feed our children.

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General Misc. / Re: [TV Spoilers] Game of Thrones (S7)
« on: July 15, 2017, 05:47:36 pm »
If you haven't seen The Black Person's Guide to Game of Thrones, do yourself a favor.

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General Earwa / Re: Man, this sucks!
« on: July 12, 2017, 02:05:13 pm »
The good news for me was that I won the Goodreads giveaway, so I didn't have to shell out for this book (which I would have, even if my wife looked askance and grumbled). But as a result I have no idea when my copy will arrive. Seeing the number of posts swell in the folder for The Unholy Consult, I despair a little each day.

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The Great Ordeal / Re: Erratics and the Ten Yolk Legion
« on: July 06, 2017, 07:02:49 pm »
They managed to rampage through Ishuäl just fine as well :)

Actually, they didn't rampage through Ishuäl that well: they tore down the walls well enough, but when the battle moved into the labyrinthine passages below Ishuäl, they got lost in its depths, they went even nuttier, and ended up burying themselves in desperate attempts to escape.
Sounds like rampaging to me lol. The hallmark of a rampage is kind of just general destruction to a specific location. Maybe I'm using the word wrong?

I guess it was more the "just fine" part that I was questioning. I mean, when I rampage through a place, I avoid dropping the ceiling on myself. That's how I judge a good rampage: not merely in the number of things destroyed, nor in the thoroughness of their destruction, but in whether or not I myself am numbered among those things.

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The Great Ordeal / Re: Erratics and the Ten Yolk Legion
« on: July 06, 2017, 12:55:03 pm »
They managed to rampage through Ishuäl just fine as well :)

Actually, they didn't rampage through Ishuäl that well: they tore down the walls well enough, but when the battle moved into the labyrinthine passages below Ishuäl, they got lost in its depths, they went even nuttier, and ended up burying themselves in desperate attempts to escape.

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The Great Ordeal / Re: [TGO Spoilers] Why did he return?
« on: September 09, 2016, 06:07:59 pm »
I agree with Yellow here.

To the original question, I'm wondering if perhaps Kellhus wasn't so much abandoning the empire as he was appearing to abandon the empire to draw out his enemies, so that he could come back as he did and efficiently wipe them out. Granted, he seems to have just plain gotten lucky (so to speak) with this White Luck Warrior business. But still. It would have been a lot of work to deal directly with the Yatwer cult, the rebellion in Kian, and Zeum not being totally on board. So he leaves under the "while the cat's away the mice will play" theory, and then boom! He's back to tie up all the loose ends.

Granted, the fact that the timing of this worked out so well is a bit tough to credit even for Kellhus, but maybe it's just one more thing we have to accept about Kellhus's abilities.

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General Misc. / Re: What are you watching?
« on: August 17, 2016, 06:03:43 pm »
Not a lot of time to watch anything, but I carve out time for:

1) Game of Thrones
2) Walking Dead

I'm about halfway through the last season of Breaking Bad, but I've been stuck there for probably four months now. I imagined I would enjoy Better Call Saul if I ever finish BB. My wife and I watched the first season of Daredevil and meant to get back to it, but... And then there was The Man in the High Castle, which we enjoyed well enough. Every so often we catch up on John Oliver's show.

I've heard great things about Stranger Things but haven't checked it out.

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The Great Ordeal / Re: [TGO Spoilers] Whale Mothers
« on: August 17, 2016, 04:16:26 pm »
I will admit that I was somewhat surprised that the Dunyain went in the direction Bakker took them. What I mean is, when a medieval-ish and/or tribal society is presented, and kind of equality between the sexes would be more surprising than not. So when we're presented a world in which rape and abuse of women is common, that doesn't strike me as "here's an author with misogynistic tendencies."

So we have the Dunyain. And for my part I've always said that Kellhus as their representative is a mixture of appealing and appalling. But with the way that they see through the arbitrary nature of culture, as the darkness that comes before, I thought we might see something like equality. But of course, there also hasn't really been any hint of that.

And, of course, we have it on the authority of the Judging Eye that, in this world at least, women are "less" than men. In other words, it's not "just" cultural. And I can see how that opens Bakker up to criticism: it's an artistic choice he's making, but why this choice?

But then, I'm an atheist. I don't believe that our world is one in which damnation, gods, etc are true concepts. Should I get all bent out of shape because this secondary world is one where those are objective facts? Earwa isn't our world, even if it sometimes rhymes with it. The world is a big what if: what if the world worked this way. And one of the deep things about this world is that even though it works differently (at least, I'm pretty sure it works differently) from our world, it's still true that, just as in our world, the exact nature of that reality is not exactly obvious or agreed upon by everyone.

Anyway, that's my $.02.

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Literature / Re: YOU MUST TELL ME ... What else are you reading?
« on: August 14, 2016, 08:25:13 pm »
Just finished Half a War last night by Abercrombie. Great twist to the end of the book, usual JA fashion. I've been on my TSA reread for over a month, just digging in here and there, taking my time. I think I'll finish up this Shattered Sea Trilogy, since its really good and he's just so enjoyable to read, love his humor. Then, I'll try and give Tigana by Kavriel another go.

I read the Shattered Sea trilogy this summer and quite enjoyed it. It was my first exposure to Abercrombie. I also read Best Served Cold this summer and plan to read all the rest of it when I get a chance.

Right now, I'm reading Emperor of Thorns (finishing up another trilogy that I started this summer). As it happens, though, I am an educator and school is starting, so my reading time is rapidly drying up. It's a shame, because I still have an awful lot of books on my TBR pile, some of them physically sitting in my house, others taking up space on my iPod in the Kindle app.

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The Great Ordeal / Re: [TGO Spoilers] Explaining Koringhus
« on: August 14, 2016, 07:46:26 pm »
So raping a child and killing her by suffocating her to shut her up are sins that can be redeemed?

I'm not sure that Mimara can pardon sin at all. She can say i forgive you but i'm not sure that actually does anything.

You've got Galian confused with the one that was going to rape her the first time.

Either way, I'm with themerchant in wondering whether Mimara can pardon sin at all. After all, it's the Judging Eye, not the Judging Mouth.  :D

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The Great Ordeal / Re: [TGO Spoilers] Explaining Koringhus
« on: August 10, 2016, 01:55:18 am »
That was a pretty dense section, and I'm sure I don't understand everything that's going on. Some very good elucidation here. I'll try to add what I see:

1) One more thought on the "Zero God" idea: he first talks about "zero" as any point in space. There seemed to be an implication to me of, well, like imagine a graph from mathematics. (0,0) is the center. Each person is--potentially--the center, but only (as the Dunyain) if they can make themselves the measure of all things ("Submit to the rule of another and you will measure as he measures."). But Koringhus realizes that the existence of the God, the Absolute as something more than an ideal that they're reaching for: The God is, in fact, that zero point from which true judgement is passed, and it "had found his own measure wanting."

But then, several scenes later, as he reflects on the whole "Zero made One," which seems to be related to the love for his child that doesn't really fit into Dunyain culture, when he gets to this point, from Koringhus' perspective, "The Eye watches. Approves." He seems to believe that his "revelation" has been approved. If the JE approves, does this mean that he is, in this moment, not damned? Is this--at least in his view--a redemptive moment? Does he kill himself because he believes he's not damned (which I suppose would be a good time to die)? If he kills himself because he knows his damnation... well, this seems like a strange choice. Sure, sure--there's despair, there's the qirri talking. But the fact of damnation seems to argue for either trying to find a way out of damnation or, at the very least, avoiding it as long as possible.

When we get the suicide itself, the text reads:

Quote
So quickly...
The events that transform us slip...
So quickly.
The face, cut into all expressions, all faces.
Eyes gazing wet from mutilation.
Fixed upon something that runs as he runs, a place he can only pursue, never reach...
Unless he leaps.
The Eye understood, even if the woman did not.

This is why I think he believes himself saved. He's been transformed, but he recognizes the very human difficulty of holding onto any transformation. As noted, it's a "leap of faith" that he's taking.

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Introduce Yourself / Re: Just another ignorant soul looking for truth
« on: August 10, 2016, 01:03:53 am »
Welcome aboard!

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The Great Ordeal / Re: [TGO Spoilers] Prophecy as viramsata
« on: August 10, 2016, 12:54:25 am »


Well, does this seem like viramsata?  In a way, yes, it is possible is we discount the time paradox.  The prophecy is one of the main reasons why Kellhus is able to gain such power.  In fact, it is the reason he isn't ended by Akka straight away.  It's also the reason he gains the Gnosis, without that he would never have been able to best any sorcerers, let alone dominate them.

So, is the prophecy a lie?  Well, no, but it is a self-fulfilling truth.  It is the reason itself is true.  Therefor at some point, it was false, and yet, it never was.  In other words, it made itself true.  It is actually the greatest piece of viramsata ever, a lie made literally true.

I'm not sure I'm buying this as "self-fulfilling prophesy" (unless Kellhus is, in fact, somehow the source) and I'll tell you why:

First, I feel like it's too specific, calling for an Anasurimbor to return at the end. The Anasurimbor line could have died out (in fact, it almost did in the prologue to TDTCB). The could have never emerged from Ishual (as far as we know, Moe wasn't influenced by the prophesy to come out and Kell didn't know about it). But to fulfill the prophesy, it had to be an Anasurimbor, not just, I don't, an ancient king of the north or something even more vague.

Second, it's the vision that we get--it's not just words, proclaiming that an Anasurimbor will return... it's the fact that, thousands of years before Kellhus is born, Celmomas sees him. Well, okay, that's an assumption, based on the decapitants in the vision. But it's pretty distinctive, and I suspect that's why Akka wakes screaming from the dream. Granted, he neither explicitly confirms or denies that he has seen, through Celmomas' eyes, Kellhus. But that seems to be what's happening.

Additionally, there's the fact of the Consult becoming/being very active in the Three Seas at the time of the First Holy War. They were bringing about the end of the world whether Akka or Kelhus did anything about it.

Even leaving that aside, with the White Luck and Yatwer, we've seen intimations that the gods are capable of seeing future events... even if it's at least somehow possible for Kelmomas to (accidentally) subvert the future that they've already seen.

Maybe we're talking past each other rather than really arguing, but this seems like some real prophesy going on. I'm not seeing it as a lie that made itself true--just because knowing the prophesy may have influenced the actions of some people involved in fulfilling the prophesy, I don't see that as the same thing as "self-fulfilling," unless every prophesy is, by definition, self-fulfilling unless no one involved in its fulfillment is privy to the prophesy, and that seems like too high of a bar to be reasonable.


On the "sweet things" well, he is telling him that his line doesn't end.  "One of of my seed" harkens right to his "seeds" comment about Ishual.  In other words, Cel was very concerned about the line living on.  Here is "Gilgaol" to say that the seeds indeed succeeded, that the line does live on.

Good point. I guess it's all in your perspective, eh?

I don't know if Gilgaol is really the source, or not.  Maybe it is Seswatha.  Maybe it is actually Kellhus.  In any case though, Kellhus is the end of the world (as it was).  If Kellhus succeeds or if the Consult succeeds, Earwa isn't ever going to be the same.  This is the End, one way or another.

Fair enough. I think my money's on Gilgaol actually sending the vision, but even if that's the case, I don't know what to make of it.

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