The Second Apocalypse

Earwa => The No-God => The Crabikiad => Topic started by: Madness on September 08, 2017, 03:40:12 pm

Title: What's the story!?
Post by: Madness on September 08, 2017, 03:40:12 pm
Sounding the Plate, what're people's thoughts on The Crabikiad?

What is it that the Boy, Crabicus, gets up to?
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: H on September 08, 2017, 04:52:00 pm
After I reread Blood Meridian, I'll get back to you.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: Redeagl on September 08, 2017, 04:58:51 pm
I have no idea for the time being, and can't figure out why he has a book just for himself. Last time we saw him he wasn't far from the Agongorea, no?  So maybe it chronicle his survival in the wilderness and his philosophical changes?  I read a theory here that I really liked, it says that Crabicus will encounter a secret cult like his also nameless ancestor did in the First Apocalypse.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: profgrape on September 08, 2017, 05:31:17 pm
It could be that the boy is picked up either by the Scylvendi host or Achamian and co as they head south. 

One of the storylines I expect to read in future books is one where Achamian goes to Atrithau (whose king was recently killed by CuS) and is like Seswatha, is expelled. 
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: TaoHorror on September 09, 2017, 02:49:24 am
I'm confused ... Bakker is writing a book The Crabikiad? Will this be part of the next books proper or a side story?
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: Monkhound on September 09, 2017, 05:36:54 pm
I'm not sure, but I also sense a parallel coming relating to Oinaral Lastborn. Not sure if it's The Boy who's going to get that story, or Akka's and Mim's son.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: TLEILAXU on September 09, 2017, 06:52:58 pm
I have no idea for the time being, and can't figure out why he has a book just for himself. Last time we saw him he wasn't far from the Agongorea, no?  So maybe it chronicle his survival in the wilderness and his philosophical changes?  I read a theory here that I really liked, it says that Crabicus will encounter a secret cult like his also nameless ancestor did in the First Apocalypse.
Maybe not specifically a secret cult, but something that will mirror what happened during the first apocalypse. Regardless I have little idea of what the story's going to be, but I'm pretty confident the world WILL be shut-off.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: solipsisticurge on September 10, 2017, 07:08:29 pm
Bakker's hinted we might get a look at Eanna, and that Crabicus' story doesn't have much overlap with the rest of the events of the Second Apocalypse. He might beeline east and become the equivalent of a metagnostic Shaman.

Anything other than the Eannan tribe swooping in last second with super-Tekne to save the day.

Otherwise, who knows? It's a novel chance to explore aspects of the setting through completely unconditioned eyes, with Kellhus-level intellect unbound by Dunyain ideological pursuits.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: profgrape on September 11, 2017, 04:36:00 pm
I mentioned this in another thread.  But I'm wondering if Crabicus ended up following the Scylvendi to Golgatterath.  And that the Crabikiad might be the story of the boy confronting the only remaining Dunyain while the rest of the action heads south.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: H on September 11, 2017, 05:35:51 pm
I mentioned this in another thread.  But I'm wondering if Crabicus ended up following the Scylvendi to Golgatterath.  And that the Crabikiad might be the story of the boy confronting the only remaining Dunyain while the rest of the action heads south.

I don't know, he seemed pretty apt to get away from the Scylvendi, knowing they would want to kill him.

I think he strikes east, meeting up with Kosoter, to play the role of "the kid" and "the Judge" from Blood Meridian.

I'll leave this litterary analysys here, more for my own ease of find later (http://oak.ucc.nau.edu/jgr6/Mccarthy_blood.htm) than anything else.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: Madness on September 13, 2017, 12:48:37 am
I'm confused ... Bakker is writing a book The Crabikiad? Will this be part of the next books proper or a side story?

Lol, no. Bakker said here and at Zaudunyanicon that he envisions TNG as a kind of new Sagas. He's also said across those interviews and at the AMA that he's focusing on the Boy's story next (which is part of the main story), which will probably be its own book and will likely stand-alone in terms of the rest of the follow-up he's leaked so far. He said at Zaudunyanicon straight up that if he wrote it after the other two or more books of TNG that people would think it a cheap add-on so he wants to do it first.

Wilshire dubbed the Boy Crabicus and pail following along the new Sagas sentiment called Crabicus' story, The Crabikiad.

Also, noted, that Bakker didn't seem to like at all that those two fan-namings had occurred, which garnered much laughter at Zaudunyanicon.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: Madness on September 13, 2017, 01:39:04 am
I'll leave this literary analysis here, more for my own ease of find later (http://oak.ucc.nau.edu/jgr6/Mccarthy_blood.htm) than anything else.

Meant to say, H, great reading.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: H on September 13, 2017, 11:06:23 am
I'll leave this literary analysis here, more for my own ease of find later (http://oak.ucc.nau.edu/jgr6/Mccarthy_blood.htm) than anything else.

Meant to say, H, great reading.

The more I reread the book itself and read about it, there are so many seeming parallels to Eärwa it's almost overwhelming...
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: Madness on September 13, 2017, 06:49:58 pm
I'll leave this literary analysis here, more for my own ease of find later (http://oak.ucc.nau.edu/jgr6/Mccarthy_blood.htm) than anything else.

Meant to say, H, great reading.

The more I reread the book itself and read about it, there are so many seeming parallels to Eärwa it's almost overwhelming...

Bakker has taught McCarthy and apparently its one of the two books always on him when he writes?
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: H on September 13, 2017, 07:57:06 pm
I'll leave this literary analysis here, more for my own ease of find later (http://oak.ucc.nau.edu/jgr6/Mccarthy_blood.htm) than anything else.

Meant to say, H, great reading.

The more I reread the book itself and read about it, there are so many seeming parallels to Eärwa it's almost overwhelming...

Bakker has taught McCarthy and apparently its one of the two books always on him when he writes?

Yeah, saw that in perusing the AMA.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: Cuttlefish on November 09, 2017, 02:57:27 pm
What has made this series what it is were always the Dunyain. In addition to personally considering Kellhus's point of view delightful to read, it's objective that the subversion of usual fantasy tropes came from Kellhus's influence in the world; a world united before the evil was reading to face it, the fight brought to their doorstep, etc. So that's where Crabicus enters the fray - he is the character whose Dunyain mastery will prevent the last trilogy from being a repeat of the unlikely heroes uniting to prevent the destruction of the world. I'm nore interested in how he'll be different to his grandfather - posessing all the power of the Dunyain, but very little of their education, what new philosophy/religion or maybe even school of magic will he come up with? Anyway, every fantasy series has its heroes, all sorts of them, but only the Bakkerverse has the Dunyain, so I expect much from the last of the Dunyain.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: Wilshire on November 09, 2017, 03:10:18 pm
Don't forget about the 4 dunyain running the Consult now. I hope they aren't off-screen the entire series.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: Cuttlefish on November 09, 2017, 03:15:14 pm
Don't forget about the 4 dunyain running the Consult now. I hope they aren't off-screen the entire series.

Oh yeah, them too... Well, four is more than one, so Crabicus is handicapped (heh) in the race. But the four Dunyain are constrained by the Dunyain dogmas, while Crabicus is free to grasp the world all by himself, without a thousand years of conditioning, so maybe one will become more than four. But yeah, that's a good point, even without Crabicus, the ongoing Dunyain presence would make things different... Perhaps ending with the Consult's plan being accomplished and the world being sealed.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: H on November 09, 2017, 03:20:33 pm
I don't know his role is that of a hero.  In fact, I venture to speculate that his role is largely same as "The Kid" in Blood Meridian.  He is the narrative exposition piece.  This is why he "has no name" and "has never needed one."

This is also probably why Bakker says he wants to write that story first, because indeed, it would seem like a pointless addendum on he story, because Crabicus does "nothing of real consequence."  It's more a story, like Blood Meridian as the “the ultimate Western” so the Crabikid as the "ultimate fantasy."  And by ultimate I don't really mean best, I mean, distilled in expression.  It's an "end-game" to the genre.  Where tSA was sort of the same kind of thing for Epic Fantasy, a distilled and inverted story, so will this be, but for the coming-of-age, bildungsroman-type of fantasy.  There won't be a hero at all.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: Thing called Sarcellus on November 28, 2017, 02:58:28 am
Crabby, although is a full blood Dunyain, was never conditioned.  He received half assed training by a lone Dunyain, while on the run, would be shoddy at best.  Kellhus had 20+ years to prepare for his final showdown.  I doubt that Mog will hang out waiting for Junior to get his shit together.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: TaoHorror on November 28, 2017, 08:44:12 pm
Crabby, although is a full blood Dunyain, was never conditioned.  He received half assed training by a lone Dunyain, while on the run, would be shoddy at best.  Kellhus had 20+ years to prepare for his final showdown.  I doubt that Mog will hang out waiting for Junior to get his shit together.

Ah, yes, but Mog doesn't know about him - mystery, what are his capabilities, what surprising strengths will we see from NOT being conditioned, yet still Dunyain? The 1/2 breed may well surprise us ... or Bakker will flush him out as a dead-end like Sorweel.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: TLEILAXU on November 28, 2017, 09:30:00 pm
Crabby, although is a full blood Dunyain, was never conditioned.  He received half assed training by a lone Dunyain, while on the run, would be shoddy at best.  Kellhus had 20+ years to prepare for his final showdown.  I doubt that Mog will hang out waiting for Junior to get his shit together.

Ah, yes, but Mog doesn't know about him - mystery, what are his capabilities, what surprising strengths will we see from NOT being conditioned, yet still Dunyain? The 1/2 breed may well surprise us ... or Bakker will flush him out as a dead-end like Sorweel.
Wait what, Sorweel wasn't a dead end, I mean, beside his end being dying. His death section with Yatwer calling him to her realm was beautiful and integral to the story, to what we lose when Meaning dies.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: Madness on November 29, 2017, 05:15:29 pm
I will never understand this distaste for Sorweel's arc in TAE. I, for one, really enjoyed it.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: Dora Vee on November 29, 2017, 06:48:03 pm
Quote
His death section with Yatwer calling him to her realm was beautiful and integral to the story, to what we lose when Meaning dies.

It won't mean anything to those who are damned.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: H on November 30, 2017, 12:14:57 pm
Quote
His death section with Yatwer calling him to her realm was beautiful and integral to the story, to what we lose when Meaning dies.

It won't mean anything to those who are damned.

I don't quite follow what you mean here, Dora.  The end of the meaning that Sorweel experiences, is actually most "meaningful" for those who are damned.  That's the whole reason the Consult embarked on the path of Apocalypse.
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: Dora Vee on November 30, 2017, 05:48:08 pm
I meant that they're not going to care about the heavens if they know that they're damned anyway. So, they wouldn't mind if the entire system is scrapped. That is, IF they're aware that they won't go to the heavens no matter what they do.

I thought that the Consult was trying to destroy "meaning."
Title: Re: What's the story!?
Post by: H on December 01, 2017, 12:41:50 pm
I meant that they're not going to care about the heavens if they know that they're damned anyway. So, they wouldn't mind if the entire system is scrapped. That is, IF they're aware that they won't go to the heavens no matter what they do.

I thought that the Consult was trying to destroy "meaning."

Well, yes they are trying to end "meaning," but I am admittedly using meaning in two different ways which is confusing (even to me).

In another thread, I wrote:

"What the death of meaning gets at is not a death of human consciousness, or of human society (for the most part), it's the death of what we would call "Higher Meaning" in modern parlance.  This presumes that "Lower Meaning" is actually not meaningful, which you can agree or disagree with, but in Eärwa this is presumed to be true.  Let me operationalize what the difference between these are.  Let's take an example:

Aurang rapes and murders thousands and then dies.  "Higher meaning" has Aurang's soul damned.  "Lower meaning" has Aurang remembered as a bad guy (ok, really bad guy).  Without the soul, there is no conveyance of meaning beyond death.  So, if Higher Meaning is gone, so is the accounting for what Aurang did; lower meaning might write what down what he did (for example), but that will only be an account of what he did.

So, when the No-God sunders Eärwa from the Outside, whatever happens loses any eternal quality.  It loses any eternal consequence and so loses any eternal meaning.  Everything is transient and pointless, except in the mundane terrestrial sense of meat begetting more meat.  You were a righteous and pious person?  Doesn't matter, you die and there is nothing.  You were a callous and capricious person?  Doesn't matter you die and there is nothing.

The "question" then is, what divides Humans from Sranc, at that point?  Supply your own answer, at this point.  Do humans, absent of "consequence" regress to such a "primal" state?  Do they strive to (re)create that higher meaning?"

So, it really isn't "Meaning" that the Consult seeks to destroy, but rather what we might call "Higher Meaning."  Unfortunately, I lack the vocabulary to disentangle the word meaning from itself, which ends up being confusing.  So, the loss of what Sorweel experiences is actually meaningful for both the Consult (it's what they don't want) and the rest of the world (what they do want).

(I actually don't think we disagree on anything, it's just a confusing thing to talk about.)