Serwe

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« Reply #15 on: June 03, 2013, 01:52:28 pm »
Quote from: Ajokli
Quote from: Sideris
I get tired of the blind fanaticism, really.

Yes, it's her character's point and I fully understand she's had an utterly abhorrent life. I CAN get behind that and sympathize, truly. But that fact is stamped out about halfway through Darkness and utterly vanishes in Warrior-Prophet under the tide of her devotion. There's just an irritation about her. Yes, she's hot; yes, she's desired by all men and a perfect tool for Kellhus; yes, she's a bit loony... but I just can't like her. There's too much 'hurr Kellhus hurr my life for you hurr' for my tastes.

Perhaps poorly articulated, but this is what leaps to the forefront of my mind.

Bu..but she's hot

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« Reply #16 on: June 03, 2013, 01:52:36 pm »
Quote from: Sideris
:P

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« Reply #17 on: June 03, 2013, 01:52:43 pm »
Quote from: The Sharmat
Were we supposed to like her? I thought at best we were meant to pity.

I did find her interactions with Esmi interesting though. Without Kellhus' influence, Esmenet clearly would have hated her, and that shines through briefly on occasion. Just a few tantalizing hints of maybe being able to escape the Dunyain's thrall. But no. Bakker continues to tease with false hope.

This world is an outrage.

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« Reply #18 on: June 03, 2013, 01:52:50 pm »
Quote from: Sideris
I always flash to Aurang's speech whenever that phrase is thrown around. So awesome.

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« Reply #19 on: June 03, 2013, 01:52:56 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
I'm looking for the interveiw where Scott talks about Serwe as being representitive of the world and one of the most important characters in the first trilogy(?)
Can someone point me in that direction? 
I have some ideas about her in light of the further layers of revelation from WLW and TJE that might be worthy of discussion.

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« Reply #20 on: June 03, 2013, 01:53:03 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
shit, there's tons of embedded meaning in her first chapter as a POV, the whole world shudders when she is wronged.

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« Reply #21 on: June 03, 2013, 01:54:26 pm »
Quote from: Duskweaver
I wonder if there is any significance to her being omitted from the Zaudunyani Circumfix.

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« Reply #22 on: June 03, 2013, 01:54:32 pm »
Quote from: bbaztek
Something is really fishy about Serwe.

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« Reply #23 on: June 03, 2013, 01:54:39 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Remember how she complains about being woken up by Kelhus at one point, complaining 'but the hoooorns, the horns haven't sounded!'. Then moments latter they sound.

Yes. Fishy.

She can literally see the future somehow enough that she makes a point she gets to sleep until the horns sound!

And she can fly!

Okay, no, not so much that, but...

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« Reply #24 on: June 03, 2013, 01:54:45 pm »
Quote from: Wilshire
Edit:
Irrelevant after posts where merged

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« Reply #25 on: June 03, 2013, 01:54:51 pm »
Quote from: Auriga
I also suspect Serwë will become post-humously more important later on, although I have no idea how. There's probably a lot of hidden clues in her early chapters.

It's obvious why Bakker would view Serwë as "representative for the world" - she's everything Bakker has pointed out about ignorant people who are being unknowingly manipulated all the time while being convinced of their own moral rightness.

Quote from: Duskweaver
I wonder if there is any significance to her being omitted from the Zaudunyani Circumfix.

The Serwës of the world are usually overshadowed by prophets and messiahs.

But yeah, she was forgotten very fast. It's almost as if she was a shameful secret in the Aspect-Emperor's past.

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« Reply #26 on: June 03, 2013, 01:54:59 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
Ah...
I have this, I believe there is more in another interveiw, but...
Quote from: RSB
I self consciously picked three mysogynistic types for my female characters (just as I picked fantasy cliche types for my male characters): the whore, the waif, and the harridan. Earwa is a brutally patriarchal world, much as our own was (which makes our own fascination with fantastic versions of our past that much more peculiar), and I wanted to explore the significance of those types in such a world. Serwe is obviously the waif, the frail innocent wronged by the machinations of a cruel world. As such she had to die.

But it was the innocence part, that struck me as the most significant and the most redemptive. Without giving too much away, there is a manner in which Serwe is the most important character in the book.

Now this statement about her innocence as a redemptive quality coupled with the notation of her importance...
There are several other dangling threads about redemption as an alternative to damnation and oblivion and Mimara's glimpses of the gold of redemption beneath the stain of damnation.

Serwe's recollection of 'fruitless' prayers to the ancestor scrolls, yet ultimately she is delivered to Kellhus.
She ?recognizes? Kellhus' apparently divine mission of modernization well before he begins to use this religious connotation to dominate circumstance and, of course, is the first to see his haloes.  Of course, it is her innocence that causes Kellhus to use this tactic to condition her, but could not this also be 'divine' machination (as per WLW)?

Ultimately, she provides the miracle of the circumfix that allows Kellhus to ensare the holy war and convinces Kellhus that he is chosen.  Remember he was bound hand and foot against her corpse and yet somehow rises up with her burning heart in his hand when they cut him down.

Perhaps it is Serwe that is the true prophet of the Thosandfold Thought (as an agency of the outside in its own right)?

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« Reply #27 on: June 03, 2013, 01:55:06 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote
Kellhus watched while the Scylvendi took her again. With her whimpers, her suffocated cries, it seemed the ground beneath slowly spun, as though stars had stopped their cycle and the earth had begun to wheel instead. There was something . . . something here, he could sense. Something outraged. From what darkness had this come?
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 383). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Is Serwe an axis upon which the whole world--nay, the whole universe, turns?

can the prayers of one devout, innocent, wronged woman change the course of the entire world?

Or is Kellhus sensing the entirety of the thousandfold thought transforming in this instance, as it reacts to this moment, causing everything projected up until this point to change.  By taking on Serwe, Kellhus doesn't kill Cnaiur at this point and make his own, way, something he could easily do.  By taking Serwe into their party, it becomes all downhill an inevitable and unavoidable path to joining and seizing the holy war. That Serwe, who causes this path to happen will also be the key to its only possible success.

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« Reply #28 on: June 03, 2013, 01:55:14 pm »
Quote from: bbaztek
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote
Kellhus watched while the Scylvendi took her again. With her whimpers, her suffocated cries, it seemed the ground beneath slowly spun, as though stars had stopped their cycle and the earth had begun to wheel instead. There was something . . . something here, he could sense. Something outraged. From what darkness had this come?
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 383). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Is Serwe an axis upon which the whole world--nay, the whole universe, turns?

can the prayers of one devout, innocent, wronged woman change the course of the entire world?

Or is Kellhus sensing the entirety of the thousandfold thought transforming in this instance, as it reacts to this moment, causing everything projected up until this point to change.  By taking on Serwe, Kellhus doesn't kill Cnaiur at this point and make his own, way, something he could easily do.  By taking Serwe into their party, it becomes all downhill an inevitable and unavoidable path to joining and seizing the holy war. That Serwe, who causes this path to happen will also be the key to its only possible success.

This forum is ruining the series for me because I know when TUC eventually comes it will probably never match how thematically rich and nuanced this board is anticipating it to be. That's not a slam, lockesnow. I really do like your theory. There's something very powerful about the concept of an incredibly hostile universe whose fulcrum is nevertheless an innocent, tormented girl.

I'm of the opinion that Bakker is gonna totally shock all of his feminist detractors by revealing that Serwe (or maybe even Mim) is in fact The God in miniature. In a universe so dominated by the male appetite/male rationality/the male desire to control, revealing the ultimate force that set it into motion was in fact an embodiment of Love and Compassion would be really cool.

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« Reply #29 on: June 03, 2013, 01:55:38 pm »
Quote from: Wilshire
Sorry bbaztek im gunna have to disagree with you there. Glance through a couple of Bakker's interviews, and basically lays out why them "feminist detractors" will always read the text in such a way that makes Bakker a misogynist.