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For an idle moment, her eyes followed the rafters of the immense willow they slept beneath. Limbs arched against the depths of further limbs, parted like a woman’s legs, and then parted again, winding away into great skirts of leaves that bobbed and dipped beneath the sunlit wind. She could feel the soul of the great tree, brooding, sorrowful, and infinitely wise, the rooted witness of innumerable suns.

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 405). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

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Might be that innocence has some kind of potency.
The dude that becomes WLW (in the ritual with Psatma) is young, perhaps he was chosen because of this quality?

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There are none so blind as those who have already decided what they will see. Chasing after people who have made up their minds that Bakker is a horrible misogynist and trying to convince them they're wrong would be pointless in the extreme. Anybody stupid and narrowminded enough to think that, because an author writes something set in a strongly patriarchal and misogynist world, that he must therefore approve of that sort of world, is not worth engaging with. I can only assume they think Margaret Atwood is a horrible misogynist, too, right? :roll:

Anyway, while the rest of the world seems to have forgotten Serwe, Kellhus clearly hasn't. Not only did he name one of his daughters after her (or, perhaps, 'allowed' Esme to do so), he then chose that daughter to turn witches into nuns: to take the lowest and most despised of women (even worse than whores!) and turn them into embodiments of the holy.

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Took Wilshire's advice and combined these threads. I'd hazard going back and reading the first two pages of new (old thread) additions to Curethan's thread.

Innocence, but also ignorance, seems key.

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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.

I think Bakker gets a little too starry-eyed about his philosophy. I don't like it when he's too quick to pull out the cognitive bias card, because it's kind of disingenuous to anyone who has a legitimate gripe with the series. That's not to say his feminist detractors are right (if anything the series is kind of misandrist), but smugly dismissing anyone whose views don't gel with your own as "sheeple gonna see what they wanna see lol" doesn't magically exempt you from the same cognitive pitfalls that you're pointing out. When the sum of human knowledge is infinitesimal compared to what's actually out there, being so quick to point out how everything we think we know is built on sand doesn't suddenly become more interesting with repetition.

Maybe you can just chalk this up to the cognitive bias stuff never grabbing my interest as powerfully as the rest of Bakker's philosophy/concepts. It's kinda weak and the most it's ever elicited from me when he uses it in a rebuttal is a "so what?"

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"So what?" is kind of the whole point.

You think he is misogynist, he says "nah, I wrote it, I think I'd know better than you reader".
Basically saying So what?

Instead of him dropping himself into a conversation that he couldn't care less about, he points out the obvious, saying that it is a waste of time to argue the point. I'd agree with that.

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Perhaps she actually gives Kellhus his haloes*? Rather than saw them first? The origin point of them? That might even be the reason for the whole Serwe heart rip thing, as she was his boost up, but now he thinks he's beyond her?


* Serwe is master chief! Holy shit! It's metroid all over again!

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because it's kind of disingenuous to anyone who has a legitimate gripe with the series.

What's a legitimate gripe, though?

For some, what seems a legitimate gripe to them seems to be if they feel something is sexist, that's all the evidence required. As if feelings could never produce a false positive? As if if you feel outrage, then that means there definately is something to be outraged about (as if it's a known known)

At least in terms of that particular type of 'legitimate' gripe, I think the cognitive bias claims are perfectly apt.

If it's another type of 'legitimate gripe' that's different from that, what is it?

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Perhaps she actually gives Kellhus his haloes? Rather than saw them first? The origin point of them? That might even be the reason for the whole Serwe heart rip thing, as she was his boost up, but now he thinks he's beyond her?

I think she has something to do with the haloes, or him 'seeing' TTT differently, or him becoming a real prophet instead of a false one... for a time at least. Since the war I think he's fallen back into the dunyain ways, but there was a time when maybe he was truely what he said he was.

That or he is full of shit, also possible.

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Thing about the heart is that Kelhus could not have gotten it by physical means and he didnt have sorcery then.
He was beaten and bound by hand and foot upside down for what, 2 days?  It would be almost impossible to tear someones heart out bare handed even if you were hale and had leverage.

Of course, Serwe had long since given him her heart, the miracle is metaphor become real...

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I'm thinking like Cnaiur manage to punch Kellhus way back on the steppe by apparently sending his hand through Kellhus' sword arm, potentially some act of passion allows Kellhus to do the heart thing.

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I remember Bakker suggesting once on Three-Seas that the ambiguity, which we all wrestle with, concerning Serwe's Heart reflects a cut scene from TWP - one where Cnaiur and Kellhus apparently have a conversation that sheds some light on exactly what happened/is going to happen at Caraskand.

He has said that he thinks the ambiguity the readers feel reflects the loss of this other scene.

Lol... Bakker Simarillian!

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My bad if this has already been mentioned, but I distinctly remember a passage in TDTCB about Serwe being unable to conceive children. Anyone have any ideas what this might signify? These books are such a smorgasbord of motifs I don't even know where to begin sometimes.

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Her Master's strangle the children of concubines. Serwe actually conceives by one of the Gaunam (sp?) men.

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The passage you may refer too is when her master or the other women say that whores only bare blue babies.
It was referring to the fact that they drowned all their whores children.