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The Unholy Consult / Re: What's up with the "Second" Inverse Fire
« on: May 01, 2021, 09:07:07 am »
One can certainly draw a number of parallels.
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Or, maybe I am just off on a tangent...No, it makes perfect sense and is exactly what I was talking about!
All of that to say, well, that I am really not sure just where Bakker wants to take it.Pretty much this. From the point the story stopped there is a huge number of equally possible ways to go forward. Some of them complement each other, some are mutually exclusive, but there is no way to logically establish any sort of concrete direction without being the author. We can only go with our own emotional preferences.
Its called "Fantasy of Manners" and/or "Slice of Life", which are 'sub-genres' or classifications of fantasy wherein little happens - the focus being on the characters/relationships rather than anything actually happening.Unfortunately, there is also very little characterization happening. All of the relationships have almost no progression, and are themselves rather milquetoast. It's realistic (real life is short on serious drama), but this is the less often encountered sort of realism that's in fact bad for fiction. It's simply boring, and one of the things people try to escape by reading entirely made up books.
I really wanted to like this book, but like JS&MN the writing is good, the concept is great, but ultimately the book just didn't "do it" for me and I struggled to get myself to finish it.Pretty much my relationship with JS&MN, although I still hold it in high esteem. But there is just too many words there that do relatively little, and certainly nothing for story progression.
I still can't download a database from SMF and I noticed it takes quite a bit of time to clear after we've rejected Spam-Sranc before the pending users notation disappears.I've left a possible explanation for this and other such errors and peculiarities in the quorum channel of the Discord server. It's not super secret or anything, but I don't wanna leave a permanent visible record of it all the same.
Thanks again for all you guys have done.
Note: It appears that your database may require an upgrade. Your forum's files are currently at version SMF 2.0.17, while your database is at version 2.0.4. The above error might possibly go away if you execute the latest version of upgrade.php.Ah, this pretty much explains everything, the upgrade wasn't finished.
Putting it in more straightforward (albeit simplified), plot-related terms, the Judging Eye is an atemporal phenomenon. If it exists at one point in time, it exists always. Since Mimara will have it in the future, she does have it for all her life.This makes Mim a bit of an inversion of the JE and its criteria. Where pregnant women get the JE and have stillbirths, Mim is an intended abortion that possesses the JE. Or at least that was my impression when i read the above statement and tried to resolve the paradox of Mim possessing the JE all her life.
Well, in my current Hegelian paradigm, I tend to think of this mainly in terms of the sort of "reconciliation" the seems to run all through TAE. Namely the notion of how the Eternal (the unchanging in Hegelian terms) could or would intersect with the temporal (the individual).
I don't know that there is a resolution to that paradox though, really. The fact seemingly just is, more so, something self-consciousness has to sublate (overcome) and possibly that is part of the Dasein spirit (in essence, what it means to have a soul). Or maybe that is the whole thing really.
Thanks! Let me preface my continuation of this discussion by acknowledging right here and now that I don't actually expect that I have or necessarily ever will be able to understand or solve the series or its metaphysics. Talking about it however is such great fun and even a great learning experience, so I want to bounce my thoughts back based on your replies.Oh, for sure, some things are just too unclear to reason about them in any coherent way. It makes sense, though. Not everything is immediately relevant enough to find its way to the page.
I guess I think the simplest interpretation would be that Bakker is saying Ajokli knows in his way of knowing but due to Resumption his capacity to know (and/or exist) is diminished or diminishing.Yeah, that's my take, too. The No-God does gradually diminish the capacity of the Gods to interact with the world, and the 144k is likely a critical threshold here.
I see your point regarding the definitions of madness but hasn't Kellhus' own sanity been called into question time and again due to his Ajokli-possession on this and various other media? Yet I can't recall a situation in which Kell truly acts illogically or as if he's what we would describe as insane...This is an interesting topic. I would say it's about Kellhus having convictions he really shouldn't have. For him, said convictions (any convictions, really) should be a clear darkness, something that precedes him and thus must be fought, yet he acts on them still. It's insanity, he understands it, but it's not something that really seriously impacts his reasoning in day-to-day matters (create a religion, build an empire, become a genius sorcerer, go to Hell to look at the God, you know, the usual stuff we're all accustomed to). It's not about how he acts but about why he acts and what goals he pursues. Nonetheless, it ultimately leads to the Golden Room debacle.
I'd like to share that I thus far have believed the Outside is some type of a mindspace that does nothing more than reflect experiences of those who live/have lived/will live on the Inward.Oh, it sure is. It's just it's more than that, since it's also connected to the God and a plethora of odd phenomena like the Judging Eye. But it for sure is also shaped by the Inside, and the Gods are reflections of beliefs. I always posited, even, that they are reflections of strictly human beliefs. This is why Earwan morality is arbitrary human morality, and thus is completely foreign to other races, like Nonmen, or Inchoroi, or Progenitors. Which is why Earwa is the Promised World - the root of the problem, humans, are there.
I suppose for the sake of discussion I might suggest it's possible that this since (if) this scene was occuring entirely within Kellhus' own mind the Ciphrang's speech may be reflected/provided by his very own thoughts (similarly that may be the case with summoners & Ciphrang). I'm not convinced, but I posit the possibility.At some point when something looks like a bird, flies like a bird, sings like a bird, and tastes like a bird, it can be assumed to be a bird in the frame of reference that insists with every given sense that it is a bird. In our case that frame of reference would be the world of Earwa as described in TSA.
As we know, it's actually somewhat the same for Outside - it can be changed, re-written. Retrofitted if you will lol.There is a key difference here, though. When the Outside is rewritten, it gets rewritten in its totality, there is no memory of the previous iteration. Unlike in the case of someone in the Inside, because they would remember themself thinking differently and making a mistake because of it. It would never be the case for an agency of the Outside.
So in truth, the tapestry is not, as we imagine the Gods might perceive it "complete" - and that makes complete sense if (perhaps - only if?) the Outside is indeed generated by/reflective of the Inside.
Humans have ontological perspective of things, while the Gods have Eternal perspective. Being created somewhere in the timeline, the Gods then exist for the whole of that timeline, ensuring their own creation. The Gods act without time restrictions, so every action they take was always taken, is always taken, and will be always taken. When the universe somehow changes without the knowledge of the Gods (say, by the No-God), the Gods instantly populate new timeline differently. It accounts for any changes made, and also accounts for their previous actions (for example, Sorweel wasn't the White-Luck Warrior v. 2.0 while the first Warrior wasn't thwarted by Kelmomas, but the first Warrior was thwarted, so Sorweel was always meant to supplant him now that Yatwer is aware of the first Warrior's failure, and this turn of events already is incorporated in the timeline; at the same time, the first Warrior always existed, and so from Yatwer's perspective always should have existed, even if doomed to fail)---
I agree, the Prophecy is definitely something! To try to turn it into something that supports my crackpot though, isn't or wasn't there some confusion or potential for the God giving this prophecy to actually be AJOKLI?I always liked to say that obfuscation-wise this dream of Celmomas receiving his prophecy takes the cake. Everything in there can be interpreted in at least 2, but mostly even more, ways.
I do recall this but would note that Sorweel is only there because of K - meaning the power is there as you say, and the power itself is associated with/attributed to Yatwer, but the actual agency arranging/placing it there need not necessarily be ultimately associated/attributed to Yatwer.The Nonmen are sure it's Yatwer, though. Like, so sure that it never even comes into question. They would fear any God equally, but they instantly jump to Yatwer, and this level of certainty that's never questioned in the narrative makes me think it's supposed to be taken at face value. It's also not really ever contradicted, on the contrary, it gets confirmed (or at least corroborated) time and time again.
DOES Kellhus not calling Sorweel out have to NECESSARILY mean "he was protected from Kellhus' scrutiny" (that Kellhus couldn't see it)?There is a two-fold answer here. First, it's not only Kellhus who doesn't see Sorweel's intentions, it's his children, too, and on more than one occasion, which in the case of Serwa is even described from her own POV.
and I suspect this truth (& the Outside in general) may ultimately be malleable.This is the part where it all starts to become really confusing because there is not enough data. Yes, the Outside is malleable, but when it's rewritten, its next iteration is still total in itself, encompassing everything it can encompass. Yes, the Outside is shaped by the Inside, but not everything that happens in the Inside has its Outside counterpart, of which the No-God is the most blatant example.
You're right that Sorweel is definitely not the same as we had seen before but that is true for all Men all the time. Sorweel was probably going to live some uneventful life, a princeling who would live then die and not do much of metaphysical significance... but his circumstances changed drastically, of course he was not as we had seen him before.No, I meant the instant and clear switch in Sorweel's POV that happens sometime around the Last Whelming, if I remember correctly. One moment he thinks and acts completely like himself, a normal human being, the next he is exactly what the first WLW was, seeing into the future and the past through all of his actions combined as though they are already done, and always were.
Thank you again for the feedback! I openly acknowledge my ignorance and the unlikelihood that I will ever attain the level of understanding of the events in these books that you and many others around here have. I just absolutely love these books and the way they get my mind working, and I love them more and more when I read the discussions on this forum and am able to gain insight and alternate opinions and perspectives from other readers like yourself. I hope my comments don't come across in any negative or know-it-all-ish way.I can assure you you're not the only one whose mind gets stimulated by TSA! It's a great series in the sense that it contains and fosters original thought. I wish there were more fiction like this.
Madness is described by Akka as the outside leaking in, and that squares up well with what happens to a WLW, they "see" from an Outside perspective.Here, you confuse definitions. What Akka means by madness is what we mean by madness - acting irrationally, without grounds, with little to no correlation with reality. A human condition.
Saying "that was an Act of Yatwer" seems almost like the opposite of a p-zombie argument, doing so is potentialy anthropomorphizing & attributing consciousness and an action to what may essentially be a primal aspect of nature (Birth, fertility et al)The weakness of this argument is in the fact that from that moment on Sorweel is protected from the scrutiny of Kellhus and his half-Dunyain children by means that do not occur naturally and are time and again ascribed to strictly Outside agencies, the Gods. This power is never attributed to agencies of the Inside.
Obviously we aren't provided any perspective from the Hundred; rightly so if they are NOT conscious; sneaky of Bakker if they are.Lastly, here are a few more Bakker quotes:
I might ask the same, what do you mean? What are you attributing/designating to be a conscious action that Ajokli/Yatwer/Gilgaol took? For example, I don't think "Yatwer selects White Luck Warriors" - a WLW simply emerges and "Yatwer" "intuits it" like a rock intuits that it is in open air, under water, or covered in mud. If nothing else I believe their lack of agency is textually supported by both Kellhus and the Mutilated. My take is, without actual living people to attribute actions/events as "Yatwer is acting through these actions/events" (like whoever-WLW1 was, Pstama, Sorweel) there is no presence of Yatwer to speak of whatsoever.Intuition is agency, but it's even more complicated than that. WLW's emergence is an act attributed and later supported by the entity Yatwer, its emergence required juice (as every act of the Gods does, I can get you RSB's quote on the matter), its emergence was later alluded to when Sorweel started slipping into his own possession (which is essentially Yatwer "speaking" to him), etc. On the level of the characters, who are intelligent and possess agency by default since they are the starting point of this discussion, this is an intelligent act of an entity that possesses agency.
I get that a Synthese requires a body, I meant that whatever Shae does to circumvent his own damnation, it makes very little sense for the remaining Inchoroi and/or Consult sorcerers not to do the same. "Double edged sword" as it may be, who cares? I thought that the Consult would do ANYTHING to prevent eternal damnation because nothing could possibly be worse. Why should Aurang and Aurax, as sorcerers, not take the same "way out"? If Inchoroi have souls, they have the exact same stakes in the game as Shae, and if that is the case, if HE is willing to be partially already suffering eternally in hell, what logical reason do the rest of the Consult have to say "that is not worth it to me"?You misunderstood me. Shae does not escape damnation by using his circle of wretches. He is, in part, already damned and suffering. That's why he's the only one who undertook this transformation. Others didn't want to condemn parts of themselves to hell, they were looking for a better solution. Shae was a Man, he had no choice when his body started to expire, but Erratics and Aurang are immortal.