Kellhus: good or evil?

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« Reply #15 on: June 01, 2013, 11:37:36 pm »
Quote from: Ciero300
Kellus is evil. His manipulation of people seem akin to the No-gods manipulation of the Shank. The no-god wants people to believe he is god .... similar to Kellus. Im still convinced that Kellus is the no-god .... or the next no-god. Either way, he is in no way a "good-guy".

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« Reply #16 on: June 01, 2013, 11:37:44 pm »
Quote from: Twooars
Quote from: lockesnow
I think it doesn't really matter because I think that:

The gods are a falsehood that really just nom nom souls after death

Kellhus is constrained because he can't restructure the beliefs of the entire world to save the souls of the world from getting munched, post death. 

Ironically, Kellhus has realized that the Consult's goal of shutting the world is also a theory to save the souls of the world from getting munched, post death, but in practice, the theory fails because the species dies out.  Stupid programming bugs.

The solution is to modify the process such that Kellhus can control the reproductive element, while also protecting the souls from munching.  This probably means something like he's going to go outside and shut the door behind him.   

In other words, he will shut regions of the outside to the world. (different from shutting the world to the outside)  Meaning, he's going to disenchant the world.  This would echo what the Dunyain attempted to do in "disenchanting" Ishual when they arrived there.   Long term, Kellhus' actions should protect the species for the forseeable millenia, while also saving the souls of the world from being munched. In a sense, Kellhus will ascend to godhood, the way that we presume Jesus to have ascended (even if he doesn't become a god or have any more connection to inward he will still be worshipped as a god, that worship just may not benefit him).  And as an added bonus, this would explain why magic 'works' in pre modern worlds but doesn't work in modern worlds. ;)

I like this. Bakker also mentioned that Kellhus is a cipher for Modernity, so I think it fits that Kellhus would 'disenchant' the world (and the rest of the universe?) while giving it scientific thinking (which is what the Dunyain are partly about, IMO) as his legacy.

Edit: I realized that the whole enchantment/disenchantment idea was Roger's and not Bakker's, so not so sure anymore that it 'fits' as well as I thought it did  :? But this still seems like a plausible ending to me, more plausible than any other idea that has been floated about Kellhus' future  :|

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« Reply #17 on: June 01, 2013, 11:37:51 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
I don't think Kellhus will survive this series...

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« Reply #18 on: June 01, 2013, 11:37:58 pm »
Quote from: The Sharmat
I don't think Kellhus is a beacon of scientific thinking and rationality anymore, either.

The trial has broken him.

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« Reply #19 on: June 01, 2013, 11:38:05 pm »
Quote from: Sideris
I maintain he went batshit insane in the prologue of Darkness, it just got worse after the Circumfixion.

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« Reply #20 on: June 01, 2013, 11:38:12 pm »
Quote from: BargiltheDestroyer
Remember all those flashbacks Kelhus has in the original trilogy?  The one where he is taught the Probability Trance after getting knocked in the snout by a Pragma because he talked out of line excitedly?  Or the one where he and a bunch of other initiates laughed and squealed trying to touch the Pragma with the stick?  Or the one where he was taught how to read faces, but had to master his revulsion at seeing the peeled back faces?

Now, by the time Kelhus hits the Three Seas, he is fully trained Dunyain, ready to dominate, but as the series progresses, we start to see cracks in his Dunyain training.  He begins to feel outrage when Cnaiur rapes Serwe, he fears for Esmenet before his Circumfixion, he weeps while Circumfixed, and feels pangs when Aurang and Moenghus shed some uncomfortable light on his relationship with Esmenet.

I feel like the Dunyain, for all their intellectual and physical brilliance, are in some ways little more than children to the Worldborn.  By shutting themselves up in their exalted grotto, they are free to pursue their quest for a self-moving soul, but when they experience life outside of their cradle, the cracks, the falsehoods, in their training and vision fail them.  Which is why I find the Aspect-Emperor series so odd at times.  Kelhus's children and Maithainat are treated as totally and completely inhuman, while in the Prince of Nothing series I got the feeling that Kelhus, while incredibly intelligent, self-controlled, and amoral at the outset of the series, starts to show his humanity as time progress.  He is a man, just like any other.  Just really, really smart.

Ultimately, I think Kelhus is a force for good and he is the only character I really trust.

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« Reply #21 on: June 01, 2013, 11:38:19 pm »
Quote from: Swense
Well, Kellhus' children are meant to be poorly trained versions of himself - it makes sense that they should be horrible and inhuman. Maithanet is the closest we get to a functioning half-Dunyain, and he always came off as rather human, up until the whole creepy "do you have your mother's bones?" scene. But even then, he rightly calls out both of the children for being really fucking psycho, so he at least has some semblance of morals. (Especially when you consider he doesn't need to call them out)

Kellhus still comes off as human, in the rare moments we see him that he isn't manipulating everyone from afar. His little comments to Sorweel when he first captures Skaupras and his discussions with Proyas all seem to show a little guilt in his mission, even if he's clearly still manipulating Proyas for unseen ends - or perhaps he's even lying to himself about how much of his conditioning is still intact, and how much isn't subsumed by the sheer number of variables and the sheer pathos of the world.

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« Reply #22 on: June 01, 2013, 11:38:26 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote from: Sideris
I maintain he went batshit insane in the prologue of Darkness, it just got worse after the Circumfixion.
Like at the staring at the twig bit?

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« Reply #23 on: June 01, 2013, 11:38:41 pm »
Quote from: The Sharmat
I'd conjecture that Maithanet would seem more human if we'd ever had any chapters from his POV. Kellhus' children on the other hand are rather inhuman seeming...but keep in mind most of them would have been considered defective by the Dunyain. They're largely insane or mentally deficient in some way, presumably due to the Dunyain's fucked up germ line.

Though Serwa seems troublingly normal. Manipulative, yes, but no more than any particularly manipulative human. Given that the other outwardly normal seeming Dunyain is Kelmomas/Samarmas, that may be a very bad sign.

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« Reply #24 on: June 01, 2013, 11:38:47 pm »
Quote from: Mog Kellhus
We must remember that Kellhus is the ultimate manipulator, so it is easy to be decieved by him and i am talking about us readers as well.In PON when we see him through other POVs he seems like a man with the best intentions,a real GOOD guy, and later of course they all think of him as a saint. Reading through his POV though we realize that it is all fake and that he is using everybody and everything to achieve his goals.

Now in AE Scott chose,wisely in my opinion, to not have Kellhus as a POV so it is easier for us to be decieved and believe that he is sincere and that he really cares for humanity.I think that he is still using everybody but only time will tell of course.

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« Reply #25 on: June 01, 2013, 11:38:54 pm »
Quote from: Imparrhas
Quote from: Sideris
I maintain he went batshit insane in the prologue of Darkness, it just got worse after the Circumfixion.
Why do you think so? Why would the Wilderness have broken Kellhus but not Moenghus?

And what is it about Serwe anyway that broke him or aggravated his madness?

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« Reply #26 on: June 01, 2013, 11:39:01 pm »
Quote from: Sideris
The fact that he showed emotion, his delirious visions, etc. And I think Serwe's death made him saner. It certainly made me sane again. Such a terrible character.

And if you recall, he goes into sensory overlord for something close to half a month, a month perhaps, while in the wilderness before he finally snaps out of it. And it seems to me his thought pattern portrayed in the opening and then right after that shifted a little. You could tell simply by reading it.

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« Reply #27 on: June 01, 2013, 11:39:08 pm »
Quote from: Imparrhas
Quote from: Sideris
The fact that he showed emotion, his delirious visions, etc.
Right, but was that because of Serwe or because he'd been going mad since the start? As I recall it the first signs of madness are that he takes pity on Serwe.


Quote from: Sideris
And if you recall, he goes into sensory overlord for something close to half a month, a month perhaps, while in the wilderness before he finally snaps out of it.
I understood that to be the Wilderness overwhelming him and I assumed that Moenghus had gone through something like it too.

Quote from: Sideris
And it seems to me his thought pattern portrayed in the opening and then right after that shifted a little.
You mean from when he meets the hunter right? I'll reread that part and see if I notice it.

Edit: I still read it the same way. Kellhus is overwhelmed by the amount of variables in the Wilderness, after Leweth finds him he has some space to adjust and start excersizing his conditioning in an environment less predictable than Ishual.

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« Reply #28 on: June 01, 2013, 11:39:16 pm »
Quote from: Francis Buck
Wow, so I just typed a huge thing and then when I pressed the "full editor" mode to see it in a larger view, something freaked out and I lost it. So pissed.

Alas, the very simple jist of it:

Having just recently read the prologue myself, I have to agree with Imparrhas. It seemed pretty clear that Kellhus was just experiencing sensory overload due to the "randomness" of the woods. As he states in the internal monologue, everything in Ishual was "predetermined"; he basically knew what someone was going to say before they said it, he knew which way a leaf would tumble across the ground, etcetera. Being in the wilderness was the first time Kellhus was subjected to a reality where he didn't know everything that was going to happen before it happened. He practically died in the snow because of it (theoretically).

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« Reply #29 on: June 01, 2013, 11:39:24 pm »
Quote from: Madness
The World Conspires, clearly. Kellhus, obviously, had to survive.

I apologize for the full editor, Francis. I made the same mistake early on. I don't believe it actually works like either of us suspected and is instead just another "Add Reply" button. I've posted the few issues we've had on the Forumer.com support forums and the wizards there have solved my issues so far. I'll see if I can get a straight answer on this.