[Madness]

Well for one I'm pretty sure Bakker was going for outrage.

I'm thick-headed, TS. Why is it so obviously outrageous? How do we qualify his writing in terms of having done something successfully or not?

Thanks, Madness.

Lol - at least half of my time spent here is quoting various sources .

[Wilshire]

I definitely agree that Bakker's goal was outrage here. I interpreted this scene's point as showing why the Dunyain are Evil. You can't convince the reader of that type of thing without outrage.

[Monkhound]

I actually read quite some objective factual and clinical statements in the first description of the rooms.
Akka is in the dark here. It's only through Mimara's Judging Eye that we get the outrage. But that is again tempered by the POV of the Survivor.
I was puzzled by how Bakker achieved that. Maybe the reread will change the experience, but this was how I experienced it the first time.

[Callan S.]

Not anyone here, per say, but the more this is discussed, the more I wonder why the cognitive average funneled towards outrage and incredulity.

Or perhaps more exactly, why believability suddenly dropped out and was replaced by outrage and incredulity? For example, some people have suggested that in the Matrix the machines could have just used cows. But no one found it unbelievable that the machines used humans, or if they did they figured ways it could make sense.

It seems unlikely (unbelievable), but if instead the dunyain went by consensual sex, I wonder how unbelievable the whale mothers would be then? I suspect they would be less unbelievable for folk.

[The Sharmat]

Plenty of people thought the explanation for the Matrix was silly and brought it up. I think you're attacking a strawman here.

[Callan S.]

Yeah, but silly doesn't mean unbelievable. That's why thermodynamics defying magic still gets believed. Probably because it's cool.

[The Sharmat]

It was unbelievable I just chose to ignore it for the rest of the story. People have different thresholds for how much of this they can do and why. I will never praise the choice (apparently foisted upon them by the studio) to use the human battery approach in the Matrix and when it comes up I will criticize it. Unless something changes, the same is true of the Whale Mothers.

[SkiesOfAzel]

Consider the following: the Dunyain turned their women into axolotl tanks because they wanted total control over their bloodline for eugenics and found lobotomized baby machines the shortest path to that goal.  But this is a form of self-harm - children don't stop needing maternal care at birth, they typically require many years of it before they reach maturity, and "Whale-mothers" can't give that.  This means that the Dunyain's chosen path was actually destructive and subversive of their goals - they needed a way to establish control of women without removing them from the natural reproductive cycle so drastically.  There was a way to do this.  You will recall that Kellhus more or less effortlessly seduced Esmenet and Serwe. I see no reason that comparatively more permanent seductions could not have been carried out under controlled conditions - and Ishual is conditioned ground.  This means that a more productive strategy would have been finding a way to perform on each Dunyain woman something akin to the sexual imprinting seen in the Honored Matres of the later Dune books - an experience so addictive that it essentially collapses the difference between intercourse in general and sex with a specific person into one event, making it impossible to conceive of having more than one mate.  This would produce the control factor.  Combined with women's natural propensity to care for their children and the general fanaticism of the Dunyain, and it would be easy to breed a sub-species of women who are totally specialized to "voluntary" breeding to the exclusion of all else: they have their children by the man they are imprinted to , and all else is unimaginable to them.  Other details could be handled in a miscellaneous manner, e.g. having those turned menopausal poison themselves as the Dunyain who received the dreams from Moenghus did.  This could even be promoted as a highly rational act, even "desirable" in a sense, since their ability to perform their function, motherhood, had come to an end; a controlled culture could have been created that would take it for granted that they would do this, a further reinforcement factor.  Or perhaps shortened lifespan could have been designed in somehow.  All of this would have gotten the eugenic job done while also providing lots of creepy feels to the audience. 

And it would have made Requires Only Hate that much madder.

Dunyain children don't necessarily have the same needs as human children, so i don't see why they would have to have their mothers beside them while growing up.

Besides, Dunyain exist in order to apply the principle of the Logos, so any emotional attachment that can arise by the connection between parent and sibling is totally unwanted. The same goes for conditioning their females for reproduction, it would make them victims to the darkness that comes before and thus undesirable in their society.

[MSJ]

Well for one I'm pretty sure Bakker was going for outrage.

Of course, I'm surprised Vox or Hate haven't had an online thesis about it yet.

[Callan S.]

Hate got her anonymity outed and was in damage control last I heard.

Vox *brrrr* probably doesn't have his fur rubbed the wrong way by it.

[Madness]

Well for one I'm pretty sure Bakker was going for outrage.

Of course, I'm surprised Vox or Hate haven't had an online thesis about it yet.

Hate got her anonymity outed and was in damage control last I heard.

Vox *brrrr* probably doesn't have his fur rubbed the wrong way by it.

What Callan said. Also, Vox is too busy for the likes of Bakker these days, leading the Rabid Puppies, and now dealing with man of Chuck Tingle.

Lol. Life.

[The Sharmat]

I for one am grateful to the creators of DARPA net for birthing the internet and showing us all how much we truly hate one another.

[MSJ]

I for one am grateful to the creators of DARPA net for birthing the internet and showing us all how much we truly hate one another.

Its all love, bruh! Seriously though, it surprising how much hate there truly is in this world. It actually makes me sick to my stomach.

ETA: which makes me think.....who is the hater that keeps giving me damnation points on my Karma? Every time I click on here I have another. Damn, who have I pissed off so badly? Come out and tell me who you are, show me your hate! I will make you love!

[Callan S.]

I for one am grateful to the creators of DARPA net for birthing the internet and showing us all how much we truly hate one another.

It's the cognitive pollutions, I tells ya! (lol, prolly is)

Also the damnation button is bad, IMO

[Wilshire]

*brrrr*

lmao.

Ooo, say it again.