[Callan S.]

Yatwerian denial,

(click to show/hide)

with the still births

, or unable to resist giving, rebukes in regards to his children (including if any were subsquently killed by Kellhus that we don't know about)

[EkyannusIII]

I always took Kellhus' reproductive problems to be a successful long term strike at him by the Consult.  Remember when Esmenet did it in the allyway at Momemn with that nameless blonde guy? Well, IIRC his semen is black like that of Aurang in his first encounter with Esmenet.  That didn't make sense to me unless intercouse with the synthese had tainted Esmenet in some way and thereby damaged her fertility, which would then effect every subsequent coupling.  This might mean that the defectiveness of Kellhus' children is not the product of his seed being "too heavy" for mortal women to bear but not heavy enough to overcome the Inchoroi pollution in every instance of conception.

And, of course, it is another nod to Dune, specifically the

(click to show/hide)

infertility of Chani in Dune Messiah, which we later learn is induced by contraceptives secretly administered by Irulan.

[Wilshire]

That is a very good point EkannusIII.  As they say, the best lie is a plausible one.

[Borque]

I seem to remember that Kellhus failed to get viable children with some concubines as well. It seems slightly improbable that Aurang had messed with all of them too.

[Wilshire]

I seem to remember that Kellhus failed to get viable children with some concubines as well. It seems slightly improbable that Aurang had messed with all of them too.

They could be mutually exclusive. Just so happens that the only woman Kellhus could breed with has been raped by his enemy. World conspires?

[Borque]

They could be mutually exclusive. Just so happens that the only woman Kellhus could breed with has been raped by his enemy. World conspires?

That darned conspiring World, yes. Could be. But it seems a little too... what's the adjectivisation, now again... Nerdany? Nerdanish? Nerdanesque?

[Wilshire]

That darned conspiring World, yes. Could be. But it seems a little too... what's the adjectivisation, now again... Nerdany? Nerdanish? Nerdanesque?

lol. You can go with 'insane', or 'horrifically unlikely'.

Though I agree its might be a stretch I think its still within the realm of possibility. Though less so because no one knew that Esmi was special yet, nor was anyone hyper focused on Kellhus. If those events took place after the Consult were freaking out, and after Esmi had been selected as his mate, then this would seem far more plausible.

The whole World Conspires bit was kind of a joke. I was never able to figure it out enough to use it in a sentence properly.

[locke]

I always took Kellhus' reproductive problems to be a successful long term strike at him by the Consult.  Remember when Esmenet did it in the allyway at Momemn with that nameless blonde guy? Well, IIRC his semen is black like that of Aurang in his first encounter with Esmenet.  That didn't make sense to me unless intercouse with the synthese had tainted Esmenet in some way and thereby damaged her fertility, which would then effect every subsequent coupling.  This might mean that the defectiveness of Kellhus' children is not the product of his seed being "too heavy" for mortal women to bear but not heavy enough to overcome the Inchoroi pollution in every instance of conception.

And, of course, it is another nod to Dune, specifically the

(click to show/hide)

infertility of Chani in Dune Messiah, which we later learn is induced by contraceptives secretly administered by Irulan.

From the chapter fifteen thread of the re-read project:

Also of interest is the Esmenet section because of the Black Seed.

Does anyone know if Esmenet ever thinks about fucking Sarcellus or otherwise whoring herself to him?  In otherwords, does she have any black seed encounters with Sarcellus, or is this encounter with this John her first sexual encounter after the interrorape by the inchoroi/synthese?  If this is her first fuck after the inchoroi then the black seed may have been lingering  unexpelled inside her. 

It's possible that the black seed means something else, perhaps this John was a skin spy?  But if the skin spy has black seed, then why doesn't Esmenet ever note black seed from Sarcellus and identify him as Consult? 

Indeed, black seed from a skin spy might seem to defeat their purpose as it would be a good way to identify them--and would cause them to be identified often since they seem to have a less than stellar control over their sexual impulses.  So if the John is not a skin spy, then why did he have black seed? 

If he was a synthese, that might explain it, or perhaps if he were possessed by the inchoroi that might explain it, but neither of those really explain his autonomy.  And neither a synthese nor a possessed person would express regret at the end of the encounter.   And if he were under the control of the inchoroi, what have they to gain by this public fucking?  It's a pointless play.

In all this entire scene makes no sense in the context of a reread, it's easy to overlook a first time through, but amidst the knowledge bestowed by future books this one scene stands out as an especially incomprehensible anomaly.

Though perhaps the best explanation is that the black seed and the "what have I done" are disconnected units of experience.  they are not on a continuum.

That is to say, perhaps Esmenet sees Black Seed because this was particularly transgressive behavior, so her mind punishes her with guilt and imagery it finds most offensive, something in proportion to her transgression and the black seed is merely an illusion of her consciousness, it's not actually there, she just thinks it is because the trauma memories help her punish herself for her desire.  Her perspective is not broken by the man's discontinuous 'what have I done' she just thinks its in response to the black seed.  But he didn't see any black seed, he just now came to his senses and realized he just fucked like a wild animal and broke a vow or moral belief that he had previously not transgressed.  His 'what have I done' was a normal guilt reflex, and his fleeing was related to his own internal narrative, and not the black seed, he never even saw the black seed.

for some reason that 'simplest' explanation seemed really difficult and complex to explain.  :-p it seems I had an illusion of simplicity when I thought it up.

[Madness]

Yatwerian denial, with the still births, or unable to resist giving, rebukes in regards to the children that did survive (including if any were subsquently killed by Kellhus that we don't know about)

Just curious. Why this subforum?

I always took Kellhus' reproductive problems to be a successful long term strike at him by the Consult.  Remember when Esmenet did it in the allyway at Momemn with that nameless blonde guy? Well, IIRC his semen is black like that of Aurang in his first encounter with Esmenet.  That didn't make sense to me unless intercouse with the synthese had tainted Esmenet in some way and thereby damaged her fertility, which would then effect every subsequent coupling.  This might mean that the defectiveness of Kellhus' children is not the product of his seed being "too heavy" for mortal women to bear but not heavy enough to overcome the Inchoroi pollution in every instance of conception.

And, of course, it is another nod to Dune, specifically the

(click to show/hide)

infertility of Chani in Dune Messiah, which we later learn is induced by contraceptives secretly administered by Irulan.

Lol - us Dune aficionados need to start collecting all these references and getting them into the Herbert & Bakker thread. And TSA fandom should probably just suck it up and read all of Frank Herbert's Dune so we can reference it like we do Tolkien (though, I'm always, always surprised by those who haven't read Lord of the Rings either).

Anyhow, to point - the John's sperm isn't black, Esmenet seems to be having a flashback, and I think we concluded in the thread locke linked (might even have mentioned it in the quote portion of the post, haven't read it all thoroughly yet) that skin-spies can't have black seed or if they do, they never actually have sex with people (I don't recall Shrial Knights needing to be celibate but is it assumed?), as we don't actually have evidence of Esmenet and Sarcellus having sex at all (which is probably just assumed by the readership).

Though, I will admit I've always thought of something having been done to Kayutas specifically because Esmenet could possibly have been pregnant already at the time of her possession by Aurang and she gets some of Aurang's memories!

So, like...

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Kayutas might have ancestral memories of the Inchoroi .

I seem to remember that Kellhus failed to get viable children with some concubines as well. It seems slightly improbable that Aurang had messed with all of them too.

+1.

They could be mutually exclusive. Just so happens that the only woman Kellhus could breed with has been raped by his enemy. World conspires?

That darned conspiring World, yes. Could be. But it seems a little too... what's the adjectivisation, now again... Nerdany? Nerdanish? Nerdanesque?

Nerdanelly, maybe?

Realistically, there are two woman in the entire world who bred Moenghus and Kellhus children... so the world seems to have to conspire on some level.

The whole World Conspires bit was kind of a joke. I was never able to figure it out enough to use it in a sentence properly.

I'm finishing up a paper on Machiavelli's Christian leanings so this example is fresh but I'm thinking I might write a mock-philosophy paper on a Machiavellian Reading of TSA after having taken this seminar class.

Anyhow, for this instance (and Hegel could well fed right into this, among others), Machiavelli's Fortune (as it can distinguished from Fate) could serve as an analogy. It's this idea that there are a sometimes perfect storms of opportunity, too obvious and graspable to a worthy human or inevitable and indifferent to our struggles, not to have been ordained by the collective exertions of the powers that be and the natural and social forces. Here that just happens to include Fate, the Gods, God, Solitary, Consult, Nonmen, Kellhus, the Outside, etc in that algebra...

That is to say, perhaps Esmenet sees Black Seed because this was particularly transgressive behavior, so her mind punishes her with guilt and imagery it finds most offensive, something in proportion to her transgression and the black seed is merely an illusion of her consciousness, it's not actually there, she just thinks it is because the trauma memories help her punish herself for her desire.  Her perspective is not broken by the man's discontinuous 'what have I done' she just thinks its in response to the black seed.  But he didn't see any black seed, he just now came to his senses and realized he just fucked like a wild animal and broke a vow or moral belief that he had previously not transgressed.  His 'what have I done' was a normal guilt reflex, and his fleeing was related to his own internal narrative, and not the black seed, he never even saw the black seed.

for some reason that 'simplest' explanation seemed really difficult and complex to explain.  :-p it seems I had an illusion of simplicity when I thought it up.

+1 again . Simple but difficult to articulate, maybe?

[Callan S.]

Yatwerian denial, with the still births, or unable to resist giving, rebukes in regards to the children that did survive (including if any were subsquently killed by Kellhus that we don't know about)

Just curious. Why this subforum?

I might be remembering it badly, but isn't this book where his kids show up first? If not this subforum, where, Mike?

[locke]

Yatwerian denial, with the still births, or unable to resist giving, rebukes in regards to the children that did survive (including if any were subsquently killed by Kellhus that we don't know about)

Just curious. Why this subforum?

I might be remembering it badly, but isn't this book where his kids show up first? If not this subforum, where, Mike?

Everytime someone calls Madness, Mike, I think of him as looking like the Great Eye, Mike Wazowski.

[Callan S.]

Working as intended.

[Madness]

Yatwerian denial, with the still births, or unable to resist giving, rebukes in regards to the children that did survive (including if any were subsquently killed by Kellhus that we don't know about)

Just curious. Why this subforum?

I might be remembering it badly, but isn't this book where his kids show up first? If not this subforum, where, Mike?

WLW? Misc. Chatter? I understand it seems tedious but I really do think that spoilers are a big turnoff to newcomers. So while that might limit the kinds of remaining questions that we who have been immersed can ask in each of the book specific subforums, newcomers could still use those subforums to populate with their own wild theories... Ideally, there would always be another new reader who hasn't yet read Bakker who participates in the forum when they find it along with the series for the first time. When you post it in TJE, I wonder why you want to give me the headache of deciding what does or does not constitute spoilers or priming for narrative, etc, for WLW.

I might be remembering it badly, but isn't this book where his kids show up first? If not this subforum, where, Mike?

Everytime someone calls Madness, Mike, I think of him as looking like the Great Eye, Mike Wazowski.

Working as intended.

Lol. Brilliant.

[Callan S.]

WLW? Misc. Chatter? I understand it seems tedious but I really do think that spoilers are a big turnoff to newcomers. So while that might limit the kinds of remaining questions that we who have been immersed can ask in each of the book specific subforums, newcomers could still use those subforums to populate with their own wild theories... Ideally, there would always be another new reader who hasn't yet read Bakker who participates in the forum when they find it along with the series for the first time. When you post it in TJE, I wonder why you want to give me the headache of deciding what does or does not constitute spoilers or priming for narrative, etc, for WLW.

Unless I'm remembering the books wrong, his kids are described in the judging eye (if I am remembering wrong and it's all in WLW, okay, move the thread over to there).

Apart from that, I think your confusing your own perception of there being spoilers involved as me having an intent to give headaches. Anyway I've edited the OP to spoiler blocked one thing and remove

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surviving

from it, the rest is my own wild speculation. Perhaps you think I'm so right that you confuse me as giving a spoiler, rather than speculation? 

[Wilshire]

Any information in the book is fair game. So everything through the end of TJE is fair game, any information divulged in WLW should be spoiler tagged. Sometimes it can be hard to accurately remember where that line is, so to be safe putting this in WLW or misnc chatter would eliminate any need for the tag.