TSACast #11 Notes:- This one was fun too - GJ's dream of doing a book a Cast is remarkably simple and entertaining.
- Also, thanks again to profgrape for participating (along with the regulars, without whom nothing would get done). We're all quite taken by you, as perceived vocally
. On that note, I've figured out why profgrape is endearing to me particularly; speech pattern very similar to one of my favorite professors in uni.
-
Mithfanion quote from Bakker, my bold:
Good to hear from you Mith! The only way I can see this being ready for summer 2014 is if my publishers decide to split the thing. This is the impasse at the moment: the book is looking too big. There really is nothing more I can say until everything is sorted out. I do want you to know that I’ve taken many of the criticisms you’ve made of the previous books quite seriously in writing this… Although not identical to my vision of the series, yours has been close enough to alert me to a number of the ways I’ve strayed – enough to convince me to let the book write itself, rather than shoehorn it into anyone else’s schedule.
In fact, I might just decide to blame you personally for the reason why it’s taken me so long!
- Cnaiur's "Shitload of Kids:"
He had fathered thirty-seven sons, nineteen of the pure blood.
-
Chekhov's Gun (TV Tropes)
- Lol, me trying to bring everything back to Cast topic at about the ten minute mark.
- Wilshire's g-string quote from the
Ch. 3 Excerpt reading (though, I'm positive I've read almost this exact same wording in an interview or on ZTS):
A nice quote to end with:
"The whole series has been a strip tease ... and TUC is the g-string shooting across the room, finally leaving everything fully exposed" - R. Scott Bakker
- "WP is a favorite of a lot of ours" - my quote, GJ
. And, of course, I realize now that my response to you on Schrodinger's topic in Quorum was, in fact, off-topic because you hadn't listened to the Cast yet (unless you did through profgrape's PM).
- Mekeritrig quote; regret quote (I'll have to search more for the regret quote, as I just don't have the time today):
I can recap and clarify the info that's been given so far: the Nonmen are an ancient race, the 'original people' of Earwa, who are nearly immortal, and who fought both for and against the No-God during the Apocalypse. They are slowly going insane: their minds can only hold roughly four or five human lifetimes of experiences, and as the centuries pass the traumatic experiences they suffer crowd out their other memories, until now, almost all Nonmen remember only the pain and loss in their lives. And some, like the Nonman (Mekertrig) that Kellhus meets in the Prologue, have taken to creating traumatic experiences just so they can have something to remember...
- I think Wilshire meant WP rather than WLW at minute 26.
- MG rampaging in
.
- Ciphrang/Iyokus/Outside quote:
He threw aside the brilliant carpets and painted the circles across the tiles with deft, practised strokes. Light spilled from his colourless lips as he muttered the Daimotic Cants. And, as the tempest approached, he at last completed his interminable song. He dared speak the Ciphrang's name.
"Ankaryotis! Heed me!"
From the safety of his circle of symbols, Iyokus gazed in wonder at the sheeted lights of the Outside.
- Lol; star-crossed lovers.
- Quote about draft-readers not getting Kellhus (from
one of many really good
interviews):
Originally, my idea was to slowly 'externalize' Kellhus, to move away from his POV and show more and more of his manipulation from the outside. I'd have a wicked gleam in my eye as I wrote, thinking 'What a sneaky bastard!' But my readers kept coming back to me with things like, 'I'm so relieved Kellhus is coming around!' It turned out that Kellhus was duping them as thoroughly as he was duping the characters! They knew he wasn't trustworthy, just as we all know commercials aren't trustworthy, and yet the instinct to think 'Ah, it's OK,' is just so strong (which is why advertisers continue using the tactics they do).
This was perhaps the second greatest difficulty I had writing Kellhus: depicting him in such a way that my readers would always have a sense of the distance between his claims and his intentions. I'm still not happy with the way I resolved this problem.
- "Scourged in the old way" quote:
"Yield, Anasurimbor Kellhus," he said hoarsely. "You will be scourged according to Scripture."
"Serwe executed!" the sorcerer exclaimed. "How could such a thing happen? Proyas? How could you let such a thing happen? She was just-"
"Ask Gotian!" Proyas blurted. "Trying them according to the Tusk was his idea - his! He thought it would legitimize the affair, make it seem less like... less-"
-
H's Aurang Quote/1st March:
It lowered its small human head and studied the patterns the innumerable dead had sketched across the plains, marvelling at the resemblances to certain sigils once prized by its species—back when they could actually be called such. Genera. Species. Race.
This is interesting, perhaps confirming what I had speculated in this thread that each Inchoroi could now be very different from each other, through the selective use of the grafts.
- The pause...
- "Even the old things would succumb" quote (TTT):
Even the ancient things, Cnaiur realized, would suffer the Holy War's fate. The Dunyain would strip them the way the People stripped the carcasses of bison. Fat for soap and fuel. Bone for implements. Hide for shelter and shields. No matter how deep they ran, the ages themselves would be consumed. The Dunyain was something new. Perpetually new.
Like lust or hunger.
- Maithanet's quote to Xerius about coming after him (2nd March):
Maithanet's laughter was sudden, loud, reverberant enough to fill even the hollows of great Xothei.
Xerius fairly gasped. The Writ of Psata-Antyu, the code governing Shrial conduct, forbade laughing aloud as a carnal indulgence. Maithanet, he realized, was giving him a glimpse of his depths. But for what purpose? All of this - the mobs, the demand to meet here in Xothei, even the chanting of his name - was a demonstration of some kind, terrifying in the premeditated lack of subtlety.
I'll crush you, Maithanet was saying. If the Holy War fails, you'll be destroyed.
- I was mistaken; Xerius did not have Shrial Exemption, which was the whole loss of his Indenture.
-
Probability Trance Vision thread:
Chapter 9:
Only this part really struck me:
Nameless Schoolmen climbing a steep, gravelly beach. A nipple pinched between fingers. A gasping climax. A severed head thrust against the burning sun. Apparitions marching out of morning mist.
A dead wife.
Kellhus exhaled, then breathed deep the bittersweet pinch of cedar, earth, and war.
There was revelation.
Some strong forshadowing here. Thoughts on what each represents?
- Kellhus quote about using Serwe (Slept with your wife quote):
Of all the souls Kellhus had mastered, few had proven as useful as Serwe. Lust and shame were ever the shortest paths to the hearts of world-born men. Ever since he'd sent her to Achamian, the sorcerer had compensated for his half-remembered trespass in innumerable subtle ways. The old Conriyan proverb was true: no friend was more generous than the one who had seduced your wife...
And generosity was precisely what he needed from Drusas Achamian.
- "Dead Wife" quote; see above to H's Probability Vision quote.
- Kellhus to Cnaiur quote:
"Lie made flesh," he repeated, staring into the fiend's embattled face. "The hunt need not end... Remember this when you recall the secret of battle. You still command the ears of the Great."
- My ramble about Proyas not doing anything with the Zaudunyani's Skin-Spy Head is invalidated because Kellhus, not Proyas, tells Achamian to have the Zaudunyani show him what "lies in the Garden":
"My Nascenti... Tell them to show you what lies in the garden."
- My
ZTS post/quote "What's going to happen in the intervening years?"
- Lol - we fuck up MG talking at about 1hr mark because we had to verify via text when people had to get offline. Reading and talking throws everyone off but then we talk for another 30+ min after 15 or 20 min is mentioned.
-
Second Crusade corollary to
Saubon opening the door of Caraskand.
- Mallahat/Maithanet/Moenghus ZTS thread link:
Moenghus = Mallahet?- Don't have meaning but must (
Poison Oak Epileptic Trees - TV Tropes)
- Apparently, we all have got a lot of love for Setup Achamian.
- I believe MG set up a thread about some of this since the Cast was recorded:
The Circumfix- Cememketri, Grandmaster of the Imperial Saik
- Eleazarus reaction quote about Achamian destroying the Scarlet Spires in the Library:
Directly or indirectly, this one Mandate dog had undone whatever advantage they'd gained at the Battle of Mengedda. First, by killing two sorcerers of rank at the Sareotic Library, among them Yutirames, an old and powerful ally of Eleazaras's.
- And Five or Eight? (hint, I'm right
):
That evening at the Sareotic Library, watching this one man resist eight sorcerers of rank with glittering, abstract lights, Eleazaras had envied as he'd never envied before. Such miraculous power. Such purity of dispensation. How? he had thought. How?
Fucking Mandate pigs.
- Clearly a good time because we were overclocked and the end seems to come too early.
