1. I should not expect Earwa to be perfectly thought out in every respect, since no writer is God, but there seem to be actualized philosophical principles in the world of the Second Apocalypse. Some of them are created by the Tekne (the Inverse Fire and the No-God), some have unknown origin (the Outside, possibly the Judging Eye), and some are sorcerous (Chorae, though I feel only to an extent). This troubles me since there are no real world alternatives to such things, and so I can't relate. Which means any kind of logical reasoning about the nature of the world of Earwa is fundamentally flawed (more than usual), because those are things in themselves, working as you want them to or as needed for the narrative. Could you comment on this issue?
2. In my opinion, there is (after the end of "The Unholy Consult") one and only one undoubtedly heroic character in the Second Apocalypse and that character is Anasurimbor Serwa. She was, of course, by no means perfect, but her intentions and actions (as I see them, and my sight is also by no means perfect) speak for themselves. She followed her father, because she wanted to save the world. She battled the Horde and suffered hardships of the Great Ordeal. She lived through Ishterebinth. She saved Moenghus. She was capable of love, and loved Sorweel. She mourned him when he died. She saved Mimara, Achamian, and Esmenet before attending to her mission, which makes her human as opposed to Kellhus. Oh, and she also killed a dragon with all its retinue. A dragon that kept the entirety of the Great Ordeal at bay. Some people argue that your books are misogynistic. And yet the most heroic character in them is a woman. Are you laughing now? I know I would be, quite evilly so!
1) The incompatibility between meaning (intentionality, in philosopher jargon) and mechanism is the crux from which the whole book hangs: the books simply inherit this incompatibility, exacerbate it with an eye for exploring its texture and implication.
2) A couple evil cackles, here and there. In terms of the extra-textual arguments I made criticizing feminist piety back when, I feel vindicated in a number of different respects. Not only has serious discussion allowed biological differences back to the table, there seems to a growing recognition that the movement needs to fundamentally retool its messaging mechanisms: I've had the strange experience of watching feminists interviewed arguing that the shame tactics so effective in the twentieth century now simply aggravate the problem. That's all for the good, though I fear that progressivism faces almost insurmountable headwinds given the way connectivity empowers extremisms of all stripes. The turn of political events in the US haunts me... to the point of developing a Cassandra complex.
As for the story, Serwa and Mimara were always in the cards, as was the democratization of sexual violence. Since the point was to cue outrage, to trick readers into making the same kinds of snap moral judgments and rationalizations that appall them in the text, I don't look at coming to the conclusion as any kind of moral vindication or ingroup credentializing. The point all along was that rationality flies out the window once our outrage buttons have been pushed, and that this applies universally, which is to say, as readily to liberals as to conservatives.
