But his opinions match those of Mandate catchphrases, these new dreams are backed up by textual confirmation, which I've posted about.
I don't follow this at all, those dreams are backed up by what confirmation and to what end? You mean, his new dreams exist? Sure. That some information in them is corroborated by other sources? Sure, but only some information, not all of it. As I understand it, you take corroboration of some things in Achamian's dreams as corroboration of others (like the map to Ishual or Nau-Cayuti's fate validating the dream about the Heron Spear missing), which is not how it works. Many things about Nau-Cayuti are confirmed, but the dream with the Heron Spear missing is not only completely unconfirmed, it's in contention with other dreams, and also can be viewed as a dream of completely different kind than Nay-Cayuti ones. The same with the map to Ishual.
Nothing in your quotes disproves this interpretation. Do you think otherwise?
Akka is our only POV into that of Mandate dreams, that's correct. But, it's the authors way of conveying everything about the dreams.
POV is a narrative tool with quite specific properties, its inherent unreliability among them, if not being the most important one. My point is, here POV is used exactly the way it should be, giving us information, but leaving up possibilities of interpretation and, most importantly, doubt. Even the POV character himself here doubts his own opinion.
It's simple, her SmilerLoki, you're making things up...fan-fiction. I'm offering textual evidence.
Again, I'm sorry, but I don't follow. What exactly did I make up in your opinion?
And, in the end these new dreams are confirmed.
Confirmed how? You confuse me. Nothing in your quotes indisputably backs up your theory, those quotes can be just as well read differently. That has been my point for some time in this thread.
What else do you want. It seems your unwilling to concede that your wrong.
I'm becoming more and more convinced that you just misunderstand me completely.
When is for textual evidence that other Mandate have dreamed like Akka, you offer none, not once.
Here is a good example why. I'm not telling there is evidence of other dreams like Achamian's. I don't understand why you would think so. I'm postulating 2 things. First, it's the fact that we know there are no other dreams like his only from his words. It's not a fact, the possibility of other such dreams is not ruled out. The second thing follows from here. If there are no dreams like Achamian's, for sure, then we have him as the only outlier (so it very well might be not the Dreams, but him who's important here). A set of theories can be offered from here, but they are all contingent on the fact that Achamian is the only outlier. If there are actually other dreams like his, meaning he is not the only outlier, than it's more likely the Dreams themselves are important and not him, which opens way for a second set of theories, now contingent on the fact that Achamian's not the only outlier. This information is vital for further logical examination of the problem, without it such examination is just not possible, because at least 2 branching sets of theories (actually more, since there are more important points that create their own sets of theories, I just brought up this one as an example) need to be examined, all of them having similar weight. Nothing then can be narrowed down, and the whole exercise is counterproductive because of the sheer amount of possibilities. That was my starting point, if you remember.
I've offered plenty to back up my position, you....none.
It baffles me that you think so. To my knowledge, I have demonstrated how every quote you brought can be interpreted differently. Which, again, was the point I've started with. There are just too many interpretation of similar weight to focus on just one. There is no logical way to consider one interpretation more likely than all the others.
This isn't a argument in good faith anymore. Just you saying, "No, well maybe the did have these dreams and just didn't realize it, blah, blah , blah."
This makes me almost certain that you misunderstood why I brought the unreliability of Achamian's opinion up.
I agree, it's then better to leave it as it is. I also get a feeling that it's no longer pleasant for you to continue our discussion. It's not in any way very important, so we can just agree to disagree.
Which makes zero sense, when the author makes a not of, "Seswatha never shift.". Why would he do that for any other reason but to show that what Akka is experiencing is quite in fact unique?
Bakker creates a world with its own history, customs, and biases, and those things are not products of logic and reason. He encourages us to doubt and challenge them, to not blindly believe words, authorities, and opinions. Many things during our own history were believed in to then be completely overturned. I feel it's very realistic of Bakker to treat Earwa similarly. So this Mandate saying, bearing weight of countless voices behind it, might only stifle the truth and not reflect it. Just like it was once confidently said that the Sun revolves around the Earth in our world. People were killed because of it.
Basically, where you see neat narrative confirmation, I see layered world-building, underlining complexity of human and historical interactions.