[MisterGuyMan]

^ Bakker said that the TTT has " run it's course".
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/6r3hba/unholy_consultation_r_scott_bakker_bares_the_soul/dl2tau4/

Just wanted to add my take on this.  TTT as originally envisioned by Moe had the Great Ordeal encountering setback after setback and would eventually meet with disaster.  So from a broad perspective, Kell's handling of TGO is still on track.  That's why I think TTT wasn't ever overturned.  Kell might have brought it further but the actual plan still went through to completion. 

I also cite the unnamed entity again.  To fight the God one must raze the fields.  So TTT is also on the same path as the entity's war with the God.

Anyway what do people have to say about this very early quote from Baker?
But it was the innocence part, that struck me as the most significant and the most
redemptive. Without giving too much away, there is a manner in which Serwe is the most
important character in the book.
Unless Serwe does something else in the next series or is representative of some meta Outside shenanigans, I don't see how she can in any way be the most important character.  So I'm making a leap here and saying her outright faith in Kell is somehow important.

[Wilshire]

I think you've misinterpreted Moe's TTT. I don't think we ever found out Moe's ultimate goal/predictions specifically, but IIRC he largely couldn't predict much of anything past the Circumfixtion, but essentially knew without Kell he'd fail, so hoped Kell would make it alive to him, unite humanity under one religion (the specific one was irrelevant) then rise up to challenge the Consult before it was too late.

Kellhus' "takeover" of the Thought was basically removing Moe from the plan and re-formulating it with this own flare. In specifics it might have been different but in generalities it was mostly the same. The Thought was constructed

Generally speaking, I think most of everything Bakker has ever said is either purposefully misleading (recent stuff in the last few years), or unaware of the specifics (older info from way back) which is now irrelevant or largely misleading. Regarding Serwe, whatever she was supposed to be, I think it was intended to be very clear by now. Thus, I think Serwe's whole thing was being the sympathetic catalyst which ends up uniting all of humanity against the consult. Yes, that's mundane and uninteresting, but I think that's all there is too it - things aren't always as complicated as we make them out to be.

Keep in mind his Serwe comments were largely as a rebuttal to the online stuff happening surrounding him at the time. I think Bakker has shown time and again a pretty extreme misunderstanding of the people he's talking to or trying to reach out too, and most probably (imo) the serwe comment was worded very poorly to begin with and is now taken out of context in the Earwa online noosphere.

[Rots]

@Wilshire - i agree w/your comments re: Bakker. At this point i find him to be an intentionally undependable narrator of his own story in a lot of ways. Im sure he would tell me that my loss of faith in him would be his goal and that i am now better off.

Ill buy whatever, if anything, comes next but im much more neutral towards the author and thus the work.

[BeardFisher-King]

@Wilshire - i agree w/your comments re: Bakker. At this point i find him to be an intentionally undependable narrator of his own story in a lot of ways. Im sure he would tell me that my loss of faith in him would be his goal and that i am now better off.

Ill buy whatever, if anything, comes next but im much more neutral towards the author and thus the work.

This really resonates with me, Rots. Similarly, I no longer completely trust Bakker as a story-teller, and, as you note, that's probably the position in which he wants to place his readers. It's a very modern, or perhaps even a modernist approach to fiction.

[Madness]

Generally speaking, I think most of everything Bakker has ever said is either purposefully misleading (recent stuff in the last few years), or unaware of the specifics (older info from way back) which is now irrelevant or largely misleading. Regarding Serwe, whatever she was supposed to be, I think it was intended to be very clear by now. Thus, I think Serwe's whole thing was being the sympathetic catalyst which ends up uniting all of humanity against the consult. Yes, that's mundane and uninteresting, but I think that's all there is too it - things aren't always as complicated as we make them out to be.

Keep in mind his Serwe comments were largely as a rebuttal to the online stuff happening surrounding him at the time. I think Bakker has shown time and again a pretty extreme misunderstanding of the people he's talking to or trying to reach out too, and most probably (imo) the serwe comment was worded very poorly to begin with and is now taken out of context in the Earwa online noosphere.

Cue FB's Earwa's Original Sin commentary. Though, I personally think "something something pure ignorance" is more her narrative antecedent and I've always liked that "the reader has Serwe in their hands and Kellhus in their heads" (badly paraphrased) quote, as per those aforementioned out of text contemporary commentaries.

@Wilshire - i agree w/your comments re: Bakker. At this point i find him to be an intentionally undependable narrator of his own story in a lot of ways. Im sure he would tell me that my loss of faith in him would be his goal and that i am now better off.

Ill buy whatever, if anything, comes next but im much more neutral towards the author and thus the work.

Nice to see you around again, Rots. It would be nice to communicate in The Agora sometime, given my lack of time to post in the past two years (though, I'm working on it).

@Wilshire - i agree w/your comments re: Bakker. At this point i find him to be an intentionally undependable narrator of his own story in a lot of ways. Im sure he would tell me that my loss of faith in him would be his goal and that i am now better off.

Ill buy whatever, if anything, comes next but im much more neutral towards the author and thus the work.

This really resonates with me, Rots. Similarly, I no longer completely trust Bakker as a story-teller, and, as you note, that's probably the position in which he wants to place his readers. It's a very modern, or perhaps even a modernist approach to fiction.

He claims to have avoided the postmodernist pitfalls a la Gene Wolfe, BFK, but I'm never sure.

[Francis Buck]

He claims to have avoided the postmodernist pitfalls a la Gene Wolfe, BFK, but I'm never sure.

The Wolfe only prepares those pitfalls, it is the reader who stumbles!

It is the reader who stumbles.

[Wilshire]

He claims to have avoided the postmodernist pitfalls a la Gene Wolfe, BFK, but I'm never sure.

The Wolfe only prepares those pitfalls, it is the reader who stumbles!

It is the reader who stumbles.

Well I find Wolfe unreadable. Not sure if that says anything about either though.

[H]

He claims to have avoided the postmodernist pitfalls a la Gene Wolfe, BFK, but I'm never sure.

The Wolfe only prepares those pitfalls, it is the reader who stumbles!

It is the reader who stumbles.

What is the supposed this supposed "post-Modern pitfall" that Wolfe allegedly falls into? 

Genuinely wondering,
Anonymous Armchair Philosopher

[Wilshire]

RIP Gene Wolfe btw, he died this week.

[mrganondorf]

Rereading the end of TTT, Kellhus as dead creates a kind of ultimate Viramsata.  If he permanently enhanced the schools' abilities to find and train the few, then in a decade or so, there might be more sorcerers about than the crowd that crossed Earwa...as in sacrifice 1k sorcerers and 280k soldiers in order to produce 10k sorcerers and millions of soldiers.

The sranc have surely grown in the intervening 2000 years (minus 1 hoard) but so should the population of Zeum/3 Seas/Eanna.

[H]

Rereading the end of TTT, Kellhus as dead creates a kind of ultimate Viramsata.  If he permanently enhanced the schools' abilities to find and train the few, then in a decade or so, there might be more sorcerers about than the crowd that crossed Earwa...as in sacrifice 1k sorcerers and 280k soldiers in order to produce 10k sorcerers and millions of soldiers.

The sranc have surely grown in the intervening 2000 years (minus 1 hoard) but so should the population of Zeum/3 Seas/Eanna.

Well, the issue with a plan that long in the making is that you have to try to not die to the Consult/Sranc/No-God until you can fulfil a 10-year plan.  It is a little hard to surmise the Three Seas, having lost as many people as they did, to muster as strong a defense as was put forth in the First Apocalypse, when most of the North was still intact.

I guess, as always, the sort of wild-card is Zeum though.

[mrganondorf]

Yeah longer, the less believable ... however, it's a helluva viramsata all the same.  Bakker took 'what is the meaning of a deluded life' and spread it to every corner of Earwa/Eanna.  These people are going to be believe hard now.

It would be the strangest thing if we found out that Khellus (inadvertently) was sacrificed to save the world (if a world united by him posthumously finds a way to overcome mog).  Trying to fool everyone into believing you are Jesus and die and yet succeed.

Also, whatever Khellus' fate, as a liar, he was the Authentic Prophet of Ajokli.  Those gold haloes weren't in lieu of silver ones, they signified an alternative holiness--being blessed by the biggest demon.

What do you think H?

[TaoHorror]

Yeah longer, the less believable ... however, it's a helluva viramsata all the same.  Bakker took 'what is the meaning of a deluded life' and spread it to every corner of Earwa/Eanna.  These people are going to be believe hard now.

It would be the strangest thing if we found out that Khellus (inadvertently) was sacrificed to save the world (if a world united by him posthumously finds a way to overcome mog).  Trying to fool everyone into believing you are Jesus and die and yet succeed.

Also, whatever Khellus' fate, as a liar, he was the Authentic Prophet of Ajokli.  Those gold haloes weren't in lieu of silver ones, they signified an alternative holiness--being blessed by the biggest demon.

What do you think H?

Extraordinary, I don't think this has been explained with such clarity and economy

[TaoHorror]

Yeah longer, the less believable ... however, it's a helluva viramsata all the same.  Bakker took 'what is the meaning of a deluded life' and spread it to every corner of Earwa/Eanna.  These people are going to be believe hard now.

It would be the strangest thing if we found out that Khellus (inadvertently) was sacrificed to save the world (if a world united by him posthumously finds a way to overcome mog).  Trying to fool everyone into believing you are Jesus and die and yet succeed.

Also, whatever Khellus' fate, as a liar, he was the Authentic Prophet of Ajokli.  Those gold haloes weren't in lieu of silver ones, they signified an alternative holiness--being blessed by the biggest demon.

What do you think H?

So, from this, the Thousand Fold Thought was delusional? Or was their something to it, just too difficult to implement accurately?

[Madness]

Extraordinary, I don't think this has been explained with such clarity and economy

The kid has a gift .