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Post by camybaby on Aug 26, 2007 14:14:33 GMT -5
OMG im so sorry. feel free to brutally murder me, it may partly make it up to you
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Post by shyviolet on Aug 26, 2007 15:11:35 GMT -5
OOOHH!!!! I am SO sorry, Zemira!! I have marked them all in large capitals now, I am so, so sorry I forgot before you saw them!! Please forgive me! *bows*
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Post by GhostEggplant on Aug 26, 2007 17:42:36 GMT -5
killing in self defence is excusable. No, it is not. Make Love to your enemies, man. This would be the major problem that I had with Weavers of Saramyr, and prevented me from really getting into it. I'm a Mennonite (and therefore pacifist) so I couldn't really relate to any of the characters. I never thought "this's how I'd do it" in this trilogy because if the 'good guys' acted how I'd want them to then everybody'd die. And we can't have that, can we? I was able to overlook this violent aspect in some of the more awesome characters (Tane and Reki, mostly), but most of the time I couldn't. >_<
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Post by camybaby on Aug 26, 2007 18:21:10 GMT -5
killing in self defence is excusable. No, it is not. Make Love to your enemies, man. Well if some one came at you with a knife attempting to kill you, and you had a knife well its a part of human nature to defend yourself (When I say you, I mean a general you, not a personal you). Almost all people will kill when put under the right circumstances, in my opinion Asara was the most natural. Ghosteggplant, surely you could relate to some characters. I mean some inexcusable actions can't really stop all empathy. Interesting denomination of Christianity, I'm interested from your own personal perspective, how did you feel towards the weavers and how did you feel towards how the characters dealt with them?
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marleen
Full Member
Wazowski!
Posts: 122
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Post by marleen on Aug 27, 2007 1:31:13 GMT -5
Wow, that was a good read. Camybaby, in regards to your very first post on how women are generally being displayed as closer to nature *in a romantic way* (mind you, death and pestilence are also natural ) - I do see your point! This hasn't bothered me much in The Braided Path, but it HAS on many other occasions, including that Avalon stuff of Zimmer-Bradley's, and most recently "Odalisque" by Fiona McIntyre. It's, like, the earthbound female Goddess against the suppressive male God, yadda, yawn. Where have I read this before? Oh right, everywhere. But I think in The Braided Path it was subtle enough (comapre to a lot of other stuff out there) and thus much less annoying.
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Post by GhostEggplant on Aug 27, 2007 15:29:28 GMT -5
No, it is not. Make Love to your enemies, man. Well if some one came at you with a knife attempting to kill you, and you had a knife well its a part of human nature to defend yourself (When I say you, I mean a general you, not a personal you). Almost all people will kill when put under the right circumstances, in my opinion Asara was the most natural. Ghosteggplant, surely you could relate to some characters. I mean some inexcusable actions can't really stop all empathy. Interesting denomination of Christianity, I'm interested from your own personal perspective, how did you feel towards the weavers and how did you feel towards how the characters dealt with them? Yes, the characters who did kill did it in a very human way (except for the Weavers, who were crazy and brainwashed). I don't really hold it against them (them being the 'good guys', in case it wasn't clear); it's in their nature. I just can't relate to them all that well. Even people like Mishani who never physically killed anyone (at least I think she didn't) still manipulated people's lives in a cruel fashion. About how I felt toward the Weavers... They're the villains in this story and what they do is horrible (though kinda awesome) so I thought Saramyr would be better off without them. Which it is. And the people fighting them apparently didn't have any moral restrictions about killing them off, so I can't really blame them if they acted violently. It's just not something I personally would do. So now I'm back to my original point of not really being able to get into the books. There's a trilogy by Midori Snyder (I think it's called The Oran Trilogy...) which is epic fantasy with magic, armies, evil rulers, etc. which also has a group of peace-keeping gypsies (who are nothing short of awesome). So I know pacifists can survive in a fantasy setting, they just don't appear very often.
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Post by camybaby on Aug 27, 2007 16:10:58 GMT -5
marleen I will give those authors a miss then since it’s got to the point were I can’t read the same childish propaganda. It’s also amazing how helpless and insultingly pathetic these earth goddesses are in many fantasy authors books. Looking through mythology, earth goddesses had very brutal dark sides and commanded vast monster armies. Another announce is how prudish these goddesses are usually written, always glorifying virginity and monogamy, which is out of character since half these writers are probably basing them on convoluted mythology. Thankfully it wasn’t really a really prevailing theme in the book and was mostly kept subtle.
*SPOILER*
Im glad that religion and the gods didn’t really play a big part in the series. I liked how the gods were distant and very alien yet they were also close and you could feel their influence. My interpretation is that they may not even be actual gods but life forms and constructs like the weave whales.
*SPOILER*
The female weavers where more powerful then why did the evil god in the series not try to intervene or encourage the weavers to allow women to become weavers when he had regained his strength?
Saramyr is better of with out the weavers, but not if they aren’t replaced. I mean the weavers where essential to the empire, with out something that can hold a continent together, the empire would collapse and wars and chaos would descend. It would be great to see pacifists more but the only problem with that is, that if it was badly written then they would be put a pedestal so high the universe would be beneath them. Wars are terrible yes, but the effects on society can be monumentally good.
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Post by GhostEggplant on Aug 27, 2007 20:15:46 GMT -5
Maybe Aricarat didn't choose to brainwash women because he was sexist...? Or women were just immune to his infuence. Both ideas sound a little far-fetched. XD
Could you explain a little more about the positive efects of war on society, please?
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Post by shyviolet on Aug 28, 2007 2:21:16 GMT -5
[POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR ALL 3] (depending on how much like Sherlock Holmes you are)
I imagine that if they were as good at manipulating the weave as it sounds like they are, women would be too hard to manipulate. It wouldn't be fast enough, Aricarat doesn't strike me as the patient type.
Chris has written a pacifist before, Ty was a pacifist, remember? I don't know about you guys but I really liked Ty.
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Post by camybaby on Aug 28, 2007 4:53:06 GMT -5
Looking at just the world wars had an immense positive effect on British society. With out those wars happening we wouldn’t have modern airline travel, our health would be a lot worse off (since the war allowed socialist ideals like the welfare state to become very popular. The NHS is directly responsible for raising life expectancy, reducing infant mortality etc), due to the more modern techniques needed to treat soldiers having been developed during the war, such as major surgery, plastic surgery, blood transfusions etc. The wars showed that women could compete equally with men, Second World War showed the evils of racism and bigotry which has helped the civil rights movements, and allowed for the collapse of the European empires and so on. Basically it was a big catalyst for social change that perhaps would have taken centuries to happen. It would be interesting to see how Saramyr developed after the war.
*SPOILERS*
In my opinion Aricarat wasn’t misogynistic. I don think he even cares for the weavers; they are just tools to get his seat of power back. I believe that when he first “created” the weavers he was weak and could only plant suggestions and influences (certainly he can only do that even when he did regain a lot of strength) and just get them addicted. I believe he could easily manipulate women, I mean he is a god and also addicts are easy to control. The murdering of the female weavers he couldn’t control or have the. Why would he care so long as it didn’t greatly interfere in his goals. Plus trying to create female weavers again would weaken and distract the weavers goal of digging up other pieces of himself which is all he really cared about. He also probably thought that ordinary humans couldn’t defeat him (or catch on to what was happening until it was much too late) and no aberrant would be powerful enough to destroy him (since the weavers killed them), so the weavers wouldn’t have any serious competition.
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Post by shyviolet on Aug 28, 2007 5:15:01 GMT -5
[POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR ALL 3] (can't remember where it mentions this)
When it said all the female weavers had been killed I kind of assumed the men killed them in their post-weaving fits. I mean, most of the ones you see torture and kill children or women, if they were up in a monastery with other weavers and no-one else it would make sense that the men would eventually kill off the women, especially the trainee ones. I thought it took them longer to notice that women were better at it.
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Post by camybaby on Aug 28, 2007 6:39:54 GMT -5
*SPOILER*
The female weavers is mentioned on page 388 of the first book, on the second paragraph. I assumed that the murder of the women weavers was calculated rather than post-weave madness. Since it says the women had mostly subjugated the men. I wonder if the female weavers deserved to be overthrown...I mean if a male weaver is pretty evil then what were the females like....
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Post by GhostEggplant on Aug 28, 2007 18:36:58 GMT -5
Looking at just the world wars had an immense positive effect on British society. With out those wars happening we wouldn’t have modern airline travel, our health would be a lot worse off (since the war allowed socialist ideals like the welfare state to become very popular. The NHS is directly responsible for raising life expectancy, reducing infant mortality etc), due to the more modern techniques needed to treat soldiers having been developed during the war, such as major surgery, plastic surgery, blood transfusions etc. Ok, I'm not going to argue this part. We woulda figured it out without war, too. I think wars cause a lot of racism. Like the Japanese in WW 2; some Americans were suspicius of Japanese neighors they had know all their lives. Yes, most of these racsisms were overcome in time, but it seem to me like going one step forward and two steps back. Empires created by war and conquest will always fall. War doesn't have to be the only way to do this. The bad still overshadows the good by far. Ty? I haven't read the book(s) he/she was in. T_T
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Post by Aryeec {E.F. Forester} on Dec 23, 2007 21:12:57 GMT -5
well.......i decided NOT to read all of that.
I really like how the action starts right up and doesn't have any b.s. chapters at the beginning. I'm glad Chris steered clear of elves, dragons, etc. I thought how he incorporated the demons and spirits and Gods into the book was magnificently thought out, even more so now that I've read the last two.....there isn't really anything that I didn't like about this book. My least favourite aspect was the political stuff, but that's just b/c I don't like politics.
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Post by GhostEggplant on Dec 27, 2007 16:13:55 GMT -5
I don't like it when the action starts off the story. As my previous posts in this thread will tell you, I'm not a fan of action scenes. I had no attatchment to any of the characters yet, being newly introduced to them, so the threat of them dying wasn't as powerful. It is only thanks to Chris's style of writing that I wasn't bored out of my skull.
The Fade had the same problem. *grumbles*
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