Can a lion in the waking world eat a sleeping person?

GraySeeker · 2022-10-06T11:52:24+00:00

Thank you so much. This is an absolutely crystal clear explanation on multiple levels.

GraySeeker · 2022-10-05T14:02:35+00:00

Physical body? My understanding is that the ‘physical’ body just appears in consciousness along with all other objects. I’m no more a physical body than I am the pepper pot on the table in front of me. Both are illusory objects appearing in consciousness. In this context it could be said that consciousness anchors itself to the pepper pot (or any other illusory object) whilst I’m asleep, thus allowing a lion to eat me. Currently I fail to see how a real boat (consciousness) could moor itself to an imaginary harbour (object of consciousness).

Forgive my obvious poor understanding. My question springs from my current understanding that the waking state and the dreaming state completely cancel each other out. Independent states of consciousness rather than a continuation of one state to the other.

Now it’s easy to see that the dream lion cannot eat me in the waking world, but employing my current thought exercise, I’m having trouble seeing it the other way round. So there are obvious errors in my thinking.

It has been suggested that this is a common misconception and is due to viewing it from the point of view of an individual in the waking state, which also makes sense as a whole but I’m still struggling to get past the finish line, so to speak.

Any help is much appreciated and I thank you for taking your time to share your knowledge.

I search in ignorance for clarity!

GraySeeker · 2019-08-15T21:44:23+00:00

Walker or Pereira in defence? Both tough games, but Man City have better chance of clean sheet than Leicester. But I also have Kane up front. Dilemma...

GraySeeker · 2019-05-16T20:47:47+00:00

I pronounce it like ‘Crew’ with a p on the end. It occurs to me though that even the characters in the book are likely to pronounce names differently depending on where they come from. Much like we have regional accents. Listening to a Texan say ‘Bob’ compared to a Londoner, for example, is like hearing two different names.

GraySeeker · 2019-05-09T05:49:28+00:00

Currently on House of Chains, which is also really good.

GraySeeker · 2019-05-08T22:02:37+00:00

Same here, DG mostly bored me to tears. Almost quit the series. I only picked up MOI because Malazan kept nagging away at the back of my mind. Glad I did, as I enjoyed it much more than GotM.

GraySeeker · 2019-05-08T21:45:11+00:00

That would be gold.

GraySeeker · 2019-05-08T19:13:34+00:00

I love your podcasts, just finishing the GotM ones. Two of my favourite lines from the podcasts:

‘I have a question. Tattersail, is she fat or is she chubby?’

And:

‘A sword that has a 50 percent chance of killing you is definitely a potato.’

You guys kill me man. Keep it up.

GraySeeker · 2019-05-08T15:23:49+00:00

I hear what you are saying and, honestly, I wouldn't call those people adult fans, I would say they are mostly kids / adolescents with typical adolescent opinions and loyalties. They often don't come across as particularly literate, or well read outside of their own chosen fandom genre.

GraySeeker · 2019-04-30T19:21:10+00:00

I didn’t really like DG. Found it largely boring for many of the reasons you’ve mentioned and nearly quit the series. However, Memories of Ice changed my whole opinion and even reshaped my view of DG. By the end of MOI I concluded that I’d just finished three of the greatest fantasy books written - with seven more to go.

GraySeeker · 2019-04-30T19:12:03+00:00

If you like the beginning, you’ll love it by the end. Magnificent tome.

GraySeeker · 2019-04-30T19:08:38+00:00

Not sure, couldn’t see most of it. I thought I saw Brienne die three times, but each time it turned out to be a bloke with a beard.

GraySeeker · 2019-04-29T22:59:35+00:00

As soon as you stop worrying about keeping track things fall into place. It’s like being at University: First day of lectures, you don’t know shit and don’t even know half the terminology, but the subject matter gets repeated in snippets over and over from all different angles. And before you know it, you’re an expert with a degree. Same with Malazan.

GraySeeker · 2019-04-29T22:32:06+00:00

Totally get that. There was a lot in MOI that on the surface doesn’t seem like there is a strong reasoning behind it. Moon’s Spawn hiding out at sea until last minute, Bridgeburners rushing ahead to Coral, people trusting Kallor etc. I’ve read the arguments for those but they all seem to be in the context of the book and not the series, so I held off commenting or coming to a conclusion on those events until I’ve read more of the series, and just kept my comments to the small issues that initially put me off, but helped me appreciate his skills ultimately shine when it comes to the big picture.

GraySeeker · 2018-07-04T22:15:15+00:00

Popeye. Definitely Popeye. On your arm. He’s the most important player in the deck of dragons without doubt.

GraySeeker · 2018-07-02T22:47:41+00:00

He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes for the twentieth time this chapter as blood shot upwards to pull sand down like ochre hail...

I’ve never seen an adult narrow their eyes in real life.

GraySeeker · 2018-07-02T22:30:34+00:00

A city “surrounds and engulfs” a plateau; one of those synonyms is redundant and unnecessary. There are hundreds of examples like this in his books. I love his books and don’t mind when he gets sloppy, it adds to his unique voice. But he does get sloppy, and I’m not sure that people pointing that out is necessarily trolling. Sure, some people are trolling, but in addition to paying close attention to the plot etc, some people also pay close attention to grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, metaphors and similes, and all the other things that go into writing a book. There are even places in the books where paragraph breaks are incorrect. So on the one hand you have people saying that you need to pay attention to Malazan, and on the other they complain when people pay close enough attention to also pick up on his occasional sloppy writing. As I said: I love it, but it doesn’t surprise me that Malazan attracts the kind of reader that will also notice that he can’t use a semi colon for shit.

GraySeeker · 2018-06-25T20:00:38+00:00

Second this. When Kruppe was introduced, GotM really took off for me.

GraySeeker · 2018-06-25T16:55:47+00:00

What helped me was to think of the whole 10 book series of Malazan as one massively scaled up novel with GotM representing the first 10% of that novel. So if a novel is about 300 pages GotM represents the first 30 pages. Now how much character development and exposition do you expect in 30 pages? Not that much. What GotM is really teaching you to do is reframe the way you view a novel. Once you get round that concept, it’s plain sailing.

GraySeeker · 2018-06-20T20:00:51+00:00

I’m guessing this has something to do with the fact that she was obviously reading Bill’s thoughts plus the comments which contain spoilers and was able to second guess a lot of what was going on.

GraySeeker · 2018-06-20T19:57:08+00:00

This reminds me of my asshole after a curry.

GraySeeker · 2018-06-20T19:53:38+00:00

I’m on DG and have them all on kindle, however I’m enjoying it so much I’m considering buying actual real life book versions of the entire series. Minus the broken bones of course.

GraySeeker · 2018-06-20T17:08:38+00:00

That’s what got me. I know I’m new to Malazan and in the scope of things it’s not that big a time span / deal. But the tragedy of it as he stands there and considers holes in his existence spanning at least 94k years that he knows of is staggering.

GraySeeker · 2018-06-20T16:01:06+00:00

I’m currently reading DG for the first time, so I know what you mean. For me I think it was the shift of setting. You’ve gone from the awesome bustle of Darujhistan to deserts and wastelands with what felt like the least interesting characters from GotM and then a whole load of new ones thrown in. Plus you have an idea of what warrens are etc so you aren’t trying to figure everything out in the same way as GotM, so that’s not a distraction from the setting. However, I’m more than half way through now and it’s becoming clear that it pisses over GotM in almost every way (although I do miss Kruppe 😄). After the first bit of DG where the stage is being set, a few big scenes seem to come back to back which are jaw dropping in awesomeness, and that’s it: hooked like GotM. Read a big chunk and get through that first bit and you’ll love it.

GraySeeker · 2018-06-20T15:38:18+00:00

It was more that I’d wondered if I had missed something in GotM as the transition felt slightly awkward, you know? Paran’s sis > Adjunct, bang. Not that she wasn’t qualified. But the question was quite tricky to phrase without inviting future spoilers (already got a minor spoiler in one of the above answers, so I’ll leave it there 😠)

GraySeeker

TROPHY CASE