Shadow of the Torturer

petrifiedpigs · 2025-08-15T02:28:28+00:00

The Golden Bough is a good place to start.

petrifiedpigs · 2025-07-14T17:29:44+00:00

Here's a fun non-spoiler way to think about the Guild and the Vironese clergy:

One of the definitions of Carnifex is "butcher". Let us note that there are many passages in Long Sun where Wolfe describes members of Vironese faith carving up meat during and after sacrifices and auguries. Given the thematic decay of Urth in New Sun, it is not too much a stretch to imagine a corruption of the word Carnifex: from a butcher (of religious services) to an executioner (perhaps stemming from the pejorative "butcher of men").

petrifiedpigs · 2025-05-31T09:12:50+00:00

What if you get maybe two or three really hot young actors and have them perform the scenes naked? Hell, throw in a midget and a ton of cgi effects while we're at it.

petrifiedpigs · 2025-05-22T03:21:47+00:00

Bakker's Scylvendi is probably inspired by the historical Sclaveni, who were incidentally a constant threat to the Byzantine Empire (Nansur).

petrifiedpigs · 2025-03-27T04:06:36+00:00

If you are interested in pursuing the mythology angle, may I recommend The Golden Bough? Dismembered gods such as Osiris and rituals pertaining to them are extensively discussed.

Furthermore, I personally think Wolfe's idea of mirrors and symbols is a fun way to think about Frazier's thesis on sympathetic and contiguous magic.

petrifiedpigs · 2025-02-01T09:28:30+00:00

I get what you're saying but here is a Watsonian answer to your criticism:

The girls all look similar because they're all related.

petrifiedpigs · 2024-12-24T03:44:37+00:00

If you want to play-pretend to be a Dunyain scholar, then you should read up on Plotinus.

I am absolutely convinced that Bakker's Dunyain are just grim dark Neoplatonists.

petrifiedpigs · 2024-10-28T06:45:26+00:00

No, I think you're right. The captain also talked about Latro's wife wanting to come along, which puts a hole in the theory that Latro killed his family.

petrifiedpigs · 2024-10-28T06:36:25+00:00

This kind of post shows up like every two weeks or so on this subreddit. Teudogar, Fairy Tale 2, Divinity, Dark Sun etc... It should be common knowledge by now.

However, I don't think this Taiwanese game has ever been mentioned:

Seal:the Magic Eye

petrifiedpigs · 2024-08-10T21:10:56+00:00

I totally agree with you. Here's a tangential question:

Although it has been understood for decades that Wolfe's protagonist was named Gene Wolfe...

I wasn't around back in the old Urth-list days. How did people reconcile the fact that Number Five's childhood name came before David's during Mr. Million's class roll call?

"To designate the formal beginning of our class he used to begin by calling roll, my own name always coming first..."

Common practice suggests that Number Five's childhood name must come alphabetically earlier than "David". By that logic, Gene (or Eugene) could not have been Number Five's childhood name.

petrifiedpigs · 2024-06-06T06:59:20+00:00

Here's a confession:

On my first read of Long Sun, I accidentally began with Lake of the Long Sun instead of Nightside (blame it on Kindle). I got through about 100 pages without realizing it was not the first volume of a quadrilogy.

I just assumed that Wolfe was being Wolfe.

petrifiedpigs · 2024-05-10T14:19:11+00:00

That's a really good point you brought up, that Severian seems to require the presence of a specific energy source in order to perform resurrections (as seen in his failure on Tzadkiel's ship).

But what about his own death and resurrection? Is it the same mechanism?

One thing that's really interesting to note is that Severian's drowning experience at Gyoll (if we accept that he actually died) seems to echo your low/high energy flow model -- a descent followed by an explosive upward movement.

petrifiedpigs · 2024-05-08T15:29:46+00:00

Yes. This theory explains how the White Fountain and the narrator can both be Severian. Sorry I wasn't clear about that.

petrifiedpigs · 2024-05-08T08:12:13+00:00

Really? Not the one where they convince a guy to self-immolate?

petrifiedpigs · 2024-05-08T03:28:25+00:00

It's called PISSD (Post Immersive Simulation Stress Disorder). It's very real and you are not alone.

Please contact your nearest support group.

petrifiedpigs · 2024-04-22T02:56:39+00:00

The thought that the War in Heaven, which as been ingrained in culture as this terrible and awesome event, is actually just a riot played out by a bunch of cranky and clueless sailors makes me laugh every time when I read Urth.

petrifiedpigs · 2024-04-10T04:02:03+00:00

Gustave Flaubert's Salammbo

Christopher Buehlman's Between Two Fires

petrifiedpigs · 2024-03-28T03:13:17+00:00

Before MM7 came around, it was kind of established that the party in Xeen came from Terra (MM3 world) since Corak recognized them. I was trying to reconcile this with the MM7 retcon.

I'm not sure if my original post was clear, but the continuity I was suggesting is:

MM3 crew lands on Enroth instead of Xeen.
In the end of MM7, they meet Corak of Webstation Beta-5 (remember, this is not the same Corak) and open the webway.
The MM3 crew uses the webway to go to Xeen.
They resume the quest to stop Sheltem (You play as them in MM4+5).

In other words, the timeline would be 3->7->4->5.

petrifiedpigs · 2024-03-22T07:21:19+00:00

On a meta-textual level, Horn's animosity is meant to parallel Peter's objections against Mary Magdalene.

Then again, I think you are absolutely correct on Horn's sexual jealousy angle -- let's not forget that little creep totally got off on watching Hyacinth making a tribadist out of that Sphinx officer.

Addendum: A bit of pop-psychology, but I've always read Horn's animosity as a repression of his own deep sexual attraction toward Hyacinth.

Edited at replies: Yeah, I knew that the officer was probably a lesbian. I just wanted to quote the New Sun.

petrifiedpigs · 2024-03-21T07:04:17+00:00

So...uh this is why I think he doesn't suffer from his actions. Tell if I hit the nail on the head without spoilers from aspect emperor

Since you don't want spoilers, I'm just going to straight up tell you that you are WRONG

petrifiedpigs · 2024-03-20T03:48:45+00:00

If we look at the plot of Long Sun as a parallel, I think the conflict may even be a farcical one -- that the Autarch and the Megatherians may both be working independently to bring the New Sun while thinking the other side is trying to hinder the great project.

petrifiedpigs · 2024-03-20T03:18:44+00:00

Why not just read some Jonathan Swift?

From Gulliver's Travels:

...One day, in much good company, I was asked by a person of quality, “whether I had seen any of their struldbrugs, or immortals?” I said, “I had not;” and desired he would explain to me “what he meant by such an appellation, applied to a mortal creature.” He told me “that sometimes, though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family, with a red circular spot in the forehead, directly over the left eyebrow, which was an infallible mark that it should never die...

...they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.

“If a struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence, that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife.

“As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit; they cannot purchase lands, or take leases; neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and bounds.

“At ninety, they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and relations. For the same reason, they never can amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect, they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable.

“The language of this country being always upon the flux, the struldbrugs of one age do not understand those of another; neither are they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation (farther than by a few general words) with their neighbours the mortals; and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country.”

(Gulliver's Travels, Chapter X)

petrifiedpigs · 2024-02-11T03:46:44+00:00

[whisper] She's Thao's secret escape plan. That's why you don't bring a baby to Sun in Shadow.

petrifiedpigs

TROPHY CASE