/lit/ - Literature

>>23378755
>Of course people say there are hidden meanings and it's deep and profound but I don't have that impression at all.
Severion literally starts talking about philosophy in the first chapter after he received the coin from Vodalus

>>23378755
Severian is Urth's autistic God.
>all the women fall for him regardless
Let's see:
The khabit prostitutes are paid
Thecla is in prison, has no one else, and is desperate to save herself
Dorcas is confused and alone in the world after Severian revives her
Agia is trying to kill him to steal his sword
Jolenta is a slut who fucks around with the troupe
Cyriaca is a nympho milf who is also trying to save herself
The island girl is horny and maybe a slave, don't remember

Book of the New Sun does not shy away from its pulpiness. Severian is the classic "tall, dark, and handsome." And he kills people for a living while shirtless, wearing a mask, and a fuligin cloak. Of course women are going to want to have sexo with him. And keep in mind this is over the span of quite a few months. So perhaps not too unrealistic in the setting. Also, didn't Gene say he wanted to create a character that people could have fun LARPing as?

>>23378755
If you think the main character has autistic mannerisms than you should relate to him more.

A lot of those women, he basically rapes.
He's socially stunted, and doesn't get it.

>>23379526
On reading it again, the realisation sets in that Thecla and Agia probably never liked him very much at all. They're the women he says he loved the most, because they were basically the first women he ever got to talk to. It's really pathetic.

>>23378755
its a 14 year olds idea of cool like Berserk

>>23379911
Berserk is actually interesting though

>>23379922
I agree at least with berserk the art is savant tier

>>23379868
Isn't that every young man's first loves? A nice girl that wants something beyond your comprehension and some bpd cunt trying to kill you on and off? I related and it was with dudes. Mostly younger than me.

>>23379868
>>23379966
yeah like another anon said its pulp, but 10 years and 3 gfs later and i think wolfe has at least a human grasp on the dubious nature of love even if you hate any sexo in novels (lol). its pretty cynical.

>>23379911
Those are both cool, and if you can't appreciate why they're cool, you're probably dead inside.

>>23380041
Male fantasy bait a unneeded rape scenes to be edgy?

>>23380047
Those ARE cool, but the rape is generally used to heighten scenes of horror and drama.

Most fantasy is Twilight but for men. Author is a loser in real life, so he creates a world where he's super strong and super smart and super talented and all the women flock to him.

Cf. Conan the Cimmerian, Dune, Kingkiller Chronicles.

>>23379911

>>23380057
Yeah, except that's not really what BotNS is. BotNS is a puzzle box, with a main character who is obviously very troubled and confused, and basically a kid in a lot of ways.

Conan is that, and Conan is great, but BotNS isn't Conan.

>>23378755
>This is just someone's self insert fantasy novel where the main character has autistic mannerisms and yet all the women fall for him regardless.
Considering he raped one of the woman it’s safe to say you’re a fucking idiot with the reading g comprehension of a mongoloid. Maybe you should stick to picture books?

>>23379526
>Severian is the classic "tall, dark, and handsome."
He’s quite literally ugly as fuck, it’s spelled out for you explicitly in book of the short sun. The narrative that Severian uses in his story to describe himself and events is unreliable.

>>23378755
>Severian, an apprentice in the Torturers' Guild
was all I needed to read to know that this book was shite

>>23380305
Bad news. Gene Wolfe is actually a genius and it's great.

>>23380281
The fact that Severian goes out of his way to remind us all of his flawless memory every 3 pages and then proceeds to not remember one single thing that actually matters in the whole story goes so hard. It's great.

Severian is not very good at telling stories. Even Ascian soldiers are better than him.

>>23378755
I really wanted to like it as well but found it quite banal and rather boring.

>>23378755
>Of course people say there are hidden meanings and it's deep and profound but I don't have that impression at all.
There are hidden messages and there's immense depth to the writing, but it isn't profound. It's a beautiful piece of writing that exists to be intricate, like a children's book with illustrations that you can stare at for hours and still find new things in.

There are some good parts (like the Ascian story) but the actual plot is repetitive shit.

>>23378755
>>23378818
>>23379526
>>23379911
>>23380041
>>23380066
>>23380276
>>23380645
>>23380648
>>23381199
It's self-insert genre fiction trash for pseudo intellectual teenagers who don't want to read actual works of literature but still want to be seen as "deep" and "profound".
>Overall, I found nothing unique in Wolfe. Perhaps it's because I've read quite a bit of odd fantasy; if all I read was mainstream stuff, then I'd surely find Wolfe unpredictable, since he is a step above them. But compared to Leiber, Howard, Dunsany, Eddison, Kipling, Haggard, Peake, Mieville, or Moorcock, Wolfe is nothing special.
>Perhaps I just got my hopes up too high. I imagined something that might evoke Peake or Leiber (at his best), perhaps with a complexity and depth gesturing toward Milton or Ariosto. I could hardly imagine a better book than that, but even a book half that good would be a delight--or a book that was nothing like that, but was unpredictable and seductive in some other way.
>I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never really did. It all plods along without much rise or fall, just the constant moving action to make us think something interesting is happening. I did find some promise, some moments that I would have loved to see the author explore, particularly those odd moments where Silver Age Sci Fi crept in, but each time he touched upon these, he would return immediately to the smallness of his plot and his annoying prick of a narrator. I never found the book to be difficult or complex, merely tiring. the unusual parts were evasive and vague, and the dull parts constant and repetitive.
>The whole structure (or lack of it) does leave things up to interpretation, and perhaps that's what some readers find appealing: that they can superimpose their own thoughts and values onto the narrator, and onto the plot itself. But at that point, they don't like the book Wolfe wrote, they like the book they are writing between his lines.

>>23378755
I liked it, more for the feel feels you get while reading the journey of a man saving the universe than because of anything else.

I turned my brain off and just let myself led by the story instead of trying to autistically interpret every single thing happening, I think that's the actual way it's meant to be read.

>>23381268
>dude, check out my quote from literally who
Think for yourself.

>>23378755
>fantasy series
Stopped reading there. It's a science fiction series, dumbass.

>>23379911
>>23379922
>>23380041
>>23379945
>manga troons
>>>/lgbt/

>>23381268
it's actually one of the only works of fantasy/scifi i see english professors and other enthusiasts of literary fiction regularly praise. they consider mieville bad btw

>>23381432
>this isn't the sickest shit, because it just isn't okay?
>I am a grown up and I only read real books!
No one cares, Melvin.

>>23378755
antoher day, another pleb being filtered by Wolfe
I live for this shit

>>23381525
YWNBAW

>>23378755
>fantasy
filtered

>>23381525
is this some BotNS artwork? if so, which scene? post more if you have them.

>>23380305
The profession of executioner has been taken fairly serious at times anon.

>>23381268
>I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never really did. It all plods along without much rise or fall, just the constant moving action to make us think something interesting is happening.
This is true. Wolfe writes a bit flat

>>23381824
That's Berserk.

>>23378755
It's good, but Gene Wolfe has written better and nore sophisticated works. People just gravitate to this one because it appeals to the basic 'genre' crowd the most.

>>23380057
Conan is Esoteric non fiction, and its amazing.
Beyond the black river shows how good american culture can mix into fantasy settings, exchanging injuns for picts and cowboys for imperials.

>>23380281
>He’s quite literally ugly as fuck, it’s spelled out for you explicitly in book of the short sun.
Where?

>>23382181
silk in long sun is probably wolfe's best character. mary sue but actually compelling.

>yet all the women fall for him
He has sex with six (6) different women across 1000 pages of story.

>>23382463
From what I remember, when Silk mind travels to visit Severian in Return to the Whorl he describes him as being slightly weird looking. I forget the exact words, something like unconventional.

>>23382937
Lets be generous and say one page is one week
That's still more people than the average anon will have sex with in 1000 weeks (~19 yrs)

>>23382984
that's how much I have sex yes. a dozen side chicks

I've never really enjoy he top recs in sff, some have their moments but the characters are so uninteresting , wouldn't say they are bad books but they are not for me

>>23383503
the top recs in sff are retarded except for wolfe

>>23382463
>My hands raised themselves like spiders to pluck out my eyes-and would have done so if the ragged man beside me had not struck them down with his own hand, which was of steel. "You are not the Chatelaine Thecla," he said. "You are Severian, a journeyman of the torturers, who was unfortunate enough to love her. See yourself!" He held up the steel hand so that I could see a stranger's face, narrow, ugly, and bewildered, reflected in its work-polished balm.

Don't know if I would interpret that as Severian being hideous, since he's looking at himself mirrored onto a curved reflective surface and comparing himself to Thecla, a beautiful woman. But I have never imagined Severian as the tall, handsome type.

>>23380281
Well he is ugly at the end because he got fucked up in battle. Before that he was handsome.

>>23380305
Niggers....

>>23380515
Agreed. He created the machine that makes pringles.

Whats with people being miserable sacks of shit?
>Is that a FANTASY book? Such low class garbage unlike my pretentious slop nobody cares about

>>23378755
Very Landsharkian thread

>>23383721
>Is that a FANTASY book?
[Sigh] ... once again, no it fucking isn't.

>>23378755
Either decent bait or top 5 most embarassing posts I've ever seen.

>>23381268
Reads like a goodreads or amazon review lol. Namedropping a bunch of writers to prove one's "credentials", then proceeding to make the most midwit critical points imaginable.
>le nothing happens
>narrator is le prick, I can't IDENTIFY like in my YA favorites!!!
>it's not complex at all, I would know because I'm smart... btw, weird how people love it for making them think and interpret between the lines, a good book should spell out everything, shouldn't it?!

>>23379868
Thecla loved him. Severian knew because he had all her memories.

>>23378755
>This is just someone's self insert fantasy novel
Wrong. You may find this hard to believe because you're incapable of writing 'real' characters that aren't merely reflections of yourself, but Gene Wolfe was a very good writer and is capable of doing so.
>where the main character has autistic mannerisms
Wrong. Severian is not especially bright, has a near perfect memory, has an utterly alien value system to what the vast majority of people today have and is writing at least in part in order to convince the reader he is a good/moral person; all of that combined =/= merely "autistic".
>all the women fall for him regardless
Wrong. He clearly rapes some and there are a plethora of other reasons why he fucks, see this anon for examples>>23379526.
>Of course people say there are hidden meanings and it's deep and profound but I don't have that impression at all.
And this is Wolfe's fault how exactly? There is an incredible amount of deeper meaning on virtually every page, much of which is overt and obvious to people with an IQ above room temperature. If you really are struggling though there are innumerable deep dives into this all online, both in written and video format. Take your pic. Also entire books have been written about the deeper meaning and symbolism in BotNS, you can pick them up for cheap if you want as well.

Twat.

>>23380064
What if I thought all that was cheesy-ass garbage already when I was 12?

Holy fuck, am I actually in /lit/? You guys shit talking Gene Wolfe but I turn around and see people praising Sanderson. You people take a beautiful Christian story like BotNS and can't see past gente shit muh camp muh Gary stu, like you're afraid of actually liking something. You don't need to be an insufferable cunt to be sophisticated, you know.
I have so many questions about this story. There are so many fun mysteries spread along these books, but I doubt people are really interested in discussing it here instead of complaining.

It's genreshit

>>23383868
Shut up you twat

>>23383863
>beautiful Christian story
Kill yourself

>>23383877
You can cope all you want, heathen.

>>23383886
Your pastor's not gonna fuck you bro

>>23383823
it is a good reads review from someone who didn't finish the story. they tapped out during claw iirc.

>>23383823
I'm surprised that people find Severian so unlikable. What I get from him is that he's pretty much caught between the sense of duty that was instilled in him, and this underlying desire to help and connect with people, while not actually being very good at doing that.

Let's solve this once and for all. Is the Citadel a space port?

>>23383901
this. him realizing justice and good comes to a head in thrax where after sparing cyriaca, he HAS to go back to the slums to heal the child. he revives all of the prisoners killed in the flood on his way out. the rest of the story is him learning how to be good for the world and it culminates to such a simple line at the end of urth of the new sun as he climes out of the ocean of ushas and sees the small village. "be kind to each other". it is a perfect way to end the series.

>>23383917
I assumed at least one of the towers was a grounded space craft, and some of the less structurally sound towers seemed to have been built in imitation.

>>23383917
nessus as a whole is an old relic of a space port with more buildings than inhabitants of the city.

>>23383925
Oh, isn't there also some indication that fuligin is the material that the sails of the space-faring ships are built from?

>>23383925
Severian says the towers can jump to the sky on a word. Also, Valeria says her family was waiting there to leave the planet with the Autarch.

>>23383934
Also, what might be poisoning the river is the petrol leaking from the ships.

So, what was the deal with the Botanic Gardens?
They were obviously built to preserve things. Was there temporal fuckery going on? Were images of the past being projected forward, or simply re-enacted by actors, or both of those things at the same time somehow?
Was it supposed to be a visitor attraction, or was it maybe put there to safeguard plant and animal samples against the dying of the sun, and that was forgotten by people over time?

>>23384003
ultan and his people also over see the botanic gardens, the same way he manages the library at the citadel. that should clue you in more about the purpose of the botanics. seems more like a record keeping technology for time periods but also allows the autarch to consult the cumerean in the swamp of the dead where they meet dorcas and hildegrin.

>>23384018
Severian choosing that point to introduce mirror technology should be a hint as to how they work. Problem is that technology is wrapped in mystery. Father Inire during the same explanation says it can be used to accelerate light beyond the light-speed limit, it can be used to create stuff out of nothing, and to transport people to far-off worlds or even alternative realities.
It seems the Gardens, being inside such mirror-like glass, work on these properties. Time is stopped in the swamp of the dead (Severian states this later) but the swamp is also very far away from Nessus, so the mirrors there work as something like a Stargate too. The treehouse is like the Sage's house in the last book, meaning if you approach it at an certain angle (likely due to reflection shit) you will travel in time and be able to interact with it. Good catch about the curators.

>>23384018
The way that the gardens get into people's heads makes me think the people you see acting out that scene (of colonial Africa, presumably), weren't actually people from the past. They were people from the present, but they were being drawn there to unknowingly re-enact that particular scene.

>>23378755
I had the same impression but after you read the whole thing and go for a couple months you kinda miss it and want to reread it because it is pretty introspective

>>23380064
So fucking true man...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UekNhaxqn8c
fuck....

>>23383859
Then you're a sad and pathetic little man

The book of new sun is a boring piece of shit.

It is written in lifeless, dragging prose. The characters do not come to life. It fails to captivate. The writing is just a sequence of disjointed events.

>then I , sephiroth the torturer, was challenged to a duel then a girl said that I had to get a special flower for the duel then I traveled to where I could get the flower then my chariot crashed into a temple and I picked up a special rock then I went to the garden where the flower grows then I travelled over a pond and found a girl in the pond then I wandered around the special spooky garden some more then I found the flower then I and my party went back to have the duel and I used my flower to kill the guy who challenged me to a duel and then I found out the girl who lead me to the flower was the guy’s sister…
It just keeps going on and on with dully-described , disjointed events that you have no reason to care about.
It does nothing to make you want to continue reading, you have to force yourself almost every step of the way.

It just keeps going on and on and on like that. The only scene or part of the story with any emotional resonance or intrigue was when he was training to be a torturer and fell in love with one of the captives being tortured.

>b-b-b-but there are parallels between the main character and Apollo! Isn’t that clever??!!
Pic related

>>23381272
>>23381434
>>23383823
>>23383820
>>23383840
Wolfefag cope
>>23384353
based

>>23384353
>>23384356
kek, samefagging that hard. get a life, loser

>>23384353
>stuff can't happen because... YOU NEED TO PLAY TO MY EMOTIONS FIRST ANND DEVELOP THE CHARACTERS LIKE CUTOUT REFERENCES TO ESTABLISHED PREVIOUS LITERATURE, ALSO YOU NEED TO BUILD THE WORLD DURING THE TWENTY FIRST CHAPTERS
Filtered midwit wojack poster.

Is Dickens the synthesis between male and female taste?

>>23379911
So... actually cool?

>>23383859
Then you were never cool B)
Nerd

>>23384356
This meme is only true to the extent that those 3 authors are underrated. Not that Wolfe is over rated.
Although, Nightland is written terribly. The setting is really harmed by how shitty the prose is.
Clark Ashton Smith is best writer of the 4.

>>23383721
that's a big tower

>>23384455
Is Wolfe too 'male'? Is that why every now and then we get readers whining about the way the story is told?

>>23384353
>The writing is just a sequence of disjointed events
Holy shit, how can you manage to miss the entire convoluted plot that draws everything together?
Your level of understanding is zero. Fucking retard.

>>23384356
i like all of those
>>23384465
>Although, Nightland is written terribly. The setting is really harmed by how shitty the prose is.
shut up retard

>we'll never get a Baldanders v. Typhon moment for dominance over Urth
Damn...

>>23384492
Did Severian NEED to enter Agias' shop?

>>23384507
Trust the Pancreator. Hieorgrammates are in control. Two more weeks.

>>23384505
>that Dr.
Kek. Why no Jolenta tho?

>>23384511
If I was gud I would maybe shop in Christina Hendricks for Jolenta.

>woman calls him a boy
>lets her be tortured on suicide-indulcing machine
Incel moment?

>>23378755
I just feel bad for people who get filtered at this point because they miss out on Severian being the funniest character of all time.

Be honest bros, would you save Casdoe after she and Agia pull the ladder up behind your as you're fighting the Alzabo?

>>23384532
What did you have in mind?

>>23384507
Yes. He was compulsively drawn to Agia. And he needed something to cover up his torturer's cloak.

>>23382984
Every woman Severian fucks is a either a slut, or severely desperate and beholden to him in some way. One is just a prostitute who he pays. Two of them, he rapes. He doesn't seduce anybody! Not one woman!

This is a zoomer incel meme. And it's funny because they complain Severian is a self-insert, yet the unspoken explanation for their complaint is that they can't self-insert as him.

>>23384542
You could even argue that despite Agia's awfulness she helps him grow as a person. She later goes on to rescue him and become the new head of the controlled resistance.

>>23384507
imagine getting filtered by this simple task of sev getting orders from the guards to change his outfit.

>>23384532
Or the Autarch.
>"Alright, I've clonned these court girls and forced these clones to protitute themselves in a cheapass whorehouse in the slums."
>"Why?'
>"Because it's funny."
I love how this is a straight-played, wisdom-delivering sequence in the story.

>"You know, Severian and Severa are names given to sinblings." *winks at camera*

>>23384538
>Severian is on a date with Agia walking through the gardens
>Severian's autism prevents him from realizing Agia is clearly upset about something
>Severian gets really excited about a story Thecla told him
>Agia realizing Severian isn't picking up on the fact she's upset tells him she doesn't want to hear the story
>Severian gets butthirt and silently recants the story to himself in his head, completely ignoring Agia for several minutes straight
Had Agia not being trying to trick him into killing himself she would've certainly just walked off by that point I think. Severian's aloofness and lack of understanding is very amusing to me.

>>23384565
that part is so fucking funny. i believe he actually says it out loud, in fact.

>>23384568
He does, she says he's mumbling back there.

>>23384565
Oh yeah, that part got a chuckle from me. He says something like, "well, I'll tell the story anyways because I want to hear myself tell it." And then it turns out he's been muttering it to himself the whole time like a schizo without realizing it.

Anons who finished the books, what's the tube baby at the end? I thought for a moment it was Father Inire but just after we learn the truth, but still no explanation about the fetus.

>>23384606
I've seen some speculate that it's a failed clone of Typhon. It seems to have telepathic abilities like him.

>>23378755
>someone's self insert fantasy
Gene Wolfe was a jaded torturer who may have killed his crush out of spite? In all honesty, when you are writing first person stories, you really need to make it feel like the narrator is a real person. If anything, it's good that you think it's a self-insert since ,for the purpose of the story, it is. Severian is after all writing it. Honestly surprised people cannot get this simple shite through their skulls

>>23384615
I didn't make that connection at all. I guess the only hint we got to its identity was that it said Severian was having a schizo moment and talking to himself (but at that point Severian was several people). I don't think Wolfe would add it there just to tell us about clones when he had already talked about them.

>>23379922
Nah. Berserk is actual power fantasy. Botns is Severian bring too autistic to realize when people are using him while also trying to make sense of his purpose

>>23383840
>alien value system
This. I have never read someone so lucidly explain why torture and execution are the only just forms of criminal punishments.

>>23384606
A homonculus, like Dr Talos. Father Inire's perhaps.

>>23384356
Are you implying that people who like wolfe don't like other dying earth stories or that Wolfe is somehow more popular than Jack Vance? Did a Wolfefag fuck your gf or something?

>>23384648
Father Inire is a cacogen. It does look like a homonculus, but why introduce it there? What's the meaning? It calls Severian 'brother' several times.

>>23384655
Severian makes an argument about how he and the mandrake are siblings of a kind but I forget the specifics of his argument. The mandrake mockingly humors him but she said "so much for brotherhood" or some such after he refuses to break the glass and kill/free her.

>>23384655
>>23384660
It's because Severian says they are alike because the mandragora says he has no parents and has lived a life in blood.

There is so much stuff that is only mentioned in passing but seem to have a much bigger meaning, like the author expected us to just understand without further explanation. For example, Jonas' tale at the end of the Shadow. Is he talking about how Erebus and Abaia arrived on Urth? Why is that relevant then?

>>23384633
Another connection people make between it and Typhon is that 'mandragora' can also be written as mandrake -> 'man drake' -> man dragon and Typhon in a mythological sense is a giant with serpent body-parts that sorta look like dragons/wyrms. Plus, Typhon kinda looks like a mandrake.

>>23384711
Meant this image.

>>23384681
Do you mean Jonas' tales of how he got stranded in Severian's time? Or the fusion of the story of the Minotaur/the Monitor from the American civil war? Jonas confuses the story for the Odyssey at the end but it's a mashup of various pieces of history/mythology. There are several of those in BotNS.

>>23384655
>using the c-slur for extrasolarians
Reported for racism outside of /b/

>>23384735
No, he tells one story at the very end of Shadow of the Torturer, when Severian and Dr. Talos were talking about the Wall.
>“I beg your pardon, optimate, but I could not help overhearing what you said. I can enlighten you further, if you wish.”
>“In the old times, the lords of this world feared no one but their own people, and to defend themselves against them built a great fortress on a hilltop to the north of the city. It was not called Nessus then, for the river was unpoisoned.”
>“Many of the people were angry at the building of that citadel, holding it to be their right to slay their lords without hindrance if they so desired. But others went out in the ships that ply between the stars, returning with treasure and knowledge. In time there returned a woman who had gained nothing among them but a
handful of black beans.”
>“—she displayed the beans to the lords of men, and told them that unless she were obeyed she would cast them into the sea and so put an end to the world.They had her seized and torn to bits, for they were a hundred times more complete in their domination than our Autarch.”

>>23384760
I imagine the great fortress is Typhon's castle Severian finds later. But what of the woman? Saint Katherine? The beans are the Lovecraft monster at the bottom of the ocean?

>>23384760
Could be an explanation for the Megatherians, although some stuff in Short Sun might contradict that, I've only been through SS once so anyone more familiar might be able to weight in. It could also be obliquely referencing a story from popular fiction or history knowing Wolfe.

>>23384494
>shut up retard
>He said to anon using his brain waves.

What was the deal with Little Sev? Why did Severian send him to certain doom? Did he molest him?

>>23384760
i think this is an allegory for destroying the sun.

>>23384800
After abandoning his role as a torturer most of Sword consists of Severian trying out different roles and failing miserably at all most of them. Little Sev gives us a chance to see Big Sev be an absolute dogshit father. He gets better as he goes but not enough to not haplessly endager his son by taking him through the most remote and dangerous parts of the mountains.

>>23384818
it is an interesting decision not to return to the boy's home to maybe get some more supplies, or to just drop him off at thrax but to instead wander aimlessly north through the fucking mountains. lol

>>23384818
so he molested the shit out of that kid huh

>>23384841
Personally I don't think so but the story definitely leaves room for it. The entire BotNS leaves room for you to read Severian as a monstrous sociopath who manipulated his way into becoming a christ figure. Personally I think a reading that cynical makes for a much worse story but it's still really cool that Wolfe left room to do that if you want.

I wanna go back and start Claw but I read Shadow of the Torturer 3 years ago and have forgotten most of it. Guess I'll have to start over.

>>23384779
I think the citadel is referring to the citadel of Nessus instead of Typhon's mountain. The city of Nessus moves around over time within the wall and there are all those ruins of the old city in the south. So I think that at the time of construction the citadel was considered north of the city even though it's no longer considered north of it anymore in Severian's time. But yeah the story is confusing. Cyriaca's story seems to suggest Typhon had Nessus built or at least it was relatively new in his time and it was his orders that brought the library into existence. So he and his retinue could be who Jonas is referring to as the 'rulers' of that age. But as the other anon says, there is a connection to Typhon and the megatherians which is why it's kinda confusing. Perhaps Jonas is referring to rulers even earlier than Typhon who had Nessus built and it was the 'beans' that became Typhon and the megatherians with Typhon later overthrowing the rulers of Urth to become the monarch. To add more confusion Typhon says he wasn't born as a human might typically mean, so his origin is mysterious. And he speaks of Urth as if it wasn't his home planet when he tells Severian why he made it his capital.

@23384800
>Why did Severian send him to certain doom?
Why do /lit/ fags always overdramatise like this?
>Did he molest him?
He specifically says he didn't.

Back inside your box, farmer of (You)s.

>>23384854
You really need to read them all without a break. Too many plot points get lost otherwise.

>>23384873
>he had Little Sev climb out onto the arm of a statue
>Severian, out of nowhere, says he didn't fuck the kid, but knows for a certainty that Mamas was getting fucked

Who was Severian's sister? Was she even introduced? And if she wasn't, why allude to her existence?

>>23384928
>Who was Severian's sister?
https://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.Severian
This link says Merryn and gives its reasons.

>>23384928
Most people believe it's Merryn the apprentice witch to the Cumean they meet in the stone town. Both because the story doesn't really leave room for it to be anyone else and because of some stuff in Short Sun I don't want to spoil.

Answer me this Wolfefags, why does the Sun rise from the West and sets in the East in BotNS?

>>23381268
This has to be parody.

>>23384959
BotNS is actually set in a previous kalpa and is Severian's universe is a perfectly mirrored version of ours unironically.

>>23384938
>>23384941
>https://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.Severian
Crazy shit. Do you actually need to be a schizo to read these books?
Alright, it could very well be Merryn, but WHY? Merryn doesn't play a big role in the story, why even bother giving Severian a sister in the first place if she's to be such a small character?

>>23384465
>>23384356
I would specifically bring Hodgson up as someone you should read you liked wolfe or vice versa. The works are very different but that's not a bad thing, some of the themes are the same, some of the approaches to the concept of an inconceivably distant future are dealt with differently.

From the perspective of someone who actually likes the genre I think they're both invaluable.

>>23384507
>Guy walking around in the equivalent of an SS uniform
>Guards say "hey dude you shouldn't wear that the SS might find out" and point him to a costume shop
>He acts like the actor the guards assume he was and goes over to switch out
>Everyone draws the logical conclusion

>>23384982
I could talk about symbolism and providence and Severian's interactions with family and what subtle meanings and textures it adds to the story but the real answer is that it only matters if you want it to matter. BotNS is a puzzlebox story but not every clue is vital to understanding the plot. Some people really do just enjoy teasing out little secrets left behind in the margins even if it doesn't add up to some earthshattering revelation that completely reframes the story.


Also, apologies for the typos, I should really stop phoneposting at work.

>>23384938
That article is an exercise in wilful obfuscation.
The author has appearently heard that Severian is an "unreliable narrator," but doesn't understand why. So he/she proceeds to doubt literally everything Severian says.
The actual reason Severian is "unreliable" is because he's led a sheltered life, and doesn't always understand what's happening. But some readers just love to make conspiracy theories.

This anon: >>23384892 suffers from the same syndrome.

>>23385015
>The actual reason Severian is "unreliable" is because he's led a sheltered life, and doesn't always understand what's happening.
True but incomplete. Wolfe is very big on the idea that all of humanity are unreliable narrators and the reasons for our collective unreliability are numerous, both intentional and otherwise. Severian is most certainly a liar though.

>>23384565
Oh fuck I've done this

>>23385039
>Severian is most certainly a liar
Post examples, without schizo theorising.

>>23385039
>Severian is most certainly a liar though.
list some examples. the only one i can recall off the top of my head is feeling like he served justice in saltus to morwenna. the conversation following it with jonas leads me to believe he wasn't 100% truthful there.

>>23385067
I hate to be doing this while phone posting but oh well.

Severian claims he has a perfect memory in chapter 1.

>It is my nature, my joy and my curse, to forget nothing. Every rattling chain and whistling wind, every sight, smell, and taste, remains changeless in my mind,

Shortly before he makes that claim, he and his friends are approached outside the gate.

>Lanterns swung there among the fog-muffled sounds of feet and voices. I would have hidden, but Roche held me, saying, "Wait, I see pikes."

A few paragraphs after this.

>The men had no armor, as I could soon see by the sickly yellow light of the lanterns; but they had pikes, as Drotte had said

Well now, is it Drotte or Roche who claimed to see pikes? This is the first clue of many throughout the book that Severian's memory is not as perfect as he likes to claim.

>>23385122
i think lies need an intent behind them.

>>23385161
Falsely claiming to have a perfect memory in an effort to build credibility certainly qualifies I think.

>>23385166
credibility for which part of the story though? the entirety? i forget at what point in the story severian sort of clarifies that he has total recall of events when spurred by a reminder of them; something to that extent. if you approach the story a total skeptic, you end up like those basedboys at alzabo soup who literally doubt every single thing severian says and at that point, why even bother with the reading?

>>23385015
I merely posted the article because the author concisely brings the points about Merryn together and also cites some "chat" with Wolfe where he confirms it apparently. Does anyone have any idea if this "chat" was a recorded?

>>23385122
It's implied that Roche and Drotte are twins. But parenthood and lineage are among the things Severian doesn't understand. He would find it easy to confuse the two.

>>23383877
>>23383895
No, he's right and you're a fucking idiot, also Wolfe is Catholic retard they don't have pastors.

>>23385122
That is actually a mistake by the author, which wasn't caught by the editor.

>>23385184
>i forget at what point in the story severian sort of clarifies that he has total recall of events when spurred by a reminder of them; something to that extent.
Yes because he contradicts himself multiple times throughout the story changing his explanation of how his memory works. You asked for an example of Severian lying and I gave it to you. Believe what you want beyond that anon, I honestly don't care. It's 4chan, no one will change their mind even in the face of new information here.

>>23385229
Cope

>>23385238
yea but you're saying because you found inconsistency in his memory after he said it was perfect, the whole story is a lie? i was hoping for a bit more than that to discuss.

>>23385229
The editions that I own are riddled with typographical errors. Really sloppy work. That alone could explain it.

>>23385238
I agree with anon. If I'm gonna doubt Severian, what's even the point? It's not like a new narrator will show up and ACKSHUALLY us. He has some schizo moments like when he says Dorcas loved Jolenta romantically, but that can be easily attributed to his status as an unreliable narrator, in the nature that he doesn't actually romantic feelings (which is maybe a side-effect of the rocket-oil poising in the river).

>>23385039
>people are... LE STRANGE!!!

>>23385270
...When you're a stranger
Faces look ugly
When you're alone
Women seem wicked
When you're unwanted
Streets are uneven
When you're down
When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange
People are strange
When you're a stranger
Faces look ugly
When you're alone
Women seem wicked
When you're unwanted
Streets are uneven
When you're down
When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange
All right, yeah
When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange

>>23384644
One of the interesting aspects of the story is how Severian starts out with this alien value system and yet by book three he basically exiles himself and (metaphorically and literally) wanders in the mountains to achieve some kind of wisdom. That by the end of book 4 he has resolved to reform/ban the torturers and has sort of embraced his messianic destiny (comes around to a version of Christian ethics familiar to us) can be argued is his whole arc.

>>23385238
there is also this >>23385202 as there is a reference to them being brothers in the passage talking about how they liked to imagine who they were descendants of. severian says drotte must have pulled him up by his hair, but later learns that he was shot out of the river and drotte couldn't have. do you consider this lying?

>>23385253
>the whole story is a lie
So tired of hearing people always say this when discussing this book.

No

No, the point is it calls into question his character. Not to discredit the entire story. Not even the Alzabo Soup guys go that far. Once you've accepted Severian is a willing to tell small lies you're supposed to ask yourself what else is Severian willing to lie about, and consider his motives. What would his goals be in attempting to lie? Why? What can be trusted and what can't? If 95% of the story is true then the goal is to tease out the 5% lies and figuring why they're there.

Severian only tells one lie, because Jolenta for sure wasn't consenting then.

>>23385264
>doesn't understand
Should be obvious what I meant. At one point this dude says he loves every woman he sets his eyes on.

>>23385293
One thing that stood out to me is in the scene where he eats Thecla he clearly can't bring himself to describe the full extent of what he actually did. He glosses over it.

>>23385288
My point is about the nature of Severian's memory, I believe he's either lying about said memory or indeed has a very good but ultimately fallible memory that he is intentionaly puffing up to make his account of events seem more reliable than they actually are. I don't think he made up the entire 4 novels but he's intentionally trying to make himself as much of an authority on the events as possible and we need to be aware of that as readers. Even if his mistake is due to their nature as twins my point still stands that his memory is not as good as he tried to imply in chapter 1.

>>23385293
>name some of the lies
>his memory isn't perfect
>le sigh i'm so misunderstood
like no fucking shit dude. you're dancing around actually listing any points in the story he's lying about or covering up. i listed earlier the morwenna execution in saltus.

Severian's supposed super-human memory has something to do with him being beyond time in a sense, doesn't it?

I think the thing about his character is just that he lies or selectively interprets things sometimes.

>>23385351
No, I think he was just born like that or the river poison did that to him. He's like one in a trillion person. That's what enabled him to reach the enlightenment necessary to summon the new sun. He's not 'beyond time', but his healing powers were given outside of time, and the events of the story we read are set in motion by a different Severian from a possible future of his remote past (the Conciliator).

>>23385351
He intuits that the Hierodules will bestow certain gifts on him because he is able to save Urth. One of these is perfect memory.

>>23381268
>that they can superimpose their own thoughts and values onto the narrator, and onto the plot itself.

This is not criticism, this is high praise.

>>23385332
I think that he believes his memory to be infallible but the written account suggests otherwise for a few reasons. He has multiple memories from the analeptic alzabo, he admits he may be crazy and hallucinating a few times, some memories are outside the scope of his immediate perception and are more suppositions than statements of fact, and to your point: there are a few implications I don't have in front of me (like Sev not knowing left from right) that while the memories may be accurate, his perception of them is distorted.

Wolfe said that Sev is an unconscious genius, highly intelligent and philosophical, but lacking the training and crystalized knowledge of...pretty much everything. I originally took it that he confabulates things and draws his own, odd or wrong, conclusions and it seems to hold water.

>>23385383
The whole Dorcas arc reads to me like a joke about the grandfather paradox, I think that plays into it.

>>23385435
>I originally took it that he confabulates things and draws his own, odd or wrong, conclusions and it seems to hold water
When Winnoc explains to him that slavery was originally by skin color he does exactly this, he concludes this is due to slave's toil resulting in natural tanning back before the sun started going out, kek. I'm sure there are other examples.

>>23378755
>all the women fall
Not a single, not one fall in love with Severian. Dorcas comes very close but she probably saw her husband in him.

>>23385473
I think that extends to perceptions of his own memories, there's a lot of Surmising that reminds me of Melville, where everything presented is just so bullshit you have to wonder how cracked the narrator is. Queequeg on his deathbed getting fitted for a coffin, because why not? Then remembering some shit he has to do later and getting better in a day or two because that's what pagan savages do. Is that what happened? Sure. Wolfe was the kind of man who woke up, read Moby Dick, and then spent the rest of an hour writing before work.

It's hilarious.

>>23385522
the amount of people with the claim of sev being a self insert and having hot bitches fawn over him is stunning. it's like their bias was the only thing registering while reading.

>>23385522
Dorcas is also vulnerable and relying on the one person she knows.
I think there's definitely supposed to be something a bit questionable about their relationship, which is why they hammer in how young she looks (though Severian isn't implied to be much older himself).

>>23385564
She probably doesn't love Severian anymore by the time they leave for Thrax but stays with him because where would she go? Maybe that's why he thinks she was in love with Jolenta (and because he doesn't understand affection until Little Sev).

>>23385564
reading botns you can put severian at around 20 years of age. this is basing it off everything said about agia's age, dorcas looking 17, and the epitome in urth of the new sun looking 25 or younger(about sev's age when leaving the citadel); but some anon in the last thread said sev is 15 based off a line in the short sun series that i have not gotten to yet.

>>23385577
Well, based on what's in the book, Agia is said to be 23, and Agia is also said to be older than Severian, but she could be lying about her age, since she lied about everything else.

Talking about Agia. Was it REALLY necessary to make her fuck her brother?

>>23385589
>make her
?

>>23385623
The author. Asking if that was really necessary for the plot.

>>23385626
I guess it hammers in the fact that she's fucking weird.

>>23385626
Nothing about art is "necessary" categorically speaking.

I don't understand Jonas' "return." Did he really return, or was Severian having one of his schizophrenic moments?

>>23383682
He was a plant engineer, wasn't he, but is that true?

>>23384552
>Two of them, he rapes
One rape was already incredibly dubious, but we're up to two rapes now? This meme is inflating out of control.

>>23385783
since severian had the plague and was dying, i think it was projection. he missed jonas as a companion. it doesn't make too much sense to me for jonas to come back as this soldier.

>>23385886
Would you really say Thecla could consent in her situation?

>>23385940
thecla was using severian. food, books, company. when she calls him a sweet boy, it wrecks him and is part of the reason he doesn't try to spring her free.

>>23385950
Won't hold in any court.

>>23385940
Severian was still very young and at his most autistic at that point and was clearly intimidated by Thecla, and she knew it. Later she calls him her "boy lover" (by way of her memories in Severians head). None of that sounds like a rape situation.

>>23385950
>>23385962
How old was Thecla? I don't remember a number.

>>23385993
2000 year old loli.

>>23386067
That's Dorcas.

what does the play mean

never could figure that out

silk is the realest main character

>>23385934
Where did Jonas even go? Another planet? What did it mean when he says, "I know where we are. Urth."

lol

>>23385317
>because Jolenta for sure wasn't consenting then
she literially was asking for the torturer d tho

>>23386281
>drumpf

>>23386281
I'd say he didn't even read it but with the amount of people who get filtered by Wolfe it's probably he got to the end and didn't understand a single thing.

>>23378755
Yeah I unironically prefer Bakker or even Drizzt saga. It's still decent tho

What was the torture device used on Thecla supposed to be?

>>23385351
His super human memory is bs, he constantly misremembers things and manipulates things

>>23385536
I legitimately thought this was a meme like a pasta, because there is NO way you could possibly have even read the story and have made this mistake.

I'm starting to wonder how much bad-faith reviewing there actually is, are people actually just really fucking stupid and not just pretending to have strong opinions on things they've actually read?

>>23386669
What do you mean "Supposed to be," the entire point is that they lead you up to think it's going to be something mundane like a pendulum or a scary iron maiden or something but it's not, it's a high-tech futuristic mind-warping device that causes her subconscious to perceive her own body/life/self as a hated enemy so that she slowly kills herself by inches. They describe it in minute detail, poetic detail even I've never had a clearer idea of what something does in my life.

You know those stories of like, disassociated limbs where someone's arm will try to strangle them of its own accord? It just makes your whole body do that, and it takes conscious effort for you to stop it, but it doesn't stop, so eventually she would've slowly tortured herself to death.

Really grim, do you mean how does it work? I mean I don't know I hope there is no such device, that's some next level psychotic shit man.

>>23387148
Oh, nice, I always thought it was a metaphoric / archaic description of cancer being induced in the body after people had forgotten what cancer was.

>>23384959
Does it? I don't remember any line that might indicate so.

>>23384959
Is that in the book?
Either something went really fucky and the Earth's spin reversed (can the dying of the sun do that? Someone tell me), or language just changed and East became West at some point.

>>23385317
jolenta is a programmed android

>i find a new thing i like
>it makes a specific subset of anons irrationally furious, they are mentally incapable of separating their opinions from reality
every fuckin time man, wish these ppl would talk about things they actually enjoy for a change. oh well, bye again bros.

>>23386669
I understood it uses part of the engine of the ship.

>>23387265
Severian says so at one time. The moon is also getting closer to Urth. Maybe it's like anon said and Severian's world is mirrored. But why didn't it mirror north and south?

>>23384959
>>23384975
>>23387265
>>23387529
This doesn't really happen. The language in New Sun is really weird, and describes the earth rising to cover the sun rather than the sun rising from beneath the earth. I think this is where the confusion comes from. Pic related is two passages describing the sun setting in the west at the end of the day.

>>23387643
There is one in Citadel of the Autarch just after he's left at the beach where he's walking north and he says the sun rises from his left and sets on his right.

>>23387652
>reading comprehension

>>23387643
i think this is just prose, not to suggest severian thinks the sun is revolving around the earth. we clearly see this in the next passage.

>>23387652
>I walked north because I was reluctant to leave it too soon, and because Triskele had run in that direction, along the margin of the sea. There great Abaia might wallow with his women, yet the sea was older far, and wiser than he; we human beings, like all the life of the land, had come from the sea; and because we could not conquer it, it was ours always. The old, red sun rose on my right and touched the waves with his fading beauty, and I heard the calling of the sea birds, the innumerable birds.

>>23387652
Land—Nessus, the House Absolute, and all the rest—lay to the
east; west lay the sea; I walked north because I was reluctant to
leave it too soon, and because Triskele had run in that direction,
along the margin of the sea. There great Abaia might wallow with
his women, yet the sea was older far, and wiser than he; we human
beings, like all the life of the land, had come from the sea; and
because we could not conquer it, it was ours always. The old, red
sun rose on my right and touched the waves with his fading beauty,
and I heard the calling of the sea birds, the innumerable birds.

>>23387658
>>23387661
>>23387662
Weird.

Did Morwenna kill her family or no?

>>23387658
>>23387661
>>23387662
Also this is consistent with Short Sun where Horn and Hoof are riding a boat down the Gyoll(west) out into the sea. They look astern towards Nessus to see the Red Sun rising over the city.

>>23387675
no, and i think severian realizes this during his talk with jonas afterwards. if morwenna had the poison on her during the incarceration and execution, and was the kind of person to kill her family, she probably would have committed suicide. it is also extremely unlikely she was able to transfer poison to the bouquet during the execution. i think eusibia set her up out of jealousy and then deeply inhaled the poison to avoid justice after the beheading. i think severian writes about this execution, and no more following, because this is a big moment for his character.

>>23385351
My headcanon is that the homunculus at the end of Citadel is the reason why Sev has an enhanced memory. They're psychically linked and the homunculus is basically recording and projecting Sev's own memories into his mind. That's why Sev remembers his mother in his conversation with the homunculus for the first time, because the homunculus provided it. Sev describes his vivid recollections more like visions than memories, and they kinda take over his mind at the expense of everything else, so that's the reason why I don't think they're really "memories". The homunculus also calls him "brother", so I think that's an explicit reveal that the homunculus is Severian's twin.

>>23387687
But the circumstances are interesting. Her husband was much older, and she's described as beautiful, meaning she could have married him for interest.

>>23387160
Aww, wait that's really cool though. I mean maybe I might just not understand it, oh fug you're right, mentions the hair, the eyes etc. It COULD be that, and perhaps a description of the fear and anxiety of death, but I think it was being a bit literal.

Also, anyone remember that Holy Katherine ritual where Severian decapitates a woman with a wax head? Something about that weirded the fuck out of me I'm still trying to figure out what was going on there. Did he actually decapitate this chick and then she just healed, or...

>>23387735
>Also, anyone remember that Holy Katherine ritual where Severian decapitates a woman with a wax head? Something about that weirded the fuck out of me I'm still trying to figure out what was going on there. Did he actually decapitate this chick and then she just healed, or...
He also says she doesn't age. There are two likely explanations: she's an android or a clone. I don't think the guild knows how to clone, so an ancient android is more likely, left in the care of the guild. Android also easily explains the severed head.

>>23387735
>>23387780
interesting catch. i always read that part as is with the woman's head hiding beneath the gown while the wax head was pushed out and removed but even severian remarks that there didn't seem to be anything hidden in her gown after.
>I knew that the sword in falling would do her no harm—I would direct it to one side, tripping an ingenious mechanism that would elevate a wax head smeared with blood while the maid draped her own with a fuligin cloth. Still I hesitated to give the blow.
>The maid stood. I knew even as I watched her that her head was only concealed in the cloth; but it seemed there was nothing there. I felt dizzy and tired.
She took the wax head from Master Gurloes and pretended to replace it on her shoulders, slipping it by some sleight into the fuligin cloth, then standing before us radiant and whole. I knelt before her, and the others withdrew.
wild, after all these years, stuff like this pops up in wolfe's writing to me.

>>23384044
I assumed it was related to the mirror technology and that each garden was actually a portal to a specific time period, but as next poster says >>23384062
The people really seem to be foreigners to the time of their garden which suggest the gardens are reconstructions of a time, and I don't quite have a coherent way to rectify these two ideas.
I have a vague feeling the reason some people feel drawn to certain gardens/time periods is because of the multiverse concept touched on much later, and perhaps there's a form of reincarnation as evidenced by Jonas "coming back" but I haven't read anything beyond the 4 BotNS novels.

>>23383984
Radioactivity is more likely

>>23385522
And herself. Dorcas and Severian is like those stories of separated siblings or family members that fall in love because they're similar; it's natural but prevented by the Westermarck effect.

>>23385589
>>23385626
My take: Agia and Agilus is supposed to put the concept of relatives experiencing romantic attraction into the reader's mind.

>>23384841
No, there's absolutely no reason to think that unless you yourself are the kind of person who can slip in a quick pedo rape in between killing a bear and getting kidnapped by amazonian tribesmen

>>23387703
I can't remember in detail, but I got the strong impression when the homonculus was describing how he wasn't really alive, but just reflecting the thoughts and memories of whoever was talking about him, that was Severian.

>>23387780
It's especially interesting reading BotNS 40 years after it was written, because it touches on this theme that even if you have a perfect memory (or perfectly preserved text) it was still recorded by a fallible human with their own biased perceptions.
So translated to 80's technology: it's a Disney animatronic

>>23387842
Severian also ends up sleeping in the same bed with the woman who played Katherine.

>tfw the master rewards you with a night with the guild sexbot on your torturer quinceanera

>>23387160
>>23387735
Yeah I took it as the white light giving her a megadose of radiation.

>people managed to actually generate discussion from this bait thread
Wolfe uplifts this dogshit board by his mere presence alone.

>>23387959
>Radioactivity is more likely
I don't know. It feels like the story wants to hammer in that the water itself is poisoned. Severian says this explicitly, Jonas says this explicitly, the city being called Nessus (the centaur whose blood's poisoned Herackles), and the 'black water' Severian finds at the lower levels of the oubliette. I can't find of anything poisoning the river if not the rockets themselves. BUT we know that the city moves north to avoid the poisoned water and the Citadel is not said to be anything inhabited, which would be the case if it were the source of the poisoning.

>>23387999
he's our melville...

>>23383917
The Citadel is the center axis structure of the circular space colony that people think of as "the wall of Nessus". The reason Severian keeps remarking that the towers (ie rockets) are made of unmelted metal is because all the other structures melted as the whole thing fell down from orbit.

>>23384552
>the Severian-is-a-rapist meme
This is nothing more than feminist schizos projecting their rape fantasies onto the narrative ... aided and abetted by /lit/ bobbleheads who repeat them unquestioningly on this board.
Severian doesn't rape anybody at any point in the books. Prove me wrong. I'll wait.

This book read like someone desperate to use as many big SAT words as possible

>>23385317
>Jolenta for sure wasn't consenting then
Jolenta and Severian wander off to take a pleasure-boat ride together. What do you think is on their minds?
Jolenta knows exactly what men want from her, since she allowed Dr Talos to convert her into a sex-doll. And Severian hasn't been hiding his intentions. When they return to the troupe, Dorcas guesses at once what they've been up to.

>>23387449
Jolenta is a waitress who accepts an offer of cosmetic surgery from Dr Talos. It's right there in the book. I suggest you read it.

>>23388298
Oh dear, was it too hard for you? Better stick to comics.

>>23387959
>Radioactivity is more likely
And human shit is most likely of all. As >>23383984 points out, the richer citizens repreatedly move upstream to avoid the worst of it. How could a radioactive source keep catching up with them?

>>23388312
>What do you think is on their minds?
She was literally asleep.

>>23388293
see >>23388350

I think this is why I like the dying earth genre so much. We subconsciously know it's over...

>>23388350
she was literally pretending to be "asleep"
You've never done that? lol

>>23388286
This is a very popular theory but I think it's wrong. Valeria says her family was waiting for the Autarch there to "leave the planet." Later Typhon says he wanted to "leave the planet" but he couldn't leave his fortress. All this leads me to believe they were on Urth at the time.

>>23387842
Wolfe is just great. I was thinking about it these days, when Jonas says "I know where we are. Urth."
That is very strange because obviously they're on Urth. What I think he actually says is "Earth." Speaking in plain English and Severian understands "Urth."

>>23388383
Read Long Sun

>>23387675
It's tricky because you can see the evidence from multiple different perspectives and arrive at different conclusions, but that's not unusual with Wolfe. There's multiple possibilities in terms of guilt concerning Morwenna.
1. She's guilty of killing her family and Eusebia.
2. She's not guilty of killing her family, but she is guilty of killing Eusebia.
3. She's not guilty of either crimes.

I think Wolfe was trying to give you whiplash in trying to think of whether she's guilty or not due to how events unfold.
1. Severian has a spooky vision of seeing Chad and Stachy writhing in agony and Morwenna's bloody head mouthing words but not saying anything.
2. The townspeople are genuinely terrified of Morwenna.
3. She's an expert in poisons.

I think all this is done to make the reader go, "Well, alright so far she seems pretty guilty." But then Wolfe adds Eusebia into the mix. I think Wolfe wanted us to now doubt Morwenna's guilt due to how vindictive and evil Eusebia acts towards "poor" Morwenna. The day of the execution comes. Morwenna denies her guilt (recall the head mouthing empty words in Severian's vision) while Eusebia acts horrible towards Morwenna by ***shoving her flowers towards her*** and taunting. Again, this makes Morwenna look good compared to Eusebia. Morwenna is executed and Eusebia is thrilled but perplexed. She thought FOR SURE that Morwenna would have some poison to ***quickly*** commit suicide. This makes her doubt that Morwenna really did kill her family and Eusebia announces in her triumph that she was responsible for getting Morwenna killed and takes another big sniff of her flowers in sheer jubilation. At this point I think Wolfe wanted the reader to go, "Well damn, I guess she was innocent the whole time..." But then Eusebia ***immediately*** drops dead. It fits with Eusebia's idea of a fast-acting poison that Morwenna would of had on her person.

Some will say Eusebia poisoned herself, which I don't find convincing. It just doesn't seem in-character for what we know of Eusebia. Plus, we see her sniffing her flowers earlier in the chapter. It's only after sniffing them after they've been up close to Morwenna that she suddenly drop dead.

I think the more likely outcome is that during the moment Severian was parading Morwenna around and Eusebia was shoving her bouquet towards her Morwenna let some poison land on the flowers. Some will say that it seems unlikely she should be able to do that without someone noticing, but keep in mind that the scene is chaotic with a large crowd and Eusebia is acting wild in front towards Morwenna. A little flick of the wrist to let some imperceptible poison go when the flowers were close by doesn't seem impossible.

>>23388350
This is a lie. She was drowsy, as Severian clearly mentions. And it's beside the point anyway.
It's only rape if Jolenta doesn't want Serverian to screw her. All the evidence suggests she does, and there's none to suggest she doesn't. She doesn't resist him in any way, and is quite content to keep his company afterwards.

>>23388363
Shut up schizo.

>>23388401
urg
Severian said everything was in the first four books

>>23388338
But Jonas says that at one point the river wasn't poisoned. How can it be shit when the population was much larger in the past?

>>23388402
>The townspeople are genuinely terrified of Morwenna.
only because of a single line severian, who constantly misreads situations, says in his conversation to jonas before the execution. he describes her as beautiful and chained near the water with eusibia tormenting her. normally murders are stoned, and if they are women, raped. jonas suggests that perhaps she is innocent and the townspeople are taking pity on her.
>"The innocent have enemies. they are afraid of her"
this all sounds so unbelievable, especially flicking poison into a bouquet after her legs are broken and she's bent over the block, and jonas is the voice of reason here, and following the execution during their private meal. the mayor and the townspeople don't seem to really care about justice here. the mayor wants this to be a huge spectacle and is marketing it as such with a genuine executioner because it's good for business in their small town. i maintain that severian knows justice wasn't served following the act, which is why he wrote about this to begin with and never any other executions. this moment plants a seed to question his guild's creed of "we obey".

>>23388431
A working sanitation system?

>>23388438
Like I said. You can interpret it any way you like and arrive at your own conclusion. That's part of the fun with Wolfe. I simply find the alternative explanation less convincing.
>only because of a single line severian, who constantly misreads situations
I think Wolfe wanted the reader going back and forth on the guilt question, so this doesn't really sway me.
>especially flicking poison into a bouquet after her legs are broken and she's bent over the block
Severian parades her around before he breaks her legs.
>i maintain that severian knows justice wasn't served following the act,
You could argue that he knows he fucked up by letting a client commit another murder while he was in charge of her during the execution. Or perhaps he was bothered because it was the first time he executed a woman. All in all, I still think there is a better reason to think Morwenna is guilty. Eusebia dropping dead suddenly is just too much and doesn't fit with her character, while we know Morwenna is an expert in poisons.

All of this flew over my head. I just liked the story.

>>23378755
>New Sun

long sun is better ime

>>23388462
Feels too mundane, Why would they rename the city just because of this?

>>23388496
>Severian parades her around before he breaks her legs.
my mistake, he had just branded both her cheeks, and severian held her by the hand. it's just such a ridiculous explanation when you consider everything leading up to this. from what we can gather based on severian's dream is that stachy was bed ridden and chad was dealing with a fever. it's suggested a few times by jonas and even eusebia that they could have just gotten ill. there was nothing indicated to gain from morwenna killing her husband and child. the town and mayor didn't care about justice because so much was to be gained from the spectacle and eusebia admits to framing her. the surface level explanation that you're supposed to believe from severian that morwenna killed her family, had poison on her while arrested near the river full of irritating mosquitos and didn't imbibe it, then saved it to kill eusebia last second is just absurd. severian saying, "he thought it went well" to jonas following is hilariously ironic since they forgot the chair and got a confession of innocence from someone who immediately dropped dead following it. lol

>>23388562
and as a follow up
>“But she stole my Stachys, and now she’s gone.” Louder than ever: “Oh, wonderful! She’s gone!” With that, Eusebia plunged her face into the bouquet as though to fill her lungs to bursting with the roses’ cloying perfume.
it just seems so evident that eusebia got away with murder then killed herself to avoid justice.

>>23388526
im saving them for the start of new year 2025 can't wait

>>23387675
No. The whole thing is structurally set up to reveal her innocence but ends with Severian denying all common sense because he doesn't want to admit to himself that he executed an innocent person. It's clever tragicomedy and on-brand with Severians behaviour throughout much of the books.

>>23388555
>Feels too mundane
Sounds like the refrain of every conspiracy theorist.
I don't know why people insist on overcomplicating this book. Have they never heard of Occam's razor?
Every major city has its sanitation challenges, and Nessus has been in a state of decay for millennia.
>Why would they rename the city just because of this?
Did they officially rename the city, or did it just acquire a new name through popular use?
And besides, we know that Nessus is definitely not the name of the city ... it's a suitably evocative "translation" by Wolfe, as he points out in the appendices.

>>23388593
start by reading the books. The river is poisoned by megatherians

>>23388597
More schizo headcanon, or do you have an actual reference?
How does the river stay poisoned? And how does the poison move upstream over time, thwarting those who moved to escape it?

>>23387675
Yes, because she was executed for killing her family.

>>23388657
based

>>23388593
>conspiracy theorist
>Occam's razor
You sound like a fedora tipper

>>23388562
>>23388569
I think we could go back and forth all day, so this will be my final little bit.

I still feel like this is still simply ignoring the fact that out of all the characters only one is said to be an expert in poison. Eusebia sniffs her flowers and nothing happens. Then she shoves them up to Morwenna. Sniffs them again and dies. All this while just prior saying she thought Morwenna would have had some sort of quick acting poison. It's too much of a coincidence to not be done intentionally by Wolfe.
>severian saying, "he thought it went well" to jonas following is hilariously ironic since they forgot the chair and got a confession of innocence from someone who immediately dropped dead following it. lol
I don't disagree with any of this. Jonas knows Severian is bothered. The setup was sloppy. Eusebia admitted she got Morwenna killed and then immediately drops dead. But that doesn't mean Eusebia killed herself in her moment of triumph or that Morwenna is innocent.
>it just seems so evident that eusebia got away with murder then killed herself to avoid justice.
But this is said slightly earlier about Eusebia before the execution begins (and before she hold them out to Morwenna):
>As I watched her, she inhaled their perfume rapturously
She's just a deep sniffer because she's having the best day of her life.

>>23383665
When was this? In Short Sun

I thought he was referring to the minor description of him that Horn gave that he had a face that was intense but wouldn't be considered handsome (IIRC, which seems like a very subjective interpretation)

>>23388526
I was filtered by the tunnels

>>23388610
they're growing thats why. Abaia in particular for south of Nessus, also it mentions how theres more undines there thats why no one goes to the ruins

>>23388508
I'm in the same boat, I was planning on rereading it anyways but this thread made me question my perception of the story completely

Some of the basic themes totally weren't lost on me but the few times I read online that Severian was supposed to be an unreliable narrator I felt like it was slightly off base. I felt like Wolfe didn't make an effort to illuminate any contradictions enough to make that a central part of the book, but I guess I just accepted the story and its events at face value without considering their placement or intent (on a fundamental level)

The constant mentions of perfect memory do draw a watchful mind's eye but mine got so distracted by almost everything else in the story that by the end I retroactively and perhaps foolishly that decided they served a different purpose. I guess despite my love of the book I underestimated Wolfe

>>23388526
I think it definitely had more real characters and a fuller more defined setting (slightly) but it kind of fizzled at the end for me and even though I did really like Silk I wasn't as consistently invested in the story or as impacted by it. Botns felt like a less flexible plot I guess but it was more grandiose

There was certainly spiritual development to be found in long sun but I felt like it wasn't given center stage in a satisfying or conclusive way like with Botns

>>23388684
>only one is said to be an expert in poison
can you point me to this line? i browsed briefly and couldn't find it.

So how many years do you think Typhon was asleep? Was the clone at the end supposed to be of Typhon?

>>23388593
>muh Occam's razor
The refrain of every midwit turning off their brain. If the river was poisoned by sewage it wouldn't be a mystery, they would easily make that connection because the river would just smell like sewage. Even the most primitive civilizations make that connection, they wouldn't know what rocket fuel smells like or that there's giant aliens living in the water.

>>23388850
If not for the other books I'd be sure Severian hallucinated Typhon. But I don't know there's no way to be sure. One hundred thousand years?
The homunculus at the end is the biggest mystery of the story imo. I don't think it was Typhon's.

>>23388684
>It's too much of a coincidence to not be done intentionally by Wolfe.
you're coming at this like your explanation isn't the one on the page telling you to believe it. what you are saying is literally what severian is telling you to believe. with gene wolfe, it's never that simple and that's where i'm coming at it from. this is a very important moment in severian's journey as it causes a schism with what he was raised on.
>Morwenna would have had some sort of quick acting poison.
eusebia says she knew morwenna and that she was careful. she would have kept poison behind for herself and would have died before getting arrested. nothing about it being quick acting.

Did you guys have a Dorcas in your life?

>>23388850
>>23388863
tBotNS appears to take place hundreds of thousands if not millions of years in the "future". There are fucking cities buried beneath the ground.

>>23388526
nope
too much tunnel

I couldn't get 1/4 of the way through Urth of the New Sun

With regard to the "unreliable narrator", I think we must distinguish between Severian the author and Severian the protagonist. We know that the Severian who writes the book has consumed the Autarch's brain and alzabo decoction, and contains thousands of individual's memories, and to some extent their personalities, if the moments where Thecla's personality comes to the forefront are themselves reliable.
In the part where the alzabo tries to enter the mountain hut, we get a glimpse of how the whole alzabo arrangement works: the consumed personalities within it seem to be convinced they're acting in their interests while actually following the host's instincts. Does it work similarly for the personalities within Severian, are they adding coloring or even whole episodes to the story for Severian's benefit? How much of the information and interpretation he relates comes from others, maybe from centuries in the past, and what does he leave out that he probably would know from them?
I think the alzabo concept adds a fascinating, unresolvable uncertainty to the story that puts it into a utterly different light right at the end. One of the great twists of literature.

>>23388908
That's true but we don't know at what point Typhon was ruling

Didn't Severian just get to meet him in some random part of the world in the mountains? I don't remember the specifics of where he was at in relation to Thrax but despite it definitely feeling like a journey I don't feel like he made much effort to really explore the world in depth. Like if Typhon had really been there for that long wouldn't he have been disturbed sooner? I assumed the implication of why he awoke was because Severian was pressing buttons (I think I remember him saying he messed with a console near Typhon)

I think it is implied multiple times though that the rule of Typhon was much further in the past than what Long/Short Sun's lore would initially indicate. It is directly suggested a couple times and there was that line from Marble where she was trying to remember how much time had passed since she was built, and she says about moving a decimal over which I took as her considering it had been much longer as well

Do you think Typhon recognized Severian? He seemed to have been pretty changed by the time he met Typhon again, but I feel like Typhon's attitude towards him implies he remembers him. Randomly offering him the world and trying to subjugate him (he is a megalomaniac but still)

>>23388908
Its likely around 10k or 100k years only

>>23389001
Would explain why thecla in his memory is a lover but in acts it seems like he raped her and she hated him

>>23389006
I assumed he was reanimated by the Claw

>>23389001
I think it undoubtedly changed his personality but I don't know if I could get behind any sizable chunk of the story (whole episodes) being added to the narrative since all of his experiences follow some thread of Severian's experiences. I get that it's not that simple and it could be memories being woven into his own but idk, as someone with a shit memory I implore you to carry that a bit further and offer some instances that you might think qualify as being sufficiently alien to the rest of the story. Maybe the green man?

>>23389020
>in acts it seems like he raped her and she hated him
What? It seems more like she just teased him out of boredom but they never did anything beyond that. If anything she kind of liked him.

How do you guys think Silk and Horn stack up against Severian as protagonists

>>23389044
Its been a long time, idk where exactly but he mention briefly that she tried to claw at his face in rage when he made love to thecla again and again, even though he never mentions anything like that before or after. Its extremely out of place

>>23389023
>>23389023
It's insane how little I considered that possibility, it had crossed my mind but still

It still feels weird to me that nothing happened to Typhon's body in all those years especially since he was probably hated by many (which I kind of assume despite his following in the Whorl but could be wrong about)

is there any better sign of lazy writing than an unreliable narrator?

>>23389047
i think silk is wolfe's most compelling character. he's just so sincerely honest all of the time, even if what he's saying is goofy. like, there is this one scene in nightside where he's putting together a "feast" together in his head about what he's going to eat when he returns and it's slice unripened tomatoes fried in what little of his old sitting oil he had, a sliver of old cheese and some hard bread. then to top it off, he thinks he's being a little too indulgent. he's just so hilariously endearing all throughout.

>>23389001
The Thecla in his body definitely does work in his interest. Remember the Autarch called her a cruel and cold woman, and in his story we can tell she's using him. So yeah the idea that Severian has that she loved him is probably what he wanted to hear. Another interesting thing is that Severian is deeply loyal to Vodalus before consuming Thecla but that loyalty seem to die almost instantly after he does, which is weird since the Autarch mentions that Thecla loyalty influenced Severian; there's a contradiction there. Perhaps the Autarch believed that the alzabo juice worked like his own?

>>23389023
>he thinks it's the claw that reanimates things!
lol

>>23389047
I don't think Horn even really counts since we never really see his perspective.

>>23389033
Not him but Severian sometimes has knowledge of things he shouldn't have. He knows that the examination room in the Matachin Tower was the rocket's propulsion chamber (whatever that is).

>>23389033
Unfortunately I don't have the best memory either and it's been a while, but maybe the episodes that have an "illusionary" feel to them might come from a confusion of memories, like the botanical gardens, the atrium of time, the encounter with the witches, the dream he has sleeping next to Baldanders...

Speaking of Typhon, I was always interested in this line right before Severian palm strikes him

>“They honor me,” Typhon said. Piaton’s mouth moved too, but not with his. This time I heeded it.

What does Piaton mouth to him? "Kill me" or something to that effect? The first time I read those chapters I had the suspicion that Typhon was a fraud, perhaps Piaton was actually the Autarch and Typhon the man he was grafted to. Skimming the chapters just now I found this

>The head that spoke laughed. “My name is Typhon. You might as well call me by it. Have you heard of me? Once I ruled this planet, and many more.”
>I was certain he lied, so I said, “Rumors of your might echo still … Typhon.”

which is probably what gave me the idea. I thought Piaton might have somehow communicated to Severian what the deal was which gave Sev the confidence to fight back

>>23388755
>I felt like Wolfe didn't make an effort to illuminate any contradictions enough to make that a central part of the book
Bro, almost every time Severian thinks back on past events things are different, including some massive things like his relationship with Thecla, or how he handled his first execution. Wolfe was using the unreliable narrator to throw some real knock-out punches.

>>23389162
>What does Piaton mouth to him? "Kill me" or something to that effect?
Yeah, that's what gives Severian the idea to kill Typhon by caving Piaton's brain in.

>>23384471
4 u

>>23388788
You know your comment spurred me to look for it and I can't find it. I've misremembered that part.
>>23388871
>what you are saying is literally what severian is telling you to believe.
And for good reason. Severian initially thinks that Eusebia blew a gasket with all her excitement and that's why she died. It's only later he learns from an expert who analyzed the flowers that he finds out there was poison on them. This isn't some wild speculation that Severian concocts up, unless you go down the route of never trusting anything he says. As for the way Severian is acting during this part of the book, keep in mind that Severian was really excited and having a great time after he executes her. When Eusebia says she got Morwenna killed Severian is completely unfazed. He doesn't seem gloomy till later with Jonas. When Jonas asks him about it Severian says that even Palaemon mentions the melancholy after executions. We also learn that Severian was really nervous about messing it up. He doesn't even realize how nervous he was until after he sees her blood spurt up and knows it's over. Severian may also be acting a bit odd because he has drawn a connection between Thecla and Morwenna. This comes out when talking with Jonas and he also mentions he has never executed a woman before.
>this is a very important moment in severian's journey as it causes a schism with what he was raised on.
I think it serves as a reminder of the fallen nature of the world with how terrible everyone is acting: Morwenna killing her family, Eusebia's manipulations and gloating, the mayor's willingness to profit off of bloodshed, and the crowd itself. And it also humanizes Severian along with the other torturers by reminding us that they too feel melancholy with their occupation and aren't just killing machines. So Severian being bothered does not mean Morwenna is innocent or that he's coping in some way.
>eusebia says she knew morwenna and that she was careful. she would have kept poison behind for herself and would have died before getting arrested. nothing about it being quick acting.
Quick-acting is just a simple inference. If one is going to use poison on oneself to escape the authorities why pick a slow poison? The idea of Morwenna being guilty is compatible with the idea that she really was planning on offing herself, maybe after her little speech about her love for her family (and remember the vision of Morwenna mouthing words but not saying anything i.e. empty words), innocence, and granting a prayer by forgiving the crowd before the torture begins, but she impromptu decides to instead use it on Eusebia.

>>23389359
>This isn't some wild speculation that Severian concocts up, unless you go down the route of never trusting anything he says
my dude, i'm granting that the bouquet is poisoned, we just differ on who poisoned it. severian comes up with an absurd scenario that morwenna must have been holding this all through her imprisonment waiting for a moment to kill eusebia by sleight of handing it into her bouquet while she happened to rush the platform after being branded and then lead around the stage by the hand. i feel like suggesting she had the poison and was going to take it herself but then pivoted to eusebia is just highly unreasonable. i'm saying eusebia came with the poison in the bouquet ready to die after seeing her framing of morwenna succeed and then confessing. stachy was dead and she probably had nothing else to live for.
>He doesn't seem gloomy till later with Jonas. When Jonas asks him about it Severian says that even Palaemon mentions the melancholy after executions.
yea, this is him getting a handle of the situation. was justice actually served? since "we obey", we aren't accountable for justice even if it's dealt out to the innocent? in my opinion, his lines of, 'i think it went well', and 'these nerves always happen afterwards' are covering up what is actually going on in his head.
>Quick-acting is just a simple inference
because quick acting helps the case of eusebia dying instantly which is why it's important to clarify. even if it were slower, she could have taken it before getting arrested and have been dead before the execution. we don't know how long chad and stachy were in anguish so kind of moot.

agree to disagree though. wolfe is excellent.

>it's a Severian tells an undecipherable tale that has little to no bearing on the overall plot chapter
Increate give me strength

>>23389284
Maybe it's because I read the first two books like close to two years before the second two, but I don't remember glaring inconsistencies with Thecla. I do remember their relationship or feelings on each other being described differently or some other feeling of inconsistency (I think) but I chalked it up to not feeling like I fully understood/remembered it to begin with. Like some evidence that she actually didn't have any love for him doesn't necessarily contradict his past words even considering their merging of consciousness, since he's reflecting on how he felt at the time and some inconsistency in what he says later could be a result of their merger, but then again I don't know specifically what you're referring to. Do you remember any specific instances of more hard line, factual differences in events in the description of their relationship or what they did together?

What did he say was different about the execution?

Another thing that gave me pause with the unreliable narrator theory was how it felt a bit at odds with the direction the book takes later, what do you think the purpose of him being unreliable is if it was as intentional as people seem to think?

>>23389127
Are you saying that you believe Silk took over completely? I always thought they had merged, that a good portion of Horn's personality remained which explains why the twist actually works, because even after you learn about the body switch it still sounds like Horn is writing it, with his feelings on Nettle and Seawrack and sons etc

>>23389777
Originally I thought Silk had merged with Pas leaving his body empty and that Horn was just occupying it, and I felt like the entire thing still read that way, but the end of Whorl definitely implies that some part of Silk is still there or came back into the body

>>23389138
That didn't strike me much, our knowledge of the world knowledge in the current era of Urth isn't that definite but it does obviously seem very sketchy, but it's not impossible to me that some would know it was a rocket. Definitions changing and shifting and all that, that vague awareness of its past purpose doesn't necessarily contradict every other description it was given (I think)

also maybe Horn mentioned it to him when he was a kid

>>23389657
>undecipherable
>little to no bearing on the overall plot

>>23389772
I don't think it's unreliable in the way that he's lying, but in so far that Severian might not know what he's talking about. The Katherine android is a good example. There was probably no clever contraption.

>>23389808
What was the story about the wizard's appreciate about, frogposter?

>>23389777
I was referring to the fact that all three books are written by 'Silk' after he returns to Blue, so we're never really seeing things from 100% Horn's perspective, even if they're his memories/personality. So what's Horn and what's Silk is confused. I do think Silk comes back to himself completely at the end, obviously with Horn's memories as if they were his own etc. but Horn is only then completely deceased. I think they were merged until that point.

>>23389820
1. As the first story within a story we read, it's to establish that Severian's far future world combines myths with reality, much like Severian's own unreliable narration. (the story is an amalgamation of elements from minotaur story and real life american civil war event.)
2. In regards to overall plot: it is how the New Sun (in this case, the Student's Son) will fight with the monstrous enemies (Ebia/lovecraft space monster things) and win, a victory of light vs darkness.

There are always gay podcasts like rereeading wolfe and Alzabo soup who go into a lot of detail if want a deeper reading.

>Baldanders
>Bald Anders

>Bald Anders
>has hair

Why did Father Inire show the mirrors to Thecla's friend? Why her?

>>23389924
He's like children and she showed a boldness that made his cacogen pp happy.

>>23389931
>He's like
I swear I'm not ESL. Just redarded.

>>23389931
I recall she saw one of the mirror's inhabitants, whatever that is. I had a strong feeling in those pages that Wolfe was heavily referencing other works for the sake of it.

>world floods
How do you survive without sounding mad?

Whats up with the painter cleaner?

>>23389964
He cleans the paintings?

>>23389964
he cleans, Jerry.