#second apocalypse

[funnyifwebothgotitwrong]

So I was re-reading Good Omens, as one does when a new adaption / season comes out, and it being - naturally - the first time after season 2 I noticed something new:

This is Crowley speculating on the Anti-Christs power. Which he is later proven to really have, when he sets the whole world back to what it was before the nopocalypse.

Sounds familiar? This is what the Book of Life can allegedly do.

Also:

Does this mean that the second apocalypse / The Second Coming might be reliant on Adam keeping his powers? (Which he has, in the epilogue he created a hole that was always there in his family's garden hedge, so Dog could escape.) Is the Anti-Christ involved in the Second Coming?

Any thoughts on this?

[balioc]

With regard to R. Scott Bakker's Second Apocalypse books:

i'd be very interested in hearing why you both really like that series and also think it would be super alienating/what its target audience is

Yeah. So. OK.

The short version is "these are books for philosophy and history nerds, who love dense complicated worldbuilding, and who are lacking a lot of common social/ideological allergies."

They are fantasy books that take ideas seriously, in a way that will appeal to a lot of the people reading this. They're built on top of some really really cool metaphysical premises, and they explore those to the utmost. They do Big Sweep of History better than most fantasy books purporting to do that thing; the first trilogy in the series is essentially about a crusade, of the real Reclaim the Holy Land style, and it does a bang-up job capturing both the grandeur and the grotesquerie entailed in that kind of endeavor.

They have a lot in common with rationalist fiction, in a "descended from a common intellectual ancestor" kind of way, but they do a lot of important things very differently from capital-R Ratfic in a way that I like. They have a much darker moral and cosmological tone, with the gee-whiz take-us-to-the-stars optimism replaced by a kind of profound historical and cosmological horror. They are also, overall, much more literary and just-plain-weird in style. One of our protagonists is basically a rationalist supergenius raised in isolation who's just now encountering the world and learning to bend it to his will, and...well, the process is cool and maybe even overall good (maybe) (very maybe) but it sure is unsettling in basically every conceivable way.

The worldbuilding is also top-notch, in my opinion, not only in terms of depth but in terms of tone and style. It's a big, sprawling setting that feels like it was created by someone who honest-to-God knows how to channel Tolkeinian numinousness and someone who knows and appreciates pulp fantasy and someone who's actually read a goddamn history book.

But.

...look, I don't even know where to start here. Let me just list a grab-bag of things that are true about these books:

In the first trilogy, we have two major POV characters. One of them is a very sweet, angsty, relatable dude who also understands a lot of key facts about the setting history and the magic system. The other is a ruthless sociopath who engages with literally everyone and everything in a purely manipulative way. Guess which one we get to spend hundreds of pages with first, before meeting the other?

The ultimate bad guys of the setting, the Mordor faction, consists of aliens whose culture is built around the idealization of rape. Their hordes of minions, the orc-analogues, are genetically engineered rape monsters.

...there's a lot of conspicuously offputting sex stuff in general, in fact.

Long stretches of the narrative are basically misery porn, in which we get to see close-up just how grindingly awful it is to be part of a crusading army on the march / to be a prostitute in a city through which a crusade is passing / etc.

The metaphysics, which are the conceptual foundation of the series and also its coolest feature, do not get revealed in significant depth until halfway through the third volume. A friend of mine read the series on my recommendation, and kept asking me questions that amounted to "...are you sure these are the books you keep talking about?"

You do not find out until at least six books in whether our sociopathic rationalist supergenius protagonist is essentially benevolent or not. Despite spending an awful lot of time in his head.

Plus, y'know, there's generally a lot of philosophical jawing.

Plus...even I have to admit that, especially starting with the second trilogy, the series starts making a number of unforced errors. (There's a moment where we go back to the Monastery of Rationalism whence our protagonist dude sprang, and we learn a lot more about what went on there, and...sense-making gets sacrificed for shock horror in a big way.)

In sum: there's something to offend just about everyone, deeply. Old-school fantasy lovers will dislike the constant nasty subversions of classic numinous Cool Fantasy Stuff. Contemporary nu-fantasy types will dislike the extent to which the series is about the powerful wreaking their will upon the powerless, the general (extremely deliberate) sexism of the setting, etc. People who are there for the setting will be annoyed by how much is concealed for a very long time; people who are there for the characters will be annoyed by how unlikeable many of the key characters are. Almost everyone will be wigged out by the sloggy unpleasantness, the sexual grossness, or both.

[jonnyconsequence]

Artwork by Jason Deem for R. Scott Bakker's SECOND APOCALYPSE series

[tyrannosarahsrex8]

Welcome to the “whoops! I accidentally started got manipulated into starting the apocalypse!” Club. Members being Jonathan Sims and Mable Pines. They’re both ✨traumatised✨

Bonus comic

[harbingerofsoup]

there’s death of the author and then there’s whatever the fuck is up with danny phantom

[itsdefinitely]

funniest season to be honest

[thenightyngale]

Hiya, first post :3

@goodomensafterdark

[ratwieldingpolearm]

give me deathbit in his stupid little mullet PLEASE

[raspberryfries]

this was basically charles in the entire first half of apocalypse

[xxplastic-cubexx]

apocalypse doodlings aka We Couldve Had Grey Hair Erik And Charles Is There Too I Guess

[kendyroy]

Although very brief, I really really love the portrayal of Logan’s Weapon X breakout scene in X2. i love how it shows how nightmarishly awful this whole situation is for him. The fucking trauma of it all. His agonizing scream and the fact he looks absolutely horrified by the blood and the adamantium claws.

[youchangedmedestiel]

You know Cas probably learned how it feels to be touched gently from Dean.

[cuepickle]

Vecna is a mean girl

[undercoverangell]

the best way to put how i feel

[sunlightedcockroach]

[it-meant-nothing]