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Post by todd on Apr 26, 2018 13:01:59 GMT
I wonder whether part of the point of the title was to surprise the audience once Ysengrin ate Coyote and attacked the Court. "Memories of the Worthless" suggested a quiet chapter, exploring Ysengrin's nature, with very little external action - so that the major events in it come as more of a shock.
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Post by pyradonis on Apr 26, 2018 16:26:18 GMT
And I ask, what kind of technological barrier could stop a god? The barrier is most likely magic. But to come back to your question: if faith is generated by believing in the barrier (maybe that's what the robots are doing?), then the barrier becomes as powerful as the God. That's what Jones said about the stars in the sky, isn't it? A being can exist before it is created. What the court is doing is proving that power is mostly derived from belief and once it is believed, it is so. So when that belief is put in technological abilities (in this case magic abilities) instead of the god, they must coexist and both claim the same role and share the same history. In a nutshell. I think. You want proof you say? Like er.. here
And here And here is a reference to the Court's aspirations exactly along those lines. So that's a theory... Or was your question rhetorical and am I "oversplaining"? For that matter: I think that the "heh" is pure Coyote. Someone else implied it on this page as well. If all of the above is so, then maybe he was testing a theory and now he has his answers, while politically not getting himself into trouble (I was eaten by Ysengrin!) but getting his answers anyway. Perhaps. Why does this all matter to me so much? I have to partly disagree... A creature has to die in order for its mind to be absorbed in the Ether. So you cannot directly change reality by telling a group of beings to believe in it. Or, more precisely, if the belief persists through generations (with many beings dying and feeding it into the Ether), it might retroactively change reality, but you cannot be sure of that. The belief might get lost just as well. Now, if the Court would continually teach generation after generation of students "we have a barrier impenetrable even to Gods", then it could spring into being exactly as imagined one day.
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Post by Runningflame on Apr 26, 2018 17:01:58 GMT
I have to partly disagree... A creature has to die in order for its mind to be absorbed in the Ether. So you cannot directly change reality by telling a group of beings to believe in it. Or, more precisely, if the belief persists through generations (with many beings dying and feeding it into the Ether), it might retroactively change reality, but you cannot be sure of that. The belief might get lost just as well. Now, if the Court would continually teach generation after generation of students "we have a barrier impenetrable even to Gods", then it could spring into being exactly as imagined one day. True, but that raises all the usual questions about retroactive causality... If the future generations of the Court believe they have always had an impenetrable barrier, then they will always have had that barrier--so aren't we just seeing the present effects of the future belief? It's the same as Jones creating footprints before there were humans to believe in her. She did really exist back in dinosaur times (or didn't exist, if you prefer Coyote's terminology), created by the beliefs of future generations of humans. --If you accept Coyote's theory, of course. We don't technically know that that's how this universe works; we just have an immortal trickster's conjecture to go on.
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novia
Full Member
Posts: 225
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Post by novia on Apr 26, 2018 18:18:22 GMT
I see your 'Heh.' and raise you this.
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Post by todd on Apr 27, 2018 1:36:46 GMT
We don't technically know that that's how this universe works; we just have an immortal trickster's conjecture to go on. Good point. Coyote could be mistaken, after all. And I'm not certain that Tom's sat down and analyzed every etheric event in the story according to how well it matches Coyote's speculation (it would certainly be a tall order).
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Post by fourleaftree on Apr 27, 2018 9:26:06 GMT
The barrier is most likely magic. But to come back to your question: if faith is generated by believing in the barrier (maybe that's what the robots are doing?), then the barrier becomes as powerful as the God. That's what Jones said about the stars in the sky, isn't it? A being can exist before it is created. What the court is doing is proving that power is mostly derived from belief and once it is believed, it is so. So when that belief is put in technological abilities (in this case magic abilities) instead of the god, they must coexist and both claim the same role and share the same history. In a nutshell. I think. You want proof you say? Like er.. here
And here And here is a reference to the Court's aspirations exactly along those lines. So that's a theory... Or was your question rhetorical and am I "oversplaining"? For that matter: I think that the "heh" is pure Coyote. Someone else implied it on this page as well. If all of the above is so, then maybe he was testing a theory and now he has his answers, while politically not getting himself into trouble (I was eaten by Ysengrin!) but getting his answers anyway. Perhaps. Why does this all matter to me so much? I have to partly disagree... A creature has to die in order for its mind to be absorbed in the Ether. So you cannot directly change reality by telling a group of beings to believe in it. Or, more precisely, if the belief persists through generations (with many beings dying and feeding it into the Ether), it might retroactively change reality, but you cannot be sure of that. The belief might get lost just as well. Now, if the Court would continually teach generation after generation of students "we have a barrier impenetrable even to Gods", then it could spring into being exactly as imagined one day. I think what I was more getting at is that in a way, the court has achieved its goal of becoming (a) God itself, by what means I don't know exactly yet but that was the gist.
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Post by pyradonis on Apr 27, 2018 9:51:29 GMT
I see your 'Heh.' and raise you this.Touché!
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