82 KiB
Unsong Epilogue
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Author: u/Fredlage *
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Score: 109
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Created: 2017-05-17T21:49:04
Post:
Comments:
u/Ninmesara [+43] (3 hours later)
This is mostly a collection of topics about which I feel Unsong underperformed relative to my (high) expectations. These should be read while taking into account that overall I enjoyed the story.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The bad parts:
A weak point is the relative uselessness of Unsong (the organization), which is (1) underpowered relative to the real important entities, like angels, demons, Cometspawn, etc; (2) quite useless at hoarding names and (3) becomes completely irrelevant after book 1. From the title of the story (and the logo), one would expect it would be this overly important organization that would influence the events and characters in the book, and this expectation is broken without even being acknowledged.
Similarly, the extremely scary Malia could use some more screen time. She is kinda reduced to the role of a blood bag.
As someone else has said, Metatron is supposed not to talk, but he decides to disguise himself as human and steal a boat to search for himself ar some point. Just so that the seed of the universe grows into something good or something to that effect. The angels actually lie/are wrong when they say that Metatron rides on top of a purple boat which is actually the Leviathan. This is annoyingly misleading for the reader.
The chapter about the War of the Angels is veeeery inconsistent regarding the angels. They go from praising God for 7 days and 7 nights to talking like they're living in a SSC post. It's just too jarring.
Sarah, the kabbahlistic secret weapon (as well as the Vital Name + ensouled Tharmas) is not used in a meaningful way, and the whole sacrifice thing is undone in a couple of chapters after TOK unceremoniously burns the supercomputer as a side effect of killing Caelius. While it might get across the idea that all resistance is futile before the might of TCK/TOK, it comes out as a little underwhelming.
Globally, the pacing is a little off. It takes way to long for us to discover that TCK is actually an important main character and not a minor background event. I felt somewhat betrayed as I felt that the story was straying further and further away from the awesome atmosphere of this fictional depiction of the Bay Area Unitarians (which is still my favorite part of the book). I eventually adjusted, though.
After giving us every indication that it's easy to distinguish a Golem from a human corpse, the book has TCK faking his death with a Golem capable of fooling the Cometspawn. Simeon does believe that fooling them with a Golem might be possible, but we've already seem him being wrong about the Drug Lord and the Captain, so I don't think his opinion was meant to be taken as gospel.
Aaron's misinterpretation of the "fall of a bird" prophecy is irrealistic and out of character. He doesn't even consider the possibility that Robin is the bird, after mentioning that TCK was brokenhearted after her death one or two paragraphs above. The reader doesn't know her name yet, but Aaron does. On a positive note, I really like the fact that his kabbahlistic deduction is visibly very weird and sounded wrong at the time (at least to me).
The "anthropic" explanation for all the coincidences is not very satisfying, but that's probably just my personal preference.
The mechanics of telepathy are poorly understood by the reader, even if they are familiar to the characters. Telepathy seems to mostly work according to the whims of the plot, which narratively is a bad thing.
The story didn't really gain much for being a serial instead of being published in one go or on bigger chunks.
The African soul inconsistency is never addressed: how come many africans don't have a soul and are perfectly ordinary humans while Sara turns into a general artificial intelligence the moment she receives hers?
My other criticisms are related to (lots of) little details, mostly inconsistencies, and nothing about the large scale structure of the novel. They are inevitable for a project of this magnitude without a proper editor. An editor could also "fix" many of the "flaws" I mention here.
Overall I have to say it's quite good. Among my favorite parts:
Book 1 is amazing - the depiction of the fictional version of the Bay Area ruled by the theonomic corporations is one of the best things I've read on the internet. I'd have liked more of this.
Props for giving an answer to theodicy. I didn't think the story would actually do it.
I now love biblical whale puns. It's my favorite genre of puns.
Interesting "local" puzzles (the way Unsong discovers the name generating computer, the mystery of the Panama canal, the angel library code, the secret of the seventh sail, the identity of the Captain - or at least the fact that Metatron possesses him sometimes). This is in contrast to the large scale puzzles, which are impossible to guess with any certainty (who is TOK? Why can Malia see Ana while she is invisible? What/who is the drug Lord? Which Golem(s) has Gadiriel created before Sarah? Why did the name stop working? It turns out that the Confounding name confounds people without them noticing and can rewrite Aaron's memories in such a way that he actually holds in his mind a valid mnemonic of 72 letters that makes sente o.O).
Most of Aaron's kabbahlistic rambling moments are great too.
The universe is colorful and interesting.
The distortions of real history are really great, and even better are the tidbits of real history/bible verses/talmud references so outrageous that they seem fake.
The broadcast chapter is great.
Chapter 72 is suitably bleak, especially the very last part. It did feel a little rushed, though.
The epilogue, even if very rushed contrasts nicely with the overly bleak ending of chapter 72 (even if Thamiel's role is a little obscure). It mixes nicely with the Blake references throughout the book.
u/ratanon [+15] Holy, holy is the lord of /etc/hosts (9 hours later)
Aaron's misinterpretation of the "fall of a bird" prophecy is irrealistic and out of character.
Aaron misinterpreting prophecies is TOTALLY in-character. See the 'Miss American Pie' interlude.
The African soul inconsistency is never addressed: how come many africans don't have a soul and are perfectly ordinary humans while Sara turns into a general artificial intelligence the moment she receives hers?
I don't think that's an inconsistency. It simply may be that having a soul is a sufficient, but not necessary condition for, um... let's call it 'apparent consciousness'.
But if we're talking inconsistencies, I can think of two major ones:
- The Shrouded Constitution anachronism
- We are told angels can't use Names, but the SCABMOM ritual contains an invocation of a Name. It seems Uriel shouldn't have been able to perform it with Sohu; this is never addressed.
u/Ninmesara [+6] (10 hours later)
I don't think your first point is a very serious one. It's just a "timing" issue, right? It can be solved by editing a couple of lines of dialog. A more serious timing issue is Ana's possession by the drug lord, which seems to happen several hours after the events in Vegas. Scott promised he would fix that one eventually (this one actually made me think that the Drug Lord was making an empty threat until Scott corrected me in the comments).
I had failed to notice your last inconsistency! This one's a big one. Maybe it could be solved by making Uriel use the name through some kind of celestial kabbahla (plucking the letters out of thin air) while Sohu says the name? That would be (more) consistent.
Regarding the African problem: it's serious in my opinion because at the time it seems to validate Aaron's perception that ensouling a computer is totally safe, as humans with or without souls are very similar. I thought the whole point of the Madrid conference was to show us that something else might be involved in making Sarah conscious, besides the Vital Name (God's intervention, Raziel behind the Scenes, etc).
u/CreationBlues [+3] (21 hours later)
Remeber, current epoch humans are different from the humans that were created by god. Remeber how trees were redesigned to run on math? A similar process was undertaken for humans, designing them so that they could run without divine light, solely on math. Since we don't see any west Africans after Uriel's machine fails, it's impossible to say what effect that had on them.
What Sarah demonstrates, I think, is that you can artificially give anything, from dust to a computer, sentience with the ensouling name, and that with math you can also give things something equivalent to sentience, though not hooked up to whatever divine machinery cares about souls.
u/Ninmesara [+5] (11 hours later)
Regarding the Prophecy: first, does Aaron really misinterpret the American Pie that badly? He says some correct things, like God's judgement being suspended (hell is destroyed and all that). And we actually never get a completely explained version of the song. Second, father Ellis's interpretation is almost as wild as Aaron's and we only see him interpreting a bit of it (the bit he interprets is correct though).
On the other hand, for the prophecy of the bird you have: (1) the Cometspawn send for the Sercret of TOK shortly after Robin has died , leaving TCK brokenhearted (2) the prophecy talks about "the fall of a bird" (not even a sparrow! And while a robin isn't even a sparrow, a bird is) and (3) TCK listens to the prophecy and never tells anyone about it, for reasons. Both Aaron and Jinxiang completely fail to make the connection that was obvious the moment Robin was introduced... Try rereading that chapter knowing that TCK's wife is named Robin.
I still thought TOK was Acher (I gave it a higher probability than TOK, something like 50% vs 45%), though, mostly because if the characters failed to make this obvious inference then maybe I was in the wrong (also because of the other reasons I mention in the comment where I talk about the puzzles).
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+2] (a day later)
The Shrouded Constitution thing didn't seem like an anachronism to me at all. I took it that the Shroudies were a preexisting political movement that Dick Cheney happened to belong to, and then he implemented their policy goals as president.
u/None [+5] (7 hours later)
Addind to flaws, THARMAS is kinda considered a character at the end to complete the prophecy, but does not ever do anything. He's literally more inert than Metatron.
u/Ibbot [+3] (6 hours later)
I'd have liked the comet king's sacrifice to have meant more.
u/mrthbrd [+2] (a day later)
What do you mean? He destroys/remakes Hell in the end, which was the goal the whole time.
u/Ibbot [+2] (a day later)
At least he does in Aaron's imagination. Do we know that he actually does?
u/Frommerman [+5] (a day later)
Given that Thamiel appears, for the first time ever, to have been soundly defeated, that the head which had previously been screaming (apparently in abject horror, poor thing), was begging for forgiveness, and that he allowed himself to be killed with his own weapon, I would say that's a resounding yes.
u/None [+1] (5 hours later)
Am I misreading your comment, or are you saying that those large scale puzzles were left unsolved, or merely that while unsolved they were interesting?
u/Ninmesara [+9] (11 hours later)
Please bear in mind that I might be misinterpreting these "puzzles" as something that can be solved by the reader... This might or might not be Scott's intention.
The "puzzles" were "solved", because the answers were ultimately revealed somehow. I say they are unsatisfying because the story is crafted in a way that you almost have 50% evidence in favor or agains an answer, and no real way of deciding beforehand which answer seems more likely. While I understand that the author doesn't want us to guess the answer too soon, I think that on rereading, we should be able to find some clues pointing in that direction. I don't think this ever happens. Some examples:
who is TOK? The only 2 pieces of evidence in favor of TCK are (1) why would a relative nobody kill someone who has drawn blood from Thamiel? and (2) why would Vihaan be in league with TOK? Everything else is either neutral or agains: TCK's body is recovered, and still the Cometspawn are fooled; there are loads of red herrings pointing towards Acher; TCK has said Robin that he can't just accumulate sin and kill himself and go to hell (yet he does exactly that in the end!); at one point, Sohu is seemingly memory wiped after Uriel tells her about Acher; TCK wants to maximize sin, yet he makes Las Vegas into a well run civilized city instead of a hive of scum and villainy. The prophecy can be interpreted either way (even if Aaron's interpretation is veeery unconvincing). While the few points in favor are pretty strong, I think this "puzzle" is unfair for the reader because there are equally good points against.
the Identity of the Captain: same thing... The scene in Panama canal is cleverly crafted so that he can be either God (dog) or Nemo (omen), with no evidence pointing either way. He is the voice of God that never talks, except he is in human form and talks A LOT. Besides, he has a more active role than Aaron. He gets Father Ellis into the crew for some reason (to get Elijah into heaven?). The angels clearly say that metatron is on top of the golden sails of a purple ship (why? To fool the humans? Do angels even coordinate that much?).
why did the sky crack? Well, apparently in a workd with a well defined magic system based on the Hebrew alphabet, reciting the bible in English has real world effects if it's done in space. This is disappointing after I've read the sentence again and again trying to find something that even sounded like Hebrew.
who has betrayed the crew of the Not a Metaphor? You could roll the dice on this one. I have a comment in which I outline possible reasons for all the three passengers (I ultimately guess wrong), and on rereading the relevant chapters I can't find any clue that points in the right direction
who is Malia? Well, this one actually has some hints, but only in the chapter where Robin sells her soul to the Devil. So this one might actually be a good puzzle.
who is the human-like Golem created by Gadiriel? We get no hint at all in the right direction (Reagan? Really?), and it comes out of the blue, in an otherwise unremarkable chapter.
Again, maybe these are not to be taken as puzzles, and it's my mistake I read them as such. What I wanted to say is that (to me!) the story seems to setup a lot of puzzles that the reader doesn't have an opportunity to solve either rationally or kabbahlistically. Maybe you can get there with some knowledge if Blake's mythology?
Some things are left unanswered of course, but that's to be expected in a universe like Unsong. My point is that while the "puzzles" have answers, the are either not very satisfying or don't seem fair.
u/MugaSofer [+10] (16 hours later)
who is TOK? The only 2 pieces of evidence in favor of TCK are...
For what it's worth, I figured out Robin's scheme well in advance and it made perfect sense to me.
TCK isn't morally perfect, and a willingness to go over-the-top for people he loves is well-established as a moral failing of his. If you want him to turn evil in order to go to Hell, sending his wife there is just the logical choice.
why did the sky crack? Well, apparently in a workd with a well defined magic system based on the Hebrew alphabet, reciting the bible in English has real world effects if it's done in space.
There's a lot more to the magic system than just the Names, though. The whole Apollo 11 thing was based on the "Uriel's machine" part of the magic system, with Adam Kadmon and the non-magical "laws of physics" working like a glitchy computer.
Also, this isn't a mystery, it's the premise of the setting.
u/Ninmesara [+2] (17 hours later)
Also, this isn't a mystery, it's the premise of the setting.
To me it seems like a mystery worth explaining, and it was eventually explained. But maybe you're right and I'm seeing mysteries in need for an explanation where I shouldn't.
u/gwern [+7] (19 hours later)
who is TOK? The only 2 pieces of evidence in favor of TCK are (1) why would a relative nobody kill someone who has drawn blood from Thamiel? and (2) why would Vihaan be in league with TOK?
I am rereading Unsong now, and while I'm only partway through, I'm noticing many hints I missed the first time. There actually are a lot of hints for TOK=TCK in retrospect, long before the more obvious stuff. For example, Aaron discusses in the first 15 chapters or so the puzzling prophecies about the Mosiach and how there would be two, an evil one and a wicked one, and how he would either come in the most just or the most evil generation or both. (EDIT: there's even a discussion between TCK and Thamiel a few chapters later about the various messiahs and whether they are the same person) This looks like a throwaway bit of 'weird Talmud stuff', but of course, in retrospect it's obvious that it's quite literal: The Comet King is the good messiah (kabbalistically powerful and devoted to good) but he turns into the bad messiah TOK (equally kabbalistically powerful and devoted to evil), and the Unsong generation is the most wicked generation due to the world collapsing and Thamiel being active but also the most just one after the world gets rewritten into paradise by Aaron-Albion. TCK says when he breaks, he'll break like a comet: visible only to the most far-sighted but continuing on the same course (to destroy Hell) and how comets end in fire and destruction and the end of all things.
Likewise, Sarah and Tharmas's role is foreshadowed by the Rubaiyat "if we could grasp the world entire", the modal realism argument is foreshadowed twice (in the discussion of the 'Digrammatron' and Aaron's discussion of Lurianic cosmology), and even the Captain being Metatron is foreshadowed repeatedly right from the start: while discussing stealing the boat, he is addressed as "Oh God" by future crew and he is described by Lin as "He is" when Ana asks his name. These are not coincidences etc.
u/Ninmesara [+2] (23 hours later)
Sure, there are hints, but for every hint pointing in the right direction you often have an equally convincing hint pointing in the wrong direction.
Aaron discusses in the first 15 chapters or so the puzzling prophecies about the Mosiach and how there would be two
I am aware of this prophecy. This sentence says that there would be two messiah, not one messiah that turns into another messiah. Of course you can say that the sentence is consistent with TCK=TOK, but I can't see how it tips the balance in favor of TCK=TOK (if anything, it hints toward the opposite conclusion). It is not quite literal. The literal meaning is that there are TWO messiah.
TCK says when he breaks, he'll break like a comet: visible only to the most far-sighted but continuing on the same course (to destroy Hell).
I'll grant you this one. This is a hint that even after being broken, TCK will want yo destroy Hell. Whether he will be able to or not is another question (he can't if he's been killed by TOK :p), but this sentence is probably a clue pointing the right direction.
he is addressed as "Oh God" by future crew
Couldn't find this one.
and he is described by Lin as "He is" when Ana asks his name.
This one is too good, especially after the part about the Right Hand of God xD I endorse this as evidence in favor of him being Metatron/God. It's funny that in the comments a commenter suggests that being Metatron is a possibility at this point, and I speculate on the fact that Nemo reversed becomes Omen. We were not that far from the truth. Hidden patterns everywhere.
But in the end, I think the arguments against (he's too active and talks too much) make this 50%/50%.
I don't really have an opinion on Sarah/Tharmas.
u/gwern [+2] (a day later)
Couldn't find this one.
I got it slightly wrong quoting from memory: http://unsongbook.com/chapter-22-whose-ears-have-heard-the-holy-word/
“It is,” said the big man. “I checked. This afternoon.”
“Holy God,” said Lin. “You’re serious.”
("There's always a choice" also has interesting connotations coming from the captain.)
This one is too good, especially after the part about the Right Hand of God xD
And Dylan's "bomb squad" vs "bomb removal squad" and Aaron going on and on about how Kabbalah is about the letter of the word and not the meaning, yeah.
u/Ninmesara [+1] (a day later)
It's always Lin (the placebomancer) who comes up with these thinks, have you noticed? This is an interesting coincidence.
u/gwern [+1] (a day later)
Hm, I haven't. How... improbable. Yet not impossible.
u/abcd_z [+1] (a day later)
a valid mnemonic of 72 letters that makes sente o.O.
u/Ninmesara [+2] (3 days later)
I think you're GOing places.
u/abcd_z [+1] (4 days later)
Thanks, but I try not to have a big igo.
*baduk-tss!*
u/RealTheAsh [+1] (7 years later)
I read the Talmud before this as an Orthodox Jew... which made me love it even more.
u/narfanator [+45] (an hour later)
thanks (I think) to the person who hid six (possibly seven, if we still haven’t found one?) purple Beanie Baby dragons in the house where we had the afterparty. It is not my house and the people who live there are very confused.
This is fantastic.
u/696e6372656469626c65 [+24] I think, therefore I am pretentious. (47 minutes later)
All right, it's over! Now it's time for the fanfics!
(In all seriousness, though, I doubt there will be any fanfics of UNSONG, simply because of the sheer amount of knowledge needed to write a kabbalistic scene that would do the original justice. If there ever is an UNSONG fanfic, it'll almost certainly have to be a group effort, which seems unlikely.)
u/Fredlage [+13] (2 hours later)
Just write one that focuses on other aspects of the world, like placebomancy, the angels, the messed up geographic coordinates and so on...
u/callmebrotherg [+9] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (2 hours later)
Or fluff. Especially fluff taking place in the remade world.
u/lawnmowerlatte [+7] (4 hours later)
Sohu/Uriel slice of life?
u/None [+14] (5 hours later)
It writes itself really. Sohu tries to teach Uriel a little of humanity, Uriel tries to teach Sohu celestial kabbalah, and eventually all the rivers end up running backwards.
u/Psy-Kosh [+5] (6 hours later)
Do Sohu and Uriel (Or for that matter Aaron and everyone else in the marriage) still exist as distinct beings anymore?
u/GeeJo [+7] Custom Flair (11 hours later)
Fanfiction doesn't have to be set chronologically after the events of the main story. In fact, it usually isn't.
u/PeridexisErrant [+3] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (2 days later)
Snippets I would love to see:
- The adventures of Peter Singer, ethicist and confidante of angels
- How, exactly, Robin arranged her meeting with Jala
- Jack Slash meets Dylan Alverez (from a
safe distancedifferent universe)
u/Frommerman [+1] (a day later)
"A trip to Wall Drug."
u/embrodski [+9] (5 hours later)
Welcome to Night Vale is basically Wall Drug fanfic ;)
u/orthernLight [+2] (16 hours later)
Just going to link to this...
u/scruiser [+15] CYOA (6 hours later)
I think... I find this story disturbing on a personally existential level.... all of the horrific things the Comet King had to do because of some technicality that you have to be both evil to get into hell yet willing and able to use the Explicit Name to unmake it? A universe were science and math prove to be a shallow facade constructed by an angel that happens to really like math? The only consistent rule being the whimsical coincidences designed to barely redeem the universe enough from evil so that it is worth instantiating in the first place? And of course... all the puns.
The Epilogue... for some reason I don't quite trust the hive mind at the end to fix things. You have... a kabbalist obsessed with puns and bizarre reasoning enough to make would should have been totally irrational and impractical choices, a theologian who care so much about the answer to the problem of evil she would rather ask god that than ask for a way of fixing the world that is currently undergoing an apocalypse, two revolutionary without a cause willing to do violence for poorly thought out reasons, an archangel that had to be explained social skills and basic moral reasoning by a little girl, an very young AI obsessed with her creator... anyway, combining all of their minds, I guess I don't trust things to sort themselves out.
This story had a lot of fun elements, it was just uniquely disturbing at the same time, and I think I wasn't quite willing to suspend disbelief enough to trust that there was a theodicy or to trust Metatron's answer. From failure to suspend disbelief, other details seem a lot worse or more disturbing. For instance... why didn't they Comet King come up with the idea of using the telepathic connection to transfer knowledge of the Explicit name to people already in hell? If one person can't use it, then he could find the right combination of hell bound people, connect them telepathically before they die, and then redeem them after they die and go to hell. It makes the Comet King's wife's plan (or lack thereof) seem really stupid in comparison.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+14] (6 hours later)
The story said that in order to use the Explicit name, you need enough brainpower to understand Adam Kadmon. Which means only the Comet King and supercomputers with souls can say the Explicit name. I don't think the comet king or his wife knew about the telepathic connection name, and it's not known whether a supercomputer can enter hell. Thamiel and his demons certainly would be very puzzled about how to torment a supercomputer.
So yes, maybe there are better plans, but the Comet King and his wife didn't know about it.
u/DisgruntledNumidian [+4] (10 hours later)
in order to use the Explicit name, you need enough brainpower to understand Adam Kadmon. Which means only the Comet King and supercomputers with souls can say the Explicit name
The Comet King, Uriel, Sohu, and Isaac Luria have all looked upon Adam Kadmon bare according to Ch.3
u/UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 [+8] (18 hours later)
Looked upon it. I think we have Sohu's POV as she sees it, and she is completely overwhelmed. Suppose one must fully comprehend the dizzying complexity that unfolds into the entire universe; Sohu is not equal to this task, but the Comet King, and THARMAS, are
u/None [+3] (4 days later)
The Comet King and his wife couldn't have done SCABMOM anyways---Uriel only created the ritual after TCK died. He might have actually created it shortly before he died, but TCK and Robin still couldn't have done it because Robin was already in Hell.
u/ViolaNguyen [+2] (2 months later)
Thamiel and his demons certainly would be very puzzled about how to torment a supercomputer.
Really? Because I thought Thamiel was the one who invented Windows.
u/None [+12] (3 hours later)
I've never been sadder at a happy ending. Oh, for a world where evil was thinner than a hair, tinier than a dust speck.
u/captainNematode [+12] (5 hours later)
So -- people who read through to the end of this, how was it? I made it something like 14 or 15 chapters in (reading as each chapter was released, about a year ago), and really enjoyed certain parts of it, but other parts found really boring -- specifically when (as I recall) it would go into these multiple paragraph spiels on how (e.g.) there are 26 letters in the modern English alphabet, which is twice the number of attendees at The Last Supper and also the product of two primes, signifying the immutable theistic dualism implicit in the aforementioned event, and if you convert "immutable theistic dualism" to hex the first two digits are 69, a popular sex position where two lovers pleasure each other symmetrically, just like the soul and the body under ideal circumstances, which is made further relevant in the relation 2^13 = 8,192, for 8192 is the precise length in KB of the program that governed the steering functions of the ship that in the 1969 lunar mission broke the firmament of being, demonstrating the conflict between humanity's scientific and spiritual progress, and the 8th, 1st, 9th, and 2nd letters in English spell HAIB, referring both to the Hawaii Association of International Buddhists and the Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology, which represent the Soul and the Body, respectively, and HAIB is also an alternate, accented spelling of HEB, or the Epistle to the Hebrews, one of the major themes of which is the role of Jesus as mediator between Body and Soul, Etc. Etc. Etc.
I generally quite liked the worldbuilding and magic and munchkinry (and found the characters to be decent and the writing quality above average), but all of the numerological "fundamental interconnectedness of all things" asides made my eyes glaze over. Just wasn't for me... so I decided to put it down until it finished and ask someone as to the balance of the former things to the latter.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+13] Finally, everyone was working together. (6 hours later)
There are quite a few passages like that in the story, but they aren't so important that your understanding will suffer if you glaze past them.
u/captainNematode [+2] (7 hours later)
Great, thanks! Do you happen to know if the author's planning to rewrite or edit it up a bit or anything, or are there no detriments to giving it another shot now?
u/AmeteurOpinions [+5] Finally, everyone was working together. (7 hours later)
He mentions in the epilogue that he has some "very long term plans" but as far as I know the story is pretty much finished.
u/Ninmesara [+4] (11 hours later)
You might like to trad it now that it is complete. Now you won't feel guilty if you jump over the numerological parts. BUT do note that the munchikinry in the story is way more inconsistent than what you might expect and after book one the story veers into completely different territory.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+5] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (20 hours later)
So -- people who read through to the end of this, how was it?
Ditto.
I got up to the boat with the seven sails and it just got too much effort to push on through something that looked increasingly unlikely to have a payoff for the effort of ploughing though it.
I really like the kind of worldbuilding and references and allusions in Unsong, but in smaller doses embedded in an actual story. I mean, even Robert Anton Wilson was willing to toss in a fish now and then.
u/thefuckisup [+3] (2 days later)
The ending is unclimatic in the best, most fitting way. The final message makes sense of the final message, as it should.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 days later)
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
u/thefuckisup [+3] (2 days later)
I honestly love all these spiels. Did you make this one? If so, it would appear to me that you have SOME interest in it.
u/captainNematode [+2] (2 days later)
Haha I did! And I think they're fun to write, and occasionally fun to read/listen to (e.g. I was quite amused by this, though it's more deconstruction than anything else), but only in small doses. I think in UNSONG it just came to be too much.
u/thefuckisup [+5] (2 days later)
I just now realized that it might be because Aaron AND Uriel are inhabiting the same body and narrating everything.
u/ViolaNguyen [+1] (2 months later)
The chapters were so short. I can't imagine being patient enough to read them as they were initially posted. I just waited and read the whole thing after it was done.
I thought it was worth it.
u/ThatDarnSJDoubleW [+11] (16 hours later)
So when are the Worm crossovers coming out?
u/Fredlage [+17] (an hour later)
Well, now that it's over, my opinion on the story as whole:
It was a very fun and clever story, the last time I'd cracked up so much was while reading The Seventh Horcrux and that was explicitly a crackfic. If someone had told my I'd like a story with such an abundance of puns I wouldn't have believed them.
The most impressive part were the incredibly convoluted coincidences Scott managed to bring up. I can hardly imagine how much research that took.
The various ideas in the story were very cool, from the brute forcing of magic words, the mechanics of placebomancy, and the drugs effects on reality. The angels were really interesting too.
I also quite enjoyed Sohu and Uriel's story. Ana's and the Comet King's were good too.
At this point however, we get to my criticism. One storyline I thought was mostly pointless was that of Boojum. I mean, sure, it ended up being important that Mark got Malia's blood, but that whole thread feels like it could have been replaced by something simpler without much being lost. I liked Malia's story and I wish we could have seen more of her, but the Boojum crowd mostly seemed to be there to react to Dylan's antics.
And finally, another weak point was Aaron. I don't know if it was intentional, but mostly his role in the story is to be there while important things happen, being done by other people. He had a couple of moments of brilliance, like when he escaped from Unsong or when he used Aramaic against the Drug Lord, but mostly he was just there, moving from one place to another while somebody else did the stuff that actually mattered.
On the whole, I quite liked it and I thank Scott for writing it.
u/ketura [+22] Organizer (3 hours later)
I'm torn on BOOJUM; I mostly agree that that particular plot thread was the weakest, but holy shit that first chapter. It's still among my favorite moments, him thwarting the ritual.
u/aeschenkarnos [+11] (11 hours later)
And this speech.
“Media outlets,” said Dylan “are supposed to tell you the state of the world. But they can only do so much. Yes, the newspapers can tell you that the health system is failing, that there aren’t enough scrolls with the Coagulant Name for everybody who needs them. They can give you all sorts of statistics, they can show you pictures of the corpses. All nice and well. But somehow, people just don’t seem to get the message. Something has been lost. The widow wailing because her husband bled to death after a car accident, she’s got something that the guy sitting in an armchair reading the paper hasn’t. The widow understands what a shortage of the Coagulant Name means, understands what it means when the guy in the suit says that we can’t lower the price or else it would ‘hurt innovation’. The guy in his armchair has been told, but he hasn’t understood. A failure of communication, you see? Everywhere people suffer, and the media tells people, but they don’t get it.
“I have always thought we can do better. That’s what we do here at BOOJUM Media, Ltd. You can talk about elephants all day long, but at some point if you want someone to understand you’ve got to take them to the zoo and throw them in the elephant cage. The only way to make people understand what it’s like to live in fear is to make them live in fear. The only way to make people understand what it’s like to suffer is to make them suffer. You can tell a Senator a thousand times that people are dying out there, but it’s not until the Senator’s colleague gets a letter-bomb that it sinks in. We’re not just a media outlet. We’re a boutique media oulet. We cater to the rich and famous, the elite. We give them a better class of service, the premium deal. The middle-class get to read about other people’s suffering in the newspapers. But the rich? They deserve better! They deserve to experience a little piece of it, to have all the conflicts of the world packaged neatly in brown paper and brought to them in their own living room. It’s the most elite media service in the world, and we do it all for free, all for the warm glow of knowing that we made a difference.”
I can morally disagree, but I can't rationally disagree. It just comes down to an emotional distaste for violence.
u/MugaSofer [+14] (16 hours later)
I can rationally disagree: this is stupid and makes no sense (except as a self-aggrandizing, largely irrelevant speech by an anarchist, which is what it is.)
Blowing up politicians does not, empirically, do any good.
u/Frommerman [+4] (a day later)
Eh, I wouldn't be too sad if a bunch of current politicians blew up.
My preferred method would be giant meteor applied at great velocity. This would accomplish two things: First, it would wipe out the entire political establishment, allowing us to start fresh. Second, it would convince whoever wound up in the replacement government that it would be a really good idea to throw silly amounts of money at NASA.
u/DaystarEld [+8] Pokémon Professor (4 hours later)
Agreed, practically every BOOJUM chapter was brilliant and hilarious, to me. I'll have to do a reread sometime to be sure, but right now those chapters might actually be the funnest of the story when all is said and done. Maybe tied with the Sohu+Uriel ones.
u/alexanderwales [+15] Time flies like an arrow (6 hours later)
My problem with the series as a whole is that it's not always more than the sum of its parts. I felt that way about BOOJUM in particular; I liked the chapters, but they felt like they were a separate story that had been welded onto this one. (Many of the chapters are adapted into Unsong from previous things that Scott has written, so perhaps that's literally the case.)
u/Ninmesara [+12] (11 hours later)
In general Unsong might suffer from trying to fit in as much plot/characters as possible. Scott has said somewhere that it's basically a collection of all the ideas he had for a story.
u/None [+9] (10 hours later)
Yeah, I feel like the first few chapters were an urban fantasy style thing where kabbalah is real, but most other things remain the same, but by the end we were in a full on fantasy universe with a great cosmic conflict. Like we got the first half of one book and the second half of another.
Feels like Scott lost interst in Aaron's story so put more attention into the cometking/sohu/angels side, which was originally part of teh worldbuilding
u/waylandertheslayer [+2] (4 hours later)
I don't know if it was intentional, but mostly his role in the story is to be there while important things happen, being done by other people.
I think Scott wrote something about the kabbalistic implications of Aaron's name somewhere, specifically 'Smith-Teller' and how it could be a reference to several different things, including that he's supposed to be a narrator rather than an actor. He also compared Teller with Singer and made a bunch of other inferences (it might have been on his tumblr?)
u/mrthbrd [+1] (a day later)
Some meditations on his name are included in the actual chapters of Unsong. And Singer is referenced too.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+8] (7 hours later)
I just found this story recently, and while the ride was entertaining, I found myself very unsatisfied with God's answer to Job in chapter 71.
I have always found "sacrifices for the greater good" to not be acts of good, but rather acts of desperation. People sacrifice for the greater good because as puny mortals, people see or have no better options, and fear that if they do not, the world will fall into ruins and everyone will suffer.
To see the omniscient and omnipotent God of Unsong operating on the same logic is utterly terrifying, significantly more so because it could also be true in reality. And also incredibly disgusting, because Unsong's God explains that he gave Job tremendous suffering, not for reasons like saving the world, but for reasons like making a beautiful Leviathan.
I don't think the garden of worlds metaphor properly describes how horrible this is, so let's try another. Imagine the multiverse is a computer, and each world is a picture. A JPG, BMP, PNG, or whatever. The Unsong God states that the Leviathan is a thing of beauty, so say we have a file Leviathan.JPG, which is a picture of the leviathan with a plain white background, i.e., a world that contains only the leviathan and nothing else. He could make two such worlds, but that's like just copying Leviathan.JPG, so now he has two copies of one picture, not two pictures.
So the Unsong God decides, let's make a new picture, LeviathanAndJob.JPG, which still has the Leviathan in the foreground, but behind it is Job, covered in boils and all other manner of suffering. That's a different picture, so now the Unsong God has two beautiful Leviathans. In essence, the Unsong God created Job and all his suffering to be the foil. The contrast for his picture. And considering all the discussion about minor permutations, the Unsong God probably has a full folder of distinct LeviathanAndStuff.JPGs, each with a different hellscape behind the Leviathan, just so he can have a bunch of beautiful Leviathans on his multiverse computer.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+10] (7 hours later)
And you know what the absolute worst part was? It was that after creating Job's world, and letting it run on for years, he then asks Job if he would like his whole world and all other sentient beings in it to be erased, just so Job wouldn't have boils. As if that would make everything better.
There is a BIG, BIG difference between creating something and then destroying it, versus never creating that thing at all. It's like murdering all your fully grown adult children versus never losing your virginity in the first place. Let's try a different analogy to demonstrate how heinous this is. Imagine a world where the Comet King is unpopular. So when he asked for women to make Cometspawn, no one volunteered.
And so, Comet King decides that, for the greater good, he should just sexually assault a bunch of women. So he does, resulting in lots of traumatized women and beautiful Cometspawn. You know, the greater good (sorta). And at the end of it all, one of the few remaining women who still have their sanity/lives talks to him about why he inflicted such evils upon them, and the Comet King tells her: "Look at my beautiful spawn! Would you rather I kill them all and you as well? Just because you want to selfishly stop your own suffering?"
Because you know, that's totally the same as never assaulting her in the first place (sarcasm).
The Comet King at least has a debatable excuse: Cometspawn are vital for fighting hell. The Unsong God's excuse is "Leviathans are pretty".
u/FeepingCreature [+8] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (7 hours later)
Eh, this really depends on your cosmology.
If you're following something like Tegmarkism (also, ironically, Beyond the Reach of God), then the reality of a world depends purely on the mathematical law that describes it. As such, a God "creating" (computing, evaluating) it doesn't necessarily do anything at all - but it's also possible that there's a Tiplerian Omega point of complete self-observation at the end of the universe, which is necessary for that universe to be "actually real". As such, God could offer Job to never have existed and have that be a meaningful offer because the universe's reality depends on an ultimate point of observation rather than an ongoing act of creation. So there's room here, philosophically, for God's offer to be plausible.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+7] (a day later)
With regard to Tegmarkism, the Unsong God says he plants seeds, and uses his omniscience to see whether they are good. So the seed could be the math and laws of physics, after setting them the Unsong God stops interfering.
However, even if he stops interfering from that point, that is a lot like starting a machine, seeing that it will brutally torture and kill countless people, and refusing to turn it off because it also produces a pretty leviathan.
With regard to Omega points, this is a bit of a gray area, but I still say it's evil. Here's a simpler thought experiment: suppose I have a time machine. I now go and brutally torture a random stranger, then use my time machine to travel back to before the torture session. Thus the torture session is not "actually real" (technically), since it never happened in this timeline and no one but me remembers it. Is this ethical? Would it be ethical if I wiped my own memories too?
If it is ethical, then God would also be ethical in creating millions of hellscapes lasting for millions of years, in which he commits all kinds of horrible evils for sadistic joy, while promising that he will turn back time at the end so whatever unspeakable thing he's doing now isn't "real" evil.
u/thefuckisup [+1] (2 days later)
I don't think you and I have read the same story. The point of the universe isn't to create a pretty leviathan, in fact there is no point at all. (U)God didn't create our universe with any intention of it being good, (U)He created it because he was trying to see if it would even function in the first place. When (U)He saw that, by it's internal consistency alone, the world would eventually be wholly good in accordance to (U)His wishes he let it run, in spite of the fact that it is pretty much a bug in the overall scheme of All Things That Are. The most complicated and wonderful bug that (U)God ever laid eyes on. There's this promise that It will all be worth it. When Job sees what (U)He means, he agrees.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+2] (2 days later)
When Job sees what (U)He means, he agrees.
No, no he did not. I can even quote it from the chapter. When the Unsong God said he let Job get covered in boils and suffering so that he could also have things of beauty that will glorify his holy name, and that Job would just have to shut up put up with it until Job dies and gets sent to heaven, Job said, and I quote:
“That’s not a fucking lot of consolation, God.”
And then you know what happened? The Unsong God basically went full intimidation mode. Full "I HAVE DONE AMAZING THINGS. I KNOW AMAZING THINGS! YOU DON'T!" And then said that utterly atrocious line about how he can erase Job's world just so he wouldn't have boils. And then the Unsong god even showed Job all of the pictures of the people who would get erased if Job continued complaining that he didn't want boils.
After which of course Job agreed. Because not agreeing would send the Unsong God on a murder spree erasing his entire world, and Job actually has the morals to not let such evils happen.
The point of the universe isn't to create a pretty leviathan He created it because he was trying to see if it would even function in the first place.
Technically true, but what the Unsong God did isn't that different: He didn't "create" the universe to create a pretty leviathan, he created it, THEN saw that it would create a pretty leviathan and decided to let it run, even though it would also create plenty of evil.
)He saw that, by it's internal consistency alone, the world would eventually be wholly good in accordance to (U)His wishes he let it run, in spite of the fact that it is pretty much a bug in the overall scheme of All Things That Are.
Quote from Unsong:
I BEHELD ADAM KADMON, THE SEED OF YOUR WORLD, AND SAW THAT IT WAS A GOOD SEED. THAT IT WOULD GROW INTO MORE GOOD THAN EVIL.
In other words, he decided that the universe that would grow from that seed would contain lots of evil, but also lots of good, and so refused to stop the seed from growing. Now, what does the Unsong God consider to be "good" things? He specifically describes the seed as quote:
YOURS WILL GROW INTO A THING OF BEAUTY THAT WILL GLORIFY MY HOLY NAME.
And then goes on to describe a list of "wonders" that the seed has created, including:
AND THE LEVIATHAN WHO RESIDES IN THE SEA.
In other words, the Unsong God considers leviathans to be things of beauty that glorify his holy name, and so willingly grows seeds of suffering if they also create an adequate amount of "wonders" like leviathans and behemoths. In short: he let the universe (with plenty of suffering) grow, because leviathans (and other "wonders") are pretty (things that would glorify his name).
u/thefuckisup [+2] (2 days later)
I give up. If you can't see past the "pretty leviathan" thing I can't help you.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+2] (2 days later)
I'm aware that the Unsong God also mentioned a bunch of other "wonders" and "goodness" like the behemoth and the fox and the bear and the saints. But there's a whole bunch of other Unsong chapters that suggest the Unsong god is obsessed with the Leviathan, to the point where the only way to meet the Unsong god is to chase the Leviathan. That's not a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence (according to Unsong). Hence the Leviathan must be the main "wonder" or "goodness" that the Unsong god cares about, which means it's not wrong to say that he let the universe seed grow because it would create a pretty leviathan.
Which part of this argument do you find incorrect?
u/thefuckisup [+1] (5 days later)
Leviathan may be the GREATEST wonder but it is not the MAIN wonder. God let the universe exist because the NET goodness would eventually upset the good-evil balance. Also, the whole "obsession" with Leviathan JOKES were made by a bunch of guys JOKING AROUND that god liked his big fish. Also, the way to meet god is chasing (U)METATRON, and he is with leviathan. Also, the last chapter explains that Leviathan's Kabalistic meaning is "the world", because it is so grand that it is as great a metaphor to (U)God as the rest of the entire world is. I don't even know why I'm bothering to keep responding to you.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+1] (5 days later)
Leviathan may be the GREATEST wonder but it is not the MAIN wonder.
Erm, aren't those the exact same thing? If I open a theme park, the greatest thrill ride IS the main attraction. How is the GREATEST thing not the MAIN thing?
Also, the whole "obsession" with Leviathan JOKES were made by a bunch of guys JOKING AROUND that god liked his big fish.
That is not a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence, as shown by your next statement.
Also, the last chapter explains that Leviathan's Kabalistic meaning is "the world", because it is so grand that it is as great a metaphor to (U)God as the rest of the entire world is.
This statement argues for what I've been saying better than anything I've said so far. The Leviathan is the world. It is the grandest thing, the thing that glorifies the Unsong God's name. The Unsong God likes the leviathan so much that he even stations Metatron, his avatar/speaker, with the leviathan. Not the fox. Not the bear. Not the angels or the saints. You sure as heck won't find Metatron by chasing the pope or the behemoth or the angel cloud fortresses or any other symbol of goodness. Only the Leviathan. You have literally just stated the best argument for why the Leviathan is the main wonder.
And even if you still don't consider it as the main wonder, surely you can admit that the leviathan contributes a significant amount to the NET goodness of the world according to the Unsong God? If so, the leviathan increases the amount of suffering that god is willing to have in exchange. Therefore, a significant fraction of extra evil in the Unsong world is allowed for the existence of the pretty leviathan. I don't understand why you find any part of this incorrect, and actually encourage you to keep responding so you can teach me why.
u/thefuckisup [+3] (14 days later)
(U)God doesn't let the world the world exist with all it's evil because 8there's a pretty Leviathan*, but because the world will eventually become good by it's own internal logic. Leviathan is indeed the greates attraction, the greatest thing in existence, the absolute symbol of (U)God's power, but it wouldn't be enough reason for an entirely evil world to exist. The main attraction is the world in it's entirety. Do you go to a theme park for a single ride in the most insane attraction that ever existed? Drive for hours and spend tens, or meybe even hundreds of dollars for a single ride in the greatest attraction? well I don't. If you believe anyone would, if you believe anyone would go to a park that only has that, in spite of all the surrounding shittyness, then that's your issue.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+1] (15 days later)
Thanks for responding, I think I understand your argument a bit better now. You're saying either one of two things:
(1) The Leviathan is great, but the world is better, so the leviathan is only a small part of the happiness.
(2) The Leviathan is great, but the world is infinitely better thanks to infinite love, so the leviathan is nothing.
If you mean (1), my objection still stands. The Unsong God is like a customer going to a theme park, he's willing to pay more to enter a theme park with its greatest attraction than an identical theme park without its greatest attraction. Except in this case, he's paying with evil and giving humans suffering. The fact that he's willing to allow more suffering because the leviathan exists is what I've been objecting to this whole time.
If you mean (2), then his answers to Job become plain weird. Why mention the Leviathan at all if it is overshadowed by infinite good? Why is there so much focus on the Leviathan even though its supposed to only contribute an infinitesimally small fraction of good to the world? While "infinite love" and "transcendent joy" just get mere mentions, The Unsong God expounds plenty on how utterly amazing the Leviathan is and chooses to emphasize it's destruction to Job when Job complains.
Don't you see it? Rather than threatening to erase heaven or whatever is giving out infinite love, the Unsong God instead threatens to erase the Leviathan if Job doesn't shut up and suffer quietly. Why would the Unsong God do that if the Leviathan is just an insignificant thing?
P.S. If the greatest attraction is great enough, I would totally go to a theme park just for that one attraction.
u/thefuckisup [+1] (16 days later)
I am glad you have taken the time to properly try to see my point of view. I will strive to respond in kind: A'IGHT U PIECE OF SH- Just kidding. Now, What you said is that it either doesn't make sense or is just plain wrong for (U)God to let the world exist at all if there is evil in it, to the point that it upsets the Good-Evil balance. Is that correct? Now, my point is most aptly described by option (1), but the other holds some weight for me as well: The Leviathan is great. Fine. That's a well established point throughout the story. However, towards the end we are posed the statement: (U)God let's the world exist because eventually Good will upset Evil in the world by itself. Now, we know that the Leviathan exists in the world, and it is Great™, does that mean that the Leviathan is part of the Good that will upset the GEB? Abso-Fucking-Lutely. But it is not enough. If there were not enough other wonders in the world brought about by humans and nature to upset the evil that exists by the very existence of space and time (remember that? that was a thing) then (U)God would have just destroyed the seed and tred again with some other universe. Further, I don't think we can clearly say what is the most important thing in the (U)World, because so many had to happen exactly how they did to create, well, Albion(est Uriel's puns were gretaest part in that epilogue). In that perspective it does become a little jarring to see the Leviathan being put so much emphasis on, but I don't think it undermines the point I was trying to make that (U)God didn't let the world exist because of a "pretty Leviathan"(I feel a lot less enmity towards you right now, so using "pretty Leviathan" sounds pretty bad, actually), but because the park would eventually develop into one that not only has some great attractions, but is also very clean and organized and everyone loves.
u/thefuckisup [+1] (14 days later)
sigh
u/Darkenetor [+8] (7 hours later)
If anyone else was wondering, the whole thing ended with a wordcount of ~233k, including quotes at the start and ending notes of each chapter.
u/waylandertheslayer [+12] (21 minutes later)
I'll be completely honest, I feel like the epilogue comes completely out of left field in a lot of ways and lacks the necessary setup to work properly. I can see how it tries to resolve a lot of the remaining loose ends, but it doesn't really work out that well because it's both too short and not properly supported by the previous chapters.
u/embrodski [+16] (51 minutes later)
I thought it was beautiful. Honestly I thought the ending at the end of Ch 72 was perfect, but the epilogue added a nice extra touch of detail to it. I'm not sure what wasn't properly supported though? The only new idea that's introduced is the nature of Thamiel's withered head, everything else was set up in a previous chapter or a natural extension of the novel's themes.
u/DaystarEld [+7] Pokémon Professor (4 hours later)
Besides the head thing, the idea that the kabbalistic marriage works that way wasn't foreshadowed at all, I don't think? It's a handy way of avoiding any of the dead characters we bonded with from "really dying," even for a little while, but there's no reason given as to why Aaron only noticed the other minds (or why they only spoke up) once everything was over and done with. Did it have something to do with the Comet King's actions in Hell "freeing" whoever went there? If that's the case, why were Sohu and Uriel there, even if we accept that Ana and Erica belonged there?
u/embrodski [+12] (5 hours later)
I'm probably getting leakage from reading the comments, during which there was much speculation of the kaballistic marriage chaining, but the ability for the dead to live on in the heads of others was demonstrated by Uriel being in Sohu's head. It's only one chapter previous, but it was some ground work.
u/DaystarEld [+5] Pokémon Professor (5 hours later)
Uriel's an archangel, so I kind of assumed the rules were different for them :)
u/Iconochasm [+9] (15 hours later)
HE IS NOT A VERY GOOD ARCHANGEL.
u/Frommerman [+11] (a day later)
I DISAGREE. URIEL IS CLEARLY THE BEST ARCHANGEL.
FOR ONE, MOST OF THE OTHERS ARE DEAD OR SOMEHOW USELESS. SECOND, URIEL MANAGED TO HOLD OFF THAMIEL FOR AROUND SIX THOUSAND YEARS, WHICH IS BETTER THAN ALL THE OTHER ARCHANGELS COMBINED. THIRD, HE WAS THE ONLY ARCHANGEL WILLING TO TRY EXPLAINING THINGS TO HUMANS. FOURTH, HE HAS LEARNED ABOUT KNOCK-KNOCK JOKES.
u/thefuckisup [+3] (2 days later)
GOOD ARCANGEL BEST FRIEND
u/Takashoru [+11] (5 hours later)
It was completely foreshadowed. Ana only knew about Malia's blood in Mark's locket because she had Erica and Dylan in her head. There were a couple lines devoted specifically to the feeling she got thinking about them that implied they were dead.
It had already been established that thoughts could be passed unconsciously with Sohu and the Vital Name.
It was all but confirmed, finally, when Uriel tells Sohu about how he made SKABMOM, and what it did. He specified that it would work even after death, even. (Edit: and then we saw it in practice with Uriel and Sohu, of course.)
While this was somewhat of a step beyond what had been shown previously, I think it was perfectly clear. Many other readers in the comments (though I will admit that they are the sharpest of all of us) also came to these same conclusions.
u/DaystarEld [+6] Pokémon Professor (7 hours later)
It was completely foreshadowed. Ana only knew about Malia's blood in Mark's locket because she had Erica and Dylan in her head. There were a couple lines devoted specifically to the feeling she got thinking about them that implied they were dead.
Right, but I took that as basically this:
It had already been established that thoughts could be passed unconsciously with Sohu and the Vital Name.
Like, there's a difference between "we're bonded now and so my soul has residence in your head after I die" and "We're bonded now so we can talk from far distances, even from the afterlife." It really should have come up when we were with Ana, after Erica died: it was intentionally vague as to how she knew what she knew, and it irks me a little that Erica didn't just go "Oh, hey, I guess I'm in your head now, that's weird huh?"
u/Takashoru [+1] (7 hours later)
Yeah, I'm a little unclear on that myself.
u/gwern [+5] (37 minutes later)
What would be appropriate support?
u/waylandertheslayer [+20] (53 minutes later)
I'm not as good a writer as Scott, so I'm sure he could do a better job given enough time & space to work with, but I'd have enjoyed this more if there were some setup about who can speak the Shem HaMephorash & why, what exactly it means to 'fix hell', why all the people in Aaron's head don't show up earlier, and so on. It all feels like there's a few important pieces of supporting worldbuilding that are missing.
The reactions of everyone to merging into a single entity are also... lacking, to say the least. I find it hard to believe Dylan, for example, wouldn't try to either take charge, kick up a huge fuss, or otherwise manipulate or exert control on things. There's also much less shock and outright horror at impending nonexistence from pretty much everyone (except maybe Uriel).
Like, I don't want to bash on the epilogue that much. It's not outright bad, but it's not at the same level as the rest of UNSONG.
u/thefuckisup [+1] (2 days later)
I think this take on the "mind merge" trope is very refreshing. Of course Dylan didn't try to take charge, because he was. Of course none of them were afraid of not existing, because they wouldn't.
u/eltegid [+4] (30 minutes later)
I like it pretty much, although it does feel a bit rushed
u/waylandertheslayer [+9] (37 minutes later)
I like the ideas in it, but I don't really think they were presented well. It's the sort of thing that would hopefully be fixed in editing, if Scott does actually get a publisher for it.
u/ShannonAlther [+6] (3 hours later)
I wrote a review of Unsong while I was reading it. After a few more days of polish I'll link it. Because, you know, we need more opinions in the room.
u/josephwdye [+4] I love you (6 hours later)
Is there or will there be a epub? Asking for a friend.
u/Takashoru [+4] (7 hours later)
Unofficially, if people make one. Scott is looking into publishing, so he won't be distributing one personally.
u/Areign [+1] (2 days later)
There's a piece of software that does it for you, on phone though. It's in my comments somewhere I think.
u/Areign [+1] (6 days later)
https://www.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/3fgjsz/convert_web_novels_to_epubpdf/
u/MaddoScientisto [+3] (9 hours later)
It was a hell of a ride And I enjoyed every single second of it
u/himself_v [+3] (14 hours later)
Sigh... Them all living in his head is not really a happy end to me. Especially if they all eventually lose their selves and become one. But whatever. They should just go ask Galadriel for some golems.
u/thefuckisup [+1] (2 days later)
They don't "lose" their selves, they become one that is greater than the sum of their parts. Ever saw the first GitS movie? pretty much that but on a... "greater(?)" scale.
u/neonparadise [+3] (23 hours later)
So was thamiel evil for the greater good or something? What happened to him at the end? Is he dead?
u/thefuckisup [+2] (2 days later)
Thamiel was the vast joke that no one would have believed was real given enough information. He wasn't necessary, per se, he was more like the evil that would eventually inspire good into being, by virtue of simply following his course. He put on the act of evil being par for the course of the world(am i using the idiom right?) while knowing that it was not, that it was an illusion mantained by people that didn't know better. He played the devil because it was what he would do if he wasn't self aware of it. Because he is self aware, he does it anyway, because he knows this is what he "needs" to do.
u/thefuckisup [+1] (2 days later)
I was thinking about looping thought processes being understood linearly so my comment got a bit wibbly wobbly fibbly knobbly towards the end sorry.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+3] (a day later)
Actually, after reading the epilogue again, I'm kinda confused by what happened. It felt like the epilogue chapter just had the words "Happy End" on it without any specific information, because they simply spoke the world-remaking word.
How exactly does that solve the problem of evil specifically? Thamiel may have been faking evil, but I doubt the rest of the denizens of hell were. What happens to them? Just erased and put out of their misery? Freed from hell only to have to live with their traumas and horrible suspicions that this is just another "hope trap" by the torture experts of hell?
And what of that little boy who came up with countless methods of perverse and horrific torture methods to use on his mother, and actually used them? Even if he's freed from hell, doesn't he still have to live with the memory and guilt of it? How would he interact with other people now that they all fear and revile him for his evils? How would he interact with the mother he tortured for millenniums? What specifically happened in the end to give him salvation?
u/gwern [+3] (a day later)
The denizens of hell get to live in a hell transformed to heaven. Since death has metaphysical importance and hell is not a place on the normal plane of existence, they presumably stay there but aren't erased. The joy of living there eventually outweighs their tortures, and no one is tortured in the future, so the universe will become net good and justify its existence as part of the net-good multiverse. They may be suspicious initially but the Broadcast establishes that the false-hope always is yanked away quickly - the demons don't need to stretch it out to be convincing because the damned are so desperate and are suckers. If anything, that implies that they will immediately believe in the Comet King's changes (because they're suckers, but this time they're right). They may have memories and regrets, but they can forgive each other because they know each of them has or would have done things just as bad; also, transcendent joy and infinite love.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+2] (a day later)
The joy of living there eventually outweighs their tortures,
also, transcendent joy and infinite love.
I'm highly skeptical of these, but fine, let's accept these assumptions.
They may have memories and regrets, but they can forgive each other because they know each of them has or would have done things just as bad;
Actually, being in hell is precisely what would show that this is false. Everyone is being tortured, but Thamiel claims that some of them come up with plans so horrifying that even the demons are repulsed. Which seems pretty plausible, since different people have different erm... creativity? (euphemism)
So while most people may resort to murdering one another, some will go to the most cruel and unspeakable lengths when ordered, and others still would come up with far, far worse methods than suggested. And so the rest would forever know, that these are the people who would commit evils so vile that no one else ever would.
u/gwern [+2] (a day later)
I'm highly skeptical of these, but fine, let's accept these assumptions.
Why would you be skeptical? An entire chapter is set in SF with transcendent joy and infinite love, and the outweighing follows directly from the theodicy.
So while most people may resort to murdering one another, some will go to the most cruel and unspeakable lengths when ordered, and others still would come up with far, far worse methods than suggested. And so the rest would forever know, that these are the people who would commit evils so vile that no one else ever would.
And some people are more athletic and others are smarter and whatnot. Why would being a little more creative matter at all compared to infinite love and transcendent joy?
(Seriously, of all the criticisms of Unsong so far...)
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+3] (a day later)
Why would you be skeptical? An entire chapter is set in SF with transcendent joy and infinite love, and the outweighing follows directly from the theodicy.
An entire chapter in SF showing people being brainwashed into professing infinite love and transcendent wisdom by LSD, and the rest of the world being so terrified that they have built a blockade around SF, and Metatron himself having to come running to save Erica from the infinite love of LSD? And of Neil Armstrong tricking unwilling people into having his "infinite love" in a way that's eerily similar to how the Ziggurat-maniac drug lord formed his Peyote slaves? Yes, that is exactly why I'm skeptical.
And some people are more athletic and others are smarter and whatnot. Why would being a little more creative matter at all
It was a euphemism for unspeakable amounts of evil orders of magnitude more than the average person. It's not a "little" more. We're talking about things so horrible that they weren't shown in the torture broadcast, because even the demons were repulsed. Things so utterly unforgivable, that you gotta be like pumped full of LSD to even consi- Oh.
Well I suppose if the whole world was so high that they don't care about anything, anything is forgivable.
(Seriously, of all the criticisms of Unsong so far...)
My criticism here is that these issues were never addressed. Apart from Thamiel going "PUNK'D! I WAS GOOD THIS WHOLE TIME!", we got pretty much no information about what happened to the people in hell.
Hell was basically the main point of everything in the story: the moment hell was discovered, all the utilitarians dropped everything to save people in hell. Starving people in africa? Dying people in hospitals? Screw them, UNSONG it up to fight hell! Yet in the end we aren't told anything about what happened to the people in hell, other than the Comet King saying the explicit name, and even that wasn't explicitly stated, just Aaron's best guess of what would happen.
u/satanistgoblin [+4] (an hour later)
They should exorcise Dylan before remaking the world, he's nuts and an asshole.
u/embrodski [+9] (5 hours later)
There's 10 entities at the end, corresponding to the 10 sephirot. (Aaron, plus his seven voices, plus the two heads of Thamiel). I dunno which sephirot Dylan corresponds to, but I'm sure exorcising any one of them would be bad. :)
u/Areign [+1] (2 days later)
But thamiel isn't in his head, is he?
u/CeruleanTresses [+8] (an hour later)
He sucks, but I think they might need his placebomancy. It's part of understanding the structure of the universe enough to reshape it.
u/thefuckisup [+2] (2 days later)
He's an essential part of Albion, and all of his flaws will(presumably or at least mostly) be fixed by the fact that there are six other moral consciences to serve as safeguards and make the final conscience capable of using The (U)Name™.
u/narfanator [+2] (a day later)
I just realized you can make a Utility Monster for any "goodness" function of God, and have a Universe that is 49.9...% minimizing the goodness function, and the rest of the time maximizing it, and that universe will exist...
A simple example would be that 11/24 hours you spend in Hell, and 13/24 hours you spend in Heaven.
This is a universe that exists in UNSONG.
u/eltegid [+4] (a day later)
"A simple example would be that 11/24 hours you spend in Hell, and 13/24 hours you spend in Heaven" That is not true: the proportion is whatever it needs to be to be juust acceptable. For instance, it may be that you need 20 hours of Heaven to outweigh 4 hours of Hell.
And actually, it may be that any 'just right' equilibrium is just not acceptable: in the universe we are seeing, there has been a finite time in which there was a Hell, and there is (presumably) an infinite time into the future in which the universe will be unquestionably good-optimized. And this is one of the worst universes possible. So maybe the utility function is such that the only 'net good' acceptable is an infinite good of a higher order than whatever evil (infinite or finite) you have.
u/narfanator [+2] (2 days later)
Ohh, that's (higher order infinite) pretty good. Otherwise it's too easy to game the system.
u/GaBeRockKing [+1] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (2 days later)
Ohh, that's (higher order infinite) pretty good. Otherwise it's too easy to game the system.
Yeah, transfinities are pretty fucking weird. |p(S)|>|S| for all sets S and all that jazz, so you can have an infinite amount of infinities, and an infinitely amount of infinite amounts of infinities, and so on and so on.
u/Endovior [+1] (3 days later)
The thought that I immediately have in response to that is "Better is one day in Your courts than thousands elsewhere."
This is not an encouraging sentiment, as it echoes the idea of the sinner, tormented in Hell for years, then told that it was all a mistake, and brought up to Heaven... and just when the traumatized victim is starting to believe it's really over, the floor drops out from under them and they're back in Hell.
You could, of course, come up with some numerical weighting of the 'goodness' function that suggests this is acceptable. Such math doesn't stop it from being horrible, though.
u/None [+2] (4 days later)
So I think a fairly obvious takeaway is that Thamiel didn't actually enjoy being evil, he was just placed there to do it by God. His role as God's left hand is to be the root of all Evil; God creates Good which is perfection, and then places Thamiel in all these Universes so that he can act to create Evil. He doesn't enjoy doing it, but he has to.
“So many centuries,” it pled. “So much misery, so many tears, so many years of suffering. You couldn’t imagine it, nobody could imagine it, but I did what God wanted, I did my duty, but you have to tell me, please, at the end of everything, did I do good?”
Anyone else think this parallels The Comet King really well? Having to become evil despite your own nature, putting on a disguise (Thamiel not showing his true self, TCK becoming TOK), having sex with Robin West, and being killed by your own weapon in the end so the world can be changed with the haMephorash.
u/feha92 [+1] (11 days later)
Picked this up a few days ago, but while it started pretty good and I really enjoyed the humor and interactions between the two mc's, I can't help but feel 24 chapters in that it has gotten really annoying (though the humor mostly remains).
What annoys me the most is the incessant perspective changes breaking the characters narratives at inopportune, cliffhanger-ish, moments.
Worse yet is that it is jumping wildly between not only who, but also when, without any clear indicators aside from a number at start of chapter for the year ...which I can't remember who is when anyway. The who is what is needed, though it doesn't help that sometimes there are flashbacks which aren't too apparent until a bit into it (slightly related, author loves to skirt around who certain named characters are such as com
iket king, artificially forcing them to feel "mysterious" and slowly revealing through incessant flashbacks).Some chapters even lack an indication of who it is until a name is dropped maybe halfway in, although this is not always the mc's name (and sometimes this was the case for entirely new characters not introduced so far), and there was a chapter just recently which failed to make it apparent who were speaking until the very end (thamiel addressing the un).
Aside from the incessant perspective switches, there are far too many references that seem to require the reader to have deep knowledge of judaism and related theism, or even related languages, while lacking proper author notes for making sense of it. Worse is when those parts are clearly important to both plot and the humor (which is so good I managed to reach 24 chapters before giving up), in particular I remember a chapter which ended in some non-english phrase that from context I could only assume to be the entire punchline to the chapter culminating in a joke. After digging through comment-field it might possibly have been a whale-joke, although I am not entirely certain as even there it wasn't mentioned in any greater depth.
This lack of understanding of some references is only made worse by the lack of author notes (and this time I include comment-field unlike last time I mentioned such notes). It is to the extent I saw a reader ask about author notes, whose comment received the answer (from author) that it would be Bad Practice for the author to make the references more accessible for readers foreign to the languages used.
Admittedly, I do agree it might be so for symbolic things such as characters names, but I can't for those references literally spelled out to the readers, provided they know hebrew or have knowledge in judaism beyond what was touched upon in social studies grades 1-9 (which honestly is not a lot). Yes, technically its all symbolism in this novel, but you can probably infer my meaning if I add that symbolism for names tie differently to the plot, than when a character actually says something where its obvious all characters in the story understands and only reader is left out.
But I obviously can't obviously complain about the bad parts, nor will I. As I mentioned before, the humor is great and reminds me a bit of terry pratchett (especially uriels all-caps). The amount of symbolism author manages to get into the story is astounding even when just considering the stuff I do get, at least if I do some concessions for unknown phrases such as kabbalist or torah and other terms which one can decode from context with fairly high certainty.
I also must laud author for building up a vivid world with a few characters who hold interesting chemistry/interaction (particularly liked the whale-pun segments with 2 mc's), though the descriptions can get rather long-winded and tedious (like when san fran was compared to jerusalem).
And, the absolute best part, fittingly saved for last, are the two repeated catchphrases of how The todium is all kinds of crazy (I def. botched the spelling on that one), and how Nothing is ever a coincidence.
EDIT: almost forgot, I felt like author were often trying to make jokes related to american geography. I did not get those at all unless context were obvious (like when talking about jerusalems garbage dump and comparing to what I am assuming is some suburb in america). This is one of the things I mentioned could really have used some author-notes, particularly as context sometimes implied something was a fictional area with symbolic or humoristic importance instead, but I just couldn't be sure.