The hardest I've laughed in the TC series *spoilers*
Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2014 8:20 am
So...
I'm almost at the end of AATE right now. First read-through of the Final Chronicles.
And I busted out laughing at one part and I want to see if anybody else has found this part as ridiculously absurd as I did.
So Thomas Covenant has just killed Joan. Good times. And the Harrow's horse is gone. Two Masters/Haruchai are with him with their two Ranyhyn. A tsunami is coming, and they've gotta book it, pronto. He refuses to break his promise to never ride a Ranyhyn, and here I quote:
"The Humbled did not object or argue. They did not waste time. Quickly they mounted their Ranyhyn. Then they leaned down to Covenant, one on each side of him, grasped him by his arms near his shoulders, and lifted him into the air between them."
Okay. I get it, he, like, rrrreallllllly respects the Ranyhyn. Or maybe he just really respects his own word. I get that. But at some point, sacredness is just a construct.
OK, I get that there's an argument to be made that sacredness is never dispensable. Maybe it speaks more to my own glibness than to Thomas Covenant's cartoonish intransigence. But when I read that, I imagined myself as a young kid, holding both of my parents' hands and lifting myself up to swing between them. It just seems impudent. Childish.
I'm losing the immediate visceral reaction I had, lost in the philosophy trying to theoretically justify what SRD wrote here. My immediate laughter was more just "OK, really? Come ON, man, just get out of there and worry about that crap later." I mean, it's not as if he's breaking a promise to anyone but himself, and that was just out of his own self-effacement. Whatever happened to "In accepting the gift, you honor the giver?" He has not honored the Ranyhyn by refusing to ride them, despite what the Ramen might think. He's just displayed a little too much gratuitous humility.
ANYWAY. This ended up being way more philosophical than I intended. All I know is, I read that paragraph and busted out laughing.
I'm almost at the end of AATE right now. First read-through of the Final Chronicles.
And I busted out laughing at one part and I want to see if anybody else has found this part as ridiculously absurd as I did.
So Thomas Covenant has just killed Joan. Good times. And the Harrow's horse is gone. Two Masters/Haruchai are with him with their two Ranyhyn. A tsunami is coming, and they've gotta book it, pronto. He refuses to break his promise to never ride a Ranyhyn, and here I quote:
"The Humbled did not object or argue. They did not waste time. Quickly they mounted their Ranyhyn. Then they leaned down to Covenant, one on each side of him, grasped him by his arms near his shoulders, and lifted him into the air between them."
Okay. I get it, he, like, rrrreallllllly respects the Ranyhyn. Or maybe he just really respects his own word. I get that. But at some point, sacredness is just a construct.
OK, I get that there's an argument to be made that sacredness is never dispensable. Maybe it speaks more to my own glibness than to Thomas Covenant's cartoonish intransigence. But when I read that, I imagined myself as a young kid, holding both of my parents' hands and lifting myself up to swing between them. It just seems impudent. Childish.
I'm losing the immediate visceral reaction I had, lost in the philosophy trying to theoretically justify what SRD wrote here. My immediate laughter was more just "OK, really? Come ON, man, just get out of there and worry about that crap later." I mean, it's not as if he's breaking a promise to anyone but himself, and that was just out of his own self-effacement. Whatever happened to "In accepting the gift, you honor the giver?" He has not honored the Ranyhyn by refusing to ride them, despite what the Ramen might think. He's just displayed a little too much gratuitous humility.
ANYWAY. This ended up being way more philosophical than I intended. All I know is, I read that paragraph and busted out laughing.