#baldanders

Bad news, my puyo puyo addiction came back (fever 2 specifically)

did some more book of the new sun stuff! sorry for being inactive for like 2 (and a half? 3?) years haha. I got too good at pretending to be a grizzled blue collar man-about-town instead of an incredibly autistic hermit with bad media opinions and briefly lost all passion and joi de vivre in my life

is that how you say that

Feel like there is something extra going on with Doctor Talos than is usually discussed. Yes, of course we have the feint that it's the "dimwitted giant" of the pair who is actually the genius in charge, that's a great twist, but the way that gets shown (Baldanders stating it as they part in Claw) is preceeded by Dorcas' wild retort to Severian that Talos seems more like Baldanders energetic child jumping in front of his parent. What a wonderful piece of imagery for what then seems to be sort of a more typical robot slave and master relationship.

But I think Dorcas' take is the better one, and definitely the more fruitful. In Sword of the Lictor there is a parodic reference to Frankenstein (perhaps even more so the films than the book, which doesn't have a castle), which of course is all about a man creating another decidedly inhuman creature in a twisted mirror of the parent-child relationship that still reinforces that dynamic.

Doctor Talos of course seems more like an inverse of Frankenstein's creature - amiable at first, with sinister undertones that come out to the forefront, most notably with Jolenta. But even before that, there is that memorable passage where Severian observes as Talos cuts down the flowers of the field in a mechanistic, life-hating way.

All of which also goes to reflect his as the robot creation of Baldanders. But unlike other kinds of evil genius' robots of fiction, Talos is never presented as the Future for Baldanders vision, which is all about becoming Big. Baldanders is his own future, Talos just his helper. Talos is small, a little aide, prattling on next to Baldanders as he strides across the world.

But whereas Frankenstein fears that his Creature will mate and that "a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror". Baldanders has no such fears, and his Talos seems to hate women and their association with sex, or at least that's the impression Severian gives of his relationship with Jolenta.

In addition, Baldanders is his own future, Talos just his helper - a different kind of rupture of the parent/child dynamic than the one in Frankenstein, where a father births his child and abandons it, and the child comes to kill the father. Talos never rebels like the Creature in Frankenstein does, or at least not as dramatically, but both relationships are decidedly the wrong way for procreation to go. Talos is a servant created to help his master achieve his own immortality, as opposed to more typical notions of a child surpassing his parent and being their legacy in the world (as does happen in Frankenstein, if not by Frankenstein's design). Baldanders, like Frankenstein, does not view his creation as his legacy, but Baldanders has a more unreserved kind of ambition to our favourite vacillating deadbeat Swiss dad.

And yet there is also that slight little detail that when he first came Lake Dieturna, he was that little man himself, so that Severian confuses the description of him for doctor Talos. Baldanders has created himself in miniature in doctor Talos in a way, in that way that seems unavoidable for parents all over the world.

And then at the end of TBOTNS Talos reappears (he's not in Urth AIRC, though Baldanders is) to return the coin to Severian and tells that he still leaves coins out to Baldanders, in what seems a ritual closer to religion, but splitting the difference between a divine sacrifice and some kind of ritual at a parent's grave side. He says he still watches out for him. He describes him with the reverence of a child for his parent - but also that of a worshipper for his god. Or, well, a tinge of something else also passes in, a kind of critically cushioned admiration:

"they say I'm a monster, and so I am. But Baldanders was more monster than I. In some sense he was my father, but he had built himself. It's the law of nature, and of what is higher than nature, that each creature must have a creator. But Baldanders was his own creation; he stood behind himself, and cut himself off from the line linking the rest of us with the Increate. However, I stray from my subject."

Talos is a creation but Baldanders is his own creation, an attempt at divorcing himself from the cycle of creation ultimately resting in God. But Talos still feels himself a part of that, despite Baldanders having created him.

In the Green Room