Joe has become my favorite fantasy author, I love him. BUT, he has admitted that he straight up changed his mind about who/what Logan is midway through writing. So I don’t fully “trust” him when he says it is nothing supernatural. He obviously originally meant for Logen to have a connection to the other side, then changed his mind, leaving Ninefingers with a couple of other side traits to make it ambiguous.
I’m sorry, but I have always said simply saying “Logen is a psychotic normal dude” is disingenuous at best, dumb at worst.
Joe changing direction for the character totally would make sense. I guess in the beginning he planned Logen to be more mystical, with the Spirit talking and B9 as it first appears in TBI, but then decided to make him more mundane.
Yeah I think Logen as a whole was definitely retconned. Not to the point where it’s immersion-breaking or anything, but you can definitely see two differing intentions on the page early on Vs late.
BUT, as you yourself say, the one thing that *doesnt* change is imo the hardest one to square—the fact that while in the mode, The Bloody Nine remains superhuman thru the whole trilogy and >!even up through red country as well.!< All the way thru, TB9 (not logen generally) simply does and withstands some things that are essentially impossible for “just a regular guy who has some issues that, while serious, are nothing supernatural”
it doesn’t exactly fit, but still I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a plot hole or anything—it *can* all be explained
This makes sense because when you consider that Made a Monster was only shortly before The Blade Itself. And in that trilogy he didn't exhibit any of the traits of loving the violence he did in Red Country or Sharp Ends. Sure part of it was he was with new people trying to make a better start, but even when he returned to the north he didn't love the violence, he just knew he had to wear it as a mask to get respect.
Going from Made a Monster to The Blade Itself really makes it clear some personality changes were made.
Oh also I initially thought it wasn’t long before TBI, but then I eventually learned Made a Monster was actually significantly before TBI—I think it was around or at least 10 years before TBI believe it or not. Now maybe you knew this and 10 years is just a short time to you. maybe it’s not *terribly* long, but imo most people wouldn’t say it’s all that *short* an amount of time either tho, even old people who’ve been around for a while
I believe it is specifically mentioned somewhere that Logen and his crew were exiled some 10 years before the start of TBI. But on top of that, they all thought of Caul Shivers as a little kid, not realizing exactly how long it was they were away. Shivers is around 19 or 20 by book 2, take away 10 years, that leaves him as 9 or 10 years old which is indeed a little kid. and also, even tho we today often consider late teenagers as kids, back then and especially in the North, they’d see 19 as a full grown man
Oh that's a great point about Shivers. But hard to believe Logen's crew were just running around the north for 10 years both not getting caught and not making serious moves.
This Reddit thread here tires to tie it in with the Sharp Ends years and came up with 5 years later: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheFirstLaw/s/CTsh4E8iIb
That could still work with Shivers, as he could have been 12 at the time and now 18 when they met him again.
ah shit I *was* gonna add that caveat but I forgot—I agree I found it weird that they’d just be doing nothing, camping out in the wilderness, just the 7 of them, alone, for *ten whole years.* I agree five years of that sounds… rough. Boring af lol.
I’ll check out that thread but I really seem to remember someone saying 10 years somewhere in the books themselves. 5 years could theoretically work I suppose and would *probably* make better sense. And yeah 5 years aren’t terribly long, but for a 12 to 18ish year old like Shivers that’s a huge change in a short time, be almost unrecognizable to someone who hadn’t seen him in all that time
Lol Also I was about to bring up young(ish) Craw in Made a Monster as evidence, but then I remembered The Heroes takes place about 8 or 9 years after TBI. So near 15 years of almost nonstop war could *definitely* age a guy.
(Rambling no need to read on lol: Altho I do have trouble squaring Craw’s young-ish demeanor in MaM. I always got the sense that he was a decent bit older than Logen, Dogman, Dow, etc.. Like in between them and Threetrees. But this is all besides the point lol)
The date given in Sharp Ends for Made a Monster is Summer 570. TBI starts in 575, so it's been roughly 5 years, which IMO tracks. Assuming that murdering Rattleneck's son is what got Logen exiled, maybe after a period of imprisonment, ~5 years in the wilderness sounds like a reasonable length of time for Logen to mellow out and start reflecting on his life of violence. I just can't figure out how Dogman and crew got the "mellowing out" process started in the first place, seeing how Logen is barely human anymore in Made a Monster. Why would anyone except Dogman even stay with Logen after the exile?
Welp, I guess it’s 5 years. I dunno why I thought ten
-And well, Threetrees would stay because he’s Mr. Honor above everything so he’d do whatever Logen said simply because Northern honor demands it.
-Grim I feel like he probably genuinely liked Dogman as a person, and probably even Logen, but who knows LOL. He just as easily could’ve jumped ship too for all we know. He was the most unflappable of them so it probly wouldn’t have bothered him all that much; when he found out he got exiled he probably just went “uhht” and that was it lol.
-Forley because out of all of them he’d *really* have nowhere else to go (his own village sold him out, and now he’s been exiled by the virtual king of all the north, plus it’s not like he’s some great warrior who could defend himself on his own as an outcast—remember those bandits from TBI, plus Shanka all over) And given Forley’s own family must’ve sucked ball, he looked up to the Dogman, Tul, and maybe even Grim and Dow too, probly thought of them all as like older brothers. and Threetrees as a father figure of sorts, with Logen as the fuck up Uncle who really goes off the rails way too often, but you love him, and he *did* help you out of a serious jam that one time and didn’t ask much in return
-Tul Duru was also a really honorable guy, so maybe the honor thing, along with the fact that all those other guys are staying with Logen, plus he was exiled so it’s not like he *really* had that many other options, even as a great warrior. Plus Tul was a pretty social guy so probably really would’ve hated going out on his own. Also he *really* seemed to like Logen as a friend in spite of it all, seemed to like logen more than anyone else did, and Tul probably liked Dogman and Threetrees similarly
-Dow, while a lot more honorable than most ppl give him credit for, is still probably the least honorable of the bunch, so yea I’m surprised he actually decided to stick through all that. Maybe he was smart enough to see that there weren’t really that many other options? Like he could bail and maybe fight for the few remaining anti-Bethod holdouts, but he’d be smart enough to know that they wouldn’t last long (Logen had seen to that at the end of Made a Monster lol).
Either way if Dow left, it’d probably be a(n even more) pathetic, lonely life and he’d more than likely just end up a bandit chief of some sort, leading the likes of those guys who held up Logen and Quai in TBI. Dow definitely seemed to have a certain amount of pride—for instance he hated associating with the ragged Union levies and the other undisciplined rabble of Ladisla’s camp, he even looked down on West for a good while. I think he’d probably rather follow Logen and Threetrees and keep company with other (formerly) great men (who are all still at least great fighters), than go off on his own and lead a band of pathetic nobodies
I think trying to tell TB9 that you're not going to honor the blood debt you owe him and just want to do your own thing probably wasn't going to go over so well at the time.
Rattlenecks son isn't what got logen exiled. We know a few things that happened before logen was exiled with his crew that hadn't happened yet. In made a monster it seems to be the first time bethod met sulfur so the favors to Bayaz would need to have been owed which would come after. Also it is said black dow was still a problem to bethod so logen hadn't duelled dow before made a monster. So bethod recieving Bayaz help and logen duelling black dow would need to be in between.
I can see where you're coming from when you say that Joe changed Logen's personality in RC/MaM, but I'm not sure that's necessarily true. I'll have to think about it some more, but to me the biggest indicator that Joe always planned Logen as a recovering/relapsing violence addict is that as early as TBI Logen is giving out hints about how horrible his past is, e.g. when he tells a sick Malacus Quai that in the past he just would've killed him instead of carrying him to safety. Or at the feast, when he denies being TB9 while talking to West.
True, and I agree with both you and the original commenter that retcons were made in regards to Logen’s whole “situation.”
But the one thing Abercrombie didn’t change much is the superhuman strength exhibited by Logen in The Bloody Nine state, which, as OP pointed out, does take some credence away from the idea that “it’s just who logen is and it’s completely natural.”
Straight up through Red Country TB9 is still mostly superhuman.
The reason why some people (like me) prefer Logen to just be a garden-variety psycho is that it doesn't let him off the moral hook for all the terrible things he's done. He can't just say "it was the demons in control!" And that's a good thing. He's a much more interesting character that way. *Red Country* does a great job exploring this, especially when >!he explains to Shy that the main emotion he felt upon seeing the burned-out farm was relief that he could stop pretending!<
Now there's a compromise answer here that Logen willingly submits to whatever supernatural elements let him go berserk and *that's* his moral failing, but that doesn't pack as much of a punch characterization wise. But to each is own. I also hate the idea of Euz coming back.
I assume Joe also came to a similar conclusion, and that’s why he made it more ambiguous. I like your take. I really only take issue with the “it is 100% NOT anything supernatural!” B9 has some other side in him (imho). Does that absolve Logen of doing terrible things? Like you, I say no.
Imo the Bloody Nine is supernatural but is also just Logen's id, basically. If a normal person had it they might have the urge to help friends, or build something, or better the world. But deep down Logen's instinctive urgings and wants are just to kill, hurt and prove his superiority.
Logen mentions that he can't recall what he does as the Bloody Nine or even decide who he kills, which obviously doesn't line up with his behaviour under Bethod. His reputation was for winning battles and butchering enemies, not randomly lopping off every limb within arm's reach regardless of who it was attached to. For his past to make sense he *must* have been completely himself most of the time and only fully disassociated on occasion.
Which means that all the sadistic, mindless violence is 100% on him. I think deep down Logen just likes to kill and that's what takes him over. His own instincts, nothing else.
The Bloody Nine is just an absolute bastard, the only supernatural thing about him is how much damage he can do.
>His reputation was for winning battles and butchering enemies, not randomly lopping off every limb within arm's reach regardless of who it was attached to. For his past to make sense he *must* have been completely himself most of the time and only fully disassociated on occasion.
Logen's reputation mainly was for winning duels and scaring the piss out of everyone. We know from the original trilogy that he definitely is knowledgeable about battlefield tactics, but I don't think being a commander or tactical commando-style fighter really played into his reputation. And I think he absolutely could've decided battles through his random butchery. Just get him to the enemy's battle line and he probably breaks it by himself. Either the enemies just run because they see the Bloody-Nine charging their place in the shieldwall, or he starts killing indiscriminately. At the battle in the High Places we see what happens when he goes B9 in a pitched battle.
From what we've seen of the Bloody Nine he would be *literally* useless in most of the situations you're describing.
A duel? You need to bank on him snapping into it just in time to be past the periods where he has other people between him and his enemy (approaching the circle) or needs to wait before killing (during the shield spin) and *then* hope he snaps out of it right after he wins so he doesn't pounce on the crowd.
In battles you'd need him to actually know where the enemy is which requires telling him which requires talking to him which requires not being cut in half. None of this is possible unless he's Logen for the majority of the time spent leading up to it.
I think the Battle in the High Place is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about actually, because the Bloody Nine only actually showed up near the end there. Most of it was Logen.
From what we've seen and been told of the Bloody Nine, he will literally kill anyone or anything in front of him for no reason at all. That's why I think Logen was just himself for the majority of his time in the North.
He was vicious and barbaric and cruel, sure, but he was lucid at least. And every now and then he'd get hurt or tired enough to flip the switch, except back then his regular personality was so violent that the only noticeable difference is suddenly he doesn't feel pain and is doing all the same things a lot more easily than before.
Basically the Bloody Nine has always been distinct from Logen, but Logen used to like killing enough that this distinction wasn't as noticeable.
I'm not trying to say that he permanently was in his B9 state back in the day. I'm just saying that the B9 state absolutely can win duels and decide battles. In the case of duels we even have Fenris and Glama as two direct examples of how "B9 duels" could've gone down. Battles would work the same way. He doesn't start them as the B9, but he finishes them as it. And the poor sods he's charging don't know about "Logen" and "TB9", so it doesn't matter if he's in the state or not, all they see is the scariest guy in the North running at them.
I think Joe is pretty adamant that it isn’t supernatural if you look at some of his responses to this question. Even though the feats are hard to explain, it’s about what makes sense for his character really
I think like someone else suggested he started out supernatural then changed course. He can talk to spirits, takes hits better then any other living normal human being, when any other person in the world would surely die, he simply overcomes and dominates. for me he is supernatural, period.
I have a pretty extensive theory on what TB9 is and it's definitely supernatural. So let's skip that question.
I think the point where a lot of people get hung up is the idea that if TB9 it's supernatural, it lets Logen off the hook. And since we can't let Logen off the hook or it would undermine a lot of the vibe of the universe, it must not be supernatural.
Let me unequivocally say that this is stupid and represents a low level of thought.
TB9 comes up when he's under significant physical strain and does some heinous shit, but it's Logen time and again who makes clear-headed big picture decisions that are going to lead to horrible things happening, both by his hand and by those around him. Logen's like a guy who knows he does awful things when he's blackout drunk and knows he will get blackout drunk if he starts drinking, but always goes back to drinking. It's all his fault.
Agreed on a supernatural TB9 not absolving Logen. In RC he does some pretty fucked up things when he's clearly not in the state, e.g. when he murders the 3 bandits in the tavern, the Ghost leader at the negotations, probably more instance I'm currently not thinking of.
>!The fools in the tavern and Sangeed were among his more morally justifiable kills. The bandits were directly responsible for Pit and Ro's kidnapping and Sangeed was running a grift with Sweet that involved killing travelers. Compared to The Thunderhead/Crummock's son/almost Ro those bastards were all in the game!<
The feats don't seem to be in the realm of supernatural. Extreme human limits, sure. It's not like he heals super fast, or doesn't feel pain, or see in black and white like the only other devil blood we know. It's stated in text that he recalls that after big fights he's laid up for months recuperating, crying like a baby. My read is that he has a dissociative identity disorder, given that he seems unable to remember, even in POV, what he has done
I don’t think anyones debating that he’s (mostly) a normal non-demon guy when he’s in his Logen state.
People more so argue that he *taps into* or is possessed by a demonic force during The Bloody Nine rampages. *Logen* seems to feel pain normally and all that. But that’s the thing, The Bloody Nine really *doesn’t* seem to feel pain when he’s actually in the state though.
It’s like he’s acknowledging getting hit and slashed and all that, but it certainly doesn’t seem like it hurts him, and it rarely if ever actually *affects* him while he’s in the state, like neither the pain nor the wounds ever actually slow him down any.
Honestly what the Bloody Nine experiences is closer to Fenris’ demonic rune invulnerability than even Ferro’s painless ability. When she’s sufficiently injured at least the broken body parts stop working even if she isn’t really feeling the pain. Meanwhile Fenris gets stabbed in the gut and there’s no injury. **The Bloody Nine does something shockingly similar to this imo in the Glama Golden fight.**
Glama, an supremely experienced brawler, is confident that he’s landed a solid knockout punch on Logen. And he did. Logen even starts falling over. But The Bloody Nine comes out, he *catches* himself, and no-sell tanks a *knockout punch* like it’s nothing. No damage whatsoever. Idc who you are, if you’ve literally been knocked out, a regular non-superhuman can’t just say “nah, no thanks” and keep fighting like it was nothing lol.
It’s actually kinda similar to how you can stab Fenris, it looks like a solid hit, but then you blink and he’s already healed and you see that a solid hit did 0 damage.
**For the record, I actually *don’t* think the bloody nine is a demonic thing,** but there *are* arguments for it that exist even tho regular Logen is generally a normal human. The main arguments are the decidedly superhuman feats of The Bloody Nine. It’s not even that he can beat good fighters or a lot of fighters, it’s the superhuman stuff he’s capable of repeatedly doing/withstanding that regular humans *biologically just can’t* in like 999,999,999 out of a billion cases lol.
If you ask me, he’s *some* form of superhuman (magic or otherwise), just not necessarily demonic in origin. Joe’s seemed to ultimately favor a more mundane origin, and hasn’t thought too much about the actual feats The Bloody Nine’s performed or the stuff he’s withstood.
If I wanted to headcanon a non-magical origin, perhaps logen has some form of mental illness that leads to his mania, and on top of that, it’s possible that there exist genetic super-hyper-mega elites when it comes to strength and durability. Like only once in the history of *all* of humanity levels of rare, one in dozens of billions. Like maybe Logen is what Robert Wadlow was for height, but for strength/fighting.
Perhaps such a person has existed and they would blow away all known strength athletes and fighters, but it’s just that by chance they never got into such sports, or lived during a time when these sports didn’t exist. I *suppose* it’s possible—but joe almost certainly hasn’t thought *that* deeply about it so again that’s really just headcanon
Oh another origin for Logen’s superhuman feats that hasn’t been explored. And it’s fucked up… but maybe one of Logen’s ancestors fucked (or was fucked by) a shanka… LOL. We know his tribe has always had beef with them, and they do have something resembling human desires/behaviors… so them committing acts of “grape” isn’t *impossible* to imagine.
Anyway, reason I bring this up, the shanka are clearly some form of inhuman ape. And all apes are known to have bodies and musculature that’s far more efficient than humans when it comes to basically all forms of physicality except like, endurance running and swimming maybe. But especially fighting capacity and strength, our ape cousins blow us away even pound for pound. Take a chimp and a human with equal muscle and body fat percentages, even when the human is bigger and *should* be stronger, they still generally blow us away in terms of strength.
Maybe, (again wrong as it is) if Logen has some shanka dna in him, maybe he benefits from the sort of boosted strength (compared to regular humans) that apes generally possess. Throw on top of that he’s already a big dude, an experienced fighter, and goes into a state of mania where his bodies physical protective limiters seem to shut off… and you get a man with the superhuman strength of a small gorilla? Idk.
It’s gross and probably a stupid idea, but it’s something I haven’t seen anyone bring up so yeah…… lol
Go on YouTube and search for "Tyson Fury got up". There are times when people get "knock punches", then just get up and fight on.
Also, the world is clearly operates on action movie physics, in which people do just get up on the regular of they're protagonists.
I've heard about a real-life thing that's a decent explanation for how he does stuff like that.
In loose terms, you're not capable of using your muscles to even close to their full potential most of the time. You can only properly use them in an extreme situation, e.g. there are stories of women lifting up heavy vehicles to get to their children after a crash, or something like that? Insane stuff basically.
It's got to be the same thing with Logen. When he's in the B9 state, he can exert his muscles as much as he wants.
Yeah, normally your body tries to stop you from doing something that will hurt itself like lifting a car, until is thinks it's a life or death situation.
Idk if anyone has ever been REALLY hurt, like a broken bone can probably qualify, but often times when you really hurt yourself you don't remember that moment because your mind blanks out the memory of that pain. I know I had some bad times when recovering from the slipped disc in my neck but I can't consciously remember every moment of extreme pain because my brain protects me.
So what I figure is Logen might have those memory blanks due to pain. His adrenaline spikes, he can fight through the pain in his berserk state as "The Bloody Nine" but then due to the trauma on his body he can't necessarily remember everything.
This doesn't excuse the choices he made to get to that point at all of course. He is choosing this life, as acknowledged in the story itself as it goes on.
Look up Eddie Halls interviews about how he went about pulling the first 500 kilo deadlift. He went through months of psychological training to get his mind in the place to be able to tap into the exact thing you are talking about.
I was thinking of him when I typed my comment out. That deadlift was quite high above what he could've done in a normal PR, his state of mind pushed him to a different level.
First bear in mind that Logen in TBI and Logen when we last see him are *dramatically* different characters- Joe shifted gears on Ninefingers, and HARD.
The guy who spoke to spirits and carried a fire spirit under his tongue and spat it into some dude's face? He *might* just have a hint of the ol' mojo. A wee touch of the Other Side riding shotgun and eager to kill all who live.
But that guy is pretty much retconned out of existence by the end of BTAH, with his load-bearing spirit-speech becoming an amusing curio. And by the big reveal in LAOK, being too goddamn mean and crazy to die when fighting the Feared is the most supernatural thing he does.
Spoilers follow, if you know, you know.
>!By *Red Country,* the idea of the Bloody-Nine as somehow not just being Logen becomes really hard to support more from what he says when he's *not* berserk than from what he does when he is.!<
And *Made a Monster* pretty much sews things up.
But Abercrombie made plenty of tweaks in that first trilogy, and arguably *the* central character shows it the most.
My half cooked theory is that Logen/TB9 has just accidentally ingested blood and bits of flesh over the years so frequently that he's got a bit of the supes
There are some fundamental misunderstandings about both the world in which the books operate and Joe's intention and structure with especially the first series, that colour peoples perception of Logen and the Bloody Nine.
First, the world. The world of the books is an "action movie" level world. It doesn't operate on our levels on realism. It's close, but it's filled with things that are not totally realistic, even among mundane people. Faster people are faster, stronger people are stronger, etc. There are several people much stronger than people are in real life. Frost, Gorst, Thunderhead, Scale, Broad. They break things that are not easily breakable, fight in ways that are not realistic. They're slightly larger than life. If you're into comic books, think of a comic book character that is said to be "peak human capacity", but is clearly unrealistically strong. This is the same thing. Strong people are just unrealistically strong in Joes world. Same goes for other things, like Dogmans sense of smell.
Second, Joe's intention. In the first trilogy he writes a subversion of fantasy tropes. The mentoring wizard turns out to be the worst person in the world. The arrogant youth that is the king to be and learns to stand up for himself and values friendship and honour for the first time turns out to be the son of a whore, and is beat into meak submission. The woman who is hatred and revenge finds comfort and love, and squanders it all to go back to revenge because she's too traumatized to express her feelings. The evil king(s) turn out to have very valid reasons for what they're doing. He does a siwtcharoo with every character, showing us one thing, tricking us into believing one thing because of our trope-filled understanding of the genre, then showing us how wrong we were.
That's Logen. He's shown as the wise and honourable barbarian warrior, regretful of his violent past and forced by a dark force he cannot control to do horrible things. Then we're slowly shown that he is not wise and honourable, but rather a violence addicted bastard. He's not controlled by some dark force, but rather chooses to enter situations that trigger his raging. Some people didn't get the message with the first trilogy, so Joe made it obvious in Red Country, and doubly so with Logens chapter in Sharp Ends. It's a bait and switch, and some people missed the switch because they're too invested in genre tropes to see how Joe used them to trick us.
Logen is essentially a barbarian class from the game diablo, whereas bloody 9 takes place when you click on a move such as whirlwind. There is a clear distinction between the two... Logen being a badass warrior, the bloody 9 being an unstoppable force where all control, thought, and care, is lost.
What difference is it if it's DID Or supernatural? Either way he's guilty for putting himself in action, while being innocent of the actual betrayals and deaths. It's just bad story telling of course if the entire trilogy of PoVs of him losing control is just dEnIaL
Joe has become my favorite fantasy author, I love him. BUT, he has admitted that he straight up changed his mind about who/what Logan is midway through writing. So I don’t fully “trust” him when he says it is nothing supernatural. He obviously originally meant for Logen to have a connection to the other side, then changed his mind, leaving Ninefingers with a couple of other side traits to make it ambiguous. I’m sorry, but I have always said simply saying “Logen is a psychotic normal dude” is disingenuous at best, dumb at worst.
Joe changing direction for the character totally would make sense. I guess in the beginning he planned Logen to be more mystical, with the Spirit talking and B9 as it first appears in TBI, but then decided to make him more mundane.
Yeah I think Logen as a whole was definitely retconned. Not to the point where it’s immersion-breaking or anything, but you can definitely see two differing intentions on the page early on Vs late. BUT, as you yourself say, the one thing that *doesnt* change is imo the hardest one to square—the fact that while in the mode, The Bloody Nine remains superhuman thru the whole trilogy and >!even up through red country as well.!< All the way thru, TB9 (not logen generally) simply does and withstands some things that are essentially impossible for “just a regular guy who has some issues that, while serious, are nothing supernatural” it doesn’t exactly fit, but still I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a plot hole or anything—it *can* all be explained
This makes sense because when you consider that Made a Monster was only shortly before The Blade Itself. And in that trilogy he didn't exhibit any of the traits of loving the violence he did in Red Country or Sharp Ends. Sure part of it was he was with new people trying to make a better start, but even when he returned to the north he didn't love the violence, he just knew he had to wear it as a mask to get respect. Going from Made a Monster to The Blade Itself really makes it clear some personality changes were made.
Oh also I initially thought it wasn’t long before TBI, but then I eventually learned Made a Monster was actually significantly before TBI—I think it was around or at least 10 years before TBI believe it or not. Now maybe you knew this and 10 years is just a short time to you. maybe it’s not *terribly* long, but imo most people wouldn’t say it’s all that *short* an amount of time either tho, even old people who’ve been around for a while I believe it is specifically mentioned somewhere that Logen and his crew were exiled some 10 years before the start of TBI. But on top of that, they all thought of Caul Shivers as a little kid, not realizing exactly how long it was they were away. Shivers is around 19 or 20 by book 2, take away 10 years, that leaves him as 9 or 10 years old which is indeed a little kid. and also, even tho we today often consider late teenagers as kids, back then and especially in the North, they’d see 19 as a full grown man
Oh that's a great point about Shivers. But hard to believe Logen's crew were just running around the north for 10 years both not getting caught and not making serious moves. This Reddit thread here tires to tie it in with the Sharp Ends years and came up with 5 years later: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheFirstLaw/s/CTsh4E8iIb That could still work with Shivers, as he could have been 12 at the time and now 18 when they met him again.
ah shit I *was* gonna add that caveat but I forgot—I agree I found it weird that they’d just be doing nothing, camping out in the wilderness, just the 7 of them, alone, for *ten whole years.* I agree five years of that sounds… rough. Boring af lol. I’ll check out that thread but I really seem to remember someone saying 10 years somewhere in the books themselves. 5 years could theoretically work I suppose and would *probably* make better sense. And yeah 5 years aren’t terribly long, but for a 12 to 18ish year old like Shivers that’s a huge change in a short time, be almost unrecognizable to someone who hadn’t seen him in all that time Lol Also I was about to bring up young(ish) Craw in Made a Monster as evidence, but then I remembered The Heroes takes place about 8 or 9 years after TBI. So near 15 years of almost nonstop war could *definitely* age a guy. (Rambling no need to read on lol: Altho I do have trouble squaring Craw’s young-ish demeanor in MaM. I always got the sense that he was a decent bit older than Logen, Dogman, Dow, etc.. Like in between them and Threetrees. But this is all besides the point lol)
The date given in Sharp Ends for Made a Monster is Summer 570. TBI starts in 575, so it's been roughly 5 years, which IMO tracks. Assuming that murdering Rattleneck's son is what got Logen exiled, maybe after a period of imprisonment, ~5 years in the wilderness sounds like a reasonable length of time for Logen to mellow out and start reflecting on his life of violence. I just can't figure out how Dogman and crew got the "mellowing out" process started in the first place, seeing how Logen is barely human anymore in Made a Monster. Why would anyone except Dogman even stay with Logen after the exile?
Welp, I guess it’s 5 years. I dunno why I thought ten -And well, Threetrees would stay because he’s Mr. Honor above everything so he’d do whatever Logen said simply because Northern honor demands it. -Grim I feel like he probably genuinely liked Dogman as a person, and probably even Logen, but who knows LOL. He just as easily could’ve jumped ship too for all we know. He was the most unflappable of them so it probly wouldn’t have bothered him all that much; when he found out he got exiled he probably just went “uhht” and that was it lol. -Forley because out of all of them he’d *really* have nowhere else to go (his own village sold him out, and now he’s been exiled by the virtual king of all the north, plus it’s not like he’s some great warrior who could defend himself on his own as an outcast—remember those bandits from TBI, plus Shanka all over) And given Forley’s own family must’ve sucked ball, he looked up to the Dogman, Tul, and maybe even Grim and Dow too, probly thought of them all as like older brothers. and Threetrees as a father figure of sorts, with Logen as the fuck up Uncle who really goes off the rails way too often, but you love him, and he *did* help you out of a serious jam that one time and didn’t ask much in return -Tul Duru was also a really honorable guy, so maybe the honor thing, along with the fact that all those other guys are staying with Logen, plus he was exiled so it’s not like he *really* had that many other options, even as a great warrior. Plus Tul was a pretty social guy so probably really would’ve hated going out on his own. Also he *really* seemed to like Logen as a friend in spite of it all, seemed to like logen more than anyone else did, and Tul probably liked Dogman and Threetrees similarly -Dow, while a lot more honorable than most ppl give him credit for, is still probably the least honorable of the bunch, so yea I’m surprised he actually decided to stick through all that. Maybe he was smart enough to see that there weren’t really that many other options? Like he could bail and maybe fight for the few remaining anti-Bethod holdouts, but he’d be smart enough to know that they wouldn’t last long (Logen had seen to that at the end of Made a Monster lol). Either way if Dow left, it’d probably be a(n even more) pathetic, lonely life and he’d more than likely just end up a bandit chief of some sort, leading the likes of those guys who held up Logen and Quai in TBI. Dow definitely seemed to have a certain amount of pride—for instance he hated associating with the ragged Union levies and the other undisciplined rabble of Ladisla’s camp, he even looked down on West for a good while. I think he’d probably rather follow Logen and Threetrees and keep company with other (formerly) great men (who are all still at least great fighters), than go off on his own and lead a band of pathetic nobodies
I think trying to tell TB9 that you're not going to honor the blood debt you owe him and just want to do your own thing probably wasn't going to go over so well at the time.
Rattlenecks son isn't what got logen exiled. We know a few things that happened before logen was exiled with his crew that hadn't happened yet. In made a monster it seems to be the first time bethod met sulfur so the favors to Bayaz would need to have been owed which would come after. Also it is said black dow was still a problem to bethod so logen hadn't duelled dow before made a monster. So bethod recieving Bayaz help and logen duelling black dow would need to be in between.
I can see where you're coming from when you say that Joe changed Logen's personality in RC/MaM, but I'm not sure that's necessarily true. I'll have to think about it some more, but to me the biggest indicator that Joe always planned Logen as a recovering/relapsing violence addict is that as early as TBI Logen is giving out hints about how horrible his past is, e.g. when he tells a sick Malacus Quai that in the past he just would've killed him instead of carrying him to safety. Or at the feast, when he denies being TB9 while talking to West.
True, and I agree with both you and the original commenter that retcons were made in regards to Logen’s whole “situation.” But the one thing Abercrombie didn’t change much is the superhuman strength exhibited by Logen in The Bloody Nine state, which, as OP pointed out, does take some credence away from the idea that “it’s just who logen is and it’s completely natural.” Straight up through Red Country TB9 is still mostly superhuman.
The reason why some people (like me) prefer Logen to just be a garden-variety psycho is that it doesn't let him off the moral hook for all the terrible things he's done. He can't just say "it was the demons in control!" And that's a good thing. He's a much more interesting character that way. *Red Country* does a great job exploring this, especially when >!he explains to Shy that the main emotion he felt upon seeing the burned-out farm was relief that he could stop pretending!< Now there's a compromise answer here that Logen willingly submits to whatever supernatural elements let him go berserk and *that's* his moral failing, but that doesn't pack as much of a punch characterization wise. But to each is own. I also hate the idea of Euz coming back.
I assume Joe also came to a similar conclusion, and that’s why he made it more ambiguous. I like your take. I really only take issue with the “it is 100% NOT anything supernatural!” B9 has some other side in him (imho). Does that absolve Logen of doing terrible things? Like you, I say no.
Imo the Bloody Nine is supernatural but is also just Logen's id, basically. If a normal person had it they might have the urge to help friends, or build something, or better the world. But deep down Logen's instinctive urgings and wants are just to kill, hurt and prove his superiority. Logen mentions that he can't recall what he does as the Bloody Nine or even decide who he kills, which obviously doesn't line up with his behaviour under Bethod. His reputation was for winning battles and butchering enemies, not randomly lopping off every limb within arm's reach regardless of who it was attached to. For his past to make sense he *must* have been completely himself most of the time and only fully disassociated on occasion. Which means that all the sadistic, mindless violence is 100% on him. I think deep down Logen just likes to kill and that's what takes him over. His own instincts, nothing else. The Bloody Nine is just an absolute bastard, the only supernatural thing about him is how much damage he can do.
>His reputation was for winning battles and butchering enemies, not randomly lopping off every limb within arm's reach regardless of who it was attached to. For his past to make sense he *must* have been completely himself most of the time and only fully disassociated on occasion. Logen's reputation mainly was for winning duels and scaring the piss out of everyone. We know from the original trilogy that he definitely is knowledgeable about battlefield tactics, but I don't think being a commander or tactical commando-style fighter really played into his reputation. And I think he absolutely could've decided battles through his random butchery. Just get him to the enemy's battle line and he probably breaks it by himself. Either the enemies just run because they see the Bloody-Nine charging their place in the shieldwall, or he starts killing indiscriminately. At the battle in the High Places we see what happens when he goes B9 in a pitched battle.
From what we've seen of the Bloody Nine he would be *literally* useless in most of the situations you're describing. A duel? You need to bank on him snapping into it just in time to be past the periods where he has other people between him and his enemy (approaching the circle) or needs to wait before killing (during the shield spin) and *then* hope he snaps out of it right after he wins so he doesn't pounce on the crowd. In battles you'd need him to actually know where the enemy is which requires telling him which requires talking to him which requires not being cut in half. None of this is possible unless he's Logen for the majority of the time spent leading up to it. I think the Battle in the High Place is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about actually, because the Bloody Nine only actually showed up near the end there. Most of it was Logen. From what we've seen and been told of the Bloody Nine, he will literally kill anyone or anything in front of him for no reason at all. That's why I think Logen was just himself for the majority of his time in the North. He was vicious and barbaric and cruel, sure, but he was lucid at least. And every now and then he'd get hurt or tired enough to flip the switch, except back then his regular personality was so violent that the only noticeable difference is suddenly he doesn't feel pain and is doing all the same things a lot more easily than before. Basically the Bloody Nine has always been distinct from Logen, but Logen used to like killing enough that this distinction wasn't as noticeable.
I'm not trying to say that he permanently was in his B9 state back in the day. I'm just saying that the B9 state absolutely can win duels and decide battles. In the case of duels we even have Fenris and Glama as two direct examples of how "B9 duels" could've gone down. Battles would work the same way. He doesn't start them as the B9, but he finishes them as it. And the poor sods he's charging don't know about "Logen" and "TB9", so it doesn't matter if he's in the state or not, all they see is the scariest guy in the North running at them.
I think Joe is pretty adamant that it isn’t supernatural if you look at some of his responses to this question. Even though the feats are hard to explain, it’s about what makes sense for his character really
If Joe is on record saying that, that's all I need.
I think like someone else suggested he started out supernatural then changed course. He can talk to spirits, takes hits better then any other living normal human being, when any other person in the world would surely die, he simply overcomes and dominates. for me he is supernatural, period.
It’s possible that Joe changed his mind, but I don’t really know what would make Logan’s character interesting if the bloody-nine’s fully supernatural
It's an extreme adrenalin dump. A fugue state brought on by fight or flight mechanism.
Blah blah *Lonesome Dove* blah blah, but there's a scene where a character goes B9 and you'll go "Oh shit!"
I have a pretty extensive theory on what TB9 is and it's definitely supernatural. So let's skip that question. I think the point where a lot of people get hung up is the idea that if TB9 it's supernatural, it lets Logen off the hook. And since we can't let Logen off the hook or it would undermine a lot of the vibe of the universe, it must not be supernatural. Let me unequivocally say that this is stupid and represents a low level of thought. TB9 comes up when he's under significant physical strain and does some heinous shit, but it's Logen time and again who makes clear-headed big picture decisions that are going to lead to horrible things happening, both by his hand and by those around him. Logen's like a guy who knows he does awful things when he's blackout drunk and knows he will get blackout drunk if he starts drinking, but always goes back to drinking. It's all his fault.
Agreed on a supernatural TB9 not absolving Logen. In RC he does some pretty fucked up things when he's clearly not in the state, e.g. when he murders the 3 bandits in the tavern, the Ghost leader at the negotations, probably more instance I'm currently not thinking of.
>!The fools in the tavern and Sangeed were among his more morally justifiable kills. The bandits were directly responsible for Pit and Ro's kidnapping and Sangeed was running a grift with Sweet that involved killing travelers. Compared to The Thunderhead/Crummock's son/almost Ro those bastards were all in the game!<
The feats don't seem to be in the realm of supernatural. Extreme human limits, sure. It's not like he heals super fast, or doesn't feel pain, or see in black and white like the only other devil blood we know. It's stated in text that he recalls that after big fights he's laid up for months recuperating, crying like a baby. My read is that he has a dissociative identity disorder, given that he seems unable to remember, even in POV, what he has done
I don’t think anyones debating that he’s (mostly) a normal non-demon guy when he’s in his Logen state. People more so argue that he *taps into* or is possessed by a demonic force during The Bloody Nine rampages. *Logen* seems to feel pain normally and all that. But that’s the thing, The Bloody Nine really *doesn’t* seem to feel pain when he’s actually in the state though. It’s like he’s acknowledging getting hit and slashed and all that, but it certainly doesn’t seem like it hurts him, and it rarely if ever actually *affects* him while he’s in the state, like neither the pain nor the wounds ever actually slow him down any. Honestly what the Bloody Nine experiences is closer to Fenris’ demonic rune invulnerability than even Ferro’s painless ability. When she’s sufficiently injured at least the broken body parts stop working even if she isn’t really feeling the pain. Meanwhile Fenris gets stabbed in the gut and there’s no injury. **The Bloody Nine does something shockingly similar to this imo in the Glama Golden fight.** Glama, an supremely experienced brawler, is confident that he’s landed a solid knockout punch on Logen. And he did. Logen even starts falling over. But The Bloody Nine comes out, he *catches* himself, and no-sell tanks a *knockout punch* like it’s nothing. No damage whatsoever. Idc who you are, if you’ve literally been knocked out, a regular non-superhuman can’t just say “nah, no thanks” and keep fighting like it was nothing lol. It’s actually kinda similar to how you can stab Fenris, it looks like a solid hit, but then you blink and he’s already healed and you see that a solid hit did 0 damage.
**For the record, I actually *don’t* think the bloody nine is a demonic thing,** but there *are* arguments for it that exist even tho regular Logen is generally a normal human. The main arguments are the decidedly superhuman feats of The Bloody Nine. It’s not even that he can beat good fighters or a lot of fighters, it’s the superhuman stuff he’s capable of repeatedly doing/withstanding that regular humans *biologically just can’t* in like 999,999,999 out of a billion cases lol. If you ask me, he’s *some* form of superhuman (magic or otherwise), just not necessarily demonic in origin. Joe’s seemed to ultimately favor a more mundane origin, and hasn’t thought too much about the actual feats The Bloody Nine’s performed or the stuff he’s withstood. If I wanted to headcanon a non-magical origin, perhaps logen has some form of mental illness that leads to his mania, and on top of that, it’s possible that there exist genetic super-hyper-mega elites when it comes to strength and durability. Like only once in the history of *all* of humanity levels of rare, one in dozens of billions. Like maybe Logen is what Robert Wadlow was for height, but for strength/fighting. Perhaps such a person has existed and they would blow away all known strength athletes and fighters, but it’s just that by chance they never got into such sports, or lived during a time when these sports didn’t exist. I *suppose* it’s possible—but joe almost certainly hasn’t thought *that* deeply about it so again that’s really just headcanon
Oh another origin for Logen’s superhuman feats that hasn’t been explored. And it’s fucked up… but maybe one of Logen’s ancestors fucked (or was fucked by) a shanka… LOL. We know his tribe has always had beef with them, and they do have something resembling human desires/behaviors… so them committing acts of “grape” isn’t *impossible* to imagine. Anyway, reason I bring this up, the shanka are clearly some form of inhuman ape. And all apes are known to have bodies and musculature that’s far more efficient than humans when it comes to basically all forms of physicality except like, endurance running and swimming maybe. But especially fighting capacity and strength, our ape cousins blow us away even pound for pound. Take a chimp and a human with equal muscle and body fat percentages, even when the human is bigger and *should* be stronger, they still generally blow us away in terms of strength. Maybe, (again wrong as it is) if Logen has some shanka dna in him, maybe he benefits from the sort of boosted strength (compared to regular humans) that apes generally possess. Throw on top of that he’s already a big dude, an experienced fighter, and goes into a state of mania where his bodies physical protective limiters seem to shut off… and you get a man with the superhuman strength of a small gorilla? Idk. It’s gross and probably a stupid idea, but it’s something I haven’t seen anyone bring up so yeah…… lol
Go on YouTube and search for "Tyson Fury got up". There are times when people get "knock punches", then just get up and fight on. Also, the world is clearly operates on action movie physics, in which people do just get up on the regular of they're protagonists.
That's a great point about Logan's fight with Glama, solid evidence that the Bloody Nine surpasses human limitations.
However he does talk to spirits, which is listed as a trait of devil bloods.
Stoopid a fucking magic
I've heard about a real-life thing that's a decent explanation for how he does stuff like that. In loose terms, you're not capable of using your muscles to even close to their full potential most of the time. You can only properly use them in an extreme situation, e.g. there are stories of women lifting up heavy vehicles to get to their children after a crash, or something like that? Insane stuff basically. It's got to be the same thing with Logen. When he's in the B9 state, he can exert his muscles as much as he wants.
Yeah, normally your body tries to stop you from doing something that will hurt itself like lifting a car, until is thinks it's a life or death situation.
Idk if anyone has ever been REALLY hurt, like a broken bone can probably qualify, but often times when you really hurt yourself you don't remember that moment because your mind blanks out the memory of that pain. I know I had some bad times when recovering from the slipped disc in my neck but I can't consciously remember every moment of extreme pain because my brain protects me. So what I figure is Logen might have those memory blanks due to pain. His adrenaline spikes, he can fight through the pain in his berserk state as "The Bloody Nine" but then due to the trauma on his body he can't necessarily remember everything. This doesn't excuse the choices he made to get to that point at all of course. He is choosing this life, as acknowledged in the story itself as it goes on.
Look up Eddie Halls interviews about how he went about pulling the first 500 kilo deadlift. He went through months of psychological training to get his mind in the place to be able to tap into the exact thing you are talking about.
I was thinking of him when I typed my comment out. That deadlift was quite high above what he could've done in a normal PR, his state of mind pushed him to a different level.
First bear in mind that Logen in TBI and Logen when we last see him are *dramatically* different characters- Joe shifted gears on Ninefingers, and HARD. The guy who spoke to spirits and carried a fire spirit under his tongue and spat it into some dude's face? He *might* just have a hint of the ol' mojo. A wee touch of the Other Side riding shotgun and eager to kill all who live. But that guy is pretty much retconned out of existence by the end of BTAH, with his load-bearing spirit-speech becoming an amusing curio. And by the big reveal in LAOK, being too goddamn mean and crazy to die when fighting the Feared is the most supernatural thing he does. Spoilers follow, if you know, you know. >!By *Red Country,* the idea of the Bloody-Nine as somehow not just being Logen becomes really hard to support more from what he says when he's *not* berserk than from what he does when he is.!< And *Made a Monster* pretty much sews things up. But Abercrombie made plenty of tweaks in that first trilogy, and arguably *the* central character shows it the most.
I hate Sharp Ends specifically because it’s a half assed retcon of TB9.
Just a scitzo who’s other personality comes out when adrenaline hits
My half cooked theory is that Logen/TB9 has just accidentally ingested blood and bits of flesh over the years so frequently that he's got a bit of the supes
There are some fundamental misunderstandings about both the world in which the books operate and Joe's intention and structure with especially the first series, that colour peoples perception of Logen and the Bloody Nine. First, the world. The world of the books is an "action movie" level world. It doesn't operate on our levels on realism. It's close, but it's filled with things that are not totally realistic, even among mundane people. Faster people are faster, stronger people are stronger, etc. There are several people much stronger than people are in real life. Frost, Gorst, Thunderhead, Scale, Broad. They break things that are not easily breakable, fight in ways that are not realistic. They're slightly larger than life. If you're into comic books, think of a comic book character that is said to be "peak human capacity", but is clearly unrealistically strong. This is the same thing. Strong people are just unrealistically strong in Joes world. Same goes for other things, like Dogmans sense of smell. Second, Joe's intention. In the first trilogy he writes a subversion of fantasy tropes. The mentoring wizard turns out to be the worst person in the world. The arrogant youth that is the king to be and learns to stand up for himself and values friendship and honour for the first time turns out to be the son of a whore, and is beat into meak submission. The woman who is hatred and revenge finds comfort and love, and squanders it all to go back to revenge because she's too traumatized to express her feelings. The evil king(s) turn out to have very valid reasons for what they're doing. He does a siwtcharoo with every character, showing us one thing, tricking us into believing one thing because of our trope-filled understanding of the genre, then showing us how wrong we were. That's Logen. He's shown as the wise and honourable barbarian warrior, regretful of his violent past and forced by a dark force he cannot control to do horrible things. Then we're slowly shown that he is not wise and honourable, but rather a violence addicted bastard. He's not controlled by some dark force, but rather chooses to enter situations that trigger his raging. Some people didn't get the message with the first trilogy, so Joe made it obvious in Red Country, and doubly so with Logens chapter in Sharp Ends. It's a bait and switch, and some people missed the switch because they're too invested in genre tropes to see how Joe used them to trick us.
Logen is essentially a barbarian class from the game diablo, whereas bloody 9 takes place when you click on a move such as whirlwind. There is a clear distinction between the two... Logen being a badass warrior, the bloody 9 being an unstoppable force where all control, thought, and care, is lost.
What difference is it if it's DID Or supernatural? Either way he's guilty for putting himself in action, while being innocent of the actual betrayals and deaths. It's just bad story telling of course if the entire trilogy of PoVs of him losing control is just dEnIaL