{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1565",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1565,
    "subject": "Pelerines must disband",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-04-22T18:32:42+00:00",
    "last": "1999-04-22T18:32:42+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0026-0008@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-04-22T18:32:42+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Pelerines must disband",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "We can side with Ava, and think \"Godless communist Ascians are something\nless than human.\"\n\nOr we can side with Severian, that the Ascians are human, and cannot be\nkilled in the guilt-free manner that butchers kill cattle or dwarves kill\norcs.\n\nBut there's a harsher side to the whole exchange.  Because even though\nneither one knows it, the Conciliator has returned to the Order founded in\nhis name, upon his relic, and he has found it quite in error.  And the\nnext\nthing you know, <SHAZAM!> the order has been destroyed on the battlefield,\nnever to rise again.\n\nJust a coincidence?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Could you enlarge on this a bit? I'm not quite following.\n\n-alga"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "En-LARE-giing . . . now!\n\n\"Mountain out of mole hill: death, doom, and distraction; take two!\"\n\nOkay. Severian talks with Ava. Severian doesn't scold her or anything, but\nhe has (I suspect) a different opinion (even as a torturer, he would). Then\nin the next chapter he hears the translation of an Ascian tale, and that\ncements it (for readers at least): Ascians are human; they cannot be killed\nlike animals.\n\nThis attitude of Ava casts a bad light upon the pelerines.\n\nAva doesn't know she is talking to the pre-Conciliator himself; nor does\nSeverian realise the Order's relation to himself.  And yet, as if in grim\nconfirmation of Dostoyevski's \"Grand Inquisitor\" scenario, Severian has a\nniggling different notion, and from an \"objective\" standpoint as readers,\nit seems that the pelerines have strayed somewhat (I mean: it seems to me\nthat they should think all people as human, regardless of whatever cultural\nbrainwashing; zoanthrops are not \"human\" [hardware issue] but Ascians\ncertainly are [software issue]).\n\nNext thing you know, the order has been wiped out on the battlefield, the\nClaw lost forever (well they thought it was lost before, but now it is\n=really= lost).\n\nNah . . . the order was destroyed, true, but it had nothing to do with\nthat. It was simply the fact that Severian, fresh from his mission to\nMaster Ash, was about to sell himself to the pelerines and be their slave,\nlike Winnoc; which would be a bad move, apparently!\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}