{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1902",
    "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": 1902,
    "subject": "Fairy Tale algame",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-11-02T14:30:39+00:00",
    "last": "1999-11-02T14:30:39+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0349@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-11-02T14:30:39+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Fairy Tale algame",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "A bit of thread:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "I strongly suspect that Damien Broderick knows exactly what I'm talking\nabout. (I also know that alga is rolling her eyes at all this!)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Well, no. Actually I agree---how not. The Gothic elements refer directly\nback to alchemy, most specifically in Baldanders's castle by the lake with\nhis \"experiments\" aided by \"elementals\" from the air and his great\nfamiliar/catamite/clone (and the whole parody, almost Pythoneque, in which\nBaldanders is both Frankenstein and creature, with Dr. Talos as a \"beard\").\nAlso much later when we find the homunculus/mandragora at the Citadel. But,\nas I have said before, these are almost certainly filtered from the direct\nGothic tradition (mostly English) by Wolfe's reading of Goethe's Faust, Part\nII (the one people don't read so much), which is a weirdly hallucinogenic\n\"take\" on the Gothic/alchemical novel with its castles and laboratories and\n\"philosopher's stones\" and transmutations.\n\nTyphon too appears in this general air of the Gothic.\n\nAnd mantis, I don't roll my eyes at your allusions, they start to roll when\nyou seize them (the allusions, not the eyes) with your mandibles and\nbrutally worry them into virtuality."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "(Technical aside: that last paragraph is what is called in alchemy a \"retort.\")\n\nDoh!  Er, I mean, \"I meant you were rolling your eyes at how very\ncommonplace and obvious the topic was!\" <g>\n\n(This is an example of the fabled \"weak force,\" a masking companion for the\nfabled element Chagrinium.)\n\nI won't be writing an essay on the subject (alchemy in/of/on Urth) anytime\nsoon, since I've sworn off essays for a while (with the exception of things\nthat I've already promised).  And it would take an essay to me to figure\nout if it was really there or not.\n\nCompletely off topic: I've seen a new movie called \"Being John Malkovich\"\nand I recommend it.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}