{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2222",
    "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": 2222,
    "subject": "Fairy blood",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-05-02T09:19:12+00:00",
    "last": "2000-05-02T09:19:12+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0953@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "pei047 at attglobal.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-05-02T09:19:12+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Fairy blood",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Jack wrote:\nThat's pretty much true, although there seems to be a growing body of\nstories/books dealing with the interpenetration of faery and\nmundanity.  I'm\nthinking of Emma Bull's overrated _War for the Oaks_ and Charles de\nLint's\nstuff, all of which seems to work from the assumption that the faery\nplace\nhas been/is being marginalized, although it is still accessible--and\nthe\nupshot seems generally to be that encountering faery enriches\nexistence.\nThis body of work has been christened (poorly, I think) Urban Fantasy,\nand I\nsuspect that a lot of it is written in imitation of _Little, Big_,\ndespite\nthe fact that they seem to disagree with it premise.  (In fact, I seem\nto\nrecall that the most recent trade paperback release of LB was touted\nas both\nUrban Fantasy and Magic Realism.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Michael Swanwick called it (or something like it) \"hard fantasy\" in a\nrather nice essay that I read because it got reprinted in an (otherwise\nfictional, or at least fiction) \"Best Of\" collection. It's a better term\nbecause it doesn't require an urban setting. Most of LB isn't urban."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "There is one exceptional treatment of the boundaries between faery and\nmundanity that leaps to my mind: Robert Holdstock's excellent Mythago\nWood\nbooks.  That's a very different notion of faery--actually an\nexternalized Ju\nngian collective unconscious--but it has a similar effect of drawing\npeople\nin and making them less than they were.  In fact, I'd say there's a\nstrong\nstreak of Lovecraft through the Mythago books."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I wonder about that. I felt that Holdstock was coming from the older\nBritish tradition, and also from the fact that Britain (including\nScotland) during the 60s and 70s was a place where far-out experimental\npsychology, with and without drugs--generally LSD--, was getting a lot\nof attention (Laing and such, also Doris Lessing). I've only read the\none (first) book, but I did review it, so I read it carefully. LSD as a\npsychiatric drug makes a lot of sense re that book."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Adam wrote:\nAlice does not disapprove of Smoky's adultery because his task is to\nfather children for the fairies."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "But Alice is very upset when she thinks that Smoky has fathered\nSophie's\nchild (because this somehow deprives her of her starring role in the\nTale? or because it indicates that Sophie, not Alice, is the bride\npicked out by the fairies for Smoky?).  It's only when she learns he\nhasn't that she becomes tolerant of the adultery."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Yes, I recanted on this."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Don't you have it backwards?  The adultery took place before Lilac\nexisted.  Or is there a later adultery that I missed."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Right. No, no later adultery."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I remembered the part about August being everyone's progenitor. And,\nfrom a later post, you regard the single eyebrow as the sign of fairy\nblood.  I'm no expert on fairy lore, but going solely by LB itself, it\nseems to me that the single eyebrow might well be a sign of the\nability\nto see fairies, rather than of being a fairy.  And there are other\nthings in LB which make me skeptical of Violet's being a fairy or\npart-fairy. For one thing, there is no explicit indication in LB\n(unlike\nin earlier lore) that fairies do or can mate with humans.  (Dr.\nBramble's lecture is hardly reliable information.)  And the fairies\nCrowley depicts don't seem the type to mate with humans.  Finally,\nViolet is just depicted as too human to be of the same species as the\nvery inhuman Mrs. Underhill."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "The first time I read the book, I think I took it that way--that the\neyebrow was simply an indicator that one could see the fairies. The\nsecond time, too many clues turned up--the fact that the fairies are\ndying out, August's impregnating all the girls--for it to be logical any\nother way but that the fairies had figured out a way to perpetuate\nthemselves. Violet seems pretty normal--fairy wives, traditionally, can\npass, to a degree--but Lilac is weird enough, and so are Alice's girls.\n(The fact that Smoky is \"chosen\" and has to be approved of by the\nfairies seems to indicate that his genetic stock is compatible.) What\nmotivation would the fairies have, otherwise, for \"saving\" this\nparticular family? For the world isn't, after all, destroyed, and we can\nenvision a recovery, but this family won't be in it."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "But (assuming the Drinkwaters have fairy blood), it's not knowledge of\nhaving fairy blood that counts, it's the blood itself. George doesn't\nknow he has fairy blood, neither does Auberon, and Sylvie doesn't even\nknow she's a Drinkwater. It still sounds more like a parody of\nChristianity than Gnosticism to me."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, that's latency, which I did get into earlier. George doesn't know,\nbut he does pass the genes down to Lilac. And to Sylvie. And neither\nGeorge nor Auberon has the eyebrow, though Auberon develops it later. I\ndon't think all of this is going to add up exactly. Most novelists don't\nquite think that way; they're happy with a general grand idea. I don't\nmean that as a cop-out, but when I pressed JC for geographical details\non just where in Upstate New York the house was situated, he said \"Oh,\nsomewhere near Brigadoon.\" Which is actually a pretty good answer.\n\n-alga"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}