{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2229",
    "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": 2229,
    "subject": "Little, Big: fairy blood and fairy logic",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-05-03T10:32:41+00:00",
    "last": "2000-05-03T10:32:41+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0963@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-05-03T10:32:41+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Little, Big: fairy blood and fairy logic",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Jim Jordan wrote:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "alga wrote:\nJC doesn't flat\nout say, \"Hey, Vi was a fairy!\" but why would he give us the backstory and\nthe chart otherwise?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Because, among other things, the book is a family saga.  And because it\nadds a temporal depth and richness to the book to know how the\nDrinkwaters got where they are, and how the Tale began.  (Besides, the\n\"backstory\" contains some of Crowley's best writing.)  On my previous\nreadings of the book I never felt the chart and backstory were\nintrusive, and I never suspected the Drinkwaters of having fairy genes."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Why would he have August go on a spending spree (I use\nthe word in its old-fashioned sense--no, not spree) among the local girls\notherwise?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Again, it's clear that the fairies want there to be as many Drinkwaters\nas possible.  It doesn't follow from this that the Drinkwaters have\nfairy genes."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "[Me]:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 3,
          "text": "I don't think there are meant to be logical explanations for all these\nthings.  At any rate, that seems to be the meaning of Mrs. Underhill's\nspeech to Eigenblick in \"Give Way, Give Way\" (Book Six, Chap. Five), the\ngist of it is that there are no explanations, it's just the way the\nworld is."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Alga:\nYes, I keep on about this too. This isn't a tidy kind of book. Many of the\nmost interesting books are not too tidy."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Nutria:\n        Dunno. He worked on it for a long time. Rather than setting something\naside as untidy, I'd assume the opposite."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "What I, and presumably alga, meant, is not that Crowley was just making\nthings up as he went along, but that Crowley didn't mean everything in\nthe book to have a neat logical explanation (unlike BOTNS, or at least\nunlike what we hope BOTNS will prove to be).  Ironically, I think alga\nherself is over-rationalizing the fairies' actions, with her genetic\nexplanations for various events.  I think that a lot of what the fairies\ndo is motivated not by cause-and-effect logic, but by the Tale: it's\nnecessary to the fairies' plan, for some reason, that the Tale be\ncarried out.  Moreover, we know that not everything that happens was\nforeseen by the fairies, although it all becomes part of the Tale: they\ndidn't plan on Lilac stealing Sophie's sleep (\"That's the Lot,\" IV, 1);\nthey didn't count on Auberon falling in love with Sylvie, and they\ndidn't originally plan for Sylvie to join the Drinkwaters in the\nfairies' country (\"Let Him Follow Love, IV, 3).\n\nIn another post alga asks what, if not the desire to reproduce, is\nbehind the fairies' concern with the Drinkwaters?  The problem with this\nis that the fairies don't show any consciousness of the Drinkwaters\nbeing a continuation of their race.  In fact, once the fairies\nthemselves have gone inward, they will apparently have no further\ncontact with the Drinkwaters.  (And to revert to a logical viewpoint, if\nthe fairies' goal is to spread their genes, wouldn't it be simpler and\nquicker to just mate with as many humans as possible, rather than\narrange one human-fairy marriage and wait a century for its\ndescendants?)\n\nThe ulterior motive behind the fairies' meddling with the Drinkwaters is\nnot reproduction, I would argue, but survival.  For some reason, the\nDrinkwaters have to cross over into the fairies' country in order for\nthe fairies to be able to go further inward themselves, and take refuge\nfrom the humans.  Perhaps, though this is just a guess, the substitution\neven has to be one-to-one, which would explain why there are fifty-two\nfairies and fifty-two Drinkwaters.\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}