{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2507",
    "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": 2507,
    "subject": "5HC: musings on the Shadow Children",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-12-14T20:43:26+00:00",
    "last": "2000-12-14T20:43:26+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0198@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-12-14T20:43:26+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) 5HC: musings on the Shadow Children",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Adding to what I wrote before about the levels of organization for each of\nthe groups, and the biomes they are restricted to; the anthropological\nterms are (or perhaps at one time were) band, tribe, and chiefdom\ntheocracy, in that order of increasing size.\n\nWith regard to harsh biomes, it was also a given that as chiefdoms grew in\nthe good lands they would squeeze competing groups into the marginal lands:\nbands and tribes are not necessarily \"pristine\" stone age groups who have\nbeen in that harsh biome for ten thousand years; more likely they are\nremnants, refugees, and other displaced persons of more recent arrival.\n\nWith this in mind, because the Shadow Children are bands, and they are\nnocturnal scavenger types, they seem to be earlier than the hill folk or\nthe marsh people; and the hill folk might be earlier than the marsh people.\n\nFrom a folklore standpoint, the Shadow Children are:\n--ghouls, eaters of dead things, permanent halloween critters that must be\nbought off with gifts of mice\n--children (they eat some, adopt others), cast off/abandoned children, as\nimplied by their name and their stature (OTOH, when the second group meets\nSandwalker as a shadowfriend, they remark how young he is, so maybe they\nusually pick up cast off elders?).\n--dead/dreaming\n--sacred Lotus Eaters with a drug communion\n--profane drug abusers (simultaneously autochthons wiped out by alien\nalcohol/ex-conquistadors derailed by exotic opium)\n--first and last: autochthons and invaders-gone-native; yet neither first\nnor last, since the magic trees came before they did, and the Anglophone\ncolonists came after they did.\n\nWhen Sandwalker first meets them, there's that weird build up of threat and\nsudden deflation after he has been scratched by what he feared was a\npoisoned claw.  Then they welcome him as friend, feed him, teach him songs.\nHave they infected him?  They seem to think of him as \"one of us,\" albeit\nat the lowest level.  (The other levels are: eating marshman flesh, taking\nthe narcotic herb.  He refuses both.)\n\nThat is to say: he has been adopted by outsiders just as Eastwind was, the\nonly difference is that Eastwind was abducted as a newborn and Sandwalker\nstumbled into his initiation while on his manhood quest.\n\nThe largest group we see are seven\nTwo are wrinkled and stiff (elderly)\nOne is a woman\nTwo are neither old nor young (adult)\nTwo are little more than boys\nto which we add Sandwalker, as shadow friend: seven males, one woman.\n\nSounds like a creepy Snow White to me.\n\nAnd that woman is probably the same one who shows up in V.R.T./Marsch's\njournal, toward the hallucinatory end.\n\nOne more tangential tidbit: re: the claimed abo naming conventions of Mary\nand John.  It is interesting that this does not appear in \"A Story\" at all,\nwith the exception of the infant Mary Pink Butterflies.  She and her mother\nare from a different tribe than Sandwalker's, and they may have different\nnaming conventions, but her mother isn't \"Mary.\"  In fact, judging from the\ncircumstances, \"Mary\" might mean \"daughter of a tree\" <g>.  But in any\nevent, my point here is that Mary Pink Butterflies might be the \"Eve\" of\nthe post-French landing abo reorganization: that is, because of her, all\nabo girls will be named Mary, and because of some John, likewise for boys.\n\nIf that Mary/John convention isn't a complete fabrication, that is.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}