{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2511",
    "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": 2511,
    "subject": "Shadow Children and Dead Languages",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-12-15T08:43:56+00:00",
    "last": "2000-12-15T08:43:56+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0202@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes",
        "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-12-15T08:43:56+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Shadow Children and Dead Languages",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Mantis wrote:\nFrom a folklore standpoint, the Shadow Children are:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "[...]\n\nActually, Mantis' list of Shadow-child characteristics immediately\nmakes me think of the Fair Folk. Given Wolfe's penchant for \nreimagining fantasy, and especially faerie-tale, tropes in a\nplausible-enough-for-SF-\"realism\" form, I'd almost bank on it."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "--ghouls, eaters of dead things, permanent halloween critters\nthat must be bought off with gifts of mice"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "That's certainly indicative; some folks in Eire _still_ leave\na bowl of milk out for the Fair Folk."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "--children (they eat some, adopt others), cast off/abandoned \nchildren, as implied by their name and their stature (OTOH,\nwhen the second group meets Sandwalker as a shadowfriend, they\nremark how young he is, so maybe they usually pick up cast off\nelders?)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Leaving the question of elders aside, this is the one that made\nmy Roach-sense go BING! BING! BING! -- Wolfe's potschke'd with \nthe changeling motif more than once before."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "--dead/dreaming"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Weird but not alien to this demi-theory: the FF seem to have a\ndifferent awareness from ours."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "--sacred Lotus Eaters with a drug communion\n--profane drug abusers (simultaneously autochthons wiped out by\nalien alcohol/ex-conquistadors derailed by exotic opium)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "These two seem to qualify as stfnal justifications of the one\nbefore."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "--first and last: autochthons and invaders-gone-native; yet neither\nfirst nor last, since the magic trees came before they did, and the\nAnglophone colonists came after they did."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Again, a stfnal version of the idea that the FF are a race much\nolder than humans, and what we see (when we do) are the last \nremnants.\n\n\n*****\n\nThen the Mad Exultant observed that he is: "
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "... still awaiting delivery of my used copies of 5HC (1 \nScribner's, 1 Ace) from that emporium called, in one of \nyour dead languages,  \"Lacking Breast\"."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Not to be too fussy, but I believe a-maston would be \"without\nbreast,\" not necessarily implying a lack -- though, of course,\nthe fact that they name themselves for this \"withoutness\" \nwould seem to imply that they themnselves feel this lack.\nOne might speculate that the founders of this emporium were\nbottle-fed and have never completely recovered from a lack \nof maternal intimacy.\n\nIn the meantime, please -- Support Independent Booksellers \nor we soon may have nothing left but B. Waldencrown, \nBarder and Borble, and the ubiquitous Breastless. \n\nAdvocatorially,"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}