{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2551", "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": 2551, "subject": "5HC recent bits", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-01-22T20:12:04+00:00", "last": "2001-01-23T08:52:23+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at sirius.com" }, "date": "2001-01-22T20:12:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) 5HC recent bits", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Talarican's burst of 5HC questions." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I was wondering if the selection of a 402 day year, pink sun, and so forth\nhad some significance, and perchance if even their astrometric unlikelihood\nwas intentional and in itself had some significance. (of course, I\noriginally embarked on this research intending to shed light on the question\nof the planets' orbital periods and length of day and so forth)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Right. Issues of error all put to one side: In a nutshell, I think 402\ndays means that the twin planets are at the outer edge of the ecosphere of\ntheir rather Sol-like star." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If lonely little Shadowchild Wolf terminated the Song of Bending Sky-Paths\nthat None May Come, why does the sun still look pink afterwards?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This suggests (to me, at least) that pinkness has nothing to do with the\ndisguise itself (although the fact that we cannot see a pink star within 20\nlight years might be taken as a clue that the cloaking is going on). The\nimage-changing field (rather like a shape-changer, come to think of it)\nmust begin a few AU out, making the star look like a dim M type of star.\n\nRe: Many Butterflies vs. Mary Butterflies. Since I originally knew only\nthe Ace version, I thought it was/accepted \"Many\" and didn't think much\nabout \"Mary\" at all, since the name isn't applied to any character. And\nthe \"Mary\" thing is a puzzler: does this mean that Cedar Branches Waving\nand Seven Girls Waiting are really \"Mary C.B.W.\" and \"Mary S.G.W.\"? (Note\nthose initials: my main reason for posting at all right now.)\n\nThe brothers are both named \"John,\" yet \"John\" doesn't really show up after\ntheir births--they are mainly known by their other name(s). These women,\nthough, they have three names; and the names have strange parallels to each\nother (similar sounds, similar stress patterns). Then there's the\ngrandmother's hidden name, which Sandwalker asks of his mother CBW, but she\nweeps and won't answer.\n\n(The \"Mary/John\" business when first presented seems to be the aboriginal\nresponse to Christianity brought by the Frenchmen. But \"A Story\" is set in\nthe pre-contact time and has at least Johns [if not also a Mary, but\ncertainly not Many Maries ], which either points to its \"fictitious\"\nnature as an anthropological romance, or to weird deeper truths. In any\nevent, the notion that \"Mary/John\" comes with/after French contact is\nthrown into question (where there was never any question before).\n\nSandwalker is on his vision quest, which will mark his transition from boy\nto man. His seemingly tangential dalliance with SGW is actually no tangent\nat all: she is proven to be fertile, she is in need of a hunter's bounty\n(weak boys die of hunger, hunters provide), he gives her honey (rather like\nmanna in that desert environment), and then they make whoopie. So when he\nmeets the Shadow Children he can boldly claim to be a man since he has had\nvisions =and= he has been with a woman.\n\nBut still, there's that weirdness of the girlfriend's name being like his\nmother's name (and different from, say, \"Sweetmouth\" or \"Three Faces\").\nAnd how the girlfriend is a mother, father unknown. And they all are\nthrown into the pit.\n\nWhat makes me wonder about this bundle is the fact that in his\n\"autobiographical\" mode, VRT has this weird \"mother caught me with the\nprostitute\" thing, which might be either the root \"reality\" of which \"A\nStory\" is built to disquise (Freudian), or the opposite--it might be the\n\"civilized gloss\" to disguise the \"A Story\" reality (dissembler). Or\nsomething else again.\n\nThat is: \"mother caught me\" might be real, \"SGW\" fantasy; \"SGW\" real,\n\"mother caught me\" fantasy (based upon these intersections of names, states\nof motherhood, being thrown together into the pit, etc.); or a blend.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2001-01-23T08:52:23+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) 5HC recent bits", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:\nIf lonely little Shadowchild Wolf terminated the Song of Bending Sky-Paths\nthat None May Come, why does the sun still look pink afterwards?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This suggests (to me, at least) that pinkness has nothing to do with the\ndisguise itself (although the fact that we cannot see a pink star within 20\nlight years might be taken as a clue that the cloaking is going on). The\nimage-changing field (rather like a shape-changer, come to think of it)\nmust begin a few AU out, making the star look like a dim M type of star." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Reading \"A Story,\" I got the impression that the field was hiding St. Anne\nfrom an already-settled-by-humans St. Croix, not shielding the whole\nsystem from Earth. In the story, the humans show up almost instantly\nafter Shadowchild terminates the song (which seems odd, even if they were\njust on the sister planet), and I also thought it odd that no one on\nSt. Croix mentions St. Anne suddenly appearing out of nowhere - if that\nhad happened, you'd expect it to be known as \"the planet that suddenly\nappeared out of nowhere.\" On the other hand, I guess the astronomers\nmight have thought they simply hadn't noticed it until then.\n\nAm I misinterpreting all this?\n\n-Rostrum" } ] } ] }