{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2562",
    "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": 2562,
    "subject": "Symmetrical Fearfulness",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-02-07T15:04:15+00:00",
    "last": "2001-02-07T15:04:15+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0274@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes",
        "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-02-07T15:04:15+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Symmetrical Fearfulness",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Responding to Talarican's list of twinnings, Tom Urash observed:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "And let's not forget \"little Severian\", struck down whilst trying\nto reach the golden ring upon the hand of Typhon's monument/mountain."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "... nor that little Severian is himself half of a dyad with \nSevera, making the Big/Little Severian dyad somehow flawed; \nand the deeply-flawed dyad of Agila and Agilus. Thecla and \nThea come similarly to mind.\n\nThis begins to wander afield from simple twinning: much of \nthe impact of BotNS comes from the way characters are paired, \neither in (true or false) dyads or in contrast (for example, \nDorcas and Jolenta). As Father Inire might observe, the book\nis constructed of reflections that reflect reflections until \nsomething real is forced to materialize. Relations reflect \neach other: most notably Severian's various relations with \nThecla, Agia, Dorcas, Jolenta, Cyriaca ... all of these \nrelationships seem despite or through their radical flaws to \nattempt to force a true love relationship to materialize.\n\n(Does one materialize? Near the heart of the story is a \n\"magic square\" of characters:\n\n                  Severian----Vodalus\n                  |                 |\n                  X                 |\n                  |                 |\n                  Thecla---------Thea\n\nThecla and Vodalus have no real relationship, except as \nmediated through Severian or Thea; Thea and Severian have \nno real relationship except as mediated through Vodalus\nor Thecla. But through the alchemy of these mediated\nrelations the broken relation between Sev and Thecla is\nrevived, albeit in a radically different form. Can there\nbe a true love relationship between Sev and Thecla after\nthe communion in the woods? Or is that only amour-propre?)\n\nPerhaps this is part of what makes UotNS unsatisfactory \nby comparison? It's hardly a _bad_ book; indeed, by the\nstandards of almost any other writer, it would be a \nmasterpiece. But the things and relations in URTH don't \nreflect each other the way they do in NS proper. (This is \nalso true of LS, and appears to be true of SS, but LS & \nSS have their own, quite different, structures ...) \n\n-- all of which is not to say that URTH doesn't have its\nown (and quite different) structural integrity: it does. \nBut because of its status as a pendant to NS, the reader \nexpects and, more, wants to find those reflections, and \nfinds only their echoes. \n\n(What is the echo of a reflection? Can it force a real \nsound to materialize?)\n\n--DDO"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}