{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/262",
    "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": 262,
    "subject": "Truncated Play",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-11-21T00:49:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-11-21T00:49:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0005-0399@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-11-21T00:49:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Truncated Play",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #7230818 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET#\n\nTony Ellis,\n\nRe: the length of the play and the completeness of the drama we are\nshown.  First off, please count the number of times the stage\ndirection \"stage darkens\" appears--this traditionally indicates the\nend of one \"act\" and the beginning of the next \"act.\"  (The dramatic\nequivalent of chapters, I suppose.)  I count five, myself, but I also\nthink the play has been cut off: so six acts, at least.\n\nSecond, if this =really= is all the play that there is, then how do\nyou explain the presence of the following characters in the list\npreceeding the play: Angelic Beings, The New Sun, The Old Sun, The\nMoon?  In other words, if the play really is supposed to end with\nBaldanders going berserk (which might be a good stunt for getting\nstuff from country bumpkins but I could've sworn that Talos and\nBaldanders admitted that it was a bad, bad mistake to pull such a\ntrick on the hierodules--a mistake that may have cost Baldanders the\nautarchy), then why would these other characters be listed?  (They\nseem logical to the flow, and they seem to appear in the Ushas or\n\"real\" enactment of the play.)\n\n(My theory, fwiw, is that Baldanders always really does go nuts when\nthey get to that part of the \"play.\"  Under his cool, sluggish\nexterior is not only a detatched scientist but also a raging maniac.\nOne of his hot buttons is \"superstition,\" and based upon his\ninability to maintain his composure during the drama, the idea that\nthe New Sun will triumph in the end sends him into a real mindless\nand murderous rage.)\n\n(Reminder: Baldy jumps twice--once at Ctesiphon's Cross in Nessus,\nthe first time we glimpse the play; and second at House Absolute,\nwhen the text of the play is given.)\n\nYou write:\n\n\"How else can the play end but on a knife-edge, with the New Sun\nbattling Darkness and everything else still in doubt?\"\n\nUh, is this a trick question? <g> It can end with the triumph of the\nNew Sun, naturally!  Be careful--you are assigning allegorical\nqualities to a play already steeped in mythos: the battle at the\ntruncation is not between \"the New Sun\" (a character on the list who has\nnot yet appeared in the play--though he probably was spotted by the\ncountessa) and \"Darkness\" (a character who does not exist in the\nplay); rather, it is between the Familiar (a torturer) played by a\ntorturer and Nod (a titan who would retake the throne of Zeus) played\nby a titan who would retake the throne of Zeus.\n\nRe: \"Agia as a typo for Jolenta.\"  Nope.  Granted, I can see how that\nmight appear to be a mistake, since Agia never appears in the play.\nHowever, Agia really =is= Lilith to Severian.  Jolenta, who only plays\nLilith in the stage production, is really only a victim with a\ncapital V; a living puppet.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}