{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2656", "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": 2656, "subject": "Copperheaded Lilith; timetable", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2001-05-19T17:35:09+00:00", "last": "2001-05-19T17:35:09+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2001-05-19T17:35:09+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Copperheaded Lilith; timetable", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on 5/9/01 3:20 AM, Roy C. Lackey at rclackey at stic.net wrote:\nHere is my spin on \"Copperhead\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Very insightful post; just a couple of quibbles." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As\nboth Endymion and Paul Duggan have noted before me, the difficult phrase\n\"Vhas a groose.\", I translate as \"[He] Was a grouse.\" In American slang, a\ngrouse is a person who habitually complains. She was referring to Adam, and\nshe is, as mantis intimated, Lilith." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm not happy with this translation, though it's better than any of the\nalternatives I've seen (and I can't think of anything else myself). For one\nthing, it seems unlikely that she'd be using uncommon American slang. For\nanother, it's phonetically inconsistent with the rest of her dialect.\nElsewhere she says \"how\" as \"'ow,\" and \"about\" as \"ahbawt\"; and there are no\nother transformations of \"ow\" into \"oo.\"\n\nBut if she is saying \"was a grouse,\" with the meaning Roy gives, she is\nsurely talking about herself, not Adam or Boone. After all, she immediately\ngoes on to describe how she \"groused,\" and Lilith's grousing is one of the\nthings she is most known for (it's also what has made her a modern-day\nfeminist heroine, something Wolfe would no doubt be sensitive to). Besides,\nwhen Lilith was with Adam, they were still in Eden; what would he have to\n\"groose\" about?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "When the NP, in his new-found Pride at the Power of his position,\ninadvertently pressed a button on the Changer and exchanged the copperhead\nsnake in the leaves for its cognate in The Garden, he got Lilith, Adam's\nfirst wife, who represents Sin, in general, and Lust, specifically." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And mantis wrote:\nShe acts like a sex kitten with a destructive agenda, which would be \"early\nLilith\" I guess (as opposed to \"Lilith, =mother= of monsters\")." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Lilith has changed over time, but as far as I can tell she never behaved\nvery much like Jane Doe. According to my skimpy research (in several\nreference books, but primarily the Encyclopedia Judaica), she derived from\nBabylonian demons called lilitu. These were of two types: one endangered\nwomen in childbirth and strangled their babies, and the other were succubi.\nLater, in midrashic literature (Jewish commentaries upon the Torah), it was\nsaid that she had slept with Adam and given birth to male and female demons.\nA later midrash had Lilith as Adam's first wife, who left him and became a\nkiller of newborn children. The final picture of Lilith synthesized all\nthese threads: she was both a killer of newborn children and a succubus who\nspawned demons from the seed she collected.\n\nSo while Lilith is a seducer of men, she does so in order to engender\ndemons, which Jane Doe has no interest in; conversely, we apparently never\nsee Lilith using her sexuality to stir up discord. Nor can one really say\nthat Lilith represents Lust. So we might see Jane Doe as a conflation of\nLilith, the Serpent, and Eve (who is the real sexual temptress of the\nGenesis story).\n\nIncidentally, Lilith left Adam not because she wouldn't have sex with him,\nbut because she wouldn't have sex with him on top: \"You will not never grunt\nover me\" indeed! Perhaps the assertion that he was \"Not like you\" refers to\nClinton's \"feminism\" (or Hilary's supposed domination of him). " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Blattid wrote:\nThis is all workable, as follows. I'm going to use the 2008\nelection to avoid implicating any specific living persons:\n\nWinter 2007/8: The Old President dies/resigns/whatever, the NP\nsucceeds to office (with minimalist inauguration)\nSpring 2008: The trouble in Spokane\nSummer 2008: The crash\nLate Summer/Early Fall 2008: Lilith appears\nNovember 2008: The NP is elected for the first time\nJanuary 2009: The NP is inaugurated. He is now in a meaningful\nsense a New President -- he will have the \"honeymoon\"\nperiod with press & Congress that any new administration\ngets.\nFebruary-March 2009: The murder\nMarch-April 2009: \"Copperhead.\" (It is Spring, and about three\nyears before the beginning of the 2012 campaign season.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't believe that if NP had been in office over a year, he would still be\nreferred to as a \"new President,\" even if he had been elected for the first\ntime four months ago. (The last time this situation occurred was with LBJ\n(Ford wasn't reelected); anybody care to look through old newspapers on\nmicrofilm and confirm or disconfirm my belief?)\n\n--Adam" } ] } ] }