{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3214", "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": 3214, "subject": "Shapeshifting (was Re: (urth) Shadow Children in the Lupiverse?", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2002-05-04T14:21:43+00:00", "last": "2002-05-04T14:21:43+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2002-05-04T14:21:43+00:00", "subject": "Shapeshifting (was Re: (urth) Shadow Children in the Lupiverse?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on 4/25/02 8:14 AM, Robert Borski at rborski at charter.net wrote:\nWhile admitting that almost all of the evidence about the Annese having\nshapeshifting abilities is anecdotal, how do you explain the lack of manual\ndexterity that all the abos seem to possess--from the shovel test, which the\nFrench used to determine who was human and who was faking it, to Victor's\npoor handwriting? (The latter a notion carried over by Wolfe to his other\nshapeshifting race, the inhumi of Green. Or are they non-pleiomorphic too?)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \n[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "3) The Annese were able to copy the _form_ of human hands, but not the\n_function_, much as a gifted, if perverse, plastic surgeon could sculpt\ntentacles from human arms or fuse the legs to forge an undine's nether\nparts, although in neither case, because of nonadaptive skeletal\nrestrictions, innervation, and cerebellar pathways, is it likely such limbs\ncould function in the same way as their true biocounterparts.\n\nThe last of these, of course, would be my explanation. But perhaps you have\nan alternate explanation--one more congruent with your theory that the\nAnnese are unable to shapeshift?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But Victor's inability to use tools is not only, or even primarily, a matter\nof manual dexterity. As Jerry Friedman has pointed out, Victor does a\nnumber of things requiring quite a bit of dexterity. He is \"a capital camp\ncook,\" \"very clever with ropes,\" catches fish with his hands with \"amazing\ndexterity\" (iirc; I can't find the passage in the book), and makes nooses to\ncatch small animals out of mules' hair. All these things require much more\ndexterity than a non-functional organ would have, and at least as much as\nthe ability to use a rifle, lighter, or kitchen knife. In any case, his\nproblem with the rifle seems to be one of aim rather than manual dexterity\n(170, Ace pb), and he is able to light a fire after Marsch's death.\n\nThe same is true of the \"shovel test\" at Running Blood, if this test is not\nindeed legendary. If the Annese had enough use of their hands to grip\nanything at all (and it's hard to imagine them being able to survive in\nhuman form if they didn't), they had enough dexterity to use a shovel.\n\nI think the reason for Victor and the Annese's clumsiness with tools is\npsychological. The tools they can't use are the colonists' tools. Their\ninability to use them is in part a rejection of the colonists, and in part a\nself-fulfilling prophecy: they believe they can't use them, so they can't." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Later, Robert Borski wrote:\nAnd lastly then, this bit of evidence for the shapeshifting-is-real\nargument. In the back of beyond Victor becomes highly upset when Dr. Marsch\nattempts to kill a following farmcat. Why? Is it because he simply loves\ncats? If so, why does he himself later attempt to kill this same cat? I\ncontend it's because she's the shapeshifted abo girl Marsch later catches\nVictor trysting with; and that he must kill her because she knows he's\nkilled Marsch. Your theory?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Actually Marsch never \"catches\" Victor with the girl, or even sees the girl:\nthe only \"evidence\" for the girl's existence is Marsch's suspicions, and he\nseems not to be completely sane on the topic.\n\nIn addition to Tony Ellis's objections to the theory that Victor killed his\ngirlfriend, if he had really killed the cat to cover up his having killed\nMarsch, would he mention having killed the cat in the journal entry which\nhas been concocted specifically to cover up Marsch's death? Granted, he's\nnot a very good liar, but still.\n\nNor am I persuaded that Wolfe portrays Victor as a psychotic woman-killer,\nas Borski argues in the essay he cited earlier. A male chauvinist perhaps,\nbut that's not the same thing.\n\nI think the cat is just a cat, and Victor killed it as part of an Annese\nburial ritual. As to why he gets upset when Marsch tries to shoot the cat,\nmaybe he doesn't like to see animals killed wantonly, as opposed to killing\nthem for ritual purposes. The pre-Enlightenment Silk would undoubtedly have\nreproved a child he saw wantonly killing a bird, even though he sacrificed\nbirds himself.\n\nThere is also the fact that Victor nowhere, afaik, states that the Annese\ncould shapeshift. In his \"April 26\" (actually June 1) entry, he writes: \"I\nhave not killed any large animals, though once I was very tempted. But the\nrifle makes so much noise--and the shotgun even more--that I am certain it\nwould frighten away those I wish to find.\" If Victor thought the Annese\ncould change themselves into animals, that would be a more powerful reason\nfor not killing large animals than the one he states.\n\n--Adam" } ] } ] }