{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3467",
    "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": 3467,
    "subject": "Jonas the Proud",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-09-26T16:32:20+00:00",
    "last": "2002-09-26T16:32:20+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0209-1788@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-09-26T16:32:20+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Jonas the Proud",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Okay, so Roy continues to ask what Jonas would do with Jolenta once he got\nahold of her, and he insists that whatever Jonas feels, it ain't \"Love.\"\n(Or wait: Roy kinda sorta argues that the robots cannot =feel= anything!\nSo this focus on \"Love\" might be a bridge of red herrings too far.)\n\nSince I agree that Jonas is more Tin Man, our argument is not there.  I\nbelieve in love at first sight, at least as a literary convention.  I agree\nwith Roy's assessment of Jonas's obsession (a passion of one kind or\nanother) and Jonas's sense of his own self worth.\n\nPutting it all together:\n\nJonas is struck-at-first-sight by Jolenta.\n\nShe spurns him, due to his worn prosthetics (as it turns out) and his lack\nof wealth.\n\nJonas says he is going to return when he is repaired, and steps into the\nmirrors.\n\nNow then, back to Roy's question: what does Jonas have in mind?  What will\nhe do to Jolenta?\n\nObviously he will crush her.  Spiritually.\n\nHe will appear in his radiant silver self.  She will see the beauty of him,\nshe will recognize that he is her equal or superior, and she will abase\nherself before him.  Then he will walk away from her (total victory for\npride) or they will become a couple.\n\nIf she fails to abase herself, he might be forced to crush her physically\n(which, in turn, makes me think of Bester's classic story \"Fondly\nFarenheit\"!).\n\nThis may seem odd, at first.  But it appears that Jonas has been wandering\nUrth in a daze for decades or centuries, and the sight of Jolenta has given\nhim a wake-up shock.  Her rebuff to him attacks his pride, and this would\nseem to be the locus of his response: revenge.\n\nIf it still seems odd, consider how the same thing happens with the same\nwoman and a different person.  Severian sees the physical perfection and\nhaughty behavior of Jolenta and he wants to crush it: he goes out on the\nboat with her and has sex with her -- some readers have called this an\nincident of rape, and judging by Severian's dark thoughts of crushing her,\nhumbling her, perhaps in this current anaylsis we should consider it a\n=failed= rape, since Severian wants to hurt her and she falls asleep.  Thus\nwe clearly see that the big tent word \"Love\" which also includes Lust can\nalso lead to darker spirits.  (As well as an unexpected brotherhood between\nSeverian and Jonas.)\n\nStill seem strange?  Then note how the same thing happens with Thecla and\nSeverian.  There he is, happy in love and lust with Thecla, but then she\nrefers to him as a nice boy or something like that, and he decides to\nhumble her or destroy her.  Gives her the knife and she opens some veins --\nand say, isn't that what happened to Jolenta, too?  Not the giving of the\nknife, that is: the opening of veins by a knife.\n\n(There is that weird detail about Miles perking up at the word razor, which\nin the past made me wonder if it was somehow related to an original name of\nMiles or Jonas, but now it strikes me as having a spooky echo to the fate\nof Jolenta -- a fate Miles does not yet know about.)\n\nAgain, my appologies to Roy: if robots cannot feel anything at all, this\nhas been a waste of time and effort.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}