{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3708",
    "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": 3708,
    "subject": "FLF: thoughts on the ending",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-12-23T17:19:55+00:00",
    "last": "2002-12-23T17:19:55+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0212-2522@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-12-23T17:19:55+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) FLF: thoughts on the ending",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "If the quadrumvirate rules over the microverse Oz-as-house (validating the\nparanormal thread present at the beginning of the book yet gradually\nabandoned for the scientific/conspiratorial threads), or if it fulfills the\nwitch's prediction without irony as I outlined in Liberty Four and enacts\nchanges in the fabric of American society, or if it does something else\nagain, the fact still remains true that the members are in the past.\n\nIf they are in the 19th century, certain things become easy (no implosions,\nno repeated actions), other things become difficult (how did the three\nbecome improved if there were no implosions, and if there were implosions,\nwhere were they?).  If they are in the past of (arbitrarily) 5 years up to\nthe minimum of 6 months, then we know where the implosions took place, but\nif they are to follow the Whitten doctrine, they must repeat history (or at\nleast, they must repeat the \"wise choice\").  At the very least, they must\nrepeat the history of moving into the house and going through the whole\nadventure one more time before free will and chance become possible again\n(after the end of the text that we have).\n\nIn this sense, then, the novel ends in medias res.  So technically we know\nexactly \"what happens next\": the novel is read again.  It ends without the\nepilogue, and in the second reading they all take the plane down to the\nground.  We don't really know what happens after that . . . it forms a sort\nof event horizon.  But the Liberty Four scenario is the most vibrant option.\n\nFor a while I wondered if the four might be also other characters: for\nexample, the light/dark/petite/tall pair of Kip and Robin echoes the pair\nCandy and the witch (with the reversal that Candy is the tall blonde one).\nBut no, this would be impossible with implosions going on.  Which is why\neach of the five (Little Ozzie, too) must repeat everything exactly: they\nbecome the \"architects of Oz\" through this.\n\n(Well wait: does that mean that they are both microverse [the course of the\nreenactment] and Liberty Four [the second epilogue], rather than an\neither/or?  Could be.)\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}