{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3818", "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": 3818, "subject": "DOORS: Tina's sense of daddies", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2003-01-28T16:15:46+00:00", "last": "2003-01-28T19:40:28+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2003-01-28T16:15:46+00:00", "subject": "(urth) DOORS: Tina's sense of daddies", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Spectacled Bear wrote:\nBut the really interesting question about Tina, that I have not seen\naddressed before, is: how does she know about Daddies? For his birthday,\n\"Didn't Mama and Daddy give you anything?\" (p228) Green hasn't seen his\nfather for years, but Tina says his father still loves him. \"I know about\nDaddies, though. And you don't.\" And so on. Where in the world - in which\nworld - did she learn about Daddies?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That is one of the funnier and puzzling bits (I could've sworn Roy Lackey\nwas complaining about Tina's Daddy knowledge as being a weird\nbending/blending of the worlds where there should be no blending, but\nlooking over the messages I can't seem to find it).\n\nWhat I find especially interesting is that Tina almost seems to be talking\nin terms of heavenly fathers. She also did that riff on the Christian God\nthat made Roy distracted, and her talk of Daddies seems to me to be\ncontinuing in the same vein. So when she insists that Green's daddy loves\nhim, it seems as though she is saying that everybody's (dead) daddy is\nlooking down from heaven and/or the north pole, and all (dead) daddies love\ntheir children (who they never see in the flesh). That is: in Otherworld,\nall children are the product of a personal human sacrifice; the culture may\nhave come up with a way to include the father ghost into the family unit\nthrough inclusion at holidays (birthday's at least).\n\nIt gives an eerie hint of a sort of immediate ancestor worship, I think,\nand finds strange echoes with Christmas Santa Claus, etc.\n\nThis thread is not validated when Tina calls Klamm \"Pappa.\" (Thanks to Roy\nfor reminding us of that additional twist.) But I think her action does\nfeed into the \"Santa Claus\" aspect, especially with regard to the desk.\nKlamm readily fills in Green on his behind the scenes activities (the\nstrange man in Green's apartment, etc.). The surprise arrival of the desk\nis supposedly due to the woman changing heart and/or the presence of the\n\"mail root\" talisman -- we automatically discount Tina's promise \"I'll tell\nDaddy [you want the desk as a present],\" and yet, what if she =did= tell\nDaddy Klamm? This turns out to be the most non-fantastical explanation of\nall.\n\nFWIW I've started reading WILL, and the author's introduction has a small\nTAD payoff already: talk of soldiers who can stand up to interrogation,\nwhich is very much like North's written confession when he explains that he\nkilled Applewood because he knew he would break under interrogation.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Spectacled Bear", "address": "spectacled.bear at pobox.com" }, "date": "2003-01-28T19:40:28+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) DOORS: Tina's sense of daddies", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 16:15 2003-01-28, Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:\nSpectacled Bear wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "But the really interesting question about Tina, that I have not seen\naddressed before, is: how does she know about Daddies? For his birthday,\n\"Didn't Mama and Daddy give you anything?\" (p228) Green hasn't seen his\nfather for years, but Tina says his father still loves him. \"I know about\nDaddies, though. And you don't.\" And so on. Where in the world - in which\nworld - did she learn about Daddies?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That is one of the funnier and puzzling bits (I could've sworn Roy Lackey\nwas complaining about Tina's Daddy knowledge as being a weird\nbending/blending of the worlds where there should be no blending, but\nlooking over the messages I can't seem to find it)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Roy said: \"Given the necessarily limited amount of memory available in\na mechanical doll, I don't think it would be expended on a person the\nchild could never know.\" - which I would agree with." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "What I find especially interesting is that Tina almost seems to be talking\nin terms of heavenly fathers." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is an interesting suggestion, but looking at it again, I still\ncan't see it anything about that conversation to suggest it. Tina asks\nif he sent his dad a birthday present. It's all very matter-of-fact and\nliteral-sounding." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " She also did that riff on the Christian God\nthat made Roy distracted" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"You're a jealous god, like the one they talk about.\" That one?\nI wondered about that too." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "It gives an eerie hint of a sort of immediate ancestor worship, I think,\nand finds strange echoes with Christmas Santa Claus, etc." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Fanny talks about \"Yule\". Does anyone from the Other world refer to\n\"Christmas\"? Tina does, when the desk arrives.\n\nOur world has robot kits and self-flying aeroplanes, Christmas,\na jealous god, and Daddies with whom one can exchange birthday\npresents. These all suggest that Tina is from here, not There.\nIf that's true, is it significant? It could simply be to reconcile\nTina's abilities, needed for the story, with the technology levels\nin the two worlds. A high-tech Otherworld would give a different\nkind of story again." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This thread is not validated when Tina calls Klamm \"Pappa.\" (Thanks to Roy\nfor reminding us of that additional twist.) But I think her action does\nfeed into the \"Santa Claus\" aspect, especially with regard to the desk.\nKlamm readily fills in Green on his behind the scenes activities (the\nstrange man in Green's apartment, etc.). The surprise arrival of the desk\nis supposedly due to the woman changing heart and/or the presence of the\n\"mail root\" talisman -- we automatically discount Tina's promise \"I'll tell\nDaddy [you want the desk as a present],\" and yet, what if she =did= tell\nDaddy Klamm? This turns out to be the most non-fantastical explanation of\nall." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "She does say that - nd it *does* arrive! Not for his \"next birthday\",\nof course, and there's a note signed by Mrs Foster, complete with a\npoem by Kipling. It's very much the kind of letter Mrs Foster would\nwrite, not Klamm. And how would Tina communicate with him?\nBut a fascinating idea all the same, and too striking to brush off as a\ncommon coincidence. I really don't know what to think about that.\n\nSpectacled Bear." } ] } ] }