{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/481",
    "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": 481,
    "subject": "Severian's Humanity",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-04-07T18:31:10+00:00",
    "last": "1998-04-08T00:11:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0009-0722@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Terence Nickolette",
        "address": "terrynick at centuryinter.net"
      },
      "date": "1998-04-07T18:31:10+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Severian's Humanity",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Sorry for the error in my last post.  Let me complete my thought:\n\n\u0000From a practical, perhaps male, point of view, Severian didn't need to\nreturn to the whorehouse.  He had his trysts with Thecla in her cell.  It\nwas painful because he didn't like the idea of Thecla as a object.  The\nmemory was painful because he had come to know her person in her cell.\n\nSeverian is shockingly matter of fact about the pain he inflicts. Which\nleads me to ask if there has been any discussion of the emotional, inner\njourney that Severian travels in the BOTNS.  When does he find his humanity?\nI would say it starts to develop when he finds and cares for Triskele.  But\nthen we see him strutting for the crowd when he severs heads in Saltus.  He\nseems cruel and unfeeling towards Dorcus when he beds Jolenta and later\nCyriaca.\n\nWandering in the mountain wilderness after Typhon kills little Severian\nseems to me to be a turning point for Severian.  \n\n\nTerry Nickolette"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0009-0723@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-04-08T00:11:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Severian's Humanity",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0009-0722@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #6224292 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET#\n\nTerry Nickolette,\n\nWe might better call this \"Severian's sense of Mercy\"; but even so,\nit is (still) a tangle.  Each act Severian performs can be qualified.\n\nSeverian's relationship with Triskele is that of human and animal.\nSeverian's \"mercy\" in giving Thecla a knife, while on the one hand a\ntestament of his love being so great that he would go against his own\nguild, is largely a result of his spiteful desire to avenge himself\nof her \"inadequate\" degree of love for him.  Severian's release of\nCyriaca is less tainted.  Giving half a whetstone to the Green Man is\nrelatively clean mercy.  Severian's lack of mercy is instrumental in\ngetting little Severian's family killed.  (In the same sort of pattern\nthat leads to Valeria being killed.)\n\nBut when he gets inside the castle of Baldanders and sees the\nvivisectioned woman, he himself notes the change within himself.  So\nthis is a benchmark of sorts.\n\nIt seems much easier for Severian to use the Claw on strangers; he\nprudently (and masterfully) avoids killing such clear and present\nenemies as Agia; yet people closer to his heart have a much harder\ntime--another reason for Catherine to keep her distance (Merryn,\ntoo)!\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}