{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/806",
    "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": 806,
    "subject": "Caraboo-hoo",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-06-16T10:21:18+00:00",
    "last": "1998-06-16T12:01:45+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0014-0013@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1998-06-16T10:21:18+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Caraboo-hoo",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "William H. Ansley wrote:\nI really don't agree with the \"morphing carabao\" theory..."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Nor me. It's funny how any evidence for shape-shifting sort of melts\naway when you look at it closely, isn't it? (The one exception being the\nOld Wise One's mention of this ability - that's currently the only\nreason I think shape-shifting has anything to do with St Anne.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "It does seem as if there is some deeper meaning to this episode, but I\ndon't think that providing evidence of shape shifting is it."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "As you say, Marsch's cruelty seems to be significant, and the tears too.\nAnd why does Wolfe _keep_ showing us Marsch gunning down the local\nfauna? \n\nMy impression is that this is all meant to suggest that the animals of\nSt Anne might be \"people\" too. Not in the sense that they are all some\nsort of morphing alien race with a big SFx budget, but simply that on St\nAnne the distinction between human and animal is blurred. There are\nnumerous references to the Annese being just \"animals shaped like\npeople\", and also hints of the reverse. When VRT lists the \"people\" he\nused to see when living in the wilderness with his mother he includes\nanimals, birds, trees and Shadow Children as if there was no distinction\nbetween them at all. He, too, cries when the carabao is killed.\n\nThat would make all those other animals Marsch so cheerfully shoots\n\"people\" too. Sort of ironic, given that Marsch wants so badly to meet\nthe native Annese, no?"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0014-0024@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "adam louis stephanides",
        "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu"
      },
      "date": "1998-06-16T12:01:45+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Caraboo-hoo",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0014-0013@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Tue, 16 Jun 1998 Tony Ellis wrote:\nWilliam H. Ansley wrote:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "I really don't agree with the \"morphing carabao\" theory..."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Nor me. It's funny how any evidence for shape-shifting sort of melts\naway when you look at it closely, isn't it? (The one exception being the\nOld Wise One's mention of this ability - that's currently the only\nreason I think shape-shifting has anything to do with St Anne.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "And this occurs in a work of fiction by V.R.T.; we don't know if\nit reflects something he saw or thought he saw, is derived from Annese\nlore, or is his own extrapolation from Veil's Hypothesis."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "My impression is that this is all meant to suggest that the animals of\nSt Anne might be \"people\" too. Not in the sense that they are all some\nsort of morphing alien race with a big SFx budget, but simply that on St\nAnne the distinction between human and animal is blurred. There are\nnumerous references to the Annese being just \"animals shaped like\npeople\", and also hints of the reverse."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "There was a similar phenomenon in \"Tracking Song.\"  There, too, you had\ncharacters who were intelligent, and who looked like people, but whom\nother characters regarded as \"just animals,\" and quite cheerfully killed\nand even ate.\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}