{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1140",
    "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": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1140,
    "subject": "This little Piggie had roast hus for dinner",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-02-12T15:10:58+00:00",
    "last": "2001-02-12T15:10:58+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0195@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at charter.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-02-12T15:10:58+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) This little Piggie had roast hus for dinner",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "For a long time now, and well before the publication of RTTW, I've been\nwondering if there might be a connection between Babbie the hus and the\nblind giant known as Pig. Part of this was based on the similarities of\nBabbie to Babe, the talking (lower case) pig of cinematic fame; both speak\nin their own fashion and are of unusual intelligence, and the hus, I always\nfelt, was meant to be seen as porcine. The hus-Pig connection was then\nfurther reinforced by GW himself, who told me that hus was actually short\nfor hushog (at least originally), and since the last three letters of this\nare a perfect synonym for 'pig,' it's somewhat easier to equate the two. And\nthen there's the loving nature of Horn's relationship to both man and beast,\neach in his own way being a friend and boon companion to Horn while he's on\nthe road and water having his various adventures.\n\nAfter having read RTTW, I'm now even more convinced that my original\nsupposition is true. Certainly, GW seems to want to suggest this (almost as\nmuch as he does the notion that Horn may be an inhumu), so let me take you\nthrough the particulars.\n\n[This post also presumes you've read my first two Piggie posts, which argue\nthat Pas's blind son Tartaros has been downloaded into godling Pig.]\n\nA number of times in the narrative both Pig and Babbie are described as\nhaving thick black nails. E.g., \"[Pig] was standing at the ambion, his thick\nblack nails seeming to stab at its carven sides.\" And: \"Babbie himself\nsimply rose to obey, thick black claws clicking along the deck very much as\nthey used to when the two of us were sole occupants of my little sloop.\"\n\nIn a dream that Horn has, \"Pig was seated in the stern, his hand upon the\ntiller and Oreb on his shoulder.\" This parallels a scene in OBW where Babbie\nmans the tiller.\n\nBabbie has grown since his earlier days with Horn, prompting Vadsig to say,\n\"Never a hus so big I see.\" Compare this with Pig's giant nature.\n\nPig has no particular bestial features (other than his thick black nails\nperhaps), but the godling who picks up Horn has \"tiny eyes, nostrils like\nthe lairs of two beasts, and a cavernous mouth,\" plus \"bestial, pointed\nears.\" The \"tiny eyes\" aspects will become more important shortly.\n\nThe gods of Mainframe, we are told, can go into animals, and have done so to\nescape Pas's angry wrath. It seems rather parsimonious of Wolfe to only show\none example of this (Scylla as Oreb).\n\nBut perhaps the strongest evidence for a Pig-Babbie link comes when Horn\ngoes back to the Red Sun Whorl with Scylla, Hoof, and Juganu. Babbie is\npresent in the boat when they dream-jump, but rather than stay behind as\nHorn intended, Babbie appears as \"a hairy man with thick arms and real big\nshoulders, and glasses, and a couple of Babbie's eyes (the little ones).\"\nHorn, in fact, does not even recognize him; but the transformation is very\nsimilar to the process that Oreb undergoes in both this and previous jumps.\nIn fact, it was these same transformations that led me earlier to conclude\nthat Oreb was possessed by Scylla--an idea that was roundly dismissed by\nalmost everyone here except mantis. Babbie's hairiness, thick arms, and real\nbig shoulders match up similarly with giant, hirsute Pig. Babbie cannot talk\nhere, but this may be because Horn cannot imagine him so (\"Are you really my\nold master? This was said with Babbie's eyes; it is the only way he has of\ntalking.\"). But what's really odd and distinctive in the above description\nare \"the glasses\" and \"Babbie's eyes (the little ones).\" This implies, to\nme, _four_ eyes, which may or may not be an attribute of the Neighbors\n(similarly the expression, \"By Pas's bright four eyes,\" if you buy my\nPas-as-Neighbor theory.) \"The little ones\" recall the \"tiny eyes\" of the\ngodling who picked up Horn, and the glasses may well represent on a\nsymbolic--or possibly prosthetic--level how Pig is able to navigate so\nthoroughly in the dark. Pig claims he can tell what's ahead by feeling it on\nhis \"clock,\" meaning face, but there may be some correlation here between\n\"clock\" and \"glass.\" Horn also looks in the dream whorl more like the Horn\nthat Hoof remembers, while Scylla finally assumes her Cilinia form,\nsplitting off from Oreb; I therefore don't think it's unreasonable to argue\nthat the hairy, man-shaped, four-eyed Babbie is more reflective of his truer\nnature--that of hus + Pig.\n\nDoes this mean I believe that Tartaros/Pig has downloaded himself into Pig\nthe same way that Scylla has gone into Oreb? I think this is certainly one\nvalid interpretation. But the theory I prefer is another one that has been\nroundly dismissed--that Babbie is actually a Neighbor. We do not know if the\nNeighbors can shape-change, but given that their programmed bio-weapons, the\ninhumi, can, I don't think it's that big of a stretch to imagine so (they\nmay also be able to bilocate in dreams like the inhumi, and this same\npluriprescence is seen in the gods of Mainframe). This helps resolve the\nfour-eyed aspect of Babbie's dream avatar, as well as the very curious\ninitial observation that Horn makes about Babbie, who's only half-grown and\nthe size of a large dog, but who at first glance, just before he jumps from\nMucor's rock, looks like \"a cluster of boys, or two men upon their hands and\nknees.\"\n\nBut what the heck is Tartaros--if he's either Pig or Babbie, or both--trying\nto accomplish with all of these outré manifestations?\n\nStay tuned.\n\n(Note to Adam Stephanides about Pig's cut-out eyes. When Horn looks at where\nPig's eyes should be, he sees \"Widely-spaced holes like the eyes in the\nskull stared at nothing.\" This is not inconsistent with a person born\nwithout eyes (as opposed to, say, blindness caused by optic nerve damage).\nIn fact, given one person who was born without eyes and another whose eyes\nwere physically removed, it may not be possible to tell the difference given\nproper healing time for the latter. But even above and apart from this, look\nat what Tartaros says at one time in CALDE OF THE LONG SUN: \"What your\naugurs and sibyls see, if they see anything, is the self-image of the god\nwho chooses to be seen.\" It could be that Tartaros's self-image includes\neither no eyes or cut-out eyes. He is, after all, as he describes himself,\n\"the only unwilling god,\" and cannot heal himself--although it's hard to see\nwhy his computer-scanned personna couldn't, unless it's written into his\nprogramming or forbidden by Pas.)\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}