{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1200",
    "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": 1200,
    "subject": "This little Piggie went wee, wee, wee all the way to the stars",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-02-19T12:34:03+00:00",
    "last": "2001-02-19T12:34:03+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0300@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at charter.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-02-19T12:34:03+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) This little Piggie went wee, wee, wee all the way to the stars",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Whatever happens to the entity I see variously as Pig, Babbie, or Tartaros?\nGiven the multivalent and/or composite nature of many of the characters in\nSHORT SUN, this may not be all that easy a question to answer.\n\nPig, when last seen (and when he at last sees us), is recovering in the\npost-operative bay of the West Pole. Possibly, he is still aboard the Whorl\nwhen it relaunches. If so, his godling status may confer upon him additional\nbenefits, as well as responsibilities. He might also join the newly-returned\npaterfamilias of Mainframe, Passilk, sitting at his right hand as the loyal\nson he has always been. As Pig notes earlier, \"'Tis me h'only kin.\"'\n\nBut what if Pig/Tartaros has returned to Blue in Babbie form? Wolfe very\ncryptically has Daisy note Babbie's presence at the novel's end with \"the\ntall, white-haired man Hoof and his brother call Father\"; the hus, she tells\nus, is carrying two sacks of supplies on his shoulders. But in the final\nparagraph, when Daisy notes who's aboard the relaunched Whorl, she cites\nonly Silk, Seawrack, Nettle, Maytera Marble, and Oreb. Are we thus to assume\nthat Babbie never joined the starfarers on their new journey?\n\nThe answer, I believe, lies in Mucor. Babbie, when we first meet him, has\nbeen given to Mucor by the captain of a foreign boat. (in my opinion Captain\nPassilk of the good ship Whorl). Later, after he's abandoned by Horn in\nPajarocu, he returns to her, and after Hornsilk returns to New Viron, he\nonce again absents himself to visit Mucor's rock.\n\nThen when we have the Tartaros angle. At Blood's mansion Mucor manifests\nhimself to the blind godling and he is stunned by her beauty. As he tells\nHorn, \"Bonnie she was, bucky. Beautiful ter me, ter auld Pig.\" Of course,\nhe's never seen another woman. (I'll avoid the obvious eye-of-the-beholder\njoke.)\n\nSo doesn't it seem likely that Babbie/Pig has gone back to Mucor, as much\nthe Odyssean figure as Horn and Passilk--only instead of settling for\nPenelope, deciding to spend the rest of his days with Blue's equivalent of\nCirce?\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}