{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1295",
    "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": 1295,
    "subject": "Posession",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-03-28T09:11:21+00:00",
    "last": "2001-03-28T09:11:21+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0495@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Straight",
        "address": "straight at email.unc.edu"
      },
      "date": "2001-03-28T09:11:21+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Posession",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Yay!  Finally finished RTTW and wading through the archives and can post\nsome of my thoughts.  Y'all can put me in the camp that thinks this series\nis fabulous--I don't know if I can say which of the three books I liked\nbest, so I'll just say I really like them all, but I do have a few\nquibbles to go with the multitude of questions.\n\nThe oddest thing for me in this series is that Horn/Silk has a readilly\navailable model for understanding and explaining to others what has\nhappened to him.  Even if the end of RTTW convinces us it is the wrong\nmodel, I still don't see why Horn/Silk wouldn't use it.  I mean posession,\nof course, which Horn, Silk, and many of the folks he wishes would stop\ncalling him Silk have abundant experience with: Mucor, Mainframe Gods\nposessing people and animals, Mora et. al. posessing people via dreams,\nand what may offer an even closer parallel, bits of Maytera Rose in there\nwith Ms. Marble.\n\nGiven all this, it is astounding to me that Horn's persona, finding\nhimself in someone else's body, would not immediately see this as some\nform of posession, or that when trying to convince people who he is, he\nwouldn't explain what has happened to him in those terms.  Why wouldn't he\nsay to Calde Mint or Horn's family, \"I am Horn, this is not my body, but\nmy spirit has been transferred into this body, let me prove it's me by\ntelling you a bunch of stuff only Horn would know.\"  Mint and Hoof and\nHide and Nettle all ought to have a much easier time believing this than\nJohn Travolta's wife in Face/Off.\n\nFurthermore, in all the cases of posession we know of, the personality of\nthe host body is still in there somewhere.  Horn shows particular concern\nfor Hide's fiancee when Mora et.al. are posessing her, and seems only\npartly relieved when she claims to have befriended this legion.  Yet he\nshows no concern for the persona in whose body he's trespassing.  Perhaps\nthis is more of the Silky \"do as I say not as I do\" that others have\nnoticed, but it still seems out of character.\n\nI was going to concede that the end shows that Horn was not really\nposessing Silk's body, that it was really Silk all along with maybe some\nmemories and influence by Horn (at a minimum, Horn is the influence behind\nSilk writing the Book of the Short Sun).  But isn't this exactly like Silk\nposessing Pig?  Pig is still himself, but he's been changed by Silk,\nshares some of Silk's emotions, and Silk sometimes influences his actions.\n\nSo why doesn't Horn/Silk understand and explain himself this way?\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}