{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1316",
    "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": 1316,
    "subject": "The Secret: Shame?",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-04-03T16:02:17+00:00",
    "last": "2001-04-03T16:02:17+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0530@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Straight",
        "address": "straight at email.unc.edu"
      },
      "date": "2001-04-03T16:02:17+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) The Secret: Shame?",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Could it be that when Horn talks of the secret returning the inhumi to the\nvermin they once were that he is speaking metaphorically?  \n\nHumans currently view the inhumi as intelligent, dangerous enemies and\npredators, but what if they knew that they are \"really\" just reptiles who\nderive their intellegence from human blood.  They would perhaps see them\nas vermin that merely mimick intellegence.\n\nAll of the inhumi that hang around Horn seem very insecure and unsettled\nabout their identity--they want to be human, they want other humans to see\nthem as human.  Perhaps the reason they are so desperate that Horn not\nreveal their secret is that it would be intolerable that humans know what\nthey really are.  Perhaps it would be so demoralizing that they would be\nless effective predators, but maybe the real threat is not so much tipping\nthe balance in the humans vs. inhumi struggle as shattering their fragile\nidentities.\n\nKrait affects a superior attitude toward Horn, talking of him as cattle,\nbut if he feels as Jahlee, Fava, and Juganu did, then that is surely a\nfront for his insecurity.  How different might their relationship have\nbeen if Horn had known from the start that Krait would be an unthinking\nbeast if not for Sinew's blood and that Krait was continually tormented by\nbeing almost but not quite human.\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}