{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1504",
    "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": 1504,
    "subject": "spys in Short Sun",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-12-25T16:33:05+00:00",
    "last": "2001-12-25T16:33:05+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0013-whorl.v012.n175.4@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "maa32",
        "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu"
      },
      "date": "2001-12-25T16:33:05+00:00",
      "subject": "spys in Short Sun",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Please forgive me if this post repeats older material and rips off anyone's \nideas.  The computer I am working on now is so painfully slow that to review \nthe archives would take a million years.  As I was re-reading the Book of the \nShort Sun, it struck me that the individual events that make up the text \ninvolve female spys working to subvert peace and order.  In the first book, \nI'm sure we've discussed how Evensong (Chota) was probably a spy for Han, \nsince she was upset when called the Man of Han's woman, and then tried to find \nall about the inhuma when the narrator escaped with her (after she got a \"boat \nfor a single spy\").  Fava and Mora where spies, and in Return to the Whorl the \ndream the narrator has in Chapter 4 involves Spider, the spy catcher, saying \nthat it's all dirt, and has Fava and Mora pointing down at Hyacinth, obviously \nimplicated as a spy at this point due to her lesbian relationship on the \nTriviguante Ship in Exodus from the Long Sun.  These females form a long line \nof spies that permeate the text.  I think the most important distinction to \nmake is whether or not Seawrack is a spy for the Mother.  In On Blue's Waters, \nHorn posits the \"main riddle\" that the Mother may desire Seawrack to mingle \nwith mankind to be a better lure, a more effective bait, or something equally \nsinister.  \nIf all these spy subplots point to Seawrack as a spy (and the name Evensong \nsailing in a boat with the narrator tends to evoke images of Seawrack), then \nperhaps Silk's departure at the end of the Book of the Short Sun is a real \nsacrifice: he bites the bullet, takes the spy with him to remove her from the \nMother's employment permanently, thus destroying the Mother's eyes in the \nworld and blinding her, as he reversed the blindness of Pig and Maytera \nMarble.  (Vision is a big part of the Book, too.) Silk steals the siren and \nsaves the world from the evil machinations of Mother, a victory for men \neverywhere and a fine answer to \"fair young girls live to deceive you, sad \nexperience teaches me.\"\nOnce again, I have no idea how much of this has been discussed before since I \ndidn't read the books until the discussion had gone in a very different \ndirection and have been grossly negligent in reviewing the archives.  \nMarc Aramini"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}