{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1509", "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": 1509, "subject": "Salica's first story", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-01-02T01:59:30+00:00", "last": "2002-01-02T20:30:10+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "maa32", "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu" }, "date": "2002-01-02T01:59:30+00:00", "subject": "Salica's first story", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Have we been able to account for the presence of the strego with the talking \nbird in Inclito's mother's first story? What does that story reflect in the \nwork as a whole? Here is my association, if anybody has any ideas I'd love to \ngo over them.\n\nIn the story, a bunch of husbands are killed by a fang in a boot long after \nthe original grave desecrator has been destroyed. The moral seemed to be that \nwhile all the men resembled the first husband to Salica, to the first \nhusband's ghost they resembled the evil suitor; therefore, that while \neveryone thinks the narrator resembles Silk, he thinks he is someone else. I \nwould like to go deeper than that.\n\nThe names of the suitor's in translation are weird:\nthey mean Helmet, Soldier, Joy, Solemnity, etc., and Silk and Oreb seem to be \nin it. Ok. Where do helmets, soldiers, and figures of Joy and Solemnity \noccur in one scene elsewhere in the text?\n\nWell, it seems to me that all these figures are joined in Return to the Whorl \nwhen Pig, Silk, and Hound study the statues of the gods. In it, Sphigx is \nrepresented by a helmet and it is explained at great length that this is to \nconceal her from the Trivigaunti, who habitually destroy her image. The gods \nthat are discussed at length are Feasting Phea (joy), Molpe (sorrow), and \nQuadrifons, as well as Scylla through Oreb and Pas through Silver or Silent \nSilk. And Pig was a soldier. How does Salica's story reveal anything about \nthe situation of the gods? In it, we learn that someone is striking from \nbeyond the grave (and in the other scene, we learn that Heirax, the god of \ndeath, is dead). \nWe know that a significant portion of Silk is trapped in Pig and cannot be \nreturned to Mainframe until Pig gets an eye back. We know that Scylla wants to \nget to \"Blue Mainframe\". In the story, the Strego warns Casco not to strike \nat the grave. Does Silk need to get back to Pas to stop a desecration from \noccuring? Or does he need to get back so that he can send his spirit into the \nbody of Silk, from which Silk's original spirit has been displaced by his \ntragedy and replaced by all that remains of Horn? (Unless Horn's spirit enters \nBabbie - off the immediate subject: have we figured out who the two fanged \n(\"with fangs bigger than a man's wrist\") green mankiller that approaches the \nnarrator in several passages in the last two books actually was? the \ndescription of Babbie in Return to the Whorl with huge tusks thicker than a \nman's wrist seems to parallel that description very strangely. And how do we \naccount for the passage at the very end of On Blue's Waters where the narrator \nseems to be Babbie?)\n\nMarc Aramini" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2002-01-02T20:30:10+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Salica's first story", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, 1 Jan 2002, maa32 wrote:\nHave we been able to account for the presence of the strego with the talking \nbird in Inclito's mother's first story? What does that story reflect in the \nwork as a whole? Here is my association, if anybody has any ideas I'd love to \ngo over them." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In addition to your interesting connections, the strego is an excuse for\nIncanto to explain the difference between believing in ghosts, believing\nin witches, and believing in witchcraft.\n\nIt also helps us see how uncanny Incanto appears to the citizens of\nBlanko.\n\n-Rostrum" } ] } ] }