{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/205",
    "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": 205,
    "subject": "Zany Outsider theory",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-04-14T09:14:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-04-14T09:14:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0004-0053@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "David Wells",
        "address": "adw at ovum.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-04-14T09:14:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Zany Outsider theory",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "While we were waiting for Exodus to be published, one of my colleagues \nsuggested an idea about the identity of the Outsider which is very different \nfrom the \"conventional\" one most often discussed here. His argument went \nlike this:\n     1) What is the most salient feature of the Outsider? That he is \n\"outside\" Mainframe.\n     2) What does the Outsider _do_? He enlightens Silk, which leads him on \na path towards fulfilling the Plan of... Hmmm...\n     3) Which of the Gods is \"outside\" mainframe and, presumably, trying his \nbest to get back in and fulfil his Plan..\nThis idea also adds another level to Silk's disillusionment with the false \nreligion he has hitherto followed. He abandons Pas' satirical idolotary to \nworship the True God, the Outsider, only to later discover... Oops! Testing \ntimes for any would-be messiah figure!\nYou could argue that it's said that the Outsider pre-dates the Whorl and \ncreated Mankind. But this is just a rumour, and just the sort of rumour you \nmight expect that old monomaniac Typhon to put about...\nFinally, I think it's amusing that this extremely bleak reading was \nsuggested to me, an atheist, by a keen amateur Catholic theologian.\n\nDavid W"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}