{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/72",
    "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": 72,
    "subject": "Mint",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-02-05T09:58:41+00:00",
    "last": "1997-02-05T09:58:41+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0002-0114@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "David_Lebling",
        "address": "david_lebling at avid.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-02-05T09:58:41+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Mint",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I'll definitely have to spend some time carefully reading all the recent\nposts before replying in detail; there's a lot to absorb.  I hope I can\nfind the time!\n\nIn the meantime, I'd like to take up the question of Maytera Mint, aka\nGeneral Mint, aka the Sword of Echidna.\n\nFirst, let me reassure Algae that Mint was not possessed by Echidna,\ncognomen aside.  When Echidna's theophany begins, Mint is described as\nadvancing \"head bowed.\"  When Echidna calls on her, she \"barely nods.\"\nIn short, she doesn't look at the Window.  In her previous theophany (of\nKypris), she looks away from the Window and thus only gets partly\npossessed.  Kypris wonders later about the effect of this partial\ndownload; it's enough to make her a superb general and masterful\npolitician -- Mainframe knows what a full download would have done!\n\nIn any case, Mint is very interesting. She has an unrevealed past which\nwe learn tantalizing bits about.  For example, she refers to at least\nfive major things she gave up or renounced, presumably to become a\nsibyl.  This occurs during the Kypris theophany, when she looks away\nfrom the image of Kypris _because it looks too much like her_.\n\nBut wait, Mint is a small, apparently mousy woman. In the Grand\nManteion, we get to be Peeping Toms as she changes clothes, and she is\nvery critical of her body and her appearance; but she remarks that once\nshe was called beautiful.  She's repeatedly described as shy, quiet, and\nwithdrawn.\n\nAt one point Marble implies that some great sadness or other terrible\nexperience lies in her past.  It can't be overtly sexual, otherwise she\nwould not be able to see the goddesses.  She cannot, for example, be\nAuk's mother (something people seem to hint at now and then).  She's too\nyoung in the first place, she would no longer be a virgin in the second,\nand third, such references were metaphorical anyway.\n\nWhat lies in Mint's past?\n\nWhat did she renounce?\n\nOf all the characters in _Long Sun_, she is the one who changes the most\nin the course of the story.  Auk may become more responsible, but from\nthe start we know he's a good guy at heart.  Silk changes allegiance\nfrom a set of trumpery gods and goddesses to a real one, but otherwise\nis the same Silk.\n\n     Dave\n     (david_lebling at avid.com)\n\nQuestions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}