{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/892",
    "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": 892,
    "subject": "Scylla as Mother",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-08-01T14:36:44+00:00",
    "last": "2000-08-01T14:36:44+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0011-0030@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at charter.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-08-01T14:36:44+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Scylla as Mother",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Safely on the ground again, but backpedaling from an earlier position, I'd\nlike to now toss out the following notion: is it possible that the entity\nHorn and Seawrack call the Mother is actually Typhon's daughter Scylla? For\nstarters Wolfe gives her additional gloss in his Proper Names in the Text,\nreminding us that Scylla, in addition to being a frequent haunter of\nIncanto's dreams, is \"a sea-monster of the Red Sun Whorl\"; why provide this\ninformation if it's not to have some future bearing? Secondly, in the first\nof Incanto's dreams, Scylla is pictured *in red* (IGJ, 59). Compare this to\nthe Mother's first appearance in OBW, 153: \"The top of the speaker's head\nbroke the water, and she rose effortlessly until the oily swell reached no\nhigher than her waist. Like the face of Kypris seen in the glass of General\nSaba's airship it remains vivid today, the streaming form of a cowled woman\nrobed *in pulsing red,* a woman three times my own stature at least, with\nthe setting sun behind her.\" Horn subsequently sees what may be the Mother\ndescending into an underwater ship, and Seawrack, when asked earlier by Horn\nabout the boat she's come from, has responded, \"Down there.\" Plus there are\nnumerous times in OBW where Horn compares the Mother directly to Scylla:\ne.g., \"Soon I was to gaze upon the sea goddess of the Vanished People.\n*Perhaps she was Scylla in another form,* as Silk once confided to me that\nKypris was becoming another form of the Outsider.\" (156) Also: \"Having the\nsea, as we in Old Viron did not, the Neighbors had also a goddess of the\nsea. She may have been their water goddess as well, as Scylla is at home; I\ncannot say.\" (157)\n\nThis lends itself to a number of intriguing possibilities, of course.\nPerhaps Scylla, like the Whorl's Cargo, has made it to Blue, where in a\nspecially-designed-and-decanted body, she's attempting to exert new control\nover her former worshippers, perhaps even knowing about the coming merger of\nPassilk/Horn. Perhaps as well her pre-Whorl counterpart back on Urth has\nplayed a part in the nuturing of Seawrack, whose \"real\" mother, we've been\ntold, has drowned--could this have been during the tidal havoc wrought by\nthe coming of the New Sun? (Getting Seawrack to Blue may be no problem if\nthe Neighbors possess--as they seem to do--mirror-transport technology.)\nDoubtless, in RTTW, we'll find out more, but for the moment I'd like to\nsuggest this as an alternative to Horn's\nshe-must-be-the-sea-goddess-of-the-Vanished-People supposition.\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}