{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/999",
    "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": 999,
    "subject": "The Night Chough (Redux, Rebuttal)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-09-01T13:01:53+00:00",
    "last": "2000-09-01T13:01:53+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0011-0212@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at charter.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-09-01T13:01:53+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) The Night Chough (Redux, Rebuttal)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Winged Falcon writing:\n\n<On the subject of Oreb and the Night Chough, I'm with Alga all the way.\nClearly Scylla is speaking through Oreb as Mr. Borski says, but these are\njust as clearly isolated incidents.  All that is established in the story is\nsomething we knew before:  namely, that Oreb is sometimes ridden by a god.\nThat god, in my opinion, is not always Scylla.  In fact, I defy anyone to\nprove to me that Scylla has ever ridden Oreb before the occasions in this\nstory, or after it.>\n\nWell again I strongly disagree. Besides the two incidents I've already\nmentioned (the dream at the end of OBW where \"an angry and vindictive Scylla\ntalked like Oreb\" and the \"undulant arms\" of dwarfish Oreb during Green Trip\nII), I believe there's yet one other incident that shows Scylla is\nattempting to contact Horn/Silk through Incanto. This one comes at the end\nof Incanto's most vivid dream about Scylla yet (IGJ, 58-9). States Incanto:\n\nAt the end of each verse I read, I watched [Scylla] straining against the\npage with all ten arms. Very faintly I could hear her cry, \"Help! Help!\" And\nthen \"Beware! Beware!\" like the bird in Inclito's Mother's story. I woke\nup--or thought I did--but the printed Scylla was still with me, crying out,\n\"Help me! Help me!\"\n\nThe bird in Inclito's Mother's story belongs to a tall man and is deemed a\nfamiliare, just as Oreb has been earlier, with the tall man clearly being\neither Silk or Horn (Inclito's mother may be doing the same sort of memory\ndoctoring as all those old duffers on Urth who claimed to be pals with\nFechin).\n\nMy problem with the one-time only approach that you and alga advocate is\nthis: it does not account for why Scylla is riding Oreb during the events\nthat transpire in \"The Night Chough.\" Is it chance? Caprice? Ennui? An\naccident? Surely, Starling does not seem the sort of individual that would\ndraw the interest of Scalding Scylla? Oh thou inscrutable gods!\n\nThen again, look at the story's first four sentences, paying special\nattention to the third.\n\n******\n\nSilk was gone, the black bird reminded itself. There was no point in\nthinking about him.\n\nNo, it itself had gone.\n\nWhich was the same.\n\n******\n\nGiven that we know Oreb has been absent from Horn and Gaon for over a year,\nI believe this is what Wolfe means by \"it itself had gone,\" signifying\nOreb's temporary abandoning of Horn--perhaps to look for someone that might\nmore readily resemble Silk. Where better to look than the city named after\nSilk's homebase on the Whorl, New Viron (which makes you right after all,\nmantis). Here Oreb is ridden by Scylla not because she's looking for cheap\nthrills or doing the Nevermore schtick from Poe, but because she's looking\nfor Silk through Oreb, \"which was the same.\"\n\nCavilers, beware: with one more volume to come, I believe a lot of you are\ngoing to have to eat some major chough--er, crow.\n\nThen again, if I'm the one who winds up eating a bunch of feathers, perhaps\nI'll just fall that much more slowly next time I stumble.\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}