Agia's Weapons

David Stockhoff · 21 Dec 2011, 20:46 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:46:36 -0500
Subject: (urth) Agia's Weapons
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W530595D5268BDDF7378EEDCFA50 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W530595D5268BDDF7378EEDCFA50 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4EF245AC.3090706 at verizon.net>

On 12/21/2011 3:18 PM, Lee Berman wrote:
>>> It would be as if Dionysus became aware of this new guy, Jesus coming up
>>> and decided to tempt him in the desert and make an ally of him or replace him
>>> or something like that.
>
>> David Stockhoff: As did Satan and Typhon, yes. But it's hard to see death as a form of
>> temptation. Do they seek to discover weakness they can turn to their advantage?
>
> Perhaps. If they managed to kill off Severian and prevent the New Sun from coming, I'm
> sure they wouldn't lament.  But I think they know he can't die. There will always be
> reality shift or time shift or eidolon-making or something from above (yep, deus ex
> machina) which will resurrect Severian.  Perhaps sometimes, as with Juturna, they hope to
> garner favor or loyalty by performing a (unneeded) rescue.

They SHOULD know, which makes their attempts to kill him inexplicable. 
The undines, OTOH, DID rescue him. And Hethor's worms failed to kill him 
at all. When he was rescued from the Autarch's flyer, what was gained? 
How do we tell a positive from a false positive?

I like your arrangement of temptations, and I'm sympathetic to a Plan 
that deploys them on a Hero. But then what about strangling 
Cyriaca---which temptation was that? "Following wrong orders" is not one 
of the seven deadly sins, is it?
>
> Trying to kill him isn't a form of temptation. I'd guess Agia (lust) or Dorcas (love)
> or Typhon (power) are the temptations. But I think the baboon guy was checking
> Severian's always-fatal avern wound to try to figure out how the heck he did that.
> Same with the Old Leech's presence. And perhaps Ceryx with his challenges to
> Severian. They want to learn what they can about his divine power.
>
>> Understood. What I'm missing is a definition of success for the Plan.
>
> My first thought on reading that was.."Plan? What Plan? Plan of Pas maybe?" But perhaps
> that is not really so far off the mark, eh?
>
> I would think the Plan of Inire is similar to the Plan of Pas- maintain the  little world
> which has been created for the purpose of entertaining the demiurge, pitting humans
> against each other in wars and tangled love affairs. Pas had a smaller stage to work with
> than Inire but both were after stasis and stifled growth and against evolution. They liked the
> nasty little world they had created and didn't want it washed away. Naturally this is
> allegory to our earth.

So success is stasis and no New Sun? but that means stopping Severian, 
which may mean killing him, distracting him, or perhaps just wearing him 
out. Yet the path he is one seems so over-buffered---he's not driven by 
any heroic goal and fails to do much more than survive, if that, and 
succeeds no matter what---it's hard to see what could stop him or turn 
him away. He falls toward "success"; he has almost no real choices; he 
merely behaves as well as he can.

This is what keeps me from seeing how Inire's goals could be much 
different from FBO's. I'd think a rebel Inire would have counseled 
against going to Yesod, but there is no mention of that. Nor does he 
seem to try to bend Severian to his own ends in any apparent way. He 
just keeps the machinery going behind the green curtain.

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