Seawrack and the Mother

Sergei SOLOVIEV · 19 Sep 2012, 16:37 · from 2012-September.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: soloviev at irit.fr (Sergei SOLOVIEV)
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:37:48 +0200
Subject: (urth) Seawrack and the Mother
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W431C82044D0B67E26AEDBECF9B0 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W431C82044D0B67E26AEDBECF9B0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <5059F4DC.2020602 at irit.fr>

It's interesting that I mostly agree with this mail.

By the way, the creature you mention reminded me about
certain strange parallelism of Blue/Green world and the
world of Urth and its green moon (there were long discussions
of that, but I want to mention only one point here).

The creature seems to be related in some "metaphysical" way to Baldanders
after he became aquatic.

Sergei

Lee Berman wrote:
>   
>> Mark Millman: alternate hypothesis- The pirate ship is just that:  
>> a pirate ship....Horn's shot kills or knocks overboard the girl pirate, 
>> who (or whose body) is then used by the Mother to create Seawrack, her 
>> agent.
>>     
>
> At first glance I can see why this hypothesis seems more parsimonious.
> But I don't think it accounts for much that is in the text. Seawrack
> does seem to feed Horn two storylines. One jibes with Mark's hypothesis-
> that she was born a regular human and adopted by the Mother. But so much
> else of what Seawrack says suggests she has spent most/all of her life with 
> the Mother, eating fish and drowned sailors, being cloistered and comforted
> within her massive body.
>
> If Mark's hypothesis was correct, all that backstory, maternal connection
> and sense of child development would have had to take place in the space of 
> the few days between when the pirate girl was shot and Seawrack joins Horn. 
> Not to mention that in the same short time, the Mother would have had to revamp
> the girl's body to possess working gills and imbue her with mystic singing
> abilities and superhuman swimming abilities. If she could do all that in a
> few days, why not also grow back Seawrack's arm?
>
> Horn pointedly notes how foreign and exotic Seawrack's face looks. I don't
> think she is from Whorl stock. Moreover, Horn speculates on how the Vanished
> People must have worshipped this Mother/sea goddess. He says:
>
>   
>> She shaped herself, I believe, a woman of the Vanished People so that they
>> would love her. We are here now, and so she shaped for me a woman of my own 
>> race....
>>     
>
> I think all the above supports the hypothesis that the Mother grew Seawrack
> from the start rather than quickly reforming an existing human body. I feel 
> Mark's hypothesis serves mostly to undercut the idea that the pirate ship might 
> be akin to the Naviscaput. But why would you want to do that?
>
> The Naviscaput is associated with Abaia who seems to bud off undines who, like
> Seawrack, have siren and mermaid connotations. Why would you want to make an
> effort to ignore such a connection as that? I don't find the reality of the 
> pirate ship important enough to preserve in the face of that evidence.
>
> As far as Seawrack's real name, I think it is a great mystery. My best guess is
> that it is English/Latin wordplay on the part of Wolfe. I think the similar-
> sounding name Wolfe is hinting at is "Siren" or "Sirenia" (the genus name of
> manatees). It makes sense that Vironese Horn would find either incomprehensible 
> and give her a seaweed plant name which sounds similar.
>
>   
>> Marc Aramini: Does the four armed thing come up AFTER the pirate girl falls in the 
>> water? 
>>     
>
> Fairly long after. Horn's hypothesis is that the multi-limbed crusted thing is a
> Neighbor something along the lines of Midas. A god gave him a curse disguised
> as a blessing in the form of eternal life. Horn invites us to come up with a
> better theory. I have one (not sure if it is better)- perhaps this is the 
> "woman of the Vanished People" that the Mother previously formed to seduce
> them.
>
> The creature is far stronger than Babbie but seems afraid of the storm.  It
> apparently responds to Seawrack's instructions to leave them alone. Because 
> she is the Mother's agent? Not sure which hypothesis that supports. Maybe mine. 
> I dunno.
>
>   		 	   		  
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net