Requiem for a mermaid

Robert Borski · 23 Feb 2001, 12:34 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: "Robert Borski" <rborski at charter.net>
Subject: (whorl) Requiem for a mermaid
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 12:34:53
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0343 at digest.urth.net>
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No one seems to have liked my Kypris-Seawrack theory, so I've done a bit of
retooling and have come up with the following alternative:

Seawrack is driven from her underwater home by the Mother ("Time to leave
the nest, darling"), has an arm immediately amputated, is then sexually
assaulted by the surface-dweller she's been given over to (although this is
not his fault, right? "Honest, officer, the bitch's singing made me do it,
and she wouldn't shut up"), and then is abandoned by this same man after
coming to see him as her best--and possibly only--protector in a world
filled with hurt and violence.

Then a couple of years later when this same man--or maybe it's not the same
man, he sort of  looks the same, but he seems to have undergone radical
changes in personality and is missing an eye--wants to take her away from
the only world she's ever known and go off on some long-ass star junket to
the-Outsider-knows-where, once again the Mother compels her to join him,
along with his wife, pet, and former robot teacher (can anyone say m=C3=A9n=
age =C3=A0
m=C3=A9nagerie?), and they all live happily after. The end.

In other words, the little fishy tramp gets just what she deserves.

Harrump. Given this sort of brutalization, small wonder Wolfe gets thumbs
down from so many feminists.

And yet this seems to be the version most of you prefer. Go figure.

Robert Borski

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