SS Stuff on a Monday

Michael Straight · 10 Apr 2001, 23:03 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (whorl) SS Stuff on a Monday
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 23:03:47
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0564 at digest.urth.net>
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On Mon, 9 Apr 2001, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

> Michael, no, your theory, attractive though it is (I love the idea of
> embarassing vampires to death...), simply doesn't fit with many of the=20
> Narr's statements about the nature of the SotI. While pricking them in
> the vanity might do any number of things to the Inhumi, causing them=20
> to become mindless leechagators is just _not_ a likely result.

My original theory was that the Narrator meant this metaphorically.  That
if humans knew what the inhumi were, then they would regard them as
mindless leechagators, rather than intellegent, possibly superior
predators.  The inhumi want to be taken for human, but they'll settle for
Count Dracula (judging from Krait's initial encounters with Horn) so long
as they don't have to be mere vampire bats.

On re-reading OBW, I see that the Rajan's words are hard to take
metaphorically (he talks about the inhumi possibly being better off as
mindless reptiles)--of course this is the same guy who claims to think
Silk might be living on Green or some other continent of Blue and who
claims to believe that hogwash about inhumi flying from Green to Blue, so
what does he know!

Seriously, it could be both: loving each other would mean the inhumi could
no longer prey on humans and would lose their intelligence, but the Rajan
also says that this is *not* the Secret that the inhumi are hunting him
for.  So the Secret could still be that they want to be human.

On Mon, 9 Apr 2001, Adam Stephanides wrote:

> 'Fraid not; your theory won't jibe with Horn's statement that the Secret =20
> "is a weapon too heavy for our hands," and that the Neighbors knew it,
> but could not wield it (IGJ, 125).  The humans on Blue are perfectly
> capable of saying to the inhumi "nyah, nyah, you aren't really
> human," and the Neighbors presumably could have done the same.=20

I take this to mean that the weapon is not too heavy to wield at all, but
too heavy to wield responsibly.  It would be too cruel (yes, more cruel
even than burying them alive--how many inhumi claim to prefer death to
abandoning the dreamwalking worlds where they seem fully human?) and
Silkhorn believes that by exercising such cruelty, humans would ultimately
harm themselves as well as the inhumi.

Further evidence: It is Hornsilk's harsh frustration of Juganu's desire to
experience human life on Urth that seems to lead to the inhumi attack. =20
Other inhumi he adopted and treated as human, and they seem to have loved
him in return, but he rubs Juganu's face in his inhumanity and it enrages
him. =20

-Rostrum

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