(urth) Mamelta is Kypris?

[Roy C. Lackey]

Crush quoted and wrote:
>Roy says:
>>While it's true that Kypris said that Hy looked much like she herself had
>>looked when she was a real woman, I wouldn't attach too much meaning to
it.
>> Iirc, Hy's tits were phony; who knows how much of her looks were
>artificial?
>>One thing she couldn't change was her height. Chenille said of her, "the
>top
>>of her head doesn't even hit my shoulder".
>
>I believe the "looks like I used to bit" refers to her black hair and maybe
>her eyes (I'll have to recheck that). Kypris used to look like Hy in the
>same way she used to look like Mint (thus her attempt to possess her). She
>looked like Hy in the same way and for the same reasons that Marble said
>*she* looked like Teasle or Dahlia with black short hair. Black short hair
>in both cases.

I'm not following you. Mint's hair was cut short, like a nun's, to
deliberately look unattractive to men. Hy was doing the opposite. The exact
quote from Kypris is: "I was there last night. Yes. But not for you. Only
because I play with Hy sometimes. Now she reminds me of the way I used to
be, but all that will be over soon. She's twenty-three." The "Now" implies
there was a time when Hy didn't look so much like her. Before the boob job
and whatever other cosmetic changes were made in a deliberate attempt by Hy
to conform her looks, so far as possible, with the image of the goddess she
saw in the monitor. She tried to do the same thing right after her wedding,
to apply cosmetics to her face in such a way as to suggest the shape of the
heart on her cheap wedding ring, with the assistance of the hotel monitor.

>>Mamelta, otoh, was a big girl. She was described by Silk as a "tall,
>>raven-haired woman".
>>If the silent woman in Silk's death vision, his biological mother, was
>>supposed to be a representation of the flesh-and-blood original of Kypris,
>>Typhon's mistress, what did Silk see? Was she short or tall?
>
>I'm pretty sure right now that the "souls" of people in the Mainframe
looked
>the way they saw *themselves.*  Tartaros had no form because he had no
>concept of his looks. He told Auk:
>*********************
>"What your augurs and sibyls see, if they see anything, is the self-image
of
>the god who chooses to be seen. You say that you could nearly make out the
>face of my father's concubine, her self as she imagines that self to
appear.
>I feel confident that it was a beautiful face. I have never meta any woman
>more secure in her own vanity. In the same fashion, we sound to them as we
>conceive our voices to sound...What you see [of me], Auk, is that part of
me
>which can be seen. That is to say, nothing, I came blind from the womb,
Auk,
>and because of it I am incapable of formulating a visual image for you.
>******************************
>
>It seems to me that the self-images of the divine modules must have been
>manipulated for Echidna or Typhon or Scylla to see themselves as monsters.
>But they could not be overhauled or implanted. Tartaros implies this just
>prior to this when he says that he could not be made to see even as a god.
>
>Is it the same for humans. I believe it is, even though I don't have an
>suitable *human* example. I do however have an example of a human *soul*:
in
>Jahlee.

You can't compare the "soul" of those transported by astral projection with
computer generated images. They are unrelated. I know you're not going to
try to tell me that Oreb saw himself as a thirteen-year-old girl when they
projected to Urth. That was Scylla in him, as we all know, and she didn't
transport looking like a monster. She looked like the kid she had been at
the time she was scanned.

>The Rajan is approached by a drunk woman from behind. He hears her
>voice and thinks it is Chenille.
>******************
>"They're y'are."
>I looked around at the swaying woman behind me and said, "Chenille?"
>"Tha' lady on Green? No, 's me." Jahlee dropped onto Auk's stool and leaned
>across the table on her hands. "Guesh my faish's not sho good, huh?"
>"Don't smile," I told here.
>"I won'. I'sh jush show hungry. I foun' thish woman in a alley."
>"Not so loud, please."
>"drank 'n drank, 'n I fell down 'n I knew I better shtop."
>~ RTTW pg 155
>***********************
>
>This is about as straightforward as you get for this kind of thing from
>Wolfe -- Jahlee's mother fed on Chenille.

Could you give me the textual foundation for that latter supposition?

>Chenille's soul is in Jahlee. She
>was drunk, she sounded just like Chenille when *she* was drunk. What does
>the soul in Jahlee look like?
>****************************
>I went over to watch Rigoglio, and in a moment more found Jahlee clinging
to
>me like the lianas, her body warm and damp with perspiration (as those of
>inhumi never are), and fragrant with some heavy, cloying scent. Long sorrel
>hair that proceeded from no wig draped us both like the vines of Silk's
>arbor. When I tried to free myself from her, she grinned at me. "I've got
>teeth here. Real teeth, Rajan. Adieu to my famous tight-lipped smile! Look
>what I can do now." She grinned again, more broadly than ever...Jahlee
>joined me there, naked still save for her long hair....I spoke to Hide.
>"Honesty compels me to tell you that Jahlee is not an inhuma at present.
She
>is a human being here, exactly as we are, and I believe for the same
>reason..."...[Hide said] "You really look a lot more like my real father
>here. You're taller than he was and older, but you look more like him than
>you used to."
>RTTW pg 315-320
>****************************
>
>Sorrel is reddish brown color. Chenille's hair, as Roy noted in his other
>post, was not red or reddish. It was dark. How dark I can't say right now;
>I don't believe black, but dark. But her image of herself was having
reddish
>hair mingled with dark brown roots. Sorrel.

You meant IGJ. This is how Silk described Chenille's hair: "her tightly
curled hair was the color of ripe raspberries." (NIGHTSIDE, chap. 10) He
also called it "fiery". The cat on the hilt of the dagger was "scarlet". I
don't think any woman's idealized self-image includes dark roots showing
under hair dyed her preferred color. And I've never seen a horse the color
of raspberries. I believe her hair was short as well as curly, not long like
Jahlee's in the above quote, but I'm not sure.


>Later the Rajan described Jahlee when she is an inhuma again:
>*******************************
>"The third member of our party is my daughter Jahlee. She is of medium
>height, red-haired and attractive, with a smooth almond-shaped face and a
>sly smile many find captivating."
>~ RTTW pg 20
>*********************************
>
>Is he describing her soul or the way the way she looks to others? Well, I
>don't think he considers an inhuma to be his daughter, so I think he
himself
>is describing her soul, but it may be one in the same. Likely it is.

He was describing her as she looked to any humans they encountered while
traveling, the same as other inhumi trying to pass as human. It was her
disguise, an illusion. And even then she wasn't tall, like Chenille. She
looked different at different times, as in Gaon and at the farmhouse.

>Sooo...what did Kypris/Silk's mother look like in the mainframe? She looked
>the way she saw herself. Not as she truly looked.

Do you really think there was a computer terminal under all that rubble,
probing a dead man's eyes and reading a dead man's thoughts, and sending the
data to Mainframe? Silk was dead, as all those present believed. The gods of
Mainframe have no power to raise the dead, and Quetzal said so. He didn't
believe the Outsider's powers to be any different from the computer gods. He
was wrong. Silk's resurrection was a miracle orchestrated by the Outsider.
His death vision came from the Outsider, not Mainframe. So the people Silk
saw in his death vision looked exactly as the Outsider portrayed them --
unless the Outsider deceived him.

-Roy