(urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

[Gerry Quinn]

From: David Stockhoff 

> On 12/16/2011 5:16 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:

> > > The Sidhe were always associated with barrows. Other, more literary and
> > > Victorian fairies tend to disdain burial mounds and live in glens. Yet
> > > others are matronly women who live in cottages, while others dwell in
> > > shining towers. Perhaps this confuses you. It confused me until I
> > > realized that the literature of fairies, like that of the gods, is
> > > complex and contradictory and is derived from many different sources 
> > > and has been put to many different uses.
But I wasn’t confused.  Whatever my state of literacy, I was well aware that faerie lore is nebulous and contradictory.

> > In which case demanding that I express my thoughts on what an amnesiac 
> > Neighbour consciousness inserted into a human body might sense as odd 
> > in terms of fairies, rather than what we know of the Neighbours, is a 
> > bit stupid, isn’t it? Given that the sort of fairies they were 
> > supposed to like was not ever defined. Yet you even demanded 
> > references to literature about fairies.

> I asked you to cite any evidence outside your own head.

What *actually* happened is that I made a few suggestions about what such an amnesiac Neighbour would see as odd:  I suggested, for example, that having only four limbs might seem strange to him.  I mentioned an affinity with trees.  I based my suggestions on what we know about Neighbours, which is admittedly slight.

You then jumped down my throat and started babbling about Faerie and demanding references.  Let me quote a direct exchange from that thread (a while after I had made my suggestions about what an amnesiac Neighbour in a human body might feel):

******************************************************
Me [trying to talk about Neighbours, and replying to your accusation that I made up my suggestions about multiple limbs and affinity with trees out of my head]
> > You've been going on about Faerie. Everyone agrees they [Neighbours] like trees 
> > (Mark thinks they ARE trees). The Neighbours seem to live in an 
> > adjacent dimension. They have eight limbs. Is your question serious?

You:
> Where is the evidence that people who hang with fairies like trees, see 
> other dimensions, and feel like limbs are missing? The page numbers 
> don't need to be in BSS. I have read about Faerie from age 7 through 
> graduate school and these are not familiar to me. Show me.
*************************************************************

How do people expect me to respond to this kind of stuff?  I’m fine with the notion that Neighbours share some characteristics with fairies [they share not specific characteristics so much, I think, as a certain kind of mystery].  But what you say has no relation to Neighbours or what I was saying or even to James’s original proposal, which was *nothing whatsoever* to do with “people who hang with fairies”.  What people are you even talking about?

It’s the same on this new thread.  We start discussing swords and sorcery and high fantasy in BotNS, genres to which most people agree it has overt resonances.  Lee said that it was magic swords and giants and sleeping beauties that told him what kind of story BotNS is, presumably meaning that it has elements of fairy stories.  I pointed out that some of the connections are tenuous and the logic of fairy tales is likely to be of limited application in understanding BotNS.  Then you jumped in and started talking about Faeries (Faerie lore is *not* the same genre as fairy-tales, incidentally, and even you admit that BotNs is thin on fairies anyway) and pretty soon you were insulting me again when I didn’t agree with you.

If something in the body of Faerie-related literature with which you are familiar is relevant to BotNS, why not post it, rather than gibber insults?

- Gerry Quinn
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