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Since I have been one of the most vociferous in promoting the old, now archived, messages, claiming that there is much fascinating discussion in them (though not denying that there is also much chaff), I thought that I should offer at list of a few topics that I found to be particularly memorable, or struck my fancy when I looked back over them. I have wanted to do this for quite some time (I first came up with the idea literally years ago), but it seems particularly pressing in light of the upcoming restriction of the archived messages to subscribers: My purpose in writing this is to advertise the excellent threads available in the archive, and thus offer anybody who sees a thread that catches their fancy the opportunity to ask that it be moved out (see Lee's post here; requests can be made here). (I admit to being greatly disappointed that the two threads that people requested be moved from the archive were not probing analyses of the YW universe, but "fluff" topics with no direct relevance to any of DD's works.)
Unfortunately, my original plans of providing a comprehensive survey of my picks of older topics have simply proved too daunting a proposition for getting this posted in a reasonable amount of time (and it's already running rather late to be truly effective in its second goal)—for me, with my perfectionist tendencies, the best is very often the enemy of the good (or even simply the existent), to quote Voltaire. Thus all I shall provide here are selecta from pretty much off the top of my head that I feel are definite high points of discussion and analysis on the forums or otherwise seem to be of wide interest (though I shall also include the results of a little systematic searching through the old messages I did a while ago)—this means that most of these are topics to which I have contributed, simply because I am apt to participate in discussion I find fascinating. But I encourage everyone to go and poke around through the archives themselves and post here about any topics they feel are worthy of renewed attention. Since, while there is plenty of chaff, as I noted above (particularly in the "Messages from the Forum Administrator" and "The Crossings" sections), there are surely more interesting threads than I mention here, and other people will doubtless have far different criteria for what constitutes an "interesting thread" than I do. Also note that I have provided copies of DD's answers to various questions from some very old posts here and various other members have listed some of the old posts they felt to be deserving of preservation here—none of those are duplicated in this list. (In both cases, the links do not work, due to the threads' having been moved, but you should be able to find all of them using the forums' search feature. Alternatively, you can simply replace the first number in the URL with 3691079384 if the message was originally in "The Playroom" section of the forums and with 4091079384 if it was originally in "The Books" section—at least this worked for me with all the ones I tried. [And there are presumably analogues for the other two sections, but I haven't bothered to figure them out.])
So, here's the list, with some glosses, to better advertise the topics (which, besides the first and last two, are in no particular order):
There is no higher payment that can be made must take pride of place, being in my estimation the most probing, insightful, and even at times most erudite topic on the forums. As its title suggests, it consists of various exegeses of Carl's 'price greater than life-price' statement in DW (and includes a vague hint from DD reported from a chat). It is one of my great sorrows that I have never found the time to complete my response to it to my satisfaction (see "the best being the enemy of the good," above), now over four years after I first started to draft it. And, as I had meant to say (among many, many other things, and may still do so at some time), all these speculations seem particularly relevant at present, given the Binding Oath from WH and the possibility of Nita's "becoming far less than human. Or far more..." in the blurb for AWOM. (I plan on saying more about this in a response to the first two chapters of AWOM, currently in progress.)
Mrs. Callahan's choice is perhaps a close second to "There is no higher payment that can be made" in depth of analysis—these sorts of topics must lend themselves to probing discussion. As the title suggests, it deals with the extent to which Betty Callahan's choice at the end of TWD is justified and plausible—i.e., whether it makes sense, given the YW universe's eschatology, or is simply an 'out' for DD. (I even think that the general idea of [vague TWD spoilers:] <span class="ev_code_white">"power from mortality" is at least tangentially related to the puzzle that's the subject of the above topic, and had planned on exploring this in my much-delayed reply-in-progress—cf. Betty's statement, "There's a power in what we are as mortal beings that even that One [i.e., the Lone Power; emphasis original] can't match. If we throw it away, we stop being human." and Earn and Healhra's "sacrific[ing] their mortality to undergo that Transformation by which mortals become gods" on Bluepeak from The Door into Shadow, which also makes an appearance [slightly reworded]</span> in "Parting Gifts." [DD has made the latter available for free download here, in case anyone hasn't already noticed.]) —Many thanks to spyells for bringing this thread to my attention by having it unarchived.
Power-Spotting explores quite a few of the guises in which the Powers may have appeared in Earth mythologies and religions.
The Manual discusses the various forms and physical appearances the Manual can take.
Timeline Issues contains the discussion attending the inception of Peter Murray's wonderful timeline. Unfortunately, the timeline is not currently available, due to his website's disappearance after his untimely death, but much of the discussion should still be quite informative with regards to the YW timeline, which ranges from 'mildly askew' to 'entangled like unto the Gordian knot.' Edit: The timeline is actually still available using the Wayback Machine here, though the CSS is messed up—thanks, Tui!
Foreshadowing is an interesting list of various instances foreshadowing members have found in the books.
Dangers of the Speech deals with what could happen if wizardry was misused, and the safeguards against such misuse.
"Do what the night tells you." contains some interesting speculation on homonyms and puns in the Speech.
The youngest wizards have the most power is mainly notable for PK's excellent post that ended the thread (and to which I link directly). See also the Debts thread, which quickly veers off into discussion of where a wizard's power (in the physical sense) comes from.
DD and 'Self-Intertextuality' contains a listing of some of DD's self-references in the YW books, along with a discussion of whether any of this goes beyond the level of in-jokes. See also DD's non-wizard works for some of the other in-jokes, mainly involving names, in DD's non-YW works (though some of the references are to the YW universe). (Note that the latter is not an archived thread.)
hearing of speach [sic] explores (starting with the linked post) the possibilities of nonverbal forms of the Speech. There is some related discussion in the Sound of the Universe thread.
Mysterious Words in SYWTBAW explores some of the unusual words found in SYWTBAW and succeeds in identifying some of them. There is a bit of intriguing supplementary information in my post in the "Dairine name pronunciation" thread. Also note that "asdekh" appears to have been invented by DD, as she identifies it as a word in the Speech in its Concordance entry.
Changes in the Paradigm discusses some of the differences in the approach to wizardry in TWD as compared with the first four books.
Natural disasters is brief, but deals with some of the primary issues involved with whether wizards are able to prevent major disasters, or just ameliorate their effects.
This post gives DD's response to questions about the different UK/US titles for OHMWS/TVTQ.
And even though it isn't archived, I would be remiss in giving some forum highlights if I did not mention DD's Talking to the Transcendent Pig post, which should be required reading for all members (and certainly repays rereading from time to time).
I hope that these prove to be thought-provoking, and that some of you might even want to respond to certain of them. But there are many more in the archive (and other older unarchived, but locked, posts that still have interesting discussions and could be unlocked by Kathy or Garrett, if you so desire—you can request such unlocking in this thread), so: Go! Explore! See what sorts of posts people made before you arrived at the forums, and what old fascinating topics you've forgotten about. But don't forget to come back here and report your findings.
Edited to add the final adjuration to members to add to the list of topics worthy of revisiting, as well as to do a little wordsmithing and fix an unfortunate transposition of words—I had originally given the (perhaps slightly better-known) 'converse' of the Voltaire quote when I referred back to it.
...and edited again to reference the correct book for the Binding Oath and do a little more wordsmithing. (I just can't help myself—I caught the obsessive editing off my mom.)
Edited once more to add "Mrs. Callahan's choice" to the list (as well as to correct a small typo and do even further wordsmithing*). Many thanks to spyells for finding this topic—I had forgotten all about it, even though it contains some truly great discussion and is highly deserving of continued attention. It's being reminded of such things that makes the construction of this list such a useful and enjoyable exercise.
Also, my humble thanks to Kathy, Garrett, and Tuttle for their appreciation of this list, below. All of your comments on how useful it is just make me wish that I had gotten around to putting it together and posting it when I first came up with the idea years ago.
Edited again much later to emend a slightly unclear bit, and, much more importantly, add the link to the Wayback Machine copy of Peter Murray's timeline, courtesy of Tui (here)—I seem to remember being unable to find a copy in the Internet Archive when I first looked, though perhaps I was thinking of the chat logs and forgot to check on the timeline.
* When will I finally stop editing this? The only thing it seems safe to say that I won't be able to edit it any longer when it's archived.
Unfortunately, my original plans of providing a comprehensive survey of my picks of older topics have simply proved too daunting a proposition for getting this posted in a reasonable amount of time (and it's already running rather late to be truly effective in its second goal)—for me, with my perfectionist tendencies, the best is very often the enemy of the good (or even simply the existent), to quote Voltaire. Thus all I shall provide here are selecta from pretty much off the top of my head that I feel are definite high points of discussion and analysis on the forums or otherwise seem to be of wide interest (though I shall also include the results of a little systematic searching through the old messages I did a while ago)—this means that most of these are topics to which I have contributed, simply because I am apt to participate in discussion I find fascinating. But I encourage everyone to go and poke around through the archives themselves and post here about any topics they feel are worthy of renewed attention. Since, while there is plenty of chaff, as I noted above (particularly in the "Messages from the Forum Administrator" and "The Crossings" sections), there are surely more interesting threads than I mention here, and other people will doubtless have far different criteria for what constitutes an "interesting thread" than I do. Also note that I have provided copies of DD's answers to various questions from some very old posts here and various other members have listed some of the old posts they felt to be deserving of preservation here—none of those are duplicated in this list. (In both cases, the links do not work, due to the threads' having been moved, but you should be able to find all of them using the forums' search feature. Alternatively, you can simply replace the first number in the URL with 3691079384 if the message was originally in "The Playroom" section of the forums and with 4091079384 if it was originally in "The Books" section—at least this worked for me with all the ones I tried. [And there are presumably analogues for the other two sections, but I haven't bothered to figure them out.])
So, here's the list, with some glosses, to better advertise the topics (which, besides the first and last two, are in no particular order):
There is no higher payment that can be made must take pride of place, being in my estimation the most probing, insightful, and even at times most erudite topic on the forums. As its title suggests, it consists of various exegeses of Carl's 'price greater than life-price' statement in DW (and includes a vague hint from DD reported from a chat). It is one of my great sorrows that I have never found the time to complete my response to it to my satisfaction (see "the best being the enemy of the good," above), now over four years after I first started to draft it. And, as I had meant to say (among many, many other things, and may still do so at some time), all these speculations seem particularly relevant at present, given the Binding Oath from WH and the possibility of Nita's "becoming far less than human. Or far more..." in the blurb for AWOM. (I plan on saying more about this in a response to the first two chapters of AWOM, currently in progress.)
Mrs. Callahan's choice is perhaps a close second to "There is no higher payment that can be made" in depth of analysis—these sorts of topics must lend themselves to probing discussion. As the title suggests, it deals with the extent to which Betty Callahan's choice at the end of TWD is justified and plausible—i.e., whether it makes sense, given the YW universe's eschatology, or is simply an 'out' for DD. (I even think that the general idea of [vague TWD spoilers:] <span class="ev_code_white">"power from mortality" is at least tangentially related to the puzzle that's the subject of the above topic, and had planned on exploring this in my much-delayed reply-in-progress—cf. Betty's statement, "There's a power in what we are as mortal beings that even that One [i.e., the Lone Power; emphasis original] can't match. If we throw it away, we stop being human." and Earn and Healhra's "sacrific[ing] their mortality to undergo that Transformation by which mortals become gods" on Bluepeak from The Door into Shadow, which also makes an appearance [slightly reworded]</span> in "Parting Gifts." [DD has made the latter available for free download here, in case anyone hasn't already noticed.]) —Many thanks to spyells for bringing this thread to my attention by having it unarchived.
Power-Spotting explores quite a few of the guises in which the Powers may have appeared in Earth mythologies and religions.
The Manual discusses the various forms and physical appearances the Manual can take.
Timeline Issues contains the discussion attending the inception of Peter Murray's wonderful timeline. Unfortunately, the timeline is not currently available, due to his website's disappearance after his untimely death, but much of the discussion should still be quite informative with regards to the YW timeline, which ranges from 'mildly askew' to 'entangled like unto the Gordian knot.' Edit: The timeline is actually still available using the Wayback Machine here, though the CSS is messed up—thanks, Tui!
Foreshadowing is an interesting list of various instances foreshadowing members have found in the books.
Dangers of the Speech deals with what could happen if wizardry was misused, and the safeguards against such misuse.
"Do what the night tells you." contains some interesting speculation on homonyms and puns in the Speech.
The youngest wizards have the most power is mainly notable for PK's excellent post that ended the thread (and to which I link directly). See also the Debts thread, which quickly veers off into discussion of where a wizard's power (in the physical sense) comes from.
DD and 'Self-Intertextuality' contains a listing of some of DD's self-references in the YW books, along with a discussion of whether any of this goes beyond the level of in-jokes. See also DD's non-wizard works for some of the other in-jokes, mainly involving names, in DD's non-YW works (though some of the references are to the YW universe). (Note that the latter is not an archived thread.)
hearing of speach [sic] explores (starting with the linked post) the possibilities of nonverbal forms of the Speech. There is some related discussion in the Sound of the Universe thread.
Mysterious Words in SYWTBAW explores some of the unusual words found in SYWTBAW and succeeds in identifying some of them. There is a bit of intriguing supplementary information in my post in the "Dairine name pronunciation" thread. Also note that "asdekh" appears to have been invented by DD, as she identifies it as a word in the Speech in its Concordance entry.
Changes in the Paradigm discusses some of the differences in the approach to wizardry in TWD as compared with the first four books.
Natural disasters is brief, but deals with some of the primary issues involved with whether wizards are able to prevent major disasters, or just ameliorate their effects.
This post gives DD's response to questions about the different UK/US titles for OHMWS/TVTQ.
And even though it isn't archived, I would be remiss in giving some forum highlights if I did not mention DD's Talking to the Transcendent Pig post, which should be required reading for all members (and certainly repays rereading from time to time).
I hope that these prove to be thought-provoking, and that some of you might even want to respond to certain of them. But there are many more in the archive (and other older unarchived, but locked, posts that still have interesting discussions and could be unlocked by Kathy or Garrett, if you so desire—you can request such unlocking in this thread), so: Go! Explore! See what sorts of posts people made before you arrived at the forums, and what old fascinating topics you've forgotten about. But don't forget to come back here and report your findings.
Edited to add the final adjuration to members to add to the list of topics worthy of revisiting, as well as to do a little wordsmithing and fix an unfortunate transposition of words—I had originally given the (perhaps slightly better-known) 'converse' of the Voltaire quote when I referred back to it.
...and edited again to reference the correct book for the Binding Oath and do a little more wordsmithing. (I just can't help myself—I caught the obsessive editing off my mom.)
Edited once more to add "Mrs. Callahan's choice" to the list (as well as to correct a small typo and do even further wordsmithing*). Many thanks to spyells for finding this topic—I had forgotten all about it, even though it contains some truly great discussion and is highly deserving of continued attention. It's being reminded of such things that makes the construction of this list such a useful and enjoyable exercise.
Also, my humble thanks to Kathy, Garrett, and Tuttle for their appreciation of this list, below. All of your comments on how useful it is just make me wish that I had gotten around to putting it together and posting it when I first came up with the idea years ago.
Edited again much later to emend a slightly unclear bit, and, much more importantly, add the link to the Wayback Machine copy of Peter Murray's timeline, courtesy of Tui (here)—I seem to remember being unable to find a copy in the Internet Archive when I first looked, though perhaps I was thinking of the chat logs and forgot to check on the timeline.
* When will I finally stop editing this? The only thing it seems safe to say that I won't be able to edit it any longer when it's archived.
. But yeah,
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