----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Olson - SunPS" <Chrisf.Olson at Sun.COM> To: <dragaera at dragaera.info> Sent: Friday, February 28, 2003 5:58 PM Subject: Boredom Relief Through Conspiracy.... > So, in an attempt to make the day go by a wee bit > quicker, I thought of another answer to the > "Who is Mario?" question.... > > See, I've been thinking. We know that reincarnation > of the soul works in odd ways in conjunction with genes, > lineage, etc. We know that souls can be eaten, placed > into inanimate objects, held indefinatly by Great Weapons, > put back into bodies, and hang around a dead body for a few > days just to see if someone will come along and reanimate them > back to life. We know Mario was a Jhereg. We know we've never > seen the guy after Adron had his hissy-cow and blew up a city, > no matter what we wish to infer from Aliera sitting in her room > with a glow around her, having a cigarette and smiling dreamily. > (Okay, so I can infer a great deal.:) > > But what do we really know about this guy? Not a whole lot. And > I can't trust anything Steve says, because what would he know? He > only relates what Vlad and Paarfi tell him, right? And we know Vlad > and Paarfi are about as reliable as a Ford that's been left in > the ocean for a few decades before having Kool-Aid put into the > gas tank. (Okay, bad analogy. That might make a Ford run better.) See the thing here is it's nice to think about Vlad/Parrfi/Steve as separate entities but really it is Steve/Steve/Steve. Sometimes I get caught up with that, the idea itself is entertaining so I go along with it. Steve is reliable AFAIK and I think this shares very close to the no one else's is anyone else scenario, you are after all suggesting that Loiosh is aware he was Mario. > See, I think, during the backlash of "Adron's Doh!", when Sethra was > teleporting the Orb and Aliera and herself and Mario out of the Palace, > Mario's soul, like Aliera's, went flying off into the stratosphere, all > lost and alone. Verra, feeling bad that her daughter's lover got done > blown up, sent his soul skipping through various creatures until it finaly > landed, as the egg was developing, into the leathery lap of Loiosh! INSANE! An entertaining and creative notion however. I think the real reason we've never seen Mario again is that he isn't relevant to Vlad's experiences or in Parrfi's case irrelevant to his histories (other than he is relevant to Aliera). Does Vlad even know Aliera knows Mario? Does Parrfi even know Aliera knows Vlad? The greater point in not being able to define Parrfi or Vlad as reliable is that since the stories are affected by them our perception of the world is skewed, it's almost as if the only 'canon to the universe' book is Brokedown Palace. Steve has created a scenario of meta-interaction; he created characters that appear capable of making mistakes not only in relevance to their world but to ours. If they get something wrong we may get it wrong which makes them seem to interact directly with us. This makes them seem real, it doesn't matter if it's dubbed 'fantasy' because that's the furthest thing from our thoughts, we are thinking about the characters as if we know them personally. Just some thoughts. -Angelo