HFQ Official Snippet #2

Weird Harold wrote:

n7axw wrote:Harold, it's more likely that you are pulling my chain (again). Just don't wrap it around my neck!

Your point seems unlikely. According to the snippet, Nynian is grimly serious.

Others have made the main defensive points:

Fan is derived from "fanatic" and fans can be deadly serious even when they know the object of their fanaticism is fictional. That's without taking nearly a thousand years of the "Whisper Game" effect -- that could have transformed "Quixote" to "Khody" -- into account.

Don Quixote is just one fictional hero whose adventures could have evolved into those of "Seijin Khody" -- Buffalo Bill Cody comes to mind as another possibility. For that matter, "Seijin Khody" could be an aggregation of dozens of Tall tales, Dime Novels, and literary/mythological characters from Atlas to Quixote, with sidetrips to Oz and Narnia.

Consider:

One of Shan Wei's reconverted Adams or a minor command staffer telling bedtime stories to a child/children from pre-safehold memories couched in acceptable terms by attributing them to Seijin Khody. Years later, the child publishes the childhood stories told by her parent and forms a "secret society" fan club and evolution and the "Whisper Game Effect" transform the fan club into a deadly serious secret society dedicated to restoring the moral values of a Hero who never really existed.

I chose Don Quixote because his delusional version of Chivalry fits the idealized world a secret society might be aimed at "restoring."

Also, I wanted to get people away from the "secret society founded by Khody" meme MWW specifically eliminated.

n7axw wrote:...snip...

Can you refer me to where RFC debunks the notion of her group is founded by Seijin Khody? I seem to have missed that trick.

...snip...

Don

Joat42 wrote:

n7axw wrote:...snip...

Can you refer me to where RFC debunks the notion of her group is founded by Seijin Khody? I seem to have missed that trick.

...snip...

Don

http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6085&start=58

n7axw wrote:Thanks guys... That does seem to rule out the possibility of Khody as organizer, doesn't it... What that leaves us with is Seijn Khody as person of influence or perhaps even authority for Nynian's group. I guess we will have to wait and see.

Don

PeterZ wrote:Actually, no. The character of Khody might never have organized anything besides a raid on brothel. That doesn't mean that whoever played Khody didn't do the organizing in his true identity.

Weird Harold wrote:If we're going to consider Seijin Khody as a secret identity -- like Batman or Zorro -- we also have to consider the possibility of several "actors" playing the part. A la "Zorro" and "Son of Zorro"

Perhaps Seijin Khody didn't organize the secret society, perhaps the secret society created Seijin Khody?

n7axw wrote:Actually, guys, this is getting to be a bit of a stretch rather than serious argumentation.

If RFC says that Seijin Khody didn't do any organizing, then he didn't do any organizing.

Merlin's view of Seijin Khody is summarized in the snippet, but he is brought up short by Nynian's response. She is entirely serious to the point where we must assume, baring further input, that she regards Seijin Khody as real. And since I think we can all agree that this smart, highly capable woman is not buying into the notion of Seijin Khody as being the Safeholden version of Santa Claus, I think we have to take her remark as seriously as she seems to be making it, at least until we have a bit more context that would encourage a different interpretation.

It is reasonable to speculate on what Seijin Khody's relationship to Nynian's group might have been, but apart from RFC's comment that he was not that group's organizer, we really can't settle it at this point.

Don

DrakBibliophile wrote:When has "lack of info" stopped this crowd from speculation????