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Post by Harkovast on Jun 16, 2017 21:17:22 GMT
Noticiably the Ferret Captain is described as one of the most popular characters. See people like this kinda thing, redemption and people turning themselves around.
It makes things seem more optimistic when everyone has a potential to have good in them. As you can see from me and wordweavers discussion, when people are just born evil and beyond hope the results become quite bleak.
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Post by Canuovea on Jun 16, 2017 21:23:06 GMT
Goddamnit, Hark! No, you don't get to quote that fucking snake at me!
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 16, 2017 21:26:30 GMT
I like this cartoon.
When I read the book it felt a bit repetitive with Cluny trying and failing over and over. In episodic cartoon form it works better for me.
Damn that snake eats a lot of characters! I think it scoffs at least 4 that we see. Like at first it eats a few bad guys stragglers, but then we get some random mouse scout getting scoffed and when they go to hunt it, it eats one of the loveable shrews.
I like that the snake feels like some great and terrible monster, a force of nature that is unconcerned with the battles between rats and mice. They are all just food to him.
Oh shit while I was typing it just killed ANOTHER shrew! This snake is an asshole! It's a lot more effective at being threatening then Cluny, who generally talks tough but doesn't succeed much. It swallowed one shrew and then left the other dead to eat later. When the bad guy is killing people and being scary it makes it better because you are more fired up to see it get some pay back.
Fucking snake is a murder machine!
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 16, 2017 21:31:00 GMT
One thing with Redwall, is there are prophecies and kinda mystical seeming things, but I dont think we get much actual confirmed magic. In the first book there was a fox healer woman who did spells and dancing around, but it was implied this was fraudulent and unnecessary to her actual healing, as I recall.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 16, 2017 21:36:17 GMT
Im glad you guys found this interesting, this was seriously just a random thing I was thinking about the last couple of days. I was typing it thinking "is this completely pointless bullshit?"
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 16, 2017 22:07:59 GMT
In the cartoon, they have "vermin" creatures being press ganged into Clunys army, literally dragged their as prisoners and made to fight. So that seems to show they would be peaceful if it wasn't for him.
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Post by StyxD on Jun 16, 2017 22:19:26 GMT
Fun fact, very early on while working out Harkovast, there were actually intended to be "bad" races who would serve almost exclusively as villains. Onrapa, Zadakine, Junlocks, Ivos and Golta were all added in with this intention. Well, they all are pretty evil if you ask me (except Onrapa, which we didn't really see enough to decide, and Junlocks, because shut up). Hey, I view Rin-Xien's story as a tale of a good samurai being slowly corrupted by the vain and ruthless Zadakine! The moment when he declines to go with Red Sword and instead accepts inclusion into Gisco's family is when he seals his fate! This might be a result of modern sensibilities, when the idea of a group being "racially" evil or having bad blood feels rather uncomfortable. Well, with how well things are going, we'll soon be referring to those as "quaint pre-2010s sensibilities". But seriously, I think it's a generational thing. It really wasn't uncommon to write wholly villain races at that time. It was just accepted. I don't think the author considered moral or practical implications of that. It was just a simple story. A robot built to kill people, or one programmed to help people, are not good or evil. Both robots are just doing the function they were made for. So if the vermin really can't resist being evil, they don't seem to be evil, as their actions are beyond their control. It's an ages old philosophical question. Though the problem is, whether they really are evil or not, it would make killing them completely okay. In the first book there was a fox healer woman who did spells and dancing around, but it was implied this was fraudulent and unnecessary to her actual healing, as I recall. But wait, if she was a fox and thus evil, wasn't she poisoning people instead of healing them? And no, I haven't read the books. Probably won't, too.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 16, 2017 22:26:35 GMT
I forget exactly how it goes in the book, but in the cartoon she betrays the bad guy by stealing his palns, but then betrays the good guys by trying to rob them before escaping. So shes pretty compulsively dishonest and thieving.
Onrapa are ruled by evil druids who worship the Harvester as a goddess of the forest, so if you want them on the bad list, there ya go. In the rpg a hordes of them showed up in book one, selling Onrapa prisoners as slaves for cash. Onrapa don't have a deaht penalty, so this was a profitable way to get rid of their enemies.
The priests leading them were really manky and diseased. One of them had a minion carrying a bucket into which he would periodically vomit.
The heroes, helped by Senchos and his Eslum crew and a heroic golta grenadier killed them off and their golta slaver allies so it all worked out for the best.
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Post by StyxD on Jun 16, 2017 22:42:03 GMT
Oh right, that evil Harvester. I forgot she's kind of in charge. Mostly because the only Onrapa to show up in the comic were the ones opposing her, so I thought it's more of an even split.
I was still busy ragequitting during Book One. I should probably go back and catch up on it!
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 16, 2017 22:48:58 GMT
God damn Im onto season 2 of the cartoon, and there was this one rat kid who was taken in at the abbey, claiming to be a mouse. He was fighting with the main character mosue kid, adn they both got into trouble.
Turns out he was just evil and was actually a spy for evil slavers.
That's not a very good aesop!
"Remember kids, outsiders are evil and not to be trusted! People who are different from you are inherently evil!"
I should point out, the Onrapa are oppressed by the evil druids. Most of them get very little say in it, though only a small number are actual full on rebels. O'Kyle is the most feared rebel warrior. He was amongst the slaves they were trying to get rid of but was freed and able to return just in time to appear in the comic and rescue Thundercloud. It's great how things work out.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 16, 2017 23:13:29 GMT
Oh my god season 2 the evil fox is voiced by Tim Curry. This cartoon is now officially awesome!
I kept thinking "He has a really cool voice, where have I heard that before..." I looked it up and holy shit! TIM! FUCKING! CURRY!
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Post by wordweaver3 on Jun 16, 2017 23:44:24 GMT
The weird thing is that the one guy who wants peace and is open to allowing outsiders into the abbey to talk in the first episode is shown to be wrong.
People who are different from you are bad and don't get chances.
Slightly off topic:
This whole discussion got me thinking, mostly the part where the one guy says it's a time of peace and don't talk of swords, and I was wondering what the role of holy people was when there was a need for combat. I mean historically. Specifically medievalish time periods. I know that Friar Tuck was often depicted as a swordsman, possibly the best in England depending on the source, so fighting was not unheard of. I've also come across some information that claimed that the church explicitly forbid priests, monks, etc from warfare. But does "warfare" just mean organized military or does it include general fighting such as you might have to defend yourself from brigands? Many saints are depicted as great warriors. I further wondered about nuns specifically. Typically they would live in a convent with no men around. They were often self sufficient, meaning they had food and livestock. Combine that with the fact that you have a big structure full of virgins and you have a very attractive place to plunder. It would seem that nuns would have some form of martial arts training in their regimen, but I can find nothing, literally zero literature about combat training nuns were expected to have.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 16, 2017 23:53:56 GMT
The medieval or ancient periods are incredibly long periods of time, so attitudes cahgned greatly over time. The vikings attacked abbeys because they were wealthy and poorly able to defend...later in the crusades there were holy orders of monastic warriors. The role of the clergy changed as much as the societies did over time. I agree that in Redwall, welcoming outsiders and wanting to pursue none violent solution does seem to be always presented as a bad idea. Dont give people a chance. If you think they are bad, they totally are! To help get more insight into Brain Jacques writing, I've found some transcripts of his communications with his editors that will help us understand what he was going for. His motivations are really interesting.
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Post by wordweaver3 on Jun 17, 2017 0:48:16 GMT
And that's kinda the problem with absolutes. As long as we're all in agreement with who is right and wrong, we can make these absolute judgements. From there it isn't a big jump to "final solution". You have to be careful when you develop a world like this, especially when you're making it for children. Simple problems have simple solutions. If all vermin are evil than it's not a stretch to say the world is better off without them.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 17, 2017 0:53:06 GMT
If you want completely evil forces to fight, you have to make them not actual people. Like in the LOTR movies, the orcs are made by evil magic in pits and bred to be evil and horrible. So its not like a racial judgement to kill them, because they are kind of artificial and not like a normal race or species. Their one note nature is by design.
In the books, Tolkien actually struggled with this issue, as the idea that a race could be entirely inherrently evil conflicted with his christian faith. He later took the view that the orcs were misled into being evil. He fought in ww1 and said that during that conflict "we were all orcs".
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