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Oh, I know why this is!

Murder takes inspo from the rainbow crow, thought to be a traditional Lenape story but later disproven. But And the Raven Brought Fire is set to an Edgar Allen Poe adaption... you know, the author most famous for writing The Raven. So Lee draws from both ideas.

I don't take the distinction between raven and crow terribly seriously, and neither does the folklore - a raven is just a large crow, there’s no consistent scientific differentiation. Makes sense, Murder is huge.

So yes, she always was a raven, just a very crow-like one. Ultimately the distinction isn't too important, though! I would chalk it up to 'raven' sounding more respectable/being larger than a 'crow.'

(Also, depends on the headdress and area of origin. Aztec headdresses used quetzal feathers, not quail, for the most part.)

I have what I think may be an odd question What animal is/was Xipe Totec? One of Betsy Lee's songs is 'The raven brought fire' but Xipe's nickname is murder which makes me think she is a crow

Well, lets see. The feathers in the traditional headdress were, supposedly, quail feathers. Before her burning, Xipe Totec looked more like a peacock actually, really colourful, but after, shes all dark. The Raven brought fire is like, her song, but her name is Murder.

Soooooo. Honestly, no idea? I want to say Raven but only because I dont see any other search result for "and the Raven brought fire" so I assume that's entirely Betsy's words, meaning she chose to call it a Raven. Best I've got!

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Murder from No Evil in B2 from this clothing meme

Yesterday in the art positivity discord we had a drawing getogether challenge thing based off of said clothing meme and I really really need to like, actually sit down and complete references for my characters since it’s been A While so I got Lovwer from the No Evil Skype to give me a random no evil character, letter and number to draw because fanart is fun.

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Or would he? Vote now on your phones!

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GIRLFRIEND (never watched no evil) TAMPERING WITH MY DATA

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tezcatlipoca that judges gay people

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“i cant believe xochiquetzal was the true wielder of the blue tezcatlipoca” - @showtoon

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actually wait

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i did expect red to be in the lead. kitty and murder are both giving major lesbian. why are you as an all-devouring molten cataclysm only choosing to be tamed by gay women who scold you? gay af. i know what you are.

i kind of figured black would be higher, considering how much gnc cunt charles is serving (and the general vibes of a shapeless mass that sometimes turns into a cool jaguar) but it's actually lagging behind them all. i don't understand why the white is doing so well. what do you see in her? genuine question, i want to know.

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we need to stand up stop being ashamed of our lightning powers and start killing people with them indiscriminately

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why tf is white pulling ahead in second place? respect for my demisexual icon the blue!!

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In posting my other meta today, I realized the B.E.L.T. project was absolutely the creation of the ring around Scourosi in Brother Swan, the symbolic divide between the "non-magical" colonizing force and the "magical" native people. and yes, I picked up on the first transcontinental railroad bit the story was laying down, but once you read about the significance of the golden spike, it becomes pretty obvious that the golden spike is what's needed to complete the B.E.L.T. project, and that's why it's such a huge deal.

So that's a mystery that probably didn't need to be a mystery but dang if we didn't just solve it!

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Part 2: Major Themes in Later No Evil

Click here for part 1! For the record, I'm defining "later No Evil" as post ep 18, once the series becomes plot-heavy.

Madness

We first see hints of this theming with the asylum, but the repeated motif of a clock ticking to represent madness (seen in A Good Deal and Blackwell) makes this theme a transmogrified version of the time theme, rather than a fully unique one. However, this theme centers around Corn: his guilt causes him to split in two. Corn gets admitted to the asylum, and thus his sense of self and autonomy disintegrate; however, this shows up in smaller ways, with the "mad" people being lumped in with perfectly sane native people. Who decides who's sane, and who's mad? What metric means you deserve freedom? Which brings us to...

Colonization

This is the big one. The how "spirits relate to villages" theme has transmogrified into a colonization theme. Now, there's a big city, with different technology, and people from far away, and things are different in the city. While spirits have always represented the land, now spirits are indigenous-coded, and likewise, native human characters feel the same boot on their necks: one of conformity and suppression. This colors pretty much every theme subsequently, and is so overarching discussing it in full is rather difficult, but I have a bite sized analysis available here.

Something I haven't touched on yet is Briarwood House and What You Want. The railroad spike and gears, surrounded by aliens, seems a pretty apt visual representation of colonization. The story is an old one, and plays out the same: Once upon a time, some men from far away came with ships and railroads and tore up the land, and things were never the same. Exploring this idea when working with an American folkloric medley setting is a good thing, and certainly the tasteful one. But all this brings us to...

Free Will

What is a colonizing force but one that suppresses the will of the people being colonized? One can't bring up Corn's treatment in the asylum without bringing up that his free will is trampled: He has no ability to do what he wants in Blackwell. Likewise, Ichabod has spent most of his life bent to Hollow's (the colonizing force's) will, rather than his own, so when asked what he wants, he falters. The story keeps building up to the Blue Tezcatlipoca, whose domain is free will, but we're not there yet... someday!

Honorable mentions: Family/generational inheritance and Desire

This one is a little less central, but there if you're looking. Despite all current spirit characters (save Corn) being adults, Xochipilli refers to them as 'kids'; in spite of their immortality, spirits sort themselves into generational categories even after they're grown. Likewise, powerful objects split into less powerful pieces with each generation: the mirror, the fork's spells, even shamanism (the three triplets vs the singular(?) Corn.) Family ties come up, too, with Amaroq being a father figure to Charles and Kitty a mother to Corn.

Meanwhile, wanting and desire show up a few times. Now, any character-driven story is driven by what characters want, so some of this is simply how stories function - apt, in a story about stories. And again, these desires sometimes come at the expense of someone else, which brings us back to the free will theme...

As a final note, the family/generation theme strikes me as one of the few truly consistent throughlines in No Evil, as the story largely loses interest in its earlier thematic ideas and explores these new ones. Not bad, just different.

Thanks for reading!

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She was feathered in rainbow, heading for the lava-flow To sacrifice her life if it was right. Not a thing did she possess but the burning in her breast And clutching in her claw the judgement scythe Then after a day or three, she told us she had to leave And sacrifice her life for us again. I told her then to stay, though that was the only way, And I swear one day I’ll leave it but I can’t really say when Love me, leave me, don't you believe in me, The lady gone below for us above, Oh, please, believe me, you keep on leaving me, And I’d swear she’s a girl who almost was.

Whenever I get into a fandom, I traditionally do a refilk of The Girl That's Never Been. Since I've been poking my head into No Evil again, I figured I'd give it a whirl, so here's a sample of The Girl Who Almost Was.

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Discovered something fun!

Googled ‘soft child’ today, trying to find the band camp track, and what would you know? This comes up!

Always something new to learn!

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Turns out Xochiquetzel was married to Tlaloc, but then captured and forced to marry Tezcotlapolka. Seeing as Tlaloc is a lot older then Quetz, and the TCP is an inanimate concept, I'm Lina glad Betsy ignored these.

[Ask sent Nov 9, 2016]

Remember when we didn’t know what Charles collecting the pieces meant exactly, and were still theory-crafting that he wanted to release the tcp rather than use it? Kids armed with nothing but Wikipedia articles on Aztec mythology and each other.

Stuff like this is lots of fun to look back on!