#Terramortals

[thunderstar-supernova]

GAME OVER, JUDE HAWKINS!

[incorrectredwallquotes]

Mariel: We’ll get to Terramort or die trying!

Dandin: No one is dying.

Mariel: Not with that attitude.

[readwall-abbey]

Do Mariel of Redwall and Pearls of Lutra feel like... different drafts of the same story to anyone else?

To be clear I love both of these books for very different reasons, they easily stand apart as separate stories with their own merits and whatnot, but they take the regular formulaic nature of Redwall books to a whole new level.

A villain (Gabool the Wild/Ublaz Mad Eyes) lives on an island (Terramort/Sampetra) where he rules over pirates. He tries to kill a character (Mariel/Grath Longfletch) but fails, resulting in them swearing vengeance on him and teaming up with a bearer of Martin’s sword (Dandin/Martin) to do so, also hoping to rescue someone being held captive by them (Joseph/Abbot Durral). Heck, it even has the same subplot where the villain kills one of his captains early in the book and his brother comes to avenge him.

[the-perfunctorily]

ive been dwelling on that redwall post you made lol and i think the base philosophy is less “some people are inherently evil” and more “people, given power, will be awful unless that power is checked somehow”. the abbey’s leadership is checked by like, redwall’s own vaguely magical nature (kinda a copout but w/e it’s a kids’ book), the villain lieutenants who go rogue are checked by being, well, lieutenants, etc, while otoh veil spends the majority of his plot being the biggest and meanest (tho isolated) kid around and deyna(sp?) from taggerung is kinda a shit before he clues in about the world and there’s plural badger lords who go absolutely off the rails because they’re gigantic berserkers that no one dares touch. but since it’s for kids it gets simplified a lot and ends up with Bad Critters Bad. (ive a vague recollection of a pirate Bad Critter having a sincere redemption and dying a hero somewhere, but iirc she was a mook rather than a captain or smth so it still fits)

Ahh interesting! I like this reading a lot better. I still have only read a few of the books (just finished mariel of redwall, starting salamandastron the minute i finish the Serious Grown Up Book For Grownups im reading, and I look forward to more nuance. I’m sure there is plenty of room in future books for this stuff to be explored.

Speaking of, having actually finished Mariel of Redwall, I do take back some of what I said about Greypatch. He is a slimy sneaky little bastard, and like almost every baddie before him, falls into the trap of wanting to take redwall for his own, and smashing his army to pieces against its walls, but in the end he DID try to do better by his crew than Gabool was doing. He left Gabool’s service because you never knew who he was going to kill next for no reason, and then while being in charge, the only subordinate he kills is Bigfang, who he gave multiple chances to fall in line, even going so far as to let him take half the crew to try and desert and go back to Terramort, and welcomes them back when they find their ship unsailable. It’s only after Bigfang actually challenges him to a duel that he defeats and kills him. That’s an interesting note about the badger lords. They are strange and mysterious, and by their nature held apart from other woodland critters (huge, magical, can see the future???) But its a little distressing that when a badger goes berserker and kills literally hundreds of rats in a blind rage, theyre still considered Good Critters, and treated with honor and respect (if a bit of fear) while Greypatch and his goons are worthy only of death for having killed some hares in open combat. But, to be fair, they were keeping slaves, which is imo a pretty unforgivable offense. I guess really what i am hoping for is not a miraculous turnaround from ‘evil minion’ to ‘hero’ but maybe some rat lieutenant sees that the Big Bad they serve is self sabotaging by being cruel and mercurial, and is just like “hey subordinates... wanna just go? we can just like go become mercenaries or something” or coming upon redwall and instead of trying to take it just forming a mutually beneficial relationship with the abbey like the Guosim shrews rather than turning around and trying to become a tyrant in their own right. But i see what you mean about the philosophy of power corrupting. While the leaders of Redwall have the spirit of Martin, and the fact that there are always multiple different leaders at the abbey (a father abbott, an abbey mother, a record keeper etc, who all have about equal say in what goes on there) keeping them from becoming too authoritarian. But gosh now I would be really interested in a story where someone comes into a position of power from within Redwall who doesnt wield that power well, and proves to be a bad leader. Seems like everyone who happens to be put in charge at Redwall bears up under the pressure and proves to be a strong moral leader. Like you say, these are books for children, so morality is going to be simplified, and of course starting from a place of “mice good rats bad” makes perfect sense. It just seems like there are so many stories that that there is a ton of opportunity to explore both sides of that, and Jacques seems like a genuinely compassionate and insightful person, so I would have loved to see more variety in character arcs from him.

[thunderstar-supernova]

hey can you tell what song i was listening to when I drew this

[thunderstar-supernova]

Gripping you by the skull. You want to look at my little freak of a man. You want to show everyone my little freak of a man.

my favorite little thing.

[thunderstar-supernova]

i love doing the weirdest freaky shit on him

[thunderstar-supernova]

every variant of jorn makes me happy

[thunderstar-supernova]

look at this fucking heartstopper, he's my absolute favorite i need to draw him even more

[thunderstar-supernova]

Just a couple of ladies with a good relationship :)

[thunderstar-supernova]

bitchin' redraw of a couple of my quirky little new yorker dudes

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do you know how often i get my ass beaten in by my sister for not posting on tumblr? surprisingly often, so here's a couple of recents

[thunderstar-supernova]

art dump of drawings in 16:9 ratio because i can make my own damn wallpapers!!