This Art Means So Much To Me Actually

So it's been a hot second since I took a break from my full series reread, but I found myself once again thinking about Outcast of Redwall and the raw deal that Veil Sixclaw got.

What kills me is that before the poisoning, the one thing Veil got in trouble for--the only thing, in fact--was stealing. This kid didn't even get into fights, he just stole food from the kitchens, which as Bryony points out is normal Abbey kid behavior. Another character shoots back that stealing is something most kids outgrow implying that the fact that Veil hasn't is suspicious, which is frankly a wild thing to say to the great grand-daughter of Gonff the Mousethief.

(In a kinder version of events, the adults in Veil's life might have shaken their heads with long-suffering fondness and remarked that he was following in his adopted ancestor's footsteps.)

The whole point of Redwall is that it's the woodland utopia where no one goes hungry and everyone has what they need, which is why kids stealing pies off the windowsill is no big deal... except when Veil does it, apparently. Veil's the one that gets physical punishment when he's suspected of stealing--not even proven! I can't recall off the top of my head any incidents in the rest of the series of corporal punishment in Redwall beyond idle threats that the kids know not to take seriously. But Veil gets scrutinized from the moment Redfarl and Skipperjo pick him up out of the mud and they and Bella look at this literal infant and say "oh yeah, he's gonna be evil for sure."

And then a thought occurred to me: it's generational trauma.

Most of the characters in Outcast are two generations removed from the characters in Mossflower. Bella of Brockhall is in both books. Verdauga and Tsarmina are still within living memory. Until the end of Outcast, as far as she knows, Bella lost her entire family to vermin warlords. Mossflower opens on a scene in which a ferret kicks in the door of a family of subsistence farmers, threatens their children with slavery, and takes all their food as taxes leaving them with none for the winter--and the Stickles were the last holdouts. The other farmers in the area had already run off to join the resistance at that point, so this kind of treatment was normal.

And we're left with a close-knit society of people who've grown up with this shared history, with a venerated authority figure who still carries the scars and memories of what they lost--and suddenly another warlord comes within a hairsbreadth of discovering the peaceful society they built in the aftermath, and leaves behind a starving neglected baby whose first impression is eating frogspawn in the mud and biting his rescuers while being the spitting image of the warlord they just narrowly avoided.

All of that gets thrown into this caustic mixture of fear and paranoia that gets projected onto a literal baby and results in their completely out of pocket response to a child taking food from the kitchens in the We Share Everything Abbey.

It also might explain why Bryony, who's young enough to be three generations removed and may have been born after most of the survivors of Kotir had already passed, is the only one who isn't scared and suspicious of Veil on sight.

Look I know our religions don’t exist in the Redwall universe, but I’d still like to see human!Cornflower drawn with a hijab please and thank you

nothing in the history of the universe will ever depress me as much as the Patrick McHale Redwall series being cancelled… that was a personal hit job from the universe aimed specifically at me

Redwall Characters as Brooklyn 99 GIFs

Saxtus, trying to look cool in front of Dandin:

Tsarmina to Gingivere:

Chickenhound, being himself:

Gonff, if he finds out about Martin whole backstory:

Dotti, after causing all sort of mischief and trouble:

Jess, at all times:

Constance, at all times:

Bucko Bigbones, joining the Brocktree squad:

Bella of Brockhall afte her father was killed:

BONUS:

Me remembering that Brian Jacques passed away 11 years ago:

How to draw some meeses. Some cheese bois. Some rodent squadron.

Been awhile since I did one of these, but @one-eyed-wizard hit me up with their guy Silvertongue awhile back and I wanted to make sure he got drawn because I love him 🙏🙏

Hit me up with ur Redwall ocs I wanna practice drawing Creatures

Constance

The one thing I did not expect when showing my friends Redwall was them being indescribably horny for Friar Hugo

WHOOPS THAT’S WHAT I GET FOR DOING THE TAGS BEFORE FINISHING THE BOOK 💀💀. You’re so right, that makes perfect sense.

Brian Jacques, every other paragraph: Sister Armel is PRETTY and INNOCENT and PRETTY and also PRETTY did I mention that she’s PRETTY, a PRETTY maid