Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - Redwall: Episode 1

Episode Date: September 4, 2021

This is the first half of our conversation on Brian Jacques' Redwall series. We talk about Great Man Theory, self reinforcing hierarchy, stranger-kings, and the importance of dreams. Follow the show on twitter @SwordsNSocPod, Darius @Himbo_Anarchist, Ketho @StupidPuma69, and our special guest Nicole @gi66le_titsEmail the show at [e-mail] patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

So I think we can be ready here. I still have no clue if we're going to do cold opens where we're just talking. I don't mind that. It just depends on what we'll be talking about. Yeah, or if I just – sort of like Eat the Rich Style where you do a cold open and then just sort of cut in. By the way, there is an intro like two minutes in

or if I open with the intro. Off that depressing note of stephen king we're at least going to be talking about someone who's a lot more wholesome from what i understand yeah for yeah from what you're telling me before someone who is a super fucking nice guy yeah the way that the wikipedia at the very least at least his kids, like his direct kids, the Wikipedia for some reason included their professions. And like one of them is like an art professor or something. It's like – but his kids seem to have gotten jobs. Yeah.

Well, I mean he didn't start writing them when he was like 20 or anything. So I'm assuming his kids probably would have had jobs already because he didn't really become them when he was like 20 or anything so i'm assuming his kids probably would have had jobs already because he didn't really become an author until he was i can't imagine he thought that they would be able to live off of that anyways because it's like he started writing this stuff when he started telling the story when he was a uh like a milkman he was a milkman who delivered to the school for the for the blind this children's school for the blind and he got to know some of the kids there and eventually they just invited him in and let him like tell stories that's awesome so yeah the theory i posed uh yesterday which is that all

the best fantasy stories come from someone just talking to kids in person and then later being like, man, maybe I should write this shit down. This is actually kind of good. You always have to have that in person. You always end up in a situation where you have to end up writing it down.

He said the other day, Tolkien's son was just like... Christopher was a pretentious little shit because tolkien was just telling his kids the hobbit like just making it up as he went along it's like a nighttime story for his kids but then because he you know he'd tell it multiple times and each time he'd like add more or whatever. Well, eventually Christopher was like eight years old and started calling him out on detail inconsistencies between tellings. So like Christopher,

Christopher would stop him and be like, well, last time you said Dwallin had a silver hood and now Dwallin has a gold hood. Why is it different? And apparently Tolkien literally said something like, like damn the boy and stood up and walked over to his desk and started writing things down. Like literally it was like, damn, confound the boy.

He was like, you little shit. And then went over and like, that's how the Hobbit became like a codified word. And we're learning that that's exactly what happened with the subject of today's episode with Brian Jakes. I'm sorry. I love him. I love him. He's a wonderful man. My biggest problem with him is that he's English. And so his last name is pronounced Jakes. It's clearly Jacques. I pronounced it that way in my head my whole life.

And then I listened to the audio book and they're like, welcome to Red Ball with Brian Jakes. One of the videos of him on YouTube is him like talking to, he's like presenting to a bunch of kids at like a library somewhere. It's in America somewhere. He was like over here and he asked them, how do you say my name? He got eight different answers from these kids. That's all correct.

I am English. Also, I definitely, until I knew he was English, but I never really looked into it because I was a child. Then I started re-listening to him as an adult. I looked it up and realized he was from Liverpool. Then I listened to the audiobooks and I was like, oh yes, you are from Liverpool. Your accent is strong. Yeah.

To put it mildly. The videos of him live was hard to follow sometimes because his accent is just very thick. Very, very much a souser through and through. And you know what? I can't, to be fair, if he's going to be from England,

there are worse places to be from than to be a Scouser. So let's see if I can do a little intro, huh? Welcome, everyone, to Swords. So I'm going to cut that bit. What time is it? I'm going to keep it all in. Keep it in. Keep it all in. Keep it in. Keep it all in.

Welcome, everyone. First one is a low bar, and then everything else just goes upwards from there. Only way to go is up. Welcome, everyone, to Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism, a podcast about the politics hiding inside our genre, fiction. I am Darius. I'm the one speaking right now. My pronouns are he and him.

And with me today, I have Ketho. Yeah, I am Ketho. This seems like we're all messing up a little bit today. I'm Ketho. My pronouns are also he, him. Just your co-host. And today with us, we have a guest to talk to us about the Fantastic Red Wall series, which I'm sure produced more furries than we know. Nicole. Hi, I'm Nicole Sheher.

Nicole Sheher. I don't know for sure, but I'm assuming these books made a bunch of furries. Because he spends a lot of time talking about how gorgeous the mice and hair maids are. Oh, yeah. What's her name in the first book? Cornflower.

I'm pretty sure it's Cornflower in the first book. Yeah, yeah. Matthias' love interest. Yeah. He's a pleasant man about. Oh, there you go. That he's basically a useless lesbian about. Yeah. He really is.

Well, I mean, it's a kid's book, so there's a lot of useless lesbianism in – yeah. All of the – Do they like me? Do they not like me? We have to have the abbot force us together. Arrange marriages. Even like in all the books, there there's not obviously there's not a whole lot of romance right like it's a kid's fantasy book there's like of the things that

does have romance isn't one of them but whenever there is it's always just like the two characters both just going you know what i? Like stumbling over their words at each other. And that's it. That's their version of romance. It's like getting tongue-tied in each other's presences, which to be fair is appropriate for kids

and also still somewhat adorable. The flip side though is the other part of this, which I feel like doesn't quite fit in the kids book is an incredibly cavalier attitude towards death. Yeah. A lot ofier attitude towards death yeah a lot of there's a lot of people just like right towards right towards the beginning like

like clooney just straight up kills a guy like in like the first scene he's in one of his lieutenants one of his like lieutenants gets murdered in like the first four pages he pulls a darth vader and just kills his own commander. So a little background for anyone who doesn't know, the Redwall series by author Brian Jakes is sort of a fantasy series for kids where it's all anthropomorphized animals. So you've got what they in the series would refer to as like sort of the good beasts so you've got mice squirrels uh hares don't call them rabbits that's a thing um badgers shrews

otters hedgehogs moles occasionally other things like water voles, a hamster, birds sometimes, sometimes, depending on the bird. Depending on who's leading the birds, apparently. Yeah, that too. And so those are sort of like the, you know, those are the good guys, right? If you're generally furry, friendly mammals generally. And then you have vermin, the bad guys. There is not a lot of gray area in terms of good guys and bad guys in this series, which to be fair, I'm not always against. And then you've got the vermin who are rats, everything relating to ferrets, stoats, minks, ermine, all of those type things.

Foxes are bad. Which is a very aggressive way to place foxes. At least in the first book, it just says that her family is like – that that specific one's family is the bad lot. But then it becomes more like – Yeah. In the first book, the foxes are just sort of like – they're like more – they're actually kind of gray where they're literally just there to like get money from everybody. That's just kind of their thing. They just exist.

It's implied that they also do healing for good creatures too. Cause like all the Redwalders know who they are, but then like later on you also get just the unambiguously like I'm a Fox and I'm as bloodthirsty as every rat that you've ever come across. Also for bad guys, there's cats, wild cats, mostly.

That's, I'm okay with that. Yeah. Wild cats also definitively bad um so it's they're essentially you know there's little fantasy stories about like mice and squirrels with swords and like slings and javelins fighting off hordes of vermin that are trying to steal their stuff like that's generally the stories either you've been in either you've been enslaved or they want to steal your stuff. And the whole story is mostly,

can we fight the vermin and how are we going to fight the vermin? And like, as a kid, I read the first one. I borrowed it from a friend of my sister. And immediately my little brain was just like, this is shit. This is what i'm going to be about and i borrowed all the ones she owned and then when i ran out i just like had my parents buy

all the rest of them so these have been like really integral part of my childhood like learning fantasy and growing up reading them and i think i might be the only one of the three of us that just grew up absorbing these books into my soft child brain or did you have did you read them when you were growing up nicole uh i definitely read them when i was growing up and all um i remember being in like maybe fourth or fifth grade and like getting i think like um, um, uh, Redwall and maybe Mossflower, uh, together at like a Scholastic Book Fair and like reading through those and yeah, like getting like Martin the Warrior. I think I have a copy of like Salamandistron upstairs, uh, in my office and all. Um, and yeah, I had like, I think Mariel of Redwall and some of the others, but it's been

like, uh, a couple of decades since I've read them because a lady does not talk about her age. Um, yeah, no, uh, it'd been a while, but so like I was, I was, you know, I remembered them, was familiar with them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And all, uh, when I saw you talking about them and I was like, oh yeah, no shit. I remember that. So yeah. So it's you, Getha, who's like, I've never read these before.

Yeah, like I've only read the first one at this point. You know, when you said we were going to be doing this, I went out to my local library and requested the book. Shouts out to libraries. Yes. I have a stack of other books that I got from the library that I'm going to have to renew because I was like, Oh,

I'll be able to read this in three weeks. I got, I got like more Le Guin and more and like Octavia Butler and other stuff. Yeah. I need to read this stuff, but it was a good choice, but, but yeah.

So this was, this was an all new going in-in-blind experience for me. Well, so I think I was going to start with generally a basic overview of what we started to read, an overview of the series. So you've got your good guys and your bad guys. The main place in every book, almost every book, catch myself there, is the Abbey of Redwall. That's like obviously the centerpiece. It is the Abbey of Redwall. That's like, obviously the centerpiece, it's the namesake of the series. It is this massive red sandstone abbey

built in the middle of moss flower wood. It is the only structure anywhere in the entire series that's built that way, that's that big and that impressive. There are other stone buildings and castles, anywhere in the entire series that's built that way, that's that big and that impressive. There are other stone buildings and castles, but this is the only one that's sort of described the way it is. Redwall is home to a series of the good creatures of woodland animals, which is set up in a way that we'll have to get into discussing. So it's an abbey, and it is headed by an abbot or an abbess abbess sure

abbott or abbess um i looked it up there is actually across the series generally a close to 50 50 representation of abbots versus abbesses um across the series so that was interesting to me i didn't remember that like sort of going into it until i had to like look into it um but then the abbey is populated by a number of creatures who large part seem to be sort of like monks or like a religious order where you have like you've got like the friar you've got the you know the infirmary keeper you've got the recorder and all the ones that seem to have these like named positions aside from champion and cellar keeper seem to be invariably like single like they don't have families and they're dedicated to the abbey

as abbey creatures now you have families of creatures that live there because they'll let anybody live there but like in order to be like have one of these like sort of dedicated positions you have to i guess you just sort of have to be one of the i don't want to call it an order because it's not like there's an induction or anything formal, but like, you know, if you're the Abbott, like someone who's been at the Abbey forever and doesn't have a

family, or if you're like the infirmary keeper or something like that, I think the cellar keeper seems to be an exception. I think from what I remember through the series and obviously what they call like the champion, which is like occasionally they have one guy, typically a guy that can use weapons. It's like the one person in the army

that knows how to stab people. And they get to be the champ, like dedicated champion of Redwall. And they can have families because like that starts early with like in book one, in book one with Matthias having a pretty little country mouse or whatever he is that lives down the street. At St. Nidian's Church, which – church to who? Yeah, like don't they – okay, so that was something i was looking into because i found it interesting that like the monks have no like the abbey itself has no religion attached to it

like and and jakes himself is like no no religion attached to that um like he's just come out and said that yeah they're just aesthetically religious I like that though they're aesthetically religious but like just in the first book you get Saint Ninian's church and then later on they like make the assertion that it used to say something else

and then a couple letters it was like ain't ninians it was like this ain't ninians church or something and or something like and then apparently some of the letters wore off over time so people thought it said saint ninians church and like he he came back to it and was like hmm i gotta I got to find a way to justify this. And just kind of threw that in there as like an offside. It's like they're kids. They're not going to think that through.

It's yeah, no, no. Well, I think to be fair, when we're talking about the very first book, Red Wall, as compared to the rest of the series, there are a lot of, what's the word I'm looking for? A thing that's like inconsistent with the tone of the book. There's a word for that or the setting of the book. I can't remember right now. But there's a word for like a thing that doesn't belong in the setting. Anachronistic? Yeah, anachronistic.

There are anachronisms in the first book because as we sort of discussed in the intro, this was just a story he was making up for kids like that he was just telling and once it became like serialized into like a series of novels he realized he needed to like clean up his world building to make sense and so a lot of things there are a lot of things in the first book that never reappear mostly things that relate to humans like a horse-drawn wagon um with a full-size horse the full size like full-sized horse so the animals are still like proportionally the same size as they actually are and you have this full horse-drawn cart that had to have been built by people with yeah and they also refer to portuguese sea mice they refer to rats being like portuguese sea rats like a certain flavor of sea rat they also refer to like um like cluny and his scourge like killing farm animals

if they were they reference dogs at some point like he actually references like like dogs like Clooney and his scourge, like killing farm animals. They were, they referenced dogs at some point. Like he actually references like, like dogs and a bunch of other things. And I think St. Ninian's church to some extent are anachronisms that he later was like, oh, I don't want to have any humans in my world at all. Like,

I don't want, this is going to be a purely animal world. And he later on eliminated like in every subsequent book i don't even think madameo has any of that stuff in it i don't think that's one of the ones i haven't read in a really long time so um there are some things in the first book where like did he just talk about getting stabbed by a cow? Like, where the fuck are the cows? But every book sort of follows a general thing where you open up,

and usually there's about three different perspective points that he switches between throughout the story. You'll have the perspective of stuff going on at Redwall, of another protagonist, another group of good creatures, like good guys, whether it be slaves somewhere that are escaping, or whether it's Salamandastron, hares, or, you know what I mean? There's some other group of good creatures. And then you always, which I also enjoy, you always also get mean there's some other group of good creatures and then you always which I also

enjoy you always also get the villains perspective in all these books every single time you will look inside the vermin camp because it's literally every other chapter in this like in this book

it is chapter to chapter this chapter is at Redwall or Matthias chapter this chapter is at redwall or matthias and this this chapter is clooney this chapter is it's just i didn't oh i didn't even notice that in the first book he literally just alternates in the later books i don't honestly i don't know i don't know i don't think it does in later books it does not always alternate because sometimes he'll like end a chapter and then the next chapter will be the same characters going again but he does still maintain you will always and for a series that is pretty black and white on its morality he still goes through a lot of effort to show you that the villains are still people well maybe not necessarily not as much the like the big bad like the head villain they

typically tend to be pretty villainous villainous and i think we're going to get into that a little bit later when we talk about hit like the sort of the politics behind how like vermin hordes work like all the bad guys seem to be set up but he almost always will show rank and file bad guys seem to be set up. But he almost always will show rank and file bad guys doing their daily lives. Like you'll get to see a couple of rats like scrounging for roots. And even though they will often end up doing bad things, he takes the time to give them more depth than a lot of other stories. Give their bad guys. I think,

or am I wrong here? No, you're good. Oh, sorry. No, no, go ahead. I don't know if it's more than – but again, all I've read is the first book, so I don't know how it changes in future novels. It humanizes them to an extent. I mean more so than it does the big villain, certainly.

to an extent. I mean, more so than it does the big villain, certainly. In the first book, Clooney is entirely... There's no redeeming qualities there at all. Clooney's an asshole, yeah. He's just an asshole. There's nothing good about him. And when the bell finally crushes him, you're like, okay, yeah, that's good. That's good. Get out of here. Side note, props to a pretty inventive death scene. Give him credit for that. But like all the lead up to there, you just see him being such an ass to his like actual horde that you kind of feel bad for them at points where you're like, okay, this guy is just, you know, like a lot of them are being pressed into service here.

In this one, like they're just being are being pressed into service here in this one. Like they're just being captured. It's essentially a slave army that he's built in the first book. And again, they do bad things, but there is that underlying layer of, I don't know if it's like super humanized or humanized in this context, I guess. But like, because it doesn't at least in the first book most of those chapters are directly from clooney's perspective so it's like you get what he does to them and you end up feeling bad for them because of that um well there's some chapters in the first book that are like you know his subordinates and stuff

like that where there's like oh like i i want to be made captain or whatever because you know i'll have a bit more power and i'll get more you know benefits yada yada yada it's like it's very much like yeah he does kind of like humanize the vermin and all but it's definitely from a perspective of not like these guys are sympathetic it's it really kind of comes off more as like, so this is kind of what like being in any military is like, where it's like, you're just trying to like scrabble by and get a little bit of profit, a little bit of wealth, get some food in your stomach, you know, feel like you're not being the one, one, the, the latrine trough of where all shit rolls down into and all, you want to be a little bit higher up, a little bit higher up and all. Uh, and like, you know, you don't necessarily like, you know, aspire to replace the big man, but you know, you, you want to be a little higher in the pecking order. And so it kind of comes, you know, reads to me as like like i don't think necessarily jakes was consciously

probably trying to you know produce that kind of like political commentary on like a standing military or even like you know no because because the flip side of that like that and all but it's like yeah no these guys are just trying to fucking live their lives and yeah they end up doing bad things because they're kind of in not necessarily dire circumstances but they don't really seem to have many more options in a lot of ways because i remember um lord brock tree or whatever the the the most recent one you're uh wanting me to to get acquainted with darius um uh there's like two of the sea rats that join up like early on.

And there's like, Hey, yeah. You know, with this, like this, basically this board, we might be able to like,

you know, make something of ourselves or like, you know, at least like, you know, get a more regular sort of like, you know, meal and stuff like that.

Not starve to death. Not starve to death. Stuff like that at all. Uh, so yeah, no, like it, I think inadvertently it's a,

it's a strong commentary on just those kinds of like essentially capitalistic militaries of where it's like hey do you do you want a gi bill do you want to get out of your shitty ass neighborhood that um uh we kind of had a hand in making that in a number of uh number ways but uh let's not talk about that. Let's get you over into another country where you can take advantage of the populace. Yeah, I mean, it just kind of feels like that to a degree where it's like it's humanizing, but still kind of like almost more of a commentary

on the system itself. And I think, yeah, that kind of puts the point that the vermin kind of do it to themselves because like none of them will ever learn to farm. Generally. Vermin don't take the time to learn how to farm or to grow things themselves. They only

just take things. And so they end up in a situation where they're like, well, if I don't join the horde of Scrontilla the Terrible, I'll die because I don't have any food right so like i have to join scruntilla's yeah um there are yeah i was gonna say i think because like they're they're children's novels late elementary school early middle school sort of like that reading level and all like it

doesn't seem like there was the the the the imp, the impetus to be like, let's, let's make this a little more nuanced. I think it's meant to be more of like, you know, a kind of binary like good versus evil to a degree with, you know, a little bit of depth of humanization of like the enemy and all. But, um, so yeah, I think if like, if we're at like a more complex reading level, I wouldn't surprise me if Jakes would have been like, Hey, you know's have some of these guys go this is a raw fucking deal why why don't we just like join up with these fucking moss flower folks because yeah they're understandably kind of angry at us for trying to come in and rape and pillage but hey they kind of have each other's

backs in a way that is not backbiting and shit like that. So maybe the backstabbing, I think, is actually like notable because it happens. I've been told that it happens in later novels, but it does happen in the first one as well. There's I mean, if I can really quickly find it, there's like a stoat who's rising through the ranks very quickly. We find that there's like a stoat who's rising through the ranks very quickly. And I think it's also notable that he just joined the Horde when the Horde got to Mossflower. He's like a new recruit who's promising. Yeah, and he's really promising. And then there's this other kind of inept rat who's been there for a long time.

Cheese thief. Yeah, trying really hard to climb up the ranks, um, sees this other, you know, this new weasel, like getting more attention from Clooney. And instead of getting pissed at Clooney for being Clooney,

he gets angry at, um, at Scrag and decides that when they fall off the tree, he's going to go back and kill him. And it's like, it, like – it made me think just of the idea of people in general when they're put into oppressive situations like that. Not turning on the oppressor. They're turning on each other. It's a reinforcing power structure.

Yeah. Yeah, he's not mad at Clooney for making the Horde the way it is. Like it's a reinforcing power structure. Yeah. Yeah. He like, he's not mad at Clooney for making the horde the way it is. He's mad that this new upstart is like too big for his boots. Yeah. And is like jumping over him. Who's been a loyal soldier for, you know,

and, and it shows a big crack in, in the effectiveness of Clooney's like horde in general, because if you have people doing that to promising new recruits, it's like you're going to end up with a bunch of old useless rats that are just not very good at their jobs. It's like you're not rewarding good behavior at all. You're just punishing people if they don't do good. Good thing there's no real-world examples of those kind of systems perpetuating themselves. Those are fancy.

I will say that, back quickly on the point of humanizing them or showing them having options, there are a couple novels specifically that have villains end up being, not villains, not the main villains, but vermin, regular vermin, not being inherently bad.

There's one specifically I'm thinking of. I don't remember offhand which book it was, because I've re-listened to basically all of them over the last couple months, where there is a group of rats that eventually gets whittled down to two through, you know, death or whatever. These two sea rats who end up at Redwall and the Redwallers, and they're like dying, like they're in the process of dying when they get there. The Redwallers take them in and heal them because that's what Redwallers do.

They take these rats, even though they know they're sea rats, they bring them in, they give them beds, they heal them, that's what red wallers do they take these rats even though they know they're sea rats they bring them in they give them beds they heal them they feed them now it's important these two rats and this is a dynamic he does repeat a few times in his stories especially among villains you have the two rats there's the one that's smarter and meaner and then there's one that's typically a little bit bigger, but actively portrayed as dumber and more like simple. I don't like, I'm not trying to like, you know, say anything like offensive here,

but like the rat is, he's like literally portrayed as not being as smart as the other rat. And the smarter one will bully around the other one, making him do stuff that he doesn't want to do well you have these two rats get to red wall the red wallers take them in and heal them while they're there the the like the junior partner in this relationship basically goes it's really nice here they feed me and the children are fun. I think that all the, the little kids would read wall called Dibbins baby animals. He like likes the Dibbins.

He thinks they're fun. I he's almost, I'm trying to, I don't know how to say, but he's almost portrayed as being somewhat on the same intellectual level as the Dibbins. Like he's not, he's portrayed as being.

Developmentally disabled. Yeah. Developmentally disabled. Yeah. Developmentally disabled. Yeah. But like he goes down with the Dibbins to the pond and like builds boats for the Dibbins to paddle around in. And he loves it at Redwall. Yeah.

His part, his partner is like, you're soft. We're here to steal stuff. And then we're going to leave. And he eventually bullies the other one into eventually trying to steal stuff, and then they get caught stealing, and they kill one of the Redwallers. I think they kill, like, the Badger mom.

And then they run. And the other rat feels so deeply bad about what they did that he ends up killing his partner, then comes back to Redwall and shows up at the funeral for the Badger to apologize for what they did and say that they, Redwallers can kill him if they want in retribution to atone for his deeds. And the Redwallers are like, we're not going to kill you, dude. Like the fact that you came back and like you murdered your partner and

then came back shows us that you're sorry and then he becomes friends with them he doesn't he doesn't stay in the abbey because he feels bad he lives like two days away on the river but like it's shown in the end notes that they go and visit him all the time like he's just becomes a friend of redwall for the rest of his life they just have this random sea rat who like shows up and is like hey guys and so they do he does occasionally have a low-ranking villain feel bad about the things that they do and wish that they didn't have to do them and that happens in a couple books and i don't know exactly what he's trying to say with that that like the smart vermin are evil vermin. Well, I think it's more just the vermin who are more in quote unquote intelligent are like thinking about things too hard.

And like they're not they're not feeling things out. They're entirely trying to think about about you know and and because they're it kind of goes back to to Clooney in the first one kind of assuming assuming certain things about his enemies that aren't necessarily true it's like I think when you're that sort of person who's like oh I'm gonna steal things and I've been living on the run and I'm living on the edge I've been alive because I'm smart or like you're more likely to just kind of betray and then dip like anyways, because, because you're going to start looking at these situations as, Oh,

everyone I've ever met in my life betrays me. You know, I have to fight, stay alive, all this. So then when you find people who are genuinely kind, like, I feel like the smarter, you know, mice like rats, vermin might just reject that kindness because they've never been given that before. And just assume that there is an unspoken cost. So they're just going to stick with the way that they know that's kept them alive for as long as they have. And so the vermin that don't think about it as hard are just like, oh, these people are nice.

The ones that just kind of went along with it and just kind of dumb what they were told because they were told to do it being presented an alternative. I don't know. I mean, I don't think it's meant to be intensely nuanced. No, but that's what

we're here to do is to put intense nuance into this child's story. Out of theories that didn't intend it. Yeah, no, it reads to me of

institutionalization and rationalization of what happens with, quote know, quote unquote criminals who go to prison and just in and out all their lives, they get institutionalized into that way of thinking. And then a lot of the, just, you know, the, the reaction to that is to rationalize why you have to keep acting that way and all of like telling yourself that story of like, well, and all of like telling yourself that story of like well everyone is like this so i might as well just keep acting like this and if someone seems like they're being compassionate and altruistic to me there's a hidden cost there i'm not going to be had because ha ha ha that's not me

um stuff like that yeah i think it's overthinking because like it's yeah that that just sort of like subconscious like ego protection of like i i have to like look out for myself and you know this is the way the world works or at least that's been my experience of it it can't be any other way there's no way it could be any other way i the fact that i'm seeing that over there means that there's something fishy about that i can't trust that you know I can't walk away from being a bloodthirsty asshole. There's kind of an element. Oh, sorry. Oh, no, sorry.

Go ahead. Go ahead. There's kind of an element of the individual versus the group sort of thing in that situation because you have, out of the two rats, you have the smarter one who's fended for themselves. Out of the two rats, you have the smarter one who's fended for themselves. They're the individual one. And then you have the quote-unquote less intelligent one that has had to rely on other people for their entire life. Fitting more naturally into this setting where other people rely on other people than a situation where it is rugged individualism to the last. I will say one more note about that little dynamic,

because that does pop up in a number of books. When you're looking from the villain's perspective, you'll have like a pair of like horde beasts, not all the time, but a lot of them. And you usually have that dynamic of like the smaller, smarter, meaner one and the bigger, like dumber, nicer one, like relative to each other. And I will say that in a lot of them one of the things that happens by the end of the book is even within their own little dynamic

the one that's been bullied around often ends up asserting themselves to some extent over the smaller meaner one like the opposite of mice and men yeah so like i don't i don't know if that means anything but a lot of times when he shows this one that's sort of been bullied most of the story usually has a moment later in the story to stand up to the little meaner rat that's been bossing them around the whole time that doesn't mean that it's like a redemption of any kind necessarily but it is just a little moment i've noticed while we were talking about it, that happens.

Well, if his stories are for kids, that might be a, a quiet anti-bullying message that he's slipping in there. Definitely inside of like the overall anti-bullying message, which is, and we've already been flirting with this a bit is how vermin hordes are set up they literally run on bullying yeah that's that's the entire modus operandi of villain hordes is i'm

bigger than you and i'm meaner than you and you're gonna do what i say or i'm gonna kill you or me and my mean girls are gonna back me up and you know yeah yeah well and, even if it's not when there's always not a direct threat of violence, like I'll kill you if you disobey me, even when they're obeying, there's often just wanton abuse for the sake of abuse. Yeah. Like one of their servants will be like, I've,

I found this food for you. And they'll be like, thank you. It's not good enough. And they'll smack them. Go get me more. And it's, but it's not good enough. And they'll smack them. Go get me more. And it's like, it's very like direct. These people are physically and emotionally abusive to everyone around them all the time.

And they're only in charge because of it. And that's why, sorry, go ahead. I was going to say it's negging as a military strategy. My army runs purely on negging and smacking people. And it's also shown that because of that structure, once the leader dies, the entire operation falls apart. Of course. Instantly. Because it was only held together by him being bigger and stronger and meaner.

And sorry, not him. There are lady villains. There are also lady villains throughout the series. There's a good number of them. And often they're more cruel, more out and out cruel than some of the male villains. If I'm like, I don't know if we can get into that yet. But yeah, the whole thing runs on bulletin. Is it either feminist or anti-feminist.

Girl boss gatekeep. The books have a, I mean, they have a fairly, at least the first one is a very, you know, traditional fictional approach to men, women as a dichotomy. It's, it's not particularly like vulgarotomy. It's not particularly vulgar or anything. It's not like sitting here going, oh, this is the way things... It's just Cornflower is

the pretty one who walks around and gives people food and keeps people healthy. And then Matthias is the one who goes out with the sword and kicks rat booty. That is one thing I think Jake's made an effort to be a little bit more equitable

about the more books he wrote. He started adding Abess's in. He started adding in the roles in the Abbey can be either gender, like the infirmary sister isn't always a sister. Sometimes it's a guy.

The head cook isn't always a woman. it's a guy like the like the head cook isn't always a woman that one can be a woman or a man like back and forth um so i think that in the first book you're right it's very much like it's very gendered i i think he i could maybe just he hadn't gotten to it yet but i feel like in the later books he made an effort to get a little bit do a little more gender equality in like the roles and the stories and stuff because he did get asked about that once excuse me that throughout the series that most of the champions of redwall the people that get to wield the mythical sword of martin the warrior are all dudes except one that i can think of only in one story does does a female character get to be the chosen that wields martin's sword there are other stories where there are women

heroes and like women like female protagonists but they don't get to wield the sword it's only in Triss does Triss get to be the actual champion and carry the sword. But with Mariel and the Bellmaker, Mariel is one of the main protagonists, but she never wields the sword. That's her guy friend slash partner that wields the sword. Mariel beats people with a knotted rope. that wields the sword. Mariel beats people with a knotted rope. In... Yeah.

In, I think it's... Oh, Hyrule Lane. The protagonist is a female otter who goes on to be a queen, but she doesn't get to wield the sword because she leaves the Abbey. The whole thing is her leaving the Abbey to go reclaim her ancestral homeland,

essentially. There's at least one more I'm not thinking of, but I think that's the one sort of gender that people put out as a right criticism is that the only female character that literally gets to wield the sword of martin is tris as far as i know well i mean in the first book at the very least martin like matthias is presented not necessarily just as like oh he's a mouse from later on that got to wield martin's sword he's almost just as like, oh, he's a mouse from later on that got to wield Martin's sword. He's almost presented as like Martin reborn.

Yeah. So it's almost like a reincarnation kind of thing. I guess I could see where he would initially like just have men wielding the sword if he was thinking initially this reincarnation type thing while also thinking within generally what we would consider normative perspectives on how gender works. So I guess I could see where that initially came from before he was like, nah, not do that again and then let's let women beat the shit out of people sometimes let's let's do that um so but that goes back to like something

really interesting i think you brought up a little bit earlier and we're segwaying into and but you'd mentioned that you know when clooney and others, when they, if they die, the whole operation falls apart, you know? And at first when I had read through that, I had messaged you and been like, is this like, because he initially was like, okay, if I die, all of my people are going to scatter. So what's going to happen is if I go in there and I take their tapestry of Martin,

the same thing's going to happen. They're all going to give up hope and be useless. And it's like, is this like a rejection of like this great man thing? Or, but then later on, you know, you get,

you know, Martin being reborn in a sense, Matthias and, and the heroes being very specific so at the same time it has like this dual approach where it's like one side is one part of him saying yeah you know leaders aren't that important because it's the collective like these these people all working together that makes this work and also you need this hero man to save the day. I mean, what's more great man than reborn mouse Jesus? Yes. Essentially, mouse Jesus reborn.

It's a good point, though, because the Red Wallers generally are shown to be flexible if they're missing a leader or they don't have a leader. They're always banding together as a collective to accomplish what needs to be done. Where the vermin hordes without a leader are often shown to literally just sit on their asses. Like they will literally just sit down and do nothing. There are multiple times where like someone's like a pirate crew where there's captain will be killed.

And he says directly, they were useless without a captain to tell them what to do they sit around listlessly not doing anything and nothing happens until a different villain asserts their dominance over the group this is a rejection of highly hierarchical centralized authority systems that is because it literally says without in these villain systems without a boss nothing happens. Nothing at all. The Redwall, the

Abbot goes missing and everyone's like well that sucks, we gotta find him but like we're not gonna starve to death we're still gonna make food and defend the Abbey and like do stuff. And I think that's I do think that there is something there in that sort of inherent sort of dichotomy between the way the different groups are set up.

The one outlier here, I think to some extent is going to be Salamandastrin, which we haven't talked about yet. And I don't know, I don't mean to cut it up. I think we should mention Salamandastrin because that's what I joked about earlier me what if the british army were the good guys it's essentially the fighting hairs of salomon dastron oh shit because i you don't get a lot of them in the first book you only encounter the one hair yeah right the one guy basil stag hair

like what like a ranger or some shit like that yeah i think later if you know the rest of the books i think it's implied that he used to be a salamandastron hair like you often get in the books hairs that like retire from the service then go to off into the woods to go live their lives or whatever but salamandastron is literally a military dictatorship. A quasi-divine military dictatorship. So, Kathleen, you're not going to have seen as much in the first book, but this happens a lot in all the other books. We were talking about the different races. There's two that have a very interesting relationship,

are hares and badgers. Hares exist in the world, but almost all of them you ever encounter are somehow connected to the mountain fortress of salamandastron which is a burned out volcano on the coast on the one big coast it has been turned into a fortress by hares and their whole existence is being a military that fights vermin they fight off pirates and vermin hordes and any other ne'er-do-wells that happen to show their face nearby, right?

That's their entire existence. They are a military society where everyone born into it gets a rank, gets jobs, gets ordered about by drill sergeants. Now, you can leave. You don't have to be in the long patrol that's what they call their like military outfit the long patrol you don't have to be in it like you could just be like a cook or something or you can leave because people do leave but if you're there you are under this top-down straight-up british army structure and they all sound as they all sound like what i

imagined british people sound like before i'd ever heard one they're very much they all care it comes across as very like oh he chaps saw all of them are like that all of them are good day mom what what what they're all like like i don't for anyone that might have overlap with other podcasts if anyone looks to trash future and knows milo's impression of a drill sergeant like good morning man it is 4 a.m british time and you need to salute the queen that is that is the hairs of salomon dastron like that is them they are like they are all the officers are from sandhurst like every single one of them yeah most of them remind me of like depictions of like world war one uh british officers whether it's like the raf or guys in the trenches and

stuff like that especially like officers yeah all the officers sound exactly like you would imagine british colonial officers to sound like all of them like they're that's the only difference is that unlike the british army uh hair officers actually fight and die in battle they don't just send the underlings to go after there are a number of hair officers that die all the time but so the other important thing about the hairs though they have this whole society that can run canon does often run all on its own but they have this special little thing at the top of their pyramid is a badger shaped hole and this is something that i think I talked to Nicole a little bit about I think you can explain a little better than

I can is this sort of mystical quasi divine lordship they don't call them a king they call them a lord but it's we can call it kingship yeah like a divinely mandated

king or queen that rules the top of the structure now the the hares will live without one and they do often do go stretches without a badger lord but then inevitably one will show up and they're like ah yes we've been expecting you badger we've never met is prophesied on our walls of the mountain that you would at some point appear and we've been waiting for you and they literally just walk in and plop down as king of the mountain it's like a space reserved for them and they're for by and large can only ever be one

badger in the mountain at a time if they have son, the son basically has to fuck off until the dad's near dead or dead before the son can come home because they can't have two male badgers in the same space or apparently they'll immediately just kill each other. But the badgers have unique in the setting where we'll get into this afterwards.

I think the importance of like dreams and prophecy, dreams and prophecy are inherently tied to the existence of badgers badgers are nearly especially badger lords are essentially plagued by prophetic visions that they carve into the side of their mountain all the time that predict are shown multiple times have predicted the future and they essentially walk in and plop down and like us i'm the divine lord of this mountain and they're all always and plop down and are like, ah, so I'm the divine lord of this mountain, and they're all always impressive warriors and are terrifying in battle and whatnot.

But so, like, Nicole, can you tell me, explain a little bit more this, like, concept of, like, a foreign divine ruler. So I've been slowly making my way through David Graeber and Moshra Solon's On Kings and all, which is basically looking at what we normally think of as more egalitarian societies

and all. It's a number of different essays that the two of them wrote, either each individually or together and all, anthropologically, looking at again, what we think of as more egalitarian societies and the roots of hierarchy and especially kingship, etc., etc., etc.

The stuff all tied up with that. and making my way through this very long, very dry piece by Marshall Solins on stranger kingships and all, where societies, like he spoke, in this essay, he's focusing more on like African societies and like the Congo region, et cetera, and all. But it's applicable to, you know, non-African societies where you see a similar dynamic going on. like the the the hierarchy they do have which is usually uh tied in with like a a a culture hero of one kind or another who comes in from another land and all like maybe an adjoining country etc and all of wherever these people are uh at some point in the past and comes in and does normal sort of culture hero stuff and ends up um usually not dominating the indigenous people but uh usually being adopted by them as a king

and a lot of times there is a view in these societies of especially in the african societies used as examples and all of the idea that having a king is a civilizing thing that if the people didn't have a king they'd be savages and all not necessarily like you know bloodthirsty or anything like that but almost like the the the sea rats to a degree and all that. There's myths that sort of imply that without the king there, these people would not have fire, they would not have cooking, they would not have tools, etc.

etc. etc. and all. They're like everything good about society we have because this foreign hero brought it in and ruled over us and gave us these gifts to a degree yeah and so part of that dichotomy is there is a tension usually between the dynasty of the king and all and the indigenous people of the land and all because there's usually a uh a dichotomy between the the the the sovereign

and all and uh like basically this this idea that like the the the land itself belongs to the indigenous people and there are usually like usually priests of one kind or another who are the ritual enactors for keeping the land to a degree fertile, to making sure that the land is accepting of the kingship and all. like the king and the like basically the the stewards and caretakers of the land and all and that like you know the king doesn't want to piss off those people because then they basically it's like you're rejected by the land itself fuck you bad fuck around and find out essentially um and so there's usually like a lot of societies there may be like this sort of like centralized hierarchy kingship to a degree but a lot of times more ceremonial than it is practical like the king will sometimes be an arbiter of justice to a degree and usually a diplomat and stuff like that and a lot of societies the the king has almost this divine fiat ability to just kill people like basically the the king is in many ways stripped

of their humanity and almost deified but um yeah so like the badgers coming in to sal mandestrum like really it's vibed with what i've been reading uh in in sal's essay there i'm just like oh this sounds a lot like a fucking stranger kingship where like, yeah, no, the hares seem to be the indigenous folk of that land and all. And every so often they need to have a stranger king come in and just like assert divine rule over the mountain and its surrounding environs. And that's just that's their story. That's their myth. It is. And he ties that in with like the sort of the hairs sort of like inherent, I want to call it like Britishness towards monarchy where they're like, where we're like, yeah.

So like you have this stranger king that comes in and in some of the books are these badger lords are shown sometimes to be somewhat unreasonable. Like they're not always logical beings. They're very driven by like their visions and their instinct and impulse. There are specific examples. There's like one badger lord who is literally known for the fact that he was extra smart and calm. was extra smart and calm. Badger lords are typically known for being like incredibly passionate, wrathful creatures whose whole existence is to murder vermin. That's what they exist to do is to murder bad guys.

And they're shown to sometimes be unreasonable. I think specifically there's in the book Long Patrol, Sal Mandestrin is ruled by a female badger lord named Crega Rose Eyes. And she is shown to have this like death drive towards destroying the vermin horde, regardless of whether her soldiers follow her or not. She's going. And she'll give orders. And it's like the officers, the hair officers are just like, that's what she wants. We're going to do it. And the other hairs will just like, that's what she wants. We're going to do it.

And the other hairs will be like, that seems like a really bad idea. I think we should do that. And then when the officers will be like, shut the fuck up and don't question her. Like, yeah, it might be stupid, but we're doing it anyway because we have to. Like, and that's like their whole dynamic. to like and that's like their whole dynamic you can have a more opposing worldview in the same setting presented as the good guys in exactly if you compare red wall to salamandastrin it's like what is what is he saying is good here because red wall is the exact opposite. It's borderline like egalitarian. There's like – like the Abbott gets some final say on stuff.

But the Abbott doesn't actually have that much control over anything. So it's like – And it's often shown the Abbott doesn't want to make decisions about stuff. They'll be like, Abbott, we have a situation. Like, Abbott, we have a thing and we need decision making. And he'll be like, I hate being Abbott.

It's like, I'm just here. I just want to go through and heal people. I just wanted to sit in the big comfy chair. I just wanted to sit in the comfy chair. And actually often when people are elevated to like Abbott or Abbess, it's generally by consensus. Like, all the Abbey dwellers typically all together will be like, yeah, it's her.

Yeah, she gets to be in charge next. And she'll be like, me? You want me to be in charge? And everyone's like, yeah, you, because we don't want to do it. We think you're smart. You're in charge. And then flip side, Salem and Dastron, you have, going back a little bit, the Badgers, along with their visions,

they specifically have a thing in them that Jakes calls the blood wrath, where when they get really angry or really close to vermin, it's literally like a mythical Viking berserker rage. Is it the Eulalia thing? What? Is that part of where he gets the Eulalia thing? Yeah, that's the war cry of the long patrol. That's what they yell as they go into battle.

Well, badgers have this blood wrath where once they get into battle, their eyes literally turn red and they go into this berserker rage where like their injury, they don't feel their injuries. They don't get slow down. They don't get tired. And they essentially just go into like a D and D like,

you know, barbarian rage where they like get extra strong and they get extra murderous, but like they're uncontrollable when they're in their blood wrath. And so you like in the one, the one I was talking about before, Craig or Rose, I,

she's called Rose eyes cause she's in the blood wrath so much that her eyes are permanently kind of rose colored. And like the whole story is her being like, I'm going to go murder the raps galleon horde. And you're coming with me or you're disobeying my direct orders. Choose. And so like they go with her. And one of the like big character moments for the hair officers is at one point she gives an order and he's literally says, you're going to get all the hairs under your command killed if you do that i'm telling you no and she's like are you disobeying me and it's a character moment that he's like i am and if you have to kill me you can but i'm putting my foot down and of course she stands down for like an hour or whatever but like it's a huge character moment that one of the officers literally disobeys a direct command because it endangers the entire army yeah but like the thing

is you're not supposed to do that the badgers are divine they have visions they see the future and a bunch of stories the badger lord acts simply as like a spirit guide for the protagonist they'll like stop by salamandastron on their way somewhere else and the badger lord will be like ah yes you i've been expecting you come up to my forge there's a carving on the wall that shows you would be here i've had this sword ready for six years knowing that you would show up eventually here you go here's a piece of wisdom for you. Now be off on your way. And like, so even in the,

even when they're not like big active participants in the story, the badgers often exist as that like connection to the mystic to help the protagonist on their hero's journey, essentially, where they'll just be like, ah, yes, I've been expecting you. And you're like, what? And it's like, yeah, some badger a hundred years ago had a vision and carved it on the wall that you would be here at some point. But I think that's the next important point. Kind of think about this world is that those kinds of things are just accepted at face value if someone says

they had a prophetic dream at least among the good guys actually the bad guys are often super superstitious as well um but like they certainly had like dreams of martin coming to kill yeah yeah you're right as soon as i said that i was it's wrong. The bad guys are super worried about prophecy as well. That like, if somebody has a prophetic dream... And Lord Broctree has a similar thing where he's like... Ungat-Trun. Badger.

Yeah, Ungat-Trun knows that a badger is coming for them. It is often in the stories between the head villain and the badger lord having dreams about each other before they finally meet and like they both know it's going to happen eventually or in the words where there's not badger lords it'll be whatever the other hero is whether it's martin or matthias the bad guy will have visions of their inevitable doom but what i was getting at is that this is a world where the mystic is inherently accepted and understood and just is.

So if somebody wakes up at red wall and says, I had a dream where Martin, the warrior spoke to me and told me we're going to be in deep shit soon. For the most part, everyone's reaction is all right, let's do what he says. Yeah. There's no,

like, are you sure you had that dream are you sure there's maybe one character who'll be like did Martin really talk to you and everyone else is like are you questioning mouse Jesus and then they're like alright now you're right you're right you're right I'm sorry

I won't question I won't question Martin anymore but it happens all the time and like what does that say about the world that they live in a world where like dream prophecy is just everywhere and nobody questions it i think that sort of ties into our discussion before about the fact that they're an abbey with no god right and then like they offer prayer at meals but they're not praying to anyone. It's this very nature mysticism. I was going to call it animism, but the fact that would be a weird pun because they're all animals anyway.

Is it really animism if you're an animal? Like it's a very, yeah, sort of animist view of nature. We're like nature just gives visions. It's like, what, and I don't know, like, exactly what to draw from that, but it's very interesting to me that that's just, like, an inborn part of their world. They're like, you're going to get a dream. I think you and I had talked about that briefly before recording today and all.

And it's like, yeah, no, that is actually like, especially with the kind of like setting and all of the society is actually really not that unsurprising and all. Because a lot of like pre-modern um european societies essentially especially and only even going further afield there's a lot of the the gods or the dead etc came to me in a dream that is like one of the most common ways of like human beings like having an interaction with like the otherworldly is in like very vivid dreams like in ancient greece and all like classical and earlier greece like classical through archaic etc and all um there's a number of temples and stuff like around the mediterranean um uh various uh serapiums uh temples dedicated to Serapis. I think there was at least one temple dedicated to Asclepius,

the Greek god of healing and medicine and all, where one of the primary things that people would do is go to that temple, make some offerings, spend the night after saying prayers of like, hey, I've got a disease or someone close to me has got a disease or an injury, et cetera. How do we heal this? Hoping for a dream from the God of how you heal that illness. And if, yeah, it's, it's one of those things that dream incubation is what it's called is that like, you know, you, you basically focus very intently on what you want to dream either in a general sense or a specific sense and try to see if you have a dream that touches on that in some way shape or form

and all it's kind of a way of like very semi-lucid dreaming to a degree and all basically just sort of like trying to implant like subconscious suggestions into the the mind so that you know when you're sleeping and dreaming the mind goes oh hey yeah no we were obsessing about that earlier today let's let's do some stuff but yeah no like it's it's very common a lot of pre-modern societies of like hey yeah no i had this really fucking vivid dream and so and so said that i should do this so i'm gonna fucking do that and it wasn't necessarily you know completely accepted uncritically by you know know, other people in those societies, but it was relatively common enough of like people going, Hey, yeah, I had this weird dream and they told me to do this and I did it and nothing

bad happened at the very least. It's not like the thing that I was hoping for happened. So everything's coming up Milhouse. Yeah. That was just, that was just, that's, that's what I want. Yeah. It was such a weird thing for me thinking about it objectively as an adult now that like our society is so not about that. You know what I mean? Like we're so not about believing your,

your like dreams being prophetic that it is strange to think about in the context you bring up that in pre-modern society, it wouldn't have been weird. Like, especially like European Catholics would have dreams about various saints all the time. Like, oh, St. Jerome came to me and told me that there's, I need to, you know, do whatever part, part of it might be like, um,

uh, like, uh, I don't know if you've heard of like bifurcated sleep and all, and like pre-industrial societies, and especially like societies prior to like the invention of, uh, like gas lights and electric lights and all that.

That's where you like sleep for a little while, then wake up for a little bit, then go back to sleep, right? Yeah, and during that wake-up period, usually during that like that middle wake-up period and all, and sometimes in the later wake-up period before like getting up for the next day and all, you would come out and they've done actual studies of this where they've been actually able to see i forget what what exactly i think it's like a neurotransmitter of one kind or another the the levels you know go up on it and it's associated with like this sort of like vividness and like weighty meaningness to the dreams you remember prior to waking up and all and so with non-bifurcated sleep it is a lot less like the levels are still kind of ish there but not nearly in the same

amounts if i remember correctly uh as to like when you have sort of like just like natural quote-unquote natural bifurcated sleep where you can wake up and just sort of like lay in bed for a little bit and not move. Because like apparently like when you're laying in bed after waking up, as long as you're not moving, really, that the levels of that like hormone or neurotransmitter will stay relatively significant in the brain. And then moving around and stuff. So, yeah. So if you increase. So that's why, you yeah so if you increase so that's why you know if you wake so i'm guessing that's why when you wake up like after being asleep for a while you wake up and then you go back to sleep you're more likely to just remember those dreams in general because like

to my that's like my experience with with that is just i'll get the most vivid dreams i have are the ones that i had if i wake up at like eight lay there for a minute because like my alarm had gone off and then i was like wait it's a saturday it's like a sunday i don't have to do anything and then give it like 20 minutes and then fall asleep again. And then suddenly I have like three dreams. It's also interesting to me because I sleep the sleep of the dead. We're like, when I lay down,

it's almost like a toggle switch where like the minute I like laid down, my brain just like shuts off and I'm out. And then I'm just essentially dead until I wake up in the morning. I wake up and I'm like, oh, well, that's a thing that happened. Like I can count on one hand the number of dreams I've remembered

from the past decade of my life. Because I just, so like this idea of like this, I have lucid dreams and I can picture things is interesting to me because I'm sure I'm dreaming, but Lord knows I haven't remembered a single one of them for like the past seven years. Cause when I sleep, I'm, I might as well be dead. Yeah. As far as I know, like a lot of like dream recall stuff is number one,

like putting attention towards your dreams as something that, you know, you want to remember number one and number two uh a lot of recall apparently is associated with like the depth of sleep like are you getting a lot of like light sleep or are you going like deep into delta like from from what i know of like your your day-to-day life darius and all with like your job and all it sounds like it's very physically demanding so yeah a little bit yeah like you know you when you go to sleep your body's like we need to fucking rest and rebuild and so all uh you need you know you go like straight into delta which is like that restful restorative non-dreaming sleep for the most part like if i remember correctly nowadays they do find that some people do have a little bit of amount of dreaming in delta sleep just like there's like non-rem like not not exactly like dreaming sleep

dreaming you know going on and all um but a lot of the recall seems to be like you know the like how light of a sleep you're getting and all uh because they do find in like pre-modern and more traditional societies where there might be like three or four people sleeping to a room and all that you you do have like uh like with people like moving around and stuff like that and all like people's like sleep getting a little jostled and all like it helps sort of like wake them up a little bit so they're more in that sort of like light sleep area where they can like, you know, remember and recall dreams more often because they're kind of writing that light sleep a little bit more as opposed to like going deep down into Delta and then coming back up and then just, you know, writing that up and down until they, you know, they wake up in the morning, yada, yada, yada. It's more like waking up a little bit, going back to sleep, waking up a little bit, going back to sleep, waking up a little bit, going back to sleep, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that actually makes sense in context to the story here because especially Redwallers usually all sleep in shared dormitories for the most part.

So you also said it's partly due to people being open to or working on the idea that you can remember your dreams and stuff. It's something you work on. working on the idea that you can remember your dreams and stuff. It's like something you work on. And this like Redwall Society has is one where animals, people usually are sleeping in groups, excuse me, whether it be vermin sleeping in a big camp or Redwallers sleeping in like an abbey or whatever in their like dormitories. So they're all sleeping in groups.

And if prophecy is a thing they all expect could happen, then that's something that they would be more open to having happen because they're like, this is just a thing we know that occurs. It's not a novelty. It's a real thing that affects everyday life. Yeah, it may not be incredibly commonplace, but it's not unusual to the point where they're like yeah no that's bullshit it's like it happens so yeah the the red wallers have it for martin typically martin the warrior a protagonist can also occasionally have it for other story specific ancestors so like in hyrule lane the the otter sees her ancestor the old queen like she sees her in dreams. Martin usually acts as like the spirit guide for other spirits. So like a protagonist will see a spirit that they need for the story,

but that one will be accompanied by Martin in this creature's dream. So he performs this like, yeah, spirit guide for other spirits to come talk to who they need to talk to. But like we said, it's not just the good guys to do this the bad guys see it too the bad guys will often get bad premonitions of either the protagonist or the badger lord that is going to end up murdering them um i don't mean murder in like a bad way like they die in battle yeah every time but like the villain to avoid that as much as possible so yeah we're like they will they will like the the villain will like have visions of the badger or have visions of martin yeah and then they will act in ways this gets into like sort of the Greek prophecy type thing where they're like will behave in ways so as to avoid this future that they've foreseen but no matter what they end up at that future often through their own actions of

attempting to avoid that future and so these like these like red wall villains are falling into like sort of the greek play trap of avoiding fate. And by avoiding fate, you actually end up achieving the faith. They're pulling, they're pulling the Macbeth. Yeah, exactly. They're pulling a full Macbeth because it's like,

ah, I've seen a vision where it's like, I mean, Clooney is like, I've seen a vision where this mouse warrior kills me. So I'm going to steal the mouse warrior from the Abbey. So he can't kill me because i have him and then they find the writing behind the missing piece of tapestry that leads them

to martin's tomb and so it's like oh unless if if he hadn't stolen that they never would have seen the poem which leads them to matth becoming the hero. And these stories are full of that. Now, obviously, if you break it down from a storytelling perspective, there's a whole lot of obviously convenient occurrences that allow the story to happen. But it's a fantasy story. I'm not mad at Brian Jakes for being like,

someone bumped into a tree and it happened to be the tree that had the inscription at the base. It's a story. Those are going to happen. I think it's more interesting to look at it. Animals are talking. You kind of have to, you know. A lot of these were stories initially meant to be out loud

to groups of children. Which I think also to me connects it to what we were just talking about where a lot of these echo a lot of things from classic Greek stories, obviously with prophecy and fate and mysticism. And also, like you just said, that they were oral. A lot of these were him telling a story to kids out loud. story to kids out loud. And which I, I think I mentioned it in the group chat beforehand leads to like, if you listen to the audio books, like I have, he put in the time to make sure they were full productions. The audio books have seven to 10 different voice actors. The songs are fully

performed with singing and instruments. There sound effects occasionally and there's like transition music between the chapters and i think that adds to the point that you just made kethel about that like it's almost an oral story an oral tradition that has been converted into a novel into novelization he's essentially done sort of like greek greek plays but in a high fantasy setting in oral tradition initially meant for blind kids yeah which i think leads us to another fun transitioning to another what i think is an interesting story point that is specific to brian jakes which i think comes from the fact that he was telling stories for blind kids, he goes out of his way to talk about how things smell, the sounds you hear, how things feel. He is very descriptive in ways that don't just rely on sight.

And I think that relates to the fact that he was telling stories to blind kids. So like telling what color the dawn is isn't going to be that useful to a 10-year-old that's never seen anything. But telling them what the pastry smells like or like the feel of the woodlands in the morning, that's something that they can empathize with more. I think that directly impacted his storytelling. And he doesn't seem to like stop there. I mentioned this. I don't know if this is true or not but this is how i kind of interpreted it there's a character in the first red wall book um silent sam that is he is a baby squirrel who or a young squirrel who can't talk at all um but is intelligent understands language fine and can and he like helps

matthias finds his way back to um redwall when he gets lost on the way back from saving the moles and um he also helps a number of other ways later on like he participates in a number of ways um it's just knowing that he was telling these stories mostly two kids with disabilities of some kind was i was like initially i immediately was like is this like an analog to non-verbal like asd because i don't know because he has a he has a physical tick too he doesn't speak and he doesn't speak and he's always sucking on his paw. Always. Which I think is just analogous to sucking your thumb or something.

So he's nonverbal, has a physical tick, but understands everyone and participates and does things that he wants to do. I think that's a really good point. I feel like that is like wants to do i think that's a really good point i feel like that is like an insert to like kids with disabilities that like he's a hero too yeah sorry yeah because obviously i feel like that would have been an important point for an important point for him especially with the first book because like who knows if there was just an

individual kid at one of at like one of his storytellings that he threw this character in there for them when he was there you know and then it made its way into the original manuscript because the manuscript when he originally wrote it was 800 pages long so it's like it's like so how many of these characters are analogs or are directly correlated to the kids he was talking to at the time when he initially did this? And then they made their way into the story over time and then stayed even when the kids weren't there. And I definitely feel that way about Silent Sam. I don't know so much about the other characters, but... I will say that speaking to kids also comes through the fact that how he,

in every book, he will unfailingly mention the Dibbons, which again is their word for babies, like children. Unfailingly, the Dibbons are always brought up, and they always play a role in the story somehow. The Dibbons always play a role in every story to some extent, except for maybe there's one out there or something. But like anytime you're at Redwall, he's going to take the time to talk about the Dibbons and name some of them.

And they are often important parts of the story. Like a Dibbon will escape, like run out of the Abbey, like being mischievous and then rescuing that Dibbon will escape, like run out of the Abbey, like being mischievous, and then rescuing that Dibbon will lead to some other important part of the story. Or the Dibbon will discover something in the woods that then the adults have to go check out. You know, stuff like that. And I think that, again, relates to who this story was originally meant for when it was an oral story, is that he's like, no, I'm going to name the babies. You're going to know their personalities babies you're going to know their personalities and you're going to be involved with them all the time all right everyone thank you for

listening if you want to follow me, I am at Himbo underscore Anarchist. If you'd like to follow Ketho, he is at Stupid Puma 69. And our guest, Nicole, can be found at Giggle Tits, which is at G-I- six L E underscore tits. And if you'd like to contact us with the questions,

you can either DM us, uh, DM the pod, or you can send us an email at swords and socialism pod at proton mail.com. Uh, thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week. Goodbye.