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TRANSCRIPT
UISSAN: That much, at least, Majesty, speaks well of your … intention.
IPOLA: I hope my actions will speak as fairly.
UISSAN: As do we all, Majesty. Gen turan.
IPOLA: Gen turan.
MENTL: (troubled) The final solution …
ZONA: What?
MENTL: But … they really are evil, aren’t they? We’ve been in their dungeons, we’ve seen what they do.
ZONA: Yes. Yes, they are.
MENTL: All of them? Every last one of them? Even the kids?
ZONA: As far as I could ever find out. I mean …
(pause. She’s not completely sure)
ZONA: Gods, let’s just win first, okay? That’s going to be hard enough.
MENTL: True.
18 thoughts on “All Of Them? – Page 1117”
EmmaC
This is why I love this comics, and the characters.
jd.
I love this page. I mean, we know that those people are the good guys, their hearts in the right place, they mean totally well, they want nothing but peace and well-being for everyone… and yet, war.
The WWII reference is a superb touch. It’s something that’s been done lots of times (and people I don’t suspect of any ill intent have been commenting on stuff like God Loves, Man Kills to the tune of “All right, I get it, the Holocaust was bad, can someone write a plot about something else?”) but here it’s just right.
And I love that sister Heart gets to reflect on the matter. One hopes the end of the story won’t be marred by a fight with Tula over mass genocide. (I’ll grant it would be BADASS, but I still don’t want to see it. That exchange in https://barbarianprincess.com/comic/takin-care-of-business/page-846/ was bad enough.)
Anvildude
Ooh, yeah. Mentl’s gonna have some opinions on this, isn’t he?
MarcusoTerra
I love Zona’s doubt here. Because it does matter. Because if a new generation can change and can be free of the evils of their parents it would be an offense to Erogenia’s cha to deny them that. And instead of simply writing of the Urtts and what ‘she’s found out’ as the facts, she stops, thinks about it, and realizes she doesn’t have the info she needs to commit to a decision.
Tula’s right these two DO make each other better.
Prairie Son
Congrats on Mentl being willing to make the obvious conclusion on what Ipola’s oath means to us.
Soulworker
As has been mentioned I also love the depth of this page. It is all to easy to engage in acts of war…and then…only later realize the full implications of what has been started…and the few horrible ways it could end. While the war has already begun in this case, Uissan’s question forces Ipola to consider this in advance of her next actions.
Michael’s subsequent reflection is both personal and powerful. Modern Jewish culture was indelibly shaped by the Shoah (Holocaust) and he is being faced with that existential question of how do we win against the evil of the Urrts without become evil ourselves?
Lovely work as always JED!
Jean
“The Final Solution”
Hearing that from Mentl… I’m not at all surprised by Zona’s confused “What?” because she doesn’t know. But most of us do know. So that’s some serious subtexting for most readers right there.
…My ideas? Either find a way to reshape the very thoughts of the urtts so that they’re not the inhumans that Vito described…or take the youngest of the urtts (really young) and hand them to the Nassim to raise. If the Nassim cannot change them, then…yeah. (And stars help them if they hurt the Nassim!)
Someone's Ed
Almost this. The Snake Tribe should also take a part in this. It’s a big complicated effort, and there may be room for other groups to help out as well.
I would say that it’s important to remember who the Urrt were and why they were what they were. But the young Urrts do not need to know they were Urrts. They should not be reminded that they were Urrts. They should not be discriminated against for who their parents were.
Jean
…Not sure what kind of offense to or balancing of the cha it would be to have Mentl sing/enchant the Urtts into being far less vicious-by-nature…since they apparently were *created* to be vicious & bloodthirsty, as opposed to what the Nassim were created to be…
jd.
Lady sis, you just made me remember that Erogenians were also quite the vicious, bloodthirsty bunch in their time. Some, likely most of them, reformed.
So yeah, things can change. For the nonce, let’s keep up hope.
Reservist
True, true, Jean.
But yet, a substantial number of pages back, we’ve followed two Urtt warriors, dubbed “Larry and Moe” by the readers, and they thought to be, well, not as blood-thirsty and single-minded about killing and all that. In other words, even though they were killed by an Erogenian deep-reconnaissance squad, they were portrayed as being less stereotypically Urttish.
So there might be hope.
Lora
These pages with Uissan have been great! The whole dialogue about oaths and what they mean and being willing to change.
And Mentl ask the right question of Zona. She probably doesn’t know Earth history, but if she did learn the modern history then she would know why killing *everyone* is troubling to him.
Archone
From what I’ve seen of them, they’re… really not that “vicious-by-nature.” That whole “genetically evil” thing really seems to be a fallacy, given how we’ve seen them wax philosophical and talk and… basically show as much humanity as they’re able to, given the constraints of their culture.
And it’s worth remembering that (as Grandpa Eregonian reminds us) the Eregonians TAUGHT the Urrts how to behave this way.
Tom Billings
“the Eregonians TAUGHT the Urrts how to behave this way.”
The problem with assuming this from the Urrts Erogenian ancestry is that recent research admits that this may *not*be*true*. The Erogenians are human. We know that behaviors in autism are genetically inherited in humans, through families. We know that sociopathy also is inherited in families. They both sometimes skip generations. Some problems are a combination of genes, and some are single genes.
The Old Erogenians changed the Urrts at their genetic core, to be different from the Seed of the Old Erogenians. This is what Kor Lachnis and his newly created Owner of Owners admitted to each other when they met. So it is quite possible that Urrts are built, genetically, to have fewer inhibitory neuronal connections on activites we will consider repulsive, …like eating sentient beings. Hannibal Lecter, and those humans whose traits that character was written from, had few or no such inhibitions. It is certainly true that before the agricultural revolution the majority of humans had humans had been cannibals. We know this because prions are spread primarily by cannibalism, and it was the agricultural revolution that was placed just as the anti-prion genes in the human genome went into genetic drift, because they were not needed any more.
It is possible that there are *family*lines* among the Urrts that are not so violent towards sentient beings. It is possible that training and culture can make such behaviors better of worse. Certainly that is true with Autism. It *might* be true with sociopathy. Until Mentl, or someone else, can examine them for it, with understanding from someone like, perhaps, the Erogenian Sun God, Sura, we simply cannot say one way or the other.
Archone
Did… did you just compare autism to… sociopathy and having a culture of evil for the sake of evil? Hell, even sociopathy shouldn’t be compared to having a culture of evil for the sake of evil; most sociopaths fit into society because they are still logical and reasonable, they simply lack empathy. They won’t go out of their way to help others, but neither will they be kicking puppies for fun.
Also, Grandpa Eregonian’s first appearance had him establishing that the Eregonians worshipped Shuach and taught the Urrts to worship the same deity. Everything the Urrts know about evil, they learned from the evil regime of the ancient Eregonians. Even the modern day Eregonians have admitted as such, that their ancient empire was destroyed because of their wickedness and they’ve spent all the time since then working to atone.
Brother Parvus
The timing of this page in my life is somewhat unnerving, as I found in the Little Free Library box near me, a copy of _The Tattoist of Auschwitz_, and an interview with one of the oldest survivors of that experience. I had a very good friend (a late friend) who wore his tattoo publicly.
TMI Fairy
Final Solution?
Kill the kids?
Well, Mentl, go read your Torah for some early examples …
Charon the Fateless
You speak of ‘final solutions’ but nothing is ever final. Trust me, the gods tried that with me; it failed spectacularly. Of course being hurled away from the seven part world did put a hiccup in my entire ‘being alive’ situation. But I am fine thus.
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