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THE APES OF WRATH!

Andrew’s favorite book is “The Apes of Wrath”, according to the N64 strategy guide. I’ve been amusingly haunted by this for years, so it’s time to say my piece.

My first thought was (1) “Andrew reads…?”. My second thought was (2) “That’s totally hilarious. Andross’s army is full of wrathful apes, after all.” My third thought was (3) “Wait a minute. The source material, the Grapes of Wrath, is a sad and soulful tale of poverty, death, and community under struggle. Could the Apes of Wrath be a similar book!?”

It was obviously just a silly monkey joke by the creators, but what if we took it seriously for juicy fanfic/worldbuilding/lore reasons?

We can muse that if the Apes of Wrath is anything like the source material it’s parodying by John Steinbeck, it concerns the plight of simian migrant workers who travel far from home in hopes of financial stability during Some Great Lylatian Depression. Perhaps it’s written by someone called Yohn Steinbock (a Steinbock goat).

Many of these ape characters would be a part of impoverished families who starve to death in hopes of a promised land that never materializes. Perhaps Corneria’s governance promised these people something that it never actually delivered on? Were they deceived in this story? Ignored? Abandoned? Exploited?

Yes yes yes yes yes, I'm so glad I stumbled onto this post because we need to talk about this, because this joke has bugged me ever since I first saw it.

Like yes they obviously did it for the pun but the sheer idea that there's a book in Lylat titled 'The Apes of Wrath' is unbelievable worldbuilding especially when you consider speciesism in the game. I mean, the Cornerian army and General Pepper are all dogs - for the "dogs of war" pun I presume because that's how this all goes, but then you have to consider the reverse, and how the bosses you fight in Starfox are all apes (and a handful of alligators for some reason).

For real has the Lylat Wars been a race war this whole time?

Venom in game is depicted as this ugly, polluted, barely livable planet in contras to the Earthlike beauty of Cornera, and Andross gets exiled there as punishment, but also when we go there, there's these old stone temples with ape statues and ancient technology. Is Venom the ape homeworld???? Did they pollute it in their race to the space age or was there some disaster that forced them to abandon it??? And now that Andross with his genius has gathered powerful weapons and formed bastion on this world, do the apes flock to him like a new messiah that will lead them to glorious victory to reclaim Venom and the rest of Lylat????

Your comment made me think about how it sticks out to me that the CDF upper brass that greet Star Fox during the award ceremony are all dogs. This is a visual contrast to Star Fox, so maybe it's intentional. Corneria's quite culturally homogeneous (especially compared to Papetoon), where dog Lylatians appear as the majority and the ruling class. I like to think that although General Pepper is a well-intentioned and morally-just character to the best of his abilities, he may also be obliviously ignorant to the downsides of this "doggy ethnostate" (lol). After all, it seems that creators like Imamura view Corneria as a good ... but not perfect ... society. Andross is like the extreme status-quo-disruptor, offering his followers an alternative vision, no matter the cost. I tend to work with the headcanon that Andross's most high-ranking followers are fringe ape supremacists.

Giving Venom some actual history in the form of a [forgive me] ... a planet of the apes ... or some other culture would be really neat. The fact that it's apparently an unlivable toxic wasteland is... Hm. Questionable. The ancient history angle as a reptilian homeworld goes as far back as Itoh's SNES comic. I think some lore also spun that it used to be a green utopia and Command played with terraforming it.

Night Lords

the jacob wysocki tulpa manifesting inside my brain:

Howling Banshee