et demain le soleil brillera toujours

There’s no stated reason. They just pretend to not be alive. We usually can suspend our suspension of disbelief here because when it’s something like a video game or an emoji because any odd occurrences is perceived as a glitch or something similar but the actual reason why they aren’t too hung up on this kinda shitty lot in life isn’t said

They get something out of their current relationship with humans (like in toy story)

They have some specific reason to hide that they’re alive, like they die if they’re seen (like in the christmas toy)

They perceive themselves as sentient, talking creatures, but humans can’t understand them. They just see a squeaking mouse or an inanimate hot dog or whatever. 

and the last one is what most animal movies do, and it’s like, not devoid of weird implications but you can see where it mostly works.

but barnyard is the outlier here: it goes with tier one: the animals can talk and walk on two legs but just pretend that they can’t for unstated reasons. 

in the history of the barnyard world non human animals, at some point, decided to just pretend to be unable to speak. a “cow” or a “coyote” or a “hen” do not exist as we know it in the barnyard universe. the baa of the sheep is false; the ewe doesn’t understand it either. they only made up that noise to hide the fact that they speak human languages. a dog barking and running on all fours is a facade. animals naturally walk on their hind legs and made up whole postures just to appear non sentient.

and for what? what do they gain from this? they have no rights and no voice by their own choice. at one point a donkey claims the farmer is a good person because he’s vegan and a pig mentions bacon - this is not a fantasy universe devoid of death and misery and meat. do animals, in hushed whispers, remind their children not to sob in their real voice as they’re taken away? do the dogs not beg for kindness when they’re tied up and hit? do cows and chickens not cry for their life in the slaughterhouses? does a rat not scream a human scream when the trap misses their neck and only breaks their spine? Why? what is the point? They loose so much and have everything to gain.

anyways does everyone remember this really awful cat. it only appears in one scene but i can just sense the porn of it that would pop up if i googled it’s name

then we get to liveship and everything in bingtown is way more intense. the rights of women are actively being taken away, althea fights misogyny in basically every single interaction, everything is extremely explicitly patriarchal. and they start talking about how the six duchies isn’t like that, how women are equal to men there, how they fight and lead and inherit and everything over there in the “barbaric” six duchies. we meet jek, who basically exists exclusively to get accused of being gay, be hot and fuck like crazy, and show off how independent and powerful six duchies women are (amber also adds to this but it is more complex for her, of course).

then in the next series we’re back home in the six duchies and it is… less… gender equal… than it was before? i was genuinely startled by just how patriarchal the six duchies is in tawny man. it’s sort of explicable from a narrative standpoint, as the out-islands are matriarchal and a strong contrast is more compelling, but it still feels jarring to read. dutiful is just sexist for no reason and is never questioned on it. molly’s last name is for some reason “burrichswyf” even though no one has had a name like that in the series to date. fitz assumes that tintaglia is smaller than icefyre because she is a female dragon, despite animals not working like that most of the time. i found it particularly jarring that, as opposed to the farseer trilogy, basically no female guards were mentioned and zero women were brought on the out-islands excursion. suddenly the six duchies is much more of a man’s club and, for all the changes in the world that fitz discusses, he never brings this up at all.

To Nettle he was like Chivalry, staying away from his child in an attempt to keep her safe, thinking he was doing the right thing by her. She even ended up in Burrichs care, much like Fitz himself did.

This kind of movies >>>>