Your Daily Redwall Fix

In case anyone was wondering how my sword making is going...the first printout, when I glued it together warped a bit, so I needed to change up what I was doing. Reprinted a whole new set (and made sure all parts had 100% flat bottoms this time)

I print in ABS because then I can make a little plastic slurry using leftover 3D print parts mixed with acetone to make a glue that holds incredibly well on the pieces.

I then glued each half together, let that dry, got a new dowel rod (smaller than the previous one, which is what I think partially caused the issue.) I let it sit for like a day and then sat to glue the two together. The gems are not glued in yet, I still have to "finish" those so they shine right.

This time around I got a package of clamps from the local hardware store, and used as many as I could to get the sword to flatten against itself, and have no gaps.

Make more fanart of well known thing??

NO

Me: ....

So! Thoughts, on reflection, about Redwall:

Something I forgot along the way is just how competent Matthias is right from the start. Granted he lives in a society that hasn’t seen war in several generations so it’s not like he has a lot of competition, but he still goes from Bumbling Novice Who Doesn’t Quite Fit In to a martial and tactical powerhouse alongside Constance, the one who closed negotiations by picking up an entire banquet table and throwing it.

And not only that, people listen to him! As soon as negotiations break down, Matthias jumps in with a plan and all his elders listen. I watched the animated series growing up, which was… not super great, quality wise, but enjoyable enough for a kid. And one of the changes the show made was playing up Matthias’s childishness and inexperience. In the adaptation, when everyone’s panicking about the legendary warlord marching on the abbey, Matthias jumps in with this rallying speech about how they’ll fight back, and the abbot scolds him for it. “No more talk of fighting,” when Cluny the Scourge is almost at their doorstep. In the original book?

“Do? I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll be ready.” The Abbot could not help shaking his head in admiration. It seemed that young Matthias had hidden depths. “Why, thank you, Matthias,” he said. “I could not have put it better myself. That’s exactly what we will do. We’ll be ready!”

(Years later, a certain wizard in a certain film adaptation would ask a question calmly.)

This book has a beaver in it. And a horse. And the mention of a dog. And Portugal.

Speaking of which, one of the many things that I think sets this book apart from the rest is that it feels like Jacques is making an attempt to write a book that takes place in a smaller Mouse World that exists within a larger world. The abbey is mouse-sized, of course, but an entire army of rats rides in on a single horse-drawn hay cart. Matthias climbs hay bales in a barn and falls into a cat’s mouth. Again, Portugal exists.

Idk what my point is, it just goes to show that BJ really was gradually building this world as he wrote it. I didn’t obsess so much over canon continuity, I just came up with my own explanations for things.

Ah, phonetic accents. I have mixed feelings about phonetic accents these days. I know logically that it’s better to avoid them, but like. I read the moles’ dialogue and try to imagine what it would look like without every word misspelled to exaggerate the dialect, and I just. Couldn’t visualize it. Moles just aren’t moles if you aren’t rereading their lines two or three times to parse what they’re saying. (Excepting Egburt the Scholar, of course, but I won’t see him for several books.)

I think my lifelong obsession with ferrets can be traced back to Killconey. I just. I know he’s a villain but I just love this guy so much. He’s adorable, he’s got a solid head on his shoulders, and he never tries to screw over his comrades, murder his comrades, bully his comrades, or flat-out lie to Cluny to get ahead, like SOME people, Cheesethief. RIP Killconey you were a good henchman and Cluny shouldn’t have thrown you at Matthias to get chopped in half.

Sela named her son Chickenhound no wonder he didn’t mourn her. Of course, his idea of a better name was “Mousedeath” so it’s not like he had room to judge.

In the case of Redwall, however, the phonetic accent is a demonstration of love for the mode of speech. There's no way to interpret the books that leaves you with the impression that the author had anything but the utmost respect for people who spoke the way moles do, and imported their mode of speech into his story because he wanted others to respect them too. There is, of course, Egburt the Scholar and his claim that it makes them sound uneducated; however this seems to be a joke, as he is quite alone in this opinion. Moles are widely regarded as some of the smartest animals in the world. Even the vermin cockney and the language of the ridiculous pygmy shrews from 'Martin the Warrior' are treated fondly; these groups have problems but the way they talk is not part of it (except, of course, for the swearing). There's none of the lingual jackassery like that explored in 'Pygmalion' here; the accents are flavor only.

Which leads me to my next point: every accent in the book is a real accent you might encounter in the British Isles. More importantly it is a work of preservation. I unfortunately do not have a source on this so take it with a grain of salt, but I've been told the speech of the pygmy shrew tribe (of all the accents the one most arguably a separate language) was a rapidly dwindling accent, one that has few speakers left. It might be lost entirely soon -- except it won't be, because it's been meticulously recorded in a book, and hundreds of thousands of people have learned to speak and understand it almost incidentally -- people who would never have picked up a book about at-risk dialects. (I do wish there was an appendix with information about these accents and their cultural and historical relevance so that people could know more about the accents they've learned from reading it. Also don't take this as fact at all; I heard it from someone who's attended one of Brian Jacques' bookstore talks but I don't have a documented source on it. If anyone else has information for or against this claim please add on!)

You’re walking through a scrubby desert in the American Southwest and you hear a high, quavering, little, howl coming from the underbrush. Is it a small coyote, perhaps a chupacabra?

In fact, it is a much more ferocious and marvelous creature–a werewolf mouse (Onychomys torridus).

You may also know it as the “grasshopper mouse”, a more common but much less fearsome name.

The grasshopper mouse is unique among mice and rodents in general in that it has an exclusive taste for the flesh of the living. This tiny werewolf feasts upon insects, scorpions, centipedes, and even snakes and other mice. They are frequently known to sate their ravenous hunger on highly venomous prey that is significantly larger than they are.

For example, this is an Arizona bark scorpion. Their venom is extremely painful and even potent enough to kill humans in rare cases (though this is usually only a threat to the very young, the very old, and the immunocompromised). Their venom is easily able to kill mouse-sized rodents.

Well, except for the grasshopper mouse.

(Animal Death Warning for the video linked below).

The grasshopper mouse is not only capable of killing and eating Arizona bark scorpions, but through some fun biochemistry shenanigans they feel no pain at all from their sting. Essentially, compounds in the scorpion venom bond to a different receptor in grasshopper mice than they do in other animals and as a result the venom compounds block pain rather than causing pain.

To use an extremely clumsy and oversimplified analogy, it would be like if someone stabbed you with a syringe full of poison and your body turned it into morphine. This talent is of particular interest to scientists, who would like to harness the mouse’s biochemical shenanigans to help control pain in humans.

The icing on the extremely-weird-animal cake is that grasshopper mice defend their territory by howling, like tiny little werewolves. 10/10 fantastically strange little beasts.

Note: this is all my own opinion!! Totally cool if you don’t agree :3

Also, this isn’t criticism! Redwall is my favourite series and I love all the books.

((Some of these have secondary villains included as well))

(Spoilers below cut)

Defender of the western coast and the peaceful wood beyond, above the beach’s endless sand stands the peak of Salamandastron.

From ancient days unnumbered and seasons now long gone, The Lords and Ladies never left the Sands of Salamandastron.

And with them stands a Great Patrol that marches ever on. A mighty force unnumbered as the Sands of Salamandastron.

An Abbey far with Walls of Red, kind beasts both old and young are kept under the watchful eye ‘f the Sands of Salamandastron

But

I

could.

Not.

Be.

Stopped.