ruff Overthinks Things

It wasn’t unusual for kids to be working in adult jobs this early in many of their time periods, the Medieval Era especially. Things like child labour laws? Mandatory education? 18 years before you were considered eligible as an adult? Almost all of them were modern inventions.

Because it’s only been 20 years and London is a massive minority in all this, I expect that a lot of parents still believe their kids should be marrying and having children at 13-14, and having a lot of them, as there’s this unwritten belief that majority of them will die off because dangers and poor health abounds, not to mention the fact that you should have been working as a servant or an apprentice in some future job so you could support yourself before it was too late, or you’d already been working to take over your family’s farm since you could walk.

Fair warning, I’m touching upon race and my deliberative process may ruffle some feathers. I can stand by my work, so anyone who wants to go off on some tirade because they disagree will find me rather unmoved by it.

Unless you have a well thought out and articulate rebuttal, then I’m open. 

Why I made Jay’s mother a Hun.

Assuming Jay (the character) looks JUST like the actor Boo Boo Stewart, I wanted an explanation as to why he looks Korean-Japanese-Chinese/Native-Blackfeet/White when Jafar is from Agrabah. While there is no official ethnic makeup of Agrabah or any of the 18 Kingdoms, it’s supposed to be analogous to a generic country/muddling of countries in the middle east. I saw two different references that Agrabah is supposed to be near the Jordan river. So we’re talking about Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria. Wikipedia lists Iran and Iraq as sources of inspiration. The actor who plays Jafar in Descendants (Maz Jobrani) is Iranian. The royal family is Muslim (the Sultan refers to Allah at last once and the palace architecture is clearly Islamic). “Sultan” is an Arabic term. So we get a pretty distinct picture of Agrabah.

Now one could make the argument that we don’t ever get a full picture of where Agrabah is in relation to the other 18 Kingdoms. I can’t even google a map of Auradon that distinctly carves it out, I think most references point to it being way up north, behind “the great wall” like Northern Wei is. So if we assume Agrabah and Northern Wei are next to each other geographically and the rest of Auradon is south, then I could see where Jay would get prominent Asian features and still be considered Agrabi. Think of an area where Agrabah and Northern Wei meet, you’d probably see people who look Nepalese, Bhutanese, Tibetan, and all up and down that general area; where Middle Eastern and Asian features mix in. So we would just have to say that Jay’s mother is from the more Northern Wei-ish part of Agrabah and ka-chow, his features are explained.

Sorry to any reader who is offended by this, I just didn’t think most would really think that deeply about it or even know geography well enough to figure it out and make those connections. So I wanted a more obvious character they could associate these features with, without having to somehow fit into the story where someone or something explained the geographical proximity of Agrabah and Northern Wei and would understand that there is a distinct area where both countries would have influenced the ethnic/racial makeup.  

It’s also kind of hard to try to explain why someone from that area would have been banished to the Isle. By all accounts, Jafar was a lone wolf and never had like an army or others to have helped him besides Iago. And he doesn’t look like he has any Northern Wei features, so he’d be from a rather distant area from there.

Shan Yu was a warlord. I’m kind of thinking Attila the Hun/Genghis Khan type conqueror. I could see him having a few loyal camp followers/concubines that would have followed him to the Isle, along with any survivors of the Hunnic war with Northern Wei. That seemed more logical and likely, to me.  

I also assume most have this belief that certain countries have a very specific ethnic/racial makeup and anyone who doesn’t have those features is an immigrant and therefore never really part of that country, regardless of how many generations removed they are from the initial immigration.

I recently did a post/reblogged about making Evie black, even though the story of Snow White has German roots. There were some people who were like, what? No way. But there are black people born and raised in Germany, they speak German. Germany is all they’ve known. That makes them German. But not everyone thinks that way, so I do take that into account.

So even if I did try to assert that Jay’s lineage is simply from an area in Agrabah that would have mixed with Northern Wei racially, I just don’t think it would have clicked in readers’ heads as well as: Jafar is from Agrabah, Jay’s mother is a Hun = Jay’s features explained.

One, Agrabah and Northern Wei were artifically put together by Auradon, Post-Great Uniting. These two were not geographically, temporally, or dimensionally close to each other BGU. To use an analogy, this wasn’t two species of flowers that bloomed in the same rainforest but only in a rare intersection, these were two entirely different, unrelated species of plants taken from different parts of the world and put in the same greenhouse by humans.

BGU, Cinderellasburg, Sherwood Forest, and Auroria were not next-door neighbours, it was only AGU that they were brought together, not to mention connected by the hub that is Auradon City.

Two, there is no reason that the parents of VKs need to have been geographically close to each other to have met and produced children. Regardless of where they were originally from, all the villains are on the Isle AGU. Jay’s mother could have been a working girl from modern day London, a Romanian cutpurse from Medieval France, or from any other time period or location in all of Auradon’s composite states, it doesn’t matter whether or not their home states were neighbours or even in the same dimension and time period, because they’re all in the same place, at the same time, here on the Isle. There’s culture clash, for sure, but like Auradon, it eventually died down as they realized they were all in this hellish shithole together, might as well fight each other for legitimate reasons like someone stealing food.

This explanation WOULD be required if Auradon had always existed, and its geography was natural and came about over hundreds of thousands of yours, and like the real world, some places simply just developed slower, or had different influences, or was so isolated that it was not influenced as strongly by global trends. But again, it’s really not, because all of these people were tossed together on the Isle, and the rest of Auradon was ripped up from their home dimensions and put together like existential LEGO bricks.

Also, why would more Huns be in the Isle? Simple: China sees them as the enemy. Regardless of how the situation with the Xiongnu actually was, Auradon are the “good guys” and are on China’s side; China says that this race of people are all barbarians who would sooner slaughter, pillage, and burn their cities than attempt to reform, and that attempting to change them would be a mistake, and Auradon will believe them.

1)      Jay’s mother is from Agrabah but comes from a region that had heavily mixed with Northern Wei and that explains his Asian features.

2)      Jay’s mother is from Northern Wei itself and is racially/culturally separate from Jafar, and that explains his Asian features.

These are two separate theories. I did not go with theory 1, I merely put it forth as a possible explanation and alternative to what I ultimately chose for LOE—theory 2.

I am not aware of the “Great Uniting.” Is this something from the books? Online research has not been fruitful. If so, could you please give me more information? Such as, which book and which page/chapter if you can recall. I would really need to see references to the Great Uniting to get a better idea of context, if it’s that in depth.

That’s definitely a big event that would break theory number one down. Especially if it implies that not only were these countries geographically separate and isolated from each other, they are from separate universes where they would have NEVER interacted, even with human travel/exploration/migration. It also raises a lot of questions of why FGM would raise not only dead villains, but villains from other universes. Like it would be more than just a “culture clash” that they’d “get over,” even in twenty or so years. If someone from another dimension had LITERALLY stolen my country, moved it, and colonized it; I’m pretty sure we’d still be seeing civil wars and fall out from that. I would think that the Huns and Northern Wei would make a peace treaty and ally themselves with each other before they would accept a sovereign of an even more foreign nation.

So if the Great Uniting is part of the book canon, then I probably would have ignored it and still felt comfortable with Theory 1. And I would have been happy to do it as LOE is divorced from most of the book and even the movie mythos anyway as most of canon is silly and riddled with incontinuity. I have no problem picking and choosing what I prefer, Great Uniting is definitely something I wouldn’t bother with.

Assuming Fairy Godmother was responsible for this unification, then it’s just another instance where she is given immense power that I just wouldn’t want a character in LOE to have. And it just introduced so many more illogical problems than banishing villains would have solved.

“Two, there is no reason that the parents of VKs need to have been geographically close to each other to have met and produced children.”

I’m not 100% sure what you mean by this. I never suggested they had to physically be geographically next to each other in order to have children. Jay and the others’ conception and birth all post-date banishment (Isle created 20 years ago, Jay and the others were 12-16 at the start of the movie). So they were sired and born on the Isle, so it’s irrelevant as to which theory holds true, no matter what the parents would have met on the Isle. That was never in question to me.

The features and mixed race thing was a misunderstanding. I assumed that it was a pre Great Uniting “this is how we met.”

They weren't colonized, China was willingly entering the alliance and the Huns were brought along for being inside their territory, or more of that Auradon style crime and punishment, China's home realm not wanting the Xiongnu left with them as China leaves for good.

Fair warning, I’m touching upon race and my deliberative process may ruffle some feathers. I can stand by my work, so anyone who wants to go off on some tirade because they disagree will find me rather unmoved by it.

Unless you have a well thought out and articulate rebuttal, then I’m open. 

Why I made Jay’s mother a Hun.

Assuming Jay (the character) looks JUST like the actor Boo Boo Stewart, I wanted an explanation as to why he looks Korean-Japanese-Chinese/Native-Blackfeet/White when Jafar is from Agrabah. While there is no official ethnic makeup of Agrabah or any of the 18 Kingdoms, it’s supposed to be analogous to a generic country/muddling of countries in the middle east. I saw two different references that Agrabah is supposed to be near the Jordan river. So we’re talking about Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria. Wikipedia lists Iran and Iraq as sources of inspiration. The actor who plays Jafar in Descendants (Maz Jobrani) is Iranian. The royal family is Muslim (the Sultan refers to Allah at last once and the palace architecture is clearly Islamic). “Sultan” is an Arabic term. So we get a pretty distinct picture of Agrabah.

Now one could make the argument that we don’t ever get a full picture of where Agrabah is in relation to the other 18 Kingdoms. I can’t even google a map of Auradon that distinctly carves it out, I think most references point to it being way up north, behind “the great wall” like Northern Wei is. So if we assume Agrabah and Northern Wei are next to each other geographically and the rest of Auradon is south, then I could see where Jay would get prominent Asian features and still be considered Agrabi. Think of an area where Agrabah and Northern Wei meet, you’d probably see people who look Nepalese, Bhutanese, Tibetan, and all up and down that general area; where Middle Eastern and Asian features mix in. So we would just have to say that Jay’s mother is from the more Northern Wei-ish part of Agrabah and ka-chow, his features are explained.

Sorry to any reader who is offended by this, I just didn’t think most would really think that deeply about it or even know geography well enough to figure it out and make those connections. So I wanted a more obvious character they could associate these features with, without having to somehow fit into the story where someone or something explained the geographical proximity of Agrabah and Northern Wei and would understand that there is a distinct area where both countries would have influenced the ethnic/racial makeup.  

It’s also kind of hard to try to explain why someone from that area would have been banished to the Isle. By all accounts, Jafar was a lone wolf and never had like an army or others to have helped him besides Iago. And he doesn’t look like he has any Northern Wei features, so he’d be from a rather distant area from there.

Shan Yu was a warlord. I’m kind of thinking Attila the Hun/Genghis Khan type conqueror. I could see him having a few loyal camp followers/concubines that would have followed him to the Isle, along with any survivors of the Hunnic war with Northern Wei. That seemed more logical and likely, to me.  

I also assume most have this belief that certain countries have a very specific ethnic/racial makeup and anyone who doesn’t have those features is an immigrant and therefore never really part of that country, regardless of how many generations removed they are from the initial immigration.

I recently did a post/reblogged about making Evie black, even though the story of Snow White has German roots. There were some people who were like, what? No way. But there are black people born and raised in Germany, they speak German. Germany is all they’ve known. That makes them German. But not everyone thinks that way, so I do take that into account.

So even if I did try to assert that Jay’s lineage is simply from an area in Agrabah that would have mixed with Northern Wei racially, I just don’t think it would have clicked in readers’ heads as well as: Jafar is from Agrabah, Jay’s mother is a Hun = Jay’s features explained.

One, Agrabah and Northern Wei were artifically put together by Auradon, Post-Great Uniting. These two were not geographically, temporally, or dimensionally close to each other BGU. To use an analogy, this wasn’t two species of flowers that bloomed in the same rainforest but only in a rare intersection, these were two entirely different, unrelated species of plants taken from different parts of the world and put in the same greenhouse by humans.

BGU, Cinderellasburg, Sherwood Forest, and Auroria were not next-door neighbours, it was only AGU that they were brought together, not to mention connected by the hub that is Auradon City.

Two, there is no reason that the parents of VKs need to have been geographically close to each other to have met and produced children. Regardless of where they were originally from, all the villains are on the Isle AGU. Jay’s mother could have been a working girl from modern day London, a Romanian cutpurse from Medieval France, or from any other time period or location in all of Auradon’s composite states, it doesn’t matter whether or not their home states were neighbours or even in the same dimension and time period, because they’re all in the same place, at the same time, here on the Isle. There’s culture clash, for sure, but like Auradon, it eventually died down as they realized they were all in this hellish shithole together, might as well fight each other for legitimate reasons like someone stealing food.

This explanation WOULD be required if Auradon had always existed, and its geography was natural and came about over hundreds of thousands of yours, and like the real world, some places simply just developed slower, or had different influences, or was so isolated that it was not influenced as strongly by global trends. But again, it’s really not, because all of these people were tossed together on the Isle, and the rest of Auradon was ripped up from their home dimensions and put together like existential LEGO bricks.

Also, why would more Huns be in the Isle? Simple: China sees them as the enemy. Regardless of how the situation with the Xiongnu actually was, Auradon are the “good guys” and are on China’s side; China says that this race of people are all barbarians who would sooner slaughter, pillage, and burn their cities than attempt to reform, and that attempting to change them would be a mistake, and Auradon will believe them.

The choice for Dude’s ‘actor’.

Dude is a mutt, explicitly said in the movie. No clue what breed he could possibly be besides that he’s probably a mix of some sort of terrier, perhaps a wirehair, but that’s as close as we could ever get to figuring out what this cutie is.

Not only does that help people see that mutts are just as cute and awesome as pure-breds, but think about 101 Dalmatians and the sequel 102 Dalmatians. They created huge crazes for the eponymous breed, and in the case of 102 Dalmatians, Oddball caused a demand for Dalmatians with no spots. Guess what, spotless Dalmatians are far more prone to issues like deafness (which Dalmatians are already at a huge risk for). Hence leading to the inevitable wave of people abandoning or giving up their dog for adoption when the breed doesn’t meet their TV standards. Descendants went out of its way to NOT cause that.

And Dude’s age is so awesome too! Dude is DEFINITELY not a puppy. He’s an adult- my guess would be about five years or so. Guess what, he’s still awesome and adorable. So unlike 101/102 Dalmatians, If someone wanted a Dude of their own, they’d go for a mixed-breed adult dog in a shelter instead of a purebred that requires a lot of care and is prone to health problems (the absolute worst choice for a family with little kids that just wants a dog like they saw on TV) and had a good chance of being mistreated, possibly even bred by a puppy mill. Dude would help people want to adopt precisely the group of dogs that needs a huge boost in popularity!

It’s hard for ex-cons to live better lives after prison. There’s strong social stigma, and oftentimes an expansive list of systemic, societal, and/or psychological issues that “locking them up” did not solve, such as poverty, racism, and undiagnosed/untreated mental illnesses. And animals are oftentimes as abandoned, abused, and forgotten as they are.

If D3 FINALLY wises up and decides that it’s not only the kids that deserve a ticket off the Isle, it’s also the SCORES of minor criminals that are there, I think it would be EXTREMELY good for Disney to show many of these ex-convicts of 20+ years non-stop imprisonment, abuse, and horrors living new lives by helping animals find theirs, too.

I don’t doubt that for however much Auradon likes to push “we love all living things!”, there’s a terrifying number of rich people who’ve adopted dogs on a whim, then put them into pounds and shelters with no regrets because “the staff are good, kind, generous people who’ll find them new, better homes in no time!”

Wouldn’t that mean someone who is half dragon would be cold all the time?

The thing you have to understand with dragons breathing fire is, it’s probably a chemical process. Fires need three things to get going:

Fuel,

Ignition, and

Oxygen

The dragons of most worlds, I theorize, provide that via:

Volatile gasses stored in a special second stomach, lung, or sac

Friction producing glands in their mouths that cause sparks when agitated, and

Oxygen in the external environment, as they still breath out CO2 because it’s non-flammable

I should note that if they did breathe out oxygen, they would have blown up like a dynamite stick by now. Think of it like lighting a trail of gunpowder while it’s still attached to the barrel itself, if you graduated from the University of Looney Tunes like I did.

Anyway, back to the hybrids: half-dragons, I would assume, are not a purely biological and genetic process. There’s a lot of magic going on there (or possibly some very mad science, most people don’t make a distinction in some realms), so that the resulting offspring will be viable and manage to survive with necessary adaptations.

In conclusion, human-sized half-dragons like Mal are probably warm-blooded, thanks to her genetics making it necessary that she be able to regulate her own body temperature, not to mention any cold-blooded creature on the Isle would likely be lethargic or hibernating all the time due to the lack of sun and warm spots.