Yesterday, I said: “I’m starting to tune in to the general vibe of Endtown. It’s not about good vs evil. It’s about a Wounded Land – an environment and its people who, by and large, are hurt and frightened and angry.”
By that, I meant everyone, including the Topsiders, and including Sparkplug Sanders. The fact that they need healing does not mean they’ll stop trying to kill people in the meantime. Sparkplug lived and literally died with killing on his mind. The Topsiders don’t think of mutants as people. Jake Jackrabbit doesn’t think of the Topsiders as sufficiently evolved people.
It’s a tragic and common situation, and while physical conflict is inevitable in the short term, war has no future in the long term. Eventually, there will be peace in one of two ways. Either there will be genocide (by arms, occupation or assimilation) as one society wipes out the other. Or there will be a way for the groups, or enclaves, or tribes, to be made to stop seeing the others as "others’ – faceless non-people on the other side of the hill. For leaders to meet and start talking sense.
Unlikely, I know. But I have seen remarkable and unlikely things happen in my time. The odd, stray spark. The power of one. The hundredth one succeeding after ninety-nine have perished.
If Mr Neathery has good sense and respect for our intelligence, he will not give us a quick answer nor an easy one. But I have he has a handle on the direction of his story and the story of his world. My mind’s appetite has the endurance, I trust his moral compass, and I eagerly await the long, long journey.
Yesterday, I said: “I’m starting to tune in to the general vibe of Endtown. It’s not about good vs evil. It’s about a Wounded Land – an environment and its people who, by and large, are hurt and frightened and angry.”
By that, I meant everyone, including the Topsiders, and including Sparkplug Sanders. The fact that they need healing does not mean they’ll stop trying to kill people in the meantime. Sparkplug lived and literally died with killing on his mind. The Topsiders don’t think of mutants as people. Jake Jackrabbit doesn’t think of the Topsiders as sufficiently evolved people.
It’s a tragic and common situation, and while physical conflict is inevitable in the short term, war has no future in the long term. Eventually, there will be peace in one of two ways. Either there will be genocide (by arms, occupation or assimilation) as one society wipes out the other. Or there will be a way for the groups, or enclaves, or tribes, to be made to stop seeing the others as "others’ – faceless non-people on the other side of the hill. For leaders to meet and start talking sense.
Unlikely, I know. But I have seen remarkable and unlikely things happen in my time. The odd, stray spark. The power of one. The hundredth one succeeding after ninety-nine have perished.
If Mr Neathery has good sense and respect for our intelligence, he will not give us a quick answer nor an easy one. But I have he has a handle on the direction of his story and the story of his world. My mind’s appetite has the endurance, I trust his moral compass, and I eagerly await the long, long journey.