So there is a book setting called Redwall which is about anthropomorphic animals. Despite being a children's series it's incredibly violent lol. The setting is rife with beheadings and slavery. Some villains like Ferahgo are known to skin their victims and wear their fur. Pretty hardcore shit and I have a nostalgic soft spot for the series because of it lol.
It can be refreshing to see a children series of things be pro-revenge and promote ruthless heroes but I feel like they aged
really poorly due to one seriously troubling theme in the story. For the most part, the story has black and white conflicts. You are either good or bad, and unfortunately in this setting your disposition largely depends on your species.
The mammalian species can be divided into two groups.
The good woodlanders consist of mice, voles, rabbits, hares, otters, badgers, shrews, moles, and hedgehogs. Most birds that aren't corvids or seagulls are depicted as being largely good or neutral.
Then there are evil the vermin which consist of rats, weasels, stoats, ferrets, foxes, and the occasional wildcat/marten/sable. Lizards, snakes, and toads show up less often but are always depicted as being evil.
EDIT:
I just remembered that foxes are sometimes depicted as wearing Romani-like clothing. I think Brian used might have used the word "gypsy" to describe their clothing but it's hard to remember. There are lot of books so it would be hard to track down a specific quote but TV tropes notes this as well in the literature section of this page so there's proof I am not making this out my ass. I never met a Romani person but from what I understand they are heavily discriminated against, so yeah another unfortunate detail about the setting. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RoguishRomani Some of the redwall books are pretty old so maybe he didn't realize that was a bad idea but it is something worth noting.
Second edit: Here is a screenshot of fox being described as a "gypsy". https://i.imgur.com/0BWSb0A.png
A small handful of characters defy their D&D-style alignment, but 99 percent of the time vermin are inherently bad and woodlanders are inherently good.
The author has stated that the reason he set up this clear divide is because his audience is children and he wants to make it easy for them to tell who is good and who is bad at a glance. I can see where he is coming from and I am willing to take him at his word that he isn't racist but to be blunt I think it's a weak defense for his writing.
JK Rowling is famously anti-trans yet a huge portion of her fan base believes that the books carry pro-trans themes and disregard her personal opinion on the matter. Likewise, I can acknowledge that Brian probably isn't racist while pointing out that his books come across as racist propaganda.
Children are impressionable and some racists are really subtle with their dog whistles. I wouldn't be surprised if some white supremacist parents used these books to brain wash their kids into thinking minorities are bad.
That may sound histrionic but hear me out. Let looks at some examples.
The most damning ones come from Outcast of Redwall and Taggerung.
In Outcast a ferret pup is ditched by his father Swartt. He is adopted by a Redwaller named Bryony who names him Veil and loves him unconditionally. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts Veil ends up being a piece of shit and gets kicked out for attempted murder. His adopted mom follows him and towards the end of the book Veil finally does a good deed and saves Bryony from his biological father at the cost of his own life. And you know what the moral of the lesson is?
Bryony decides that despite her love for Veil, he was destined to be an evil piece of shit and everyone would have been better of if he hadn't been born in the first place. To prove I am not exaggerating, here is a screenshot.
https://imgur.com/7bK9Nno
Even if a reader interprets this as an allegory about people with psychological conditions like anti social personality disorder rather than about race that is still an incredibly fucked up message to send to kids lol.
To add salt to the wound, Brian later made a book called the Taggerung which goes in the opposite direction. An otter pup that is kidnapped by a ruthless ferret warlord still ends up being a good guy despite being raised in a vicious community his entire life because he is an otter and inherently good.
.......I honestly don't know how you can read both these stories and not see the ugly implications. I am not the first person to notice how skeevy this stuff seems, but there are a surprising number of people that dismiss the series skeevy vibes just because the characters are anthropomorphic animals.
A lot of people try to defend Brian by comparing the vermin races to the orcs from Tolkien's stories.
Two issues with this defense.
1: From what I understand, Tolkien regretted his decision to make all orcs inherently evil.
2: Lord of the rings is a setting with magic. While there are a few supernatural elements in Redwall like prophecies and spirits. There are no wizards or spells. Vermin and naturally born creatures, and largely behave like humans. Despite being primarily composed of carnivorous species, the vast majority of vermin do not kill woodlanders for food. It's heavily implied that eating other mammals is taboo to most vermin. Some vermin are also clearly capable of feeling love. Even Ferahgo the assassin, the dude who brags about how much he loves skinning his enemies clearly loves his son. He never says that aloud, but he tells his captains he will always forgive his son no matter how many times he tries to stab him in the back. There is no explanation on why 99 percent of vermin are bad. They just are.
Anyway, here are some more examples of Redwall coming across as pro-racist allegory.
In Salamandstrom a badger girl run aways from home and meets a charming weasel character. She brings him back home and her dad immediately goes on an explosive rant about how all vermin are evil.
This sounds like familiar story of how the racist parents gets between two friends/lovers right? Except in this case racist badger dad is
100 percent correct. The weasel is actually Ferahgo the assasins son and is a murderous piece of shit that wants to kill everyone in Salamandstrom and steal their treasure. Therefore racist dad's beliefs are totally vindicated.
The same book doubles down on this stance when it introduces Dingeye and Thura. These two are low ranking henchman that understandably flee from Ferahgo the assassin's horde and take refuge in Redwall. It's made clear that they are selfish and lazy guys but overall they come of as bumbling fools rather than outright mean-spirited thugs. And in their defense they were treated like canon-fodder so its no wonder they are so self-centered. There is actually a sad scene where they eat themselves sick because they are so used to not having enough food they can't pull themselves away from the dinner table.
To the Abbey's credit, they accept the two without any racist attitude but because the two are vermin, destiny demands they suffer a horrible, undignified death.
While most of the abbey is sleeping Dingeye and Thura play with a bow. Unfortunately, a redwaller has a late night revelation and runs out of door right as one of them shoots an arrow. The two panic and flee the scene with the Abbey's fabled sword. A few Redwallers try to track them down but one dies because of an illness and the other gets his head lopped of by a fox before they can catch up to them. So the Redwallers don't even get to hear their story, they just assume Dingeye and Thuras intended to murder their friend and steal the Abbey's legendary sword.
Cutting and running was a dick move, but I am sympathetic to them because they've been conditioned to think that mistakes result in a horrible grisly demise. Remember these guys used to work for someone who flays his victims and wears their skins.
This scene is also really frustrating because it could have been so much better if the Redwallers did catch up to them. Redwall is supposed to be a place of peace, hospitality, and forgiveness. It would have been interesting to see if the characters would have been willing to forgive Dingeye and Thura for what was a genuine mistake.
But no, they lesson the Redwallers learn is that vermin are pieces of shit and you shouldn't let them into your homes otherwise they will kill and rob you. Oh, and to add onto this the Redwallers contract the illness that one of the weasels had, because Brian really felt the need to hammer this lesson home.
We get a similar lesson in the Bellmaker. A squirrel king meets two seemingly starving foxes and takes pity on them despite his racist friends warnings. Unfortunately, the racists are right again and the foxes take the king's baby hostage.
Redwall is also filled with woodlanders that are surprisingly blood thirsty. It would be one thing if they were depicted as disturbed Punisher-like individuals , but no. Typically these vermin-hating characters are treated as pleasant people that the other woodlanders feel safe around.
Here are some examples:
In Long Patrol there is a character named Russa Nodrey whose policy is literally "I kill vermin before they hurt others." A naive hare thinks she is being too harsh and spares two vermin that she was about to kill. But again, the racist ends up being vindicated when those two robbers come back for revenge.
https://redwall.fandom.com/wiki/Russa_Nodrey
Cregga Roseye is a badger famous for her tendency to go into berserker rampages and her love of killing vermin, but she is beloved by woodlanders.
In the Sable Quean a mole named Axtel Sturnclaw will toss vermin carcasses into tree branches "so their corpses won't sully the earth" yet despite this dude's unsettling behavior he is depicted as someone with a heart of gold that is loved by children.
Let's look at another aspect of Redwall's shady world building.
Occasionally ferret/weasel called wearets will show up. These hybrids are always depicted as hideous abominations. In a vacuum I could see this concept being interesting because weasels and ferrets are totally different species rather than different ethnicities. Real life weasels and ferrets are incapable of crossbreeding in real-life, so this could be an interesting thought experiment on the difficulties of interspecies love between two intelligent species. But if you combine that with all the other stuff I mentioned...........it paints a pretty icky implication. There are no cases of woodlanders have interspecies romances. So one could easily come to the conclusion that Redwall is opposed to mixed couples.
Maybe that's a stretch, but I dunno, I feel like a lot of people can interpret wearets as an ugly allegory about biracial children.
I could go on and on, so I'll say talk about one more problem I have with the series. Given that the Redwall books are supposed to be black and white conflicts I find it annoying how there are some very clear double standards. Woodlanders can often get away with doing stuff that vermin can't.
For instance, Redwall typically portrays predatory birds as good or neutral creatures despite the fact that they eat sapient creatures. Even the ones that eat woodlanders are treated as characters that can be negotiated with and aren't ever killed for their past transgressions.
In contrast, snakes are considered evil for doing the same thing. Bullshit! Bullshit I say! I get that people don't like snakes but bullshit! Birds of prey can fucking fly!. They can pick and choose their targets! Snakes don't have any motherfucking legs, they can't be picky. Plus realistically birds of prey need to eat a lot more animals since snakes are cold blooded. That's a minor point though since most people don't understand the nuances of endothermic and ectothermic metabolisms but I still call bullshit.
Some other double standards:
In Salamandastron, the run away badger and her hare friends accidentally break into a lizard's hole. When he shows up the hare instinctively attacks him for having the gall to enter his own home and the badger accidentally rips off his tail while trying to pull them apart. Instead of apologizing when the lizard explains that they broke into his home the badger, the hare, and the author treat the lizard like a petulant, unreasonable, asshole for being understandably pissed. In fairness, the lizard does ends up selling them to a tribe of toads that try to eat them, but they didn't know that at the time. Just because the lizard was evil in hindsight doesn't mean its okay to treat someone like shit for being different.
I also recall a time where a bunch of parched woodlander characters stumbled upon a group of reptiles with some dirty water. When the woolanders ask if they can have some a lizard demands their weapons in exchange or something like that. A dick move to be sure, but instead of trying to negotiate further the woolanders just beat the shit out of them and take their water.
I guess theft is okay if you're a woodlander and your victims aren't! Rules for thee but not rules for me! Great moral lesson for kids! It would be one thing if this was done out of total desperation, but if I recall correctly, none of the main characters felt any remorse for this act. To be fair, I don't remember which book this comes from. I hope this isn't some hallucination of mine; I am 90 percent sure it isn't.
Anyway, one last double standard to share. In Rakkety Tam there is a vole called Yoofus who is a thief and ends up stealing a flag from the main villain. Zero issues with this. However, this villain, Gulo the Savage, a wolverine and one of the few characters that actually eats other mammals has captured two redwallers.
Yoofus meets the main character, the titular Rakkety Tam, who explains the situation to him. Yoofus agrees to help them locate the redwallers but
only if Tam gives him his claymore. Keep in mind that he was explicitly told that the Redwallers are endanger of being eaten and he pulls this shit.
Yoofus is admonished for doing this and eventually does give Tam his sword back, but overall he is depicted as a loveable rouge. Bullshit.
If a vermin character tries to steal something they are never treated sympathetically and usually get beat up or killed. But the woodlander who was willing to put two lives in jeopardy for the sake of his greed just gets a stern talking to and is still considered a good guy. BS dude. BS. Granted there are couple of evil woodlanders that get appropriate comeuppance but I don't think Brian's handful of "grey characters" make up for all the other stuff. Honestly part of the reason I take such an issue with the all vermin are evil stance is because I like the evil species a lot more than woodlanders lol. Weasels, corvids, snakes, and lizards are way cooler than mice and squirrels!
To be clear, while I do take a lot of issues with Redwall I still have a nostalgic fondness. I'd love to see an animated adaption that wasn't turned into a bloodless PG-fest but since the Netflix series appears to be axed I figured I'd talk about how poorly the series has aged.
Redditors....
