- Joined
- Oct 16, 2019
I'm not much of a physical book reader, but I have nagging memories of the Redwall books from back when I was just a child and I wasn't sure if anyone had heard of them. I figured people here might be big enough nerds they'd be familiar. Plus the internet has furries so maybe they're into the whole thing? Literature weirdos online is a culture I'm not really in touch with.
For anyone not familiar, these books were really the man's choice of book for a gradeschooler back in the day, because they pretty much consisted of 3 things: adventure, food porn, and intense violence.
You had a shit ton of anthropomorphic animals which basically served as different races/clans, and in the epicenter of the story was usually this sort of peaceful multi-species abbey called Redwall.
There was the legendary swordsman mouse named Matthias (he and his sword were so keen he could cut a dandelion in half lengthwise while it was in air), he served as the warrior of the abbey. He had a whole history I can't quite remember, but all I know is he tended to be central to a lot of stories and he was a tough little guy. Google says this is him:
There was also this hulking bro named Lord Brocktree, he I remember most often. He was a badger and he had a huge god damned sword, maybe a little like guts from Berserk if he was a ground dwelling forest mammal. I would not push this dude:
There was a mole that showed up a lot too if I'm not mistaken, he used a rapier.
They were sort of the main-est characters; however there were also shrews, otters (which used two sided lances), just a whole cohort of animals specializing in certain weapons, styles of combat, and with different home habitats and belonging to various different factions. Here's a little chart I found on images:
And they never skimped on the violence when it happened. It wasn't super gratuitous, but motherfuckers died, this wasn't a fuzzy series where everyone becomes friends at the end.
The weirdest thing to me as a kid though (and why I'm writing this) was the food bit. The adventuring and battle would just stop for a god damned pages-long break to present, in what could only be described as lurid pornographic detail, the process of all the little critters at the abbey frolicking around making scones of all kinds, dandelion wines, roasted acorns, blackberry pies...
I'm not sure if part of the idea was to portray the central abbey as being very idyllic or if he was simply a really hungry guy, but whatever it was the man writing the series loved eating, and he loved fantasy combat.
I could read the books, but honestly I was a little young to keep track of all the relationships between all the various moving parts in the story. I remember the food though.
The combat was cool, but every time there was a break and it was back to a bunch of characters at the Abbey my spirits fell because I knew that was going to last for the next 5 fucking pages. I wanted to get back to fighting pirates and people (anthro-animals?) getting impaled on javelins and shit, but no, you're going to hear about boring lady animals picking apples and making blackcurrant jam instead.
Google tells me they made a whole cookbook based upon the series, that's how often they talked about god damned food. Look at this fat fuck:
My young self feels vindicated having finally shared these criticisms decades later.
Is this a popular book series among internet weirdos? It seems like it should be but I barely ever hear it mentioned. Every time I see an anthropomorphic badger I remember Lord Brocktree though. He was pretty sick.
For anyone not familiar, these books were really the man's choice of book for a gradeschooler back in the day, because they pretty much consisted of 3 things: adventure, food porn, and intense violence.
You had a shit ton of anthropomorphic animals which basically served as different races/clans, and in the epicenter of the story was usually this sort of peaceful multi-species abbey called Redwall.
There was the legendary swordsman mouse named Matthias (he and his sword were so keen he could cut a dandelion in half lengthwise while it was in air), he served as the warrior of the abbey. He had a whole history I can't quite remember, but all I know is he tended to be central to a lot of stories and he was a tough little guy. Google says this is him:
They were sort of the main-est characters; however there were also shrews, otters (which used two sided lances), just a whole cohort of animals specializing in certain weapons, styles of combat, and with different home habitats and belonging to various different factions. Here's a little chart I found on images:
The weirdest thing to me as a kid though (and why I'm writing this) was the food bit. The adventuring and battle would just stop for a god damned pages-long break to present, in what could only be described as lurid pornographic detail, the process of all the little critters at the abbey frolicking around making scones of all kinds, dandelion wines, roasted acorns, blackberry pies...
I'm not sure if part of the idea was to portray the central abbey as being very idyllic or if he was simply a really hungry guy, but whatever it was the man writing the series loved eating, and he loved fantasy combat.
I could read the books, but honestly I was a little young to keep track of all the relationships between all the various moving parts in the story. I remember the food though.
The combat was cool, but every time there was a break and it was back to a bunch of characters at the Abbey my spirits fell because I knew that was going to last for the next 5 fucking pages. I wanted to get back to fighting pirates and people (anthro-animals?) getting impaled on javelins and shit, but no, you're going to hear about boring lady animals picking apples and making blackcurrant jam instead.
Google tells me they made a whole cookbook based upon the series, that's how often they talked about god damned food. Look at this fat fuck:
My young self feels vindicated having finally shared these criticisms decades later.
Is this a popular book series among internet weirdos? It seems like it should be but I barely ever hear it mentioned. Every time I see an anthropomorphic badger I remember Lord Brocktree though. He was pretty sick.
