Posted In: comic
This is based on a real store that my family frequently stops at between Portland and the coast. They have an astounding selection of knives, lighters, weird pills, crossbows, walkie talkies, homemade bread, fresh salmon and jerky.
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Not that one.
Is it wrong to eat snake jerky when your best friend has snake hair? Asking ourselves the real questions
Why was that even an option you were considering, Meg?
Does Modest consider Snakes people? Can she communicate with them, like she can with her hair?
You know, from her time in Yeld and attempt to communicate with at least one regular old snake, it seems to me that she would probably err on the side of safety, a.k.a. “Snakes are people.”
However, I could definitely see her thinking/saying something along the lines of “aha, snake jerky! it’s jerky FOR snakes! ekans, you try to find human jerky for yourself.”
tbh TBH Tee Bee Haitch tho! pretty much everything that they make jerky of was a thinking, feeling creature with its own inner life, thoughts and feelings… so those people that eat meat should really address it from that perspective IMHO. Just the opinions of one lifelong vegetarian (my parents and siblings eat meat but I decided even before I can actually remember that it’s just not for me, at least partially because it just tastes *so incredibly awful*)… I don’t have any issues with other people eating meat if that’s their choice, I just think it’s a dishonest cop-out to imagine that there’s some huge ethical difference between meat from a cow versus a chicken versus a fish versus a snake… really the only types of meat that I believe have irreconcilable ethical/moral “don’t eat that!” dilemmas would be dolphin meat, meats that have cruelty involved as part of the prep (foie gras, lobster), human (cannibalism, duh) and cat. Well, okay, this last thought isn’t a type so much as a habit, but the FDA recommended daily meat portion is a single-meal piece of meat about the size of a cassette tape; it’s bonkers to me to see people eating 7 or more times that amount at a meal, or worse: taking a few bites from a massive meal that only exists due to the life of a creature having been taken, followed by throwing the rest of it into the trash… 🙁
woops sorry that was a long comment
uhh tl;dr – eat meat if you like, but try to avoid cannibalism, cruelty and waste! ty and sorry for my loquaciousness
No need to apologize!
I hadn’t considered that Modest might think it’s jerky FOR snakes. That’s funny, and a missed opportunity. I do think you’re right, she remembers that in Yeld snakes are people. And of course she has her own snakes. She was also pretty upset when Glados suggest she might eat one of her snakes in Season 6.
I’ve been working on some Yeld content that talks about the Animal Tribes and their complex systems of who is allowed to eat who, and how non-meat diets are pretty common in Yeld among some people, while others do hunt and eat Yeld’s animals (or each other). It’s something we’ve alluded to a few times, but not gone into deeply. It’s neat, but also genuinely scary to pull back the curtain on something like that.
oh also woops i forgot the second half of the question you posed… at least in her trip to yeld with Marah, Modest failed at communicating with the snake that she tried it with. I think communication with a yeld snake would be possible though, because it’s possible to talk to a beetle… I don’t think that the same rules apply to Earth snakes however, at least without magic being involved.
Yeah, it’s not clear if that snake couldn’t talk or simply didn’t want to.
Canonically, that snake is a spy for the Prince. Yeld’s native animals are all capable of speech, but not all of them do. A lot simply never learn how, either because they don’t want to or don’t live around anyone else who talks and don’t need to or don’t even know they can. Most snakes that interact with other people of Yeld do speak, and in fact the serpent tribe is the animal tribe most likely to live among other people of Yeld. So my guess is that snake probably was perfectly capable of talking and was just keeping his mouth shut. Good spies don’t talk!
Ahhh gotcha… I didn’t even consider the angle of “Yeldish native animals can talk but many never learned how”… honestly that’s a topic in fantasy which rarely shows up in the world building.
Like, Earth has hundreds of languages with thousands of dialects, so it makes sense that Yeld would likewise have a linguistic diaspora. Even if major cities and merchants/traders use a common tongue, with all of the different sorts of folk (and as you mentioned, Animal Tribes!) ntermingling in Yeld, there’d have to be a bunch of different dialects and regionalisms.
There must be, right? We purposely don’t really talk about it because in the comic and the game we need characters from two very different worlds to be able to easily talk to each other, but realistically Yeld MUST have many, many dialects and languages. And almost certainly none of them are English!
Very early in Modest Medusa she didn’t speak, and when I started planning out the series I thought Marah might slowly teach her to talk. This was in the first 2 strips where Marah appeared. But i quickly realized that was going to cause problems no matter what, so i decided she just new English and so did everyone else in yeld and we’d never address it.
Are the snakes scared, or…
… are they wondering, “Huh… what do I taste like?”
Ouch xD
The the snakes wouldn’t be cannibals because they’re actually from Yeld and not Earthly snakes, right? And Modest is a Medusae so it wouldn’t cannibalism for her either, right?
Oh but we’ve seen cannibalism already… 😢 (it was rather traumatic!) if not worse.
Modest probably won’t want to eat the Snerky (Snake Jerky) due to the memories involved.
i wonder what other uncommon jerky the store sells though?
Also does anyone else know about the whole “her mother ate her siblings” thing?
I don’t know for sure, but I think Jake and Marah know. They probably inferred it from the story about the Gorgon they were told by Michelle. Im not sure of Modest would have told anyone though.
Snake jerky is not to be confused with Jake snerky.
ha
Imagine jerky made out of human hair.
hmm
I just now realized Modest called Meg by name.
yeah. She mostly calls her Meg by now. It has been like 2 years.
Don’t worry too much, those snakes were jerks.
Is everything okay?
yep! Running a little late. But just about to post right now. Thanks for asking!