Dadrobit wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2017 8:23 am
This is honestly pretty dark if you think back
In my opinion, this is honestly pretty dark any way you look at it. I was reminded of
Wilhelm Hauff’s fairy tales as well as the darkest moments of "Ozma of Oz" by
L. Frank Baum.
Dadrobit wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2017 9:55 am
The alternative that I could maybe see is the spell lasting only a period of time, followed by a memory wipe (and a gnarly headache).
My current theory is that the effect of the spell is neither irreversible nor fixed-term. The effect lasts until Nora reverses it, and Nora reverses it when Trace considers the time appropriate. Too bad if Nora is going to sleep for a long time. (In earlier times: too bad if Trace saw little gain in ever having somebody’s spell reversed.)
I am very curious to see if we’ll learn more or if the author prefers to leave us guessing. Oh, and Menke, you make a lot of sense. Still, people are surprisingly bad at keeping their mouths shut in the long term.
TheMouse wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2017 8:37 am
We do, sometimes, need reminders that despite Tom's bright colors and cheerfully anime-esque art style, Mekkan is an awful place to live. (...) This is a place where racism isn't even seen as a problem in general, where assassin is a respectable job title, and where not listening to the polite, matronly red-head can get you turned into livestock.
While I largely agree with you (and Andre), I’d like to point out that Mekkan does not differ from our world all that much. It is all about where you live and what you do, and in which century and decade.
I sincerely believe that many ordinary Basitin, just to give an example, find their everyday lives more secure and predictable than I find mine. On the other hand, most areas of the main continent that we know about seem to resemble our Europe, Africa and America as they were roughly between 1600 and 1850. Of course magic adds a good deal to the horrors for the less fortunate, but on the other hand, no faction appears to be technically capable of atrocities comparable to our XX century in scale. At least not yet. I wonder how bad Trace’s plan to break the Basitin society could have gotten.