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So you should trust stories over the evidence provided by your own eyes but you shouldn’t just trust stories, don’t be naïve… And it’s THE SAME story in both cases. Yeah, this is the exact kind of unapologetic self-contradiction I have come to hate in the original books. Congrats, Kory, on capturing the infuriating spirit of Wonderland ;)
(To be clear: I don’t hate Wonderland, neither here nor in the books, just the anti-rational… attitude? Environment?)

I feel like I’ve had this exact conversation about a different, much older book.

This… much older… book…

It wouldn’t happen to be the book that was once used to justify slavery and human immolation… would it?

Good thing that older book doesn’t justify those things and it’s just humans being humans and using whatever they can to justify tragedies. :) People will take whatever weapons or reasons they can to justify crap. Sure that old book has been around for centuries, and been used by others to justify things, but that doesn’t mean that it states to do those things explicitly. :D (Someone who has read that much older book at least three times, holy crap that’s a lot of book!)

Don’t insult kids to their face?
Like they’re just asking questions and Mockturtle over there saying shit like that is just gonna make them feel stupid and just stop asking questions all together. Especially when they just want clarification on something they were told/taught

given the content of the conversation, i would say jimmy has the correct (or rather, expected from someone his age) reaction.
at least antagonizing his cousin is something he knows how to do, and with predictable results.

This feels like a Zen koan. “We can’t trust our senses, so we must trust the old stories. The old stories are only believed by the gullible. Therefore, we must trust our senses.” It’s the mystical approach to the same moral lesson as the rationalist “nullius in verba”.

I dunno, I just have a Thing for when there are two facts that contradict each other but are both obviously true. It feels like those always point to some kind of deeper revelation.

Wait, so if you can’t trust your eyes, and you can’t trust the stories, and you can’t trust the adults to explain what’s what, that only leaves one option: Find out for yourself, no matter how dangerous. For it is better to die discovering the truth than to live in ignorance, for to live in ignorance means to one day die in ignorance as well.

I think you’re kinda right. This anti-rational and contradictory nature / attitude / behavior is honestly the norm for Wonderland. I think the only way to live (both as a resident and in survival circumstances) is to turn off one’s brain (specifically logic) and follow one’s intuition / gut. Wonderland seems explicitly designed to mess with one’s head, leaving instincts to lead the way. As such, if the person believes / intuits that the Jabberwock is a monster to be feared, then by golly they’d better listen. If they believe otherwise, finding it might be both pleasant and rewarding.

Okay, I now have a headcanon that jub-jub birds are more dangerous than gorgons, it’s just that nobody remembers why because they don’t go around hurting people. Maybe they make a sound that causes really bad hallucinations.

Yeah I feel like it might almost be a case similar to nemean lions.
As in back in ancient times they were considered dangerous monsters
But once they were slowly introduced into ‘mythical society’ and granted medallions people realized “Oh well maybe they aren’t that bad after all.”

The real question is why a dodo bird thinks it knows more about being safe than another species – their track record isn’t all that great as far as self-preservation…

it should probably count for something that this specific specimen slipped through the sportsmen’s symbolic spotlight.

True enough, although we have to question his status as a totem or just a sentient bird. If the former, that means a sizable population of the buggers is extant. If the latter, we know where a lot of the sentient bird folk in this setting come from

well I guess this is wonderland, they are supposed to reject all sense and logic, so I can kind of understand why dodo would think that way…

Also I find it interesting that the mock turtle is part donkey, rather than cow

John Tenniel’s illustration of the Mock Turtle in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” depicted the creature with a calf’s head. This was a pun on the fact that ingredients in the dish “Mock Turtle Soup” are Calf brains and organ meats used in the original (Victorian Era) British version to simulate actual turtle meat. Kory, obviously, has his own spin in depicting the character. It is Wonderland, after all.

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