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Oh, how come I’m just now realising the Finns are rich?

Largest, oldest gryphon family in the isles. It would make sense.

I think we need to get back to the focus at hand? Namely MICHELLE’S LITTLE ENIGMAS

I think this is pretty well related. Ravi gave the Finn’s magic, but he also knew Michelle’s ancestors. That’s why they came here in the first place, after all.

While Ravi knew Michelle’s ancestors, at the time of the Great War, it’s never been mentioned why the Sphinxes, Gryphons, and other Mediterranean mythical species came to the British Isles, most likely as far back as Roman times.

There was always a lot of movement within the Roman empire. You don’t have to look very hard at history to find someone who was born in Turkey or Northern Africa and died in Britain, or vise-versa. It’s far from strange that non-humans would move around the same way.

This isn’t really circular reasoning, and it’s actually not that intelligent. They hide because humans don’t know about them, *and because they don’t want them to find out.* So the answer to the second question should be, “Because we don’t want them to,” which isn’t all that much of a shocking revelation: oh frabjous day, we actually succeeded in doing exactly what we intended to! Why is this news?

Ravi still doesn’t feel all right to me. I fear he has an agenda and that it’s not exactly in the Finns or in Michelle’s best interest.

I feel like he’s just like every other ancient, powerful being; we meddle not just because we can, but because we’re bored and meddling with sentient mortal creatures, especially if it’s to their benefit, is much more entertaining than just existing.

It’s sort of like, his agenda might actually BE their best interests, because then he has a chance to bring back a species of creature that he rather liked, as well as seeing our heroes triumph, which is far more amusing than just sitting in a stone room in a temple in India and examining a wall. If his agenda really was more self-centered and generally “bad”, I don’t think he would have avoided his own introduction into myth and legend, especially in regards to someone who is as great of a hero as Phineas was.

Granted, he may have his own agenda, but the same could be said of anything that can walk and talk at the same time; and that agenda might not actually be hurtful in any way, shape or form, at least where our heroes are involved. Considering that the only reason everyone is actually sitting at this table right now, or even EXISTS, is because of Ravi’s agenda, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Ravi seems to be implying that the humans did at one time know about the existence of the monsters/mythical beings, and that it was not a catastrophic situation. His point seems to be that Lorne’s argument that “we don’t know how they would act, so it would be unsafe” is inaccurate.

That said, I’m not loving Ravi’s condescending manner.

I’m guessing, it’d be more accurate to say that some humans knew about some mytholos. Most humans would know nothing about any mytholos except from rumors and distorted descriptions, with varying degrees of belief (and nothing at all about most mytholos).

Of course, history shows that ignorance is not exactly a guarantee of good relations.

And why do witches float?

Sorry, that’s the first thing that came to mind.

Holy crap; nice place the FInns’ve got there…..

Circular reasoning is so easy a habit to fall into, and never allows a culture (or a person) to change. “Why do we do this? Because we’ve always done it this way. Why have we always done it this way? Because that’s how we do this.” Circular reasoning is *deadly.*

If High School English has taught me one thing, it’s that circular reasoning is a logical fallacy. Even if what Ravi says is true, circular reasoning is not the way to explain it. It’d be better to say: “We hide because they don’t understand, so why not expose ourselves so they can understand us?”

Because they (humans) will refuse to understand us, and will react violently towards us, and try to hunt and kill us, so we hide.

To quote David: “We’ve got magic, but they’ve got BOMBS!”

That’s true, but as Ike has already pointed out, it’s not just humans who give mythicals a hard time. Even other mythicals can make your life miserable.

I mean, the feud between sphinx and dragon led to the [seeming] annihilation of both species. Monsters are not trusted. Manticores are something everyone is afraid of. Crossbreeds are treated as freaks of nature, and we’ve even got racism, too. Jim doesn’t like bugbears, John has a thing against manticores, Lynn hates everything feline [at least], David isn’t wild about totems. Etc.

Erecting walls against humans only protects against the threat humans present [which is understandable given that humans outnumber mythicals many times over, and that history is a precedent]. It didn’t get rid of ugly stuff like genocide, racism, and other unpleasant things that humans don’t have a complete monopoly on.

I concur. If the magical community were to suddenly expose themselves to the rest of the world, I get the feeling that that would cause infinitely more problems then it could possibly solve. Especially when you consider the fact that the humans might not take too kindly to the fact that they were hiding for so long in the first place. And I don’t know about the rest of guys/gals, but I would not react too well to the concept of the “Unturned” if that was made general knowledge.

I see you there. In my head the idea that I may not be human but instead something else sounds awesome and I wanna be a part of it, but in reality, if you had the chance to change your world views and identity all at once would you take it? That is the main theme with both the Michelle and Tony arcs, and we belittle the characters for not thinking it’s all awesome. It’s not just some fun thing that everyone should embrace, it comes with its own complications too, the biggest one being the fact that there’s always that fear of being found out.

With what Ravi is saying here, if all them mythics didn’t go into hiding, there would be no reason to hide. Maybe nowadays it may be generally accepted if the big reveal happened way back when, but the longer the secret is hidden, the worse the reaction is gonna be. We know people have gone on witch hunts for those who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, especially when everyone is in horrible mass hysteria; and nowadays if people don’t fit under the “acceptable” terms they’re shunned. A mass reveal that there are mythical creatures among us will definitely cause more problems than it solves, if it solves anything in the first place.

And also like Ike said, it’s a common thing among sentient creatures to fear what’s different. Xenophobia is rampant anywhere you go. Especially in Wonderland.

And building a little off of what you just said, how would you react if you suddenly found out that someone close to you, be they your best friend or girlfriend/boyfriend or whatever, wasn’t really what you thought they were or were even something you originally thought impossible and that they were basically lying to you?

Seeing all the parallels from two chapters ago with “coming out” I’m fairly certain we know exactly how people deal with that. Hopefully with a thank you and a willingness to be introduced to their world.

ok how the hell did I start all this when I was just my belief on what would happen in this situation. I would be overjoyed honestly that all my fantasies were reality. And I want to at least be given the chance to understand the people behind the outer appearance. That is one belief I hold dear, that a person’s (or in this case mythical’s) outward appearance does not define who they are as a person.

Given how humans treat other humans who are just SLIGHTLY different, like having different skin color, or being in love with the “wrong” people, or even believing in the “wrong” creation fable, I don’t think hiding is at all difficult to justify. I may be a pessimist, but I don’t have a lot of faith in the human ability to embrace anything truly different. Ravi is very powerful, and possibly immortal, but so were the sphinxes, and where are the now?

Except it’s not the lack of human acceptance that killed the sphinxes – they were at war with another very powerful and possibly immortal race, the dragons. Who were also thought to have been killed off in the same war.

I think – I hope – that revelation would not be as negative now as it might’ve been a hundred years ago, and possibly will become less and less dangerous as humans learn to be more inclusive and respectful. We *are* getting better about how we deal with differences. It’s slow progress, and there’s plenty of proof we’re not as far along as I thought we were even 5 years ago, but it is happening. We just need to *keep* moving forward, and not rest in our pride of how far we’ve come (because let’s face it, success means we treat everyone like people, and that’s less an end goal than a basic expectation).

Palatial! Who thinks that the theme to Fawlty Towers should be playing over this? >:=)>

It isn’t surprising that Lorne is a near-resident at Fingol. Given that Lorne and Jim were best friends from childhood before becoming boyfriends, and given Mary’s emphasis on hospitality, she would tend to maintain a friendly relationship with him and let him come and go as he pleased, regardless of the fact that Jim had gone to study overseas. Not to mention…

Mary: There – if you could pull the slab from the doorway of the tomb and lean it up against the wall there… and then I can get on and dust. Hasn’t been done since Regency times, as far as I’m aware… *chuckle* I do appreciate having strong men around the house… How are you and Leah getting on, by the way?

Lorne: *grunt* She’s exactly the same… “Can you move this heavy art installation over here, Lorne?” over and over and over…

>:=)>

Circular reasoning is just a fallacy, and a fallacy shouldn’t be used to justify the opposite (see, the fallacy fallacy). A good point was still made. Nobody really knows how the humans will react if the mythical creatures reveal themselves.

I always thought that if they exposed themselves suddnely and without warning humanity would assume danger and do what they did in Parasyte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasyte. That is, find a way to detect the threat and then terminate it with extreme prejudice using any means necessary.

There are key differences, though. Most mythical creatures don’t want to harm other humans, whereas most of the parasite’s at the beginning of the series did want to harm humans. An obvious danger actually existed. Not so much here. The problem is that humans just need a big enough perceived threat and an enemy that is “other” enough to not feel too bad killing it, and we will. We have a hard enough time finding the humanity in each other, let alone finding it in something that isn’t human.

As I briefly touched on in my above comment, the main problem in my mind with the Magic community outing itself is that they have been hiding for so long that it stands to reason that humans would be a little miffed to find out they was a community of possibly dangerous creatures that spit in the face of “Science” “Logic” and “Common Sense” hiding under their noses for almost a thousand years without their knowledge.

There should be enough scientists going back to Alexandria at least to get around that problem.
I don’t remember there being anything in the comic that explicitly said magic didn’t follow natural rules. And surely they’d have scientists and other scholars working at this.
Heck, if some Avalons pre-date the Chinese cultural revolution, there could still be a couple running off confucian scholastic standards.
I’m fairly certain scientists would more likely be elated at some of the texts that Avalons could have preserved.

Yay, circular logic! They went into hiding (for whatever reason) in the Avalons. SO! They don’t know how the humans would react to them revealing that these Avalons have been around harboring mythical creatures that can look human for so long. So they stay hidden. Which means they still don’t know how the humans would react (because they’re in hiding).

Circular reasoning is flawed, based on the idea that there are no other options available, even though in many cases there’s a certain amount of being stuck in specific thought patterns. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other options, just that they can’t figure out how to see things from a different perspective.

In some ways Ravi is above the kind of fears and concerns that the Avalon inhabitants are affected by. While they would have to live with those reactions, Ravi isn’t. He’s not living on the same time scale, so while they’d have to live with the reactions for the rest of their lives it’d be little more than a brief tumultuous instance for Ravi. As he states here he was against the Avalons in the first place; likely for this sort of reason. While he has no real reason to continue to live in the secrecy of the Avalon he chooses to do so, likely he decided to let that decision and its consequences play out as it would, with no interference or manipulation.

Now we’ve seen the younger generation moving more towards starting to reveal themselves to select humans. Blanche to Anthony (although….) and the tunnel into the Underground, for one. So clearly the younger generation is more open to revealing themselves to humans. They’re cautious, but definitely wanting to not hide from humans.

It definitely seems like the direction this whole thing is heading is towards the Big Reveal. And possibly the ability to fix/replace broken medallions. There have been several critters with broken or non-functional medallions (Myra, Greg, Sam) and a lot of critters who don’t have medallions but would want to if they could have them (Eleanor, Anthony, Ms. Okypete, Ms. Gillis, Ike (although I’m not sure he needs one, what with being able to shapeshift?)) because they can’t leave the Avalon except with a lot of layers on. But… If we get the Big Reveal, would the medallions be necessary?

…sorry for the long analysis? I may have gotten carried away.

They hide because it is one of the few ways that gives genuine power over humans, a power that grants them safety and denies human control over them.

Human societies cannot act on something that they think doesn’t think exists. This ensures the safety of the avalon’s denizens, at least partially. Sure, their human personas can still be killed or caught in a crossfire, but they can drop that and hide in avalons. Most humans do not have such options.

Now this here is an interesting narrative turning point. Given how slice-of-life SD is, it’s hard to forget the sheer scope of the machinations happening in the story…

I think it’s… a bit specious to make parallels to real-life systems of oppression that go deeper than individual prejudices, and I don’t think that’s what Ms. Bing is going for here. Although you could also draw parallels with the way a monster is defined as something that causes fear due to being a liminal creature that evades simple classification. But I digress.

Of course, there’s the obvious issue of the physical power disparity between humans and some creatures. I wonder if these disparities have caused hierarchies to develop within mythical communities?

One thing I do find interesting is the way Ravi implies, by extension, that he doesn’t mind being deceived. Maybe he doesn’t think he’s able to?

I’m beginning to suspect that the hiding has long outlived whatever made them start i the first place…

Overly cheerfool Ravi thinks so.
I don’t.
If anything, it will cause more problems, not less, in the immediate, and short terms, and likely maintain that situation for the mid and long terms.

1. Magic is real, and humans just love weaponizing everything they can.
2. Members of mythical species are buried throughout humanity. Racism is still a problem today. You want to add speciesism to that?
3. The severe negative reaction to the Mythicals for lying about their non-existence by staying hidden.
4. Shapeshifters. How can humanity trust a being where humanity cannot ever really be sure the being is showing its true form.

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