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Yikes, the “you are different”. It sound bad no matter if it refer to humans or mythical creatures

and he has no idea how unintentionally painful his comment was…

In previous parts, we had an image of a traditional , but not close minded , description of the Finn family, so it (presenting eleanor, the first meeting in particular) could go in many different direction , from a lesson on racism to a lesson in racism, passing by missing her completely in favor of worrying about the children absences, not noticing/ being incoherent because wonderland…

I bet on the wonderlanders acting worse than the rest (Finn and Nemeans) on this matter, base on the previous depiction of the place, and the fact that some left because of similar issues

Heck. “You’re different” is pretty positive.

A lot better mental field than “All are same” or better yet “All should be same”. Not actually allowing people to celebrate difference is what’s causing some of the problems we have today. Both in line of some being too buttheads to allow people to be themselves, but also others denying some the right to recognize difference in people.

Heck, my mother is still from rural enough area where you don’t see too many people of colours. Even in this day and age. So she is surprised when she sees a midnight black person walking around. There are legit people in the world to whom THAT is a hate-crime.

There are A HUGE amount of people who get harassed and bullied because of what some white dudes did in colonial America and WWII Germany. Because again, of course they are all the same.

I’ve even heard few takes on blacks themselves getting called out on their “white privilege”, because they weren’t enough same with their fellow blacks and the people of colour and even dared to question what they are all owed and by whom. Because they too were not enough the same as all the rest of them.

“You’re different” is probably one of the healthiest catchphrases we could adopt in this day and age. And just accept it that no matter who, no matter from where, people can be different from what you’ve heard or even think you know.

And this goes to everyone. Sadly both in good and bad. There are a-hole bipoc-not-including-whites people just as well as white-not-including-bipocs. But overall we are all for major parts good people with good intentions (which pave the road to hell all too often), once you get to know us all. We. Are. Just. Different.

I see where you are coming from, but I don’t think in this context it applies. Jimmy has been raised being told that “monsters are bad” then he meets Elanor, and she is not bad. Rather than learning the lesson that the entire group “monsters” are not the same, he instead decided to go with the idea that “all other monsters are bad, but this one is different. ” It isn’t celebrating diversity, it is making a one person exception to a prejudice rather than reconsidering the prejudice.

I think you’re forgetting Jim is still a child at this point. Kids don’t have the same wealth of knowledge and experience adults do, and they view the world in a very different, simpler light
You can’t really expect his first steps to be a full blown generalization. It’s far more common to first see a single individual as distinct and slowly question the validity of the “absolute truths” the more they interact and learn

He’ll have plenty of room to look back and cringe later

He is more likely to say “perhaps all the monsters are also different” than he was before. He is at a stage where he is about to start questioning all these things, give him some time to have a realisation now that he’s had his first ever encounter.

That said, he IS nine. Perhaps that time will be a year or two….

Jokes aside, I remember when I–who grew practically one the belt buckle of the Protestant belt in the USA–had that revelation smacked onto my stubborn head. You see, where I was from there’s a ratio of 500:1 Protestant:Roman Catholic in the distribution of faiths, so there are a _lot_ of prejudices about the R.C.s. Well, I talked with this European guy, got to know, got to LIKE him, and we avidly emailed back and forth. (We also used that prehistoric MSN Netmeeting for him to teach me his mother language. Considering the 5-second lag the thing had, it’s amazing I learned it.) When in an early conversation he admitted he was Catholic, I was so baffled I said a shuper shmart thing: “What, you are? But you’re…NORMAL!” Long story short, wedding bells rang 15 years ago in our ears, HAH. Let’s hear it for broken prejudices!!

Race and class privilege. It’s largely the privilege of never having been prompted to think about it. At his age, Jimmy’s clearly never thought about it before and has no idea that it even exists.

Remember, no matter how awful it sounds when you’ve heard it fifty times, “You’re Different” genuinely is progress from “You have to be awful because you’re a [slur].” Baby steps.

Jimmy has to find some way to reconcile recent experience with longstanding belief. “You’re Different” and “My Parents Told Me a Mean and Vicious Lie For No Reason” are what he has to choose between. The first is way less traumatic (for HIM) than the second, and he has no experience to realize how nasty it is to HER, or why.

Eleanor is evidently the only Bandersnatch he’s ever actually met, (in fact the only “monster” he’s actually met) so he doesn’t even have the basic information he would need to figure out that he’s even wrong.

Accepting that your parents told you a lie – a vicious, mean, evil lie – when everything else you know about them says they are not vicious, mean, evil people, is hard.

But did they say monsters are evil or monsters are dangerous? Let’s not forget that Jim’s dad lost his wings to a chymera, so monsters are dangerous (especially to a family protecting a phoenix egg) sounds more logical. Jim, with the understanding of a young kid, might have made the mental leap from dangerous to evil, especially with the daily sight of his father’s wounds.

The implication of danger is not just in physical ability, as many of these creatures are very physically impressive too. The implication of ‘monster’ is also in temperament, that so-called monsters are prone to violence and are difficult, if not impossible to control or civilize.

In short, those in this society who subscribe to that stereotype would assume a bandersnatch would be prone to lashing out in fits of violence, unable to stop themselves from mauling anyone that annoyed them, and incapable of integrating into ‘civilized’ society.

The initial taboo began when certain sphynxes decided that certain creatures who were prone to hunting and killing humans, specifically, might endanger other mythical creatures by their activities and allowing them medallions would only enable and worsen their murderous tendencies in human society.

Michelle’s ancestor thought that was bullshit, and began manufacturing medallions for Nemean Lions, which the other sphynxes considered monsters just like bandersnatches, and was willing to consider making some for dragons too, before shit went sideways. Notably it was an ancestor of the Finns with a friendly nemean lion buddy that got that ball rolling, so even if the modern Finns backslid a bit more they’ve historically been more accepting of taboos.

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