I love your post about Tula, I just finished the latest ep of burrows end and I am SCROUNGING for theories.
What do you think she was ‘fundamentally lying’ about?? I’ve seen a couple posts floating around:
- one was how maybe Geoffrey could’ve been a bad husband and Tula didn’t save him because of it (maybe killed him?)
- Another was, maybe the Blue (radiation?) is killing her to use it?
- Another good one, was maybe Tula isn’t their (Jaysohn and Lila’s) bio mother.
I don’t have a very good or original educational guess, but I don’t think she killed Geoffrey. I do think she knows what did, and she’s lying so her children aren’t vengeful. She doesn’t want her children chasing power, to avenge their dad, or getting caught up in what he was deeply in.
I think it’s been said before, but in some of Geoffrey’s art he has a little grass belt, and the only other stoats we’ve seen have tools/clothes, was in Last Bast. (I can see the connection there, but we’ve also seen Viola have ‘accessories’, so it could just be a red herring.)
I think maybe Tula knows more about Last Bast (or humans) than she lets on, possibly from Geoffrey (if the grass belt is a connection.) I think Geoffrey saw something, or knew something in Last Bast, and ran. Eventually, he found the red Warren, fell in love, and started a family.
Now with an invested interest to keep his family safe, he’s using what he learned in Last Bast in the Red Warren, which somehow got him killed. (By a human? Maybe? The humans that saw Thorn seemed more interested than expressing a want to kill him - maybe humans want to test the stoats for radiation sickness, or something like that?) it’s giving watership down meets Chernobyl, the natural world clashing with human disasters.
Just some thoughts! I feel like there’s so many clues and pieces on the board, but no lines connecting them. There’s an allegory that I’m not catching, and it’s driving me NUTS.
What do you make of this? :)
(sorry for the long ask! Just excited!)
omg this is my very first ask and I'm trying to be normal about it
So, it's been a few days and I've been going over this in my head and here are my conclusions to your lovely, lovely ask <3
The lie is probably something incredibly mundane.
Adults lie to children all the time. Lila is going through what every child goes through as they become a teenager--she's starting to see the cracks between reality, truth, and the fictions adults use to process an unfair world.
I think it is entirely possible that when the lie is revealed, an adult audience might go, "Oh, that's not a big a deal," while Lila overreacts with betrayal.
It's entirely possible Geoffrey is from Last Bast.
The only thing I'm basing this on, besides character art, is that Tula is based on Mrs. Brisby from Secret of NIMH and Last Bast is giving me Rats of NIMH vibes, not secret authoritarian cult vibes (which is an entirely different post that I'll probably never write). I mean, the Rats had magic and electricity.
Also, Brian might be analogous to Jenner, the power hungry Rat, the First Stoats might be like Nicodemus, just like Bennett is probably Justin.
Did I want Bennett to be a fuckable version of Justin for Tula? Yes. But that's only because my childself wanted Justin and Mrs. Brisby to end up together. Baby Banshee didn't understand why that wouldn't work. She wanted love to win.
Anyway.
Based on how much the Red Warren Family popped off against Last Bast during this episode, I don't know if there will be more Secret of NIMH elements playing out. It's possible Tula could bring up Geoffrey and get confirmation on that but I don't think it's important to our stouts anymore.
But wouldn't it be interesting if Tula knew about Last Bast before they arrived? Didn't someone say something about lies of omission?
Mrs. Brisby's character arc is about having enough courage to move her family while her son has pneumonia. She confronts an owl, a cat, and a power hungry rat who deliberately puts moving the mouse family's home in jeopardy, in order to keep her family safe.
During most of the story, her children are in the dark about what she's doing to keep them alive and protect their future.
What an amazing archetype as Tula's touchstone.
One of the great things about the d20 campaigns is not only the mashup but how the players resolve the mashup after making a mess. I might be seeing lots of NIMH being laid down, now that the Watership Down portion is somewhat resolved but I'm prepared to be totally wrong as maybe our vicious varmints take us in a new direction.
Like I said--obsessed with Tula =^_^=
