Know Your Place Page 2
February 20th, 2017Jassart tells of his childhood and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. No idyllic running through fields here. Just work and ash as the son of a charcoaler. Jassart makes the first big choice of his life on the next page. Please vote for Snow by Night on Top Web Comics and see a preview!
Emerald City Comic Con is coming up on March 2-5. Steph and I will be venturing to the West Coast for the first time! Come see us if you’re going to this fabulous show. We’ll be at table C15!
Blaise is a thief like Jassart, so I guess life has not been kind to him either. Yet he seems to have more scruples than his ex-partner in crime.
Now I wonder about B’s own backstory.
They do certainly come from different standpoints, Jassart thinks to avoid being oppressed he has to become part of that oppresive society and use it against itself, Blaise i think believes that to stop oppression he has to change that society, I personally think he was born into the oppressors.
I don’t really see Blaise as someone who’s trying to change the system, nor is Jassart trying to become part of the oppressors. They’re both career criminals: they’ve placed themselves outside the system and its rules, so outside both the oppressed and the oppressors. The crucial difference between them is that Blaise retains some form of a moral code other than the legal one (even if he’s usually more likely to just go through the path or least resistance, or at least was until he met Snow), while Jassart has ditched all of that and seems to be pretty much a completely amoral little shit. (And that’s why I like them so much, for all their flaws. :D)
For fun you can compare them to Mathilde, who took the “fuck rules” approach just once, to defraud the money to buy the saloon and get into a position where she can afford to live more or according to the rules, except for the lying necessary to hide the original crime.
We’ve actually seen where Blaise came from; he’s from a peasant family in Aradie. So he wasn’t born to the oppressor class, but you’re probably right that his origins would affect his outlook; farming your own land gives you a bit more control on your own fate, and Aradie does seem like a place where poor people have a bit easier to catch a break than in Saronne (even though of course it isn’t at all egalitarian either).
“Rules are made by the powerful to keep them in power. For the rest of us, they’re shackles, designed to keep us in our place.”
You know, at the time I felt like he as good as told his backstory right then and there. But seeing that the preview panel is happening on only page three of the vignette, I suppose there is more to it. :)
There’s an amazing number of people who don’t actually have a problem with oppression, but that they are the oppressed.
Also, it’s easier to change your position in society than to change the society. This is not singular incident, whole society is not exactly supporting free people. (Also, it’s unlikely to get that much better in next century, based on our own experience. In fact, based on this year US election, it may not get better for veeeery long.)
A sad life and wanting more, but being the same lying and bullying thief the intendant was makes you no better than what you despised.
Dominance is a tool. Dominance for the sake of dominance is cruelty. Dominance for the sake of making things better is just necessary.