Outcast Of Redwall - Tumblr Posts
Veil: I realize how difficult it would be for you to forgive me, so I did you a favor and forgave myself. And if that isn't karma, I don't know what is
Bryony: That's not karma
Veil: Then I don't know what is
I think he just wants to be grumpy
A summary
Outcast is maybe one of the deepest books in the Redwall series and I will always love it. I know there are many people who see it as a failure, but I think it makes a lot of sense. You could say Veil was doomed. You could say he was always good. You could say he was just a child. I say he deserved a real chance and a good name, both literally and metaphorically.
Me reading Outcast of Redwall at age 10: That was cool but I don’t get Bryony’s final thoughts on Veil, he sacrificed his life to save her, obviously that proves he was good all along!
Me reading Outcast of Redwall now: Veil Sixclaw was abandoned at birth and taken in by people who looked at this weeks-old infant and said “well this one’s definitely going to grow up evil” and their solution to that was to give him to a little girl who had never taken care of a baby before and make her his sole caretaker and she loved him unconditionally but didn’t understand how to set boundaries and discipline him properly on account of being an Actual Child and the result was Veil growing up in an environment that treated him like he was already a criminal with the exception of one person who loved him but also enabled him and protected him from consequences until finally he tried to take revenge on one of his biggest tormentors and was exiled at the age of fourteen and sent off into the woods with one final “fuck you, we knew you’d be evil” after which he spends the rest of his short life being rejected a second time by his birth father and lashing out at everyone he comes in contact with until finally dying to protect the one person in his entire life who didn’t treat him like shit. He did awful things and hurt a lot of people and while his final act wasn’t proof that he was good along, it was proof that he might have been good if he hadn’t been repeatedly failed by every adult in his life, especially the supposedly wise old lady who named him Veil because it was an anagram of “evil” and “vile”.
I gladly volunteer to be Veil’s mother figure
I think I have this idea of Veil in my head that he’s a sweet hurt little boy, which may be true, but he’s also a bratty mean child. It makes me so sad. And the thing is- children are like that! He’s only like 12 years old and I dearly wish he had a better life. It didn’t get better for him, it just ended. I love him so much.
Ah goddammit, Outcast has been living rent-free in my head for the last two weeks now. I love that book, and I hate that book, and I wish the subject matter had been handled better. And no, I don't care if anyone thinks the "dumb kiddie animal books" are cringe as hell, this is my brain right now. I want to gather that kid up in my arms and protect him because goddammit the people who should have been able to put their issues aside and protected him just failed that kid so damn hard. Nature versus Nurture my ass, gah.
Do not @ me. I am feeling feels right now. Even twelve year-old me thought that whole thing was fucked up.
Thank you, Alex, for this troubled youth. Veil makes me so sad I love him so much… he could’ve had such a future.
Veil did well with his life
This art is evocative and very good
Have a troubled youth, courtesy of Outcast still living rent-free in my head.
Also courtesy of my further attempts to get back into drawing stuff.
Occurs to me reading this book, pretty sure Outcast has the most instances of winter out of all the Redwall series. Skarlath frees himself and Sunflash during the winter, Veil is born in the winter. Most of these book are set solidly solidly in the summer, which honestly makes sense for the Medieval-inspired seige warfare that tends to crop up a lot. But then this book also covers a larger span of time too.
Sitting here like "Mmn, she's only got so long left to go..." Because I went and got super attached to/protective of Bluefen all over again.
No of course not. He’s all-powerful, if he doesn’t like what she has to say then she can’t be right
Guy's got one of the few legit seers on his payroll, but does he listen to her predictions? Course not.
Bryony: Come on, you need to go to bed. Veil: Mr. Snuffles says that I can stay up as long as I want. And that you need to die! Bryony: … Bryony: What the hell, Mr. Snuffles—
Bluefen Lives Outcast of Redwall AU:
-Bluefen, once she's strong enough slips out of the hoard camp in the middle of the night with baby Veil.
-Since it's during a super harsh winter and also Swartt doesn't give a shit about her or their child, no one goes after her.
-She almost doesn't make it, but manages to get to Redwall.
-Most of the Redwallers are suspicious of her, except for Byrony.
-They become great friends.
-Veil is still named Veil, but this time the name means 'courage' or 'daring' in the ferret language.
-Bluefen didn't speak to anyone for almost a full season.
-She manages to win over most of the Redwallers by the end of the season.
-Once she began to come out of her shell, she proved herself to be kind, helpful, and brave.
-The following spring, a fisher ferret named Hooter (named for his large nose) came to visit Redwall.
-They became fast friends and later fell in love.
- Hooter is the exact opposite of Swartt Sixclaw. He's warm, funny, sentimental to a fault, and adores Bluefen and Veil.
-Veil grows up in a loving environment, to rather than in one of prejudice and suspicion.
-He grows up to be kind and brave like his mother.
-While Veil knows Hooter isn't his bio dad, he's the only father he's ever known.
-Much, much later, Hooter and Bluefen have a daughter named Aster.
-She's a dibbun during the later parts of Outcast.
-after getting driven off from Salamandastron, Swartt decides it's a good idea to attempt to take Redwall. Predictably, it is not.
-there's a great scene where Bluefen gets to tell Swartt what she thinks of him.
-Veil is the next creature to carry the sword of Martin. Although he never faces his father in combat, he proves himself against other creatures in the hoard.
-He never faces his father bc Sunflash gets ahold of Swartt first.
-Also Skarlath lives.
"oh! I'm so happy to see you up and about! How are you feeling? Lunch will be served soon! Come and sit with Togget and I if you're feeling up to it. How is the little one?"
----
Au in which Bluefen survives childbirth but is sickly and is left behind with veil after Swartt is attacked as she couldn't keep up
She and Bryony become girlfriends because bryony is the only redwaller that isn't suspicious of her and raise veil together. Bluefen adjusts to abbey life well enough, veil is still a little bitch (affectionate) but turns out slightly better off
So it's been a hot second since I took a break from my full series reread, but I found myself once again thinking about Outcast of Redwall and the raw deal that Veil Sixclaw got.
What kills me is that before the poisoning, the one thing Veil got in trouble for--the only thing, in fact--was stealing. This kid didn't even get into fights, he just stole food from the kitchens, which as Bryony points out is normal Abbey kid behavior. Another character shoots back that stealing is something most kids outgrow implying that the fact that Veil hasn't is suspicious, which is frankly a wild thing to say to the great grand-daughter of Gonff the Mousethief.
(In a kinder version of events, the adults in Veil's life might have shaken their heads with long-suffering fondness and remarked that he was following in his adopted ancestor's footsteps.)
The whole point of Redwall is that it's the woodland utopia where no one goes hungry and everyone has what they need, which is why kids stealing pies off the windowsill is no big deal... except when Veil does it, apparently. Veil's the one that gets physical punishment when he's suspected of stealing--not even proven! I can't recall off the top of my head any incidents in the rest of the series of corporal punishment in Redwall beyond idle threats that the kids know not to take seriously. But Veil gets scrutinized from the moment Redfarl and Skipperjo pick him up out of the mud and they and Bella look at this literal infant and say "oh yeah, he's gonna be evil for sure."
And then a thought occurred to me: it's generational trauma.
Most of the characters in Outcast are two generations removed from the characters in Mossflower. Bella of Brockhall is in both books. Verdauga and Tsarmina are still within living memory. Until the end of Outcast, as far as she knows, Bella lost her entire family to vermin warlords. Mossflower opens on a scene in which a ferret kicks in the door of a family of subsistence farmers, threatens their children with slavery, and takes all their food as taxes leaving them with none for the winter--and the Stickles were the last holdouts. The other farmers in the area had already run off to join the resistance at that point, so this kind of treatment was normal.
And we're left with a close-knit society of people who've grown up with this shared history, with a venerated authority figure who still carries the scars and memories of what they lost--and suddenly another warlord comes within a hairsbreadth of discovering the peaceful society they built in the aftermath, and leaves behind a starving neglected baby whose first impression is eating frogspawn in the mud and biting his rescuers while being the spitting image of the warlord they just narrowly avoided.
All of that gets thrown into this caustic mixture of fear and paranoia that gets projected onto a literal baby and results in their completely out of pocket response to a child taking food from the kitchens in the We Share Everything Abbey.
It also might explain why Bryony, who's young enough to be three generations removed and may have been born after most of the survivors of Kotir had already passed, is the only one who isn't scared and suspicious of Veil on sight.
What about Outcast of Redwall?
Here it is. However, we simply call this book "Outcast".