About Mender and Winnowill and the parallells that Dart DIDN'T draw

Mender and Winnowill are, to my knowledge, the only elves who have successfully had sex with non-elves (if you don’t count that half-elf Cutter AU where it was clearly rape, or Ahdri/Two-Edge. Being only half elf sure wasn't a problem in the half-elf Cutter AU)

Having sex with humans clearly isn’t taboo among the elves (Little Patch), it’s just somehow biologically impossible (Rogue’s Curse, Final Quest); both Winnowill and Mender had to take on a human shape in order to do it. Moreover, we see humans desiring elves (Wild Hunt, Rogue’s Curse, Little Patch), but not the other way around - Mender does it out of curiosity, Winnowill out of business (the Djunn) and being extremely mentally disturbed (Two-Edge’s father). Mender and Winnowill are also the only elves we know to be desired by trolls (Trinket and Two-Edge’s father).

They’re clearly not violating taboos in-universe (sleeping with a half-troll is obviously no problem, even though both Cutter and Oddbit think that Two-Edge’s ancestry is "disgusting" in OQ), but I wonder if they're meant to be violating the reader's sense of decency.

Maybe their willingness to cross that border is meant to be taken as a further indication of the wilingness to let go of all morals, like Dart seemed to be warning Mender about way back when. I have absolutely no hope that we'll ever get that comment or these parallells resolved within what remains of Final Quest, but I still find myself wondering if this was coincidence or not.

Wasn't Smelt completely brainwashed by Winnowill tho? If something was wrong with his head, it was Winnowill's doing. She killed him because he shook it off.

I think Mender's romp with that human woman/girl is generally considered to be rape as well.

Mender likely has morals, he just doesn't listen to them if he's really curious about something, from what I gather. 

Winnowill...is just evil and free. She has power, she knows what she can do and has little to nothing keeping her in check.

I don't think it's coincidence there's these parallels between them, I think some healers are just more inclined to experiment?

If he was brainwashed, I missed that :/ and yeeeeeah, Mender's choices re. that human girl were pretty skeevy. What I meant was that in that one story with half-elf Cutter, Bearclaw was forced to sleep with a human woman, and it's a very different situation from what Winnowill and Mender both did.

It was.
I have to admit I don't remember much of that story because its so damn dark and such a miserable verse. I read it once.

Cool post!
With Mender and Winnowill, the troll was brainwashed, but so were the girls Menders played around with. He didn't just turn human and sleep with them, he did the whole hands-on tingling horny magic on them to make them fall for him (while he was spinning the story).

Winnowill didn't seem to do anything with Djunn besides look human. It never showed her doing anything magically to seduce him, asides from seeming to be a scheming bitch, and showing magic in other forms (focused outwardly, not on him at all).

Waaait. He fucked more than one? 

I remember reading it, (because I needed to) but the only parts I actually recall is Mender and that one sobbing girl/woman who later got tortured by her own family. Possibly half to death, because Abode humans.

YUP. He "seduced" two girls - sisters. He used the same story about their beloved Dalan being spellbound a.s.o ...

The one you remember was Anamara. She loves Dalan and agrees to help ... but was unwilling and feeling wrong about it nevertheless.
The other was Morisaitai, her praised and "perfect" sister and Dalan's betrothed ... and she was actually more than willing to follow Mender's lure. Still under false pretences.

Yikes, Mender, yikes.

I actually really liked that story, because it was fascinating. Yes, it was terrible of Mender. Mainly though it was cool because I really loved the dynamic of Yun and Mender. They were the coolest lovemate coupling. Also, this was the tale where Yun 'found' Khorbasi (or, rather, he found her).

I found myself really liking Mender's Quest as well, which surprised me a lot because Mender is one of very few characters in Elfquest that I just flat out don't like. Sure, he's making a huge mess out of a simple culture crash, but I honestly enjoyed that look into his mind and into the human-elf relations and how he acknowledged his mistakes and did his best to fix them.

And I completely agree about Yun and Mender, Zadzi. I liked the way they first ended up together and wouldn't have minded seeing more of their relationship.

Mender and Winnowil weren't the only elves to have sex with non-elves. Timmain mated with a wolf,hence the Wolfriders origin and Jink routinely boinks humans in the future.but yeah Mender and Winnowil are very manipulative and amoral about interspecies sex.

Timmain in retrospect mated with a wolf , and it's not exactly comparable in terms of actual communication. Jink...well, her entire existence is speculative.

Mender and Winnowill may've been amoral but I found them the least milquetoast. Granted, this is still having to contend from Winnowill's batshit catroon villain status. But in general, it does seem to be the healers who takes these chances with others since they can altar their 'pitch'.

Zadzi wrote:

But in general, it does seem to be the healers who takes these chances with others since they can altar their 'pitch'.

That was my thought in reading this - you only see Mender and Winnowill engaging in interspecial intercourse because as healers they are the only ones able to pull it off. In this case Leetah is the odd one in that she consciously made a choice to limit what she did with her powers.

Winnowill and Mender are both examples of the questionable morality of doing something just because you CAN.

Which is the only answer I can think of to the question of WHY Winnowill would have a half-Troll baby, especially if she's so hung up on pure blood. She just wanted to see if it could be done.

because Winnowill in OQ wasn't supposed to be the same villain as Winnowill in Siege? In OQ Two-Edge was more frightening to the Wolfriders than his mother. On the last pages of OQ she seems to have assumed the position of Voll, but Tyldak and Aroree don't appear anything but relaxed. The Wolfriders move extremely close to Blue Mountain, unafraid of the threat. And Winnowill has no issue with a Glider/ Wolfrider baby (less than, let's say Leetah or Scouter "but he's a monster"), she torments Leetah with Cutter's mortality because she can and because she senses, that this is a problem for Leetah as well

I don't think Scouter was objecting to a Glider/Wolfrider baby, he did say he's be a father to the child no matter what, and he stayed true to his promise.
What he was objecting against was the fact that Dewshine had to mate with someone she really didn't like, and who didn't try to hide that he was repulsed by her.

And I think Leetah having a problem with Cutter's mortality wasn't because it somehow makes him "impure", but because it means she'll lose him someday. Something she's only very recently come (somewhat) to terms with.

Lastly; Winnowill wasn't exactly nice during OQ, what with locking up Strongbow, using Dewshine's soulname to control her, and kidnapping Suntop...

I thought the main reason for 'humans/elves can't have sex with each other' was the human men just didn't have enough stamina/couldn't last.

See, I got the distinct impression that it was mostly due to how their minds worked. That it was sending done during sex that was the problem. I mean, Aroree had in the past had sex with various members of the Hoan-G’Tay-Sho. The problem was that when she sent to Little-Patch in the heat of the moment was just another slap in the face for him. That he simply could never be a part of Cutter's tribe, because it required him to not be himself.

Aroree hadn't had sex with humans before, though; she was just curious about it, so she was willing to try with Patch.

"... Aroree was once *curious' with ..." - they use 'curious with" instead of "curious about" and 'curious' in the inverted commas.

For me this means that the author used a G-rated term to express that Aroree fulfilled her curiosity. Even more as it is told that "she's forgotten" (that it doesn't work out well). Also implies for me that she only tried once back then and not multible times with various human pets..

Redhead Ember wrote:

I don't think Scouter was objecting to a Glider/Wolfrider baby, he did say he's be a father to the child no matter what, and he stayed true to his promise.
What he was objecting against was the fact that Dewshine had to mate with someone she really didn't like, and who didn't try to hide that he was repulsed by her.

And I think Leetah having a problem with Cutter's mortality wasn't because it somehow makes him "impure", but because it means she'll lose him someday. Something she's only very recently come (somewhat) to terms with.

Lastly; Winnowill wasn't exactly nice during OQ, what with locking up Strongbow, using Dewshine's soulname to control her, and kidnapping Suntop...

I was thinking of these two:



Of course, Winnowill wasn't nice, but she also wasn't the uber-evil person she became later on. She wanted to protect her people, even if that meant being cruel to other elves. She was ruthless, but still no moustache-twirling villain.
Leetah knocked over the wine cup (must've been some schnaps, actually, wine doesn't burn), it was because Cutter started to talk about wolfblood. Leetah was afraid how Voll might react, if he knew about it. She knew, this might be a problem.
About Scouter, in the German version -I think-, he once says that Tyldak is a monster, in the original it's just ugly. So that's my mistake.

Just as an aside here, I need to mention how absolutely gorgeous that Hidden Years series was (the one Wendy did). It's really I feel some of her best work. The art, the stories... everything. It remains very high on my list in terms of visual stories. The Little Patch story was definitely my favorite.
I know it's impossible to expect this kind of quality consistently, but in all honesty, comparing FQ to that Hidden Years, is to me the equivalent of watching one of the most talented, soulful singers turn around and do vapid commercial jingles. It borders on desecration of the sacred.

Sorry to sound all dramatic, but that's sometimes how it feels!

Embala wrote:

"... Aroree was once *curious' with ..." - they use "curious with" instead of "curious about" and 'curious' in the inverted commas.

For me this means that the author used a G-rated term to express that Aroree fulfilled her curiosity. Even more as it is told that "she's forgotten" (that it doesn't work out well). Also implies for me that she only tried once back then and not multible times with various human pets..

You have a point. I sit corrected.

Miss Gillespie wrote:

Redhead Ember wrote:

I don't think Scouter was objecting to a Glider/Wolfrider baby, he did say he's be a father to the child no matter what, and he stayed true to his promise.
What he was objecting against was the fact that Dewshine had to mate with someone she really didn't like, and who didn't try to hide that he was repulsed by her.

And I think Leetah having a problem with Cutter's mortality wasn't because it somehow makes him "impure", but because it means she'll lose him someday. Something she's only very recently come (somewhat) to terms with.

Lastly; Winnowill wasn't exactly nice during OQ, what with locking up Strongbow, using Dewshine's soulname to control her, and kidnapping Suntop...

I was thinking of these two:

[Pictures removed to avoid clutter.]

Of course, Winnowill wasn't nice, but she also wasn't the uber-evil person she became later on. She wanted to protect her people, even if that meant being cruel to other elves. She was ruthless, but still no moustache-twirling villain.
Leetah knocked over the wine cup (must've been some schnaps, actually, wine doesn't burn), it was because Cutter started to talk about wolfblood. Leetah was afraid how Voll might react, if he knew about it. She knew, this might be a problem.  
About Scouter, in the German version -I think-, he once says that Tyldak is a monster, in the original it's just ugly. So that's my mistake.

Well... she was nasty in OQ, then she got even nastier in SaBM. Voll's death might have had something to do with it; partly because it meant he wasn't around to keep her in check anymore, partly because she actually blamed the Wolfriders for his death.

She was power hungry and manipulative in OQ, but she loved Voll and it was easy to see how her love was twisted into fear of loss and the need for control-- which became control for is own sake. In SABM, she as insane. She hallucinated. She wasn't sane. And she was in some hardcore grief-and-guilt-induced pain.

After that-- she was nothing but bad guy. Just plain all out, cookie cutter bad guy.

I actually think that might be one of the main differences between Winnowill and Mender:

Winnowill used her love of Voll - who might very well have been the only person she genuinely loved - as an excuse to be terrible; first by doing her damnest (sp?) he never even thought about leaving Blue Mountain, then - after he actually left and was killed - by blaming his death on the Wolfriders, saying they "betrayed" him, even though if anyone did any betraying, it was Voll himself.

Mender uses his love - mainly for Dart, but also for other people, most noticeably Ember - as a reason to become a better person. The whole "Making me do what's right, instead of fight." thing springs to mind.


(Bit late here)

September wrote:

They’re clearly not violating taboos in-universe (sleeping with a half-troll is obviously no problem, even though both Cutter and Oddbit think that Two-Edge’s ancestry is "disgusting" in OQ), but I wonder if they're meant to be violating the reader's sense of decency.

I thought that was simply a humouristic way to show that even though they "agreed" they were on completely opposite sides.

Cutter thought the idea of an elf sleeping with a troll was disgusting.
Oddbit thought the idea of a troll sleeping with an elf was disgusting.
Elves think trolls are ugly. Except when they get drunk and mistakes a troll for their lifemate...
Trolls think elves are ugly.