A Redtail's Dream: What if... Paju?
Jun. 25th, 2015 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yuuagoSit tight for some Redtail's Dream thoughts - of the canon-based alternate universe kind.
So, Daeareina on tumblr posted fanart of Paju dressed in the same clothes that Hannu wears in chapter four (one of my favourite sections from the comic). First thoughts were:
1. Holy hell, I love Paju (nothing new there)
2. What if she had been the one who had to save the village, instead of Hannu?
It's a pretty interesting scenario. How would she handle it? Would she be better at the whole hero thing than Hannu is? There are some things about the story of A Redtail's Dream that might look different if Paju were the hero, because she and Hannu are very different people and might take completely opposite approaches to the same problems.
To make this fair, let's assume that she has an animal friend with her, either Ville or someone else, because an animal companion is pretty much required to solve some of the tasks.
Paju does have some advantages over Hannu. The main one is that she isn't reluctant to talk to people. Hannu isn't shy, but he seems to be very introverted, and he tends to go out of his way to avoid talking to people - including his friends! - even though asking for help really would make everything go more smoothly for him (see page 87 and 164). Paju doesn't have this problem. She doesn't avoid talking to people. She wouldn't be reluctant to approach friends or acquaintances. She has zero difficulty prodding people for information and answers (page 552). Her personality is very forward, and she's used to trying to control any situation that comes up.
Because she's so willing to confront people and problems, she might get some of her tasks done faster and with less trouble than what Hannu encounters.
Rather than making requests, Paju is more like the kind of person to make demands and give orders. This is also a personality flaw - and honestly, at times she comes off as kind of a jerk, especially because she also acts this way toward her friends - but it seems to be effective, because her part in the prologue shows that she's pretty good at getting people to do what she wants them to do, or at least that she has no problem ordering people around (11). So, her approach might be more effective, in that it might help her get some of the tasks finished more quickly and more efficiently.
There are some things that Hannu does well that Paju would have more difficulty with, or where she would encounter different challenges than he does. The situation of the Dream is pretty strange, but in spite of that strangeness, it doesn't take Hannu long to accept that he has tasks that he needs to do. He doesn't want to do it (and in general he seems to rarely want to do anything), but he accepts that he needs to get it done in order to set everything back to normal again, and he doesn't care overly much about the details (51). He's been flung into a supernatural situation, and he just wants to get it all over with so that he can go home and get a good night's rest. Paju, on the other hand, doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would decide, "I don't care that this is really weird; I just want to get it over with as quickly as I can". She'd demand answers. She'd want to understand. Paju seems like the kind of person who would try to make sense of the Dream and the tasks she has to undertake. Trying to understand it would take up time that she doesn't have.
... Alternately, it's entirely possible that instead of trying to make sense of the dream and obsessing over every small setback, she would accept that it's a dream, and say "Fine, I'll do this" - and then plow through it like an angry moose.
Paju has a tendency to obsess over details, to the extent that even small setbacks stress her out (08 and 09). She reacts to problems by trying to further control the situation, obsessing and stressing over it more, and giving herself a headache. Hannu doesn't react the same way; he tends to either push on in spite of ridiculous and frustrating situations, or flop down and want to give up (83 and 146). Obviously, wanting to give up doesn't help him, but pushing on without worrying about the details is definitely to Hannu's advantage. In a case like the dream, Paju's typical reaction might not be very effective.
However, there is no guarantee that she would actually react in that way. Her stress/obsess reactions in the comic are in response to relatively trivial details, and people don't always react to triviality in the same way that they react in situations that are actually important. Additionally, even though Hannu expects her to be stressed out in the dream, she seems to have a relatively cool head inside the schoolhouse compared to the way she is acting in the prologue (32) and contrary to the way Hannu expects her to act (30). While it is true that she is affected by the dream, and doesn't realize just how weird the situation is, I feel it's enough to suggest that she isn't obsessively picky all the time. People in the dream generally act as if everything is normal, even though the circumstances are very weird and there are talking animals everywhere, so having an authoritative air and taking charge of things while managing to keep most of her cool might not be entirely unusual for Paju (33, 34). If she could manage this, it's possible that she would have a more effective approach to the tasks than Hannu does, because she doesn't have the "flop down and want to give up" reaction that he does.
Another problem, and one that would have more to do with Paju's interpersonal relationships than her personality, is chapter six's task. Her brother Tuomi is the leader in that layer of the dream, and he doesn't want to leave. Hannu handles this task spectacularly badly, even worse than some of the others. There are some slight similarities between him and Tuomi, and that causes me to think that these similarities are what made him realize what it would take to make Tuomi want to go home. They're both introverted - at this particular time, Tuomi has had enough of everyone, even including friends, and he wants some peace and quiet with his animal companion. He wants to take as much time to himself as possible, and to be left alone until he decides that he wants company. Sounds a lot like Hannu, doesn't it?
Additionally, Hannu figures out how to send Tuomi back after listening to him talk about how he can't stand being around his friends (434, 435 and 436). It seems like something clicks. While this is speculation, I think that Hannu is seeing a bit of himself in Tuomi at that moment, and that's how he figures out how to handle this. Hannu's final words to Tuomi as the dream changes seem very knowing (439). "You'll feel fine in a few years!" It could just be because Tuomi is a teenage boy, and Hannu used to be a teenage boy, so he knows what that's like. But I think that their mutual introversion also plays a role.
That's a lot of words about Hannu and Tuomi. But what about Paju? Firstly, there's nothing to indicate that she, like Hannu and Tuomi, prefers to avoid talking to people and just wants her peace and quiet. So, it's possible that she wouldn't identify with that, and that it would take her longer to realize that what needs to be done in order to send everyone in this layer of the dream back is to make Tuomi's friends annoy him until he gives in. It's also possible that she would have to discover the solution to the problem in an entirely different way than Hannu did.
Secondly, Tuomi is her little brother, and they very much act like siblings. If their interaction in the prologue is any indication, Paju's method of dealing with him is generally not very effective (10). That's not to say that she wouldn't be able to find a way to convince him to leave the dream world at all, but it might take more time and more effort before she figured out how to do it. The difficulty in negotiating with him and figuring out what he wants might also be increased due to sibling baggage. Tuomi seems to be convinced that Paju and his mom don't want him around (433). In context, this seems to be normal teenage angst, but it certainly wouldn't help matters, and it means that there would be barriers and difficulties for Paju when interacting with her brother in the dream that did not exist for Hannu when he encountered Tuomi.
There are probably a lot of other factors that I haven't considered.
Overall, it seems like Paju wouldn't necessarily be any better or worse at being a hero than Hannu is. But because she and Hannu are very different people, they would handle the challenges of the dream differently. The way that they approach their tasks would also be different, and the decisions that Paju would be likely to make would occasionally give her advantages that Hannu doesn't have, but also sometimes set her back in ways that they would not for Hannu. She also would have to face a particular problem that Hannu definitely would not have to deal with; that is, the problem of having to deal with sibling conflict in the context of the dream's challenges.
Either way, I love the idea of Paju as the village's hero. She has such an assertive personality, and it's a lot of fun to think of her tackling all the trouble that would get thrown at her in that situation, and the challenges - internal or otherwise - that she might have to deal with.
So, Daeareina on tumblr posted fanart of Paju dressed in the same clothes that Hannu wears in chapter four (one of my favourite sections from the comic). First thoughts were:
1. Holy hell, I love Paju (nothing new there)
2. What if she had been the one who had to save the village, instead of Hannu?
It's a pretty interesting scenario. How would she handle it? Would she be better at the whole hero thing than Hannu is? There are some things about the story of A Redtail's Dream that might look different if Paju were the hero, because she and Hannu are very different people and might take completely opposite approaches to the same problems.
To make this fair, let's assume that she has an animal friend with her, either Ville or someone else, because an animal companion is pretty much required to solve some of the tasks.
Paju does have some advantages over Hannu. The main one is that she isn't reluctant to talk to people. Hannu isn't shy, but he seems to be very introverted, and he tends to go out of his way to avoid talking to people - including his friends! - even though asking for help really would make everything go more smoothly for him (see page 87 and 164). Paju doesn't have this problem. She doesn't avoid talking to people. She wouldn't be reluctant to approach friends or acquaintances. She has zero difficulty prodding people for information and answers (page 552). Her personality is very forward, and she's used to trying to control any situation that comes up.
Because she's so willing to confront people and problems, she might get some of her tasks done faster and with less trouble than what Hannu encounters.
Rather than making requests, Paju is more like the kind of person to make demands and give orders. This is also a personality flaw - and honestly, at times she comes off as kind of a jerk, especially because she also acts this way toward her friends - but it seems to be effective, because her part in the prologue shows that she's pretty good at getting people to do what she wants them to do, or at least that she has no problem ordering people around (11). So, her approach might be more effective, in that it might help her get some of the tasks finished more quickly and more efficiently.
There are some things that Hannu does well that Paju would have more difficulty with, or where she would encounter different challenges than he does. The situation of the Dream is pretty strange, but in spite of that strangeness, it doesn't take Hannu long to accept that he has tasks that he needs to do. He doesn't want to do it (and in general he seems to rarely want to do anything), but he accepts that he needs to get it done in order to set everything back to normal again, and he doesn't care overly much about the details (51). He's been flung into a supernatural situation, and he just wants to get it all over with so that he can go home and get a good night's rest. Paju, on the other hand, doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would decide, "I don't care that this is really weird; I just want to get it over with as quickly as I can". She'd demand answers. She'd want to understand. Paju seems like the kind of person who would try to make sense of the Dream and the tasks she has to undertake. Trying to understand it would take up time that she doesn't have.
... Alternately, it's entirely possible that instead of trying to make sense of the dream and obsessing over every small setback, she would accept that it's a dream, and say "Fine, I'll do this" - and then plow through it like an angry moose.
Paju has a tendency to obsess over details, to the extent that even small setbacks stress her out (08 and 09). She reacts to problems by trying to further control the situation, obsessing and stressing over it more, and giving herself a headache. Hannu doesn't react the same way; he tends to either push on in spite of ridiculous and frustrating situations, or flop down and want to give up (83 and 146). Obviously, wanting to give up doesn't help him, but pushing on without worrying about the details is definitely to Hannu's advantage. In a case like the dream, Paju's typical reaction might not be very effective.
However, there is no guarantee that she would actually react in that way. Her stress/obsess reactions in the comic are in response to relatively trivial details, and people don't always react to triviality in the same way that they react in situations that are actually important. Additionally, even though Hannu expects her to be stressed out in the dream, she seems to have a relatively cool head inside the schoolhouse compared to the way she is acting in the prologue (32) and contrary to the way Hannu expects her to act (30). While it is true that she is affected by the dream, and doesn't realize just how weird the situation is, I feel it's enough to suggest that she isn't obsessively picky all the time. People in the dream generally act as if everything is normal, even though the circumstances are very weird and there are talking animals everywhere, so having an authoritative air and taking charge of things while managing to keep most of her cool might not be entirely unusual for Paju (33, 34). If she could manage this, it's possible that she would have a more effective approach to the tasks than Hannu does, because she doesn't have the "flop down and want to give up" reaction that he does.
Another problem, and one that would have more to do with Paju's interpersonal relationships than her personality, is chapter six's task. Her brother Tuomi is the leader in that layer of the dream, and he doesn't want to leave. Hannu handles this task spectacularly badly, even worse than some of the others. There are some slight similarities between him and Tuomi, and that causes me to think that these similarities are what made him realize what it would take to make Tuomi want to go home. They're both introverted - at this particular time, Tuomi has had enough of everyone, even including friends, and he wants some peace and quiet with his animal companion. He wants to take as much time to himself as possible, and to be left alone until he decides that he wants company. Sounds a lot like Hannu, doesn't it?
Additionally, Hannu figures out how to send Tuomi back after listening to him talk about how he can't stand being around his friends (434, 435 and 436). It seems like something clicks. While this is speculation, I think that Hannu is seeing a bit of himself in Tuomi at that moment, and that's how he figures out how to handle this. Hannu's final words to Tuomi as the dream changes seem very knowing (439). "You'll feel fine in a few years!" It could just be because Tuomi is a teenage boy, and Hannu used to be a teenage boy, so he knows what that's like. But I think that their mutual introversion also plays a role.
That's a lot of words about Hannu and Tuomi. But what about Paju? Firstly, there's nothing to indicate that she, like Hannu and Tuomi, prefers to avoid talking to people and just wants her peace and quiet. So, it's possible that she wouldn't identify with that, and that it would take her longer to realize that what needs to be done in order to send everyone in this layer of the dream back is to make Tuomi's friends annoy him until he gives in. It's also possible that she would have to discover the solution to the problem in an entirely different way than Hannu did.
Secondly, Tuomi is her little brother, and they very much act like siblings. If their interaction in the prologue is any indication, Paju's method of dealing with him is generally not very effective (10). That's not to say that she wouldn't be able to find a way to convince him to leave the dream world at all, but it might take more time and more effort before she figured out how to do it. The difficulty in negotiating with him and figuring out what he wants might also be increased due to sibling baggage. Tuomi seems to be convinced that Paju and his mom don't want him around (433). In context, this seems to be normal teenage angst, but it certainly wouldn't help matters, and it means that there would be barriers and difficulties for Paju when interacting with her brother in the dream that did not exist for Hannu when he encountered Tuomi.
There are probably a lot of other factors that I haven't considered.
Overall, it seems like Paju wouldn't necessarily be any better or worse at being a hero than Hannu is. But because she and Hannu are very different people, they would handle the challenges of the dream differently. The way that they approach their tasks would also be different, and the decisions that Paju would be likely to make would occasionally give her advantages that Hannu doesn't have, but also sometimes set her back in ways that they would not for Hannu. She also would have to face a particular problem that Hannu definitely would not have to deal with; that is, the problem of having to deal with sibling conflict in the context of the dream's challenges.
Either way, I love the idea of Paju as the village's hero. She has such an assertive personality, and it's a lot of fun to think of her tackling all the trouble that would get thrown at her in that situation, and the challenges - internal or otherwise - that she might have to deal with.
Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.