TM Stuff- blue eyes~
Added 2017-03-19 19:21:34 +0000 UTCMany readers have noticed that some of the Pasori characters in The Meek have blue eyes! I've made a little compilation above to show the variety we've seen in this chapter so far.
It's true, a lot of characters do have blue eyes... in fact, Luca's father, best known for being the first person to unite all of the tribes, had blue eyes (that's where Hyla gets hers from). But default eye color is the range of brown that most people have. Some tribes, like the Kan tribe, have almost entirely blue-eyed members (the new character Ulyer is one of them). Kinda depends on the politics...
Supposedly people with blue eyes were considered to have access (potentially), to superhuman powers, ranging from control of animals to ability to predict the weather. Luca's father in particular was supposed to be an unbeatable warrior due to his ability to see and avoid traps. In some tribes this trait was celebrated to the point where, like the Kan, there was strong selection for blue eyes, and a majority of the members had it. And in other tribes, blue-eyed children born to familes who posed a threat to leadership might be put to death for being unlucky as a way for the head of the tribe to maintain his power. If you're an adult in a tribe like this, you might wear a target on your back for someone to accuse you of whispering warnings to hunted game, or for causing a storm, or whatever. It's sort of up in the air, and also unclear if anyone actually believes that blue-eyed people do these things, or if it's just a convenient excuse to get revenge on a neighbor who is doing a little better than you are.
Anyways, that is sort of old-days stuff, in these wonderful modern times more urban Pasori don't really care as much, or treat it like a backwoods joke. The fact that Luca is pretty standard issue and yet controls both the tribes and the Santri people with an iron fist is a good argument that maybe eye color doesn't matter as much as one's birthright and will to control.
Comments
Haha, same... My cousins are white/ mexican and inherited my grandpa's blue eyes. My branch of the family is white/ mexican/ asian and one of my brothers has hazel eyes, sort of like Angora with the green eye with a light brown ring around the pupil XD I'm a little jealous
Der-shing Helmer
2017-03-21 20:53:19 +0000 UTCGood question :D Yeah, mixing with other cultures has diluted superstitions a bit... most of the Southern tribes under the permafrost line are a bit more savvy? They deal with outsiders more so aren't quite as easily impressed by details, but the upper North tribes are more isolated and initially saw the Carissi as potentially a tribe of magicians (them appearing randomly from the ocean was already kind of a lot, then also the fact that they have Cool Stuff to Trade). Later the Carissi were lumped into a big category of "enemy/ outsider," so the eye thing was not considered important in the same way that if you saw a dog with blue eyes you wouldn't necessarily think you had a kinship with it.
Der-shing Helmer
2017-03-21 20:51:49 +0000 UTCI am wondering, did the blue eye mythos disappear because of the thirty years war, since most of the Carissi also have blue eyes? Having a bunch of blue-eyed people invade and steal family members away must have really changed how they thought of it, if it was still a relevant idea in their culture at the time.
lauren Ross
2017-03-21 20:35:54 +0000 UTCMy maternal grandparents had blue eyes. My parents have brown/hazel eyes. Three of my siblings and I have brown eyes. We have one brother with blue eyes. He also shares the curlier hair of my grandparents. Genetics are pretty cool! People groups have lots of variety within them. It's fun to learn about the "variations of normal" that can pop up.
Lilian Stoltzfus
2017-03-20 19:51:55 +0000 UTC
