EQ Readthrough: Issue 2, Raid at Sorrow's End

[elf]

LINK: Issue 2: Raid at Sorrow's End
Questions for this issue:

• What did you find most interesting about the trip through the desert?
• How could the raid have been prevented? What would have changed?
• What did you think of the display of healing powers?

Main OQR post with prompt questions
Note: These aren't mandatory questions; they're meta prompts. If you don't care for any of them, or want to tangent from them to some other topic, that's fine too.

Comments

[schattenstern]

Ah, the journey through the Empty Land. That reminds me... back when I bought my first volume of ElfQuest, which included the first two issues, I was at that age where my mum had decided that I should show more interested in discos and boyfriends than Fantasy books or comics. She used to call them "childish", knowing full well that I was too much of a teen to just let it slide, it always irked me... anyway, her comment on EQ, based on the cover and looking at a random page was "Have you now regressed to being a toddler mentally? This is even ore childish than your usual stuff!" I eventually talked her into reading a couple of pages from the trek through the desert, and while she only scoffed and scowled, she never said anything about EQ again.

(For the record, I love my mum dearly and we have obviously learned a lot since then. ^^)

What did you think of the display of healing powers?

To be honest, I didn't think terribly highly of them. That's probably because I had read so many Fantasy books in which the healing worked like "The healer closes his eyes and touches the patient, then concentrates very hard and the wounds go away. He is then very exhausted but happy, the end.", and Leetah's first display of her healing powers don't exactly stand out among that. But hey, whatever works. ;)

By the way, has anyone wondered how the wolfriders know what a wheel is when neither they nor the humans use them and their contact with the trolls is minimal? (When they discover that the lodestone always points north, they talk about constellations and one is called a wheel.)

[dancing_serpent]

*g* True, that healing scene is pretty much cliché when it comes to how magic gets pictured in fantasy.

But there's something else that bugged me for a while. Leetah's pose seems very much exaggerated with her head thrown back like that. As if she's putting up a show. I don't know if it's for the sake of the "new", strange elves or because she thinks too highly of herself at this point, being the only healer of the Sun Folk for centuries and being revered for that.

[schattenstern]

Hmmm. I always just assumed that her pose had more to do with the Pinis wanting to show that first display of Leetah's healing (first from the wolfrider's perspective as well as the readers) as an extraordinary event and that's why they used such a dramatic pose. But from Leetah's point of view... I have no idea, but yours seem logical enough. ^^

[kimboo_york]

I thought it was a slightly cliched representation of "magical healing", but like Schattenstern I think I always envisioned it from the perspective of the Wolfriders' wonderment. But I do love Dancing's idea, that it is also Leetah putting on a show -- perhaps to awe the Wolfriders, and perhaps to remind Rayek of her own spectacular strengths, or maybe just out of ego. I don't know which, or maybe a bit of all of it, but I think it adds a lot to my reading of the scene to think of it this way.

[elf]

Ooh, I like that.

I suppose I can also understand, if she's working with a level of damage she rarely sees, it was difficult for her. Perhaps the thrown-back-head pose works better for concentration, or aligning the energies, or whatever. But yes, it very much looks like she's showing off, and her status as Important Magic Person in the village implies that she'd be prone to that type of display.

[dancing_serpent]

The more I think about it...I'm pretty sure now that she's showing off. I remember later situations, where Leetah herself reflects on her status as Important Magic Person and comes to the conclusion that she was too proud and self-centered.

Also, later healing scenes are very different - there's an painful urgency in her expression and she keeps her eyes on the patient as if to monitor her progress visually, too. And she does arrive at a point where her powers get challenged, while at first she never even seems to consider that she might not be able to heal someone.