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[SPOILER] Click here to see my commentary for this page!
My comment for this page from Gaia: sic mundus creatus est:I was surprised that the meat plants were poorly received by some readers. I still think that it was a clever idea. There’s no way the inhabitants of Gaia would approve of hunting animals or keeping them for slaughter. I myself am not a vegetarian. But I take great care to never throw away food, especially meat.
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A meat-melon? Sausage from trees? I’d have a greenhouse for year-around growth! What else, a bush to grow pork, a vine for chicken? A tree that grows any fruit? Farming from an orchard, I’d love it! No worry if a vine was to break out the fence, or the dozens of other livestock getting out to wreak havoc on the neighbors. I can hear the TV slogans now: “I can’t believe it’s not ____!” (Enter the desired meat type here)
I remember later strips where the characters express revulsion at eating meat from an animal. I did not remember specifically this one though with the meat “fruits”.
Interesting concept. If there is a non-killing, less energy intensive way to get similar taste and texture than raising animals, why not?
This is an interesting idea, but I’m curious what would lead to plants growing meat. Is it still muscle tissue, somehow? Is it Gaia’s doing?
Scarsdale wrote:
Not to mention less greenhouse gases….
I’m vegan for the animals.
Meat growing on trees is certainly a very original idea—off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other works that have done the same thing unless it’s played as a joke.
I don’t think the steakoloin should be “poorly received”, it’s just such a very strange thing to suddenly happen to see. It was never spoken of before, or since. You’d think that people would be growing window boxes of chicken legs, then. Not to mention the sort of things that “Wanna buy a watch?”-type seed salesmen would be claiming. Can you grow your own horse? Can children spend their allowance on real-monkey Sea Monkeys? My little ponies?
If “Golnar couldn’t pay for their grain deliveries”, does that make grain peasant food? How can they not have food when “live off the land” things like this happen?
Whiplash is more the experience I think. Given that lifeforce has an upperlimit as Gaia is everything on this world… it makes sense as a religious tenant, and outside of survival situations or foraging, you wouldn’t eat animals. But … seems kinda odd? A bit ham-fisted, pardon the pun. There were earlier casual references to meat-items. Lamb, shortly before Ryn slapped his then girlfriend. Why have artificial meat producing vegetation? That seems odd.
And what does this mean for animals hunting to survive? There are ecosystem considerations, in conjunction with the finite resource that is bluestream lifeforce.
Genuinely fascinated still with this world building choice. I remember finding it especially absurd way back when this page first went up, but in hindsight I love the originality of it. It was kinda of a whiplash though. I think the thing that coulda softened the blow was just having a background character mentioning a garden of meat vegetation, or just in the environment of the city or marketplace having a meatmonger bragging about the quality of their selection picked from the finest orchards. A sort of word combination that makes a reader say “what” but it’s just a background character in a single panel. You kinda file it away as an oddity but the story is chugging forward so you’re not gonna think about meat plants.
THEN hit ‘em with the full on BBQ. The readers go nuts and then they remember that monger or that gardener and just go ‘oh my god, that’s what they meant when they said meat plant”. A lot of natural elements in the comic are dropped organically (pun not intended for once) but this particular element could have used some time to simmer.
Carefulrogue wrote:
Since lifeforce is limited, there can’t be “too much” of life. Although maybe an unregulated specie could maybe “take too much” liveforce?
I don’t know how Novil considered that, but my feeling is that :
– there are obviously animals and a few insects eating dead meat (cleaning purposes)
– all “normal” animals (not monsters that really eat flesh) can live off veggies for most of their diet
– some animals (including humans) can eat a bit of real meat, and some animals would sometimes eat others, that would help regulate things a little bit (killing the weakest and really hurt ones sometimes help).
But I guess that there is no “need” for full regulation by big groups of carnivores because of this limited life supply. No specie would go totally unregulated and grow wayyy too much.
FuryoftheStars wrote:
They’re really no issue, actually. The problem with the greenhouse gasses is where they were sequestered well below ground until we dug’em up and threw’em into the air. Skip the digging up part and mother nature turns them back into greens again eventually. Even the cows farting methane aren’t that interesting; the really big emitters are our trash heaps.
As to meat-trees, sausages are a way of preserving meat and meat is ment to move. There’s no point for trees to put effort in either. And making meat, nevermind preserving meat, takes quite a bit of effort. So where is the evolutionary upside? It makes so little sense it actually hurts to think about. The only thing that makes it attractive is human ethical considerations. And who’s to say the plant doesn’t put nerves in the meat and thus hurts a lot when the sausages are plucked? The meat-making still has all the water and food needs and greenhouse emissions, but a movement problem since it’s a plant doing the making, thus a gathering problem, thus poor results. It isn’t the oink that takes the resources. So the concept takes a massive amount of projection. It is a bit of a rabbit hole that doesn’t help the story. It does paint a bit of a background, but says more about the author than that it helps fill in the world-building.
Cellar wrote:
Nature would be even able to deal with the mining. Problem is that we are mining it TOO FAST. Like, we take thousand of years of stored carbon and put it into atmosphere in month (and that may even be a low guess). Nature can’t adapt so quickly.
Cellar wrote:
It’s quite obvious those meat plants didn’t evolved. However, remember that this is setting with active gods. Only way the meat plants make sense is if Gaia created them specifically to make people stop hunting animals.
And regarding the ethical concerns … you know that animals are killed before we eat them, but fruits and vegetables are still alive while we eat them (if we eat them raw)?
@ HKMaly:
Fruits and vegetables don’t feel pain and aren’t people.