WARNING: ENTER THE SAMURAI SPOILERS AHEAD!
They say a cynic is a disillusioned idealist and from that kernel, John Skye stepped onto the stage. He has his roots in old Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns, a former soldier-turned-gunslinger who’s used to working in the moral gray areas of the Empire. I picture him as tall and lanky, quick with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He’s wealthy and vain enough to have custom-tailored uniforms but treats them poorly which irritates his superiors to no end but cultivates a certain mystique around Paradise City, which he takes full advantage of. If I were casting him in a movie, I might go with and actor like Orlando Bloom or Trainspotting-era Ewan McGregor.
The interesting thing to me about Skye is he’s trying to find something to believe in, but isn’t willing to take the leap of faith it requires. He’s been burned repeatedly but keeps coming back, even if he’s all the more jaded each time. We know he’s haunted (literally) by his older brother the war hero, who died defending Paradise City from the Empire. Skye was part of that fight too, but we get the sense the old citizenry didn’t think as much of him. That he went on to serve the Empire in a morally gray capacity couldn’t have helped his reputation either.
On top of that, in a land where gods were walked among the people only two generations earlier, John is a tepid believer at best. He doesn’t believe in the Blood Weeper at all, and he mocks Cora’s faith in the Twins as superstition. He represents a growing part of the Badlands population that accepts its supernatural nature, but doubts its origins as Ryan’ Shaw’s rock n’ roll demiurge. I think this will be a fun area to explore in later stories, this notion of how we make sense of the world around us when the unexpected happens, especially in the Fantasy genre. What’s the relationship between a god-like figure and its worshiper and how is that maintained? For example, can you have a secular theory of the occult?
Fantasy and Science Fiction like to ask questions like these, and wading through their answers as points of view battle it out are what keep me coming back. It reminds me to question my assumptions as I go through my day and remind me that what I know about the world is a mere thimbleful compared to what I don’t. How about you? What book asked a question you hadn’t considered before? Leave a note in the comments, I’d love to hear about it!
