What Birds Know

"Don't speak about the cycles of life

'Cause your thoughts are so soft I could cut 'em with a spork or a bride's knife"

 

Andrew Bird - Spare-Ohs

 

 

I was reading the webcomic What Birds Know back when I started this blog, and in fact p.191 inspired me to jot down the little vignette I called One Thriving, One Withering. At about p. 400-ish I deliberately stopped visiting the site to let the archive build up for a big satisfying binge. By the time I got back to it years later it seemed about to wrap up, so I told myself I'd binge it when I can benefit from the satisfaction of an ending. For years I kept putting it off until one day the site was offline. End of story... except the Wayback Machine luckily archived it, so I was recently able to complete my decade-overdue binge.

Looking at the site now, I'm surprised by its scarce reader comments suggesting obscurity. Back in the late 2000s, SluggyFreelance-inspired random mishmashes of pop culture references with crude draw'rins were still largely the norm for webcomics. What Birds Know benefited from professional (if not quite earthshaking) artwork. Judging by how often revelations or turning points in the story coincide with hundred-page marks, it must have been carefully plotted from its very start. It didn't pull its punches (until the slightly deus ex machina-ish ending) and it provided just enough wry, in-character comic relief to let readers breathe. In short, it should have stood above its competitors.

Maybe it was harmed by its ambiguity. The public, after all, likes easy answers, white hats and black hats. At first glance, WBK lacks an over-arching moral, unless you count "don't put preteens in charge of kingdoms, no matter how adorable they look on the throne" and even eschews its obvious coming of age potential by not really being opposed to childishness so much as childish facetiousness, self-delusion. Anyway, in a vaguely renaissance-level society, three teeange girls go hiking, stumble into yer standard-issue ancient ruins, and fantasy adventure ensues. By the time one of 'em coughs up a surprise, you should already have figured out whether it's your type of story or not.

 

But if you must seek a recurring theme, call it freedom, or sacrifice, or freedom of sacrifice: willing and unwilling, justifiable or not. It's not so much the inherent good and evil of each situation that yields good or bad results as the characters' deliberate, knowing engagement with it.

 

A good yarn overall, and sadly underappreciated.