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Power Grid

5 Times Characters Ate Organs

by The Mary Sue Staff | 12:34 pm, April 4th, 2012


Digger

Digger

The work of Ursula Vernon’s that is probably best known online is the LOL WUT pear, which is now used as a basic “picture unrelated” image by many people. Vernon’s okay with that, so long as nobody’s selling Biting Pear merchandise. But her other contribution to the internet is the Eisner nominated webcomic (now complete) Digger.

Digger follows the big adventure of its titular main character, a wombat in a vest. Secondary characters include a hyena with no name, a newly born being made entirely of shadow, and oracular slugs. And what all of these characters (a decent chunk of the whole number of characters in the story) have in common is that they are not visually sexually dimorphic. That is, they don’t have an immediately obvious gender, and such things are eventually explained through the course of the story once it actually matters to a character or the narrative to know whether a person is male or female. Digger is a female wombat, the shadow child has no gender to speak of, and Ed (that nameless hyena) is male. Hyena society itself is simultaneously gender neutral and gender-flipped (each character is individually visually gender neutral, but in comparison the females generally larger, stronger, and more violent; and take on many leadership and fighting roles).

And Digger’s need to become part of hyena society is where we get to the organ eating. It’s a bit complicated, but basically what it comes down to is that if the proper traditions aren’t observed, a hyena who gave her life for Digger life is going to have to be, though it pains her tribesmembers, considered a no-person, unworthy of burial and remembrance. And the only way to square that with hyena traditions is to adopt Digger into the tribe. Inducting a wombat into a hyena tribe turns out to be the lesser stretching of tradition than twisting the rules to honor Skull Ridges. This process, though it involves intense debate and the shortening of a three day ritutal to about ten minutes, is actually Digger’s smoother interaction with hyena culture. The problem is Skull Ridges’ funeral, which happens directly afterwards and in which, as a hyena, Digger must fully participate.

Which means eating a bit of Skull Ridges’ raw liver. Hyenas ritualistically consume the liver of their fallen comrades, in order that their strength and ability in life be honored and returned to the tribe. Fun fact: many ancient societies associated things that we generally associate with the heart with the liver instead, like courage and strong emotion! Anyway, aside from the idea of eating part of someone who saved her life, Digger’s lot is complicated by the fact that she’s not only a vegetarian but a a herbivore. She literally can’t digest meat.

But she doesn’t have to digest it, after all, just swallow it in front of the rest of the tribe so that she doesn’t deliver a grave insult to Skull Ridge’s memory. Which she manages, though she describes it as “like eating a blood-soaked rubber sponge.” Then, stumbling home later with a bellyfull of mead and a kindly and quietly provided ipecac, she horks it all up into some bushes and feels much better.


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  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_R7GVNIKWG3S2UTHEQOMSZXT4M4 Anna B

    Great list! Strangely appropriate image of the church (?) organ.

    I’m reminded of when I was in law school, when there was a test question about a transaction between two people suing over the failed sale of one such musical instrument. After the test, my friends and I discussed the answer and one of them said it was an illicit transaction and therefore unenforceable. When asked why he thought it was illicit, he said it was because it was “organs”. Further conversation determined that he did not mean “internal organs” but “sexual organs.” Ah, this is what law school does to people.

  • http://twitter.com/ChrisLindsay9 Chris Lindsay

    Tooms in the X-Files ate livers, I believe? 

  • Anonymous

    The twin vampires in Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned had to eat the organs (brain and heart, I think?) of Akasha in order to keep all the other vampires alive. I was so bummed when they cut that part out of the movie.

  • Frodo Baggins

    I’m really glad you left out the part where that evil wizard in The Sword of Truth ate a little kid’s balls.

  • http://www.facebook.com/eric.lindberg3 Eric Lindberg

    Digger! I love that comic. Awesome that you referenced it. Best moment (and most appropriate to this list):

    “But you’d die without your heart!”

    “Not be getting too far without liver either.”

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=681460421 Lauron Haney

    This is a good list, but I wish that you had included the scene from “American Horror Story” with eating the (very juicy) sheep brain.

  • JoAnne Pope

    In American Gods, didn’t one of the Egyptian gods eat small slices of organs from cadavers he’d done autopsies on?  

  • http://twitter.com/UrsulaMinor K Shorten

    Oooh yeah, he did too.
     

    From Chapter 8:

    ” From the heart, the liver and from one of the kidneys, he cut an additional slice. These pieces he chewed, slowly, making them last, and ate while he worked.

    Somehow it seemed to Shadow a good thing for him to do: respectful, not obscene.” 

    (I had the ebook with me – not crazy, I swear)

  • http://twitter.com/lichenlight K B

    “Neal” Gaiman? I wouldn’t be so picky, but it’s not like his name isn’t all over the entire web!

  • http://profiles.google.com/ashleysue Ashley Sue

    Why is this a thing?!  Also, why did I read so much about people eating themselves.  Blergh.

  • Anonymous

    omg, “the cobra event” rocks so hard.  i also read it in junior high…just after finishing his previous book “the hot zone”.  if characters werent bleeding out of all their orifices, the book did not make it to my reading list, haha.  i should really check out “demon in the freezer”.  i *think* its about weaponized viruses, too.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=560699935 Becky Sanders

    It’s Neil Gaiman.  With an I.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jason-Christie/536168272 Jason Christie

    “Why I suddenly love this series.”

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