Wednesday 24 September 2014

In Which We Discuss Eating Animals You Can Talk To

There are quite a few stories out there with characters who can speak to animals, but very few then go to deal with the dilemma of eating them.  Off the top of my head, I can think of three.

Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is an excellent, novel-length Harry Potter fanfic which imagines that Lily was kind to Petunia, and as a direct result, Petunia married a scientist and was more loving towards Harry.  Harry Potter-Evans-Verres is a scientifically-minded rationalist who does lots and lots of interesting things at Hogwarts, and I very highly recommend giving it a read.  However, what we are concerned with here is what he does when he finds out about Parselmouth, and hears of other spells that can give animals cognisance.  He diligently researches exactly which foods are likely to have come from sentient creatures and avoids those he isn't sure of.

In Jinian Footseer, Jinian, who can talk to animals, doesn't eat anything explicitly mentioned as not being vegetarian in the first book.  In the second and third, she does explicitly eat meat.

In The Fairy Godmother, part of Mercedes Lackey's 500 Kingdoms series, Elaina drinks dragon blood and begins to understand all animal speech.  After listening to the chickens for five minutes she decides it's okay to eat them because they're stupid.

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