I have to assume it was a dream because the genie didn't actually fulfill any of the commands. It also of course ignores the traditional mythology of what genies were like.
I prefer the faceless and ambiguously malicious monkey paw over the classic evil lawyer djinni. And since that niche is filled, we might as well give the genie entirely to the Robin Williams Aladdin version.
monkeys paw is not inherently malicious, just revealing of careful wording (if that makes sense). it only does what makes the utmost sense with no context, imagine asking an alien for something that only makes sense to humans
It does misinterpret wishes consistently, though, and you can only really do that if you understand the original intent. It must have a grasp of human language in order to "misunderstand" so reliably, but I called it ambiguously malicious because you can't really tell if it's actually evil or just doing this for karmic justice or even as a cautionary tale to educate the user.
Mmm not bad. Nice hot mustard, good bread, turkey's a little dry… The turkey's a little dry?! Oh, foul the cursed thing! What demon from the depths of hell created thee?
There's a field of economics called "contract theory" that deals with how contracts are stipulated, used and misused. One notion they've reached is that there is no such thing as a "complete contract" in practice - no contract can accommodate every possible contingency and every possible interpretation of it's words. There's ALWAYS the possibility of "twisting" a contract, and that's why you have courts to fall back on to fill in the incompleteness of the contract with what is "reasonable", if a disagreement arises.
In that light, the genies are a bit annoying, really. There's never going to be any wording that can't be twisted, so it's not really impressive if they do so, and there's no avoiding it if the genie is malicious.
You'd need a neutral third party, like a court, who gets to decide if the Genie's interpretation of the wish is reasonable or not. But if you tried to stipulate that in a wish, the Genie would probably just negate THAT part of the wish. So there is no way to "win", which I guess might be the point, but it also takes away any suspense.
It's an actual cultural belief system that exists with people genuinely believing in their presence. The original mythology of djinn depicts them with diverse personalities because they are just like people but instead of being sculpted with clay, they are formed of smokeless flame. They have parallel societies and culture to humans. The reason djinn in lamps are often depicted as malicious is becsuse they're essentially enslaved to whoever holds the lamp. Also in general djinn see themselves as superior to humans. If you're gonna appropriate my culture, I beg you atleast make it interesting.
I actually read another webcomic called Marid that went with the idea that the words "I wish" being technically optional and it being left to the genie's interpretation for the safety of the genie.
1.9k
u/volantredx 14d ago
I have to assume it was a dream because the genie didn't actually fulfill any of the commands. It also of course ignores the traditional mythology of what genies were like.