[756] You can't just make it better

I get the feeling Paz knows more than she's letting on.

Was anyone else thinking all this time that Paz was naive/innocent to the point of being unable to deal with moral ambiguity? Also, is anyone else currently facepalming for thinking this?

Now im kind of interested in this chapter.

Well, to be fair we knew quite little about her so far. Two out of three times she's been featured prominently so far she's been "the victim", and the third time at least gravely disappointed. It's only natural to put her into the "naive/innocent" box.

That said, I applaud Paz to actually attempt to change things, especially with an adversary as huge as "the court". So much easier to just shut your eyes and go with the flow.

I love the way Paz takes a normally stupid haircut like a bowl cut and just breathes new life into it.

Very true, but this also means I was wrong. About a comic. On the internet. THIS IS SOMETHING THAT SHOULD NOT BE.

I can't see Kat as Ollie... However, I can see King Mob and Mason, if you want to go Vertigo.

It's only natural to expect that years of being a chew-toy are somehow conducive to remaining unaware of just how much can go wrong? I don't get it.

If we're into confessions, my after-reading reaction was to shudder in the anticipation of a massive wiki-yay. But of course, you're quite right, possible misconstructions are in no way limited to the digital maoism.

Well, it depends on the system. What they have is almost uncontrolled and almost uncontrollable self-organized community. Got lots of quirky individuals with their own areas of enthusiasm and much more points on to-do list and thus have to run on whatever goodwill participants can spare. Not unlike an OSS project that gradually grew way too big. ;D

You're right, and you sparked my thinking in a tangential direction. This is probably true of real-life institutions. But what does it mean for wildly un-real-life fictional institutions like the forest? Even the most corrupt of our real-life groups of people doesn't have an omnipotent prankster god stirring things up. My thoughts aren't really all together, so I'm posing it as a question: does Paz's claim hold for the Forest, or are they exempt from the rule?

I really like this page, and this chapter. And I don't think it's out of place or at the wrong depth for these characters. These people might be young, but they're not stupid. Tom's good about remembering the difference.

Man, Kat just got told.

I also didn't take Paz too seriously until this chapter either. However, Tom hasn't given us many "take her seriously" views of the girl until now anyways.

And it's interesting to see Paz is actually quite tough - willing to see a potential positive outcome in a situation, and do the hard work to get there rather than to just give up or wish for it. This is something Kat needs, quite badly. Right now she's failing around, angry, lashing out, without seeing the possible positive outcome.

I think what Tom is doing is to show that however bleak things look, while you may never fix them completely, you can improve them to where you feel better, and those affected by the situation feel better too. Sometimes that's all you really need.

And yes, whoever said Annie has a better understanding of this...I agree. Sometimes you really have to know a bad situation before you can know how you can pull some good out of it. I think she'll be able to take what Paz just did to Kat, and expand on it. She's used to being in un-ideal situations, and making them work for her. Kat most definitely is not.

Another person who may be really good for Kat might be Anja. She strikes me as a fairly gentle soul herself, and probably doesn't have any illusions as to how science is sometimes garnered at the expense of others.

I was thinking along a similar line.

Annie has Jones as a mentor (for better or worse).

Paz seems to have some sort of mentor, at least an interaction with Court people doing biology experiments.

Kat has... who? She's off in some corner of the Court, hammering away at making a robot, with no adult assistance, much less guidance.

Her mom might be good for her, but then again, it's her mom, and we know how uncool parents are. And note how much parental love Anja has shown to Kat since Chapter 25

Just musing...

Oh you.

Well...he'll grow up to be a pigeon, anyway. Let's not overreach.