[278] Story Discussion - The Point

Strange...I agree with Xux. It's as if James, Anja, and Don don't know what the heck those birds are about at all.

And Ysengrin seems a little cold, considering he's talking about Annie's "death" right in front of her. Although he might not have known it was her.

New and surprising relations about the Tic-Toc Birds all around.

I wonder how much of the Tic-Toc's posthumous actions (in sending out all those mechanical extensions of itself, such as the miniature satellite dish) were due to Annie cutting it open. If her action really was responsible for that, the forest-folk now have another grievance with her. (I'll have to reread Chapter Eight to see if the bird's "death" had anything to do with the Tic-Tocs saving Annie's life. If the answer is yes, then that increases her responsibility for these troubles.)

In fact, it seems as if ultimately Annie's sending Robot across the bridge with Shadow2 was the cause of all these troubles: it leads to Shadow2's "evil cousin" possessing Robot and making him return to the school only to get vaporized by the electric lights, the fight between Eglamore and the possessed Robot resulted in Annie getting knocked off the bridge, which led in turn to the Tic-Toc infection.... Something tells me that when the full story gets out about how all of this began, Annie might be in for more than just another week of detention.

I don't think anyone in the know would be willing to tell Ysengrin about that. It would be bad for the Court as well.

Man, this page was quite a surprise. Ysengrin's greivance turned out to be nothing I expected. I'm really liking this chapter so far.

What...the...****? It's a good thing Kat isn't here. Lord knows what sort of ideas she'd be getting, relating to those birds.

If it had been left alone long enough, I wonder what the bird would have become. Tic-Toc factory? An extension of the Court? Maybe that's how it was built; the life cycle of a Tic-Toc ends with it becoming part of the school. Maybe there's a little assembly line churning out robot birds somewhere in the bowels of the school.

One could equally argue that the trouble could have been avoided if Annie had, after learning about Shadow2's plight, persuaded him to stop hiding from everyone else, and approached the teachers a second time to inform them about the situation. (The reason why they didn't help her out was because Shadow2 always hid and they apparently thought that it was just her imagination.) Though there wouldn't have been as much of a story if she'd done that.

Yes! I thought it was avaguely familiar, though that was to do with the abundance of life force because Death is sacked. Not actual creeping technology (thought that is the general idea of the virulent shopping malls). I did ask Tom in the Questions thread a while ago if he'd read Pratchett, but he hasn't. Probably a good thing. (So there can be no accusations of plagerism.)