[1081] Please be calm!

A: "Coyote's Funny Theory."

Y: "You think you're better than me!"

A: "Wait, what?"

I get the feeling that since Y left during the story, Annie's part in this conversation isn't really all that important. Could be anyone there, Y's been down this road before.

Coyote is no liar, Carver. Therein lies the danger.

Wait, how did Annie do this wrong? She was just downplaying what Coyote said to try making him more comfortable with it, to make it seem less important. I really think old Ys is going a little crazy over something that had no malicious intent - rather the opposite actually. Granted, Annie's attempt obviously didn't work, but it'd have been pretty smooth if Ys hadn't been as batshit insane as he is. (He's still the most lovable grumpy, fuzzy wolf-tree ever though).

Why would she call Court for help?
Both logic and simple fear should tell her to seek help from Coyote.
Though given her usual attitude (and the time spent with Ysengrin), she'll likely try to handle it herself.

Have you seen another lovable grumpy, fuzzy wolf-tree? Please tell me, i wish to meet him/her

Given that this is Annie attempting to Jones up our friend Ys, I think that was fairly successful. We know how deeply Ys resents the humans and we know he is insecure about his relative lack of power (hence the 'teeth baring' at the last Forest-Court meeting). Of course, mortal danger is not really a good trade off for that simple info, but it is info nonetheless.

Nooooo, not the tree

It's possible to downplay something but you have to do it with actual reasons. The way she did it just came off as laughing at it. Ys is over-reacting, but I can see how he'd feel a little hurt even if he was perfectly sane. It's important to him, he's bared a bit of his soul to her, and it might feel like she's laughing at his concerns.

As far as his reading of her intent goes: Not everyone heavily weights intent in their judgements. I don't. When I was younger my mother always excused my father's conduct with the excuse that he had a good heart deep-down. But that just seemed to keep her unhappy forever. If you pre-commit to use a minimum level of retaliation of tit for tat, coupled with a forgiveness strategy to reduce the noise level, and largely disregard guesses at the other person's intent, then my experience is that you can get along more easily with people.

For some of us the answer to being hurt is, "I don't care if you meant it. Don't do it again." And if you're a little unstable, and the forgiveness level you've selected is wrong for whatever reason... maybe you think the issue is particularly critical, or you have low self-esteem or something (which seems to fit Ys)... then I can see how it might lead to this sort of explosion.

They've attacked! Retaliate!

On the flip side, Y is always putting down humans, which must hurt Annie as she's mostly human. Pointing out that he chose a human-ish body is understandable, considering he just told her that most of her ancestry should be crawling on their knees before him and Coyote. She's still a teenager...expecting her to be as neutral and perfect in her "counseling" as a trained therapist seems a bit unreasonable. Personally, as much as I love GC, I'm starting to cringe every single time Annie starts feeling good/safe/like she has a home/can relax in any way...it's like the warning sign that something is guaranteed to happen to rip that away from her. It's like, "Oh, you're starting to feel comfortable, Annie? Well, your father still can barely stand interacting with you (don't you remember the death glare he gave you in the hospital at your mother's bed? Of course you do!), the Court isn't your home and seems complicit in the constant tracking of children, and occasional murder of either a student or her lover, you killed your mother just by being alive, your best friend isn't sure she wants to deal with your issues, your mother was a lying manipulator, a ghost wants to kill you, Coyote is going to give you a "gift" along with an armband that will amputate your arm if you tell anyone about it, you're going into a coma because of something your father is doing to you, and now the only place you started to feel like you can relax and cuddle with your favorite wolf friend is about to turn where your favorite wolf friend is going to go insane, blame you, and probably try to kill you, probably because Coyote either considers this medium training, he's jealous over the bond you have with Y, or he just likes seeing people jump when he wrecks their relationships. It's starting to just feel relentless. I'm just waiting for Kat to find out Annie used to copy her homework and have that blow up in her face, too. Most teenagers I know would have become suicidal long before this.

Huh. Yeah her life is pretty intense, isn't it?

Thanks for breaking it down for me.

This is what happens when you bend the evidence to fit your preconceptions instead of the other way around. He heard exactly what he expected to hear from her. Hopefully she can get through to him before he smooshes her.

The question is, will this just make Annie like him more?

For instance a speech synthesizer could declare, "I don't exist"?

Well then, how about a hallucination? Could that declare that it didn't exist?