[414] You are a good friend to her

Nah, it's okay.

He GLOWS?? Jeez. (are those his eyes doing the glowing?)

I never realized he had such a, well, paternal interest in Annie. It's cute. : )

Edit: Or maybe it's more big-brotherly. Even cuter!

"Ren-ar-deeen"

*snerk*

I'm not quite sure about his motives yet. While pretty much everything suggests that he genuinely cares about Annie, remember it's a body-snatching demon we're talking about. He might think that knowing some juicy details about her social life could give him some leverage to help him out of his rather weak position.

Playing devil's advocate here and saying that the stuffed animal there is trying to make Kat feel bad.

We've seen Annie copying off of Kat's paper. What's the chance Kat knows how well Annie's studies are going?

Aside from a few acquaintances - George, Smitty, Mort if he could count - she really doesn't have any other true friends.

There's been no indication that anyone gives her trouble, but it's likely, given the taunting she received earlier.

And so far, there's been no signs that she has her eyes on any boys.

He wants to make Kat feel bad for not knowing the answer to any of his questions. For what reasons, I'm not sure yet. But you must admit, it's an odd thing. I don't think there's anything protective about his questions at all. I think it's sketchy.

Reyn: *bombards with questions*
Kat: What wha wah?! I dont know!!!
Reyn: Oh, ok, but just so you know, if there are any boys, i'd like to speak "1 on 1" with them, if you catch my drift.

*A few chapters down the road*
Reyn:soooo, taking my little girl to prom?
Boy: Yes sir.....*holy crap its a talking wolf*
Reyn: I want her home by 11 you hear me?
Boy: Yes sir.....
Reyn: Have you ever killed a man with your bare hands before?
Boy: *Gulp*
*silence*
Boy: Sir, theres no need to chew on that chicken bone, your menacing enough already....
Reyn: Who said this was a chicken bone?
Boy:

You guys are all so suspicious. >=O
I think he's just genuinely concerned. =D

Hmm...I got it! While Rey is in big form he is paternal, but in toybox form he's a cocky little creature worthy of being despised with a passion and susceptible to creepy, snide remarks =D

Personally I think he's being paternal, because if he has an interest in Annie that would be creepy

I admit I'm guilty of being new here but I suspect the discussion of what Reynardine is in regards to Annie is not uncommon.

In case there was any doubt, I'm new to this forum (though I've followed Gunnerkrigg Court for a while now), so I hope I'm not tearing a hole in the universe by posting here first and not declaring myself anywhere else. I didn't see a forum topic to do that in, but it's quite possible I'm blind.

Anyways,
the only boy I could ever possibly see Annie "having her eye one" is fuzzy and white and fits in her messenger bag. He's also a demon.

I like Reynardine, I can't help it, and I was not creeped out by the questions he posed to Kat, but saw them as genuinely concerned.

I may be off my rocker.

Man, I so want to speculate on what is up with Rey, but Tom's story has so far proven too subtle and intricate to try to predict much of anything and get any sort of confirmation. After Annie returns, this conversation may not even be mentioned again for a few chapters; like the "My poor Surma" line, we keep getting little bits and pieces and hints of clues scattered here and there.

But I can't stop my mind whirling. So, possibilities?

Possession by Surma's spirit?
Doubtful. The different behavior in his wolf form has been consistent, if not so noticeable before. He's acted more like an ancient, (sometimes) evil, demon than an ethereal mediator. I can't see Surma calling Coyote a "jackass". It could be a one time thing, but i think there would need to be some specific attribute about this room, or something therein, that hasn't been revealed yet to make that a possibility here when it hasn't been in evidence elsewhere. I suspect when the lights go up whatever, if anything, is reveled will not be related to this, but will move the story away from this topic. This won't come up again for a while. I think.

Possession by or reporting to Anthony?
Don't think so. At the end of 'Fangs', Annie's narration says she doesn't hear from her dad for two years. Even using Rey as a circumspect spy I think would count as 'hearing from' him, if you're open to some loose interpretation- and I am.

*EDIT*-- I'm reconsidering these. The questions in the last panel sound too much like some one who hasn't been around to know anything that's been happening. I'm back to just lost and confused.

Why all chivalrous and protective of Annie?
Could be the un-clarified Surma connection, like Eglamore. I have my doubts about Eg.'s motives on that front as well. Could be another unintended effect of possessing an inanimate object owned by some one else. Combination of the two?
Could be he has started to respect her. Could be attraction. Could be subtle manipulation to find a way out of his predicament. I'm really not so sure about that last.
I just can't bring myself to believe Tom would be that tricky about it. Plus, remember Rey thought he had the perfect disguise to let the others believe he was gone. Then he was caught sabotaging the science experiments. Annie wasn't even involved, it was her friend he was trying to help. Why try the curry-favor, gain-their-trust, then betray tactic of escape, when it would unnecessarily jeopardize the lay-low tactic he thought was safest? He wasn't even trying to let them know he was helping.
I suspect that Rey is not as evil as some would like to believe of a body-snatching demon. There are significant differences in sociology, physiology, and general world view between the Court and Wood denizens. A form of life that is fundamentally different may be judged evil for not conforming to your standards of moral conduct while behaving in the only manner that it is capable of. There is still a lot of back story there we do not know.

Split personality?
Well, I wouldn't bet on so easy an answer. My best guess is the form he assumes inadvertently affects his mentality. As a toy, immature; as a wolf, noble. I wouldn't even bet on weather he's aware of it, or if it will even prove to be significant beyond an interesting side effect of the possession. It should be mentioned that his mannerism when possessing Sivo was also more dignified, like the wolf.

Like I said- whirling mind.

...sigh, I was waiting for a good scream... and it was me the one who almost screamed...

well, anyway, Annie and Reys relationship is a weird one indeed. For most of the time Annie goes all motherly around him [send him to naughty zone, be quiet, do as I teached you]... and this happen during toy form

In full wolf form Rey behaves kinda of fatherly towardas her... protecting her (all the way back from Fangs of Summertime).

For some reason I don't see this going to a romantic route... all the beauty and the beast thing doesn't feel GC to me (not to this point anyway) and romance is not the main interest of the plot....

I get the feeling tha he owes Surma... what I don't know... but I get the feeling

I think he was getting desperate to escape from Mr. Eglamore because he might have killed Rey because he was too dangerous and had shown he could escape, but now he feels bad for what he tried to do because Annie is Surma's duaghter and I'm guessing he was friends with her. Speaking of which, those two people on this page (http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=341) might have really been Rey, as he can go into bodies, but I have no good reason to say that. But maybe my crackpot theories could turn out to be right.

Monday's comic will have the lights turned on and the characters will be too distracted by what they find to continue this discussion much further.

Isn't it a bit early for the spirit of Surma to reappear if that happens at all?

I personally had been thinking until now that because of the hints of a not-quite-platonic relationship between Reynardine and Surma, Reynardine probably had developed a surrogate-fatherly feeling towards Annie over time. When he tried to capture her body in chapter three, he was desperate and probably a little out of his mind from the harsh imprisonment, and not knowing Annie yet he might have had good reason not to expect kindness from her. We don't know how Surma and Reynardine's relationship ended, and he didn't know what Annie might have been told about him; perhaps Surma spurned or otherwise betrayed him, whether the relationship was platonic or not. Reynardine probably believed that no human in the court would befriend him if they knew about his as-yet-unrevealed crime. Possibly Annie has restored Reynardine's faith in humanity. Certainly I think Reynardine's thoughts and feelings regarding Annie are drastically different now than they were in Chapter 3.

But yeah, getting back to my point, there's always a romantic tension between a mother's old boyfriend and her daughter; that doesn't mean the relationship isn't primarily paternal. I considered it silly to think Tom might go anywhere with it in this case, since developing a much older character into a romantic interest without coming off as insufferably creepy usually requires that the pair meet when the younger person is fully matured, or at least that they experience a prolonged separation while the younger character becomes 'all grown up'. However...

... reading this page, I realized that even though they would have had their heyday 15-20 years ago, that wouldn't make much of a dent in the fact that Reynardine was also much, much older than Surma back when she and he were together. (Platonically, paternally, or otherwise.) And I don't think most of us have been thinking of that relationship as creepy. It makes knowing the nature of Surma and Reynardine's relationship all the more important, and raises the question of how old they were when they met.

But I can now imagine Tom 'going there' with Annie & Reynardine. All he'd have to do to make it work is show that when Reynardine is seriously interested in a female, he brings himself down to her level: imagine Reynardine, through shapeshifting or other means, semi-permanently taking on the appearance of a teenaged boy. It happened in Sluggy Freelance, and it can happen here. The only other real obstacle is whether or not Tom sees it as family-unfriendly, and whether or not he cares.