[527]Mort?

Wow.Looks like Annie's come back to her senses....and the weight of guilt over the terrible words she uttered shall haunt her until she finds Mort again.I wonder how she'll find him.

Looks like Mort's powers are hitting Annie full force.





:/

Sad Annie. Poor Mort deserves better.

A thought inspired by the recent remarks that Annie often seems Mary Sue-ish (until the last couple of pages where she jumped to the wrong conclusions about Mort's gift and hurt his feelings).

I think that our impressions of Annie have been shaped by the opening chapters, where she's usually depicted as extremely calm and capable, whether it's needing to help a shadow across a bridge without crossing it herself, meeting the Minotaur, or teaching a ghost how to haunt the school properly. So much so, indeed, that we think of that as the norm, though the story does seem to be increasingly moving away from that (in this chapter alone, not only do we see Annie making that terrible slip-up with Mort, but she also almost drops the Blinker Stone whenever she summons it back).

This is based on earlier comments of mine, but: Annie grew up at Good Hope Hospital where the etheric beings whom she knew were the Guides (who seem to have been friendly to her) and a few confused ghosts like Martin, in situations where, if there was trouble (as in Martin's case) her own etheric abilities could easily handle it. That could lead her to two conclusions: first, that the etheric world was a friendly place, and second, that she could solve any problem she ran into on her own. Hence her approach to the various situations she ran into after just arriving at the Court. And she was fortunate that Shadow2, Basil, and Mort were also friendly.

But she was easily duped by Reynardine in his Rogat Orjak body (granted, I think most of us would have made a similar mistake; he's that cunning), and only Eglamore's timely intervention saved her from being possessed. Her ingenious solution to Shadow2's problem turned out to be a disaster, for both Robot and (almost) the Court (not to mention that Shadow2 decided to move back into the Court, making Annie's act in the first chapter futile). Annie had to be rescued by others from Jeanne and Ysengrin, as well. So far, she hasn't fared well against hostile etheric beings.

Clearly these developments must have come as a shock to her, and I think this could be one reason why the opening chapters depict her as they do. We are led to have the same opinion of Annie as she (subconsciously, I assume) holds of herself, that she's thoroughly capable and can deal with anything strange that comes up. Thus, when things start to go wrong (beginning with her encounter with Reynardine), we can share her shocked astonishment at these developments.

she still had the right to be angry. If somebody laid claim to *you* (even if they didn't know they had) you'd be angry. And she is, what 12/13? Hormones make angry Annie angry.

Todd's mention of Good Hope reminded me of what an RL friend pointed out: Annie's been living with death for forever. She's met guides, ghosts and then her own mother passed on. She needs to draw a line between the living and the dead. The dead, presumably, will eventually move on. Mort *is* a ghost. "Just" was harsh, but when real people are hurt and angry say things like that. I love the writing of GC, it's one of the best written stories around.

Now, let's all speculate why Mort knows Mutt, and where Mort came from and how he came to be in the Court.

The conclusion was justified - the confidence in it was not.

And if someone's been asked to deliver something to you, them delivering it the next time they see you is hardly coincidental no matter when that might be.

A hard time imagining hormonal Annie? Just go back a couple days.

Apparently it translates to "Sweet and Fitting". Wikipedia is great. Didn't find anything about a poem titled "Mort" though.

The full translation of that line is, "How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country" and was originally from a work by a Greek poet Horace (same guy who coined the phrase "carpe diem" as well as many other commonly used phrases).

Kat's strategy to withdraw and let Mort brood and Annie hurt, instead of making every effort to deliver a speedy apology, is a bit odd as well. Or maybe this is just the writer saying "this won't be resolved that easily kthxbye".

Edit: The Pogues' version of "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" is one of my favouritest songs.

Horace is Roman. He wrote in Latin. Carpe diem, and dulce et decorum est are Latin phrases, not Greek Just so you know



Angry people jump to conclusions and act irrationally. Just because we've rarely seen Annie be emotional doesn't make her emotionless. In fact, relatively early on, Chapter 6, we see her break down because she hasn't yet had the chance to grieve for her mother and her dad's b*ggered off god knows where. I miss my mummy.

I might have said this before, but I *hope* that Mort isn't the young man whom Reynardine possessed. The evidence we had in Chapter Twenty suggests that it happened when Surma was in her late teens or thereabouts (at least), so the young man would probably have been the same age - and if he's Mort, that makes Mort's crush on Annie (who's 13 at most) kind of creepy.

True - though I didn't think that her anger was prompted by chemistry or biology - just a mistaken interpretation of the situation (and all the worse in that it involved someone whom she saw as a friend).

Hoo boy. This is the last time I ever let my computer get broken ever again. I don't see the comic for a week and come back joyfully to learn that one of my favorite characters in the story may be gone forever.

It looks like people's earlier predictions of Mort not knowing the stones symbolic nature were right. It didn't seem like he knew from the look on his face on page 526. Now I am really curious about Mortimer's relationship with the rest of the pychopomps. And for that matter why his job is to haunt the court for his own amusement. I guess the staff just want to keep the students on their toes.

Also, when Muut went to Annie after she fell off the bridge, he called Mort "new and inexperienced," implying that he has not been a ghost for that long. If he were the young man Reynardine possessed, that would mean that he had been dead for more than 13 years, which is not what I would think of as "new and inexperienced." Tom has also said that Mort was not a student at the Court when he was alive. The evidence all points towards Mort and the young man being different people.