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Post by q3 on Dec 24, 2010 16:09:26 GMT
From hence forth, Jones' real name shall be known as Strabismus. And forget all this talk of gods, or of golems; I'm thinking she's really a beholder.
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Post by bookworm on Dec 24, 2010 16:09:35 GMT
Did anyone else immediately think of those giant eyeballs in spaceships from The Eleventh Hour, in Doctor Who? >_> For some reason I'm imagining Jones as just a huge gigantic floating eyeball in ether-vision. Yes, exactly ;D
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Post by aaroncampbell on Dec 24, 2010 16:28:20 GMT
There's too much new information for me to process in today's comic and discussion (great ideas on the Egyptian pantheon, all!), so I'm just going to wait until Monday to catch up and see what the new page brings.
Merry Christmas, everyone!!!
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Post by atteSmythe on Dec 24, 2010 16:35:38 GMT
Okay, read some more, it meshes *frighteningly* well. Still doesn't explain weighing several hundred pounds, but otherwise, Sekhmet/HetHert was a dual Egyptian goddess with "two different aspects; one protective and healing, the other destructive and retaliating. She was said to have an awesome appeareance, her weapons being arrows 'with which she pierces hearts'" She was known as the Eye of Ra due to her very close association with the chief god. Oh my goodness... Jones is Steadman!
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niche
New Member
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Post by niche on Dec 24, 2010 16:50:38 GMT
What is Jones doing in panel 3? did she twiddle her fingers to appear or is she ready to strike out? I think she's just pushing her way out of the underbrush. If not pushing away underbrush, I think with the way her hand is positioned(as if it were on a shoulder) and her sudden appearance might have been from using Parley's teleportation with Andrew's, uh, organization. Since Parley apparently got the hang of it, and with Andrew can teleport objects (?) with accuracy, I think that together they'd be able to get Jones into the forest. You know, returning Wandering Eye to where she should be. Or it's underbrush. Yeah.
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Post by johnwwells on Dec 24, 2010 17:18:49 GMT
This Egyptian spec is putting my jump to "one of Graeae" to shame. Darn it. That said, the Graeae shared one eye and one tooth... and Coyote can provide both.
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percival
Full Member
there's a storm a-brewin'
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Post by percival on Dec 24, 2010 17:27:40 GMT
You know, Jones's eyes do look kind of Egyptian-like to me (now).
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Post by fronzel on Dec 24, 2010 17:30:45 GMT
It's more or less already been said but; Coyote has apparently spoken figuratively before ("fire-head girl") when he's actually speaking literally. Hence "wandering eye" gives us something to think about. I think she's just pushing her way out of the underbrush. If not pushing away underbrush, I think with the way her hand is positioned(as if it were on a shoulder) and her sudden appearance might have been from using Parley's teleportation with Andrew's, uh, organization. Since Parley apparently got the hang of it, and with Andrew can teleport objects (?) with accuracy, I think that together they'd be able to get Jones into the forest. You know, returning Wandering Eye to where she should be. If Jones did use Parely and Andrew to teleport, I think Andrew's imposition of order would rather be sending Jones to Annie, whom she wishes to retrieve, rather than sending her to the forest because she "belongs there".
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Dec 24, 2010 17:36:01 GMT
There are temples dedicated to Mut still standing in modern-day Egypt and Sudan, reflecting the widespread worship of her, but the center of her cult became the temple in Karnak. That temple had the statue that was regarded as an embodiment of her real ka. The Muut / Mut thing still seems too weird to be true, but considering Mut appears to have actually, canonically, *been* a stone golem, and Sekhmet, one of the goddesses Mut got mixed up with, was a warrior woman who got sick of the egyptian pantheon and lit out of there for a nice long time, it sounds increasingly plausible as a backstory for Jones, with of course the huge glaring exception that there was someone named Jones we never saw in the "Ties" chapter, who was implied to be a young teen. Anyone know if Tom has ever flatly stated that they were the same person? It sounds like Jones I could have died somehow, and ageless wandering Egyptian Goddess Golem could have stepped in and taken her place as Jones II- or even something more complicated than that. Ancient Egyptian gods tended to all have shapeshifting powers, after all, and Sekhmet is explicitly stated to have been a lioness for a time. It's been said in an old "Questions to Tom" thread that Jones was not taught at the Court. I think that throws into doubt the idea that Jones was a teen back when Surma was a student. She may have been in the same role she has now. See the Jones: The Facts thread for more facts about Jones, and more reasons I think she's Galatea or some version thereof. Now, this may be confusing so hang on with both hands. The association of Sekhmet to the eye is through her association/blending with the goddess Wadjet. Short version: Sekhmet and Menhit were blended into Mut then into Mut/Hathor/Isis which later compacted into Isis. But even disregarding all that, Hathor is also depicted as bearing the solar disk. The personality of Sekhmet is polar opposite to what we've seen from Jones. Hathor is just a better fit than Sekhmet (though she may be in there somewhere, we haven't seen Jones get mad yet).
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Post by wanderer on Dec 24, 2010 17:43:20 GMT
Two words, and people are already grabbing on to the Egyptian theory. I think we still lack sufficient information to make assumptions like that.
Also, a point of note: when Annie asked Reynardine what Jones was, he replied "You'd have to ask her. I don't think even Coyote could answer that."
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Post by 0o0f on Dec 24, 2010 17:51:11 GMT
I almost forgot that it's friday today (merry christmas!).
"Is that the latest name you've stolen, Wandering Eye?" Now I'm wondering if stealing names is something she does often.
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niche
New Member
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Post by niche on Dec 24, 2010 17:53:34 GMT
If Jones did use Parely and Andrew to teleport, I think Andrew's imposition of order would rather be sending Jones to Annie, whom she wishes to retrieve, rather than sending her to the forest because she "belongs there". That makes more sense for why she appeared, then. I took Wandering Eye to be something like an eye related to Coyote, so Jones would 'returning' to him; in hindsight, this has a few problems with it.
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Post by 0o0f on Dec 24, 2010 18:00:10 GMT
I took Wandering Eye to be something like an eye related to Coyote, so Jones would 'returning' to him; in hindsight, this has a few problems with it. Sounds like it would be awkward...
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Post by strainofthought on Dec 24, 2010 19:27:45 GMT
The Muut / Mut thing still seems too weird to be true, but considering Mut appears to have actually, canonically, *been* a stone golem, and Sekhmet, one of the goddesses Mut got mixed up with, was a warrior woman who got sick of the egyptian pantheon and lit out of there for a nice long time, it sounds increasingly plausible as a backstory for Jones, with of course the huge glaring exception that there was someone named Jones we never saw in the "Ties" chapter, who was implied to be a young teen. Anyone know if Tom has ever flatly stated that they were the same person? It sounds like Jones I could have died somehow, and ageless wandering Egyptian Goddess Golem could have stepped in and taken her place as Jones II- or even something more complicated than that. Ancient Egyptian gods tended to all have shapeshifting powers, after all, and Sekhmet is explicitly stated to have been a lioness for a time. It's been said in an old "Questions to Tom" thread that Jones was not taught at the Court. I think that throws into doubt the idea that Jones was a teen back when Surma was a student. She may have been in the same role she has now. See the Jones: The Facts thread for more facts about Jones, and more reasons I think she's Galatea or some version thereof. Now, this may be confusing so hang on with both hands. The association of Sekhmet to the eye is through her association/blending with the goddess Wadjet. Short version: Sekhmet and Menhit were blended into Mut then into Mut/Hathor/Isis which later compacted into Isis. But even disregarding all that, Hathor is also depicted as bearing the solar disk. The personality of Sekhmet is polar opposite to what we've seen from Jones. Hathor is just a better fit than Sekhmet (though she may be in there somewhere, we haven't seen Jones get mad yet). In my first post in this thread I acknowledged the tremendous personality gap between Sekhmet and Jones, but didn't go into why I thought it wasn't a deal breaker. From what I'm reading, Sekhmet and Hathor were explicitly dual goddesses, with several myths revolving around events that caused one to transform into the other aspect. Like I said before, Sekhmet the goddess of war and fiery rage and Hathor the goddess of fertility and joy, combined together come off as Bi-polar. In two of the stories I've found already, some other god has to trick Sekhmet into calming down and turning back into Hathor to get what they want, once by getting her extremely drunk and another time by dunking her in the Nile. What's intriguing about this to me is that Jones' stoicism seems like it might be a halfway point between the two states; if Sekhmet-Hathor was somehow "cured" of her flip-flopping, and the two personalities were merged into one, mightn't Jones' apparent emotionlessness be a reasonable end result? Or, seeing as how one of the stories is about how Sekhmet nearly wiped out humanity in a fit of rage, maybe she finally became appalled at her own actions and decided to adopt Vulcan-like total emotional control?
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Post by q3 on Dec 24, 2010 19:52:26 GMT
Jones' line should have been, "Come with me if you want to live." But it's interesting to hear Coyote accusing her of stealing names, when he's previously been so cavalier about stealing bodies.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Dec 24, 2010 20:57:36 GMT
It's been said in an old "Questions to Tom" thread that Jones was not taught at the Court. I think that throws into doubt the idea that Jones was a teen back when Surma was a student. She may have been in the same role she has now. See the Jones: The Facts thread for more facts about Jones, and more reasons I think she's Galatea or some version thereof. Now, this may be confusing so hang on with both hands. The association of Sekhmet to the eye is through her association/blending with the goddess Wadjet. Short version: Sekhmet and Menhit were blended into Mut then into Mut/Hathor/Isis which later compacted into Isis. But even disregarding all that, Hathor is also depicted as bearing the solar disk. The personality of Sekhmet is polar opposite to what we've seen from Jones. Hathor is just a better fit than Sekhmet (though she may be in there somewhere, we haven't seen Jones get mad yet). In my first post in this thread I acknowledged the tremendous personality gap between Sekhmet and Jones, but didn't go into why I thought it wasn't a deal breaker. From what I'm reading, Sekhmet and Hathor were explicitly dual goddesses, with several myths revolving around events that caused one to transform into the other aspect. Like I said before, Sekhmet the goddess of war and fiery rage and Hathor the goddess of fertility and joy, combined together come off as Bi-polar. In two of the stories I've found already, some other god has to trick Sekhmet into calming down and turning back into Hathor to get what they want, once by getting her extremely drunk and another time by dunking her in the Nile. What's intriguing about this to me is that Jones' stoicism seems like it might be a halfway point between the two states; if Sekhmet-Hathor was somehow "cured" of her flip-flopping, and the two personalities were merged into one, mightn't Jones' apparent emotionlessness be a reasonable end result? Or, seeing as how one of the stories is about how Sekhmet nearly wiped out humanity in a fit of rage, maybe she finally became appalled at her own actions and decided to adopt Vulcan-like total emotional control? I think we're both saying the same thing in different words! I agree that the character Jones might be a representation of a single being who is represented in myth in several different aspects over many centuries. What I'm trying to add is that the common thread that got us to Sekhmet goes a lot farther than a dualism between her and Hathor. The eye goes all the way back to Wadjet and all the way to Isis, and through the Hathor branch and Isis to Venus/Aphrodite and later incarnations.* I'd prefer to point to Hathor because of Jones' personality as we've seen it but that's not the same thing as saying not Sekhmet. Is all part of the same tree. *Edit: Not saying that Venus/Aphrodite is represented with the eye as with the previous series of goddesses, just that there is a link between them and the Egyptian ones who have the eye.
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Pig_catapult
Full Member
Keeper of the Devilkitty
Posts: 171
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Post by Pig_catapult on Dec 24, 2010 22:20:16 GMT
Re: All the confusion with names and which Egyptian goddess(es) were whom where: Perhaps that's the kind of thing Coyote's talking about by "stealing names". Hathor, Sekhmet, Mut. . . and that looks like it's just the tip of the iceberg.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Dec 24, 2010 23:02:11 GMT
Re: All the confusion with names and which Egyptian goddess(es) were whom where: Perhaps that's the kind of thing Coyote's talking about by "stealing names". Hathor, Sekhmet, Mut. . . and that looks like it's just the tip of the iceberg. Agreed. It's possible that our Jones was the originator of one or more of those and assumed/stole the others where useful as the centuries passed. I will also Wildly Speculate that after the Christian era really got started and her cult(s) died out she would've had to "steal" much more mundane names. It doesn't get more mundane than "just Jones." I suspect she would usually choose roles to play that put her close to the center of interesting places, much like the one she has now.
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Post by theogrin on Dec 25, 2010 0:29:08 GMT
Let's see what we know already. - Jones is inscrutable, or at least shows no emotion beyond a poker face.
- Jones is not a robot, or at least claims not to be one.
- Jones is extremely strong when she exerts herself, to the degree that she can smash through walls.
- Jones has the ability to bend space to her whim, or at least appear to do so, as if she can manipulate gravity by herself. (Dear readers: this is still a work of fiction.) To add to this, she did not strike first: she merely reacted to Eglamore's attack.
- Jones rarely provides more information to others than they need - when such information is provided (say, with the whole 'we track them via the food' bit), it's something the other participant should already know, or can find out just by asking.
- Jones can cross the bridge between the Court and the Woods without qualm, in such a manner that she can take Coyote by surprise.
- Ysengrin has not reacted poorly to Jones - rather, he seems aloof in today's comic.
- Coyote called Jones 'Wandering Eye', and claimed that she stole her current name, as though she were around for far longer than Jones' tenure at the Court.
A wandering eye, ever-watchful, which views events in a detached state, but nonetheless exerts a sort of pull on them... to me, this seems to lead to the conclusion that Jones might very well be the avatar of the moon. (It's admittedly fairly wild speculation, but...!) Of course, this is tempered by the fact that Coyote manipulated an image of the moon... but that might have been one more trick of his. After all, he never said that Antimony held the moon.
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Post by ninchilla on Dec 25, 2010 2:49:40 GMT
I immediately made a mental connection with Renard, a wandering soul who can posess anything with eyes...
I guess we'll see (or more likely, not).
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Post by TBeholder on Dec 25, 2010 4:31:39 GMT
Suddenly even the presence of laser cows began to make some freakish sense. So... Jones is one of Coyote's lost eyeballs? Well I.. I guess that would explain why he's so happy to see her.. ;D It looks like Jones noticed Coyote but he didn't see her, too distracted with annie? Or pretends there's nothing special while the Court's humans are present. Also, she casually busted 'Grin's little game. The "interesting" part is that she sort of corrects Coyote but doesn't address him in any way. "I'm here for the girl" sounds a bit abrupt doesn't it? Presumably Annie won't actually want to go back yet, and would have rather had a quiet private chat with Coyote. Isn't she always like this? But i wouldn't really expect Annie to contradict her. For some reason I'm imagining Jones as just a huge gigantic floating eyeball in ether-vision. Hello. P.S.: There's already existing thread about Jones
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Dec 25, 2010 5:37:45 GMT
Welcome to the forums, Theogrin and Ninchilla! I immediately made a mental connection with Renard, a wandering soul who can posess anything with eyes... I guess we'll see (or more likely, not). The eyes are the windows to the soul, as they say. Hopefully Antimony will finally look at Jones with her super etheric vision powers and we'll see something conclusive, or just ask. Before that we may manage to get one last huzzah out of the Jones thread. Shall we resurrect it then? to me, this seems to lead to the conclusion that Jones might very well be the avatar of the moon. The same confusion/crossing of myths takes place between the sun and moon references but if I recall right most of the lunar deities were male like Thoth. Some of the others were sons of the aforementioned goddesses, though, at least in some versions of the twisty Egyptian pantheon.
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Post by warrl on Dec 25, 2010 8:55:47 GMT
Er, let me know if this is off topic but, was it ever speculated that Coyote gave Surma this backfiring gift of passing off her strength/powers/gifts to her daughter? It has been repeatedly speculated even though there are a couple rather huge plot-holes in it. (On the other hand, Coyote giving this flawed gift to Surma's great n-grandmother, and it being passed down, would not have those same plot-holes. Or it could be a result of a Court experiment of similar vintage. Or something else entirely.) I thought of Ra's eye when I read this page, but then also recalled Odin sacrificing one of his eyes in return for a drink from Mimir's well. Nothing is mentioned of what happened to the eye afterwards, or if it did any wandering - but if Jones is linked to Odin, that could give a new perspective to Brinnie being mistaken for a long time by the readers for a younger version of Jones.... Actually, Odin's eye is a recurring villain and distraction... What's interesting is that Sekmet isn't described as being flatly unemotional, but rather bi-polar: veering back and forth between two opposite mental states of rage, leading Ra's forces on the field of battle, and tenderness, healing the sick and protecting the weak. So Sekmet got romantically involved with a much younger deity, Zoloft? ;D
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Post by Stately Buff-Cookie on Dec 26, 2010 2:43:07 GMT
Jones as an Egyptian deity is certainly a compelling theory. Reading over all these deities associated with the Eye of Ra (the wandering eye) gets a long series of, "Well this deity got rolled into this one. Which got rolled into this one. Which all shared the eye trait because they keep getting rolled together into one super deity."
Depending on how many liberties Tom has taken, the continual lines of melding these deities together could certainly be explained as Jones taking on new identities as time goes on. Always marked by her one true trait as The Wandering Eye.
Who knows, though. Tom is an expert at making you think something is something else. Except he's so insanely good at it he doesn't even need to do fake outs. You do it to yourself. Entirely to yourself. This forum doesn't have a good record of guessing the plot.. even with all the clues before it.
Though I will say that her being coyote's eye doesn't seem likely given how he addressed her. He's shown to be ENTIRELY LITERAL with what we thought were just pet names. You'd think he'd reference her as being his eye. Not just any wandering eye.
[EDIT: that said, jones seems to be deliberately not looking coyote eye to eye]
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Post by warrl on Dec 26, 2010 5:43:52 GMT
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Post by Ulysses on Dec 26, 2010 11:02:38 GMT
But it's interesting to hear Coyote accusing her of stealing names, when he's previously been so cavalier about stealing bodies. I don't think he's accusing her of anything, he's just interested. I bet he doesn't have any more problem with Jones stealing names than he does with Reynardine stealing bodies. Perhaps Jones was originally something similar to Renard, having the ability to move between bodies, but rather than overwhelming the host personality there's a fusion and a new personality is created. That could result in the stealing of a name rather than a body, because the host personality is still in control, technically. I'm taking my cues from Jadzia Dax here, and as this idea has already been used in pop culture I doubt I'm correct, but whatever.
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Post by Stately Buff-Cookie on Dec 28, 2010 15:06:35 GMT
Thus I'm safe in telling everyone they're wrong. I'll always be right.
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Post by TBeholder on Dec 28, 2010 15:08:20 GMT
Oh, missed this one. From hence forth, Jones' real name shall be known as Strabismus. And forget all this talk of gods, or of golems; I'm thinking she's really a beholder. Hsst? We tend to float in the air, not sink in lakes. Also, excessive reading of w...dia may be harmful.
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Post by Per on Dec 28, 2010 16:43:47 GMT
Remember that we cannot tell homophones apart in spoken dialogue, which is what this is in the GC universe. Coyote is really saying: "Wandering I!" It's all clear. Jones is the avatar of the letter I.
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kazuki
New Member
The silver haired demon.
Posts: 12
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Post by kazuki on Jan 2, 2011 9:42:02 GMT
Hmm, that's an interesting idea. Now, I'm not sure if this has been mentioned or not, but if Jones had so many names, isn't it possible that the other "gods" did too? Isn't it possible that not only could they have had other names, but that they themselves could have been considered different deities by different civilizations? If that much was true, then there wouldn't be a wide array of gods and goddesses, but a small group of gods and goddesses that were known differently within the rest of the world, know what i mean?
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