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Post by philman on Nov 13, 2012 8:38:44 GMT
If she's had that stone since the dawn of the Earth, she had no clothes or belongings that we could see for the first few billions/millions of years, where did she keep it?!
Maybe best not to think about...
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Post by aaroncampbell on Nov 13, 2012 13:49:49 GMT
Ridiculously, this page has been the hardest one to suspend my disbelief for. It's true that she didn't say she had NO emotions, but the implication that she can't experience them to any strong degree makes me wonder what Tom was trying to tell us with all those initial pages. The idea that she's just going through the motions of friendship/whatever else with multiple people over the years makes those pages seem very hollow now, and I just don't think that's where Tom is ultimately trying to take this chapter, or Jones. I'm totally not going to be able to wrap my brain around this chapter until the "chapter-over" symbol finally appears. Someone said earlier that they just couldn't buy that Jones didn't have emotions, and I am starting to agree. I mean, why else would Jones hang around one human being from birth till death? She did seem at least somewhat aggrieved that the manor house owner was dying, although that could just be her standard dour expression. It's really hard to tell. These lines of discussion got me to thinking more about what Jones said in panels 3-4: "Through their art, their writing, their music, I became aware of the inner struggles present in all humans. A flood of emotions that welled in every one of them. It is something I myself am unable to experience." Perhaps Jones has the same emotions, but simply does not struggle with them? Given her unique physical circumstances (unnatural long life, extreme hardiness, &c.) she grew up with the time to develop an internal mindset, free of human interaction, that allows her to make sense of the world around her. Since everything is, to her, relatively fleeting, she has learned to understand and accept that and simply flows with it now. Another way to look at it is to consider Jones as a highly functioning autistic. I know that is a controversial perspective, and mean no disrespect to people with autism by bringing it up. Obviously Jones does not evidence a number of the more common signs of, say, Asperger syndrome, but given the broad range of symptoms covered by the autism spectrum she does seem to match up functionally with several of the more common ones: formal or idiosyncratic speech, limited range of intonation, impaired nonverbal behaviors in areas such as facial expression, posture, and gesture, &c. If she did have some sort of pervasive developmental disorder, the unique conditions surrounding her "birth" and "childhood" would be a nearly perfect explanation for it. Just a thought.
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Post by zimmyzims on Nov 13, 2012 20:55:12 GMT
We have a good amount of conceptual mess here as well. Start by adequately defining 'emotion', 'will', 'act', 'decision', 'truth' and of course, 'love'. Then we talk. Don't forget 'life'. I understand that she isn't alive in a biological sense, but my mind still identifies her as alive, because she walks and talks and thinks and reacts. She acts alive, and I have trouble taking in that she isn't. I think many would say that, biologically, if she has no metabolism, she is not alive. And everything, that she generally seems unchanging, that she neither eats nor drinks nor breaths nor any of the related actions, suggests that she has no metabolism. In this respect her body does not seem to be living. But then again, life is hard to define. One thing that she does is that she spontaneously arranges her living environment and does not simply bend to the physical laws of motion as the inorganic nature does. And in this respect she seems to live.
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Post by zimmyzims on Nov 13, 2012 20:58:15 GMT
fill a hole in Eggie's heart This, of all we've seen, is the most disturbing to me. What role does she play for Egg, and the other men we've seen in her life? For Egg especially, though, when a human girl proved herself to be...all too human, Wandering Eye steps in. Is he satisfied with her? Is she his lover? She can never be his wife, for that implies (for most of us) the mother of his children. Is life with her all that fulfilling, or is there some shortfall in Eglamore himself, that lets him go through life wanting nothing more than her? And most importantly, does this make Jimmy a necrophiliac?
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Post by palevalkyrie on Nov 13, 2012 21:31:05 GMT
Don't forget 'life'. I understand that she isn't alive in a biological sense, but my mind still identifies her as alive, because she walks and talks and thinks and reacts. She acts alive, and I have trouble taking in that she isn't. I think many would say that, biologically, if she has no metabolism, she is not alive. And everything, that she generally seems unchanging, that she neither eats nor drinks nor breaths nor any of the related actions, suggests that she has no metabolism. In this respect her body does not seem to be living. But then again, life is hard to define. One thing that she does is that she spontaneously arranges her living environment and does not simply bend to the physical laws of motion as the inorganic nature does. And in this respect she seems to live. I've been trying to articulate, in my brain, an alternative word for 'life' that encompasses the behaviors she exhibits, but does not imply a biological entity. "Sentience" is pretty much all I got. Jones is a sentient entity--she can alter her environment and interact with others around her, but does not have a metabolism or other biological trappings of "life." This way of thinking about it would even allow for the presence of emotions, if she indeed has them in there somewhere--and if she doesn't, I'm going to need some serious in-story clarification of what she's doing going around awkwardly pretending to be affectionate. (As an aside I'm going to make the prediction now that Eglamore makes a brief cameo before the chapter is over--where did he go after the last chapter? After Annie said, "I need to see Jones!" did she bolt and he just...decided to go get a sandwich? Seems like the thing with Ys is something he'd have to report ASAP.) Anyway, although it seems jarring that she says it so bluntly, Jones is hardly the only sentient being in this comic that is not alive. Coyote isn't alive. Rey is in the body of a wolf-doll and also not alive.
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Post by faythofdragons on Nov 13, 2012 21:36:06 GMT
This, of all we've seen, is the most disturbing to me. What role does she play for Egg, and the other men we've seen in her life? For Egg especially, though, when a human girl proved herself to be...all too human, Wandering Eye steps in. Is he satisfied with her? Is she his lover? She can never be his wife, for that implies (for most of us) the mother of his children. Is life with her all that fulfilling, or is there some shortfall in Eglamore himself, that lets him go through life wanting nothing more than her? And most importantly, does this make Jimmy a necrophiliac? Nah, Jones isn't dead. He might be geophiliac though.
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werrf
New Member
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Post by werrf on Nov 14, 2012 7:51:46 GMT
Emotionless? Hardly. Emotion is a difficult word, after all. Is hunger an emotion? Tiredness? Is anger the same thing as fury? Is a preference for blondes the same this as a mad and burning lust for Marilyn Monroe?
I would say that Jones has plenty of emotions, but they're more flavouring to her every day life than a controlling force. What she lacks, and does not understand in humans, is passions, all-consuming emotions that change and colour everything a person sees, thinks and feels, and take control of our bodies against our better judgement.
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Post by warrl on Nov 14, 2012 16:06:32 GMT
I don't think she's just fitting in, either. If that were true she wouldn't have been driven out of everywhere (I think we are meant to assume that that wasn't a one off once magic powers stopped being a good thing.) She's very intelligent, a great judge of people, and completely in control of herself. Flesh and blood sociopaths do a better job than her of pretending to be human, which doesn't make sense, because Jones has much more experience of watching people, and I don't think she has sinister motives that she's covering up. Don't forget that for a long time single women past a certain age (varied from 15 to 25) were abnormal and automatically suspicious, while married women who persisted in not having children were even worse off - abnormal and suspicious, and the husband and his family have a societal incentive to get rid of her somehow. Makes it tough for a person who appears to be a mid-to-late-20s human female, but cannot have babies after the fashion of a human female by mating with humans, to fit in.
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Post by warrl on Nov 14, 2012 16:13:17 GMT
Actually, this is a universe where (allegedly) human beliefs can shape the universe around them, so perhaps Jones was created by human beliefs and was merely, omphalos-style, created with memories of older experiences. That gets really complicated. When did she stop remembering creation occurring in 4004 BC, and start remembering the Paleozoic Era? There's also the fact that if she lies to other people sufficiently effectively, she REALLY comes to believe her own lies.
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Post by warrl on Nov 14, 2012 16:26:02 GMT
There's a smart bunch of people here, but also... Tom said it really well once after he revealed that Alistar was turning into a bird... "Good job, the people who guessed. It was like a dartboard riddled in darts." Or something along those lines. People are a fan of their pet theories here. It's all in good fun. People are also fans of proposing and extending totally implausible theories that they don't take seriously themselves.
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alexh
Full Member
Posts: 113
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Post by alexh on Nov 14, 2012 21:26:14 GMT
People are also fans of proposing and extending totally implausible theories that they don't take seriously themselves. My theory is that Tom is secretly employing all these people in an attempt to throw us off the scent.
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Post by Doomrider on Nov 14, 2012 23:38:03 GMT
People are also fans of proposing and extending totally implausible theories that they don't take seriously themselves. My theory is that Tom is secretly employing all these people in an attempt to throw us off the scent. HAHAHAHAHAHA! You found us out! Guess we'll just have to kill you now, won't we?
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Post by GK Sierra on Nov 15, 2012 2:03:57 GMT
My theory is that Tom is secretly employing all these people in an attempt to throw us off the scent. HAHAHAHAHAHA! You found us out! Guess we'll just have to kill you now, won't we? Saddle up the duty van comrade. Tonight we ride.
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Post by zimmyzims on Nov 16, 2012 16:12:46 GMT
And most importantly, does this make Jimmy a necrophiliac? Nah, Jones isn't dead. He might be geophiliac though. So, back to this, she's not quite a stone either. So we talk about moving, yet inanimate and probably inorganic, certainly not living, however personal being. What is the word for that? Other than Jones. After much consideration, I take it 'dead' actually refers to 'inanimate'. So: All training and no girl makes Jimmy a.... necrophiliac.
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