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Post by King Mir on Jun 30, 2014 15:43:07 GMT
Off topic, I still want to see Annie bring up Jeanne in front of Coyote, and Coyote go "If you know what's good for you, -girl-, you'll avoid her." Coyote advising caution? doesn't sound like him. Caution isn't a lot of fun. Besides which, it's in his interest to get rid of Jeanne.
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Post by Daedalus on Jun 30, 2014 16:44:09 GMT
I wonder what is the Forest's official stand on this Gunnerkrigg Refugee Introduction Program. Also is there a similar option the other way round? For some reason, I'm envisioning an orientation video starring Coyote, where he occasionally breaks Fourth Wall and interacts with the viewer. Best. Orientation video. Ever. I wonder if Tom would take commission to do that... Off topic, I still want to see Annie bring up Jeanne in front of Coyote, and Coyote go "If you know what's good for you, -girl-, you'll avoid her." Coyote advising caution? doesn't sound like him. Caution isn't a lot of fun. Besides which, it's in his interest to get rid of Jeanne. We don't technically know that, since his endgame (if he has one) is open to debate. Does Canvey seem like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland to anyone else? My wife saw something completely different, she has a dirtier mind than you and I. ...no. So much no.
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Post by GK Sierra on Jun 30, 2014 17:27:33 GMT
My wife saw something completely different, she has a dirtier mind than you and I. Glad to hear you picked a winner. If life is an RPG, kinkiness is the hidden stat that no one tells you to look for.
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Post by Intelligence on Jun 30, 2014 20:05:34 GMT
I think Green may be possibly misinterpreting Rabbit's desire.
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Post by Daedalus on Jun 30, 2014 21:26:56 GMT
I think Green may be possibly misinterpreting Rabbit's desire. How so?
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Post by Aegis J. Hyena on Jun 30, 2014 21:37:08 GMT
I dunno. I think if it was in Coyote's best interests to be rid of Jeanne, he would have done it himself. He's got the same powers as the other psychopomps and then some, right? I keep thinking he had a hand in her "lockdown", so to speak...
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Post by Intelligence on Jun 30, 2014 21:42:17 GMT
I think Green may be possibly misinterpreting Rabbit's desire. How so? I don't know. It feels like it, though. After all, in the other transformation (ALy's) we saw there was miscommunication.
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Post by Neon_Knight on Jun 30, 2014 22:43:08 GMT
I dunno. I think if it was in Coyote's best interests to be rid of Jeanne, he would have done it himself. He's got the same powers as the other psychopomps and then some, right? I keep thinking he had a hand in her "lockdown", so to speak... I'm not sure. Coyote came to the Forest after all the incidents with Jeanne, her lover, and the Court Founders, according to his tale in Chapter 20.
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Post by Aegis J. Hyena on Jul 1, 2014 0:11:32 GMT
Good point, I hadn't gone back and reread. That does make it a bit more interesting and far more tempting for him to stuff his nose up Jeanne's skirt... always a victim of a pretty face...
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Post by goldenknots on Jul 1, 2014 1:15:16 GMT
... I'm not sure. Coyote came to the Forest after all the incidents with Jeanne, her lover, and the Court Founders, according to his tale in Chapter 20. He had to have been there before, because he's who made the river. It'd be pretty tough for them to have killed Jeanne's lover in the river without an actual river present.
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Post by warrl on Jul 1, 2014 1:35:26 GMT
Of course, Coyote by definition has issues with causality, considering that he has existed since the beginning of the universe and was created by humans. So what's one more temporal anomaly among friends and deities? But the ravine that the river is in definitely existed before Jeanne died - according to both Jeanne and the robots.
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Post by crater on Jul 1, 2014 2:05:25 GMT
that thing is seriously starting to creep me out
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Post by keef on Jul 1, 2014 9:19:36 GMT
Word of Tom is Coyote didn' t know about Jeanne, or at least he didn't till he saw the cut on Annie's face. Coyote made the ravine to end the war, and in a way the Court sealed that by placing Jeanne there to guard it.
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Omnium
Junior Member
Posts: 58
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Post by Omnium on Jul 1, 2014 10:46:14 GMT
Here. I can't use formspring with Firefox, probably something to do with my ad-blocker, that's why I usually link to Chrysoprax. Thanks. I have trouble with Formspring on my phone, myself. But I have to say, that really sounds like an arbitrary and rather unfortunate policy. I hope it'll actually come up in this storyline so we could figure out what it's for. I guarantee the reason behind it is that Tom didn't think of the implications for trans* people. He just figured that since the fairies are all female, the Foley males had to come from somewhere, and he decided that they used to be animals to balance out the numbers. It's kinda stupid, since it's unlikely that Aly's mum didn't get transformed into a male bird so there's no canon reason for female animals to become male humans. That wouldn't be the last time Tom didn't think of trans* people before saying something though, so... If Tom's sensible, he'll retcon that particular decision/Word of God into something more thoughtful. Such as all of the Foley guys seen in the comic so far just happening to have been ex-male animals, and all the female just happening to have been fairies. After all, there's more in the forest than animals and fairies. Would an Anwyn male be forced to become female (they aren't animals, so they can't become males under that WoT)? If they follow their assigned genders, why can't everything else?
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Post by Per on Jul 1, 2014 12:30:22 GMT
I really don't see how there are any "implications for trans* people" at all?
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Omnium
Junior Member
Posts: 58
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Post by Omnium on Jul 1, 2014 14:14:42 GMT
Pick one of the following:
Facetious answer: Transspecies falls under Trans*
Short answer: There are.
Longer answer: Animals who become humans at the court become males. Word of Tom confirms that. Ignoring that statistically 50% of said animals would have been female. I question how assigning these people a gender without taking into account the animal/person in question does not have unfortunate (and unintentional) implications. Especially given that animals have at least some degree of intelligence in the GKC universe.
The only in-universe answers for why every animal coming to the court becomes a male human would be if every animal is male (biologically or otherwise), or whomever handles the transformation (whether that be the Court or RotD) has a bias towards making animals male humans (which again has some implications).
The out of of universe reason is that Tom wanted there to be a fairly even split of males to females in Foley and made the decision that all animals become male to balance out the fairies and didn't think about it any further.
Let me put it this way, if two Anwyns (one male and one female) came to the court as humans, do they both end up as the same gender, despite them retaining their memories, personalities and generally being the same people, just in a different body? If not, why aren't animals given the same rights?
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Post by hypixion on Jul 1, 2014 14:18:27 GMT
Off topic, I still want to see Annie bring up Jeanne in front of Coyote, and Coyote go "If you know what's good for you, -girl-, you'll avoid her." Coyote advising caution? doesn't sound like him. Caution isn't a lot of fun. Besides which, it's in his interest to get rid of Jeanne. I don't think coyote is all about fun, he has his trickster attitude but that doesn't mean that's all he is. He has a plan in mind, we just don't know what it is. Could be anything.
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Post by Per on Jul 1, 2014 14:55:57 GMT
Pick one of the following: I believe I understand all those words, yet I am no closer to seeing how anything means Tom is thoughtless or not sensible. Fictional animals undergo a sex change along with a magical transformation and this is supposed to mean bad things for some specific set of real people? It seems someone could just as easily get upset about the inverted scenario ("Oh, so everyone just HAS to retain their original god-given gender even with all this huge magic bluh bluh involved? THAT'S a shocker. Way to think about MY feelings, webcomic guy").
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Post by fwip on Jul 1, 2014 15:48:45 GMT
I smell drama brewing...
Someone (I didn't find the original post) pointed out that gender is less of an issue to animals than it is to humans, given that they have a looser society. It's more of a biological thing with them, so they probably have less reason to object to it being changed. Same probably goes for fairies.
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Post by Lightice on Jul 1, 2014 19:07:47 GMT
Someone (I didn't find the original post) pointed out that gender is less of an issue to animals than it is to humans, given that they have a looser society. It's more of a biological thing with them, so they probably have less reason to object to it being changed. Same probably goes for fairies. Even if we go with that, it's still decidedly arbitrary, considering that fairies don't change biological sex while becoming humans, and as far as we can tell, neither do any other creatures besides the animals. So what's the purpose of such policy? And adding one massive biological transition over another seems like redundant extra trauma to heap on the creatures. It just seems strange that one group would be singled out like that. And it's still rather unfortunate in that it treats the change of gender as trivial, which it most certainly is not. An odd oversight in an otherwise very progressive story. I hope that it at least gets addressed in this chapter.
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Post by fwip on Jul 1, 2014 20:39:39 GMT
Do you remember the "what do we feel about Kat being (possibly) gay?" thread? Let's not have a repeat, please. I'm sure that Tom will elaborate on this, or it was a minor point that he didn't think much about (in which case it doesn't really matter, although at this point it seems unlikely). Tom is only human, no matter how we treat him here on the forums, and his comic is only so detailed. It's inevitable that some details will be poorly thought out. Perhaps this was one of them.
Also, the exchange program is by choice. No doubt the animals and fairies who make the crossing know what they're getting into.
(I'm not doing a very good job of avoiding arguments, huh.)
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Post by keef on Jul 1, 2014 22:37:38 GMT
Do you remember the "what do we feel about Kat being (possibly) gay?" thread? Let's not have a repeat, please. It was an education, but I agree. I agree. Blasphemy! I applaud you for trying. I'm typing on my phone, so a bit difficult to make an elaborate post, but Omnium, the anwin have no interest in the program (wot)
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Post by csj on Jul 1, 2014 22:42:34 GMT
Tom is actually made of spiders spoiler alert
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Post by Rasselas on Jul 1, 2014 22:56:28 GMT
It's a fairy tale, in those it's normal that creatures and people are subjected to cruel and arbitrary whims. I believe that's all this is. Of course it's not fair, or tolerant, or whatever - that's the point! It doesn't reflect on the author, it doesn't imply the author himself approves of this. If it's in the comic, it can also be from a villainous side. It doesn't mean the author approves of any villains he writes, because that would be ridiculous. It would result in the creation of only such media that we approve of in every possible expressed aspect. That would be boring as shit!
In this comic, Coyote placed a bind on Annie's hand that would snip it if she squeaked about the Tooth. He extracted memories from Ysengrin's brain just because it was convenient to him, or even just for fun. Diego murdered and trapped his unrequited love because he was a gigantic jerk. Should I take it that Tom approves of all these things, just because he's written them into his comic?
It would make perfect sense that an authority such as the Court imposed a technical and emotionless rule on the incoming Foley students just because it was more convenient for them. Maybe they wanted a similar ratio of boys and girls, and this was the easiest way to accomplish it. Thus it seals the idea of the Court as an emotionless bureaucracy that doesn't care so much about anyone's desires.
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Post by Daedalus on Jul 1, 2014 23:22:49 GMT
A god is a being empowered by collective belief. I believe in Tom Siddel's genius for storytelling (as do we all), and this leads me to the following conclusion. Honestly the idea that they change gender at all is odd to me...though, if Aly were to take the test again and come back female, I suppose that would be an interesting situation. But why does it matter what I think? It's Tom's universe to create. And indeed it does cement the 'uncaring bureaucracy' motif. Not to mention, Tom never even said this was a good thing. No need to say he's being offensive, and no need to call for a retcon. That would be silly, especially because it's never even come into the story directly. My two cents. oh god the 'is Kat gay' vibes are strong here...
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rama
Junior Member
Heh
Posts: 54
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Post by rama on Jul 2, 2014 1:05:56 GMT
But wait.... if the fairies are spawned without any kind of parental involvement, effectively making them sexless....do they even have a sex to begin with? I'm not even being philosophical here; what proof is there that the fairies are actually female? We haven't seen or heard of any ancestry, so maybe they aren't actually any gender to begin with, and the humans of the universe see them as female because they look more female than male? Or, if Coyote's secret is true for all etherical beings, they're only as female as the humans believe them to be; effectively looking the part and pretty much nothing else.
Which only raises further questions about the nature of the transition to human form.
Also, the deal was that the people who took the test were to be given new bodies. If the terms spelled out included this weird sex restriction thing, what is the actual problem? If they didn't feel it was worth it they wouldn't have done it. Given that it was stated in the terms, that is. I imagine switching from living as a moose or a badger to living as a human is way more drastic a change than switching from male to female or vice versa.
Also, as these contracts seem to be set by old magical entities, I still expect there to be some hidden catch.
Seriously, old folk tales dealing with magical contracts have some messed up stuff in them.
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Post by warrl on Jul 2, 2014 4:09:22 GMT
Even if we go with that, it's still decidedly arbitrary, considering that fairies don't change biological sex while becoming humans, It's been explicitly said, and repeated in this thread, that all fairies who make the transition become female humans. Are you asserting that all fairies are female? Perhaps, for the purpose of this transition, every creature that isn't a fairy is an animal, and every creature that isn't an animal is a fairy. We have no basis to assume the mere existence of a third category, let alone the rules that apply to such a category.
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Post by SilverbackRon on Jul 2, 2014 4:31:53 GMT
Ok, I cannot find it in Word of Tom, so it probably doesn't exist. Maybe what I am thinking was just speculation here on the forum. BUT!
I seem to recall hearing that Ysengrin had something to do with deciding the terms of the test, and that he considered ANY forest creature defecting to the Court to be a traitor. So my thought is that if some of the terms of transitioning from a forest dweller to become a human are arbitrary or unkind, that would suit the General just fine.
Notice how forest creatures, be they animals or fairies, have to DIE to become human. The reverse is not true, which indicates there are two separate sets of rules.
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Post by Rasselas on Jul 2, 2014 5:12:04 GMT
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Post by SilverbackRon on Jul 2, 2014 5:15:04 GMT
Oh thank you! That was driving me batty. I knew I had read it, I just couldn't remember where.
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