Earin
Full Member
Posts: 115
|
Post by Earin on May 6, 2017 19:28:42 GMT
What concerns me is that the world itself is grounded in having an etheric component. They know for a fact that humans are a part of, have had an influence in, and are affected by the ether. Stripping that away would be like ripping all sulfur out of the human body because "sulfur is harmful," while ignoring that humans have evolved to rely on minerals in their diet and physiology. The humans of their world grew up in, evolved from, or were otherwise created with an etheric imprint. Even if I thought magic was bad, and my lack of understanding made me hate it, knowing that it's a component of living organisms would give me pause for thought on pulling the plug. This goes beyond the Omega Project. The Court leadership might well be too arrogant to realize the consequences of its actions. "Last month a random spirit came onto our grounds, and started knocking over buildings because we gave a girl detention. How dare you talk to me about consequences, when I'm trying to keep people safe, from that? When Coyote gets bored and starts eating people, or Ysengrim decides that we'd all look better with limbs made of wood, how effective will your talk of consequences be then?"
|
|
|
Post by todd on May 7, 2017 0:07:41 GMT
They wouldn't have to worry about Coyote and Ysengrin if they didn't live next door to them.
|
|
|
Post by Deepbluediver on May 7, 2017 1:23:14 GMT
I wish Tom would stop explaining what doesn't need explaining. I guess two more pages or so Not everyone who reads the comic reads the forums- plus sometimes it's just good storytelling to have the characters lay things out, so we understand what they are thinking and feeling.
|
|
|
Post by red4bestgirl on May 7, 2017 6:36:15 GMT
I was told to be nicer so I am trying to think of a nice way to ask like,
Have y'all just not had friends before, or
When you are friends with someone- much less best friends!- and your friend comes to you and is like, "I'm really upset and hurt because this person basically tore me a new asshole and expressed a lot of criticisms of the way I've acted," you just comfort them and try to help them feel better. Even if a lot of those criticisms obviously have validity. If you do raise them at all it's usually later and pretty gingerly.
But if my friend is already feeling like shit I'm not going to rub their face in it, like, "Yeah, you really fucked up."
Even as nice and supportive as Kat is being, notice that her answer to the question, "Did you feel pressured into helping me?" is basically a really nice and roundabout way of saying "Yes."
And Kat isn't really even addressing the most fucked up parts of Annie's actions at all- manipulating Ayilu and her motivation for not teleporting Andrew to a doctor.
And this isn't a reasonable response to the fundamental behavioral problem of dragging people into danger, which is really reckless and dangerous- manifestly dangerous!- regardless of how much Kat views that as "trust" and "faith in us."
Like, Kat is not some authoritative narrator here, she's a friend actively comforting a friend.
Like I'm just confused what some people seem to think is going on, like some of y'all seem to think the author sat down, plotted out these few chapters, and was like, "And here, I'll have the comic relief break character to say all these super harsh things about the protagonist, and then a few pages later, the best friend/sidekick will face the audience and calmly assure them that all of those bad things were false and wrong and the protagonist is just great the way she is. That will be a really interesting and satisfying arc without the need for bothersome things like moral ambiguity and character arcs."
|
|
|
Post by zaferion on May 7, 2017 8:37:44 GMT
This is the moment I, a non-native-English speaker, must figure out the difference between "love" and "adore". When you adore someone you have a platonic fondness for them, as opposed to love being romantic attraction. (Many sources define love as also being sexual attraction, but I've always been taught that sexual attraction is "lust," and not "love".) Like, you love your girl/boyfriend, but you adore that one teacher from grade school you were really fond of. Or you adore that adorable little 8 year old. TBH, it's difficult to understand a lot of the time because in the English language, especially American English, people use the word love when they actually mean "really like," "adore," "are overjoyed by," or anything denoting extreme joy. It's the same way for the word hate: people use hate when they mean "dislike" or "mildly inconvenienced". If it seems unnecessarily overdramatic to use the word love (or hate), it probably is and the person means something less over the top. All of this is why I really appreciate Tom/Kat's use of the word adore instead of love--it's much more clear and succinct. All of the above is a modern definition of the difference between love and adore, but adore comes from the Latin word adorare which means "to worship". It was originally a term ascribed to worshiping gods and, much like people are overusing the word love these days, people began overusing the word adore and it slipped into common parlance.
|
|
|
Post by GriffTheJack on May 7, 2017 17:37:21 GMT
I was told to be nicer so I am trying to think of a nice way to ask like, Have y'all just not had friends before, or When you are friends with someone- much less best friends!- and your friend comes to you and is like, "I'm really upset and hurt because this person basically tore me a new asshole and expressed a lot of criticisms of the way I've acted," you just comfort them and try to help them feel better. Even if a lot of those criticisms obviously have validity. If you do raise them at all it's usually later and pretty gingerly. But if my friend is already feeling like shit I'm not going to rub their face in it, like, "Yeah, you really fucked up." Even as nice and supportive as Kat is being, notice that her answer to the question, "Did you feel pressured into helping me?" is basically a really nice and roundabout way of saying "Yes." And Kat isn't really even addressing the most fucked up parts of Annie's actions at all- manipulating Ayilu and her motivation for not teleporting Andrew to a doctor. And this isn't a reasonable response to the fundamental behavioral problem of dragging people into danger, which is really reckless and dangerous- manifestly dangerous!- regardless of how much Kat views that as "trust" and "faith in us." Like, Kat is not some authoritative narrator here, she's a friend actively comforting a friend. Like I'm just confused what some people seem to think is going on, like some of y'all seem to think the author sat down, plotted out these few chapters, and was like, "And here, I'll have the comic relief break character to say all these super harsh things about the protagonist, and then a few pages later, the best friend/sidekick will face the audience and calmly assure them that all of those bad things were false and wrong and the protagonist is just great the way she is. That will be a really interesting and satisfying arc without the need for bothersome things like moral ambiguity and character arcs." I agree with your main point, that Kat's motivation for comforting Annie should be taken into account, just like Red's motivation for being angry should be taken into account. Neither of them are the voice of Tom objectively describing Annie to the audience. As for every friend necessarily being like Kat in this situation, and otherwise they aren't actually a friend ("Have ya'll not had friends before")? I disagree. There is more than one philosophy of friendship, especially when we get into friendship between heroes or other people-doing-important-things. One part of heroic responsibility is to be able to stand up to your fellow heroes and break the groupthink and post facto rationalizations that are endemic to everything people do in groups, even if the other heroes are your friends. Your continuing work, whatever it may be, is more important than massaging your friends' bruised egos, and it's their responsibility to take the criticism under careful consideration. This goes for anyone with an important job to do, from heads of state down to individual law enforcement officers, but it tends to be concentrated on fictional "heroes" because by their nature they're working without a system behind them that can remove some of the responsibility (the question becomes, when does Gryffindor's Creed apply?). Basically, even harsh and direct criticism can be well within the bounds of friendship, if the subject of the criticism is sufficiently important to a shared cause. In this particular comic, I will freely grant, everything is a lot more gray than that. Not every story has to have protagonists who act as fully-adult-and-responsible heroes from beginning to end, and these two aren't heroes, they're teenagers with rather complicated emotional lives who happen to get into adventures every once in a while. Like you say, comforting her best friend Annie is probably the only thing Kat is thinking about. However, they're both growing up and doing more and more important stuff. Parley is right on the cusp of being a fully-adult-and-responsible hero now. If they all continue on this path, get into more adventures that could change the nature of the Court and/or the Forest forever... Well, it will behoove them to examine themselves and their actions more closely, not to mention hammering out what exactly their desired end-state is. All I can say is that it will be interesting to see where Tom takes these problems of responsibility and adulthood. Those themes are sort of what a good chunk of the comic is about.
|
|
|
Post by Deepbluediver on May 7, 2017 18:31:56 GMT
And Kat isn't really even addressing the most fucked up parts of Annie's actions at all- manipulating Ayilu and her motivation for not teleporting Andrew to a doctor. I still don't get how you think Annie "manipulated" Ayilu- Annie offered her a deal, and she took it. Your attempts to prove the faeries where ignorant of the danger Jeanne posed have fallen completely flat, and Red wasn't even supposed to be part of the deal- she insisted on coming along anyway. Also, she seem to treat Annie's response in the 10 seconds she had to think of one as the only possible motivation. When Kat flat-out says "this was the best outcome we could have hoped for" you still seem to treat Annie as if she was wrong, rather than just flustered when having this conversation with Red. Look at the very first words to the pyschopomps: " Never mind that [Jeanne]. Fix this. I know you can." Are you telling me that she's not worried about Andrew in that moment? "The main character is bad and we should hate them" is only marginally more complex (morally speaking) than "the main character is good and we should love them". I think what's happening is that Tom is showing us that there are different viewpoints. And as we've discussed in the forum, Red's character could be more complicated than it first appears. You claim that we're all missing the point, but you seem to ignore everything else in favor as taking every word out of Red's mouth as objective truth, instead of the perspective of someone with severe emotional issues.
|
|
|
Post by warrl on May 7, 2017 19:40:17 GMT
Significant prediction: in a few chapters Red will come to Annie and beg for help with something.
Warning: to date my significant predictions about webcomics have a 100% inaccuracy rating.
|
|
|
Post by red4bestgirl on May 7, 2017 19:52:04 GMT
And Kat isn't really even addressing the most fucked up parts of Annie's actions at all- manipulating Ayilu and her motivation for not teleporting Andrew to a doctor. I still don't get how you think Annie "manipulated" Ayilu- Annie offered her a deal, and she took it. Your attempts to prove the faeries where ignorant of the danger Jeanne posed have fallen completely flat, and Red wasn't even supposed to be part of the deal- she insisted on coming along anyway. Also, she seem to treat Annie's response in the 10 seconds she had to think of one as the only possible motivation. When Kat flat-out says "this was the best outcome we could have hoped for" you still seem to treat Annie as if she was wrong, rather than just flustered when having this conversation with Red. Look at the very first words to the pyschopomps: " Never mind that [Jeanne]. Fix this. I know you can." Are you telling me that she's not worried about Andrew in that moment? "The main character is bad and we should hate them" is only marginally more complex (morally speaking) than "the main character is good and we should love them". I think what's happening is that Tom is showing us that there are different viewpoints. And as we've discussed in the forum, Red's character could be more complicated than it first appears. You claim that we're all missing the point, but you seem to ignore everything else in favor as taking every word out of Red's mouth as objective truth, instead of the perspective of someone with severe emotional issues. 1) Is the implication supposed to be that no deal is ever exploitative or manipulative? Because I really don't know how to respond to that other than smashing out a long string of hahaha's etc.. Like, that's simply ignorant or naive or I don't know what. Just because you agree to a deal doesn't mean you aren't being exploited or manipulated due to vulnerabilities. Red was completely correct on this: Annie got Ayilu, someone she barely knows, to risk her life, by offering her something that she wasn't supposed to have, that had no value to Annie, and that she could have given at any time if she felt she should have it. This was not only manipulation, it was grotesque manipulation. It actively makes me like Annie less as a person. 2) What in Heaven's name are you talking about? The faeries don't know how dangerous Jeanne was on fully two different levels. a) They had no knowledge of the video/flashback evidence of Jeanne and her history of brutally killing many powerful supernatural beings, including a psychopomp. b) They don't seem to fully grasp mortality as has been demonstrated lots of times, including Red trying to cut her own fingers off for instance. Like, ohnoes, they saw an image of Jeanne as a ghost across the river one time! That must mean they fully understand the situation! Because Annie fully understood the situation from then on and didn't need to do more research/get more info dumps, right? 3) Annie's stated motivation is her motivation until we have reason to think otherwise, because that's how narrative fiction works. You don't get to just ignore evidence of the protagonist acting shittily because it hurts your idea of the character a bit! 4) Oh my God the point of Red's criticisms isn't "Annie is bad and you should hate the protagonist," it's, "Annie has gotten carried away with her protagonist-ness and is disregarding the agency and safety of people around her in favor of trying to decide what's best for everyone all by herself." Annie has been bombarded with really conflicting messages since day 1 at the Court. She's been told by powerful people and by weird destiny-ish happenstance over and over that she's special, that she's this really important person- implicitly better than others. But she's also been constantly abused, ostracized, marginalized and disempowered in a host of circumstances, esp. those revolving around her father. The incident with Jeanne replays this contradicting set of signals; she manipulates and cajoles the others into carrying out her plan, succeeding in her goal of removing a really powerful ghost. But then she's placed directly under the power of the psychopomps who don't hide the extent to which they're subjugating her. It's not surprising that these circumstances are messing with her head and her ability to judge what's right and wrong to do, and just as importantly, the right and wrong ways to do it. If you want a bold prediction of where this arc is going, Annie has to learn how to rely on others as friends, being fully open and considerate towards them- and that's a challenge especially for someone raised mostly in isolation- instead of copying the tactics of the Court or Coyote, who freely and abusively control those under them, hide things from them, dictate what's best unilaterally etc.. For a slightly bolder guess, I think we might see a third iteration of this conversation next, or at least soon, that's with Jones and presents a more nuanced and fair appraisal than Red, who is in fact traumatized and angry over Annie manipulating and endangering her girlfriend, and Kat, whose primary aim here is to comfort her. Jones is sort of more of what I imagine Annie's ultimate role model will be in the story, because ultimately Annie is the protagonist and basically a good person so we can presume that the story is about her confronting and overcoming problems with her own behavior, as with external problems. That doesn't mean those problems aren't there though.
|
|
|
Post by warrl on May 7, 2017 20:01:45 GMT
Agreeing that there are exploitative and manipulative deals does not constitute agreement that this is an accurate description of any specific deal.
Many of us see nothing exploitative and manipulative about the deal between Annie and Ayilu.
Between Red and Ayilu... yep there's a lot of exploitation and manipulation going on there.
|
|
|
Post by red4bestgirl on May 7, 2017 20:16:21 GMT
Agreeing that there are exploitative and manipulative deals does not constitute agreement that this is an accurate description of any specific deal. Many of us see nothing exploitative and manipulative about the deal between Annie and Ayilu. Between Red and Ayilu... yep there's a lot of exploitation and manipulation going on there So, for instance, a lot of 14 year olds desperately want to be adults because of all the reasons being a kid sucks. If however, I were to go up to a 14 year old that I know is really eager to be an adult and say, "I will wave this magic wand, which requires no actual effort on my part btw, and make you an adult as your heart desires, but first you have to run some drugs for me first and you might get shot by a rival gang so watch out for that," Like If you wouldn't describe that as manipulative and exploitative, I just don't know what to tell you, man. But that's basically the deal with Annie and Ayilu, excepting only that Annie has a good underlying motive. But good intentions don't make manipulation and exploitation go away.
|
|
|
Post by red4bestgirl on May 7, 2017 20:28:12 GMT
Like it's so obvious that Annie was being manipulative and exploitative that I don't really know how else to further this point other than maybe turning to my ol' favorite technique, reading the comic. (I do want to emphasize that I don't think all of Red's critiques are 100% spot on, but this one really obviously was as I think the vast majority of even the forum acknowledged at the time:)
|
|
|
Post by zaferion on May 7, 2017 21:33:20 GMT
Like it's so obvious that Annie was being manipulative and exploitative that I don't really know how else to further this point other than maybe turning to my ol' favorite technique, reading the comic. (I do want to emphasize that I don't think all of Red's critiques are 100% spot on, but this one really obviously was as I think the vast majority of even the forum acknowledged at the time:) I think that was Red's only sound argument, and the rest was her letting her emotions get the better of her. When a person gets angry they'll spit out any kind of personal attack and that is 100% what Red's entire spiel sounded like to me.
|
|
|
Post by GriffTheJack on May 7, 2017 22:45:26 GMT
Agreeing that there are exploitative and manipulative deals does not constitute agreement that this is an accurate description of any specific deal. Many of us see nothing exploitative and manipulative about the deal between Annie and Ayilu. Between Red and Ayilu... yep there's a lot of exploitation and manipulation going on there So, for instance, a lot of 14 year olds desperately want to be adults because of all the reasons being a kid sucks. If however, I were to go up to a 14 year old that I know is really eager to be an adult and say, "I will wave this magic wand, which requires no actual effort on my part btw, and make you an adult as your heart desires, but first you have to run some drugs for me first and you might get shot by a rival gang so watch out for that," Like If you wouldn't describe that as manipulative and exploitative, I just don't know what to tell you, man. But that's basically the deal with Annie and Ayilu, excepting only that Annie has a good underlying motive. But good intentions don't make manipulation and exploitation go away. I went into this point in depth in the last couple of page threads (and I agreed with you, basically), but one thing to think about this whole issue is that it's about Annie's level of self-awareness. Red's half-justified/half-emotional diatribe definitely didn't help Annie find a fully realistic interpretation of her actions, and neither has Kat so far, really...
|
|
|
Post by spritznar on May 7, 2017 23:35:28 GMT
Agreeing that there are exploitative and manipulative deals does not constitute agreement that this is an accurate description of any specific deal. Many of us see nothing exploitative and manipulative about the deal between Annie and Ayilu. Between Red and Ayilu... yep there's a lot of exploitation and manipulation going on there So, for instance, a lot of 14 year olds desperately want to be adults because of all the reasons being a kid sucks. If however, I were to go up to a 14 year old that I know is really eager to be an adult and say, "I will wave this magic wand, which requires no actual effort on my part btw, and make you an adult as your heart desires, but first you have to run some drugs for me first and you might get shot by a rival gang so watch out for that," Like If you wouldn't describe that as manipulative and exploitative, I just don't know what to tell you, man. But that's basically the deal with Annie and Ayilu, excepting only that Annie has a good underlying motive. But good intentions don't make manipulation and exploitation go away. i feel like your undervaluing the 14 year old's agency and reasoning ability in this hypothetical. at 14 i most certainly would not have agreed to a sketchy, possibly life threatening deal to get something sooner. then again, i was a particularly boring, reasonable teen. do you really think that the offer of a name was so irresistable that ayilu couldn't turn down the deal? and if so, do you think annie was aware of that? i don't see annie as some chess master, maneuvering all her friends into doing what she wants them to, i see a teenager who's got some networking ability. to me, it kind of sounds like you're arguing that annie should have known better than to assume red and ayilu were compenent enough to make important decisions. perhaps red and ayilu shouldn't be considered mature enough to make these decisions, but then, should we blame annie, seemingly of an age with them, for not being mature enough to realize that? it was a growing experience for everyone involved. i'm curious, did you feel that the deal was manipulative and unfair when it was first presented? re: kat and pressure, i don't think feeling "under pressure" about a particular part of the plan is the same as feeling "pressured into helping" in the first place. i think kat would have been down there with annie and the gang whether she figured out the arrow or not, she was just afraid of failing at such a vital part of the plan
|
|
|
Post by puntosmx on May 8, 2017 4:01:05 GMT
2) What in Heaven's name are you talking about? The faeries don't know how dangerous Jeanne was on fully two different levels. a) They had no knowledge of the video/flashback evidence of Jeanne and her history of brutally killing many powerful supernatural beings, including a psychopomp. b) They don't seem to fully grasp mortality as has been demonstrated lots of times, including Red trying to cut her own fingers off for instance. Like, ohnoes, they saw an image of Jeanne as a ghost across the river one time! That must mean they fully understand the situation! Because Annie fully understood the situation from then on and didn't need to do more research/get more info dumps, right? I just noticed a dichotomy here that leads us to the same point, and thus is moot. On one hand, if Annie explained the danger in rough terms, Blue would have gone blind to the real danger of dying. But on the other, if Annie had provided a detailed explanation of how deadly Jeanne was, Blue is a fairy and would have jst glossed over that, musing on getting a name at whatever "small cost of creating an illusion paired with some mind manipulation", which seems to be second nature to her. As a corollary, Blue frequently kills herself, over and over again, to get Red's attention, so she obviously doesn't care abouth death. These are the relevant quotes: "Yeah, dat always hap-(pens)" "She always pretends to die in her illusions to get my attention." 3) Annie's stated motivation is her motivation until we have reason to think otherwise, because that's how narrative fiction works. You don't get to just ignore evidence of the protagonist acting shittily because it hurts your idea of the character a bit! The problem is you find Annie's actions and motives shitty because you are buying only one perspective (the one from Red, who we alsready know is a jerk, has confidence issues, flat out refuses to say the truth when it's inconvinient to her ("It's none of her stupid bussiness!"), and to care for nobody except herself. Not one of the most agreeable and sincere perspectives. If you then contest and deny any evidence to that perspective, then it is you who doesn't want to have dialogue, but just to have confirmation of your ideas.
|
|
|
Post by phantaskippy on May 8, 2017 4:15:31 GMT
Red and Ayilu had met Jeanne, they saw her strike Annie. (140-141)
Then in Chapter 59 we see:
Red understands the danger Jeanne poses, remarking that if the illusion wasn't working Parley would be dead. Red earlier remarks that if her friend is going to get a name Red is going to be there to see it. Red is also the least serious one there. She also clearly realizes the danger they are in when it starts to fail.
Ayilu on the other hand creates an illusion where her and Red are standing, when in reality they are sitting, has brought pictures to help her create the illusion and treats the entire situation seriously. Ayilu, so far has not shown any signs that she was tricked, or regrets the risk she took.
What we have is Red, who in spite of knowledge of the danger, lacked a realization of the danger. She not only was not coerced into coming, she tagged along to see the show. I believe the Red/Annie situation exists because: 1. Red wasn't a part of the group. She was a bystander who had a lot to lose and nothing to gain. 2. Red has way more influence on Ayilu than Annie, and yet Ayilu went, with Red tagging along with no complaint. 3. Red was not prepared for Ayilu's illusion protecting them. 4. Red was not prepared to deal with her own feelings.
We have Red tagging along naively, like a little sibling insisting they come along when they don't realize what all that means, and then while Ayilu is prepared and willing to go through with it, Red who stands to gain nothing and suddenly finds herself having much more to lose than she is willing to admit to herself, has no plan, no mature realization of the risk she not only took, but did nothing to prevent Ayilu from taking.
Red feels tricked. Ayilu does not. Red can't blame Annie for her own danger, and is uncomfortable with her enabling Ayilu to take such a risk. She blames Annie. Annie is responsible for Red having to face her own feelings.
And notice, it's only after Red names Ayilu that she complains to Annie. Red is willing to participate in the naming and benefit from the risks that were taken, and then once she has no more to gain turns on Annie.
As for Kat's words, Leadership is convincing people to do things they wouldn't have done normally. Annie's friends trusted her, and took risks to help her because they knew that Annie was the type of friend who would do something like the deal she made to save Smitty.
To my mind, the interactions go like such:
Annie wants to go help Jeanne, is willing to take the risk. Kat is there because her friend believes in it, and Kat is going to be there with her friend, and do everything she can to help so her friend will be okay.
Parley also seems to believe heavily in the cause, and wants to test herself against Jeanne. She seems to want to do this almost as much as Annie does. Smitty is there for the same reason Kat is, because he isn't going to sit by and let Parley go alone, he is willing, and in fact happy to die to protect her.
Ayilu is willing to risk death to get her name. It is that valuable to her. Red is there because Ayilu is, but is unwilling to accept what that means. While both Kat and Smitty walk into danger not for their own gain, but to stand with someone they care about, Red is going without an honest economic process, she hasn't actually weighed the value of going, she isn't honest with herself about why she is there or what is at stake.
A more mature Red would have tried to stop her friend from going, or made the decision to face the danger while being honest to herself.
This is a problem of Red's making.
|
|
|
Post by Zox Tomana on May 8, 2017 16:22:19 GMT
I was told to be nicer so I am trying to think of a nice way to ask like, Have y'all just not had friends before, or When you are friends with someone- much less best friends!- and your friend comes to you and is like, "I'm really upset and hurt because this person basically tore me a new asshole and expressed a lot of criticisms of the way I've acted," you just comfort them and try to help them feel better. Even if a lot of those criticisms obviously have validity. If you do raise them at all it's usually later and pretty gingerly. <snip> And Kat isn't really even addressing the most fucked up parts of Annie's actions at all- manipulating Ayilu and her motivation for not teleporting Andrew to a doctor. To the first point: yes I have had friends before and I still have those friends, and I have been in a position to comfort them before *and* during that I have raised the legitimate concerns and discussed them with said friends. My friends know who I am, and how I am. I've even done this with my patients as a medic. A favorite story to tell is the person suffering anxiety attacks that I calmed down, and then proceeded to chide for not taking care of their basic needs (like not taking their meds, or eating, or sleeping). To the other point: I've already argued about her motivation for not teleporting Andrew and I anticipate you're going to ignore said post, so I'm not going to bother arguing it here; regarding the manipulation of Ayilu I dispute the point that "it was manipulative because names aren't worth anything to Annie and co. but fairies will do basically anything for names." If I hold something to be of high value, you're going to have to trade me something I deem to be far, far more valuable in order to get me to give it up. If I have something you want that I consider to be low value, and you have something I consider high value that you're willing to give up... is it manipulative for me to say "here, take this thing you want that I don't care about, and I'll that this thing (this object or service) in return that you're willing to give me"? No. That's how trade works. There's a high demand for names, and a low supply of people willing to step outside the Court's rules to give them. For another example: I consider it nothing to do manual work on someone's neck or back. It's fairly easy for me, and a fairly quick thing to do. Certain people around me find this to be something they value because they have back or neck pain. I don't ask for anything in return for my services, but would it be manipulative of me to ask for them to do something for me in return? This is a high value skill for them, why should I not ask for them to do something I value? Regarding knowledge of danger: The fairies saw Jeanne up close when she crossed the water to see and then attack Annie without any provocation, so they know that she is--at the very least--a significant factor of danger. They do understand what death is (see Ayilu's repeated demonstrations of dying, and the fact that the test they have to pass involves the destruction of their bodies, and that during Jeanne's attack they clearly understood that Annie was in danger). What they didn't understand in the chapter about Red's haircut is the nature of the human body: namely that certain things can be removed (hair, nails) and other things cannot (fingers). To make the leap from "they don't understand how human bodies work" to "they don't know what death is" given their background in the Forest where animals go around killing each other in order to eat (read: part of <snuffle>'s bunny friend's reason for transitioning to the court) is a bit of a stretch in my mind.
|
|