[2027] Far... far away!

[Angry Individual]

Ysengrin I need you to stop being so cryptic for about five seconds thanks.

[avurai]

Wait, what?

[Nepycros]

So, those who speculated that the Omega Device is an "ether-deletion" or "ether-displacement" device have another point in favor of their theory that the Court is trying to take Bikini Bottom the ether, and push it somewhere else.

[madjack]

So where would the Court take her? OR.... when?

Seed Bismuth reveal incoming? 

Can we even trust anything he says?

[philman]

And you should totally take my word for it, I am completely sane and in control of my actions and I totally didn't just kill my boss the second I got enough power to do so, and this is definitely me speaking right now.

[fjodorii]

I would say Ys is very trustworthy, he is not the scheming type. Just worried about that blue colour dripping in in the last panel

[Angry Individual]

I couldn't tell if that was Loup's markings coming back, or if it was Ysengrin crying.

Or... both?

[madjack]

Aug 15, 2018 7:36:02 GMT fjodorii said:

I would say Ys is very trustworthy, he is not the scheming type. Just worried about that blue colour dripping in in the last panel

I think that's him crying? He sure doesn't want to lose Annie...

[Eve Swann]

Coyote said the Court was man's attempt to "become god" and Coyote never lied, but what would that have to do with Antimony being taken away...?

Yeah, I admit it. I'm stumped. Hopefully Friday's strip will have a few answers.

[rinabean]

I'm hyped again. What does he mean? And how much influence does Coyote have on this conversation?

[faiiry]

Why do I feel like several huge plot twists are about to be dropped on our unsuspecting heads like an anvil from a tree in an old cartoon.

[arf]

Might Ys be talking about the evacuation?

Or maybe the Court is planning to go "okie"? (They could pick up Jones on the way past.)

[razgrizx]

Aug 15, 2018 7:36:02 GMT fjodorii said:

I would say Ys is very trustworthy, he is not the scheming type. Just worried about that blue colour dripping in in the last panel

I disagree. He's already lying here when he says he didn't mean to attack the Court when he's been wanting that ever since we've known him

[todd]

I certainly wasn't expecting this - Ysengrin speaking about the Court's dark side, suggesting that there was more to his attack on it than mere resentment of the humans (and with more justice - the humans couldn't help creating beings like Coyote and Ysengrin out of their imagination through the ether, assuming Coyote's account is correct - but if the Court really is plotting something dark and devious....). And, based on the Court's track record (an organization which has been willing constantly to sacrifice morality for expediency), his words seem all too believable. And raise the question that Annie hasn't thought of yet - is the Court worth protecting? (Of course, the bulk of the people there - including the children attending classes and most of the teachers - probably have absolutely no involvement in this; I suspect that the "far worse than I imagined" is being carried out by a small group of people at the top, with everyone else in Gunnerkrigg unaware of their true goals and intentions.)

(There's probably more involved; Loup's already gone from attacking the Court out of a desire to do so to threatening the Court to get Annie to stay - changing his offensives against Gunnerkrigg from an ends to a means.)

It does remind the reader that the friction between the Court and the Wood isn't a good vs. evil struggle - either way. The Court's done a lot of bad things, and even its goals (from what we know of them) seem questionable. Coyote, the leader of the forest, has likewise engaged in trickery and deceit. I've sometimes imagined Annie just leaving the area, turning her back on the quarrel between Gunnerkrigg and Gilltie with a tone of "A plague on both your houses!"

[faiiry]

Annie's hair seems to be growing longer and longer as the pages of this chapter progress.

[ctso74]

Aug 15, 2018 8:51:44 GMT Eve Swann said:

Coyote said the Court was man's attempt to "become god" and Coyote never lied, but what would that have to do with Antimony being taken away...?

Yeah, I admit it. I'm stumped. Hopefully Friday's strip will have a few answers.

Yes, Friday, August 17, 2029.

Gods both create and destroy. Perhaps, the Omega Device is a Seed Bismuth for the Ether itself, and the Court wants to make its own version of Mechanus. Never liked that plane.
As for taking Annie awway, the Omega Device may need a reliable Etheric power source, and the Court thinks a fire elemental would do in a pinch. That might explain Tony's willingness to work on it, ie. try to perfect another power source.

[ohthatone]

I guess that explains why Loup was so insistent she stay in the Forest. yeah I'm stumped too. I don't think he's talking about the Court taking Annie to another physical location (my best friend is moviiiing!), that seems a little too...juvenile? but I got nothin', maybe it is as simple as that.

[blazingstar]

"They mean to take you away. Far...far away!" 

This is not the first time it's been mentioned that the Court has wanted Antimony far away. ("They were going to wait until graduation and cast her out.")

At the time, many of us thought deciding to expel Annie was just incompetence and neglect. Now it turns out the truth may be more sinister: getting her away from the Court was all part of a larger master plan.

[gergle]

Aug 15, 2018 15:00:30 GMT blazingstar said:

"They mean to take you away. Far...far away!" 

This is not the first time it's been mentioned that the Court has wanted Antimony far away. ("They were going to wait until graduation and cast her out.")

At the time, many of us thought deciding to expel Annie was just incompetence and neglect. Now it turns out the truth may be more sinister: getting her away from the Court was all part of a larger master plan.

I don't believe The Court to have a master plan. From The Court setting up Jeanne in her time, to the current time bumbling, I think we are dealing with the current generation of incompetent adults flailing about mostly impotently until their exit stage left and a new crop of bumblers take over.

[torontoregonian]

Permanent vacation to Zimmingham? *shudder*

[netherdan]

Aug 15, 2018 7:36:22 GMT Angry Individual said:

I couldn't tell if that was Loup's markings coming back, or if it was Ysengrin crying.

Or... both?

+1 for "both"

You appear in the ether as you see yourself, so if Ysengrin is feeling like crying then his etheric form will tell these feelings (same for Annie's hair getting longer and hotter as her confidence increases - expect blue or white hot if she keeps succeding in this talk)
But Loup could very much use this show of weakness and turn these markings (which are already similar to his own) and try to "boo" Annie off (then she slaps him in the face and yell at him for interfering again)

[todd]

Aug 15, 2018 15:00:30 GMT blazingstar said:

At the time, many of us thought deciding to expel Annie was just incompetence and neglect. Now it turns out the truth may be more sinister: getting her away from the Court was all part of a larger master plan.

I don't think this is the same plan (assuming that the Court really intended to expel Annie and weren't just lying in order to manipulate Antony). If Ysengrin had said "send", then it's plausible. But "take" implies bringing her to a specific location. So presumably this is something else - an actual plan for her they've had all along.

[todd]

Aug 15, 2018 16:22:25 GMT gergle said:

I don't believe The Court to have a master plan. From The Court setting up Jeanne in her time, to the current time bumbling, I think we are dealing with the current generation of incompetent adults flailing about mostly impotently until their exit stage left and a new crop of bumblers take over.

The Court's shown some competence (if more in the form of individuals like the Donlans and Eglamore who presumably aren't part of the "inner circle"); even the Jeanne scheme, while morally wrong, went as planned (though if the Court had handled its relations with the forest-folk better, it probably wouldn't have felt the need to do what it did to Jeanne - and they also didn't take into account Diego having enough of an attack of conscience to break the rule of silence privately and document what they did, sharing it with the robots; without his secret records, Annie and Kat would probably have never learned enough to free Jeanne). On the other hand, there's the suggestion that the reason why the Court is so huge is because it couldn't control the spread of the Seed Bismuth (which also led to those troubles with Gilltie Wood), and much of the other trouble that's gone on could have been avoided if the Court had been paying closer attention to events (the power plant business, the cruise ship incident, etc.) - assuming that the Court didn't want those events to happen for the sake of experimentation.

I think that the Court know what they want to achieve (most likely, turning the study of ether into an exact science rather than "it's just magic; we can't explain it"), but haven't been able to handle the path there so well (probably due to arrogance and overconfidence).

[todd]

I might add that if this is a lie, it could succeed where the threat and the temptation failed. Annie knows that the Court has engaged in a lot of scheming and amoral activity, and certainly doesn't trust it - so she'll take seriously Ysengrin's words about it, and they might even sway her. It'd be a case of "the best lie, the lie most likely to work, is the one which contains some truth".

[imaginaryfriend]

Supposing the Court doesn't have a sinister plan for taking Antimony "far away" Ys is right in that if Antimony stays in the Court she will eventually graduate from school. She'll either have to work for the Court, which probably means she'll be sent places on assignments since she doesn't have a specialty that would permit her to stay in the Court and work there, or she will have to leave the Court. Either way she won't be able to spend time in the Wood like she's been doing.

[saardvark]

Something seems fishy here. "Ys(?)" says "I ...that was not my intent... not originally." But it *was* exactly his intent originally. The first thing Ys does as Loup is to test his new strength and attack the court. So "Ys", who is very direct and rarely (if ever) lies, is not being candid here. I am suspecting some Coyote/Loupy subterfuge going on....

[pyradonis]

Aug 16, 2018 0:07:08 GMT netherdan said:

Aug 15, 2018 7:36:22 GMT Angry Individual said:

I couldn't tell if that was Loup's markings coming back, or if it was Ysengrin crying.

Or... both?

+1 for "both"

You appear in the ether as you see yourself, so if Ysengrin is feeling like crying then his etheric form will tell these feelings (same for Annie's hair getting longer and hotter as her confidence increases - expect blue or white hot if she keeps succeding in this talk)
But Loup could very much use this show of weakness and turn these markings (which are already similar to his own) and try to "boo" Annie off (then she slaps him in the face and yell at him for interfering again)

If Ysengrin appeared in the Ether as he sees himself, shouldn't he appear as a useless old wolf then? Remember the three Ysengrins.

[blazingstar]

Aug 16, 2018 14:02:35 GMT pyradonis said:

Aug 16, 2018 0:07:08 GMT netherdan said:

You appear in the ether as you see yourself, so if Ysengrin is feeling like crying then his etheric form will tell these feelings....

If Ysengrin appeared in the Ether as he sees himself, shouldn't he appear as a useless old wolf then? Remember the three Ysengrins.

You don't appear in the Ether as you see yourself. For those with enough etherical strength, you appear in the Ether as you truly ARE. So if you're crying in your soul, you're crying in ether-vision too, I guess. 

[pyradonis]

Aug 16, 2018 14:32:40 GMT blazingstar said:

Aug 16, 2018 14:02:35 GMT pyradonis said:

If Ysengrin appeared in the Ether as he sees himself, shouldn't he appear as a useless old wolf then? Remember the three Ysengrins.

You don't appear in the Ether as you see yourself. For those with enough etherical strength, you appear in the Ether as you truly ARE. So if you're crying in your soul, you're crying in ether-vision too, I guess. 

That reminds me of being puzzled why former animals do appear as humans in the Ether. Do their souls really remain unchanged? Their etheric connection does not seem to be impaired by the process. Would they appear animal-like if they had higher etheric strength?

[zaferion]

Theory: That's not Ys on the bottom of the page. "Oh! The Court is far worse than I imagined!" Ys doesn't speak like he's in a Shakespeare play. He's not that dramatic; nor is he dramatic enough to start anime-tears weeping. We're one step away from him flinging himself upon a rock or chaise lounge with his hand pressed to his forehead and Annie yelling at Loup to gtfo.