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Post by King Mir on May 28, 2019 7:30:17 GMT
I can easily generate problematic situations for this system for which the bureaucracy that manages contracts most likely exists. For example, if you steal a coin from someone and hire someone with it, do they own it when you pay them? Money usually works a bit differently than other items, because one coin is exchangeable for another. But for normal objects, it's not that strange to say if you steal my car, and sell it to someone else, that I would have some authority to say it's still my car, and I should have rights to it, even though the sale of the stolen property seemed kosher to the buyer. In other words, all Saslamel and the interpreter are describing is the very concept of ownership. It's just that, because in Gunnerkrigg, ideas can manifest as etheric entities, there is a god for this sort of thing. Well getting hit by an arrow or something less lethal doesn't usually mean you would call it "your arrow". You could take it as a trophy if you wanted to, but the act of being hit by it doesn't make it yours. Right? madjack description of "use with intent to discard" fits, since if someone is killed with an arrow, you would ask "Who's arrow was it?", whereas if a dagger is found you might ask "Who's dagger is this?".
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Post by King Mir on May 28, 2019 7:43:50 GMT
If anyone accepts without question all this ownership babble, I found a bridge when I was younger so I now own it and can sell it to you for a few thousand dollars, and if you need proof I can send you paperwork from some magical godlike lawyer/judge entity that you have never heard of before. If it helps I can like the Wizard of Oz, use my movie projector to make a big scary goldlike talking head thing speaking gobbledegook and a little wispy "interpreter". Cosmic Court of an Ancient Aribitrator: I Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, ancient arbitrator of Sector 3.793 of the galaxy 3923921, of unisec 239341371 here certify that Davidm did in his youth find the brooklyn bridge after it had been accidently discarded by its previous owner "The City of New York", and is therefore free to gift or sell it to whoever he chooses. Signed, The Honorable Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious It's not that contracts of ownership exist because Saslamel says so, it's that Saslemel exists because humans have imagined the concept of ownership and associated it with him.
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Post by moonwyn on May 28, 2019 10:49:25 GMT
Long Time Reader first time poster.
What does all the ownership / contracts mean in regards to the missing objects Loup wants retrieved?
Oh and hi All you have some great discussions its been a pleasure reading both the Comic and your daily replies. Thank You!
M
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Post by DonDueed on May 28, 2019 11:36:16 GMT
If anyone accepts without question all this ownership babble, I found a bridge when I was younger so I now own it and can sell it to you for a few thousand dollars, and if you need proof I can send you paperwork from some magical godlike lawyer/judge entity that you have never heard of before. I'm not sure what the exact definitions mean yet but I'm pretty sure that, for example, Jen could cast a curse on someone who stole something from her and it'd work even if she had no idea who it was by virtue of them having stolen the item. We certainly know that ownership has a special meaning in the GCverse. Rey's subservience to Annie(s) makes that obvious. He was downright antagonistic to her at the beginning, so her possession of the toy surely saved her from possession by him.
We can't know Saslamel and Clippy are being 100% truthful, but we do know that it's not just "babble".
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Post by DonDueed on May 28, 2019 11:41:54 GMT
... because in Gunnerkrigg, ideas can manifest as etheric entities, there is a god for this sort of thing. There's an app a god for that!
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Post by saardvark on May 28, 2019 12:15:08 GMT
Long Time Reader first time poster.
What does all the ownership / contracts mean in regards to the missing objects Loup wants retrieved?
Oh and hi All you have some great discussions its been a pleasure reading both the Comic and your daily replies. Thank You!
M
welcome to the forum, moonwyn! Coyote gave those things as gifts, so I would think that Loup (even as Coyote's "descendent") has surrendered ownership of them. He's just trying to bully them back....
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Post by pyradonis on May 28, 2019 13:14:45 GMT
Long Time Reader first time poster.
What does all the ownership / contracts mean in regards to the missing objects Loup wants retrieved?
Oh and hi All you have some great discussions its been a pleasure reading both the Comic and your daily replies. Thank You!
M
welcome to the forum, moonwyn! Coyote gave those things as gifts, so I would think that Loup (even as Coyote's "descendent") has surrendered ownership of them. He's just trying to bully them back.... But as long as Parley, Andrew and Renard willingly give those gifts back(?) to Loup, it should be fine in the arbiter's books.
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Post by phantaskippy on May 28, 2019 13:38:48 GMT
Things being stolen doesn't invoke an Arbiter.
This ownership thing is defining very fundamental rules of existence in our comic world. Seriously, what does this mean with Coyote's story about him being created by humans?
The arrow wasn't violating contracts, it was rewriting fundamental properties of existence. This isn't saying "this was your Grandmother's brooch, now it is yours." This is ripping Grandma out of the brooch so that it was never hers at all, and thereby changing the nature of the brooch's existence.
That's what I'm getting from this.
It's almost like a computer error, Kat didn't reprogram the arrow properly because she doesn't understand it fully, so what she was about to do was going to crash the system, so it got interrupted with a living embodiment of an error message and his translator.
This arbiter has me thinking that this is playing into the notion of true language, the myth that animals and objects have a true name that holds power over them, only in this case we are dealing with a "True Language," words that have power over reality at a fundamental level, and Kat can kind of read it. Diego was able to use it, and was able to write his golems into existence, and use it to create a device that had power over the nature of existence.
What is this foreshadowing is my question. Is this about the nature of the Coyote-Ysengrim merger, are they going to revoke ownership of Coyote's power from Loup? Is it about the ownership of the gifts from Coyote, or is it something else?
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Post by darlos9d on May 28, 2019 14:08:03 GMT
This arbiter has me thinking that this is playing into the notion of true language, the myth that animals and objects have a true name that holds power over them, only in this case we are dealing with a "True Language," words that have power over reality at a fundamental level, and Kat can kind of read it. Diego was able to use it, and was able to write his golems into existence, and use it to create a device that had power over the nature of existence. What is this foreshadowing is my question. Is this about the nature of the Coyote-Ysengrim merger, are they going to revoke ownership of Coyote's power from Loup? Is it about the ownership of the gifts from Coyote, or is it something else? So, runes, basically? Also I hope that this weird concept of spiritual ownership rules that got introduced so late in the story doesn't end up being so important to multiple things in the plot. I feel like that's encroaching on ass-pull territory. Anyway how about these tiny Annies
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Post by ctso74 on May 28, 2019 14:16:27 GMT
"Since the beginning of time", what a whole lot of baloney, pffffft. Yeah I'm going to have to sit down and figure out exactly what this dude means by "object" "possession" "individual" and "enters" before I can even start to figure out what he means by "beginning of time" or "status in the world."
They didn't appear when Kat used the arrow to transfer Rey to Annie, or anything else Kat used the arrow for. This only began with the activation of "new" Arthur. I'm thinking this "arbitration" is dealing with Arthur's ownership. That brings up a very interesting question. One that has future real-world implications. When does an object become sentient enough to own itself? These "ownership" rules bring up a lot of interesting stuff (arrow, Rye, Jones, my laser pointer), but nothing more fascinating than the AI-ownership question.
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Post by tustin2121 on May 28, 2019 14:49:04 GMT
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Post by tustin2121 on May 28, 2019 15:01:08 GMT
Also I hope that this weird concept of spiritual ownership rules that got introduced so late in the story doesn't end up being so important to multiple things in the plot. I feel like that's encroaching on ass-pull territory. What are you talking about "so late in the story"? This stuff has been in play since chapter freaking 7. It's only now it's actually being explained fully. The interpreter said that the arbiter doesn't get called very often, so it's clear that the ownership rules follow all the usual rules we've been following up until now. It's only when things like the magical arrow of rage ghost get involved that things turn haywire...
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Post by ohthatone on May 28, 2019 16:21:05 GMT
So at what point does an object cease being an object and become an owner? The quick answer would be when an object obtains a soul, but then it could be argued the robots have souls (see: the Iron Giant). Where does that leave Robot (the human object)and Jones (the object human)?
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novia
Full Member
Posts: 224
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Post by novia on May 28, 2019 16:21:22 GMT
What?? I have researched and read twice what this word means, and I have no idea how it applies to today's comic.
It's not what you say, it's how you say it. Though it's also what you say. I think going out of their way to define of "lost" and "stolen" kinda fall under that umbrella. You have to remember that this is not meant to be read one page at a time. They are starting with easy examples to lay the groundwork for more complicated examples. Mansplain had a specific definition, and it is definitely not this. Before you accuse me of mansplaining this to you, please note that I am not a man and I am a feminist.
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Post by pyradonis on May 28, 2019 16:22:51 GMT
It's almost like a computer error, Kat didn't reprogram the arrow properly because she doesn't understand it fully, so what she was about to do was going to crash the system, so it got interrupted with a living embodiment of an error message and his translator. When using an efficient language, double-check the damn pointers.
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Post by warrl on May 28, 2019 17:49:55 GMT
Annie: "You" - points at Clippy - "shut up a minute. Saslamel: please say yes in your language."
(he says something)
Annie: "Now, please say no."
(he says something different)
Annie: "Is this guy" - points at Clippy again - "telling us the truth?"
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Post by Gemini Jim on May 28, 2019 18:32:59 GMT
Annie: "You" - points at Clippy - "shut up a minute. Saslamel: please say yes in your language." (he says something) Annie: "Now, please say no." (he says something different) Annie: "Is this guy" - points at Clippy again - "telling us the truth?" That might work if Annie were reading about her own adventures and reading the forum. However, a couple of panels ago, she looked ready to find out if giant stone heads can catch fire.
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Post by Gemini Jim on May 28, 2019 18:51:32 GMT
All this talk of arrows suddenly reminds me of a story from the "Three Kingdoms" era of ancient China. I read about it in a comic book; here's the Wikipedia version. TL/ DR version: Zhuge Liang gathered thousands of arrows by tricking the enemy into firing at straw boats. Would Saslamel consider the arrows stolen, especially since they were gathered by trickery? Or do they now legally belong to Zhuge Liang?
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Post by netherdan on May 28, 2019 19:21:10 GMT
I'm wondering if this concept of etheric ownership could be why Blinker Stones can be summoned by their owner effortlessly. If so, maybe this relates to how the Donlans' technomagic can summon objects to anyone with permission performing the access sequences (gestures). Oh, but they're not just making coordinated gestures in the air, you just aren't seeing the popup item menu that they see. Kat just made her visible to not look like a wizard with magical abilities (as if a floating light box that bleeps, distorts light waves and materialize stuff wasn't wizardry)
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Post by arkadi on May 28, 2019 20:20:09 GMT
Still trying to wrap my head around the fact that property is one of the physical (etherical?) laws of this universe.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on May 28, 2019 21:58:21 GMT
Yeah I'm going to have to sit down and figure out exactly what this dude means by "object" "possession" "individual" and "enters" before I can even start to figure out what he means by "beginning of time" or "status in the world."
They didn't appear when Kat used the arrow to transfer Rey to Annie, or anything else Kat used the arrow for. This only began with the activation of "new" Arthur. I'm thinking this "arbitration" is dealing with Arthur's ownership. That brings up a very interesting question. One that has future real-world implications. When does an object become sentient enough to own itself? These "ownership" rules bring up a lot of interesting stuff (arrow, Rye, Jones, my laser pointer), but nothing more fascinating than the AI-ownership question. If my read of #2150 is correct they're saying that Kat was about to (accidentally and improperly) shift Antimonies' ownership of Renard's toy body to Arthur; because the gang "fixed" the situation with Jeanne they are now able to track the arrow's use using their system. According to #2153 the individual (rights?) preceded pretty much anything else but I'm going to interpret that as being consciousness acting on inanimate objects and abstracting/asserting "my/mine" ownership which necessitated "yours/theirs" in other parties, and not a notion of rights flowing from the individual's existence... since it appears that this system has no problem binding individuals under ownership contracts and keeping them there. I'm not sure what the exact definitions mean yet but I'm pretty sure that, for example, Jen could cast a curse on someone who stole something from her and it'd work even if she had no idea who it was by virtue of them having stolen the item. You have to remember that this is not meant to be read one page at a time. They are starting with easy examples to lay the groundwork for more complicated examples. Mansplain had a specific definition, and it is definitely not this. Before you accuse me of mansplaining this to you, please note that I am not a man and I am a feminist. I am reading the comic. Still trying to wrap my head around the fact that property is one of the physical (etherical?) laws of this universe. It eases my migraine slightly if I imagine the Gunnerverse as a continuum between matter and ether and put the more subjective stuff more towards ether and the more objective stuff towards matter.
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Post by warrl on May 28, 2019 23:02:07 GMT
All this talk of arrows suddenly reminds me of a story from the "Three Kingdoms" era of ancient China. I read about it in a comic book; here's the Wikipedia version. TL/ DR version: Zhuge Liang gathered thousands of arrows by tricking the enemy into firing at straw boats. Would Saslamel consider the arrows stolen, especially since they were gathered by trickery? Or do they now legally belong to Zhuge Liang? Oh, they were definitely just borrowed - he intended to return them. (I've read about half of that book. It's LONG. Oh, and by the way, the "Romance" in the title is probably derivative from the French "Roman", which translates into English as "Novel". It is not a romance story. It's an embellished history, covering a period of a bit over 100 years.) Still trying to wrap my head around the fact that property is one of the physical (etherical?) laws of this universe. According to Coyote, even gods come into existence because humans believe in them. Humans have believed in property for probably longer than we've been humans.
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Post by mturtle7 on May 29, 2019 0:18:26 GMT
Still trying to wrap my head around the fact that property is one of the physical (etherical?) laws of this universe. My simplified take on this: 1. Magic is (probably) made by humans. (Note: This is basically Coyote's Great Secret in a nutshell) 2. Many humans have this concept called "ownership" with lots of subtle rules and room for interpretation.
3. Humans often make things whose entire function revolves around this concept of "ownership" 4. Therefore, there are magic things in the world whose effects depend on knowing how any given thing relates to this concept of "ownership". (Note: Renard's "possession" ability is one of those things, and the arrow is probably another one of these things)
5. Because "ownership" often has room for interpretation, magic as a whole needs bureaucracy and arbiters in order to make sure that a clear working knowledge of "ownership" is even possible in this wild & crazy world full of edge cases. Even though bureaucracy isn't something most humans would think of as very supernatural or mythological, it still exists, simply because it has to to keep those other, more obviously supernatural things functioning. (Note: we've already seen similar kinds of bureaucracies among the ROTD's case workers and the pyschopomps' claims of territory rights)
Hopefully that's small enough to wrap your head around. Honestly, I think a lot of people (including Coyote himself, actually, but mostly forumgoers) get waaaay too hung up on point #1, so they end up either ignoring it, or leaping to conclusions from it which are wild to the point of insanity (see: "I...DO NOT...EXISSSSSTTTTTT even though I am very clearly right in front of you and yelling at you with my entirely physical mouth"). I still think that that particular point is not really any more cosmically significant or reality-breaking than the idea of magic in general, so once you establish that, stuff like point #4 becomes a lot easier for the human mind to accommodate.
Edit: Also, thank you darlos9d for the chibi Annies shout-out
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novia
Full Member
Posts: 224
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Post by novia on May 29, 2019 1:42:12 GMT
You have to remember that this is not meant to be read one page at a time. They are starting with easy examples to lay the groundwork for more complicated examples. Mansplain had a specific definition, and it is definitely not this. Before you accuse me of mansplaining this to you, please note that I am not a man and I am a feminist. I am reading the comic. Oopsy! Hit the wrong quote button. I was trying to respond to the person above you >.<
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Post by Sky Schemer on May 29, 2019 7:10:28 GMT
. Before you accuse me of mansplaining this to you, please note that I am not a man and I am a feminist. Was I about to do that? Because just assuming I was going to do that, based on no evidence that I've ever done so around here, and then pre-emptively calling me out on it, is what people commonly refer to as "rude".
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Post by darlos9d on May 29, 2019 14:04:51 GMT
Also I hope that this weird concept of spiritual ownership rules that got introduced so late in the story doesn't end up being so important to multiple things in the plot. I feel like that's encroaching on ass-pull territory. What are you talking about "so late in the story"? This stuff has been in play since chapter freaking 7. It's only now it's actually being explained fully. The interpreter said that the arbiter doesn't get called very often, so it's clear that the ownership rules follow all the usual rules we've been following up until now. It's only when things like the magical arrow of rage ghost get involved that things turn haywire... Yeah well the part where there's some god who oversees this stuff and can literally show up and enforce very specific rules is new. So is the specific rules surrounding the arrow that is now an issue. Like we knew the arrow was weird, of course, but... I expected we'd learn the details through something simply "going wrong." Not some god showing up and just deciding that something is wrong. Makes it feel like everything would be fine if this jerk hadn't shown up.
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Post by arkadi on May 29, 2019 18:40:41 GMT
Still trying to wrap my head around the fact that property is one of the physical (etherical?) laws of this universe. My simplified take on this: 1. Magic is (probably) made by humans. (Note: This is basically Coyote's Great Secret in a nutshell) 2. Many humans have this concept called "ownership" with lots of subtle rules and room for interpretation.
3. Humans often make things whose entire function revolves around this concept of "ownership" 4. Therefore, there are magic things in the world whose effects depend on knowing how any given thing relates to this concept of "ownership". (Note: Renard's "possession" ability is one of those things, and the arrow is probably another one of these things)
5. Because "ownership" often has room for interpretation, magic as a whole needs bureaucracy and arbiters in order to make sure that a clear working knowledge of "ownership" is even possible in this wild & crazy world full of edge cases. Even though bureaucracy isn't something most humans would think of as very supernatural or mythological, it still exists, simply because it has to to keep those other, more obviously supernatural things functioning. (Note: we've already seen similar kinds of bureaucracies among the ROTD's case workers and the pyschopomps' claims of territory rights)
Hopefully that's small enough to wrap your head around. Honestly, I think a lot of people (including Coyote himself, actually, but mostly forumgoers) get waaaay too hung up on point #1, so they end up either ignoring it, or leaping to conclusions from it which are wild to the point of insanity (see: "I...DO NOT...EXISSSSSTTTTTT even though I am very clearly right in front of you and yelling at you with my entirely physical mouth"). I still think that that particular point is not really any more cosmically significant or reality-breaking than the idea of magic in general, so once you establish that, stuff like point #4 becomes a lot easier for the human mind to accommodate.
Edit: Also, thank you darlos9d for the chibi Annies shout-out I would object that, if property-as-a-physically-real-thing is the result of human-created magic, then it cannot have been in effect "since the beginning of time", as humans clearly haven't been around that long. But Coyote already illustrated how messed up time and causality can get when magic is involved, so I guess I'll let it rest...
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Post by keef on May 29, 2019 23:13:40 GMT
- any kind of arrow would probably be 'used with intent to discard' and thus be the property of whoever claims it afterwards, in this case Annie. When arrows are used in warfare, they are quite often returned to sender, by the same means and with the same intent. Probably a lot of archers were hit by an arrow they fired themselves earlier. Here the case can be made that the arrow was fired by the Court, in the same way that Mort was killed by the Luftwaffe, and by extension Nazi Germany. The Stuka pilot or Steadman the Archer are "just" delivering, the munition factory workers and Diego are "just" manufacturing. Looking at it that way; Kat owns this weapon only in the way that a court of law owns a weapon it keeps as evidence, or a museum owns a piece of shrapnel. Anyway how about these tiny Annies
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Post by pyradonis on May 30, 2019 10:40:23 GMT
- any kind of arrow would probably be 'used with intent to discard' and thus be the property of whoever claims it afterwards, in this case Annie. When arrows are used in warfare, they are quite often returned to sender, by the same means and with the same intent. Probably a lot of archers were hit by an arrow they fired themselves earlier. Here the case can be made that the arrow was fired by the Court, in the same way that Mort was killed by the Luftwaffe, and by extension Nazi Germany. The Stuka pilot or Steadman the Archer are "just" delivering, the munition factory workers and Diego are "just" manufacturing. Looking at it that way; Kat owns this weapon only in the way that a court of law owns a weapon it keeps as evidence, or a museum owns a piece of shrapnel.
The thing is, Kat does not just "keep" the arrow, she is actively using it, knowing that the thing is able to trap souls and tear through the Ether itself.
I would object that, if property-as-a-physically-real-thing is the result of human-created magic, then it cannot have been in effect "since the beginning of time", as humans clearly haven't been around that long. But Coyote already illustrated how messed up time and causality can get when magic is involved, so I guess I'll let it rest... Ask Jones. She has not been around since the beginning of time, but since the beginning of Earth, which is still a lot longer than since the beginning of humanity.
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Post by arkadi on May 30, 2019 12:01:50 GMT
That's what I mean.
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