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Post by pyradonis on Oct 3, 2019 13:44:46 GMT
In which Courtney, Eglamore, Frannie, Eglamore Cvet, Renard and Eglamore Parley enter the red zone where the giant tree had erupted in the midst of the Court, get very confused by perspective illusions Court-esy of a nest of Eglamores wisps (who posed as a Court security team (although for some reason they later posed as monsters as well), make a new friend(?) named Idra, who is definitely an Anwyn (and not a monster) who came to the Court after she was somehow not frozen in time in the Forest, and helped them break free of the illusion, find the goose bone but quickly decide they need to visit Loup, presumably to tell him to get the vial of lake water out of the tree himself. Also we learn that Renard now has cool fire powers and can act as a telephone line for both Annies, Cvet is a huge gossip, and Courtney has some sort of problem with Eglamore (no, this time it is really him). Welcome to the grand experiment of estalishing end-of-chapter threads to discuss finished chapters as a whole. Gotolei explains the idea here: Throwing around an idea for the dezinens of the forum, based on something that the subreddit has been doing for a year or so: End-of-chapter discussion threads, pertaining to the chapter as a whole. Following the updates on a page-by-page basis is nice and all, but because one chapter ends up spread out across a month or two it's easy to miss or forget the arc of a whole chapter in general. This past chapter, Perspective, for example. I've long lost count of the number of comments where people had forgotten why they were in a red zone in the first place. And that's to say nothing of the seemingly endless confusion that New Contract stirred up. A thread about discussing the whole chapter would likely clear up the plot as a whole for those who've lost a link in the chain of events, find connections between different parts that would be otherwise be missed, and also probably be a nice way to catch up on the perspective and thoughts of the time while doing re-reads. Figured it'd be an idea worth sharing since a chapter just ended. Dunno if the idea's come up before since proboard's search function is still made of rotten potatoes despite all the v5 hype, but as far as I can tell the only instance of this sort of thing happening in the past is one about a specific aspect of chapter 71. I'll leave the thread creation to someone more eloquent than myself who also shouldn't be doing coursework right now, if someone does want to go through with it. So I thought I would just start this age-old tradition. Why should a subreddit have what the comic's very own forum does not? Oh yes, and this is my proposal for the first post of every thread: Give a short summary of the chapter and link to the chapter's title page, and maybe some other relevant pages.  |
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Post by DonDueed on Oct 3, 2019 14:23:30 GMT
Nicely done, pyradonis. Starting off on the right foot, I'd say. Proper precedents established.
The point about Idra "somehow" avoiding being frozen in the forest had not escaped me. I can imagine a few possibilities.
1. Idra is actually Loup in disguise, as has been suggested elsewhere. The bonus page makes this seem less likely.
2. Idra is some other magical being, or has some special magical ability (akin to Annie's fire elemental side) that made her immune to the time freeze.
3. Loup's power to freeze time has spatial limits even in the forest, and distant parts thereof are not frozen. She did say she was far from home when it happened. But how did Idra reach the Court if she had to cross a time-frozen region? Would that not have frozen her too? And why didn't Loup freeze time in the Court too? Was that impossible for some reason, or is it just another example of Loup's flaky approach to things?
4. Idra was already in the Court when time froze. This doesn't match her account, but she could be lying for some reason.
5. Plot convenience -- but I hate Doyleian solutions to Watsonian problems. Meh.
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Post by philman on Oct 3, 2019 15:37:31 GMT
I assume that Idra avoided being frozen in the forest in the same way that the other monsters that have crossed into the Court managed to avoid it. Perhaps the time freeze only affected certain forest areas (which included the village), perhaps that band on her arm is a protection against it. Or perhaps she is not telling us everything (After all, she thought the gang would lock her up once they caught her, why should she trust them?).
Other things that happened this chapter, the ongoing feud between Court Annie and Eglamore. Is there something going on there that we have not seen? Or that happened during the 6 month gap? Or is she just being an annoying teenager?
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Post by Gotolei on Oct 3, 2019 16:17:04 GMT
Eyy, this'll do. Idra did mention being in the "deep forest" when time froze, I wonder if that's the elf name for the ruins (or the region with the ruins) featured back in Crash Course? Like a play on our society's "deep web." Presumably that part of the forest would have been left alone because Loup wanted to use the monsters. But, per Ysengrin, "People of the forest do not come here." Sure she might be a self-designated outcast or something, but personally I wonder what she would have been doing in that area. That, in combination with Idra being the one and only elf-type we've seen so far depicted with shaped eyes, coming out of a forest currently governed by a halfwit trickster, leaves me wondering about her story and who she actually is.
E: also, about the arm band. The bonus page shows her following Team Protagonist into the wisp nest, with an intact wrap around the each forearm and nothing on the upper arm. I'm guessing that after Parley had that smackdown with a "gurdig" Idra just repurposed the wraps as a bandage. Dunno about the red cord though, unless she simply found it somewhere.
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Post by pyradonis on Oct 3, 2019 20:21:21 GMT
Nicely done, pyradonis. Starting off on the right foot, I'd say. Proper precedents established.
The point about Idra "somehow" avoiding being frozen in the forest had not escaped me. I can imagine a few possibilities.
1. Idra is actually Loup in disguise, as has been suggested elsewhere. The bonus page makes this seem less likely.
2. Idra is some other magical being, or has some special magical ability (akin to Annie's fire elemental side) that made her immune to the time freeze.
3. Loup's power to freeze time has spatial limits even in the forest, and distant parts thereof are not frozen. She did say she was far from home when it happened. But how did Idra reach the Court if she had to cross a time-frozen region? Would that not have frozen her too? And why didn't Loup freeze time in the Court too? Was that impossible for some reason, or is it just another example of Loup's flaky approach to things?
4. Idra was already in the Court when time froze. This doesn't match her account, but she could be lying for some reason.
5. Plot convenience -- but I hate Doyleian solutions to Watsonian problems. Meh.
Another theory: Loup deliberately did not freeze her (she need not be aware of this). I would like to hear more of her story, like, were all other unfrozen creatures she saw monsters? Why did she go through the tunnels in the first place, instead of looking for other, less dangerous creatures? Did the whole Forest around her freeze in time, making her unable to sustain herself on solid water and unmovable fruit (if yes, would this be a hint for her exclusion from the time freeze being a deliberate act?)?
Regarding your question why Loup did not freeze the Court too: He claimed in "Neither" having inherited control over the Forest - and even that was shaky and incomplete. Coyote had controlled and strengthened the Forest through his " series of interconnected systems", that is why Loup can control everything in the Forest, even time. I read this as him having this level of control only over the Forest. Presumably also the thing the Court is working on that " functions essentially the opposite" to Coyote's systems keeps Loup's etheric control out of the Court.
(How could he then grab an Annie from another timeline, you ask? Easy, she was in the Forest at that point, so he just reached across timelines but stayed in the Forest, where he has complete control.)
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manxy
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Post by manxy on Oct 4, 2019 13:28:25 GMT
Eyy, this'll do. Idra did mention being in the "deep forest" when time froze, I wonder if that's the elf name for the ruins (or the region with the ruins) featured back in Crash Course? Like a play on our society's "deep web." Presumably that part of the forest would have been left alone because Loup wanted to use the monsters. But, per Ysengrin, "People of the forest do not come here." Just building off this first part here: We know from the Neither retrospective that the time freeze on the forest was Loup's hasty band-aid solution to something put in motion by Coyote's death. Tom describes whatever Coyote put in place as a "dead-man's switch" that causes the forest to start unravelling in some way if he's removed, and Loup freezes time to avoid dealing with the problem. So if Idra was in part of the forest where none of Coyote's denizens usually go, maybe it was unaffected by the problem, and thus unaffected by Loup's "solution?" Whatever Coyote did to the forest might be sort of like Andrew's etheric threads, but destructive instead of helpful—if you're not wandering around in an area tangled up in them when disaster strikes, you avoid being affected. |
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Post by pyradonis on Oct 5, 2019 19:12:12 GMT
Eyy, this'll do. Idra did mention being in the "deep forest" when time froze, I wonder if that's the elf name for the ruins (or the region with the ruins) featured back in Crash Course? Like a play on our society's "deep web." Presumably that part of the forest would have been left alone because Loup wanted to use the monsters. But, per Ysengrin, "People of the forest do not come here." Just building off this first part here: We know from the Neither retrospective that the time freeze on the forest was Loup's hasty band-aid solution to something put in motion by Coyote's death. Tom describes whatever Coyote put in place as a "dead-man's switch" that causes the forest to start unravelling in some way if he's removed, and Loup freezes time to avoid dealing with the problem. So if Idra was in part of the forest where none of Coyote's denizens usually go, maybe it was unaffected by the problem, and thus unaffected by Loup's "solution?" Whatever Coyote did to the forest might be sort of like Andrew's etheric threads, but destructive instead of helpful—if you're not wandering around in an area tangled up in them when disaster strikes, you avoid being affected. Hmm, but should not every part of the Forest be affected by the unravelling? Or do you mean Loup only froze the parts of the Forest where his subjects usually dwell? |
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manxy
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Post by manxy on Oct 8, 2019 13:15:34 GMT
Just building off this first part here: We know from the Neither retrospective that the time freeze on the forest was Loup's hasty band-aid solution to something put in motion by Coyote's death. Tom describes whatever Coyote put in place as a "dead-man's switch" that causes the forest to start unravelling in some way if he's removed, and Loup freezes time to avoid dealing with the problem. So if Idra was in part of the forest where none of Coyote's denizens usually go, maybe it was unaffected by the problem, and thus unaffected by Loup's "solution?" Whatever Coyote did to the forest might be sort of like Andrew's etheric threads, but destructive instead of helpful—if you're not wandering around in an area tangled up in them when disaster strikes, you avoid being affected. Hmm, but should not every part of the Forest be affected by the unravelling? Or do you mean Loup only froze the parts of the Forest where his subjects usually dwell? Well, by establishing that " people of the forest do not come here," we know that Coyote's forest is not the entire geographic area on the other side of the river. So then when Loup froze time to deal with whatever problem Coyote's death set in motion, it would probably only affect Coyote's part of the forest. Thus Idra being in the "deep forest" could just be outside the...um...area of effect. |
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