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Post by foxurus on May 6, 2021 1:54:13 GMT
This makes me wonder: could Annie have been Astral projecting around each of the previous meetings? Even if Kat wasn't in on it, Annie has twice the firepower; is it a stretch to think she might be able to project WHILE walking around and interacting, sorta like the fae/animal kids? I think that is a stretch. Firepower doesn't translate directly to etheric power, and having twice the sentience/awareness sounds pretty difficult. The fairies run their bodies on auto-pilot, it'd be pretty rude to Kat if she was walking silently while off astral projecting around all day.
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Post by foxurus on May 6, 2021 1:48:38 GMT
Which is fair, he needs it and should be seeking it out, and the Court should do better at giving people the option or making the option known. But I'm not convinced a lack of the facilities existing is an answer. Tony just not seeking it out despite needing and wanting seems more likely. The Court not making it easy and or not encouraging it makes sense and is very plausible to me, but honestly the answer that makes sense to me is that therapy sessions are tough to write/pace in an authentic way and aren't very dynamic within this type of story. Also this world has strong supporting characters(Jones being a great example) that can serve the same story function as therapists, without having to write therapy scenes and simultaneously give said characters more screen time. Tony without therapy would be a disaster in the real world and I'd be super worried about the situation, but I have confidence something equivalent is happening right now or in the near future. I don't really understand why you think it's so implausible that there are no therapists in the Court. If the Court doesn't think individual therapy is useful (and we have no reason to think they do), then why would they employ people to do it? "Tony wants to but he just doesn't" is such a weird explanation. If not having therapists makes for a better story, the Court not having any is a pretty good justification. The Court exists to serve the story. Why would Tom put therapists in the Court when that just forces him to justify not using them? (Personally, I think it'd be fine if we saw Annie in therapy or if someone else mentioned they were going, but that's neither here nor there.)
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Post by foxurus on May 5, 2021 18:46:23 GMT
It's sunset, more red/orange light to dull the blue. Wouldn't the rest of her be more red, then? Or Jones? Palettes have been pretty consistent. Out of curiosity I found a recent pre-recombined panel to grab swatches from. Her skin and hair are almost the same, which makes the difference in her eye color more marked. Jones's palette isn't much different from the first page of the chapter either. Though it could be that Annie's eyes are just more washed-out as an artistic choice and it doesn't mean anything, but it still felt worth mentioning, because her eyes have been getting a lot of attention this chapter. The odd-eyed panel for Surma afaik is an unanswered mystery still... Also probably the boring answer, Surma had half her face in shadow, so one eye reflected more light. I do not believe that is a probably answer. There were lots of light and shadow effects that whole arc, but only that one panel had her eyes just... be different colors like that. They were otherwise consistently grey throughout. Her eyes are the unsaturated shade, compared to Annie's stronger blue tint. (A page earlier, there was a very close shot of Surma's eyes to see the grey clearly, as well.) Eyes are an important running theme in this comic in various instances, so why not here, in a girl who's had something strange and magical just happen to her soul? It could be a coloring error, and if it gets retconned then we'll know that for sure, heh. But for now, I'm sticking to thinking, "Tom's panel direction and color choices have been deliberate for some reason". Besides, if it turns out to be significant, I get cookies!
Jones is a different color, at least eyeballing it. Not "much" different is still different, when Tom eye droppers his colors. I assume Tom put a reddish-purpleish tint over the page. I do think that's part of why I found Annie creepy, though! Surma's thing is weird, I dunno about that. But I don't think it's related to this particular instance. I wonder if Tony and Jones have done any role-playing. No, nothing weird like that, but just practicing saying things. I often write down scripts or practice what I’m going to say in a stressful situation, and it helps to practice saying them out loud to a person. So I wonder if Jones has been coaching Tony. Can't imagine Jones doing that. Like I said last thread, she's not a therapist. She asks questions and listens to people talk, and she answers questions, but she seems to stick to that. Anyway, my opinion is, yes, Annie does look fine. We're not used at seeing her smile, she's always been very neutral and otherwise quite angsty. So maybe that's way it feels weird to many people. But when she did feel terrible inside and wanted to hide it, she always had this blank Jones-like face, which is what she seems to default to. In this chapter she looks relaxed and happy, like at the beginning of Torn Sea, or in Tall Tales, or the happier scenes of Get It Together. I'm used to seeing her smile, it's definitely not just that. Her eyebrows aren't moving at all and she's smiling while saying things that aren't positive, where normally her facial expressions change throughout a page. She's become a very emotive person. Paz: I'm assuming that you mean whether Annie would ask or order Renard to take Paz's body. I don't think Annie would order Renard to murder somebody, especially somebody so beloved of her own best friend. Paz has given Annie few reasons to like her lately, but no reasons to want her dead. We don't know whether the living being's spirit is gone the instant Renard jumps in, or whether they hang around unable to use their body and pass on as soon as Renard jumps out, but at the very least, the body of everything Renard has inhabited so far has died the moment he jumped out, if it was alive to begin with. Also, if Annie asked him rather than ordering him, Renard would likely refuse. He's been down that road before. I think it's just a tongue-in-cheek callback to how Renard said Paz was a nice choice when he and Kat talked about her relationship.
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Post by foxurus on May 5, 2021 18:08:15 GMT
Sorry about combining two different quotes. About 95% of the people I know who need/needed therapy don't/didn't seek it out easily, at best it was a struggle to come to the decision and at worst it was something they only did when forced to, and then for as little time as possible. I mean the real world has therapists that aren't Lindsey like, and a lot of people won't seek them out. A lack of the resources as a whole or a Court plot to stop people from going seems to me like an explanation for a situation that's rather common: people don't like seeking out therapy regardless of if they need it or have access to it. Mental health is inherently difficult to work on, which is why people in US colleges who are struggling are referred to campus counselors instead of just left to figure it out on their own, and why my doctor sat with me, called a therapist, and scheduled an appointment for me after I filled out their mandatory how-are-you-these-past-two-weeks sheet, because I wouldn't have done it by myself. The Court, as a entity which has its own culture, seemingly exists in a mostly-economyless bubble of socialism, and has a huge amount of information on and power over everyone in it, should have an obligation to connect people with the support they need. There is a certain point where the barriers to entry are high enough that it is equivalent to not having the resource at all. Tony actively wants to work on his mental health; he doesn't have any logistical setbacks like lack of money, transportation, or time; and he's able and eager to talk about his problems in one-on-one settings. Maybe most people don't want therapy, but it sure seems like Tony would appreciate it, so I'm searching for an explanation for why he's not getting it.
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Post by foxurus on May 5, 2021 7:15:22 GMT
"Everyone" is happier, huh Jones?
Annie is creeping me out in this page, iunno. Emote more, please.
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Post by foxurus on May 5, 2021 7:06:52 GMT
Just so many good points here, though I think perhaps a couples therapist would still have enough general background to be able to at least start with other types of therapy. But anyway, we've established that there's an England (with a Queen, though not the Queen Elizabeth of the real world), a Birmingham that has a Good Hope Hospital like the real-world Birmingham, entertainment industries that have produced The X-Files and Hellboy, as well as various musical artists who also exist in the real world. There's a Scotland and an Italy. There's a New World that at least had a Jamestown colony and an ill-fated Roanoake colony. The geological timescale is similar to the real world's. My theory, anyway, is that the world is about the same as the real world on the macroscopic scale, the broad brush strokes. But the fine details differ a bit. Most people wouldn't believe a place like Gunnerkrigg Court exists, but that's most people. A few do, enough to make interesting stories happen. And in a world like that, a crustacean (or whatever a merostomatozon counts as) attending a school somewhere would, if word got out, be an international sensation, enough to interfere with that education. Although I suppose other places like GC could exist, meaning secretive places that seek out or at least accept the unusual and are also difficult to find and get to, and they might also train therapists of non-human species. I'm going with my own argument that where one exists, there could be more. That would imply that it isn't necessarily true that there are other therapists in the Court at all; Lindsey wasn't necessarily trained and certified at the Court. Or she could've been trained entirely by other merostomatozon, we don't really know what their society looks like... Lindsey probably could be an adequate therapist for general things, but Tony (and a lot of the cast!) definitely needs a specialist. It's possible she doesn't even work as a counselor any more, she's got another job after all. Being potentially the only therapist in the whole Court would be horribly draining! There's a bunch of canon-established video games too like Kojima's games, and Studio Ghibli (or at least Princess Mononoke). I like to theorize that people have a broad general understanding that Weird Stuff happens sometimes, and weird people, and there's just a lot of unexplained stuff that happens in the world. Kind of like how we go, "Huh, wow, people can hold their breath for thirty minutes/eat cars/keep growing for their entire lives, that's wild," and then carry on with our day cause that's just a weird thing that exists. The Court likes to be secretive, so it specifically is probably not a thing people know about -- nor the fact that actual literal gods exist in the Gillite Woods. People who care about the weird stuff they hear about enough to look into it probably end up in the Court anyway (or a similar place, like you said). But like. A fingerprint showed up on the moon one day. City fairies are an established thing in the comic, and fairies don't seem to have any invisible-to-normal-people-eyes abilities. There's GOTTA be some kind of general awareness of magicky weirdness being a thing, I think.
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Post by foxurus on May 5, 2021 2:30:55 GMT
This reads like speculation or personal insertion to me, no offense meant. Speaking about Hogwarts lack of a psychologists isnt really an accurate comparison to the Court, only the school section of the Court. The Wizard world absolutely has mental health services, big part of the story in fact, and based off of being shown that an individual in the court has training in this area, which I assume happened in court (cause where else could Lindsey go to school, considering what she is) its pretty reasonable to assume such facilities exist. I dunno how she is an exception that proves the rule, she seems more like evidence that metal health services are a thing somewhere in the Court. To each there own I guess. Even if the Court has therapists, it's not good at providing people with the mental health treatment they need. In the most obvious example, all these kids are now in a warzone and we haven't heard any mention of any of them being connected to therapists. Also, Annie has publicly flipped out two times with obvious, property destroying, fiery anger and no one has referred her to a therapist. Jones is ostensibly having this whole conversation because people in the Court are concerned about her mental wellbeing, but she has not been visited by a mental health professional. She has, though, been given prompt medical treatment when she needed it. Maybe therapists technically exist in the Court. But how do you go about setting up appointments with them if you've never heard about them, and if you've lived your whole life in a place that didn't suggest counselling for anything, when would you ever develop the idea that that's an option for you and you should pursue it? I've been looking at things the other way. If no therapist of any kind had ever been mentioned in the comic, I would right now be saying that there's no evidence of any therapists in the Court at all. But since there's one, that implies that there's a means by which someone becomes one, and that in turn means there could be others. In fact, I'd say it's likely. Why set up an infrastructure to train therapists and then train one therapist? Perhaps Lindsey's therapy certification comes from outside the Court, someone may ask? Where exactly in the world outside of the Court would there be a therapy certification program that a very large crustacean could apply to and complete? The Court likes romantic relationships. From what we've seen, they haven't ever dissuaded any romantic relationships with non-robots, despite having the ability to. Tony & Surma and Donald & Anja were both childhood sweethearts from the Court who got married and had a child, and Smitty's parents can be assumed to be in the Court as he was born there. Perhaps the Court encourages committed relationships because they often lead to children, and special abilities seem to be genetic, and it's easier to have kids born in the Court than have to go fetch them from the outside world. Children who have some emotional stability in their life (like undivorced parents give) are more likely to not explode into flames and run into the forest, and have more time to focus on honing their special abilities which will help the Court. It also establishes ties to the Court; if one half of the couple wants to stay, the other is naturally going to be enticed to stay as well, as will any children they have. Adults in the Court keep it running, and it makes the investment in the children worthwhile. There are reasons why a place like the Court would have couples' counselors but not general counselors. Also, is the outside world quite as normal as ours? What do we have established about it? There's outsiders who know about the Court's workings, people like Paz's family who know she can talk to animals, so there's at least some understanding of magic by some people. Alistair's parents weren't from the Court, yet they knew how to arrange turning into birds. Maybe there's people who can train giant sapient crustaceans.
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Post by foxurus on May 3, 2021 8:17:59 GMT
Very late to this but this comic has such amazing composition and details without feeling "overstylized"! I love how perfectly it conveys Zimmy's vision of the world and the relief she experiences when Gamma is here. Some of her visions remind me of Silent Hill but also Basil Wolverton's art with the way people/things are deformed. Can't thank Tom enough for putting the extra comics for free on his website tbh. I missed this comic, thanks for resurrecting the thread so I could read it.
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Post by foxurus on May 3, 2021 8:11:01 GMT
Also I really like how Tony is drawn in the second panel.
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Post by foxurus on May 3, 2021 8:10:22 GMT
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Post by foxurus on May 3, 2021 7:22:34 GMT
There's something about the way Jones keeps repeating that she doesn't experience emotions that makes me...doubt. Like, she's established it so many times already, why repeat it? It's unusual. Pfft that's ridiculous, Jones doesn't have feelings. Humans have feelings, and they're far too interesting and cool and worthwhile for her to be like them. Jones should spend more time learning about animals before she makes statements about what's uniquely human. Elephants, for example, grieve when a herd member dies and even have funerals.
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Post by foxurus on May 3, 2021 2:37:43 GMT
Renard's statement " But if I take his body... he could die!" (is this The Incident referenced above?) strongly suggests that Renard still didn't know for sure what would happen. Coyote, being Coyote, didn't give Renard a straight answer. Instead, he basically goaded him into possessing Daniel. But in the page linked above, Coyote's statement "any body he took that was not his own would die when it was used up" implies that he knew Renard's use of the body-snatching power would always kill the possessed. I suspect that Coyote was well aware of the limitations of Renard's power and Renard was not, and he didn't take the time to experiment extensively to find out. Per Coyote, Renard took over Daniel's body " soon" after he was given the power. More relevant links! Coyote once again shows the danger in never telling a lie. "You can't be sure" implies "...and neither can I", but it doesn't state it. Mind that Coyote being immortal, him saying "soon" doesn't necessarily mean anything.
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Post by foxurus on May 2, 2021 23:18:38 GMT
Lots of those links were broken, at least on my end, silicondream.
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Post by foxurus on May 2, 2021 20:57:16 GMT
He would presumably have had to kill two animals to establish a pattern, unless Coyote straight up told him what the deal was after the first time. Found it! If what's depicted here is true, then he returned directly to his own body after possessing the rabbit.
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Post by foxurus on May 2, 2021 18:46:32 GMT
James was collected from his parents by the Court, seemingly without them really knowing what the Court was about. We haven't seen him do anything outside of his knightly abilities, right? Why do you guys think he was pegged? Or did the Court send out flyers or something?
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Post by foxurus on May 2, 2021 18:24:18 GMT
It is difficult for me to be upset with Rey for that, first killing a person by accident and then faced with being stuck inside a cage for an eternity. (For the record he's killed two, though Sivo was a soldier, not a civilian.) It was not an accident. He knew that possessing somebody would have caused the death of the possessed. Oh, you're correct. I forgot he tried it with a rabbit first, right? I'm having trouble finding the page...
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Post by foxurus on May 2, 2021 8:42:14 GMT
1) A message being sent doesn't require that the author explicate "this scenario is true all the time in all cases" in the footnotes to be harmful. 2) I didn't say that would be gaslighty, what I said would be gaslighty would be rewinding the sympathy building being basically thrust on unaware readers by the power of narrative perspective management to say, "Nah, but that was wrong, actually Tony is responsible for his actions and not just a victim." I also said that while that would be some bullshit writing it would be a lot better than the alternative which is just. Playing that straight. And no frankly I don't think I could just say it's bad writing etc.; I think this complaint is pretty arbitrary and it's the underlying criticism that wrankles you, and my phrasing it differently wouldn't avoid that. As a point of fact I've taken significant pains to phrase everything I've said here very carefully and, really about as charitably as possible given the context. 1. I know. 2. Sure, whatever. That's not gaslighting. I added the reason why gaslight is a word that I am uncomfortable with being used when it's not describing abuse in my previous post. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to edit after you'd responded. I don't care about your criticism. People saying Tony is abusive and horrible and should go die in a ditch doesn't bother me. I am bowing out of this conversation with you, though.
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Post by foxurus on May 2, 2021 8:15:27 GMT
Author intentionality can be murky. Does an author stop and say, "I will write an arc about how abuse is okay because sadness"? No probably not. Does an author write a character that is a shitty person and then want to explore them more and in doing so keep writing backwards to justify that character's previous shitty actions even if it has really unpleasant and horrible implications? Well that happens all the goddamn time. Yeah, I agree. And that isn't gaslighting, and it isn't saying every other person will act like Tony. If there were multiple Tony-likes in the comic and they all were abusive to their children, you could say that the author is implying that all people with Tony's problems will be abusive. Otherwise, it's unreasonable to extrapolate that as a representation of everyone with mental illness. You can say it's misleading, you can say it's unrealistic, you can say it's bad writing, you can say it's advocating sympathy for active abusers and that's immoral. But it's not prescribing a fate to everyone with mental illness and it sure as hell isn't gaslighting. Gaslighting is a specific kind of abuse wherein the perpetrator tries to make the victim doubt their own mind, perception, and memory. And incorrectly signaling themes in a story isn't that.Edited to add: I've been gaslit. Not to try and pull rank or whatever, you might've been too. But for me, it's really triggering to have that word come up out of nowhere, because then I think about what the word means and that makes me remember how it feels and it's just all really unpleasant, so please, can you just say misleading or whatever unless you actually think Tom is trying to abuse his readers? Also. Here is a way you could have worded your first post that I wouldn't have had any problems with: "It is very hard to overstate how much it sucks to have an arc about how having mental health problems means it's okay to be an emotionally abusive parent." That is a reasonable critique of the comic. I don't agree with it, but it's a reasonable interpretation without accusing Tom of thinking everyone with mental health problems is an abuser.
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Post by foxurus on May 2, 2021 3:35:30 GMT
When has Tony ever tried to kill Annie or anyone in fact? You must be thinking of Rey, he's the dude who's killed a guy and tried to kill Annie. Or maybe Coyete and/or Ysengrin. It is difficult for me to be upset with Rey for that, first killing a person by accident and then faced with being stuck inside a cage for an eternity. (For the record he's killed two, though Sivo was a soldier, not a civilian.) Tony's killed even fewer relatives than Kat; approximately the same amount as Smitty. what Hope you are doing okay, liminal. <3
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Post by foxurus on May 2, 2021 3:15:43 GMT
silicondream (I hope that works, walls of text are a pain to edit down on mobile ): A difference in definitions, then, I think. Ignoring(?) how other people will be affected by something and doing it anyway because it furthers your goals is self-absorbed, in my book. I think I'd define it loosely as being generally selfish, usually as a result of (often willfully) not self-reflecting. Surma's lack of self-reflection might be understandable, maybe she felt she didn't have time for bad feelings cuz she wasn't gonna live very long anyway, but not excusable, imo. Letting yourself hurt people because it's easier that way is no bueno. I feel like she was probably more obedient than loyal; doing what the Court wanted likely gave her privileges (like visiting the forest) and in my doesn't-self-reflect interpretation, she probably didn't think too hard about the ethics of it all. It's a fair point about her dealing with her own intense trauma, though. That she reacted by putting it all in a box and shoving it into the deepest part of her brain and then Never Ever opening the box again is a fair reason to not be able to teach Annie good coping skills. If she can't cope with it, then it's a bit much to ask her to teach someone else to. Don't feel obligated to respond re: Awful Dog Gods, Coyote's gaslighting is sommin that makes me really uncomfortable so I won't be great at being reflective and contemplative during a convo about it, haha. (But also you can respond if you do want to.)
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Post by foxurus on May 1, 2021 21:14:40 GMT
...gaslighty as Hell... ...excusing abuse... ...a shit dad... ...shit parents... ...abusive parents... ...abuse... ...emotional abuse... ...neglect... ...emotional abuse... ...child abuse... ...trauma and abuse... ...I'm not even going to bother addressing anyone [who disagrees with me]... Oh, give it a rest. The comic has explored abuse a lot, through depictions of it and of its effects. Calling the comic gaslighty (aka, abusive) is a bit much, and the snide comment about people who disagree with them was...snide, but the rest is fine. Discussions that label characters' behaviors as abusive are relevant, just like any other discussion about characters. This is a forum to discuss the comic, after all. (As an aside, the comment about not bothering to address certain people feels like it was pointed at me? Which is a little upsetting because I don't think I've been particularly unreasonable re: Tony's abuse. I don't mind Red not addressing my post, but dismissively subtweeting about it feels unwarranted.) Hell is watching otherwise thoughtful folks act snide and reductive toward actual human people, when those people express reasonable frustration with their fictional pet abuser. But of course, throwing the word "abuser" out there so casually makes me a From Tumblr, which I infer from the disdain is some kind of subhuman whose opinions aren't worth caring about. "Arguing with tumblr" wasn't thrown out after the word "abusive" was used, it was thrown out after the user said the comic is being written to show that all people with mental illness will be abusive parents. Which is an uncharitable take of an actual human (Tom). Also, it's not about worthless opinions, it's about how arguing with a hostile brick wall who will use the worst interpretation of your words against you is an exercise in frustration. Whether that applies to Red is debatable, but regardless, their opinions -- and yours -- are worthwhile, and I care about them. -- A lot of people on both sides of this topic are commenting from experience, and all of those experiences are likely to be painful ones. Please, be as kind as you can muster.
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Post by foxurus on Apr 30, 2021 22:28:03 GMT
During one of the City Face interludes, characters from the comic would post in the comment section. I think you can still find them somewhere, maybe on the wiki? But it's kind of sad you can't find them on the site any more.
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Post by foxurus on Apr 30, 2021 21:36:26 GMT
Hmm. I've never felt like this all was supposed to explain him lashing out at Annie after his return.
Tony has been housing Annie for a while now. He cooks meals for her and does her homework with her. He gives her (stony-faced) compliments and advocates for her agency to others. He lets her help him with his arm. He works in the living room, where she can always see him if she wants to or ask for help. They're in close proximity to each other for large portions of every single day.
Tony hasn't been able to talk to her much, but if one were to look at their household without being able to hear anything, I think it'd look like a pretty normal house with a teenage girl and her single father.
He's emotionally distant now, but I don't think he's being abusive. And this conversation isn't about his behavior upon returning to the Court or his decision to leave. It's about the past year after Annie moved in with him, and about her childhood when they all lived together.
At most, it's saying that if someone has severe social anxiety they'll be distant from their child, but I really don't believe Tom's trying to say that everyone with social anxiety will have this problem. And while he's been abusive and negligent in the past, I don't think being distant should be considered abuse. (Which isn't saying that it's good.)
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Post by foxurus on Apr 30, 2021 9:16:34 GMT
I hope one day Annie gets to hear her dad tell her he loves her. I hope Tony gets to say it to her some day.
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Post by foxurus on Apr 30, 2021 6:47:18 GMT
[...] I trust that she eventually will cause ultimately she's a good kid but I don't care what the aftermath of that was. It was a monstrous thing to do.*sigh* I guess I've kind of gotten tired of this fandom twisting these characters and their motivations* until they're unrecognizable. If they're not making Annie some grand hero or wide-eyed waif who doesn't make terrible or stupid decisions sometimes or should not be judged when she does, they're turning Surma/Tony/Paz into a monster or some other nonsense. Do you see the irony here? You're being pretty rude about other people having different opinions than you about a story. People were not caps locking about how eeeeeviiiil Paz is in that thread, they were offering a different reading of the comic that put her in a more negative light. Not liking a character doesn't make everything someone says about the character irrational and over the top. It seems to me that people do point out Annie's faults an awful lot. Which is fine. But every time someone defends a character they immediately jump to how beloved and defended Annie is and how hypocritical that is, and from where I'm sitting it doesn't seem like she's any more defended than Paz. Or Surma. Or even Tony. People have different opinions on characters and will voice theirs in discussions, that's to be expected. And it's perfectly fine, as long as the personal attacks are left to fictional characters. If it's bothering you, it probably is a good idea to take a break. People exaggerating events is really not helpful in conversations. Exaggerating characters' negative attributes, or the arguments of the opposing point of view, just escalates things and makes everyone feel a lot more angry and annoyed. I feel like it's been happening a lot in this thread and it hasn't led to anything productive yet, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's going to continue to not be productive.
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Post by foxurus on Apr 29, 2021 20:26:17 GMT
That said, we do know that Surma didn't want her child born (and by implication raised) in the Court, so she most likely didn't plan for it. So when she knew she was dying, what did she have in mind for Antimony's future? Did she discuss Antimony's education with Tony, or did she just leave him to figure it out on his own? What did she assume he would do, especially when he had already repeatedly suggested bringing them back to the Court? If she was strongly opposed to Antimony ending up at the Court, we're not shown that she tried to make other arrangements (although I'm rather glad she didn't because then we would have no comic...). As several others have pointed out, Surma really dropped the ball with respect to her daughter's future; I'd like to know why. According to Annie, it was Surma who wanted her to go to the Court, though she probably wasn't privy to her parents' discussions about it. Regardless, Surma did at least plan that before she died.
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Post by foxurus on Apr 29, 2021 11:53:57 GMT
Surma is a self-absorbed asshole because, from what we know, she: 1. manipulated someone who had done nothing wrong into believing she loved him so that the Court could imprison him, simply because Coyote liked him and that made him theoretically dangerous; Court scheme. As I said earlier, this may have been the very reason behind making her the medium in the first place. That doesn't make it okay at all. Surma had agency and could say no to the Court, we have absolutely no reason to think anything counter to that. Imprisoning someone who hasn't done anything is a great hill to die on. Because it's a magic school with two gods living next door and a demon imprisoned inside?? This isn't politics. Nowhere else is like Gunnerkrigg Court, even if you're a kid who can see psychopomps. I don't get your last sentence. You don't tell the kid she's a freak, you tell the kid, "Hey this is where I grew up, and I think you'll like it there, and there's these things you should know about it." Because there were things she should have known about. Yes. Like Kat. Because it is at a school where children are, instead of a hospital which is just a hospital, and Surma knew other people there. Even if she had to leave the Court, she could have done literally anything proactive about Annie's social life and it'd be better than Annie being socialized almost exclusively by dead and dying people. Surma was a parent who was keenly aware that she'd be bedbound until she died. She had plenty of time to solve this problem, and she should have figured it out. That's her job. Tony didn't raise her. Surma could have prepared Annie for her death, and if she did, then Tony's stoicism would just be "the weird no-emotions thing Dad does" and not Annie's entire basis for how to deal with her mom being dead. Tony being a bad father doesn't make Surma a good mother. She can also be a bad parent. They can both be bad. Something being understandable or believable doesn't make it okay or the person not an asshole. Assholes are humans too. The things that Surma was doing to Renard were to the Court's benefit at the expense of Renard. The things that Annie was doing for Renard were to make up for her mom and for Renard's benefit against the Court. We can't call both of these things wrong if they are diametrically opposed. Either Renard was taken advantage of, and Annie is making up for that, or humanity was defending itself, and Annie is a traitor to humanity. It can't be that Surma was wrong for capturing him and Annie is also wrong for trying to free him. I mean, he did kill two sapient creatures in between Surma deceiving him and Annie trying to free him. That's a pretty notable change in circumstance. So I don't think it's hypocritical to admonish both of them for their actions.
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Post by foxurus on Apr 29, 2021 3:28:30 GMT
That's a thing I like about GC. There don't seem to be any completely evil characters. Everybody's got reasons for doing what they do. A villain who does evil things just because they like being evil is unrealistic. They're less effective a character than one who does something that hurts another because they're hurting, they don't realize what they're doing is harmful, they think they're doing the right thing, they're doing a good thing for a third character, etc. Though I'm really glad it improves the story for you, as someone who's always hated Coyote I have to disagree, haha. Fun to read about, but I think he's decidedly Evil in D&D terms. ("Evil" in real life is always murkier, but I'd personally argue he's that, too.)
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Post by foxurus on Apr 29, 2021 0:07:09 GMT
Surma and Annie couldn't bear to be apart. I always assumed that was because they were sharing the same flame.
Surma is a self-absorbed asshole because, from what we know, she: 1. manipulated someone who had done nothing wrong into believing she loved him so that the Court could imprison him, simply because Coyote liked him and that made him theoretically dangerous; 2. cheated on her long-time boyfriend because he was "never there", seemingly without actually addressing that with him, and then was an unsympathetic jerk about it when she broke the news, judging by her expression and defiant pose before James got violent; 3. up and left without any explanation and never talked to her best friends again because she didn't want them to see her dying; 4. didn't tell her child about being a fire elemental, or why the psychopomps wouldn't be taking her; 5. seemingly didn't do anything when she saw her husband struggling to connect to their child; and 6. failed Annie in several other ways, such as not teaching her anything about the Court even though she knew they'd send her there, denying her social interaction until she was twelve years old, and not teaching her how to deal with the grief she was about to experience. For god's sake, the kid thought she had to not cry about her mom being dead.
Worst person in the story? Not by a long shot. But she certainly had a track record of not considering other people and caused a lot of problems which everyone else decided to blame on anyone-but-her because of her charisma.
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Post by foxurus on Apr 28, 2021 9:03:15 GMT
I don't know, I don't see this as etheric. This is just pathology. I think there's definitely something to discover about his parents (why else would Tom have included that little throwaway line in Get Lost), but I think it's going to turn out to be some version of psychological abuse or trauma, more than an etheric block. He has too much insight into this problem for it to be magical - which of course doesn't mean he has the tools to deal with it. He clearly doesn't. 4am musings, anyway. I'm not saying there is no etheric reasons, but it also doesn't have to be that complicated. People see kids as a reflection of their parents to differing degrees. Even forgetting the fire elemental (which Tony may not have been fully aware of) and Annie looking like Surma, Surma died so her strongest connection to the world is through Annie. He sees his dead wife every time he looks at his daughter. That's an incredibly common trope in fiction. I guess the reason I think it's etheric is because there's plenty of reasons why he might have a hard time being himself with Annie, like the constant reminder that his wife is dead, or his guilt, but he doesn't list anything like that. "Two people. So my mind closed off to her." Of all the understandable, logical reasons why he'd have this problem, that one doesn't make any sense to me. Being reminded of your wife -- even thinking someone is your wife -- isn't anything like literally having a second person in the room. Why would his lockup about having other people around come into play? The only similarity I can see is how it's phrased, like it's this poorly worded rule that has been placed on him by someone else.
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