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Post by aline on Feb 23, 2022 6:48:09 GMT
Well, to be honest they seem to mostly be assholes... You know, I think you have a point here. Both times we've seen elf kids in the wild, they were up to no good.
1. Harassing Zimmy because she was having problems and looked, um, "demon-like"
2. Bugging Lana because she may not be real, then asking for a free show. Or possibly something worse - not clear.
Brats or creepy juvenile delinquents? Or what?
Number 1 never happened except in Zimmy's head.
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Post by aline on Feb 22, 2022 9:20:02 GMT
I don't know what's going through his mind but it might also have something to do with his present form. Coyote when he was a dead goose in a bush started to forget he wasn't really a dead goose in a bush. Loup didn't juste take the form of Jerek, Jerek also has a personality completely disconnected from Loup's and maybe there is a weird thing going on where the feelings of fake Jerek are affecting Loup. Maybe Loup started to forget he's not really Lana's friend and he felt protective of her for that reason. I thought of this myself, but (at least as far as I understood it) we were privy to Loup's thoughts right until the elf boys turned up, and those said he had a low opinion of NP in general and Lana in particular, and what he is focused on are Annie and those lights he can see inside the Court... Plus, if Loup actually started to forget he is not actually Jerrek, shouldn't he take up Jerrek's timid personality then? What he is doing here does not look at all like something the "Jerrek" he has shown us so far would do.
Let's say if it turns out the Jerrek persona made him do it after all, I will expect Loup to be as surprised as I will be myself.
What I'm saying is, this may not be an on/off switch but a slower, more subtle process. It took Coyote four days to forget who he was when he pretended to be a dead goose. There might be gradual progress from thinking fully like Coyote and fully believing to be a dead goose. So even though Loup still knows he's Loup and still has his personality, some part of his thoughts might be contaminated by the pretense. If that is the case, I would expect the contamination to become worse, especially since there is a high chance he would have a harder time controlling it than Coyote would.
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Post by aline on Feb 21, 2022 15:05:12 GMT
Idk, I wouldn't be surprised if in this case it will literally just be "he's an abuser and he's going to get called out on it". Loup IS an abuser. 'Jerrek' is only doing this to further his own interests. This is not "Tony is horrible to Antimony, but he actually really cares about her and just wants her to do better at school". This is "a completely selfish god-like creature just got annoyed at creatures that used to fear and respect him now ignoring him". Yeah, Loup has really other things to worry about (in his opinion), those insignificant people just keep him from getting along with his plans. I don't know what's going through his mind but it might also have something to do with his present form. Coyote when he was a dead goose in a bush started to forget he wasn't really a dead goose in a bush. Loup didn't juste take the form of Jerek, Jerek also has a personality completely disconnected from Loup's and maybe there is a weird thing going on where the feelings of fake Jerek are affecting Loup. Maybe Loup started to forget he's not really Lana's friend and he felt protective of her for that reason.
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Post by aline on Feb 21, 2022 12:25:06 GMT
Tom about to pull his patented "he's an abuser but sometimes their heart is in the right place"-schtick. I can never tell if it's a problematic relationship with abuse, or an attempt at an "it's problematic so it must be complex!" style of writing. Not the "bad character must not be seen to ever have a good feeling and / or change" discourse again, please, I beg of you. We've all suffered enough.
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Post by aline on Feb 18, 2022 15:35:23 GMT
I'm surprised I haven't seen this take yet because when I read the page I immediately thought that the reason Loup was intervening was because he was "protecting" (BIG quotes) the elves, not her. He has a huge amount of disdain for the court, its inhabitants, and it seems especially NP (at least the vibes I've gotten). Plus, given he's from the forest and part Coyote, I don't think he'd be bothered by overt sexuality or even borderline-nonconsensual sexuality. Loup is also part Ys, and Ys has expressed extreme dislike of the forest being "contaminated" by the court. I think it's more likely that he views the *elves* as his property and wasn't going to stand by and let them associate with NP in that way, and is punishing them for stepping out of line. He ejected them from the Forest and gave them to the Court without a second thought because Annie said she needed some help moving wood. I doubt he gives a crap who they associate with.
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Post by aline on Feb 18, 2022 15:04:17 GMT
I wouldn't watch the show "the sex lives of college girls" by Mindy Kaling. Her self insert character is like 100x more sex positive than Lana is doing now I think you missed my second comment. I'm not interpreting this as sex positive. It looks to me like Lana meant that she knew what boys like in the sense of how she created her physical form, not in the sense that she was propositioning them for sex. The question mark in the third panel implies to me she had no idea they wanted to get physical with her. Exactly this. I wonder what she even knows about sex in general. Has any of those robots except for Arthur had The Talk? They're not children exactly, but they were very quickly and massively released into an entirely new physical reality and lots of things that were never relevant to them have become important knowledge to have. Not sure the humans involved thought this through, especially since they have to rush so much.
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Post by aline on Feb 18, 2022 14:59:36 GMT
Is anyone else surprised by the rapey vibes of the scene? Yes. I don't like it. I imagine from the elves point of view it looks like she is looking for some fun, and they're merely enthusiastic about participating in that. But the whole mood of the scene, with her being outnumbered, them starting off by touching her and questioning whether she's real, it's honestly quite creepy. Wouldn't think I'd read that in GC. Although the moment when Loup declared his love for Annie and wanted her to stay with him forever also felt creepy it wasn't as explicitely sexual.
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Post by aline on Feb 16, 2022 8:07:21 GMT
This page is a bit creepy.
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Post by aline on Feb 9, 2022 15:59:19 GMT
I thought it was pretty clear it was the Court's Omega device that Loup referenced, not Kat or anything Kat built.
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Post by aline on Feb 7, 2022 12:20:34 GMT
They perhaps look "empty" to Loup but it doesn't mean they are. Different people see different things in the ether. The fairies couldn't see the strings of fate in Smithy's hand but Annie and Jeanne could. I think it's maybe Loup who is outside his area of expertise.
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Post by aline on Feb 2, 2022 10:11:19 GMT
I still think "Loup" basically is Ysengrin, just with Coyote's power and a few tweaks he thought would make him an ideal god. I don't. Ysengrin had many flaws but he was honest even in his brutality. Straightforward. He didn't play games. He either ate you or didn't. This whole "let's split Annie in two to confuse everybody and amuse myself while using it as pressure to force people into advancing my agenda", that was very much a Coyote kind of mind game. Coyote told Loup he was "less than the sum of his parts" and I feel like Loup is inferior to both Coyote and Ysengrin on pretty much every metric that matters.
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Post by aline on Jan 17, 2022 20:11:33 GMT
Do you think Anthony has been working on the Omega device since he was young, around that time he got together with Surma? I thought the omega device would be something that removes the ether entirely. But then Anthony would be glad to work on it during Surma's pregnancy if it could save her. So now I'm not sure what the omega device is for. It almost seems like it's a device that dictates the Court's actions by telling them what's possible with calculations. We know he did. But that doesn't help us much. Even is if the omega device is something that can remove the ether, it doesn't mean it can be applied to a person. And removing the ether from someone like Surma might just as soon kill her than save her.
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Post by aline on Jan 17, 2022 9:15:06 GMT
Come to think of it, has Annie mentioned Omega in the presence of either Juliette or Arthur before? I don't think so... Juliette is close enough with Tony that she trusted him to help with Arthur's body, it would make sense for her to be familiar with his work for the shadow men. She probably knows some things about the omega device.
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Post by aline on Jan 14, 2022 12:49:19 GMT
Shell obviously doesn't know the whole plan. So what she's giving us is a lie by omission at best. The truth is probably either somewhat sinister or dangerous because else, why keep loyal members of the shadow men like her out of the loop?
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Post by aline on Jan 13, 2022 12:10:27 GMT
My point is that I don't understand what makes the ether inherently unfair. The assumption seems to be that a world with ether in it is inherently more unfair than a ether-free world like ours. That's what Shell is saying. I dispute that because the laws of physics aren't "fair" either. Yes, strictly speaking they apply the same way to everyone, but outside of a lab with controlled conditions, the laws a physics will still cause disasters that blindly kill some people and not others. I don't see why an ether-free world should be more fair than a world with ether. It would be one thing if they were talking only about super powerful creatures like Loup and saying "we can't deal with that" but they think things like Anja's computer or Eglamore's wards, or the elves' tree magic are unfair too and shouldn't exist, I just don't see any logic in that. Why not? I agree. The difference between a world with and one without Ether is not that one is fair and the other is not. The difference is predictability. The aforementioned natural disasters obey the laws of nature and can be predicted, given the necessary mathematical model, measurements, computing power etc. But Etheric effects? Not so much. That is not true, we have seen many times that the ether follows its own laws, hence how Kat can channel it through her magical computer. She was able to study the arrow and infer enough to use it to do something completely different than its primary use, and give the robots ownership of their new body by means of a magical contract. She also understood how to bring the golems to life despite their etheric nature. The ether has its own logic, and we've seen many people be taught how things work in the unseen world. The Court even has ether collecting stations. That means they can detect it, channel it and store it, which you can only do if you know how the ether reacts to certain things. The main difference /issue seems to be "we can't explain why that happens / that should be impossible" (which I also have a problem with because that's true of many actual real world things too but whatever, it's the premisse of the comic). Surma knew she'd die. That was predictable (by someone who understands how the ether works), but not explainable in medical terms.
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Post by aline on Jan 12, 2022 12:32:17 GMT
So, an EtherNation will be created with all the etheric users/beings united? That does not square with Ysengrin's warning about The Court taking Annie far, far away, so my theory is that they will just "destroy" their powers. Maybe the Omega device will nullify the etheric side of everybody, so all humans can go with them? What about Rey? Will Rey be dispelled to just a ghost? Two thoughts: Annie could be a very big etheric power source, and eeerm... Omega could very well be an etheric hydrogen bomb to level the entire forest and everything in it. So yeah, it'll "nullify" every etheric being. Or they need Annie because they need Tony, who apparently spent decades on this Omega thing. They already used Annie to blackmail Tony into coming back. Presumably they thought he was important to the project.
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Post by aline on Jan 12, 2022 12:28:11 GMT
I disagree. Many people in the Court have been there all their life. If they're left behind they'll lose at once their home, their job, their entire way of life. People like Anja can probably adjust to some other city somehow, even if they feel terrible about the rejection, but what will happen to those Forest creatures who where made into humans? How are they going to function outside of the Court? I doubt they were even told what money is and how it works. They were used for years for some unnamed purpose and now they're on their own? It's cruel. It's definitely cruel and it's always unpleasant to lose your job/home (twenty times more if its forced) but, come on. Tonny found several weird communities of etheric creatures. The Court is not the center of the universe. Many of these etheric creatures were not born in Court but arrived from somewhere else. Would Red and Ayilu not be able to return to the forest? There are opportunities elsewhere, and there is the possibility that every creature and person scorned by or displeased with the Court will just start their own etheric!Court. Unless the Court's relocation of people is forced, violent or extremely abrupt, then I fail to see the tragedy of it (although I do see its cruelty). It didn't say they would all starve and die. You said you can't see how it's a bad thing. I said I disagree because it's cruel to a significant part of the current Court community who will be left behind to fend for themselves. It's possible to decide something is a bad thing and should be prevented before reaching the stage of people getting killed, enslaved or forcefully deported. Not that I think they'll succeed anyway. Stage 1 of that plan was "steal Coyote's powers" and despite centuries of planning that's not exactly going swimmingly.
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Post by aline on Jan 12, 2022 9:35:46 GMT
I fail to see how any of this is, by itself, a threat or a bad thing. "If you don't want to take us with you, then good riddance! We don't want to come with you either." Arthur and his gf (forgot her name) wanted to leave. Tonny and Surma wanted to stay away. Similar to the "they were going to remove [Annie] from the program entirely" threat. The only way this is a bad thing is if the Court plans to annihalate or enslave etheric beings by force when they leave. I disagree. Many people in the Court have been there all their life. If they're left behind they'll lose at once their home, their job, their entire way of life. People like Anja can probably adjust to some other city somehow, even if they feel terrible about the rejection, but what will happen to those Forest creatures who where made into humans? How are they going to function outside of the Court? I doubt they were even told what money is and how it works. They were used for years for some unnamed purpose and now they're on their own? It's cruel.
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Post by aline on Jan 12, 2022 8:24:39 GMT
If mindlessly destroying cities makes things unfair, then we've got to be fair and add earthquakes, storms and the like to the list of unfair things, no? But since they follow the laws of nature I guess those are fair game. Same with war bombings or nuclear disasters, after all, it kills people but not physics, welp But more seriously, most etheric creatures we've met have limited abilities, and I have a hard time understanding how tree elves making tree houses somehow deprives humans of anything. But the shadow men don't think any use of etheric power is fine, hence the hilariously insane situation that Aata banned himself and is now having a Tragic Moment for saving someone's life. And let's not forget people like Eglamore, or Kat's father, or even Kat herself, who have no etheric affinity but still use a few etheric tricks to great benefit. How is the ether unfair to them? The shadow men at this point feel more like a cult that invented a new kind of sin than an organization having anything to do with science or rational thought. I'm sure I misunderstood your joke/point, but it sounds like you are saying that people/the court aren't researching how to control, understand, and end earthquakes, dangerous storms and war/bombings, or maybe you are you saying we/they shouldn't be trying to in the first place? Or prehaps its a "how can you be unhappy about that injustice when this other injustice exists? By caring more about the one, you're a hypocrite" thing. My point is that I don't understand what makes the ether inherently unfair. The assumption seems to be that a world with ether in it is inherently more unfair than a ether-free world like ours. That's what Shell is saying. I dispute that because the laws of physics aren't "fair" either. Yes, strictly speaking they apply the same way to everyone, but outside of a lab with controlled conditions, the laws a physics will still cause disasters that blindly kill some people and not others. I don't see why an ether-free world should be more fair than a world with ether. It would be one thing if they were talking only about super powerful creatures like Loup and saying "we can't deal with that" but they think things like Anja's computer or Eglamore's wards, or the elves' tree magic are unfair too and shouldn't exist, I just don't see any logic in that. Why not?
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Post by aline on Jan 10, 2022 22:47:14 GMT
WTF. People being able to do stuff other people aren't able to do describes the entirety of human diversity. Well... in this case its more like some people are able to cause a massive destruction of a city enraging some cannibalistic trickster deity, and you can only stand and watch as the world burn around You. Guess she might feel slightly disgruntled. If mindlessly destroying cities makes things unfair, then we've got to be fair and add earthquakes, storms and the like to the list of unfair things, no? But since they follow the laws of nature I guess those are fair game. Same with war bombings or nuclear disasters, after all, it kills people but not physics, welp But more seriously, most etheric creatures we've met have limited abilities, and I have a hard time understanding how tree elves making tree houses somehow deprives humans of anything. But the shadow men don't think any use of etheric power is fine, hence the hilariously insane situation that Aata banned himself and is now having a Tragic Moment for saving someone's life. And let's not forget people like Eglamore, or Kat's father, or even Kat herself, who have no etheric affinity but still use a few etheric tricks to great benefit. How is the ether unfair to them? The shadow men at this point feel more like a cult that invented a new kind of sin than an organization having anything to do with science or rational thought.
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Post by aline on Jan 10, 2022 8:17:50 GMT
It's like me saying since I have ADHD nobody should use their executive function. Just imagine if everyone was as entitled as those ridiculous people. Dude. WTF. People being able to do stuff other people aren't able to do describes the entirety of human diversity. With a bit of collaboration it gives birth to so many great things! But no, you decided you were going to sulk and hide from it. Fantastic. I can see the general fairness of the world increasing the more you scowl, Michelle, keep at it.
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Post by aline on Jan 5, 2022 13:25:49 GMT
Getting angry at Coyote is human, but not very scientific. True science would demand that they keep trying to understand and explain the Ether, rather than rejecting it altogether... What do you mean by true science? I mostly agree with you, the deductive/research aspects of science in its pure form always strives to understand. But other types of science, the more physical sciences, want to have consistent rules to test against, that aren't going to be altered at a whim. Wanting to remove ether from the equation instead of trying to understand the how makes sense for say, building engineering. An ether based being changing the meaning of structural integrity for example is just an inconvenience regardless of the how. A scientist in a magic world just wanting to stop that entirely instead of understanding the how would make perfect sense to me. I'm an engineer and I don't "want" consistent rules. You *discover* how the world works and then you deal with it. And then you build things based on it. Like Anja's computer. Or whatever Kat has been doing which largely integrates etheric stuff into the process, and does change things in predictable ways. And as we discovered with the whole Annie/Rey ownership contract, the ether does have rules. It's a matter of discovering them. As for what "makes sense", how many of you can explain to me exactly why gravity works the way it does? We know what it does, how it applies to things in the world, but why exactly do objects attract each other depending on their masses? Why do some particle have mass and others not? Are we supposed to call magic everything we don't understand 100%?
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Post by aline on Jan 3, 2022 12:27:40 GMT
Can you imagine a scientist going "Yeah, but quantum theory is really unfair, man, a thing is both there and not there at the same time? Not done, dude, not done. It's not ok unless it makes sense to me." What complete BS. I mean, that sounds like many scientists I know, including me. Science is pretty much all about things not being ok unless they make sense, and then doing all the investigative work required to make sense of them and making those data available to all (pending patents anyway). Scientists usually question their theories about the world when things don't match up. They don't look at the world and tell it to get a grip and run in a way that seems more logical. To me it looks like a mental confusion between rules that have to be followed like "raise your hand before you speak" and physics rules. Etheric creatures are presented as beings that can decide to not follow the rules of the world and speak out of turn, it being "unjust". But physics rules don't work like that. They are just observations about the world, and if they don't predict some outcomes they're either wrong or incomplete. And it might be forever beyond humans to describe etheric phenomenons for some in-universe reason, but so what? And how would they know for sure that it's impossible, given the amount of real stuff that seems to make no sense and that we have yet to explain despite centuries of efforts? Seriously, WTF. I feel this comic greatly overestimates how rigidly science looks at the world. Real scientists would not be put off by the ether. They would be writing full shelves of unprovable theories about it and throw tea kettles at each other while arguing about which one is correct.
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Post by aline on Jan 3, 2022 8:49:42 GMT
Beings like Coyote being able to break the rules does seem a bit unjust. ...but why would anyone think reality in the GCU would be just? Yes. I mean, bringing justice into this is complete nonsense. Gravity isn't just, mountains and volcanos and tornados aren't just, they just are. Whether humans are able to formulate certain phenonemons into rules they can understand or not, the world is just what it is. Can you imagine a scientist going "Yeah, but quantum theory is really unfair, man, a thing is both there and not there at the same time? Not done, dude, not done. It's not ok unless it makes sense to me." What complete BS.
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Post by aline on Nov 22, 2021 8:03:16 GMT
Hugh. It's not just the forest that's been falling apart.
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Post by aline on Nov 15, 2021 8:26:02 GMT
Well, that's not ominous at all. Also where does the Court want to move that they need such amounts of magic to do it? Aren't they the all hail technology guys with unlimited access to robots who do all the work?
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Post by aline on Nov 8, 2021 14:21:46 GMT
Also apropos of nothing, I am guessing Shell's age (or apparent age) to be in her early 30s. At least I punched in all the data I know about Shell (heh) and that's what the wetware popped out. She reminds me a whole lot of an oilfield engineer I had in one of my training classes once. God I hope not. If she behaves like that at 30 then that's a lost case. Nobody past the age of 25 should be wide-eyed and impressed because some dude did not prioritise his career over saving their life.
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Post by aline on Oct 25, 2021 10:30:41 GMT
I'm completely failing to feel any empathy or compassion for these shadow dudes. It looks like they created their own tragedies by creating and upholding stupid anti-magic rules. Like. It feels like watching a bigot find out that they, too, end up suffering because of the bigotry they've upheld all their life. Am I supposed to be sad? Am I supposed to feel sorry for them? Why? This is a problem they created in the first place, and they never would care about any of it if somebody else than the people they care about was excluded
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Post by aline on Oct 20, 2021 7:10:33 GMT
Good advice: Don't make your wife sad. Also: The only way "Loup" is already dead is if they later go back in time to kill him before now. She didn't say dead, she said gone. And then added "he must be hiding in the Court". Which is totally cool and not upsetting in any way, I mean, what could go wrong.
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Post by aline on Oct 18, 2021 8:05:19 GMT
Am I the only one who is worried about "the next steps" given the track record of this dude so far
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