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Post by The Anarch on Jul 23, 2013 18:31:03 GMT
Plus, not-knowing-her-own-strength would seem more than a bit unusual given just how much time she's had to practice with it. Her own strength? Sure. Their lack of immutability? Nah, not if she thought they were beings like her at first. Hopefully she discovered that they weren't like her through observation, by watching someone fall and skin a knee or something. At first? Maybe. But she's had around four million years or so to discover otherwise. As I said, plenty of time to practice. After all, she seems perfectly capable of stroking a man's hair without caving his skull in, tightening his armor without crushing his ribcage, nudging a boy and patting his shoulder without flinging him halfway across continent, holding a child's hand without snapping every single finger, picking up a toddler without squishing him into goo, and even pulling people up from under wreckage without accidentally tearing them in half. So yes. She seems well aware of and capable of compensating for their lack of immutability. But as to the physical constraints of Jones... If she can exert those pressures with her fingertips I don't see any reason why other parts of Jones don't follow the same rules. There isn't any reason why they wouldn't follow different rules either. Just because she can use her voluntary muscles to crush rocks doesn't necessarily mean that her involuntary muscles are set to exert the same amount of strength whenever they fire off. They may be set to act and react at normal human levels and no further by her own brain (or whatever she has in place of a brain). Really, we don't even know yet that she even has involuntary actions or reactions of any sort. She may, in fact, have complete body control, be it by design or through eons of practice. We needs more data! PS, my second favorite character is probably Coyote. Nyahahahaha! |
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Post by Lily Cooke on Jul 23, 2013 22:10:17 GMT
I love Coyote too, but I'm sure he's hiding an evil agenda and will end up being the true villain. I can just feel it. :x
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Post by Señor Goose on Jul 23, 2013 22:12:35 GMT
I feel especially for Coyote because I live in Arizona and I see a lot of them.
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Post by The Anarch on Jul 23, 2013 22:14:17 GMT
I love Coyote too, but I'm sure he's hiding an evil agenda and will end up being the true villain. I can just feel it. :x Same here, and that's exactly why I said "probably".  He's fun and trickstery and all most of the time, but those couple of moments where he's a obviously screwing around with Ys and Ren's heads in blatantly destructive ways . . . that's just awful stuff. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Jul 23, 2013 22:32:40 GMT
Assuming Jones has human-like internal structure, gaining some control over some autonomic body responses is possible but only up to a point, even by eons of practice, and I have trouble picturing Jones mirror-kissing for any extended periods of time. Her smile needs practice, apparently, so I'll assume she's even less practiced at osculation. If some parts of Jones were capable of exerting force capable of deforming any known substance like wet clay but some were not or "set to" not, I think she would be able to alter her own shape in at least some areas. She says she can't. She's also depicted as being equally opaque to x-rays, I guess, so I think any notion that different parts of Jones operate on different sets of rules will have some steep obstacles to overcome. So I'm speculating that her blood pressure is off the charts. Oh yeah, and welcome to the forum Lily Cooke! Sorry we polluted your thread! |
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Post by The Anarch on Jul 24, 2013 0:16:21 GMT
Assuming Jones has human-like internal structure, gaining some control over some autonomic body responses is possible but only up to a point, even by eons of practice, "Assuming Jones has human-like internal structure", yes. But given that she can't be damaged, her strength and weight are completely disproportionate to that of a human her size, and she can't be successfully X-rayed, all things that are not in any way human-like, assuming that anything other than what we have directly seen is at all human-like can't strictly count. That was why I was hesitant before to even assume that she has normal human nipples and external genitalia. Until we learn more about her internal structure, all the possibilities we have mentioned are open. I don't. She does try to blend in with normal humans, and has said her social skills were learned through close observation and mimicry. Given that she doesn't have a need to sleep or eat (or likely many other biological functions) and has lived for so very very long, it would seem doubtful to me that there would be any aspect of that social interaction she hasn't at least dabbled it. Further given that she seems well acquainted with other aspects of intimacy in human relationships (the way she steered Smitty and Parley together, the way she touches and otherwise acts with Eggers, etc.), it would actually strike me odd if she hadn't at some point practiced the art of kissing given its importance in normal human interaction, be it strictly intimate or friendly or otherwise. She has nothing but time to fill up with various projects, after all, and since she could just sit around doing nothing and be perfectly fine with it but instead actually goes out and interacts with people, it would seem to me that studying those various interactions as fully as possible would indeed be something she'd be likely to do. This is not necessarily from lack of practice (I would dare say it definitely isn't, considering she outright says she can indeed mimic the facial movements), but much more likely due to lack of real emotion backing it. Ah, if I may digress for a moment, there's something that I had been considering before, when we were using the word "immutable". You say she says she can't alter her own shape, but she does not in fact say that. What she does say is "I cannot be marked or damaged in any way," which is something different. The very fact that she can move around means that she is not immutable. You pointed out yourself that her hair became weighed down by water. Her arms and legs move about, so whatever she uses for muscles (including if they are actual muscles) presumably move around inside her as well. We pretty much agreed before that she is pliable up to the point where damage would occur. This is not immutability, therefore, but invulnerability. In any case, if I'm reading what you're saying right, what you're actually suggesting is that if she was, say, strong in her hands but not as strong in her legs, she should be able to reach down and snap her own legs in half, yes? But that point would rely on the idea that strength and toughness go hand in hand, and that doesn't necessarily follow. Take the muscular system of an animal versus a block of steel. Take a knife to each, and you find that the muscle gets cut while the steel much more easily fends the edge off. Steel is tougher than muscle. But if you try to get each of them to physically move another object, the muscle can push the object aside while the steel just sits there. Even if there was an intelligence residing within the block of steel, it couldn't do anything, 'cause steel don't move dat way. So muscle is stronger than steel. Jones has elements of both - the ability to move objects like a muscle and the inability to be significantly damaged like the steel - but these elements may very well be separate from each other. Just because the muscle aspect of her may be a little weaker in a few spots than in the rest of her body, that doesn't automatically mean that the steel aspect in those areas isn't going to be just as uniformly tough. The ability to manipulate objects does not always equal the ability to resist manipulation and vice versa. When a person stands behind a lead shield, they can appear opaque to X-rays. This doesn't mean that they themselves are likewise opaque. It is only necessary for the very outer layer of Jones' body to be opaque to X-rays for all of her insides to also be hidden from such observation. Heck, our own normal human bodies have different parts that work on different sets of rules. It's the whole reasons X-rays are useful to us . . . our bones are opaque to X-rays while the rest of our tissues are not. So I don't see why the idea would be so difficult to encompass. Assuming she has blood and a circulatory system for it to flow through. Et cetera. Well I'm not sorry! In fact, I'm glad! Glad, glad, glad, glad, glad! |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Jul 24, 2013 1:30:27 GMT
Poor Lily Cookie will get the wrong idea about the forum (or the right idea way too early).  I think it's likely that Jones has the internal structures but have been making allowances for the possibility that she doesn't in my posts. But she either does or she doesn't. If she does have human-like internal structures and they are why she works, then the same muscle tissue (or whatever) that is responsible for moving her finger is also responsible for moving the rest of her (with some exceptions like for cardiac muscle but let's not get too deep into the weeds). If they have nothing to do with why she can exert so much force then the force is based on Jones' conscious desire (or Jones equivalent) and she should be able to change her own body by say, plucking her eyebrows or breaking a hair to make it shorter. If you believe she's spent loads of time practicing other stuff then our fashion-conscious lady would've tried that too, yes? And if she has no internal structures then there's no significant differentiation between her fingertips and other parts therefore no reason other than her conscious desire what gets super-strength and what doesn't, and you're back to the same problem as before. What you seem to me to be suggesting is that Jones could have an alien internal structure where none of those three possibilities would be the case, but with the external appearance and movement being identical to a human's, and sense organs being within human ranges if we can take her word, the only thing you can point to in the comic that might back that up is her perfect recall. If so, I think the fact that she can't damage herself remains a problem that this theory will have trouble overcoming. You'd have to say she's lying or wrong about something, in addditon to having alien internal structures. Is bending your arm at the elbow proof that the arm's broken? I think "immutability" when applied to a human form can encompass those movements that are within the normal range of motion for a human. Re: Lead/shield, muscle/steel: Observing that the result of an experiment depends on its construction doesn't change anything unless you want to advance the idea that Jones is lying or self-deceived. |
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Post by GK Sierra on Jul 24, 2013 2:59:33 GMT
(or the right idea way too early).  |
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Post by The Anarch on Jul 24, 2013 3:01:34 GMT
I think it's likely that Jones has the internal structures but have been making allowances for the possibility that she doesn't in my posts. But she either does or she doesn't. Ultimately, I don't think it matters whether or not her internal structures look exactly like a regular human's or not. One of the points I'm trying to make is that regardless of what her insides may look like or what they may be constructed of, it's not necessarily correlative to what those bits and bobs are actually capable of. From all outward appearances, it would seem she has normal human skin, but we know that it's not normal since it's impervious in more ways than one. But here's the thing, even though most of the muscles in a normal human's body work on the same basic principles, not all those muscles are of the same strength. My arm muscles, for example, are not as strong as my leg muscles. The idea that just because Jones can break a rock with her hands, she must be able to break rocks with every single part of her anatomy doesn't follow. It might be the case, but it doesn't have to be. I'm sorry, but most of this section of your post is baffling to me since maybe only one or two small bits of it are close to what I've been suggesting. Your posts seem to be the ones positing that Jones is all the same all over, with the exact same level of strength in every part and all made from the same or extremely similar material. I've been trying to point out somewhat the opposite, that while that's a possibility, it's also not necessarily so, nor is it some far fetched idea considering that real life actual human bodies are themselves not all the same all over. When you bend your arm, the muscles flex and change shape, the tendons pull tight, the lubricating elements in your elbow move around and do their stuff, various chemical reactions take place. It's not about your arm being broken or being capable of being broken, or at least it's not just about that. It's about things changing within the structure, and when you bend your arm, tons of changes do occur. Being able to bend your arm at the elbow doesn't prove that your arm is broken or even that it's breakable, but it does prove that your arm is not immutable. Again, I'm confused. I don't see what the analogies I put up have to do with Jones' truthfulness with herself or anyone else. Jones never said her super-strength and her invulnerability and inability to be X-rayed were all interrelated. She never said they weren't, either. She never said anything regarding that at all, as far as I can see. At most, the only thing they have in common that she implies is that they are all traits that she possesses, and nothing I said belies that. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Jul 24, 2013 7:10:40 GMT
Might I interest you in a silly example? Suppose that you greatly desire to sculpt a bust of Amanda Bynes. Your hands and arms are strong so you easily form the wet clay into a perfect likeness. Like Pygmalion you become enamored with your creation and decide to kiss it to life. Even though your tongue is much weaker than your arms and hands it still makes a hole in the clay, just a smaller one than if you'd poked Amanda in the mouth with a finger. Your lips have done damage to your sculpture as well. The reason is that the muscle cells that can deform the clay are present in your mouth as well as your limbs, there's just fewer so they don't displace as much clay as far. Your legs are strong as well, and they carry you out the window to safety before the haters in your pottery class can catch you. Shine on, you crazy diamond.  [edit] No troll intended, just trying to make the topic entertaining. What if I said that you can increase force by adding more contractile tissue and the leverage of longer joints, and by doing so bend or move stuff you couldn't before, but that doesn't change the relative plasticity of two materials at all? [/edit] And I'm not saying it's impossible that Jones has one sort of contractile tissue for poking and another for patting Jimmy on the head, just that the balance of stuff in the comic seems to be leading us in a human-like direction for Jones' substructures, if any, and that wouldn't be humanlike at all. Your example, "when a person stands behind a lead shield, they can appear opaque to X-rays. This doesn't mean that they themselves are likewise opaque. It is only necessary for the very outer layer of Jones' body to be opaque to X-rays for all of her insides to also be hidden from such observation," doesn't apply because the "shield" IS Jones or part of Jones. Our bones only appear (semi)opaque because of the amount of radiation used. Even Jones' hair is opaque to x-rays. Assumption my part that the Court is smart enough to crank the juice when the first films come back as a silhouette, but I take that panel to mean that Jones is opaque to all levels they could produce in all areas (including mouth) and that, while not conclusive, is far from insignificant. Jones may or may not be uniform but she's uniformly opaque to x-rays as far as they can tell. I'll concede your point about the propriety of the term "immutable." I am a fan of non-reversibility. I suppose we'll have to come up with a different word. Regarding the muscle/steel example you used, that's apples/oranges. That doesn't change the amount of force Jones can exert with her fingers or the amount of force she can resist, which in both cases is more than the Court can measure, or the apparent fact that even Jones can't change Jones... unless it's all just magic in which case, "a wizard did it" will suffice for explanation. So what I'm saying is that unless we are wrong about something we think we know, and most of what we know about Jones comes from Jones, then the situation should logically break down as I described it in the "poor Lily Cookie" post as a series of yes/no props. True, it's not conclusive but other possibilities have to appeal to stuff not in the comic so I think they are less probable. |
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Post by The Anarch on Jul 24, 2013 7:54:44 GMT
there's just fewer so they don't displace as much clay as far This is almost exactly what I have been saying this entire time. There are further other parts of your musculature that would not be able to displace the clay at all because they're simply not as strong as the other parts. Similarly, there may be parts of Jones that are not as strong as the others. This seems like you've put together two different parts of our conversation as being a single point by me, which was not my intention at all. The talk about Jones having alien physiology and the talk about Jones have different amounts of strength in different parts of her anatomy were not meant to be all the same idea. Except it does apply because that's exactly what I said. The "shield" being a part of Jones is what "the very outer layer of Jones' body to be opaque" means. I fail to see how slightly rewording what I said makes what I said not apply. Again, that was exactly my point. That equating her strength with her toughness as you did is like equating apples and oranges. The muscle/steel example was showing how the metaphorical apples and the oranges are different from each other. The things you have posited yourself appeal to stuff not in the comic as well, such as the idea of Jones having a normal human internal structure. My entire overarching point this whole time is that we don't know what's inside her because not only has the comic not shown us at all, it has gone out of its way to conceal her internal structure from both us and the characters, including Jones herself. She could have human-like bits, she could have completely alien parts, she could be filled with granite, she could have a living black hole in there, an inferno of magical energy, a void of absolute nothingness, or a jumble of unused subway tokens. Given the highly unusual nature of the GCverse and until we get a better look at what's going on under the surface, the inside of Jones could be anything at all regardless of arbitrarily assigned probability. Despite what Kat might have to say on the matter, "a wizard did it" is a perfectly applicable theory in a world where magic actually exists. I disagree. But I also have lost pretty much any interest in continuing this conversation, so I'll leave it at that. My third favorite character is Kat/Paz. |
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Post by Lily Cooke on Jul 24, 2013 13:08:44 GMT
The right idea too early? Please, it's the internet; I'd be more surprised if we weren't mulling over details like this. :3
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Post by snipertom on Jul 25, 2013 10:02:33 GMT
Lily Cooke is one of the 'older kids'. Won't see her getting fazed that easily! hahaha.
Just to add to the debate about what it feels like to touch/do whatever with Jones, remember that strength and flexibility aren't the same. Spider silk is very flexible and very strong. There are many things that are also malleable and strong, or ductile and strong.
The suggestion so far from the comic is that she's made of something malleable, flexible, strong (can't be broken) and dense (heavy, blocks Xrays). In addition, she can also generate a great deal of force.
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Post by Per on Jul 25, 2013 11:48:12 GMT
She also breaks conservation of momentum. Like some kind of freak.
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Post by GK Sierra on Jul 25, 2013 17:26:32 GMT
She also breaks conservation of momentum. Like some kind of freak. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a law of thermodynamics Jones DOESN'T break. I guess etherics>physics in this universe. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Jul 26, 2013 1:53:44 GMT
It is a dualistic universe so physics in the Gunnerverse includes ether! And her mass is finite, she only looks about 20%-ish heavier than a woman of her build, guessing by Parley's bedsprings. Assuming her ability to deform matter and resist change is unbounded and we know her exact volume and mass, that could tell us something fundamental about the Gunnerverse if we just had a touchstone, like how much etheric energy it takes to move x mass y far, maybe...
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Post by zaferion on Jul 26, 2013 15:32:36 GMT
Jones has always been my favorite character, I guess. Until today's update. Now all I can do is love Renard and really want to give him a hug even though I know he doesn't want it.
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Post by andante on Aug 18, 2013 0:14:57 GMT
This is difficult. Veeeery difficult.
A while ago I would have said Coyote, but now I'm not so sure. He's still up there, though. Annie is the character I identify with the most.
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Post by Daedalus on Aug 24, 2013 19:07:13 GMT
Hmmm...I love Coyote on each page he participates in, but I really don't like the sinister sides of his personality he has displayed at some points. I also love Ysengrin, but I would have to say Renard is the best character.
I apparently have a weakness for mythical canine creatures. Go figure.
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winsbury
New Member
^ He's probably a goon
Posts: 22 
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Post by winsbury on Aug 28, 2013 0:45:30 GMT
Winsbury of course. Next to him, Parley.
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Post by GK Sierra on Aug 28, 2013 1:42:07 GMT
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winsbury
New Member
^ He's probably a goon
Posts: 22
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Post by winsbury on Aug 28, 2013 7:52:11 GMT
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Post by GK Sierra on Aug 28, 2013 8:13:19 GMT
Yep, it all checks out. He's the real deal.
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Post by Ophel on Sept 1, 2013 2:21:55 GMT
Jones. I do so enjoy enigmatic or odd characters with a nice helping of cute and a generous serving of intellect. A bit of power doesn't hurt either.
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Post by quinkgirl on Sept 3, 2013 18:13:44 GMT
My top three are Reynardine, Coyote and Ysengrin. It's strange, I didn't even like Ysengrin until Annie spent the summer in the forest because I thought he was just some guy who hates the court and that was it... Reynard and Coyote were always funny and cute though. But I'd probably be scared as hell if I met any of them. Everyone seems to like Jones, I wonder why that is? And isn't anyone curious about Hetty? This probably makes me sound stupid, but I want to know her story and how she got trapped in that doll.
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Post by zimmyzims on Sept 5, 2013 11:42:26 GMT
Jack is still my favorite. Oh Jack, you'll wander back into this comic someday you vagabond, I know it. In other news, Hetty is now a close second for "least favorite character", running just two lengths behind Tony, the perennial champ. Anthony Carver? My favourite character! |
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Post by zimmyzims on Sept 5, 2013 11:53:25 GMT
I love Coyote too, but I'm sure he's hiding an evil agenda and will end up being the true villain. I can just feel it. :x Hmm.... what makes you feel like that? Is it that he manipulates Ys and drives him to insanity by stealing his memories? Or that he tricked Renard to kill that young man and get jailed in the Court?  But I don't think this really is so black and white. Or, let's say, it is pretty dualistic, but neither side is that of a simple villain, and there is good in both sides. I'm not sure there will be any true villain in this. |
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Post by GK Sierra on Sept 5, 2013 16:41:55 GMT
Jack is still my favorite. Oh Jack, you'll wander back into this comic someday you vagabond, I know it. In other news, Hetty is now a close second for "least favorite character", running just two lengths behind Tony, the perennial champ. Anthony Carver? My favourite character! Son, I am dissapoint.  |
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Post by Daedalus on Sept 5, 2013 22:53:45 GMT
Tony hasn't even had a large enough role in the story to make a definitive conclusion, but I dislike him in his own special 'absent parent who may be trying to kill his daughter' way
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Post by zimmyzims on Sept 9, 2013 7:39:23 GMT
Tony hasn't even had a large enough role in the story to make a definitive conclusion, but I dislike him in his own special 'absent parent who may be trying to kill his daughter' way I know that that is pretty bad., but I find him a tragic character, it is pretty obvious that it is not what he intends. And I'm not half sure he tried to kill his daughter, something a bit awful he was doing, but we don't know yet what. Anyway, he has played some role in the court-forest quarrel, since Coyote and Ys all too well knew to dislike him in particular, and I suspect he is on some secret mission right now, too, either that of court or of his own. There is much to still learn about him. I see him mostly as a man of principle who has lead a sadly tragic life. Of course, he may also be just the hugest jerk in the world, which is what he let's himself seem like to others, but I doubt it. |
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He's fun and trickstery and all most of the time, but those couple of moments where he's a obviously screwing around with Ys and Ren's heads in blatantly destructive ways . . . that's just awful stuff.
