322-Good ol' Ysengrin

[Count Casimir]

ZOMG!

The plot, she thickens! Ysengrin, a traitor?

EDIT: And/or a fairy eater?

[Mezzaphor]

I think it's more planting evidence than double-crossing.

Maybe he's more cunning than his action last chapter suggested.

[popo]

Okay sorry guys, but I'm a retard, you're going to have to help me out here.
What did she mean when she said he 'buried dat sucka'?

[Mezzaphor]

She means he buried the TicToc in the ground.

How far away is the barber? This is bordering on ridiculous.

Actually, I take that back. If Red is going to be answering questions the entire way there, I want this to last as long as possible.

[neal]

That IS quite the trek to the barber. I'm too lazy to walk into town, I make my roommate do it! Surely Annie has a pair of shears and a deft hand!

[divergence]

mezzaphor said:

I think it's more planting evidence than double-crossing.

Seems to me that it's likely both.

He's planting evidence against the Court, in hopes of starting a war that neither side would ordinarily want. He probably sees himself as loyally serving the larger interests of Gillitie Wood, but many of the Wood's other denizens might call him a traitor if they knew.

Of course, Coyote presumably does know...just because he's Coyote, and you can't trick the Trickster unless you've got way more brains than Ysengrin.

[Chromeleon]

Wait, why're we assuming that burying it is planting it, rather than just "taking care of it"?

Fabricating the whole thing makes more sense to me.

[UbiquitousDragon]

Red Riding Hood anybody?

Aaaand: the plot, she does indeed, thicken! Ysengrin, you bar-stud, though should any less be expected of a wolf(-tree)?

Chromeleon--he probably would need some physical to prove to Coyote so that he could go ape-shit at the Court. Coyote clearly didn't want to start any kind of war, for want of a better word.

[Goatmon]

chromeleon said:

Wait, why're we assuming that burying it is planting it, rather than just "taking care of it"?

Fabricating the whole thing makes more sense to me.

Because, Ysengrin claimed it had gone untouched for months before he found it. Red says he stumbled upon it minutes after Annie met the fairies.

Unless the Fairies have an astronomically different perception of time, someone's telling a lie.

[todd]

Maybe Coyote manipulated Ysengrin into lying about when he found the Tic-Toc. (As I've mentioned before, I think that Coyote set up the embassy as a means of luring Reynardine out so that he could communicate with him and find out more about what was keeping him from leaving Gunnerkrigg.) Ysengrin didn't seem especially subtle to me - though that might be just an act.

The journey to the barber's is an amazingly long one - four pages and three modes of transport. I wonder if, by the time that they finally reach it, Red will have changed her mind about wanting a haircut. (Maybe that's why the barber's is so far away from the main school buildings - in case the boy or girl seeking a haircut only wants one because of some frustration in his/her life, and by the time that he or she gets there, the frustrations that initially motivated him/her have been somehow resolved.)

[Mezzaphor]

With how forthcoming Annie has been with the adults in the past, I doubt she's going to volunteer this little tidbit any time soon. Of course, with Kat right there, Annie may not need to.

[Boksha]

It's quite likely Ysengrin is and was well aware of what such a bird can do. There's no way he could've mistaken it for a real bird because Annie already cut it open.
So now we know how Red died.
Also, I didn't realise Venice was in Gunnerkrigg Court.

[breakfast]

Everywhere is in Gunnerkrigg court at some point.

Unless the Fairies have an astronomically different perception of time, someone's telling a lie.

One of the classic elements of fairy lore is lost time or time running different in faerie so this is not impossible...

[mudmaniac]

goatmon said:

chromeleon said:

Wait, why're we assuming that burying it is planting it, rather than just "taking care of it"?

Fabricating the whole thing makes more sense to me.

Because, Ysengrin claimed it had gone untouched for months before he found it. Red says he stumbled upon it minutes after Annie met the fairies.

Unless the Fairies have an astronomically different perception of time, someone's telling a lie.

I doubt its a time thing. Ysengrin was still burying the thing. whereas to take it to the Court, he would have been digging it up.

Most likely it was a ploy to gain access to the court that day.

I must admit I'm a bit curious what mode of transport shall follow next. kickboards maybe? and who are the people missing bicycles right now?

[Ferin]

One unlikely explanation is that when he was burying it, he was unaware of it's ability to root itself into the ground, so now he is blaming the court for making this technology to cover his error, even though Anja (Kat's mum) denied all affiliation with it.

But really, I think that he deliberately intended it to root itself in, so yes he would be a traitor.

EDIT: Also, Red said that he turned up a few minutes after Annie and Kat left. Did he know it was there from the beginning, or was he alerted by Kat's anti-grav vehicle? He could have been deliberately waiting until they left. He could also be connected to the ghost lady with sword.

[popo]

If he went down there so soon, he would've been able to tell that the sweater was a student's, seeing as it was there moments after a student fell down from the bridge.
He should also of known that whoever was there got back up, which he makes no sign of knowing.

[yin]

I'm too lazy to check, but when Annie fell down there, there wasn't a machine growing into the cliff, was there?

I think Ysengrin buried it so it would start infecting the land as a way of forcing a confrontation with the Court. Whether or not he was in on it, Coyote then took advantage of the situation to scout some information about Reynardine.

[dragonmage06]

I will second that "the plot thickens" comment from Casimir. This strengthens the thought that the whole Coyote/Ysen visit to the Court was just a ploy to drop those seeds...or something else DUN DUN DUUUUUN.

[venndiagram]

I wonder if Red's friendliness towards Ysengrin is just because he helped her pass the test, or because of something else in the past? I mean, she seems pretty nice to Annie now even though Annie refused to kill her, so I figure that's not a big or long-term factor in her estimation of a person. (Of course, it could also be a simple lack of room to hold more than one sentiment for a person: the last time she saw Ysengrim she liked him, so she still does, and when she saw Annie in the beginning of this chapter she carried over a months-old sentiment, but she quickly lost that as soon as Annie did something nice.) Also, though this may be overthinking, I wonder why Ysengrin helped her pass the test anyway. She was a forest creature trying to get into the Court, which sounds like something Ysengrim would discourage; could she be a plant of some kind? That's probably not true given Ysengrim's and Red's apparent lack of subtlety (maybe he was just hungry and didn't care about a couple of fairies inconveniencing his enemies), but I do think all these fairy students are somewhat sinister given the Forest-Court relations.

Sadly, this update kills my "catch-up summer school for fairies" idea, although I think that might strengthen the theory that the school doesn't know about or officially acknowledge the fairies.

[Mezzaphor]

Obviously, the fairies watched Ysengrin long enough to figure out he was burying the TicToc. But how long did the fairies watch Y before trying to get his attention? Did they wait a bit, and then upon seeing them, Y ate the fairies before they could ask? (That was the impression I got from Red's comment about how Y must have been hungry.) Or were they pestering Y the whole time he was digging, and he patiently waited to eat them until he was finished?

[UbiquitousDragon]

breakfast said:

Everywhere is in Gunnerkrigg court at some point.

Unless the Fairies have an astronomically different perception of time, someone's telling a lie.

One of the classic elements of fairy lore is lost time or time running different in faerie so this is not impossible...

But isn't that usually in the Otherworld, rather than faeries in our world?

[todd]

As I mentioned above, the new revelation about Ysengrin raises the question whether he really is the simple, direct, and unsubtle general he appeared to be in Chapter Fourteen (someone who could have said, like Moloch in "Paradise Lost", "of wiles, more unexpert, I boast not"), or whether he's much more shrewd and cunning than he seems. (The role of his namesake in the stories of Reynard the Fox, as easily outwitted by Reynard, supported this initial view of him all the more.)

Though there's another possibility. Ysengrin was altered by Coyote, given those wooden limbs; what if that alteration allows Coyote to control Ysengrin's actions? He might have made Ysengrin bury the Tic-Toc Bird, and then forget about it until later, as part of his scheme. (Though I won't speculate whether Coyote, in such a scenario, had Ysengrin eat Red and Blue, or whether that was entirely Ysengrin's idea.)

We'll probably learn the truth later on, however (though I don't think it'll be in this chapter).