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Post by louisxiv on Aug 1, 2015 9:29:16 GMT
I am honestly disappointed by the name of the new plot device. "Omega Device" just sounds like a generic doomsday weapon. Why not, I dunno, "The Jupiter Construct"? It'd fit in with the alchemical symbolism of the comic (Jupiter is representative of Tin), and wouldn't sound so... bland. Am I the only one who feels this way? Yes, it is an odd note which rings a bit... dull. However there have been a number of odd notes in recent chapters, so I'm not sure whether the dissonance is unintentional, a stumble by Tom, or indicating a new theme breaking in to the story. We shall see... |
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Post by TBeholder on Aug 1, 2015 10:42:27 GMT
Also the pregnancy is starting to raise questions what exactly he means. Equipment bonelasers? Of course. Pregnancy was caused by bonelasers. Isn't it always? Of course, but if it helps, are there any parents in fiction you could point out to who exercised the tough love approached and without getting into abuse territory struck you as in the wrong. I'm afraid I don't read that kind of fiction.  Good one.  But you still feed 'em, and the thread still rolled into repeating of the same unrelated derp that is endlessly repeated here for about 4 months, and failed to climb out. |
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Post by antiyonder on Aug 1, 2015 10:58:23 GMT
Even if that were the case his bosses must have known about it within the hour, given their level of surveillance on their own people, so it can't be an act of earth shattering consequences. There's no evidence of that, so you're rejecting the possibility that it was out of hand. Even so, Donald told Annie that Tony had plenty of ways to contact him. Those ways may be mutually exclusive, however. If Tony had only one opportunity to leave a plain briefcase by a bench in the park, only Agent A or Inspector B could pick it up, not both. The "security concerns" will have to be pretty huge and specific to justify that. With a name like "Omega Device", being 'disappeared' (aka silently removed from existence) seems a rather plausible concern. Yeah, I remember, *he* wanted to hear her voice. How very tragic. But then again he could have stopped watching his own belly button and wonder about her emotional needs instead of his. Or maybe it was so that she could hear his voice, and not one day went by when he didn't worry about how Antimony was faring in his absence.
- Even if Surma's death hit him hard, that is no excuse for not dealing with his daughter. When you're a parent you have duties to your kid. You're not allowed to behave like a 15 years old emo goth even if you feel like it. Once again, I've never said Tony hasn't failed in his duties as a parent. Only that he has been attempting to fulfill said duties, while still being hampered by his fallible human nature. Yeah, the whole protection angle kind of stinks as a cop out reason. 1. Take the famous Spider-Man comic story The Death of Gwen Stacy. Basically the title character's girlfriend is murdered by the Green Goblin as he discovered Spider-Man. The kicker is that she herself never learned of her boyfriend's secret id. In other words, keeping the loved one in the dark, clearly didn't keep her from being a target. 2. Or heck. Maybe he's being distant in order to convince The Court that he doesn't love his daughter, thus keeping her from being a target. But if The Court is a force to be reckoned with, wouldn't they likely consider that he's putting on an act for Annie's safety? 3. And really, while folks like the Green Goblin, Darth Vader and The Court are dangerous and all, the one who has the potential to harm an individual is said individual's family and/or friends, as they actually have the emotional means to do so. As such, I think it is worth considering one's emotional and mental well being if one feels the need to be cold/secretive. I mean if the person you're trying to protect becomes permanently damaged emotionally, can you honestly say that protecting them physically was worth it when they are pretty much a mental vegetable for the rest of their life? |
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Post by youwiththeface on Aug 1, 2015 11:49:07 GMT
I'm not so sure it would make sense storywise for Anthony to be portrayed as in the right. Only showing Annie a side of him she's never seen before, one she didn't even imagine possible nor can make excuses for is going to make her rethink what she's done to herself. If this meeting justifies Anthony's actions to us and by extension Antimony, she ain't ever going back to the way she was.
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Post by deuswyvern on Aug 1, 2015 12:15:25 GMT
It seems that while Tony is working for the court, that he does not like or trust them. He’s just helping them because it serves his own purposes. I wonder how this effects Annie. If he does care about her that would give them leverage yes?
My guess is that Tony has good intentions, but his personality flaws mess everything up. He's not as bad as some people think, but he'll never be the father that Annie wants him to be.
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Post by cu on Aug 1, 2015 13:52:50 GMT
The Omega Device! Ooooooo! (wiggles fingers)
Actually it could be the Green Arrow of Doom, indeed, and the Court has Tony working on deactivating it. After all, its tip resembles a capital omega:
V
V
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Ω
Since this definitely establishes Tony as a plain old good guy, it is time for him to appear in the Goodyverse thread with a hook photoshopped on his stump and the girls congratulating themselves about how cool it is having a pirate as dad.
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Post by oneandoneis2 on Aug 1, 2015 17:52:53 GMT
A bit of a a reach, but.. what if Annie's the Omega Device? He was researching the device and Surma's pregnancy at the same time, so it kind of fits...
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Bill
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Post by Bill on Aug 1, 2015 21:20:10 GMT
It sounds like a major piece of the endgame of Gunnerkrigg has been named with this Omega device. I must point out that we are at most half way through the comic (likely less), and that investigation of this device will be a recurring theme for a long time to come, just like the ghost of the Annan Waters. But we are unlikely to find out more at this time. Unless Donald thinks this is something that Annie, the Forest Medium (considered separately), and perhaps Renard (if remembered) should know about, he will not be asking what Tony found in his research. Unasked, Tony may not elaborate. Which I would not put past him (Tony or Tom).
I'm torn between laughing maniacally at the long-term plot reveal, and crying out in frustration at the long wait before we get more information. I'm leaning towards "Aaarrgh!"
Anthony, you have just handed your daughter a secret pet project called "Omega" more surely than Muut handed her one called "Jeanne".
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Post by justcurious on Aug 1, 2015 23:39:41 GMT
Tony has rightly been called a coward for his approach to emotional problems. The Court as an organization has at least two times acted in a fear driven manner in in its dealings with the Forest.
The first was the murder of Jeanne and her lover and her use as a barrier against the Forest. The were driven by fear of what Coyote might do without real evidence to believe that he would act as the sort of threat that they envisaged.
The second was the entrapment of Renard. They knew that Coyote wanted to give powers to Renard and that Renard was resistant to the idea. Out of fear they used Surma to entrap Renard and in doing so gave Renard the motive to accept Coyote's offer with tragic consequences.
Also Coyote appears to be supporting the institution of the mediums and the Court to be trying to undermine it. They had Surma entrap Renard. They appear to have rejected Annie as Medium because they thought that they could not control her to the extent that they controlled her mother. This backfired because Andrew was just as resistant to their control as Annie would have been and had Parley to give him support. Coyote exploited their mistake by offering the Forest medium position to Annie, someone that he knew would work effectively with Andrew. Bringing Anthony back sounds like it is in part an attempt to sabotage the Forest medium.
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Post by todd on Aug 2, 2015 0:23:40 GMT
Tony has rightly been called a coward for his approach to emotional problems. The Court as an organization has at least two times acted in a fear driven manner in in its dealings with the Forest. The first was the murder of Jeanne and her lover and her use as a barrier against the Forest. The were driven by fear of what Coyote might do without real evidence to believe that he would act as the sort of threat that they envisaged. The second was the entrapment of Renard. They knew that Coyote wanted to give powers to Renard and that Renard was resistant to the idea. Out of fear they used Surma to entrap Renard and in doing so gave Renard the motive to accept Coyote's offer with tragic consequences. Also Coyote appears to be supporting the institution of the mediums and the Court to be trying to undermine it. They had Surma entrap Renard. They appear to have rejected Annie as Medium because they thought that they could not control her to the extent that they controlled her mother. This backfired because Andrew was just as resistant to their control as Annie would have been and had Parley to give him support. Coyote exploited their mistake by offering the Forest medium position to Annie, someone that he knew would work effectively with Andrew. Bringing Anthony back sounds like it is in part an attempt to sabotage the Forest medium. All good points. I wonder whether the Court might be unhappy about the medium business in part because it means having to negotiate with animals as if the animals were equals (all the more so since Jones made just such an observation back in Chapter Seventeen). Not that Coyote's approach might be any better; I think he supports the mediums only because they'd be necessary for relations between the Court and the Wood to have the right amount of tension. He doesn't want both sides to be living in peace; that would be too boring for a trouble-loving trickster like himself. But he doesn't want them to wipe each other out in a war, because whom does he have to meddle with for his entertainment after that? But keeping things in a tense situation, not entering a state of "hot war", but with a lot of distrust on both sides that he can exploit for a few laughs - that would fit his desires. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Aug 2, 2015 3:22:34 GMT
Oh, I'm sure on some level he's convinced he's done the right thing. Who doesn't? Much agree. Pretty much everyone in the entire world believes that the reasons they're doing things are excellent no matter what they're doing... at least at the time they're doing those things. Even the laziest person in the world is working as hard as they can. Not being gods, the only thing I think we can effectively do is look at patterns in behavior and believe that over what people say. A person's behavior will probably not significantly change over the long run if the factors that go into their decision-making process haven't changed. If anyone else has had the mixed blessing of being in charge of a thing or things and having to make decisions about separating people from their places of employment perhaps you can relate. Or if you've just gotten fed up with bullshit coming from a particular romantic partner and decided to cut he/she/they loose, it's pretty much the same thing. I am honestly disappointed by the name of the new plot device. "Omega Device" just sounds like a generic doomsday weapon. Why not, I dunno, "The Jupiter Construct"? It'd fit in with the alchemical symbolism of the comic (Jupiter is representative of Tin), and wouldn't sound so... bland. Am I the only one who feels this way? Yes, it is an odd note which rings a bit... dull. However there have been a number of odd notes in recent chapters, so I'm not sure whether the dissonance is unintentional, a stumble by Tom, or indicating a new theme breaking in to the story. We shall see... Eh, in real life giving a secret project a hokey name like "Omega Device" would probably be a canary trap; it sounds exciting and would tempt journalists to use it in combination with other searchable key words thus giving your counter-intelligence a good shot digging the leak out of the electronic clutter and at silencing the canary before it sings. In the Gunnerverse the two main possibilities seem to lead to the same place... Omega meaning final device (needed?) or the end of the sequence including Gamma and Zeta. Either way, and assuming it's not a doomsday weapon, that sounds like the effort to make humans into "gods," which would be changing humans to be able to control ether without machines. Or to put it another way, that's the Gunnerverse's answer to the human instrumentality project except that Gendo's already lost his hand. The really interesting thing this comic told me is that Omega preexisted Antimony. As others have noted: It's not something Anthony invented to help Surma or Antimony. Someone else must have invented it. It could well have been a device of Diego's, even the arrow if they retrieved it somehow, and they are trying to reduce his magical methods to cold, hard, repeatable and explainable results. But it could also be the receiving point for the collection stations, simply a giant etheric manipulation facility that was built much later and does not work properly... yet. |
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Post by youwiththeface on Aug 2, 2015 5:17:10 GMT
Guys, Omega makes sense because it's already been established that the court uses the Greek alphabet with Gamma and Zeta. It's not like it came out of nowhere because Tom needed something super villainy sounding.
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loner
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Post by loner on Aug 2, 2015 15:50:37 GMT
Instead of the good ol isanthonynice debate, i would just like to point out a genius thing in Tom's work.
Before that, Anthony was poker faced all. The. Time. His face litterally never changed expression, or very lightly some times, but we can't really say the guy was expressive. But in that new page, Anthony looks alive. Really alive, even though his expressions aren't exaggerated, or in the last panel.
Good work, Tom. In every single new panel, even the less detailled ones, Tony looks like a normal humain being... Well.. A functioning one.
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Post by zbeeblebrox on Aug 2, 2015 20:38:55 GMT
Maybe. A McGuffin has to be useless though, like the Maltese Falcon. If the device actually does something, like the One Ring, it's a Boon. Or if it only does something bad, like a death ray...it's probably a death ray. |
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Post by Per on Aug 2, 2015 22:53:48 GMT
I thought the defining aspect of a McGuffin was that its details need not be elaborated on for it to serve its narrative function. (Definitions clearly vary and the MF may or may not be counted as one, though in any case I think the twist is incidental to this.) I think it's unlikely that the Court's doings will never amount to more than vague hints like this one, and so it will not be a McGuffin.
It might also be worth noting that since Ale & Wenches mostly doesn't distinguish between upper and lower case, Tony might have been saying "their blasted omega device" just as well as "their Blasted Omega Device". So it may not be necessary to speculate on what a Blasted Omega is or otherwise pick at device naming conventions until we know a little more.
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Post by gunnerwf on Aug 2, 2015 23:53:42 GMT
I thought the defining aspect of a McGuffin was that its details need not be elaborated on for it to serve its narrative function. (Definitions clearly vary and the MF may or may not be counted as one, though in any case I think the twist is incidental to this.) I think it's unlikely that the Court's doings will never amount to more than vague hints like this one, and so it will not be a McGuffin. It might also be worth noting that since Ale & Wenches mostly doesn't distinguish between upper and lower case, Tony might have been saying "their blasted omega device" just as well as "their Blasted Omega Device". So it may not be necessary to speculate on what a Blasted Omega is or otherwise pick at device naming conventions until we know a little more. He said their Blasted omega device |
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Post by Nnelg on Aug 3, 2015 0:46:45 GMT
It might also be worth noting that since Ale & Wenches mostly doesn't distinguish between upper and lower case, Tony might have been saying "their blasted omega device" just as well as "their Blasted Omega Device". So it may not be necessary to speculate on what a Blasted Omega is or otherwise pick at device naming conventions until we know a little more. Now I'm thinking of a stone 'Ω' with craters in it. The craters expose an ancient technology within. The device is massive, and floating out in space. It fires a beam a plasma in a macroscopic sinusoidal pattern out the bottom. The stream hits a planet, where an annihilation reaction occurs. A third of the planet is blasted into space, but the crater is short-lived as the remaining mass is forced to shift in to maintain hydrostatic equilibrium. The debris cloud forms temporary rings, as the majority falls back down as meteorites. However, the device provides a nucleus for some of the ejecta to coalesce around, forming a moon. Later, Jones looks up and observes it. |
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Post by Jelly Jellybean on Aug 3, 2015 0:56:06 GMT
I thought the defining aspect of a McGuffin was that its details need not be elaborated on for it to serve its narrative function. (Definitions clearly vary and the MF may or may not be counted as one, though in any case I think the twist is incidental to this.) I think it's unlikely that the Court's doings will never amount to more than vague hints like this one, and so it will not be a McGuffin. It might also be worth noting that since Ale & Wenches mostly doesn't distinguish between upper and lower case, Tony might have been saying "their blasted omega device" just as well as "their Blasted Omega Device". So it may not be necessary to speculate on what a Blasted Omega is or otherwise pick at device naming conventions until we know a little more. He said their Blasted omega device Or he's been yelling at everyone in ALL CAPS the whole time and we didn't know it because of the lack of facial and body expressions. EDIT: Tony can be hilarious if you think he is yelling. "DON'T WORRY, I TOOK CARE OF ALL THE SURVEILLANCE IN THE BUILDING. THEY CAN'T HEAR US." |
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Post by TBeholder on Aug 3, 2015 6:09:27 GMT
The Omega Device! Ooooooo! (wiggles fingers) Actually it could be the Green Arrow of Doom, indeed, and the Court has Tony working on deactivating it. After all, its tip resembles a capital omega: Ha, good point. Or even better! They have found some partial sketches and a prototype (adjustable lab version with gauges and whistles, rather than the final warhead version) of this thing, and thanks to most records being wiped out, have only vague misconceptions of what it actually could be. And of course monkeying with it will eventually give Tony and his boss(es) a boatload of negative brownie points with anyone who can recognize its nature at a glance. Annie and Kat being the most obvious candidates. Tony can be hilarious if you think he is yelling. "DON'T WORRY, I TOOK CARE OF ALL THE SURVEILLANCE IN THE BUILDING. THEY CAN'T HEAR US." You remembered Chief Gordon Cole from Twin Peaks, didn't you?  That said, the very phrase gives away his blind overconfidence. |
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Post by zbeeblebrox on Aug 3, 2015 7:07:49 GMT
I thought the defining aspect of a McGuffin was that its details need not be elaborated on for it to serve its narrative function. Right. Or in layman's terms: it's useless |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Aug 3, 2015 7:54:02 GMT
Tony can be hilarious if you think he is yelling. "DON'T WORRY, I TOOK CARE OF ALL THE SURVEILLANCE IN THE BUILDING. THEY CAN'T HEAR US." You remembered Chief Gordon Cole from Twin Peaks, didn't you? That said, the very phrase gives away his blind overconfidence. If there are eyewitness-model robots wandering around on rooftops in the Court, how many might be lurking in the bushes outside an interesting person's house? Or are they all at the co-ed swimming pool? |
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