|
|
Post by pxc on Aug 24, 2015 18:50:51 GMT
If the court can transfer animal souls into grown bodies, they can certainly give Tony a better prosthetic than what he has. So why is he using that block of wax or whatever it is? Is this another self loathing thing? "I don't deserve a replacement hand."
|
|
ysca
New Member
Posts: 9 
|
Post by ysca on Aug 24, 2015 18:54:54 GMT
The Court watches everyone constantly. The kids (and likely the staff) all have trackers in their food, for starters. There is no reason to imagine the Court can't quietly get at anything seen by any robot. Tony straight-up discussed "removing all the bugs" in his building. Part-etherial critters like Bud and Lindsey hang about and spy. It's a near-total surveillance state with multiple layers of redundancy. It all makes the Court's general non-intervention on matters like Zimmy and the Torn Sea cruise and crazy-Jack slinking around and Annie's cheating Super Extra Creepy. They KNOW stuff is going on (they know when and where trackers are going silent, if nothing else), but they almost never directly intervene, even when a Shipful of Trackers goes out and Lindsey watches the sea tear open next to her. Their complete willingness to do stuff like silently watch kiddo-Annie's tracker approach bound-Renard-Sivo's body is deeply creepifying. Likewise, their willingness to have the Bridge Without Safety Rails to the Forest of Angry Shadow People just sit right there, without any fencing. Alarms are nice and all, but allowing kiddos access to just wander onto it is a conscious design choice. Everything you mentioned brought me on another train of thought - yes, the court watches everybody, but they're not a particularly efficient organisation. That's the problem with every surveillance state - you have all these agents, all this information, you open every letter and have free agent listening into every conversation. That's a lot of information, even if it's properly stored and recorded, easily accessible and searchable which the Court's information is certainly not. I bet they don't have enough people to review it all, and what's more - the information they get isn't really that good either. The robots are hilariously inefficient, the scientific equipment didn't even notice that the moon went missing (or had at least Annie's fingerprint applied), Bud and Lindsey are powerful creatures that use their own discretion a lot, and they let realitywarpers like Zimmy walk around like they own the place. Not even the court can track people in horrifying-industrial-nightmareland, even if they tried. I think it's part bureaucracy and inefficiency and part design - genius minds don't work that well if they're under constant supervision, and Zimmy can't bear it at all. The court's method of education is dangerous, but very liberal. They just offer all kinds of resources to teachers and children and see who comes out - sometimes it's somebody like Parley, a highly intelligent, powerful swordfigher that could give Ysengrin a run for his money and sometimes it's somebody like Kat who constructs an AntiGrav machine for a science fair. The surveillance is not to prevent stuff, it's for figuring out what happened afterwards and maybe using it to their gain. I've always wondered if the court had way more people at some point in the past, and something decimate the population to its current low number. The court is huge, but mostly empty. There's tons of empty buildings, and whole trains to move people, but we rarely see any of those other people. We mostly just see students or teachers, with some notable court employees here or there. It's not even a problem of perspective with Annie just being a student, even when she's out of the school, walking around, going to the warehouses, or sneaking out with the other students, there's hardly anyone there. It's like the place is a shell fo what it once was. |
|
ysca
New Member
Posts: 9
|
Post by ysca on Aug 24, 2015 19:00:23 GMT
If the court can transfer animal souls into grown bodies, they can certainly give Tony a better prosthetic than what he has. So why is he using that block of wax or whatever it is? Is this another self loathing thing? "I don't deserve a replacement hand." That could be for all sorts of reasons. Maybe he doesn't trust the court? Or he's keeping it as a reminder or how he messed up and what he almost did to his daughter? Or it could just not be done growing yet. |
|
|
|
Post by antiyonder on Aug 24, 2015 19:04:27 GMT
Well some speculation from THBeholder (I think) suggested that a reason he brushed off her concern over his hand is that he didn't see himself as a parent, thus it wasn't her business.
So, it seems like this chapter confirms the speculation or is basically a step away from making it a factual prediction.
|
|
|
|
Post by darththulhu on Aug 24, 2015 19:29:15 GMT
Well some speculation from THBeholder (I think) suggested that a reason he brushed off her concern over his hand is that he didn't see himself as a parent, thus it wasn't her business. So, it seems like this chapter confirms the speculation or is basically a step away from making it a factual prediction. Interesting theory. He'd be interacting with her only as "a deeply concerned teacher" and "a legal guardian", then. Man, seriously messed up |
|
|
|
Post by setrain on Aug 24, 2015 19:32:23 GMT
A particularly salient (or at least snarky) comment on this comic page. Looking forward to seeing what comes next. My best guesses are: 1 - The court saved him and then threatened that they'd do worse to Annie than holding her back a year, etc. if he didn't return and get her under control. 2 - He thinks he deserves to be hated so he's giving her reasons to hate him. In an ass backwards way this is more self flagellation. 3 - He understands leaving her alone was bad and wants things to be better for her, and so despite his self-hate he is simply trying (failing) to do what a good dad would do. I think 2 is pretty likely. People do that a lot. |
|
|
|
Post by imaginaryfriend on Aug 24, 2015 19:44:16 GMT
That actually makes a kind of sense of how his first actions on meeting Annie again are to take her to task for cheating in her homework and wearing way too much make-up (way too much to be appropriate in school, anyway, forest medium or not). After realising that in fact he's not just failed Surma but also Annie, he tries to make amends by getting Annie's upbringing back in hand - but being half-crazy with grief, major depression, possibly after-effects of his injuries too, as well as having no more social skills than he ever had, his way of doing it is totally stupid. Yes, somebody needed to tackle her about those things, but somebody also needed to, you know, actually talk to her... Like I said before: So endeth the days of the absentee fathering; now beginnth the reign of the half-@ssed tiger-parenting. Or something like that, I forget exactly what I wrote. Anyway, Anthony is a scientist. Any idiot can have a kid, how hard can it be? Isolate the subject from outside influences so that yours is the primary voice she hears; control the environment to remove contamination and unwanted influences. To prepare a sample for a microscope slice it into very thin bits, or grind it into a fine power if it's for the spectrometer. To work a clay you have to break it down completely before you build it up again. Metals need to be melted and the slag skimmed off before they can be worked with properly. Or in botany, prune back anything that's grown while you weren't looking I guess. Perfectly simple to apply these principles to nurturing the growth of an adolescent. He'll be father of the year in no time. I'm grateful to this comic; I act like that myself sometimes when I've done something bad through no fault of my own, and this has knocked it into my head just how annoying it is from everyone else's perspective. A wise man finds more wisdom wherever he looks. -Confucius |
|
|
|
Post by imaginaryfriend on Aug 24, 2015 19:53:22 GMT
Double post for bonus points! If the court can transfer animal souls into grown bodies, they can certainly give Tony a better prosthetic than what he has. So why is he using that block of wax or whatever it is? Is this another self loathing thing? "I don't deserve a replacement hand." One of the reasons that people get stuck on stupid is that they fall in love with the wreckage that is themselves; I'll speculate that he wants to be and look physically disabled because he wears that as a badge of honor in showing how devoted he was in his quest to bring Surma back, as misguided as he now knows that his methods were. And he probably is punishing himself through it also, and perhaps doesn't want to ask the Court for anything. [edit] Should also mention he didn't have stitches for busted lip/won't have plastic surgery to correct injuries for face for same reasons. [/edit] |
|
|
|
Post by hp on Aug 24, 2015 19:54:50 GMT
Depression as this terrible way of making it so hard to see any other perspective than your own. It's an incredibly self-centered illness, not because the person suffering from it is meaning to be self-centered, but because you become pre-occupied with your pain and your failures, and you hate yourself for those things, then you hate yourself for being so pre-occupied with your own problems, which just feeds into the cycle. It's so hard to escape, especially when it's wrapped up in so much guilt. It's taken me years of almost daily therapy and a lot of a medication to get to the point where I think my family was right, and they are happier with me in their lives and life is worth living, and even now I still have days where I doubt those things. Basically, Tony really needs to go see a therapist. Yeah, I was about to comment on that. Tony seems to be coping badly with his grief. Looks like depression or something like that leading to poor thinking. That and the fact that he doesn't have the information we have about Annie's involvement with psychopomps and the RotD... We have to remember that we're judging him from a position of omniscience (at least, omniscience about the facts already shown in the storyline) |
|
|
|
Post by l33tninja on Aug 24, 2015 19:58:34 GMT
A particularly salient (or at least snarky) comment on this comic page. Looking forward to seeing what comes next. My best guesses are: 1 - The court saved him and then threatened that they'd do worse to Annie than holding her back a year, etc. if he didn't return and get her under control. 2 - He thinks he deserves to be hated so he's giving her reasons to hate him. In an ass backwards way this is more self flagellation. 3 - He understands leaving her alone was bad and wants things to be better for her, and so despite his self-hate he is simply trying (failing) to do what a good dad would do. Interesting thoughts. I think #1 is probably not right since the Court has known for a long time about the cheating but has done absolutely nothing. I don't think they care about the schoolwork part of the Court. It would not surprise me on the other hand to find out that they are part of the reason for the harsh punishments; I don't think they like how familiar Annie is with Coyote, and how it always makes them look bad. They might be using Tony to get back at Annie in a very insidious way.
As for 2 and 3, I think it's a combination of those. It's amazing how many people on this board don't realize that parenthood comes without an instruction manual. There are many, many ways that parents fail - even with good intentions. It's a hard job. Not saying that Tony's methods (if they are as transparent as we have believed to this point), are right. Not at all. But sometimes parents try to do what they think is best when in really it isn't even close. Observing, and 20/20 hindsight expose bad decisions and make them seem really horrible, when at the time it seemed the right thing to do.
Tony may even have a more crafty plan than we can imagine. Perhaps his treatment of Annie is an attempt to get her to run away and escape the Court all together. He has seen lives used up by the Court and perhaps this is his plan, all the while acting as a seemingly good teacher at the school.
|
|
|
|
Post by pxc on Aug 24, 2015 20:09:21 GMT
My best guesses are: 1 - The court saved him and then threatened that they'd do worse to Annie than holding her back a year, etc. if he didn't return and get her under control. 2 - He thinks he deserves to be hated so he's giving her reasons to hate him. In an ass backwards way this is more self flagellation. 3 - He understands leaving her alone was bad and wants things to be better for her, and so despite his self-hate he is simply trying (failing) to do what a good dad would do. Interesting thoughts. I think #1 is probably not right since the Court has known for a long time about the cheating but has done absolutely nothing. I don't think they care about the schoolwork part of the Court. It would not surprise me on the other hand to find out that they are part of the reason for the harsh punishments; I don't think they like how familiar Annie is with Coyote, and how it always makes them look bad. They might be using Tony to get back at Annie in a very insidious way.
As for 2 and 3, I think it's a combination of those. It's amazing how many people on this board don't realize that parenthood comes without an instruction manual. There are many, many ways that parents fail - even with good intentions. It's a hard job. Not saying that Tony's methods (if they are as transparent as we have believed to this point), are right. Not at all. But sometimes parents try to do what they think is best when in really it isn't even close. Observing, and 20/20 hindsight expose bad decisions and make them seem really horrible, when at the time it seemed the right thing to do.
Tony may even have a more crafty plan than we can imagine. Perhaps his treatment of Annie is an attempt to get her to run away and escape the Court all together. He has seen lives used up by the Court and perhaps this is his plan, all the while acting as a seemingly good teacher at the school.
All parents make mistakes, for sure. The good ones learn from them and become better parents. It seems just a matter of time now before the reality of his bad decisions smacks him in the face. Hopefully he finds it within himself to learn instead of wildly flailing around like he currently is. |
|
|
|
Post by imaginaryfriend on Aug 24, 2015 20:17:07 GMT
That and the fact that he doesn't have the information we have about Annie's involvement with psychopomps and the RotD... We have to remember that we're judging him from a position of omniscience (at least, omniscience about the facts already shown in the storyline) I believe that even with the facts we know Anthony knew (or knew but chose not to believe) that his marriage to Surma wasn't a trick or a Faustian bargain or a Job-like trial. There are probably better parallels in myth but the only one I can think of right now is Persephone; a beautiful wife from the other-world but for a limited period of time. I'm okay with people saying that the Court shares in the blame for helping refine his natural tenancies but in the end Anthony is responsible for the actions of Anthony. I'm not saying that I'm completely unsympathetic but Anthony is not a tragic hero in my book, he's just in the process of learning that the rules apply to him and actions have consequences... hopefully, he's learning, that is. |
|
|
|
Post by l33tninja on Aug 24, 2015 20:23:56 GMT
Interesting thoughts. I think #1 is probably not right since the Court has known for a long time about the cheating but has done absolutely nothing. I don't think they care about the schoolwork part of the Court. It would not surprise me on the other hand to find out that they are part of the reason for the harsh punishments; I don't think they like how familiar Annie is with Coyote, and how it always makes them look bad. They might be using Tony to get back at Annie in a very insidious way.
As for 2 and 3, I think it's a combination of those. It's amazing how many people on this board don't realize that parenthood comes without an instruction manual. There are many, many ways that parents fail - even with good intentions. It's a hard job. Not saying that Tony's methods (if they are as transparent as we have believed to this point), are right. Not at all. But sometimes parents try to do what they think is best when in really it isn't even close. Observing, and 20/20 hindsight expose bad decisions and make them seem really horrible, when at the time it seemed the right thing to do.
Tony may even have a more crafty plan than we can imagine. Perhaps his treatment of Annie is an attempt to get her to run away and escape the Court all together. He has seen lives used up by the Court and perhaps this is his plan, all the while acting as a seemingly good teacher at the school.
All parents make mistakes, for sure. The good ones learn from them and become better parents. It seems just a matter of time now before the reality of his bad decisions smacks him in the face. Hopefully he finds it within himself to learn instead of wildly flailing around like he currently is. I'm with you; and if he doesn't, he will have another pile of regret to stew about. |
|
|
|
Post by aline on Aug 24, 2015 21:01:08 GMT
I have some majorly mixed feelings about Annie hearing all this. On one hand, it's good for her to know that her actions and her worthiness as a personal have nothing to do with her father's actions or choices, but that's a huge burden of emotions for a teenager. If she's already in the state where she's willing to turn herself inside out for his acceptance and approval... hngh. In general, I don't foresee Anthony being able to provide emotional support to anyone, let alone Annie, for a good long while. He's gotta get himself taken care of first. It's much better for her to know than not to. The silence her father kept about all this has been destroying her. Nothing but genuine, unfiltered truth could repair that. Anything told by a third party she would never believe anyway. Now she's seeing her dad's feelings written on his face, for possibly the first time in her life. Annie has wanted very badly her father to love her and to make him proud of her. Now she can see that he already loves her, very much, but that he is also a vulnerable human with plenty of failures and defaults of his own, not that statue-like father figure that judges her from his pedestal. It's also a warning to her, because she's exactly the same: drowning in guilt, shame and frustration but smiling and lying her way through it, alienating along the way the people who are trying to help her. Hearing all that is the best thing that could happen to her.
I the end, she will be the one to provide emotional support to her broken father and bridge the gap between them.
|
|
freeman
Full Member
That 70's Coyote!
Posts: 242
|
Post by freeman on Aug 24, 2015 21:26:05 GMT
Just pointing out the suspicious beard growth between the pages. He's been out for days at least. Yeah, he's in full-out self-loathing mode. I wonder how hammered the guy is by this point. He's had at least what, three glasses? Not too much, but depends how long he has been talking between the shot. I also doubt he has any tolerance and he's a light guy. tl;dr Tony is absolutely rocking now, going up up up fast! (The good old thirty minutes in ferris wheel and crash.) Trust me, I'm a Finn  |
|
ysca
New Member
Posts: 9
|
Post by ysca on Aug 24, 2015 21:27:31 GMT
That and the fact that he doesn't have the information we have about Annie's involvement with psychopomps and the RotD... We have to remember that we're judging him from a position of omniscience (at least, omniscience about the facts already shown in the storyline) I believe that even with the facts Anthony knew (or knew but chose not to believe) we know that his marriage to Surma wasn't a trick or a Faustian bargain or a Job-like trial. There are probably better parallels in myth but the only one I can think of right now is Persephone; a beautiful wife from the other-world but for a limited period of time. I'm okay with people saying that the Court shares in the blame for helping refine his natural tenancies but in the end Anthony is responsible for the actions of Anthony. I'm not saying that I'm completely unsympathetic but Anthony is not a tragic hero in my book, he's just in the process of learning that the rules apply to him and actions have consequences... hopefully, he's learning, that is. I don't really see where he thought the rules didn't apply to him, or that actions didn't have consequences. He seems to understand that actions have consequences just fine. Most of his lessons seem to be more about understanding his own limitations rather than about rules and consequences. The things he did had consequences, but they weren't consequences he could have predicted based on the knowledge he had, other than Surma dying. |
|
Sadie
Full Member
I eat food and sleep in a horizontal position.
Posts: 146
|
Post by Sadie on Aug 24, 2015 21:36:28 GMT
They can also point out multiple God-level etheric threats to her well-being. This is true, and he is indeed in the mindset to be especially negative toward non-human entities. By appointing Smitty instead, who is more cautious and - though I'm sure this is entirely incidental - more controlled and controllable. " I tried to kill her!" screams Tony in desperation, before breaking down into ragged, choking sobs. And she can say "No", but she chooses not to and has, in fact, run to him/the Forest for help/support/comfort when distraught. Whyyy is that? Maybe if someone asked that question and worked out a solution based on her answer, she'd be less inclined to scurry to Coyote's side at his slightest call or spend time relaxing with Ysengrin. It's like she's missing something in her life and they are satisfying a need. I wonder what it could be. Hmmm. You know, the further this story goes on, the more I'm wondering how much he genuinely gives a damn about her school work, versus how much he clings to it as an excuse on which to float their interactions. I said in the post you quoted that her homework is one of the only things that he occupies himself with because there's nothing else that matters. I don't think he even really cares about the homework. It just a task; a role he can fill; an obligation completely disconnected from everything else he's been through. He's not her father. He's her teacher. He doesn't have to touch or comfort or express emotion or anything else with her. He won't be taking any undeserved affection or wrongfully enjoying her presence. He just has to give assignments and correct the completed ones. Easy. Controlled. Safe. It's just that... when someone reaches that point where they'd rather just die, how their kid is doing in school means jack all. It's too small. Even if he moved past it of his own violation, he was at the bottom of a pit where absolutely nothing in her life mattered to him. I'm not saying this to scold or demonize him; it's one of the ways grief and depression can warp a person's mind. He knew in his core that her life was better off without him and in that moment, he was the absolute worst and most harmful thing her life. Someone else will look after Antimony. Someone more worthy. Someone who didn't almost kill her on a fool's mission. "But what if she's doing bad in school and only I can get her back on the right path?" No, no. I could buy that he pulled out of the pit enough to accept that he could do something about the other risks in her life, just not the school thing. Or the makeup thing; I'm much more inclined to believe the theory that she looked too much like Surma and it was flipping him out. That they might. |
|
|
|
Post by antiyonder on Aug 24, 2015 22:07:24 GMT
It's much better for her to know than not to. The silence her father kept about all this has been destroying her. Nothing but genuine, unfiltered truth could repair that. Anything told by a third party she would never believe anyway. Now she's seeing her dad's feelings written on his face, for possibly the first time in her life. It also makes for a nice bit of irony that the only one who can convince her of his imperfection is himself. Yeah, the coma incident is arguably a good example of that too. As an objector of him (possibly) doing surgery of this fashion without her consent, it was definitely dickish and disturbing. But at the same time, I could still see it as Anthony possibly knowing what he's doing until Zimmy interfered. The recent revelation shows, however, that he was basically a kid who played with fire and got burned. |
|
|
|
Post by imaginaryfriend on Aug 24, 2015 23:10:51 GMT
I believe that even with the facts Anthony knew (or knew but chose not to believe) we know that his marriage to Surma wasn't a trick or a Faustian bargain or a Job-like trial. There are probably better parallels in myth but the only one I can think of right now is Persephone; a beautiful wife from the other-world but for a limited period of time. I'm okay with people saying that the Court shares in the blame for helping refine his natural tenancies but in the end Anthony is responsible for the actions of Anthony. I'm not saying that I'm completely unsympathetic but Anthony is not a tragic hero in my book, he's just in the process of learning that the rules apply to him and actions have consequences... hopefully, he's learning, that is. I don't really see where he thought the rules didn't apply to him, or that actions didn't have consequences. He seems to understand that actions have consequences just fine. Most of his lessons seem to be more about understanding his own limitations rather than about rules and consequences. The things he did had consequences, but they weren't consequences he could have predicted based on the knowledge he had, other than Surma dying. Surma dying is sorta the big one there but Anthony sacrificing his hand to construct the antenna is a good microcosm for the way he treats people. He gave himself a great deal of harm to achieve a goal without considering that a price might have to be paid beyond the one he was paying. But his focus on the construction of the tool he needed to get the result wanted appears to have been the limit of his plan. There is such a thing as willful ignorance, choosing not to ask questions, cultivating one's own blindness. Hrm, that fire thing was a part of Surma once. Oopsie. Add that to his failure to find some way around the whole passing-the-fire-Surma-dying thing and that's his second fire-related-f*ckup. So I must disagree: What happened was not unforeseeable and other worse things may have happened if things had progressed farther. "There's no such thing as a free lunch" is an old saying related to sales pitches you had to sit through and bars that served oversalted food and overpriced drinks. But that's not saying that there's no such thing as a free lunch for YOU. If you're tricky you don't even need to dine-and-dash or slip a dead bug in your meal (in which case the restaurant picks up the bill). You just need to figure out how to shift the costs onto someone else... The Court itself may have had ulterior motives in letting Antimony enroll, since she's etherically gifted, so Anthony and the Court had mutual interests even if he didn't spend a cent boarding her there. But as far as providing a guardian, looks like this was his way of dumping her on the Donlans (to the extent she had a parental figure whatsoever during that time) without so much as a by-your-leave. What the hell, they're friends, nice people, they'd have said yes if he'd asked so why interrupt the grief/spend the calories asking. And they might actually want to converse, ask uncomfortable questions about their old friend Surma, which would be inconvenient. Nom om om. Injuring people accidentally is a theme of this comic but usually it's children doing the harm in small ways. In the case of Diego we have an adult who chose to do something he knew to be injurious to another on purpose under the guise of protecting the Court, and perhaps in a cloud of suspicion and ignorance that support this more than I credit here, but Diego probably manipulated events to Jeanne's death simply because his feelings were hurt; in the case of Anthony we have an adult who injures himself purposefully and others blindly (though I'd say with negligence) for better motives. If Anthony is not accountable by now with what he knew and should have known, how old does someone have to be, how many messes do they get to make, before they are accountable for their own actions? |
|
|
|
Post by smjjames on Aug 24, 2015 23:25:25 GMT
1) Reynardine tried to kill her He's since regretted trying to and has paid his penance since. He wasn't of sound mind at that point. He's only done that, what, twice? The rest of the time, it was of her own will or expected duties. |
|
Sadie
Full Member
I eat food and sleep in a horizontal position.
Posts: 146
|
Post by Sadie on Aug 24, 2015 23:45:25 GMT
It's much better for her to know than not to. The silence her father kept about all this has been destroying her. Nothing but genuine, unfiltered truth could repair that. Anything told by a third party she would never believe anyway. I do agree with you! Annie has always been way too ready to lionize and defend her father to accept anyone else telling her his flaws. I think where my conflicted feelings come in is... well, like I said. That's a lot of emotion to dump on a teenager. Speaking from my own experiences and biases here -- it's so hard reconcile complex feelings about your parents. About anyone, really, but especially parents. Annie was mad at her father and hurt by both his abandonment and his publicly cold treatment. She's missed him. She's carried the sting of his rejection for three years. She bottled up those feelings instead of sharing them and she's been telling both herself and everyone who's tried to sympathize with her that they don't exist. Now she's hearing that her father has been through hell and back and is completely emotionally destroyed. What is she supposed to do with her anger and hurt now? How on earth can she tell this poor man, who utterly hates himself for accidentally harming her, "you also hurt me this way". How can she even compare HER sadness about her mother dying to HIS sadness about his wife dying? Why, he was completely alone and suffering so horribly, and here she was, snug and safe at school, daring to be mad that he's not there for her birthdays or holidays or when she's in the hospital, she's been so petty, she knew there was a good reason he was gone and -- Yeah. Maybe I'm off-base and it'll turn out that Annie will be able to offer him support without any major emotional burdens on her. It's just hits close to home on some stuff for me, so I'm all hrrrrmmm. Again though, I do think her knowing what he was really did and seeing him as human IS very important and a necessary step both for her and their relationship. I totally believe she can handle the rest with the right support. I'm just not sure where that support is going to come from. She's been in short supply since the beginning. |
|
|
|
Post by psybershadow on Aug 25, 2015 0:21:36 GMT
You know, I've been thinking about this for awhile, but Tony seems to have more hair currently than he did in these flashbacks.
|
|
|
|
Post by matoyak on Aug 25, 2015 0:27:25 GMT
I am going with the theory that Tony is rescued by Coyote because he resembles the Man in the Desert who "created" Coyote. Except the "man in the desert" dies. And Coyote doesn't have a habit of saving dying people, that's not what he does. Why waste a tasty morsel by saving them? That's him being unselfish - only he hasn't twigged that it's doing anything BUT help. It's a self-centered way of handling things. Dunno if it qualifies as "selfish", but unselfish is not the word for it. sometimes it's somebody like Kat who constructs an AntiGrav machine for a science fair. The surveillance is not to prevent stuff, it's for figuring out what happened afterwards and maybe using it to their gain. Or someone like Kat who creates an antigrav machine as an aside for her actual science fair project, at least  |
|
|
|
Post by todd on Aug 25, 2015 0:33:52 GMT
Everything you mentioned brought me on another train of thought - yes, the court watches everybody, but they're not a particularly efficient organisation. That's the problem with every surveillance state - you have all these agents, all this information, you open every letter and have free agent listening into every conversation. That's a lot of information, even if it's properly stored and recorded, easily accessible and searchable which the Court's information is certainly not. I bet they don't have enough people to review it all, and what's more - the information they get isn't really that good either. The robots are hilariously inefficient, the scientific equipment didn't even notice that the moon went missing (or had at least Annie's fingerprint applied), Bud and Lindsey are powerful creatures that use their own discretion a lot, and they let realitywarpers like Zimmy walk around like they own the place. Not even the court can track people in horrifying-industrial-nightmareland, even if they tried. What makes it all the stranger is that most of the individual adults (the Donlans, Eglamore, Jones, etc.) at the Court are very competent and able. Of course, they may not be high up enough in the Court's hierarchy to have a say over how it runs things. Though some of it might just be plot-necessity - if the Court stepped in to, say, thwart the Seraphs' scheme in "The Torn Sea" before they could carry it out, there'd be no story. |
|
|
|
Post by ctso74 on Aug 25, 2015 0:39:23 GMT
The things that taught him how to create the bone lasers don't exist in the physical realm. But it seems by some method or another (apparently bloody and painful) he could communicate with them. For all we know in order to do so he downed a sack of fungus and beat his face against a rock until he passed out. Or licked a hoard of toads. I prefer the mental image of Anthony scurrying around in the desert chasing toads than collecting shrooms. Traditionally, instead of smoking or eating shrooms, you are supposed to soak them in scalding water like a tea. But rather than drinking it, you use it in an enema. Exactly how ridiculous do you want to envision Tony? I've been thinking, that any hand the Court grew for him wouldn't work, because the Etheric component of his hand is literally gone. As if, he merely had a paralyzed hand. But that lip makes me think, that you may be right. |
|
|
|
Post by matoyak on Aug 25, 2015 0:40:28 GMT
Though some of it might just be plot-necessity - if the Court stepped in to, say, thwart the Seraphs' scheme in "The Torn Sea" before they could carry it out, there'd be no story. Well yes, this is the real answer. But a good author (one of which I consider Tom to be) will also have a reason for the lack of interference. (Or they would have told the story OF that interference). |
|
|
|
Post by warrl on Aug 25, 2015 0:42:19 GMT
I've always wondered if the court had way more people at some point in the past, and something decimate the population to its current low number. The court is huge, but mostly empty. There's tons of empty buildings, and whole trains to move people, but we rarely see any of those other people. We mostly just see students or teachers, with some notable court employees here or there. It's not even a problem of perspective with Annie just being a student, even when she's out of the school, walking around, going to the warehouses, or sneaking out with the other students, there's hardly anyone there. It's like the place is a shell fo what it once was. A crystal, placed into a suitable environment, will grow and/or reproduce until the environment is no longer suitable. (In fact, crystals feature strongly in some theories on the origin of life, for precisely this reason.) Whether this happen quickly or slowly depends on the type of crystal and details of the environment - if the environment is a supersaturated solution of the same stuff the crystal is made of, it can be very fast indeed. The initial crystal used to start this process is sometimes referred to as a seed crystal. The court has this sort-of-mystical origin story involving a "Seed Bismuth". Have you seen a bismuth crystal? Here are a couple:    To me, they look rather like the aerial shots we've seen of the Court. Simply, I think the Court's buildings crystallized out of the surrounding environment rather quickly, and the population has not caught up. (In fact it isn't established that the buildings have stopped crystallizing.) |
|
|
|
Post by antiyonder on Aug 25, 2015 1:02:37 GMT
What is she supposed to do with her anger and hurt now? How on earth can she tell this poor man, who utterly hates himself for accidentally harming her, "you also hurt me this way". How can she even compare HER sadness about her mother dying to HIS sadness about his wife dying? Why, he was completely alone and suffering so horribly, and here she was, snug and safe at school, daring to be mad that he's not there for her birthdays or holidays or when she's in the hospital, she's been so petty, she knew there was a good reason he was gone and -- Yeah, but as I mentioned in the Tony appreciation thread, there's a reason I tend to be more defensive of a kid in this kind of situation. For any discipline problems they present, the one thing a kid can't be faulted for is being born, even in Gunnerkrigg Court's continuum, at least until details prove otherwise (like say a kid projecting their conscience back in time to suggest that their yet to be parents get together). Tony losing Surma and further suffering is due to him making a decision without a willingness to prepare for the worse case scenario. And while Annie would go on to make her own share of mistakes, some of her misfortunes like losing her mom and being abandoned by her dad is something that happened through no fault of her own, so I'd say that she'd be entitled to a little anger. Simply put the common pain they share is something that one brought about by hubris, while the other didn't have a say in the matter and still had to pay for it. |
|
|
|
Post by imaginaryfriend on Aug 25, 2015 1:04:51 GMT
Or licked a hoard of toads. I prefer the mental image of Anthony scurrying around in the desert chasing toads than collecting shrooms. Traditionally, instead of smoking or eating shrooms, you are supposed to soak them in scalding water like a tea. But rather than drinking it, you use it in an enema. Exactly how ridiculous do you want to envision Tony? I'm unsure if that's a rhetorical question or not but I'll answer it: Live toad-horde enema. |
|
|
|
Post by knightingale on Aug 25, 2015 1:32:09 GMT
1) Reynardine tried to kill her He's since regretted trying to and has paid his penance since. He wasn't of sound mind at that point. He's only done that, what, twice? The rest of the time, it was of her own will or expected duties. Yes, we know all this, but I thought the point of the original post with these points is to point out simply how the Court could build a case for Tony to come back to them. He would have no access to any of this information, and it would be incredibly easy to twist these 'facts' to look as ugly as possible. We know Tony isn't exactly the master of looking at things from other people's perspectives at this point. |
|
