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Post by artezzatrigger on Aug 26, 2015 14:28:43 GMT
YMMV, but to me, it's just too neat of a solution. Everything bad Tony did? The Court made him do it. So he goes from a very interesting, tortured character who turned his grief upon his daughter (not without his own twisted reason) to...just being a tortured heroic guy, who never intended any harm he did. Just seems like a cop-out, to speak frankly, since it sidesteps all of the moral gray areas in his previous actions ("Oh, sure! It was wrong, but the Court made him do it, so he's absolved of blame!"). I don't think its fair to say that. At least, not until we see the next page. With the information we have now, all we know with 100% that the Court has done is: A) Told him to come back, and B) Waved around their banishment card in his face. Until he says something along the lines of "they made me stay distant", his behavior after the return is still entirely on him. |
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Post by Sky Schemer on Aug 26, 2015 14:29:02 GMT
I am not quite ready to have a love-fest here. Even with this revelation, I am not seeing anything that couldn't have been better handled with old-fashioned honesty. Maybe, maybe not, but... Did the faceless representatives of the Court (which Louis "The Court" is?) tell him to, specifically, start with public humiliation of Annie during the first minute of meeting her? Or not, and they merely meant what was said? Or it was all vague, but whoever arranged this knew Tony is going to act like a complete jackass? If Tony really can take care of the surveillance like he said, then he can have a come to Jesus meeting with Antimony. It may not change what has happened, but at least she'd understand why. It won't improve anything with her friends, but at least shed not be harboring massive resentment towards (and other conflicted feelings about) her father. Based on her reactions so far, that's clearly not happened. There are all sorts of reasons why this may not be practical, but I think the best explanation is that Tony is simply a flawed character. This is what he thought was the right way to handle it, and he didn't know better because he just didn't know. Assuming he read the information collected by the court on Antimony, that is not the same as actually knowing your daughter. That being said, I am softening my position on Tony. I am still not a fan of his parenting-- there is a lot that led us to this point-- but we have learned some valuable information about him here that paints him in a better light. A god that has not really intervened directly in the affairs of the Court. The most he has done is separate it from the forest. So until she steps foot into the latter, I'm working on the assumption that she is more or less on her own. |
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Post by Per on Aug 26, 2015 14:30:22 GMT
Judging from panel 4, a lot of good malt has been sacrificed to gather this much information. If that's whisky, then even if Don's been swigging his share it's a miracle Anthony is still this coherent. I don't really get what's happening - who exactly are the Evil Faceless Men (how do they get to be in charge and make evil plans is my question)? They're the ones who graduate from Thornhill North-North-West. Very hush-hush. |
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Post by Sky Schemer on Aug 26, 2015 14:31:31 GMT
Good question. But whether or not they know anything about her, I think this little incident has rocketed Jeanne to the top of Annie's to-do list. The Court is now a real threat to her and a damn big one. I'm not really seeing the urgency, though it would be nice to get back to that and away from the twelve labors of Anthony. I think it comes down to leverage. She needs it and she doesn't have it, and Jeanne is the only way that she knows of that she can get it. The time to start working on that is now because you don't know how long it's going to take. |
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Post by Daedalus on Aug 26, 2015 14:32:36 GMT
YMMV, but to me, it's just too neat of a solution. Everything bad Tony did? The Court made him do it. So he goes from a very interesting, tortured character who turned his grief upon his daughter (not without his own twisted reason) to...just being a tortured heroic guy, who never intended any harm he did. Just seems like a cop-out, to speak frankly, since it sidesteps all of the moral gray areas in his previous actions ("Oh, sure! It was wrong, but the Court made him do it, so he's absolved of blame!"). I don't think its fair to say that. At least, not until we see the next page. With the information we have now, all we know with 100% that the Court has done is: A) Told him to come back, and B) Waved around their banishment card in his face. Until he says something along the lines of "they made me stay distant", his behavior after the return is still entirely on him. I kind of touched on that in a separate post this morning on the "Tony Appreciation Thread". Regardless of his motivations, he's still not off the hook for being a poor father figure (from his original disappearance on his necromancy vision quest to the way he handled his first interactions with Annie). But I doubt the Court told him to be the way he was, since it seems more of a natural outgrowth of his distant and rather insensitive personality that we've already seen. So yeah, Tony's not entirely in the clear yet. |
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Sadie
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Post by Sadie on Aug 26, 2015 14:46:02 GMT
I've got more to say about this page, but first, let's check timing!
"Changes" occurs AFTER "Divine"
The Court already had a badly injured Anthony in custody at the time they decided to pick Smitty instead of Antimony for Court Medium. "This makes no sense. What are you planning?" Jones asked of the Headmaster, who yawned before shooing Annie back to her schoolwork.
Annie had said something interesting that always stuck with me in "The Great Secret": if they wanted to stop me, they would.
But they haven't. I noted of the scene in Changes that the Headmaster treated Annie like an adult. threatened removal of Court support, but in no evoked his powers as an authority figure over her.
No, stop. Don't take Coyote's job offer. Yawn.
What if all this time, the Court has just been giving Annie the rope needed to hang Tony?
Edit: Revising my above comments to clarify that I don't think they actually intended or expected Coyote to make a job offer. I think they expected Antimony to rebel in some way, maybe violently lash out or even to run back to the Forest. Something big that would give them further ammunition against Anthony. Coyote's offer genuinely pissed the Headmaster off and was not something he wanted to allow or encourage, but once it was on the table, there was enough exploitable potential to not actively prevent it.
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Post by pxc on Aug 26, 2015 15:06:54 GMT
That being said, I am softening my position on Tony. I am still not a fan of his parenting-- there is a lot that led us to this point-- but we have learned some valuable information about him here that paints him in a better light.Does it? To me it just says he wasn't planning to go back at all and was fine with never seeing Annie again, and with her never seeing or finding out what happened to him. Did he go back for Annie's benefit, or because he thought it's what Surma would've wanted? If it's the former, then I don't understand his reasoning. "I won't go back, make amends, and be her father. But I can't just let her not graduate! Ok I'll go back." |
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Post by scottjm on Aug 26, 2015 15:13:43 GMT
I've got more to say about this page, but first, let's check timing! "Changes" occurs AFTER "Divine" The Court already had a badly injured Anthony in custody at the time they decided to pick Smitty instead of Antimony for Court Medium. "This makes no sense. What are you planning?" Jones asked of the Headmaster, who yawned before shooing Annie back to her schoolwork. Annie had said something interesting that always stuck with me in "The Great Secret": if they wanted to stop me, they would. We do not actually know that for certain. Divine appears to be early fall Changes is in the winter. All we know about the delay between tony in the cave, and the court approaching him is it is months. This could be before Changes, or after. I am thinking they approached Tony after changes and their attempt to separate Annie and Renard there failed. As to her comment in "The Great Secret" (I think she said the same to Kat a couple chapters earlier), I would not be surprised if they were not punishing her for skipping detention because the court had already decided they did not want her. |
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karl
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Post by karl on Aug 26, 2015 15:15:10 GMT
Is it just me or the Court isn't making any sense here? Let's assume that the Court was unable to contact Anthony and Antimony keeps on living the way she has so far - being friendly with the Forest, being a medium and doing medium things and digging up some dirt (probably for both sides) every now and then. Cheating? My impression is that she was kinda phasing that out so I'm going to assume that this year (and every year after) most of her grades would have been earned.
So years tick by and at the graduation she finds out that she's not going to graduate because she cheated for 2-3 years (out of maybe 6?). Antimony cries and the Court snickers because their dastardly plan went off without a hitch. Then they're going to cast her out of the Court. (I'm guessing that she can't take the Court to the court because at that point the grades are set in stone and surprise - we knew you cheated-HA-Now you're expelled will probably not fly in a court of law).
And she is going to go to the Forest. Because, where else? Cardiff?
And now the Forest has a medium who is slightly pissed off at the Court. And the Court lost a good specimen for whatever they were doing. And the Court lost their means of controlling Antimony. And Antimony knows quite a bit about the Court.
Besides the small snicker I can't really see how the Court would actually profit from that...
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Post by scottjm on Aug 26, 2015 15:22:03 GMT
Does it? To me it just says he wasn't planning to go back at all and was fine with never seeing Annie again, and with her never seeing or finding out what happened to him. Did he go back for Annie's benefit, or because he thought it's what Surma would've wanted? If it's the former, then I don't understand his reasoning. "I won't go back, make amends, and be her father. But I can't just let her not graduate! Ok I'll go back." He might feel he is not worthy of being her father due to shame and self pity. This would explain not wanting to see her, but it does not mean he does not care. Tony probably thought Annie was being cared for by he court, and doing fine without him. But the threat of expulsion probably made him fear about her future, and feel that he needs to step in regardless of how he feels. His actions are probably made to try and save Annie while making him the villain in her eyes, as he might want her to hate him (due to how he is broken emotionally). |
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Post by avurai on Aug 26, 2015 15:42:41 GMT
Is it just me or the Court isn't making any sense here? Let's assume that the Court was unable to contact Anthony and Antimony keeps on living the way she has so far - being friendly with the Forest, being a medium and doing medium things and digging up some dirt (probably for both sides) every now and then. Cheating? My impression is that she was kinda phasing that out so I'm going to assume that this year (and every year after) most of her grades would have been earned. So years tick by and at the graduation she finds out that she's not going to graduate because she cheated for 2-3 years (out of maybe 6?). Antimony cries and the Court snickers because their dastardly plan went off without a hitch. Then they're going to cast her out of the Court. (I'm guessing that she can't take the Court to the court because at that point the grades are set in stone and surprise - we knew you cheated-HA-Now you're expelled will probably not fly in a court of law). And she is going to go to the Forest. Because, where else? Cardiff? And now the Forest has a medium who is slightly pissed off at the Court. And the Court lost a good specimen for whatever they were doing. And the Court lost their means of controlling Antimony. And Antimony knows quite a bit about the Court. Besides the small snicker I can't really see how the Court would actually profit from that... We still have no idea how the Court even gets people into it. We know they have Men In Black agents willing to go out into the world and track down potential students (as shown with Zimmy), yet we haven't seen any of these students actually enter the Court via transportation. Harry Potter had the magic train hidden in platform 9 3/4, Gunnerkrigg Court hasn't shown us anything about how people on the outside get in. It's entirely possible it can't even be located on a map and if the Court wanted to they could force her powerless with a ether-computer wrap-around-the-body spell they've used to capture etheric beings in the past, put her on whatever they use to transfer students to and from the Court, and she'd be made to fall asleep before being removed and shoved somewhere she doesn't recognize in the normal world, with no idea how to get back. Also, the Court has been shown consistently to play with fire and assume they won't get burned. Which is probably the most appropriate metaphor of all time. |
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Post by l33tninja on Aug 26, 2015 15:46:41 GMT
Aaannnnd there's the mssing link. Part of it anyway. The long-hypothesized "they brought him back to rein her in" theory. But more importantly, in my opinion, is that Tony is trying to protect her. I'm glad she's hearing this. It doesn't necessarily make up for him being a little bit cold to her, he could have totally approached it differently . . . but hindsight is 20/20 and we aren't all as good at parenting as apparently many people in this forum are.... |
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Sadie
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Post by Sadie on Aug 26, 2015 15:47:31 GMT
We do not actually know that for certain. Divine appears to be early fall Changes is in the winter. All we know about the delay between tony in the cave, and the court approaching him is it is months. Tony thinks it might have been months after, and 'early fall to winter' could cover anywhere from two to three months, depending where you start counting and assuming you don't mean 'middle/end of winter' (traditionally, fall is September to November and winter is December to February). My deal is that regardless of however long it took the Court to directly speak to Tony, someone picked him up out in the wilderness and began nursing him back to health. There's a really good chance that they either knew exactly where he was during that time and could drop in on him whenever, or it was some of their own people who'd collected him. But you're right, we don't know for certain! It would just be very interesting if that was the case. Since Annie is the protagonist and has been sticking her fingers in the Court's eye the longer she's been attending, it's natural for the readers (I mean me, here) to believe that the Court would go out of it's way to get her under control. It turning out that the Court has, in fact, always been way more interested in reigning in her father, not her, would be a neat flip. Whether they wanted her as Medium or not, she was still a student and they're still a school. Specifically a boarding school that has parental authority while her father is incommunicado. Yet they were doing jack shit about her cheating and her general disobedience. The only people who commented on it was James (who has reason to care about Annie as a person) and Jones (who... honestly, I don't know why she respects Annie or is encouraging toward Annie. Maybe she's just curious to see how Annie's actions will play out in the long run, or maybe she genuinely cares about her as a person). Either way, the Court has found Annie useful enough to not expel her already, yet has made, at best, half-assed measures to enforce their authority over her. Why? That's been the big question for a while. There's a lot of theories, but nothing confirmed yet. |
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Post by l33tninja on Aug 26, 2015 15:51:30 GMT
I don't really get what's happening - who exactly are the Evil Faceless Men (how do they get to be in charge and make evil plans is my question)? If the business with the forest annoyed them so much why was Antimony ever allowed to be a medium in training? I don't even see how the "business with the forest" could "piss them off" - what was she doing that was so bad for them? Is it forest-related or Jeanne-related? *keeps adding question marks* I think part of it is that the Court dislikes how they get mocked by Coyote, and then Annie (unwittingly perhaps) humiliates them by finding ways to spend time with Coyote. They specifically did NOT choose her as the Court medium, but she still is from Coyote's perspective. They don't like being flouted. |
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Post by l33tninja on Aug 26, 2015 15:52:38 GMT
I don't think its fair to say that. At least, not until we see the next page. With the information we have now, all we know with 100% that the Court has done is: A) Told him to come back, and B) Waved around their banishment card in his face. Until he says something along the lines of "they made me stay distant", his behavior after the return is still entirely on him. I kind of touched on that in a separate post this morning on the "Tony Appreciation Thread". Regardless of his motivations, he's still not off the hook for being a poor father figure (from his original disappearance on his necromancy vision quest to the way he handled his first interactions with Annie). But I doubt the Court told him to be the way he was, since it seems more of a natural outgrowth of his distant and rather insensitive personality that we've already seen. So yeah, Tony's not entirely in the clear yet. but at least he had a reason for his actions (whether we like the actions or not); and I believe he had good intentions, however poorly executed. |
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Post by Sky Schemer on Aug 26, 2015 15:59:03 GMT
That being said, I am softening my position on Tony. I am still not a fan of his parenting-- there is a lot that led us to this point-- but we have learned some valuable information about him here that paints him in a better light.Does it? To me it just says he wasn't planning to go back at all and was fine with never seeing Annie again, and with her never seeing or finding out what happened to him. Did he go back for Annie's benefit, or because he thought it's what Surma would've wanted? If it's the former, then I don't understand his reasoning. "I won't go back, make amends, and be her father. But I can't just let her not graduate! Ok I'll go back." I think it does. It says he's not innately an emotionally abusive person. At least, I don't get that impression now whereas it seemed like a possibility before. And "better" doesn't necessarily mean "good".  |
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Post by Jelly Jellybean on Aug 26, 2015 16:00:05 GMT
Is it just me or the Court isn't making any sense here? Let's assume that the Court was unable to contact Anthony and Antimony keeps on living the way she has so far - being friendly with the Forest, being a medium and doing medium things and digging up some dirt (probably for both sides) every now and then. Cheating? My impression is that she was kinda phasing that out so I'm going to assume that this year (and every year after) most of her grades would have been earned. So years tick by and at the graduation she finds out that she's not going to graduate because she cheated for 2-3 years (out of maybe 6?). Antimony cries and the Court snickers because their dastardly plan went off without a hitch. Then they're going to cast her out of the Court. (I'm guessing that she can't take the Court to the court because at that point the grades are set in stone and surprise - we knew you cheated-HA-Now you're expelled will probably not fly in a court of law). And she is going to go to the Forest. Because, where else? Cardiff? And now the Forest has a medium who is slightly pissed off at the Court. And the Court lost a good specimen for whatever they were doing. And the Court lost their means of controlling Antimony. And Antimony knows quite a bit about the Court. Besides the small snicker I can't really see how the Court would actually profit from that... What we are learning at the moment is through Anthony. Anthony has issues and the Court may have lied to him. The expulsion threat may have been an empty threat. Or it may be a real threat, but Anthony may be misinterpreting what was realy said to him. I would take what Anthony says with a grain of salt until there is some verification from someone else. |
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Post by pxc on Aug 26, 2015 16:31:35 GMT
Does it? To me it just says he wasn't planning to go back at all and was fine with never seeing Annie again, and with her never seeing or finding out what happened to him. Did he go back for Annie's benefit, or because he thought it's what Surma would've wanted? If it's the former, then I don't understand his reasoning. "I won't go back, make amends, and be her father. But I can't just let her not graduate! Ok I'll go back." I think it does. It says he's not innately an emotionally abusive person. At least, I don't get that impression now whereas it seemed like a possibility before. And "better" doesn't necessarily mean "good". I understand now. I too have converted from the abuse stance to less-horrible viewpoint that he's a terrible father, incredibly self-absorbed, confoundingly dense, emotionally infantile, etc. No malice really, just really dumb decisions based on ridiculous reasoning. Once it became clear the bone antenna wasn't intended for Annie at all, I stopped viewing him that way. He's not evil, he's incredibly broken. Which is obviously still a big problem. |
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Post by l33tninja on Aug 26, 2015 16:34:16 GMT
Alright, so someone clear this up: Lately, the thriving opinion is that Tony's a self-obsessed, or otherwise egotistical, person who values himself far above any other people. I've heard claims that he overstates his abilities knowingly; that he believes himself to be incredibly important to everyone; that any attempt to resurrect his dead wife is just one avenue of his trying to play god; and others. Where in the text do we (a major part of the forum) specifically get some kind of validation that Tony's an egomaniac? This kinda cropped up out of nowhere. It was sharks in the water, smelling blood. If the story had been strung out a couple of more pages, Tony would have been the worst dictator in the history of the universe. He would have enjoyed eating stewed cats and babies for dinner, and would purposely run over rabbits in the road. |
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Post by warrl on Aug 26, 2015 16:36:37 GMT
* Separating her from Kat/putting her in that Big Box Room? Ya got me there. I dunno. I guess it'd be much harder to fill a room like that with deadly neurotoxin through the vent system while Annie sleeps? Harder to fill the room... but easier to fill the room without risking killing anyone else. (And who are the two most likely possibilities for the "anyone else"?) On the other hand, we have no reason to think the *current* court leadership is that vicious. The expulsion threat makes no sense at all. "This powerful etheric being who has strong ties to both us and the Forest, of nearly equal strength, and knows some of our secrets... let's piss her off, sever all her ties to us, and shove her into the Forest! It was so much nicer when Ysengrin was Forest Medium and wanted to kill us all, we should see if we can get Annie hating us too!" Yeah, I don't think even the Court bureaucracy is that stupid. And that's without considering the likely effects on Katrina Donlan, The Robots' Angel - and, thereby, on the robots. And other people, particularly including Don, Anja, James, and Jones, who would be less than happy to learn that the Court would treat a student with such duplicity. An expulsion *bluff*, on the other hand... well, it got Anthony to stop trying to die, and to come back. Not sure why they wanted him back, other than to control Antimony. There has been no objection to the notion that something needed to be done about her cheating and other flouting of the rules. (Objection to *what* is being done, is another matter. Also objection to the fact that the Court didn't appear to even be trying to do anything.) It's possible that the Court feels some responsibility for its former students, and they didn't necessarily want Anthony back either as a teacher or for Annie's sake, but rather for his own sake - to give him a reason to stay alive and give himself time to heal. And his maltreatment of Annie is a combination of his own nature and miscommunication about what the Court wants him to do. (I wouldn't bet a pile of dog droppings on this...) |
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Post by atteSmythe on Aug 26, 2015 16:37:26 GMT
Also, let me remind everyone, Reynardine is not unlikely to be in the desk drawer, or somewhere else nearby, where wolf ears can pick up every word and etheric eyes of power can see Antimony in the background. Hahaha...oh, man. I've been so focused on Antimony that I completely forgot that Reynard is in the room. |
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Post by Daedalus on Aug 26, 2015 16:37:30 GMT
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Post by pxc on Aug 26, 2015 16:37:51 GMT
Alright, so someone clear this up: Lately, the thriving opinion is that Tony's a self-obsessed, or otherwise egotistical, person who values himself far above any other people. I've heard claims that he overstates his abilities knowingly; that he believes himself to be incredibly important to everyone; that any attempt to resurrect his dead wife is just one avenue of his trying to play god; and others. Where in the text do we (a major part of the forum) specifically get some kind of validation that Tony's an egomaniac? This kinda cropped up out of nowhere.
Massive hyperbole here. And establishing Tony as incredibly self-centered has been done by multiple posters, multiple times. I don't know how you've missed it but the thought of doing it again is exhausting so I'm going to go ahead and not bother. I think most people are fairly settled on their opinion of Tony at this point anyway. |
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Post by atteSmythe on Aug 26, 2015 16:54:44 GMT
Alright, so someone clear this up: Lately, the thriving opinion is that Tony's a self-obsessed, or otherwise egotistical, person who values himself far above any other people. I've heard claims that he overstates his abilities knowingly; that he believes himself to be incredibly important to everyone; that any attempt to resurrect his dead wife is just one avenue of his trying to play god; and others. Where in the text do we (a major part of the forum) specifically get some kind of validation that Tony's an egomaniac? This kinda cropped up out of nowhere. A character's traits aren't something you can just read straight out of the text. It's a pattern of behavior - how they act; what they do; and in this case, very importantly, what they don't do. Tony has established a pattern of assuming that he can accomplish whatever he sets his mind to, and that he doesn't need to consult with anyone prior to doing it. This continues even after the first assumption is proven false by Surma's death. Hence, massive ego. Hence, egomaniac. That's the 2-second summary, anyway. There's more. There's so much more. |
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Post by Trillium on Aug 26, 2015 17:18:00 GMT
Is it just me or the Court isn't making any sense here? Let's assume that the Court was unable to contact Anthony and Antimony keeps on living the way she has so far - being friendly with the Forest, being a medium and doing medium things and digging up some dirt (probably for both sides) every now and then. Cheating? My impression is that she was kinda phasing that out so I'm going to assume that this year (and every year after) most of her grades would have been earned. So years tick by and at the graduation she finds out that she's not going to graduate because she cheated for 2-3 years (out of maybe 6?). Antimony cries and the Court snickers because their dastardly plan went off without a hitch. Then they're going to cast her out of the Court. (I'm guessing that she can't take the Court to the court because at that point the grades are set in stone and surprise - we knew you cheated-HA-Now you're expelled will probably not fly in a court of law). And she is going to go to the Forest. Because, where else? Cardiff? And now the Forest has a medium who is slightly pissed off at the Court. And the Court lost a good specimen for whatever they were doing. And the Court lost their means of controlling Antimony. And Antimony knows quite a bit about the Court. Besides the small snicker I can't really see how the Court would actually profit from that... People in power are not above being petty. The Headmaster may not consider Annie's fate that important. Punting her out of the Court and the educational program might seem a suitable punishment for going against his wishes. The pleasure of punishing someone might be enough profit for a tin plated headmaster with delusions of Godhood. |
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Sadie
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Post by Sadie on Aug 26, 2015 17:40:41 GMT
Where in the text do we (a major part of the forum) specifically get some kind of validation that Tony's an egomaniac? This kinda cropped up out of nowhere. I feel like I've seen you ask this exact question before and get answers that you disagreed with. I mean, it's clear you don't think there's support for this outlook and you don't agree with what and where other people are seeing that support. You're more than entitled to that position! But you're still asking like no one has explained themselves, despite direct answers to you and in general commentary explaining the viewpoint. Are you genuinely seeing if anyone has a different answer that you'd be open to considering, or has this become a rhetorical question for you? |
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Post by scottjm on Aug 26, 2015 17:45:44 GMT
Where in the text do we (a major part of the forum) specifically get some kind of validation that Tony's an egomaniac? This kinda cropped up out of nowhere. First reference/hint I am aare of is from Eglamore during the dinner with Kat's parents in chapter 7 |
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karl
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Post by karl on Aug 26, 2015 18:12:05 GMT
My previous post omitted, just look bit above. We still have no idea how the Court even gets people into it. We know they have Men In Black agents willing to go out into the world and track down potential students (as shown with Zimmy), yet we haven't seen any of these students actually enter the Court via transportation. Harry Potter had the magic train hidden in platform 9 3/4, Gunnerkrigg Court hasn't shown us anything about how people on the outside get in. It's entirely possible it can't even be located on a map and if the Court wanted to they could force her powerless with a ether-computer wrap-around-the-body spell they've used to capture etheric beings in the past, put her on whatever they use to transfer students to and from the Court, and she'd be made to fall asleep before being removed and shoved somewhere she doesn't recognize in the normal world, with no idea how to get back. Also, the Court has been shown consistently to play with fire and assume they won't get burned. Which is probably the most appropriate metaphor of all time. That's, uh, really evil. I think she should have a birth certificate though. And it would make for a cool story though, like a reverse Harry Potter or something - "I got expelled from the Magic Academy and now have live in the normal world". What we are learning at the moment is through Anthony. Anthony has issues and the Court may have lied to him. The expulsion threat may have been an empty threat. Or it may be a real threat, but Anthony may be misinterpreting what was realy said to him. I would take what Anthony says with a grain of salt until there is some verification from someone else. Anthony is the kind of a person for whom academic achievements matter so the Court just said things (not necessarily lies) which would make Anthony come back. And to rein in his daughter. And if the Court can squeeze out some tears from that Forest Medium, then they also realised their graduating scheme. This whole thing stinks. Pettiness mixed with a vague and ominous long-term gameplan and incomplete understanding of ether makes for a really unpredictable and dickish Court. |
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Post by Refugee on Aug 26, 2015 18:12:52 GMT
So here's our little three-quarters orphan Annie listening to all this, and she discovers that one of the people she's put at risk with her little escapades is her beloved Father.
She is the lever the Court is using to rack a man who would rather be dead in order to force him to be coldly cruel to the daughter he loves almost as much as his dead wife.
I wonder if James and Jones knew about Anthony when they warned Annie that she was going way outside the boundaries.
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I see some people a tad miffed that the riddle Anthony's cruelty is so neatly solved, without leaving him 100% an abusive monster.
Instead, I think this just breaks open a huge, rotting, bulging can of story. What exactly were they planning to do to Annie? Expel her? What does that mean? Where would she go? The forest? Down her Father's path? Out into the world at large? Would she still keep her powers there? If she were expelled, could she get to the Forest? Would Coyote find her and bring her back?
Would they condemn her to Jeanne's fate, or try?
What about Jones? Eglamore? The Donlans, all three of them? What about Parley and Chance? Kat has control of Renard. What would he do? The Court robots worship Kat as an angel. What would she order them to do?
What about the Zeta/Gamma duality? Zimmy might try to claim she doesn't care, but Gamma would certainly try to get her to intervene.
What if the Court knows about all this, including Annie's freed elemental, and has decided that Annie is so dangerous in her out of control state of mind that expelling/imprisoning/killing her is still the wisest course?
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Most of all, it comes back to Annie. She knows that her seemingly trivial, schoolgirl defiance has indeed put everyone she loves at risk.
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And the agonies of self-hatred Anthony must be going through. He is acting the cold disciplinarian because that's the role the Court has ordered him to take, on pain of seeing Annie destroyed.
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guyy
Full Member
Posts: 113
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Post by guyy on Aug 26, 2015 18:27:44 GMT
I kind of suspected something like this would be the explanation; whether Tony was manipulating Annie of his own free will or not, it was clear that the Court had dragged him back in to do just that.
And I don't feel like it excuses much of what he's done. Yeah, the court blackmailed him into being mean to Annie... and he didn't even try to secretly reveal the truth to her? It's not like they threatened to kill her or something. Getting expelled from the Court wouldn't exactly be the end of the world, especially since it's apparently run by giant arseholes and Annie's been drifting towards the Forest for the entire story. If Tony can sneak into the spirit world and do transdimensional surgery, surely he could have slipped Annie a note explaining what's really going on. Or confiscated her blinker stone and "accidentally" left it next to some documents ordering him to be an evil dad. But he did nothing.
Maybe he didn't want to hurt Annie, and was forced to do so, but he's still not really treating her like a human being.
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