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Post by nero on Sept 4, 2015 16:52:24 GMT
It still looks like the elemental is attached to the blinker stone. MaskAnnie is just trying to convince herself that her father is in the right.
If Kat learned about Anthony's deal with the Court then at least she can push Annie into action. Kat can figure out that there some other reason for Annie's change. She can get help from Paz, Parley, Renard, Anja, Jack, Lyndsey, and ZimGam. It takes time to confront yourself, and your issues.
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Post by csj on Sept 4, 2015 17:07:05 GMT
But it's my room...
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Post by eyemyself on Sept 4, 2015 17:10:49 GMT
Ahhh, but is it your building? |
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Post by Trillium on Sept 4, 2015 17:14:45 GMT
I guess Ys' advice didn't take into account that some people's inner demon could get annoyed with them and try to (ahem) split. Given the previous page, it's very equivocal.  I agree with fire-Annie here. Annie is as stubborn/stupid as her father. Annie isn't playing with the full matchbox right now. And so we roll on to another chapter without a resolution. It's a story, not a Regional Party Congress.  If Kat had bugged the place wouldn't her dad have found and rendered them useless along with the Court listening devices? Not blipping likely. Sorry, I misspoke. Tony messed with the surveillance not Don. Actually I'd like to see how a contest between The Man Who Walks Through Walls vs The Angel of Robots would go. Kat has youth, brilliance and skill on her side. Don has his own smarts, years of experience and God knows what tricks up his sleeve. The old man may have the edge on his daughter if he wished to exercise it. |
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Sadie
Full Member
I eat food and sleep in a horizontal position.
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Post by Sadie on Sept 4, 2015 17:36:06 GMT
I should've known this wasn't going to be easy.
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Post by Sky Schemer on Sept 4, 2015 19:02:30 GMT
Incidentally, I find it an apt metaphor for how real life victims of abusive relationships often modify their own behavior. So we are basically seeing a defense mechanism. It's an etheric manifestation of it, but a defense mechanism nonetheless. Or, perhaps, just depression. One of the characteristics of severely depressed people is the inability to feel... anything. |
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Post by aline on Sept 4, 2015 20:07:47 GMT
So we are basically seeing a defense mechanism. It's an etheric manifestation of it, but a defense mechanism nonetheless. Or, perhaps, just depression. One of the characteristics of severely depressed people is the inability to feel... anything. Depressed people do not depart from their feelings voluntarily. And if Annie had this degree of depression, we would see other symptoms of it, it comes with some heavy tolls including physical ones. No, Annie is not having a major mental illness, I think mainly she's a kid struggling to find herself. She thinks she should be in control of her emotions (she's believed that for a long time), but she has that huge volcano boiling inside and sometimes exploding. The question of how to deal with that has been haunting her for a while. Then the horrible emotional wounds dealt by her dad suddenly make the pressure unbearable, she reaches for the cissors, and off goes the volcano up the ceiling. Now she's calm. She's in control. She no longer feels like she's a bomb about to explode. There is a comfortable aspect in this situation for Annie, not solely because of her father. Isn't that what she always wanted? Isn't that what Ysengrin claimed would make her strong? Isn't it better to be free from all those impulses that sometimes make her hurt her own friends? That's why this situation can't go away all of a sudden. Annie has already been told that she's entitled to be angry, but I don't think she wants to be angry. I hope we'll see that challenged in the next chapter. |
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Post by ih8pkmn on Sept 4, 2015 21:00:11 GMT
Color me disappointed. For a chapter billed as "Annie and the Fire", it seemed to be more about Anthony's life before he decided to be a complete and utter bastard, and his transition into bastardom. I understand why Anthony acted like that... but it justifies it about as much as losing a game of chess justifies throwing the board at your opponent's head and forcing them to eat their king.
If the next chapter just continues this plotline, I think I'll be taking a break from the comic for a while. I've said before, I miss the other plotlines in this comic that seem to have been completely abandoned by Anthony's presence. I think that's another reason people dislike him- the entire comic seems to have revolved around him these past few chapters. Under non-Anthony-Infested circumstances, we most likely would have gotten a chapter about Kat and Paz's relationship, a chapter about robots, and a chapter about the forest by now. Instead... *sigh*
I get that not every story is supposed to make you feel good. Tom wrote a whole bunch of tweets about that a while back. But right now, Gunnerkrigg Court, to use a comparison a friend had, has turned from Harry Potter books 1-5 to Harry Potter books six and seven. Massive tonal shift into darkness that's honestly inducing apathy in me- it's still good, but I'm losing touch with the characters and the world. I didn't cry when Dumbledore died because the rest of Half-Blood Prince was so dark that it honestly didn't faze me, and quite frankly, if Antimony were to do something like jump into the Annann waters to her death, I would hardly be affected by it. I know that sounds horrible, but in the span of three chapters, we went from relatively light-hearted urban/boarding school mystery-fantasy with dark themes such as coping with death, to a story about emotional abuse with some fantastical elements in the background.
We need a perspective shift; maybe next chapter will focus on Kat, or Parley and Smitty trying to bargain with Coyote regarding Annie, and hopefully have Anthony shoved into the background. Way into the background. Or have him not show up at all. Unless the next chapter involves Eglamore punching Anthony in the face. In which case, go at it, Jimmy Boy.
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Post by ctso74 on Sept 4, 2015 23:10:57 GMT
Unless Fire follows Annie to class, it doesn't seem like distance is a problem. Though yeah, it doesn't look like this'll be worked out until they get back on the same page again. Which at this rate will indeed require outside influence/interference. Hoping for surprise Zimmy next chapter..? I think at this point Antimony can still fix this... but yeah if it gets bad Zeta is the only one who could probably fix this... except possibly Coyote, and Coyote would probably do something unexpected. Which would make it expected. And somewhat boring. But once the fire is seen by someone else it will be in their stories, so in addition to starting to have its own memories and a different will... I just remembered this comic. The two halves may be more connected than they let on. Instead of an Etheric character, Kat may be the one to knock Annie's walls down. Especially since the break come from Annie inner world, not her Etheric one. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Sept 5, 2015 1:09:39 GMT
I think at this point Antimony can still fix this... but yeah if it gets bad Zeta is the only one who could probably fix this... except possibly Coyote, and Coyote would probably do something unexpected. Which would make it expected. And somewhat boring. But once the fire is seen by someone else it will be in their stories, so in addition to starting to have its own memories and a different will... I just remembered this comic. The two halves may be more connected than they let on. Instead of an Etheric character, Kat may be the one to knock Annie's walls down. Especially since the break come from Annie inner world, not her Etheric one. Agree, Kat can do it now... or probably better to say she could help Antimony to reunify now, or facilitate, whichever.* But the longer this drags on... *Who mediates the mediator? I guess Kat does. Unless it's Zimmy. |
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Post by todd on Sept 5, 2015 1:56:57 GMT
Color me disappointed. For a chapter billed as "Annie and the Fire", it seemed to be more about Anthony's life before he decided to be a complete and utter bastard, and his transition into bastardom. I understand why Anthony acted like that... but it justifies it about as much as losing a game of chess justifies throwing the board at your opponent's head and forcing them to eat their king. If the next chapter just continues this plotline, I think I'll be taking a break from the comic for a while. I've said before, I miss the other plotlines in this comic that seem to have been completely abandoned by Anthony's presence. I think that's another reason people dislike him- the entire comic seems to have revolved around him these past few chapters. Under non-Anthony-Infested circumstances, we most likely would have gotten a chapter about Kat and Paz's relationship, a chapter about robots, and a chapter about the forest by now. Instead... *sigh* I get that not every story is supposed to make you feel good. Tom wrote a whole bunch of tweets about that a while back. But right now, Gunnerkrigg Court, to use a comparison a friend had, has turned from Harry Potter books 1-5 to Harry Potter books six and seven. Massive tonal shift into darkness that's honestly inducing apathy in me- it's still good, but I'm losing touch with the characters and the world. I didn't cry when Dumbledore died because the rest of Half-Blood Prince was so dark that it honestly didn't faze me, and quite frankly, if Antimony were to do something like jump into the Annann waters to her death, I would hardly be affected by it. I know that sounds horrible, but in the span of three chapters, we went from relatively light-hearted urban/boarding school mystery-fantasy with dark themes such as coping with death, to a story about emotional abuse with some fantastical elements in the background. We need a perspective shift; maybe next chapter will focus on Kat, or Parley and Smitty trying to bargain with Coyote regarding Annie, and hopefully have Anthony shoved into the background. Way into the background. Or have him not show up at all. Unless the next chapter involves Eglamore punching Anthony in the face. In which case, go at it, Jimmy Boy. It's possible that Tom chose the chapter title he did to make the revelations about Anthony more of a surprise. (And the title is justified, since we find out in it how Annie and her fire elemental side were separated.) I've been concerned myself about the fact that this situation is making it difficult to attend to the other threads - all the more so since while it lasts, I don't think that the rest of the cast will be able to concentrate on much else. I also suspect, from the way things have been going, that it will take a long time to undo (if it gets undone at all). Maybe this is Tom's way of saying that the webcomic is "growing up" - moving away from the fun of the earlier chapters to a far more serious story, though there are still a number of threads that have to be resolved. (Since you brought up the Hary Potter series, Rowling could have been doing the same thing in shifting it from a school story with fantasy elements to a "defeat the Dark Lord" story - and I've known people who think that it was a mistake and that Voldemort worked best as a plot-device villain whose role was to orphan Harry so that he would be brought up in ignorance of the wizarding world. Whether that "genre shift" was indeed a mistake is something that ought to be discussed in a different forum, though.) For now, all we can do is wait and see where this is going - and trust that Tom knows what he's doing. |
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Post by deuswyvern on Sept 5, 2015 2:14:14 GMT
I think that while Fire-Annie is closest to feeling what we feel, it is equally in the wrong. Both sides of Annie are completely dominated by someone who does not deserve their attention.
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Post by youwiththeface on Sept 5, 2015 2:44:03 GMT
It's only just occurred to me that even though we now have a lot more insight into what was going on with Anthony before he came back to the court, we still don't have any idea how he and Antimony interacted before Surma died.
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Post by darththulhu on Sept 5, 2015 4:29:47 GMT
It's only just occurred to me that even though we now have a lot more insight into what was going on with Anthony before he came back to the court, we still don't have any idea how he and Antimony interacted before Surma died. We also have almost no insight into how the two of them are interacting now. We have seen almost Zero of their interactions that lack Kat, which adds up to several hours worth of interaction involving some Gigantic Changes, including "this is where you'll be living" and "this is the homework regimen" and absolutely everything else other than silently walking together. Are they doing martial arts again? Do they share meals? Do they do anything else together? How bizarre and/or normal and/or mutually-not-neurotypical are those times? How about homework reviews? And so on and so forth. We don't actually know any of that. Instead, we're being allowed to fill in the very large gaps with whatever we choose to imagine: complete isolation, full daily routines, and every possibility in between. And since we're almost certainly about to skip some time and shift some perspective, that vast negative space is only going to grow. |
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Post by TBeholder on Sept 5, 2015 12:07:50 GMT
Tony messed with the surveillance not Don. Actually I'd like to see how a contest between The Man Who Walks Through Walls vs The Angel of Robots would go. Kat has youth, brilliance and skill on her side. Don has his own smarts, years of experience and God knows what tricks up his sleeve. The old man may have the edge on his daughter if he wished to exercise it. The answer is the same: intruder wins. There are measures and even standards for securing an area. They range from obvious to secret, but practical level must include what amounts to starting with "you have built this room in the first place or studied walls and everything around very thoroughly with several solids-penetrating sensors, same for any elements of basic infrastructure (wires, air ducts, water pipes) directly leading into it and those are directly connected on the other side with your equipment" and end with "your access to it was last, exclusive, and for long enough time to make sure there are no surprises anywhere in it, at all - not even a dead fly or a pencil trace". Hard standards ("really sure" rather than "reasonably confident") start with "you have built this room in the first place and no possible intruder even had access to its inside, its walls or anything directly leading into it - ever". It's more of engineering common sense than knowledge of particular tricks. That's when one have a very good idea of what other players could do. In the Court it's not the case, as we have seen. Which is why Anthony's statement amounts to one more demonstration of dangerous overconfidence, and little more. |
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Post by Jelly Jellybean on Sept 5, 2015 12:39:54 GMT
It's only just occurred to me that even though we now have a lot more insight into what was going on with Anthony before he came back to the court, we still don't have any idea how he and Antimony interacted before Surma died. We also have almost no insight into how the two of them are interacting now. We have seen almost Zero of their interactions that lack Kat, which adds up to several hours worth of interaction involving some Gigantic Changes, including "this is where you'll be living" and "this is the homework regimen" and absolutely everything else other than silently walking together. Are they doing martial arts again? Do they share meals? Do they do anything else together? How bizarre and/or normal and/or mutually-not-neurotypical are those times? How about homework reviews? And so on and so forth. We don't actually know any of that. Instead, we're being allowed to fill in the very large gaps with whatever we choose to imagine: complete isolation, full daily routines, and every possibility in between. And since we're almost certainly about to skip some time and shift some perspective, that vast negative space is only going to grow. I think what we've seen, the homework regime and walking together in silence, is the full extent of their current interaction. Neither one is doing more because Anthony doesn't know what else to do without making things worse (failing again) and Annie doesn't know what else to do without making things worse (her father leaving again). |
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lumos
New Member
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Post by lumos on Sept 6, 2015 10:38:12 GMT
I wonder what her next interaction with the court will be. She has just heard that they are the reason - ultimately - that her father has done all of this to her. She has previously had bad moments with them.
I agree with much I've seen above regarding the fire. Annie is trying to control some deep anger and bitterness that she feels towards her dad by pushing it aside, pretending it isn't there. It isn't healthy, and it will come crashing down when given the right push. It will be interesting to see..
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Post by jda on Sept 6, 2015 15:33:54 GMT
But... What PROGRAM? ? Etheric XMen? Or what?
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Post by aline on Sept 6, 2015 19:30:00 GMT
I wonder what her next interaction with the court will be. [The problem is, who exactly is "the Court"? Eglamore is the Court. The Donlans are the Court. The Headmaster is also the Court. They're all a part of it, anyway, and we have no clue as to how they are truly organized. There are several levels to it. The games teacher is a dragon slayer, the Headmaster presides over a diplomatic meeting with the forest (what other job does *he* have?), the math teacher seems to be involved in... "work" he can't discuss in front of hiw own family. "The Court" is actually a gathering of people with different opinions and many layers of control. So who are Annie and Anthony up against, and what is it they want? I have a feeling that when we get there, we'll be quite close to the resolution of the entire comic. |
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Post by Gotolei on Sept 6, 2015 20:22:36 GMT
For what it's worth, we only saw Kat's reaction to that. Wouldn't be the first time something was kept secret from the kids.
Anything's possible, but it does seem that Donald only wants the best for them.
Though if he's stuck keeping it from Anja as well, then yeah that's pretty messed up.
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Post by TBeholder on Sept 7, 2015 0:14:38 GMT
How bizarre and/or normal and/or mutually-not-neurotypical are those times? How about homework reviews? And so on and so forth. We don't actually know any of that. Instead, we're being allowed to fill in the very large gaps with whatever we choose to imagine: complete isolation, full daily routines, and every possibility in between. And since we're almost certainly about to skip some time and shift some perspective, that vast negative space is only going to grow. I think what we've seen, the homework regime and walking together in silence, is the full extent of their current interaction. Neither one is doing more because Anthony doesn't know what else to do without making things worse (failing again) and Annie doesn't know what else to do without making things worse (her father leaving again). Indeed. Anthony doesn't look like he would occasionally had the classic "oops, got so distracted I forgot being a tsundere today!" lapse.  |
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Post by aline on Sept 7, 2015 7:12:11 GMT
For what it's worth, we only saw Kat's reaction to that. Wouldn't be the first time something was kept secret from the kids. Anything's possible, but it does seem that Donald only wants the best for them. Though if he's stuck keeping it from Anja as well, then yeah that's pretty messed up. I never said there was anything messed up about it. I just meant that almost everyone at the Court seems to have an obvious role, and a much less obvious one. Donald isn't just a math teacher, just like Anthony wasn't hired back in order to teach biology, and the headmaster is much more than a headmaster. That goes for Anja as well. She answered a request of Gillitie Forest without asking anyone about it, and was present at the meeting with her husband and everyone else, that didn't happen because of being the 1st year's form teacher. Where exactly do they all stand in the Court hierarchy? There are layers other layers. How decisions are made in this mess remains quite the mistery. The Donlans, Eglamore, Jones, alll seemed to be pretty important people back during "The fangs of summertime". But then during "Change", they were all kept in the dark about the decision of not making Annie the medium. And it seems some people also went out of their way to make sure they wouldn't get any information about Anthony.
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Post by rafk on Sept 7, 2015 8:14:21 GMT
And so we roll on to another chapter without a resolution. I think it's a bit unfair to see it that way. Annie's current situation is still unresolved, but this chapter has answered many, many questions that were lingering since forever. Some of those have been there since chapter 1 of the comic. Compare the content of the last 3 chapters (75 pages) with the content of, say, The Torn Sea (about 80 pages). The Torn Sea could just as well not have been there and it wouldn't have made that much of a difference for the overall comic. There was a lot of fun action, but not much else. While in the last chapter alone, we've had so many explanations that brought closure to open plot threads. There is only so much content one can fit in 25 pages.
I also think it would belittle what Annie went through to repair it all in one evening, like the fairy godmother just passed through and fixed it. She needs to find the path back to herself and it's not going to be easy. And she has to process what she just heard before she can do that.
It's not about the lack of plot development. It's just been a lot of pages, a lot of months, on this downer of a plot line without change of pace. If the next chapter is not going to resolve this plot arc, I'd prefer to see a chapter dealing with something completely different before we return to it. |
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Post by rinabean on Sept 7, 2015 9:10:09 GMT
She may have done it (or something else related) without us seeing. We don't know what Kat's up to but she's surely up to something. Annie fell to her death and she made a bloody flying machine on the offchance she was still alive. And as the years have gone by she's only got both more skilful and more furious at Annie's dad/more protective of Annie. I would guess we're changing perspective next chapter so I reckon we'll see Kat and how she's coping If Kat had bugged the place wouldn't her dad have found and rendered them useless along with the Court listening devices? Edited: Opps, my mistake Tony was the one who fiddled with the surveillance of the Court. Kat's made things the court science teachers have been baffled and amazed by. (Not to mention when she nearly brought a ship to life.) She's an innovator and I think she could do better than the court if she wanted. Bear in mind she works with people with teleporting abilities as well. I think we can't discount Kat doing things just because other people can't, that's what I mean. |
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Post by TBeholder on Sept 7, 2015 15:35:18 GMT
So, the obvious question is: what happens when Annie closes her eyes in the presence of her hotheaded half like this? |
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Post by Trillium on Sept 7, 2015 16:29:17 GMT
So, the obvious question is: what happens when Annie closes her eyes in the presence of her hotheaded half like this? Good question. Annie also closes her eyes before she goes in or out the door. What is up with that? |
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Post by warrl on Sept 7, 2015 18:56:04 GMT
We don't know what Kat's up to but she's surely up to something. Annie fell to her death and she made a bloody flying machine on the offchance she was still alive. Actually, they had an easy means at hand to verify whether Annie was dead or not, and it was consistently conveying the information that she was still alive. Even if that information didn't register consciously (which would have revealed HOW it was being conveyed), it might have registered subconsciously - and, in that event, Kat was the one most likely to be clued in. The means of verification: Reynard. He was still bound by Annie's orders. |
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Post by l33tninja on Sept 8, 2015 17:35:12 GMT
I think what we've seen, the homework regime and walking together in silence, is the full extent of their current interaction. Neither one is doing more because Anthony doesn't know what else to do without making things worse (failing again) and Annie doesn't know what else to do without making things worse (her father leaving again). Indeed. Anthony doesn't look like he would occasionally had the classic "oops, got so distracted I forgot being a tsundere today!" lapse. I agree with Jellybean. I think they are both "walking on eggshells" around each other, combined with the fact that there are frequently communication difficulties between teenaged children and their parents. Sometimes one or the other (or both) just aren't sure what to say. So, they might say nothing instead. Compound that common parent-child interaction with what Anthony and Antimony have gone through both together and separately, and I don't think I would expect any more than what we have seen thus far. It might be a while (perhaps years) before they are able to actually put what is happening into words in a conversation with each other. |
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Post by l33tninja on Sept 8, 2015 17:41:41 GMT
Unrelated to this particular page but now that the chapter has ended I'm surprised Kat didn't bug Tony's house to know "what he was up to". It would have been interesting to see her reaction to the story - would probably have involved a lot of "  ?" and "!!!!!!!!!". She may have done it (or something else related) without us seeing. We don't know what Kat's up to but she's surely up to something. Annie fell to her death and she made a bloody flying machine on the offchance she was still alive. And as the years have gone by she's only got both more skilful and more furious at Annie's dad/more protective of Annie. I would guess we're changing perspective next chapter so I reckon we'll see Kat and how she's coping I agree that Kat has a plan . . . at least one. I also think that at the end of this tough relationship time, it will be Kat, not Annie, that has the most difficult time forgiving Anthony. I think Annie is pretending right now that she doesn't care and that she is okay with everything when clearly she is not (and should not be). But, I also think Annie has the added dimension of understanding that some of what her father did was because she was actually cheating, and she has carried that burden for all her years at the court. So some of Annie's perspective includes the fact that the punishment (not necessarily the delivery of said punishment) was deserved. Kat doesn't have that perspective. She knows Annie cheated, but it's different knowing versus doing.
Either way, Kat is a superhero (the archetype of a superhero, that is) and she will want to swoop in and rescue Annie. Possibly to the benefit and possibly to the detriment of them both. But it will be well-intentioned.
I am in full concurrence with all pseudonyms of the "bean" variety today. Both Jellybean and Rinabean.
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