[1825] Did the right thing.

[antiyonder]

May 3, 2017 7:02:18 GMT Daedalus said:

May 3, 2017 4:58:28 GMT red4bestgirl said:

Oh my god you flailing goobers

Like read my previous wall of text but like, really

It's not a fucking debate club, what's wrong with you

Annie was asked her motive. Annie gave her motive. Stop pretending her motive was something noble when the comic explicitly states that it wasn't

What the freaking frack is wrong with you people

I leave the forum for one goddamn day and it's on fire.

Freaking kids these days. *crotchety waving of cane* Get off my lawn!

Considering the subject of the discussion, fire kind of comes with the territory.

[youwiththeface]

May 2, 2017 16:50:41 GMT red4bestgirl said:

Maybe it's the agency issue. At the end of the day, Red and Ayilu chose to go along for this mission they basically knew nothing about, while Annie had no such choice. Red held her at gunpoint and forced her to have a conversation and come up with terrible rationalizations for her actions.

This is not true. Both of them knew how dangerous Jeanne was. They'd seen her in action. 

[Eversist]

Like... I'm not a mod or anything, but I value this forum as a sort of last bastion for rational and polite discussion on the internet. And I'm also late to the party after making one throwaway post in the midsts of the debate... but!

Even if people don't see eye-to-eye with you (or even if you insist people are making stuff up to fit their interpretation of the comic)...

1: Do not be a jerk.
The simplest and most important rule. Use your common sense. If you are a jerk, I will ban you without discussion.

If we haven't crossed the line already, we're very close. So... Let's Be Nice?

[Deepbluediver]

I'm going to go through your post one section at a time so we can try and discuss this. You have a habit of ignoring any inconvenient evidence and then claiming I'm making stuff up, I'm going to ask you to have the courtesy to respond in the same manner.

May 3, 2017 4:49:45 GMT red4bestgirl said:

At this point I feel like I'm really not allowed to take anything for granted, So I am going to go ahead and highlight the most important part of the strip here, Annie's immediate response. 

Now Annie is our viewpoint character here, so we're going to get a pretty open and honest look at what she's feeling here. Her eyes are wide and her eyebrows lifted, suggesting surprise and vulnerability. This is to emphasize that she is just giving her immediate, honest take here. And she could have said several different things. Lots of stuff could go in that bubble and make sense right? Like, "Wow, I didn't think of that, I guess we could have just teleported Andrew to a medic," or, "I didn't know if they could have saved him," or anything like that. She gives her immediate, honest response, which is: She didn't want the Court to know what they were doing.

Now, the counter people are saying itt and have said elsewhere is, "Well, but, sometimes people just say things without thinking about them, that doesn't mean she wasn't really just concerned about the medical facilities etc. etc.."

Is just so mind-bogglingly, shockingly wrong and nonsensical and flatly ignorant that I can scarcely find words to describe it.

Let aside the question of whether or not GKC's medical facilities are better or worse than the psychopomps', which as far as I know we have absolutely no evidence to establish or not.

This is a fucking comic strip. 

Like I can't even deal with this level of sheer willful ignorance. Nothing in comics or animation happens by mistake. Well, I mean, of course, animation errors happen by mistake, like forgetting a character's been burnt or smudged lines or whatever. But diagetic events, no matter how miniscule, cannot, by the nature of the medium, just happen accidentally. Every leaf that stirs on a branch, every hair that falls across a character's face, every shift in the shadows and the lighting, all of this is quite deliberate. Even in live action film it's silly to just assume these things are accidental, but it is stark raving madness to assert this about a comic strip.

Annie's answer isn't flipping random noise. It did not pop into the comic strip by chance or spontaneously. Annie is not a real person who sometimes says innocuous or inconsistent things just through random brain-noise. She is a fictional character, a collection of lines and ideas put together into the simulacrum of a person by Tom Siddell in order to tell a story. Things in that story are, duh, part of that story and contribute to it, unless he's an incompetent or an idiot just spouting random gibberish onto the page. 

The comic conveys that that is Annie's actual reason for wanting to stop Smitty from getting teleported to a doctor because that is Annie's actual reason. This is a revelation in the developing story to shed light on earlier events and contain developing the story and thus create meaning through the interconnectedness of past and future events.

It is not random things happening randomly at different portions in the story that have no bearing on each other.

Like I feel like I have to hammer this point pretty hard because it seems to escape some of the people posting here, this whole "basic structure and nature of a narrative story" thing.

You can imagine whatever alternate bizzaro version of the comic you want then, but in the actual text, the above dialogue illuminates this:

As meaning that Annie wanted Parley to wait because she was worrying about the Court finding out. In other words, Smitty's actual health was a secondary concern for her in that moment. This is fucked up! Red is right! This is a revelation about a real problem with our protagonist's behavior!

Now, Red then does make an actual jump in assuming that this was simply because Annie didn't want to get into trouble. The next layer of reasoning has not yet been revealed, but I don't think it's that. I think it's partly distrust of the Court, but also partly that Annie has become very used to and wants to be the director of events and control and compel others to what she considers their best interests, a tendency which she has long been developing and which also was probably reinforced by the period of disempowerment with her father. But that's just speculation, like I said. It's not explicated clearly by the text anyway, unlike some of these other things.

Yes this IS a comic, but guess what- realistic characters are not written so they are perfectly logical, computational machines. An author can write a character so they make mistakes or lie or even just plain get things wrong.  Not every word that comes out of a character's mouth is writ-in-stone gospel-truth.

Not getting in trouble could have been ONE motivation, which in this case would have been not just Annie but SEVERAL people, but it's only part of the outcome. Annie didn't leave Andrew in pain for hours or something like that, she talked to the guides for less than 30 seconds and barely had to think about it before agreeing to do whatever they wanted her to, which she has apparently been resisting for quite a while, and yet all that goes away the moment her friend's health is on the line. Hardly the actions of a greedy, selfish person, yes? Annie was trying to help her friends, all of them, in the best way she knew how.

Assuming for the moment that Annie DOESN'T know what the Court's medical capabilities are and George teleports Andrew to the cure-all-experiment lab so he can be instantly and completely healed of all his wounds, what is the outcome?  Andrew's healing is effectively the same as he got from the psycopomps, so no difference there, but (A) everyone in the group, not just Annie, might have have gotten in trouble, and (B) Annie wouldn't have owed the pyscopomps anything.  And you're telling me that her decision was the WRONG one?

Also, regarding characters acting "pretty fucked up", how do you read Red's treatment of the other faerie- Red's doll?  I honestly have trouble calling her Red's friend at this point because of how flat she is- aside from the illusions her only character trait seems to be Red's clingy ever-adoring fangirl.  SHE doesn't seem to have any problem with the outcome, and she lets Red make the decision to never talk to any again for both of them.  Rather than Ayilu maybe we should start calling her Doormat.

Speaking of which, was Ayilu almost killed?

Well, yes, as far as the story is concerned, this is a clear-cut case.



So, here Jeanne clearly is trying to kill Ayilu.

However, as we know, she actually misses because Ayilu was kneeling?



So did Ayilu almost die? Yes, really obviously. A vengeful murder-ghost tried to stab her in the face and missed through described luck. Red isn't a reliable narrator of normal events, but she is our primary window into how fae stuff works and Ayilu's powers in particular, on which she seems to be authoritative, and she describes it as "lucky" and "out of her hands." (And also describes literal textbook ptsd she's experiencing over it.)



This is probably because of basic cognitive functions that allow Red to notice things like

1) Jeanne could have sensed through the illusion at the moment.
2) She could have stabbed lower.
3) She could have stabbed twice.
4) She could have stabbed at a different time when Ayilu was projecting as also kneeling in the illusion, for instance:

etc. etc..

Like the comic and events all strongly and pretty explicitly state that they are treating this as a real close brush with death and it's nonsense to pretend otherwise.

Gosh golly gee, I guess it's LUCKY then that Annie thought to bring alone someone who can manipulate probability. That would be this guy right here. Like I said before, there were multiple levels of backup in this plan.

Also, the very first time we see Jeanne, she's already in the illusions and everyone is already standing around. Clearly at some point everyone had to move to get in place to "catch" Jeanne, so it would seem that the smart thing to do is never have illusion-you overlap with real-you. Or never give illusion-you elf-ears. That was a pretty dumb move and what made her a target after all.

This is actually a pretty good webcomic. Maybe you guys should try, idk, fucking reading it.

So I'm curious how your read today's page then, since Kat clearly doesn't feel the same way about Annie's plan that Red does.

What, exactly, would you have wanted Annie to do differently here?  NOT bring along the faeries, so that George, Andrew, & Robot had to hold Jeanne off for even longer?  Maybe you think she should have gone down all alone, so as not to endanger anyone else- how do you think that would have turned out, especially in light of her last 2 encounters with Jeanne?

[Deleted]

red4bestgirl

Your behaviour aside. See Zox Tomana 's post for why the first panel you picked actually also presents, though not helpfully pointed to with red hand-drawn arrows, an instance of Red's ignorance, willful or not; or read the following paragraph.

Annie talked to the psychopomps because she knew, from the start, that they could heal Andrew (this is also an insight gained by reading the comic, even superficially -- "fix this; I know you can"), and presumably counted on their assistance. She was weighing both options; she chose (and she alone, of the characters present, could choose) instantaneous perfect healing that didn't involve drawing the Court's suspicions (or so she thought). At a cost to herself, a binding contract signed under pressure, with forces that were actually using her without showing any generosity, she took responsibility (review the RotD chapters; the arrow disrupted the RotD's agents, suggesting that it had a similar effect on the psychopomps; and Jeanne killed "several" of them -- yet they're coercing Annie to finally recruit her). She clearly valued Andrew's life more than the life-time commitment she had to enter. She could not have stopped Parley from teleporting, either.

Apart from that, you belittle others' "basic cognitive functions" and blast their "willful ignorance", yet you're ignoring that Ayilu was missed (as was Parley) because Andrew's strings bound Jeanne's hands, as Jeanne herself notices; calling this "luck" is disingenuous from a reader's perspective, although not from Red's. The last panel you gave shows partially-cropped Red ignoring Andrew's (and Parley's) abilities in the same manner; she clearly thinks that the whole plan hinges on Ayilu's abilities alone.

You flaunt your inconsistency in defining characters as devices to tell a story, yet instrumentalizing Ayilu's possible death as "another burying-the-gays moment", ignoring narrative purpose in favour of social purpose (or subsuming the former under the latter).

(For instance, Robot's near-destruction and now-occurring rebirth after his first experience of pain appears to fit a narrative purpose of alchemical progress, a stage known as albedo.)

Annie is not a real person who sometimes says innocuous or inconsistent things just through random brain-noise. She is a fictional character, a collection of lines and ideas put together into the simulacrum of a person by Tom Siddell in order to tell a story. Things in that story are, duh, part of that story and contribute to it, unless he's an incompetent or an idiot just spouting random gibberish onto the page.

The comic conveys that that is Annie's actual reason for wanting to stop Smitty from getting teleported to a doctor because that is Annie's actual reason.

If the comic's lines are written with narrative purpose, they should not only be taken at face value, but also with attention to said purpose.

Your argument does not refute, but rather supports that Annie's inability to explain herself under pressure -- with Red preying on the exact letter (that inscription is not complete without its Alexandrian sister, though) -- was written with narrative purpose. She states the difference between the options available to her, and Red twists this into an expression of egoism. That Annie has, in fact, shown careless or selfish behaviour on different occasions, and that she has grown aware of this, fuels precisely the self-doubt that opens Red's avenue for attack.

In the best spirit of literal exegesis, I might also let you speak entirely for yourself:

Like, [...] fucking [...] things in that story [...], duh, [...] simulacrum [...], spouting random [...] goobers, [...] [the Gunnerkrigg Court discussion board is] not a fucking debate club

[Tom Siddell]

May 3, 2017 4:49:45 GMT red4bestgirl said:

fucking
fucking
fucked
fucking

I welcome your enthusiasm and discussion, but please make your points without breaking the first rule of the forum.
There will be no further warning.

[tc]

May 2, 2017 2:55:10 GMT antiyonder said:

I almost feel that she may have to someday be allowed to get burned so to speak. Even if she had some near death situations, I feel having someone to bail her out softens the blow and prevents her from fully getting the criticism.

Not that I want to sound rude, but is it not the case that Annie's *whole flipping existence* is a cautionary tale about getting in over your head, even with the best intentions? Her mother is *dead* because her parents felt it worth the risk to have a child and try to solve the fire elemental aspect after the fact. There is literally no harder way to "burn" a child than via the loss of a parent.

May 3, 2017 3:37:34 GMT puntosmx said:

I mean Andrew's first reaction is him asking if they are going to act upon Jeanne.
Although below he is supportive, that support boils down to "I'll help you".
This instils on me the impression that Andrew had already forgotten about Jeanne, and wasn't planning on actually going down to sort her out.

But Smitty's not agreeing to do so for Annie's sake (in fact Annie never asks him), he's doing it because Parley is 100% in favour. And also because he knows that were it not for Parley's encounter with Jeanne in "The Coward Heart", Parley may never have had the courage to admit her love for Smitty.

May 3, 2017 4:49:45 GMT red4bestgirl said:

Let's start by looking at the panel where Red confronts Annie about not teleporting Smitty to a medic:

Your analysis sidesteps the fact that Annie knew that she could save Smitty by her own actions - and in doing so willingly accepted the hardest and most far-reaching act of self-sacrifice of all those present.

Annie went down there knowing that was on the cards, and whilst - in the event - it was Smitty she had to save, the clear implication is that she'd have done it for *any* of the group, including Ayilu.

[antiyonder]

May 4, 2017 11:57:07 GMT tc said:

May 2, 2017 2:55:10 GMT antiyonder said:

I almost feel that she may have to someday be allowed to get burned so to speak. Even if she had some near death situations, I feel having someone to bail her out softens the blow and prevents her from fully getting the criticism.

Not that I want to sound rude, but is it not the case that Annie's *whole flipping existence* is a cautionary tale about getting in over your head, even with the best intentions? Her mother is *dead* because her parents felt it worth the risk to have a child and try to solve the fire elemental aspect after the fact. There is literally no harder way to "burn" a child than via the loss of a parent.

I see no problem with how you worded your post. That said her mom's death isn't fault, unless it can be proven that a child has control over whether they themselves are conceived (only exception I can see is Legion from X-Men during the Age of Apocalypse).

No, when I suggest that Annie needs to suffer a burn (literal or proverbial), I'm talking about her or someone close to her suffering as the result of her own choice.

[tc]

May 4, 2017 12:33:57 GMT antiyonder said:

No, when I suggest that Annie needs to suffer a burn (literal or proverbial), I'm talking about her or someone close to her suffering as the result of her own choice.

Understood - however with her having to repeat Year 9, Reynard having had to endure a significant period of immobility and knowing how the Court blackmailed her father as a result of her copying Kat's homework, I'd argue that's already happened.