Noka
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Post by Noka on Nov 3, 2017 15:52:33 GMT
her father is actually capable of being kind to people, he just explicitly isn't interested in being kind to her (Kind of harsh that "Annie's mom cheated on uncle Jimmy?" is immediately met with "but that's not the point!", though. Show some sympathy to your friend, girl, because it doesn't seem like you did in the immediate aftermath.) Explicitly isn't interested??? Did we read the same comic?Not speaking on Tony's parental suitability or anything like that, but he definitely doesn't want to be a continuous shitheel to his daughter. Whether he can make that a reality or not remains to be seen. Also, Jimmy Jims is not the most emotionally stable person, and I get the feeling he would have refused to allow Anja in even if he wanted to be seen flipping out about Tony being picked over him. Anja is clearly there & concerned in all the most recent panels, and she did say that she couldn't believe it at first either, so I think she was just in shock/disbelief until she talked more with Surma about it. |
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Post by Per on Nov 3, 2017 16:44:45 GMT
When you see Jones close a door, that is not a door you try to open right away. That reminds me of the old saying, "When God closes a door, Jones walks through the wall." |
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Post by aline on Nov 3, 2017 17:17:24 GMT
With Court tech and Anthony's interest in finding a "cure" I suppose Antimony isn't even proof that they had sex. It's reasonable to extrapolate that they did, though. I think we should all probably reflect on how much time we spend morally judging the characters vs. time we spend paying attention to the actual story. I can do two things at once. I'm sure you can. My point is that I've spent too much time lately engaging in discussions that were mainly about issuing moral judgement on the fictional actions of fictional people, and I probably should have spent that time doing things that are actually fun instead. Issuing moral judgement is not the reason I like to read comics, and I've no idea how I end up reading and writing so many pages about who gets to win the moral upper ground cookie in the middle of a very ordinary relationship mess. That's all. |
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yinglung
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Post by yinglung on Nov 3, 2017 17:34:51 GMT
The thing is, though: the fact Annie thinks that it's even a possibility that her father is mind-controlling people, i.e. forcing them to like him without their consent, should be a big warning sign? Even when you don't like your parents, generally kids don't think that they're outright awful people, and that Annie thinks her father would do something like that is something that someone needs to eventually address. It's not normal, or healthy, to lack trust in your guardian to that extent - but neither Anja or Donnie has actually tried to find out why Annie feels this way, especially because she's his kid. It'd make sense if, say, Kat thought that Antony was brainwashing Annie into loving him, because, like you said, he seems like a cold, manipulative robot! But Annie was directly raised by him, interacted with him regularly enough that she views him as her father and craves his affection / positive attention, she saw him interacting fondly with her mother, and.. she still thinks that he can't be trusted, ultimately, not to violate her friends mind, and potentially not to have done so to her mothers. I disagree with him seeming manipulative. We have no reason to think that Annie sees him that way before this chapter. Annie grew up in the hospital, believing that her father and mother loved each other. She has spoken to Kat about this enough that Kat brings it up. But she also saw that everyone else at the hospital disliked or at least avoided Anthony. Because that was always the case in her childhood, she never questioned it. It was just a fundamental part of how things are. But now she sees Kat who used to hate Anthony, act friendly towards him. This disrupts her worldview of her father, making her wonder if anyone ever genuinely liked him, or if he just used some sort of power to get her and her mother to do so. When it was a static thing, these people like him and those people don't, it was simply a matter of belonging to one category or the other. But when Tony can influence people who don't like him to like him, then Annie wonders if anyone started in the liking him category. She doesn't have an explanation for it, since she has no reason to believe he has interpersonal skills. So she grasps for something that might explain it, like mind control. She's not certain it is mind control, that's just a guess. At this point she isn't even trying to work out if her father has mind control powers, and what that means. She's just coming up with possible explanations. Annie has genuine grievances with her father, but they are from when he left her alone after her mother died, not some previous abuse we have not seen. Remember, the first summer at Gunnerkrigg, Annie was anticipating her father coming back. She believed that was something he would do. Meaning that abandoning her like that was strange, and not the usual. You're giving Annie too little credit. www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1561Kat invented the anti-grav unit that was used for the hovercraft, but for a different purpose. So when they were building the hovercraft, the unit might not support Donny's and Annie's weight. Or perhaps it would take too long to adapt it. Either way, time was of the essence, and this might have been the quickest way. He probably didn't feel great about her being that close to the forest, but it's unknown how much danger he thought she was in. She might have been intending to tell more of the story, but then Kat interrupted with the question about cheating. |
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Noka
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Post by Noka on Nov 3, 2017 20:31:56 GMT
Kat invented the anti-grav unit that was used for the hovercraft, but for a different purpose. So when they were building the hovercraft, the unit might not support Donny's and Annie's weight. Or perhaps it would take too long to adapt it. Either way, time was of the essence, and this might have been the quickest way. He probably didn't feel great about her being that close to the forest, but it's unknown how much danger he thought she was in. Actually, from Kat's dialog waaaay back when? It sounds like Kat might've stretched the truth a bit. "I made it small so only you and me could ride it!" sounds like Kat admitting to deliberately keeping the unit small so that she could get to swoop in like a big hero and help Annie. Plus, the concerns about making sure Annie was the right weight probably could have helped, too. We also don't know what Donnie did, just that he helped - so it's possible that he used his computer to help protect Kat while still allowing her to do her own thing. (Consider: Kat's arrival did somehow dispel Jeanne!) I also doubt that Donnie knew anything about Jeanne, and he probably also wanted to save Annie (considering what she was and represents in his/Anja's life), so... |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Nov 3, 2017 20:44:36 GMT
My point is that I've spent too much time lately engaging in discussions that were mainly about issuing moral judgement on the fictional actions of fictional people, and I probably should have spent that time doing things that are actually fun instead. Issuing moral judgement is not the reason I like to read comics, and I've no idea how I end up reading and writing so many pages about who gets to win the moral upper ground cookie in the middle of a very ordinary relationship mess. That's all. Cool. Just speaking for myself, I don't separate the analysis of right and wrong actions of characters from storytelling and art appreciation when looking at the comic. I think it's easier to have a discussion about fictional characters' ethics than say, celebrities or politics. |
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Post by snowflake on Nov 3, 2017 20:56:52 GMT
Well, these truth beans sure have cooled some jets. Jet fuel can't melt cool beans. |
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Post by keef on Nov 3, 2017 21:03:28 GMT
The real point is that Anthony isn't some uniformly asocial monster: he can be open and likeable... around people who aren't Annie. This is actually worse for Annie than her mind-control hypothesis. Maybe it helps in some way for Annie to know her dad is in many ways just a normal, even lovable, guy, but yes, it may sting extra he isn't able to show that side to her. She's a smart kid, she may figure out a way to approach him. |
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Post by frankehfresh on Nov 4, 2017 0:24:37 GMT
Haha, yeah, Anja, good choice there glossing over Annie's mom's infidelity, that's not a major blow to her already fragile self-worth telling her that not only did the cold jerk who constantly emotionally abuses her because he apparently can't handle being open about the fact that he cares about her get her mom to cheat on the upstanding kind-if-a-bit-pigheaded games teacher shes grown to respect over the past few years, she's also the 'proof of their love.' "Congrats Annie, you're proof that stupid teenagers stuck in a cabin watching snails bone for months will eventually Stockholm themselves into boning too, oh and also that the emotionless jerk who fathered you isn't actually totally emotionless but you're just not one of the people he can express emotion around, and no don't ask me how that works because I'm not one of those people either." <--- What Anja's been explaining for the past twenty pages. Tom, I wanna have faith that you understand why this is neither a good parenting decision on Anja's part nor a good excuse for Tony being a jerk. Prove to us that you understand that next page by not glossing over Kat's much more astute summation of that story. "that's not the point"?!?! Like hell it isn't, if anything it's a much more pertinent piece of information! Sure, the idea that Tony brainwashes people into caring about him is bunk, but the guy is still cold enough around his own daughter that she was convinced it was a reasonable suspicion, and the fact that he was able to 'convince' her mom to cheat on James just makes that suspicion seem even more viable! Anja's asking Annie to believe that Tony and Surma loved each other by telling her that they decided to get together after existing in isolation from the entire world for months because that's the only time Tony the Emotionless Wonder-Jerk was able to express anything other than dull surprise. And that is supposed to somehow comfort her?  What even the heck. Seriously, this better not go without being challenged by another character in the story, because all this says to me is that Anja is so desperate to believe that Surma didn't fall in love with a cold-hearted jerk that she's willing to peddle crap to said cold-hearted jerk's emotional abuse victim in order to try and convince her that he's a 'good guy'. |
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yinglung
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Post by yinglung on Nov 4, 2017 0:58:26 GMT
I am curious to see how Annie and Tony interact from now on. I'm pretty sure he won't reach out to her unprompted, so it's probably up to Annie to make the first move towards reconciliation.
Now I'm imagining Annie in class, looking at Tony with a deadpan expression, while he does the same. Then panels of the two in various locations, secretly looking at the other person with that same, blank expression.
Meanwhile Kat is just rolling her eyes at her weird Asperger friends.
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Post by bgb16999 on Nov 4, 2017 3:24:32 GMT
So, I've been thinking...
I actually think this chapter works better if you think of the story as being filtered through Annie's mind. Even though it is Anja telling the story, we may be seeing Annie's understanding of Anja's story.
I'm thinking of myself at Annie's age. Back then, I didn't really have any conception of what romantic love was, beyond the rather poor depictions I had seen in fiction. At the end of the previous chapter, Annie was told that a seemingly inexplicable series of events (that her mother, a seemingly kind and decent person, literally died on account of someone who, as far as Annie has seen, is an irredeemable monster) can be explained by simply saying "they were in love."
In this chapter, Anja attempts to explain to Annie how Surma and Anthony fell in love. But romantic love isn't really something that can easily be explained second- or third-hand. So Annie hears the events that Anja describes, but she doesn't feel the connection between her parents that presumably occurred, and so we end up with what seems like an underwhelming backstory.
I don't know if that's what was intended, but for me, at least, it makes more sense if I suppose that what we just saw was all Annie's perception, not Anja's (or Surma's) unvarnished narrative.
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Post by antiyonder on Nov 4, 2017 4:04:29 GMT
I am curious to see how Annie and Tony interact from now on. I'm pretty sure he won't reach out to her unprompted, so it's probably up to Annie to make the first move towards reconciliation. Perhaps as a first step, but I imagine that they might also end up having to work together on something with both (Annie first) making some small talk. |
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Post by youwiththeface on Nov 4, 2017 6:47:48 GMT
The real point is that Anthony isn't some uniformly asocial monster: he can be open and likeable... around people who aren't Annie. This is actually worse for Annie than her mind-control hypothesis. Maybe it helps in some way for Annie to know her dad is in many ways just a normal, even lovable, guy, but yes, it may sting extra he isn't able to show that side to her. She's a smart kid, she may figure out a way to approach him. She shouldn't have to. She is not the parent of a child that needs a delicate emotional approach goddamn it, that's TONY. Tom, I wanna have faith that you understand why this is neither a good parenting decision on Anja's part nor a good excuse for Tony being a jerk. Prove to us that you understand that next page by not glossing over Kat's much more astute summation of that story. Seriously, this better not go without being challenged by another character in the story, because all this says to me is that Anja is so desperate to believe that Surma didn't fall in love with a cold-hearted jerk that she's willing to peddle crap to said cold-hearted jerk's emotional abuse victim in order to try and convince her that he's a 'good guy'. Yeah, if Tom's setting up pins so he can knock them down later than okay, I get it. I get what all this is for. But if he's not.... |
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Post by avurai on Nov 4, 2017 15:40:29 GMT
As a former social conspiracy-weaver myself, I can almost hear Annie’s expression on that last panel saying “So, Anja. From your limited perspective... The Court set up an expedition to a random location. Which my mother happened to go on, seemingly on a whim. Where she and Anthony spent two months completely isolated. Observing something the Court would have literally no interest in. Then they became miraculously attracted to each other. Only to return to the Court and cause a rift in their entire friend group. Which further isolated them to the point where they actively left to have a child?”
When you put it that way, it’s very easy to imagine Annie assuming this was all a conspiracy by the Court to get Surma and Anthony together so they could have insight into Fire Elementals and an in on Anthony as a brilliant scientist. Especially since she knows about the Court actively manipulating Anthony years later. They threatened Antimony’s expulsion to get him to work for them again. This... most likely didn’t help at all. In fact, it’s actually given her a stable timeline to concoct a more elaborate theory than she could’ve managed before.
It doesn’t help that we know the Court uses romantic interest as a political strategy (see: their making Surma coax Reynardine). This spells trouble for Annie’s mental stability.
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Post by darlos9d on Nov 4, 2017 15:55:23 GMT
Guys I hate to say it but this is mostly a story about kids doing things. The kind of story where the adults practically aren't allowed to be properly useful for solving any actual problems. Either through inability, or unwillingness.
So, yeah, I'm honestly not surprised Anja here is being kinda... useless. Even Donny having direct conversation with Tony didn't seem to amount to much. Really those two have just been vehicles for Tony/Surma backstory and nothing more. Maybe they'll shape up later but it probably won't be until Annie and other younger characters have already done some important stuff on their own, regarding Tony.
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Post by antiyonder on Nov 4, 2017 21:59:50 GMT
Tom, I wanna have faith that you understand why this is neither a good parenting decision on Anja's part nor a good excuse for Tony being a jerk. Prove to us that you understand that next page by not glossing over Kat's much more astute summation of that story. While I don't care for Anja's phrasing of her point, I think Don's comment here would suggest that Tony is in the wrong despite his reasons. |
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Post by snipertom on Nov 4, 2017 22:57:05 GMT
i kind of thought the "proof of their love" comment was more specific to annie and the whole fire spirit thing... maybe i'm just reading too much into it I think she's saying that the decision to have a kid together was a thing that Surma and Tony could only do because they loved each other very much, among others because of the special circumstances of fire elemental reproduction. That assumes a lot of things, like "it was a mutual decision", and "these two people with their personality wouldn't have taken that decision without the condition of love" and so on. I get what the meaning behind it is, but it still bugs me for two reasons: - the word "proof" is a very strong one and as an engineer I put a lot of weight on it - the idea that a child is the demonstration of the parents' love is a very common trope and is harmful [off topic] Disclaimer: I'm a mother of two younglings in a happy relationship with said kids' father. That said, I entirely agree with speedwell on the matter. And no matter what you do, people-who-are-not-yet-parents, never ever ever do kids to prove your love, deepen your bonding to your partner, or fix your relationship in any way. Having kids won't do any of these things. Don't expect your partner to change his/her ways just because kids are now around, either. It's like with getting married. Mostly people stay who they were before. Also, sad truth that I'm just throwing around in case anybody around should ever need it: if your partner is abusive, having kids never makes it better. Usually they'll get worse. If you're lucky they'll stay the same. There are actual studies on the subject. In fact it's startling how often physical abuse patterns start or escalate when one partner gets pregnant. [/off topic] Spot on. I wish more people knew these facts. Thanks for the post ☺ |
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Post by todd on Nov 4, 2017 23:58:40 GMT
As a former social conspiracy-weaver myself, I can almost hear Annie’s expression on that last panel saying “So, Anja. From your limited perspective... The Court set up an expedition to a random location. Which my mother happened to go on, seemingly on a whim. Where she and Anthony spent two months completely isolated. Observing something the Court would have literally no interest in. Then they became miraculously attracted to each other. Only to return to the Court and cause a rift in their entire friend group. Which further isolated them to the point where they actively left to have a child?” When you put it that way, it’s very easy to imagine Annie assuming this was all a conspiracy by the Court to get Surma and Anthony together so they could have insight into Fire Elementals and an in on Anthony as a brilliant scientist. Especially since she knows about the Court actively manipulating Anthony years later. They threatened Antimony’s expulsion to get him to work for them again. This... most likely didn’t help at all. In fact, it’s actually given her a stable timeline to concoct a more elaborate theory than she could’ve managed before. It doesn’t help that we know the Court uses romantic interest as a political strategy (see: their making Surma coax Reynardine). This spells trouble for Annie’s mental stability. As I've mentioned before, the whole problem with the "Court conspiracy" theory is that Surma wasn't pushed into going with Anthony; she volunteered. If she hadn't done so, the Court's plot would have fallen apart. (And can we be certain that the Court would have no interest in the mating habits of South American slugs? That would be of interest to anyone involved in invertebrate biology - and in a scientific institute the size of the Court, there's bound to be someone on the staff with interests in that field.) But Annie believing that this was all a conspiracy is another matter. She's seen plenty of evidence that the Court engages regularly in such unscrupulous behavior, all the way back to the Founders murdering Jeanne and her lover, and then covering their tracks by omitting Jeanne from their records. She knows about the Court lying to Renard and manipulating Antony. (And Coyote's telling her that the Court is "man's attempt to become God" can't be helping, either.) Annie and Kat have both seen too much of the Court's darker side. After what they know, they'd find it hard to trust it (only a couple of chapters ago, Kat's talking about the present-day Court as if it was responsible for what happened to Jeanne and her lover - we know that the ones responsible are all dead now, and that the current Court administration was after that time, but from what we've seen, their methods haven't changed that much). It's easy to believe the worst about people when they engage often in amoral scheming, lying, and cover-ups. So, yes, while I think the conspiracy theory is too far-fetched, it would be easy for Annie to believe it. (Maybe not Kat; though she distrusts the Court as well, she's more stable, less inclined towards those kinds of assumptions.) And, from a "wild speculation" perspective, maybe the Court did have some unwitting responsibility for what happened. I've suggested before that the Court might subtly encourage a certain spirit of moral laxity among the students, to make certain that when they grow up and take their places in the administration, they're not likely to raise objections about the Court's more devious policies. Could such an education have made Surma and Antony more ready to ignore any warnings from their consciences about cheating on Eglamore (particularly if Surma's deceiving Renard on Court instructions had taken place by this time - though we don't know yet whether that came before or after)? |
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Post by todd on Nov 5, 2017 0:07:10 GMT
Guys I hate to say it but this is mostly a story about kids doing things. The kind of story where the adults practically aren't allowed to be properly useful for solving any actual problems. Either through inability, or unwillingness. So, yeah, I'm honestly not surprised Anja here is being kinda... useless. Even Donny having direct conversation with Tony didn't seem to amount to much. Really those two have just been vehicles for Tony/Surma backstory and nothing more. Maybe they'll shape up later but it probably won't be until Annie and other younger characters have already done some important stuff on their own, regarding Tony. People have pointed out here before that the adults in this comic have shown greater competency than the adults in most such stories - even that there's a strong sense that Annie could have avoided a lot of the trouble she gets into if only she'd gone to the grown-ups for help, advice, and information - that it might even be a criticism of those kinds of stories, suggesting that the kids shouldn't be "doing things". On the other hand, the adults could have, if they'd been consistently this competent, spotted and dealt with many of the problems (such as "The Torn Sea") - so maybe there's a case here of "They're competent and alert until it would get in the way of the story". And it can't help, either, that all the adults at the Court are employees of an amoral organization. That makes it harder for Annie and Kat to get help from there. If you were a kid and all the grown-ups in your life were working for a group that had done the kinds of things the Court had done - and you knew about those things - how ready would you be to seek help from them? |
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imany
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Post by imany on Nov 5, 2017 9:04:39 GMT
It doesn’t help that we know the Court uses romantic interest as a political strategy (see: their making Surma coax Reynardine). I'd kind of take that situation with a grain of salt. We don't really know for sure the extent of what the Court makes people do or what it made Surma do in capacity of court medium. From what's been said of Surma and what's been said of how the Court operates, I wouldn't be surprised if the Court gave a very vague order ("Deal with Reynardine so he's not a problem") and Surma executed a strategy of her own design (by leading him on.) |
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Post by pyradonis on Nov 5, 2017 11:44:04 GMT
"that's not the point"?!?! Like hell it isn't, if anything it's a much more pertinent piece of information! Sure, the idea that Tony brainwashes people into caring about him is bunk, but the guy is still cold enough around his own daughter that she was convinced it was a reasonable suspicion, and the fact that he was able to 'convince' her mom to cheat on James just makes that suspicion seem even more viable! What did Tony do to "convince" Surma to cheat on James, in your opinion? And can we be certain that the Court would have no interest in the mating habits of South American slugs? That would be of interest to anyone involved in invertebrate biology - and in a scientific institute the size of the Court, there's bound to be someone on the staff with interests in that field. Or it's not the mating of the slugs which was of interest to the Court, but a test of their new system to predict events at a certain time in a certain location - hence why they didn't tell Tony what to look for and instead had him record everything. Also, if it was simply about zoology, there wouldn't be that ominous omega symbol on the envelope. The real point is that Anthony isn't some uniformly asocial monster: he can be open and likeable... around people who aren't Annie. This is actually worse for Annie than her mind-control hypothesis. Maybe it helps in some way for Annie to know her dad is in many ways just a normal, even lovable, guy, but yes, it may sting extra he isn't able to show that side to her. She's a smart kid, she may figure out a way to approach him. I wonder if she ever asked him about his science projects. Maybe that would somehow help. |
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Post by todd on Nov 5, 2017 12:45:41 GMT
Or it's not the mating of the slugs which was of interest to the Court, but a test of their new system to predict events at a certain time in a certain location - hence why they didn't tell Tony what to look for and instead had him record everything. Also, if it was simply about zoology, there wouldn't be that ominous omega symbol on the envelope. I'd forgotten about the symbol, but I don't know how ominous the Court might have seen it as being. I've mixed feelings about the Court. I do think that it's earned its dark reputation by its actions, all the way back to Jeanne's murder. Also, while I take Coyote's statement about it with caution, I think that the Court's experiments with the ether could indeed give it godlike powers, based on what we've learned about the ether. Certainly I think it has a lot to answer for. But I also think that what's fueling it is a genuine interest in science, in research and discovery. I believe that it wouldn't have done the bulk of the crooked things it had done if its leadership wasn't so nervous about Gilltie Wood (though the evidence we'vs seen suggests that the Court bears much of the responsibility for those troubles). Even if the "Omega Device" was an attempt to weaponize the Court's findings (and we don't know anything about it beyond the name - I think most of our suspecting the worst comes from our being ready to believe the worst of the Court after what we've seen it do - a case of "If you do enough bad things, people will think you guilty even in cases where you're innocent"), I believe the Court would see it as not a grand goal but as simply a tool to fend off the annoying distraction from the forest, so that it could continue with its studies in peace. (To me, the Court's likely perspective on Gilltie Wood and its importance might be illustrated by something like this. Some years ago, you might remember, when CERN got to work on the Large Hadron Collider, many people were openly worried that its experiments might produce black holes that would devour the Earth, or a similar catastrophe. Now, imagine that a large group of such people were camped outside the labs, threatening to break in and smash the place, and for some reason, CERN couldn't simply call for the police to handle it, and was on its own - and that the crowd of people besieging the labs had become powerful enough to pose a possible threat to the labs, at least in CERN's eyes. It's likely that much of its concern after that would be to handle the besiegers, on its own - but that wouldn't change the fact that its main goal was scientific research.) I think that the Court's heading down the wrong path, certainly, but in a much more subtle way than a conventional mad scientist. |
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Post by warrl on Nov 5, 2017 18:55:14 GMT
Well, according to some religions, God is omniscient. Coyote says the Court is Man's attempt to become God. The omega symbol could have indicated that the task was part of the Omega Project - in this case, testing just how omniscient the Court has become...
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Post by arf on Nov 5, 2017 22:43:34 GMT
Tony as a double blind subject on "their blasted Omega Project" makes sense. (and serves to clarify Tony's hint of bitterness on the matter when he tells Don the Court still has him working on it.)
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What even the heck.
