fjodorii
Full Member
It just does, ok?
Posts: 134
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Post by fjodorii on May 16, 2018 14:04:58 GMT
It's easy to blame Annie over this - but let's not forget that she'd learned that two people had been murdered and their ghosts unjustly imprisoned in an eternal nightmare of agony and hatred, and she had the ability to free them. Turning her back on them would have made her complicit to the original crime. (The only alternative I can think of would have been to leave the Court and never return, refusing to enjoy the ill-gotten gains of the Founders' scheme.) I certainly hope that the story is not going to take a tone of "The Founders were right to do what they did to Jeanne after all" approach. I think it's an interesting moral dilemma and I hope it will be worked out in this chapter. 1. Annie set Jeanne free, and that was the right thing to do from a moral point of view. 2. Setting Jeanne free had consequences and that is what we are seeing now. So ending the suffering of two person now leads to the suffering of many. No one likes to hear the word 'blame' when it is used in their own direction, but if we leave that word out of the picture it is clear that Annie carries a fair amount of responsibility. I remember a story about WW2, when the English had cracked the Enigma code. To keep this a secret they had to let a German air raid on an English city happen. Churchill walked on the streets of that city after the raid in which people died. He could have evacuated but he didn't. Was he to blame for the deaths of the citizens, or is the word 'blame' simply not the proper word to use if you must choose between two evils? |
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Post by blazingstar on May 16, 2018 16:06:53 GMT
Direct 1-1 link between the waters no longer being guarded, and coyote deciding to grant Ys's wish, for a start... ...Jones told her to tell her about it when she found out more, which is very different to "don't tell me about it, even after you remove the protective divide between these two very different groups that require mediums and would otherwise keep murdering/invading each other". I'd been wondering about that. Jones DEFINITELY told Annie to update her when she found out more, and yet, as soon as she solved the mystery of Jeanne, Annie put together an extraction team and set about freeing her. Did Annie just...forget to report to Jones? Did she not trust her? Maybe this is my favoritism towards Jones showing, but Jones could have helped. As a self-described neutral party, Jones would have known how much to tell the Court and how much to keep from them, as well as provided some insight on the best course of action to avoid cataclysmic consequences. Like the type they're experiencing right now. |
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Post by flowsthead on May 16, 2018 16:24:36 GMT
Isn't all of this Jeanne talk complicated by how the Annan Waters were made? Coyote made them. If he had wanted to attack the Court at that time, he could have since the Forest and the Court were connected, and even when they weren't there was nothing blocking the Annan Waters initially. Even after that it was the humans who wanted contact with the Forest by creating the Bridge. Annie helping Jeanne has nothing to do with Coyote and Ysengrin's long relationship with the Court, nor with all of the Court's really questionable research into manipulating the Ether.
Also, I think it's important we recognize that despite being Forest Medium and being involved in a number of life-or-death situations, Annie is still a child. It's ridiculous that it ever got to this point. The Court is definitely to blame for not keeping track of what is going on, and for forgetting what the power of the Forest really is. Janet's father is at the very least incompetent, if not fully culpable for this situation.
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Post by todd on May 16, 2018 16:29:09 GMT
I'd been wondering about that. Jones DEFINITELY told Annie to update her when she found out more, and yet, as soon as she solved the mystery of Jeanne, Annie put together an extraction team and set about freeing her. Did Annie just...forget to report to Jones? Did she not trust her? Most likely it was Annie's old "I can handle this by myself; I don't need the grown-ups' help" approach at work again, one of her major weaknesses. I hope that the story will present that as where Annie went wrong, rather than freeing Jeanne. (That's what's concerned me most about the "all my fault" part. I wouldn't be as troubled if what Annie did that caused this mess had been something like copying Kat's work, making a tactless remark to Ysengrin, or investigating something in an ill-advised manner simply out of curiosity and nothing deeper.) |
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Post by todd on May 16, 2018 16:33:42 GMT
all of the Court's really questionable research into manipulating the Ether. That sums up my thoughts on it - I think that's the main reason why the Court's there, living next to Gilltie Wood, which is the root of the trouble. I mentioned this once, but I've noticed that so far, from what I can tell, we haven't even seen anything useful or beneficial coming out of all these experiments - except maybe Kat's work, which could mean an improvement in artificial limbs (if with the side effects of starting a disturbing religious movement among the robots). |
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Post by ctso74 on May 16, 2018 16:41:59 GMT
"Blame" is a fool's game that lacks context, and worse, lacks results. "Responsibility" in the present, and "Fault" in the past, seem to matter more for a better tomorrow.
Past faults are numerous thus far, but in the context of the attack, Ysengrin's hatred toward Man "creating" him seems to be the strongest. But was that Ysengrin 2.0's motivation?... The story will say, I suppose.
Current responsibility should be to help with the evac, even if it's just moving boxes. If Annie wants to answer the Call, she should do it by looking after the former Forest residents now in the Court. Buny Boy is probably going to need a shoulder, when he thinks he'll never see his friend again.
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Post by fia on May 16, 2018 16:54:32 GMT
In my humble opinion whose fault it is at this point is a distraction. This page is probably setup for whatever inadvisable thing Annie is going to do next.
My vote is for either: (a) going into the forest alone because she thinks it is all her fault and so she has to fix it; but she is going to be unsuccessful because how can she stop a Coyote-Wolf god? (b) She confronts someone at the Court; or (c) she hatches some plan with Renard and possibly Kat, Shadow, and Robot.
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Post by pyradonis on May 16, 2018 17:26:41 GMT
Sir Young & co. are, of course, entirely blameless. Yes, in fact they are. In their time, they were creating a shield for the Court using morally despicable, yet very effective means. They can be blamed for what was done to Jeanne and Green guy, but not for the current mess. a bunch of humans who are long dead, including Steadman: See Diego. For all we know, had they not placed Jeanne down there at all, then a devastating forest attack on the court could have happened much earlier. No and no. With Diego's technical wizardry skills, they could have fortified the Annan shore with an army of robotic guardians. Maybe helped by, I don't know, an impenetrable shield for example. I heard the Court robots can produce something like this! They could have built many other things to fortify, protect, et cetera... Or they could have moved away. At no point in the Court's history did the Founders "have to" do what they did. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on May 16, 2018 19:17:49 GMT
One thing i don't get about the first panel: The Forest symbol is meant to request a meeting between the Forest and the Court, correct? As Annie is representing the Forest, I would assume the symbol is calling on the Court, and not Annie (she'd be in the meeting of course, but it is clear the court's mind is not focused on a meeting right now). Yeah I also suspect Ys wants to meet with both the Court representative(s) and Antimony but if Ys sent up the Court symbol, or both Court and Wood symbols, or a new symbol that would just be confusing. I am starting to think releasing Jeanne really had not much to do with current events. Coyote chose now to give Ysengrin his powers (still not buying he didn't plan on Ysengrin doing what he did) and nothing he did would have been prevented by Jeanne. Obviously Ysengrote (or whatever) didn't need the Annan. So what else changed? the green guy was released, the arrow is gone...? It may have been about removing uncertainty. Coyote wasn't sure exactly what the Court did to defend the Annan so if he merely wound Ys up and aimed him at the Court he couldn't be sure that Ys wouldn't also become stuck or worse. Also, while Jeanne never left the Annan Coyote couldn't guarantee that would always be the case. |
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Post by Zox Tomana on May 16, 2018 19:21:44 GMT
One thing i don't get about the first panel: The Forest symbol is meant to request a meeting between the Forest and the Court, correct? As Annie is representing the Forest, I would assume the symbol is calling on the Court, and not Annie (she'd be in the meeting of course, but it is clear the court's mind is not focused on a meeting right now). Yeah I also suspect Ys wants to meet with both the Court representative(s) and Antimony but if Ys sent up the Court symbol, or both Court and Wood symbols, or a new symbol that would just be confusing. I have to agree, mostly. Annie is technically being called on because, until she receives a signal that she's been fired, she's still the Forest Medium. If Gilletie Woods want a meeting, then that signal has a side-meaning of "Ohhhh Annniiiieeee!!!!!" |
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Post by Runningflame on May 16, 2018 19:44:14 GMT
could mean an improvement in artificial limbs side effects: starting a disturbing religious movement among the robots " ... Eh, it was worth it!" |
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jocobo
Junior Member
Posts: 78 
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Post by jocobo on May 16, 2018 20:05:59 GMT
Direct 1-1 link between the waters no longer being guarded, and coyote deciding to grant Ys's wish, for a start. One could probably also wonder if Jeanne was specifically tuned to be more effective against etheric beings. Also, entirely anticipated defense of Annie, (and I disagree that it's easy to blame Annie, as evidenced by the vast majority of replies immediately moving to absolve her) but she SHOULD accept her part of the blame. Yes, other people can and should also blame themselves, but, for a start, freeing Jeanne was very much driven by Annie. There were definitely more than a few people that noted that Jones told her to tell her about it when she found out more, which is very different to "don't tell me about it, even after you remove the protective divide between these two very different groups that require mediums and would otherwise keep murdering/invading each other". However I'm not looking to explain culpability. I understand that Annie is the viewpoint character and we've had a long time with her, but just like with Anthony (who has a LOT in common with Annie, but due to the difference in sequence of events and perspective to things, has a very different response), I feel like people are blinding themselves to her being a nuanced and flawed character. She's also a very human one, though, which is great. If she looked around at the current emergency situation and didn't feel entirely responsible, I'd actively hate the character. She is NOT entirely responsible, and the "all" is definitively wrong, as other people have noted...but she would feel like the worst sociopath in the comic and downright inhuman if she didn't have those human feelings and reasonable reactions to seeing such large scale damage come about from events she was involved in. If I choose to walk down the street after dark and someone sees me and chooses to rob me, it is my fault because I walked down the street? No. Its that persons fault for choosing to rob me. I see a similar scenario here. That Annie's decision to free Jeanne influenced Coyote's decision to now give YS his strength is not he same thing as Coyote's decision was Annie's fault. So, I again repeat the question: In a universe where Jeanne was still around......How does that stop the attack? And I don't mean maybe's or assumptions. I mean based on the evidence we have, Jeanne could do nothing about this. If we learn something new in this chapter, ill take it back, But a look at what we have on the table at the moment doesn't show any signs Jeanne could have stopped this. A few chapters ago Coyote himself causally knocked over a skyscraper in anger of Annie's absence. Jeanne's ghost didn't stop that or respond to it. Indeed, based on what we know, she literally couldn't even if she wanted(which she probably wouldn't) to as she cannot leave the ravine. I disagree about people being blind to Annie's negative traits. It's a relatively common point of discussion. This is her being a flawed character right now but it's not her acknowledging her flaws to me. It's her falling into the same old mistakes but not in the way a lot of people are thinking. Her streak to be independent, her need to handle everything herself. That's the flaws that would make one say "This is all my fault". It's a very self-centered mind set to take blame for the decisions and actions not just of other sentient living beings, but ones far older and wiser than you in response to a conflict that has existed since before your father and mother were even born. I agree she should feel compelled to help fix things. After all she is intimately and emotionally connected to both sides of this conflict and key actors. But thinking it's her fault is almost arrogant in a way. As if she alone was the only one with agency. Basically, I think she's being a bit silly right now. |
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Post by mturtle7 on May 16, 2018 23:06:51 GMT
The worst part about this, I think, is that I have a horrible suspicion that the major Court authorities will happily confirm Annie's guilt for her. They've disliked her and what she represents even when she was just a medium-in-training (or maybe even before that), and that's just gotten worse and worse over time. Even if they didn't know about her close friendship with Ysengrin, she would make the perfect scapegoat for this entire fiasco. Of course, how and when exactly they use this scapegoat is a mystery, and Tony could still have some tricks up his sleeve to counter it, but I'm convinced that it is going to happen at some point. |
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Post by arf on May 17, 2018 0:02:04 GMT
Sir Young & co. are, of course, entirely blameless. Yes, in fact they are. In their time, they were creating a shield for the Court using morally despicable, yet very effective means. They can be blamed for what was done to Jeanne and Green guy, but not for the current mess. The same argument can be applied to Annie releasing Jeanne. What we see here is a matter of unexpected consequences. |
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Post by todd on May 17, 2018 0:04:57 GMT
No and no. With Diego's technical wizardry skills, they could have fortified the Annan shore with an army of robotic guardians. Maybe helped by, I don't know, an impenetrable shield for example. I heard the Court robots can produce something like this! They could have built many other things to fortify, protect, et cetera... Or they could have moved away. At no point in the Court's history did the Founders "have to" do what they did. Not to mention the question of whether the Court's experiments (the whole point of this organization's existence) are something they should even be doing. |
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Post by todd on May 17, 2018 0:17:22 GMT
Her streak to be independent, her need to handle everything herself. That's the flaws that would make one say "This is all my fault". It's a very self-centered mind set to take blame for the decisions and actions not just of other sentient living beings, but ones far older and wiser than you in response to a conflict that has existed since before your father and mother were even born. I definitely think that's one of Annie's leading flaws. And I think the "conflict that has existed since before [Annie's] father and mother were even born" is important. Despite the mess that Annie's meddling has helped cause, was the situation before she arrived that healthy? We have: 1. A group of humans engaged in questionable scientific experiments, who've shown themselves willing to ignore the moral code to achieve their goals repeatedly. 2. A group of angry and resentful forest-folk (particularly Ysengrin) who hold a grudge against the Court - partly because of the things it has done in the past, partly (at least, in Ysengrin's case) out of frustration over the thought that they're really just the products of human imagination, with no independent existence - and try to take it out on the humans as a result (since you can't bite or claw or tear apart an idea or theory - and it's this theory, Coyote's "Grand Secret", that Ysengrin is really angry at - but you can do all those things to humans and the things they've built). 3. An amoral trickster-god manipulating both sides against each other just for his own amusement. The conflict was facing a lull at the time, but only that, not genuine peace. The situation called for a genuine cure, rather than the "false peace" that prevailed during the absence of direct conflict. |
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Post by todd on May 17, 2018 0:22:21 GMT
The worst part about this, I think, is that I have a horrible suspicion that the major Court authorities will happily confirm Annie's guilt for her. They've disliked her and what she represents even when she was just a medium-in-training (or maybe even before that), and that's just gotten worse and worse over time. Even if they didn't know about her close friendship with Ysengrin, she would make the perfect scapegoat for this entire fiasco. Of course, how and when exactly they use this scapegoat is a mystery, and Tony could still have some tricks up his sleeve to counter it, but I'm convinced that it is going to happen at some point. Except they don't know about Annie's role in this as yet. Remember, the Court doesn't know about Jeanne any more, thanks to the Founders' cover-up. They just might have suspected there was something dreadful down in the Annan Waters keeping attacks away, but that would be no more than speculation. Even if they did suspect, all of Ysengrin's attacks bypassed the bottom of the ravine, so the more likely conclusion they'd draw would be that he'd finally realized that there were other avenues of attack and was employing them. Coyote revealing to Ysengrin that the Guardian was gone led to the attack, but only Coyote and Ysengrin know about that; Coyote's out of things for now, and I doubt Ysengrin's going to be mentioning that. (Not to mention that he knows only that the Guardian is gone, not how it happened.) If the Court does think Annie's to blame for this, it's far more likely to believe that she said or did something foolish during that last visit to Gilltie Wood which angered Ysengrin enough to provoke his attack - and Andrew's report on events would dismiss that possibility. Unless, of course, Annie's guilt-ridden enough to make a public confession, entirely on her own initiative. |
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Post by philman on May 17, 2018 11:53:23 GMT
Yes, in fact they are. In their time, they were creating a shield for the Court using morally despicable, yet very effective means. They can be blamed for what was done to Jeanne and Green guy, but not for the current mess. a bunch of humans who are long dead, including Steadman: See Diego. For all we know, had they not placed Jeanne down there at all, then a devastating forest attack on the court could have happened much earlier. No and no. With Diego's technical wizardry skills, they could have fortified the Annan shore with an army of robotic guardians. Maybe helped by, I don't know, an impenetrable shield for example. I heard the Court robots can produce something like this! They could have built many other things to fortify, protect, et cetera... Or they could have moved away. At no point in the Court's history did the Founders "have to" do what they did. The purple impenetrable shield is similar enough to Anja's that she must have had some hand in making it, even if she didn't know that it had been adopted to such a massive scale. They didn't have that technology back at the founding. And we have seen Ysengrin try and get members of his army to cross the waters before and get cut down by Jeanne, so the founders knew they had need of protection, and their methods, as morally reprehensible they were, obviously worked. Was releasing Jeanne the right thing to do? Yes, of course. But it's like opening the cages of mistreated captured wild animals. Yes they should be released and not tortured any more, but you still have to have some plan in action so that it doesn't immediately turn around and tear your face off. |
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Post by todd on May 17, 2018 12:46:35 GMT
I wonder whether some of the lack of a plan Annie and her friends had over "what after Jeanne is freed" stemmed from Diego's video recording of the murder of Jeanne and her lover - which was how they learned about the event - focusing on Diego's motive (revenge for Jeanne turning him down) rather than on the rest of the Founders' motives (raising a defense against the forest-folk), which were placed in the background. That would have led them, in turn, to see what the Court did to Jeanne as more the jealous rage of a rejected suitor (definitely wrong and inexcusable) rather than the grayer tone of "reasons of state" (in the manner of "Necessity, the tyrant's plea", as Milton put it), and give less thought to the "practical" reasons for the deed.
Not that even those were much of an excuse, given the response of the Artilleryman (who had to be as aware of the problems with the Wood as everyone else at the meeting).
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Post by bedinsis on May 17, 2018 19:17:40 GMT
While everyone else is conversing in the deep moral complexities of guilt, I'd like to point out a shallow detail with this page:
Annie is wearing three different outfits in the panels of this page. Meaning these events took place over at least three days(but probably more, since most people don't change clothes every day).
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Post by fia on May 18, 2018 1:02:46 GMT
Is Annie holding a seeking robot like in the Torn Sea? It looks more like a small acoustic locator of some kind... |
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Post by todd on May 18, 2018 1:09:25 GMT
A couple of further thoughts about the "didn't think how removing Jeanne from the Annan Waters" would affect the Forest's ability to attack the Court.
1. In the chapter immediately before "Jeanne", Annie, Parley, and Smith were all involved in the meeting between the fairy and the boy who used to be a rabbit, with a tone of members from both communities getting to understand each other better. Such an element, a hope for genuine peace (rather than just an absence of armed conflict) must have suggested that Jeanne was an anachronism (or becoming one), that they didn't need violent methods to keep the forest-folk from going at the Court any more, that both sides could learn to live together harmoniously.
2. For that matter, most of the forest-folk in Annie and Smith's past visits to the forest seemed happy to receive them and showed no animosity. The opposition seemed reduced to Ysengrin (whose softer side Annie had discovered), the monsters in "Crash Course" (who could be overruled by the forest leaders - and who might even have lost some of their appetite for war after Annie in her fire elemental state gave them a taste of fighting), and the shadow-folk. The feud seemed to be dying down, the few genuine haters in the minority. At least, that's what Annie seems to have thought.
She and her friends hadn't counted, of course, on Coyote's deviousness beneath his jokey manner (perhaps all the more since he'd given the Court permission to stay even before the Jeanne business began). That's the trouble with tricksters.
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Post by pyradonis on May 18, 2018 17:01:31 GMT
Was releasing Jeanne the right thing to do? Yes, of course. But it's like opening the cages of mistreated captured wild animals. Yes they should be released and not tortured any more, but you still have to have some plan in action so that it doesn't immediately turn around and tear your face off. But the animal in your analogy is Jeanne, and Annie had a team assembled and a plan in action to keep her in check (even if it worked only partially). Like todd said above, most of the forest creatures she met were genuinely friendly, and even grumpy old Ysengrin didn't seem (by what she could observe) hellbent on attacking the Court at the first possible occasion (which might have been true as well, for as long as he did not eat back all his stolen memories). |
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Post by pyradonis on May 18, 2018 17:02:27 GMT
Basically, I think she's being a bit silly right now. A common trait for people her age (and people in general). |
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