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Post by flowsthead on Apr 12, 2021 0:22:47 GMT
Murder is not a big deal to the creatures of the forest as they live by a survival of the fittest dynamic, almost. Ysengrin and Renard almost killing Annie is not that strange from their perspective, even if both of them now feel bad about it. It's what makes the murder of Jeanne by Diego and the archer so heinous, that they know the terribleness of their actions. I am not sure I agree with the applicability of your assessment. Renard clearly feels uncomfortable with the possibility of Daniel dying, and what little we see of their interaction looks like they were friends or at least on friendly terms. IMHO not comparable to one animal killing another (humans included) for food or to defend itself. Renard knew what he was doing was wrong. Normally, I would agree with this. But the comic has already established that every creature has some amount of intelligence and consciousness. Some are former humans and some will become humans in the future. At that point, even just eating animals in the forest is a very different situation than it would be in our world. Renard feeling bad about it is because he loves humans the most, but that doesn't mean his instincts aren't still of the forest folk. Well, I'm trying to make this a stronger argument, but I do think it's arguable. I'm not saying it's definitive. I get what your saying but if it's intention that matters Tony isn't even bad. From Tony's perspective, he was working to keep his family alive, then when Sumra died he was working to bring his family back together while keeping Annie safe, then when he got back he was working to keep Annie on the right track. Rey intended to kill Annie because he wanted to escape, and killing might not be a big thing to some Forrest creatures, but it's implied by Coyote that this isn't the case with Rey. Intention only matters so much, how we judge characters is largely, like you said, kinda just who seems the most "relatable" bad. I used intentionality as a word, but I didn't mean intention in a purely subjective sense. I'll just say up front that I used the wrong word. I'm sort of talking about a mix of author intentions, character intentions, and reader perspective. You're right in that Tony never meant to harm anyone. But I don't think we can consider Tony as a purely ignorant party. He knows what the expectations society has of the role of "father" or "parent", and he must be aware that he is not living up to it. To a certain extent, that is enough. And whatever faults Annie has, she is still young enough that that is partly on him. There is a point where you can say parents are not responsible for their children, but A) Annie has not reached that point, and B) his absence makes him for sure responsible.
I would like to emphasize again, though, for both pyradonis and maxptc. I am not saying anyone is particularly or not particularly more worthy of reader criticism. I am saying that the emotional response being greater to Tony and Paz compared to the others makes sense, even though Tony and Paz never tried to murder Annie. If you're only looking at it from the perspective of murder, the response doesn't make sense, but that's not really how reader psychology works. It's something that authors have to be very careful and very aware of in case they create a toxic fandom when it comes to their characters. A lot of lesser works especially have this problem if readers relate too strongly to their main characters to the point of undermining other characters. Gunnerkrigg doesn't have this problem. I think Tom has written it really well, and I think the comic readers aren't likely to take it that way for this. You can this very often in most popular movies and tv shows. Breaking Bad is a famous example, where you have a very clear villain protagonist in Walter White that the show didn't do a good enough job of tempering or undermining and created a fanbase that was willing to forgive everything he did because he was the main character, and there was major backlash to other characters that had problems with WW. I think the reaction to Paz and Tony is expected, and I don't think Tom has done a bad job with the writing because as we can see in these discussions there are no overwhelming opinions one way or the other on either character. There are plenty of people criticizing and plenty of people defending them. |
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Post by maxptc on Apr 12, 2021 2:11:35 GMT
I used intentionality as a word, but I didn't mean intention in a purely subjective sense. I'll just say up front that I used the wrong word. I'm sort of talking about a mix of author intentions, character intentions, and reader perspective. You're right in that Tony never meant to harm anyone. But I don't think we can consider Tony as a purely ignorant party. He knows what the expectations society has of the role of "father" or "parent", and he must be aware that he is not living up to it. To a certain extent, that is enough. And whatever faults Annie has, she is still young enough that that is partly on him. There is a point where you can say parents are not responsible for their children, but A) Annie has not reached that point, and B) his absence makes him for sure responsible.
I would like to emphasize again, though, for both pyradonis and maxptc. I am not saying anyone is particularly or not particularly more worthy of reader criticism. I am saying that the emotional response being greater to Tony and Paz compared to the others makes sense, even though Tony and Paz never tried to murder Annie. If you're only looking at it from the perspective of murder, the response doesn't make sense, but that's not really how reader psychology works. It's something that authors have to be very careful and very aware of in case they create a toxic fandom when it comes to their characters. A lot of lesser works especially have this problem if readers relate too strongly to their main characters to the point of undermining other characters. Gunnerkrigg doesn't have this problem. I think Tom has written it really well, and I think the comic readers aren't likely to take it that way for this. You can this very often in most popular movies and tv shows. Breaking Bad is a famous example, where you have a very clear villain protagonist in Walter White that the show didn't do a good enough job of tempering or undermining and created a fanbase that was willing to forgive everything he did because he was the main character, and there was major backlash to other characters that had problems with WW. I think the reaction to Paz and Tony is expected, and I don't think Tom has done a bad job with the writing because as we can see in these discussions there are no overwhelming opinions one way or the other on either character. There are plenty of people criticizing and plenty of people defending them. Oh he definitely isn't ignorant to what he's done, and I'm not saying Tony should be let off the hook. On the contrary, he needs to prove himself in a variety of ways to get redemption, even if everything is already square in Annie's eyes. But leaving your child at a boarding school without contact after closing off more then you already are because of spousal death isn't as abnormal or evil or dastardly as people make it out to be. Its a sign of mental imbalance, as is a lot of his behavior. Not that it's okay or justifies Tonys actions, they are bad as heck imo, the no contact part in particular, but again it's only one of a series of undesirable events Annie has endured. That fight with Renard before Annie ran to the forest was as traumatic for Annie as anything I've seen from this comic. That seemed way worse for Annie mentally then her dad siphoning her soul to get Surma back, or embarrassing her in class. I think a lot goes into how we feel about characters, and closed off blunt mentality troubled jerks like Tony typically get judged very harshly, where as mystical old wisdom filled dangerous rascals like Rey get a lot of slack. As for the last section, I agree with almost everything you said wholeheartedly. This is a very well written comic, I love it and the community, which I don't feel is toxic at all. I'd still argue the levels of hate a few characters get boarders on or is excessive(Paz way more then Tony), and Rey gets away with alot less hate then he should (not that I would truly argue that, I'm a big Rey fan) but I'm definitely not in the "it's a problem" camp, if such a camp exists. I'm in the more robots camp. |
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Post by Gemminie on Apr 12, 2021 4:26:56 GMT
Murder is not a big deal to the creatures of the forest as they live by a survival of the fittest dynamic, almost. Ysengrin and Renard almost killing Annie is not that strange from their perspective, even if both of them now feel bad about it. It's what makes the murder of Jeanne by Diego and the archer so heinous, that they know the terribleness of their actions. I am not sure I agree with the applicability of your assessment. Renard clearly feels uncomfortable with the possibility of Daniel dying, and what little we see of their interaction looks like they were friends or at least on friendly terms. IMHO not comparable to one animal killing another (humans included) for food or to defend itself. Renard knew what he was doing was wrong. Yeah, it looks as if Coyote had to do some convincing to get Renard to take Schiff's body, and as he's Coyote, he's certainly very convincing. Still, Renard did it. Then he took Sivo's body – we haven't seen exactly how this happened. Did he defeat Sivo in combat using Schiff's body and then maliciously take his body to make himself more difficulty for the Court to catch? Or did Sivo beat him within an inch of his life, so he took Sivo's body in order to save his own life? But once he let Coyote convince him, that bad choice led to situations with no good choices. Letting Coyote convince you to do something is, it seems, a bad idea. |
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Post by speedwell on Apr 12, 2021 4:29:25 GMT
I'll pile on to the "reactions to characters in the comic are very diverse and complex" bandwagon by mentioning that I realised, a few months ago, that I've become a bit disappointed and frustrated expecting James to develop any emotional maturity past the level I'd expect from a twenty-year-old. If I'm being generous.
While I think he is a sympathetic and decent person in general, he strikes me as exactly the type of character that in other stories (movies, TV, novels) gets led by the nose by the "dark side" into doing things that seem right at the time but more and more surely ensnare him. Consider that there are a lot of things we would never expect Tony to fall for; despite the fact that *he actually did* get led by the nose and fall for a trap, I think we generally recognise his motivation as being essentially clean. James, however, is a seething ball of rancor who isn't in full control of his emotions, and it wouldn't take much to turn him from the white knight to the black knight.
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Post by speedwell on Apr 12, 2021 4:40:26 GMT
I am not sure I agree with the applicability of your assessment. Renard clearly feels uncomfortable with the possibility of Daniel dying, and what little we see of their interaction looks like they were friends or at least on friendly terms. IMHO not comparable to one animal killing another (humans included) for food or to defend itself. Renard knew what he was doing was wrong. Yeah, it looks as if Coyote had to do some convincing to get Renard to take Schiff's body, and as he's Coyote, he's certainly very convincing. Still, Renard did it. Then he took Sivo's body – we haven't seen exactly how this happened. Did he defeat Sivo in combat using Schiff's body and then maliciously take his body to make himself more difficulty for the Court to catch? Or did Sivo beat him within an inch of his life, so he took Sivo's body in order to save his own life? But once he let Coyote convince him, that bad choice led to situations with no good choices. Letting Coyote convince you to do something is, it seems, a bad idea. Coyote's brand of convincing seems, to me, to be of a piece with the Old Testament God's convincing Pharaoh to "harden his heart" against the Jews. Gods will, I suppose, be gods. |
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Post by maxptc on Apr 12, 2021 5:00:01 GMT
I'll pile on to the "reactions to characters in the comic are very diverse and complex" bandwagon by mentioning that I realised, a few months ago, that I've become a bit disappointed and frustrated expecting James to develop any emotional maturity past the level I'd expect from a twenty-year-old. If I'm being generous. While I think he is a sympathetic and decent person in general, he strikes me as exactly the type of character that in other stories (movies, TV, novels) gets led by the nose by the "dark side" into doing things that seem right at the time but more and more surely ensnare him. Consider that there are a lot of things we would never expect Tony to fall for; despite the fact that *he actually did* get led by the nose and fall for a trap, I think we generally recognise his motivation as being essentially clean. James, however, is a seething ball of rancor who isn't in full control of his emotions, and it wouldn't take much to turn him from the white knight to the black knight. Circling back to earlier wild spec; Tony being freed from a literally mind cage, being fully redeemed somehow and maybe hugging Annie might do it for James. James going evil black knight and Tony becoming super dad is more personally amusing to me then actual speculation. |
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Post by speedwell on Apr 12, 2021 6:08:17 GMT
I'll pile on to the "reactions to characters in the comic are very diverse and complex" bandwagon by mentioning that I realised, a few months ago, that I've become a bit disappointed and frustrated expecting James to develop any emotional maturity past the level I'd expect from a twenty-year-old. If I'm being generous. While I think he is a sympathetic and decent person in general, he strikes me as exactly the type of character that in other stories (movies, TV, novels) gets led by the nose by the "dark side" into doing things that seem right at the time but more and more surely ensnare him. Consider that there are a lot of things we would never expect Tony to fall for; despite the fact that *he actually did* get led by the nose and fall for a trap, I think we generally recognise his motivation as being essentially clean. James, however, is a seething ball of rancor who isn't in full control of his emotions, and it wouldn't take much to turn him from the white knight to the black knight. Circling back to earlier wild spec; Tony being freed from a literally mind cage, being fully redeemed somehow and maybe hugging Annie might do it for James. James going evil black knight and Tony becoming super dad is more personally amusing to me then actual speculation. Oh, certainly I'm not projecting that as an outcome; just marking a contrast between their characters. Complexity, you know. We're not writing this  |
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Post by jda on Apr 12, 2021 7:17:03 GMT
Murder is not a big deal to the creatures of the forest as they live by a survival of the fittest dynamic, almost. Ysengrin and Renard almost killing Annie is not that strange from their perspective, even if both of them now feel bad about it. It's what makes the murder of Jeanne by Diego and the archer so heinous, that they know the terribleness of their actions. I am not sure I agree with the applicability of your assessment. Renard clearly feels uncomfortable with the possibility of Daniel dying, and what little we see of their interaction looks like they were friends or at least on friendly terms. IMHO not comparable to one animal killing another (humans included) for food or to defend itself. Renard knew what he was doing was wrong. I love how threads start on Parental issues and a couple pages later, I come and see it on discussions of murder applicability. |
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Post by warrl on Apr 12, 2021 8:28:22 GMT
I love how threads start on Parental issues and a couple pages later, I come and see it on discussions of murder applicability.  ...or...  |
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Post by lurkerbot on Apr 12, 2021 15:53:46 GMT
One thing I find interesting about this debate is the disagreement about how much to take Annie's wishes into account. Some say, "Yes, he's been a lousy father, but Annie wants to be with him, so she should be." Others say, "It doesn't matter that she thinks she wants that, it's objectively bad for her and he needs to be out of her life." (I'm paraphrasing and not thinking of anyone in particular here, so my formulations may not match exactly how you would put it.) Eglamore, clearly, falls into the second camp. I'm not 100% sold on either argument: on the one hand, I don't think severing Annie's connection with Tony against her will would be good for her (I am hopeful that we've seen and will continue to see some progress, even if it's painfully slow); on the other hand, people sometimes want things that are not good for them, and it can become necessary to rip off that band-aid. The chapter 52 retrospective actually touches on both sides: Tom points out that the situation isn't great and Annie's not dealing with it quite as well as she says she is, but he also points out how a lot of other characters assume that Annie needs to be rescued without giving Annie any say in the matter.Very much this [emphasis mine]. As one obvious example, I'm not aware of anyone asking Antimony how she feels about living with her father besides Tony himself offering her the option here and here. And both times she apparently happily agreed. Based on what Jones is hearing from others as this chapter unfolds, I wonder if her comment " they wonder about your mental state" could also be about Antimony's choice to live with her father in addition to any lingering effects of her recombination. So far, we've seen all of Antimony's acquaintances express the opinion that the recombination has improved her, but unprompted, they also all have disapproved of Tony's ongoing behavior towards her. |
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Post by maxptc on Apr 12, 2021 16:01:34 GMT
One thing I find interesting about this debate is the disagreement about how much to take Annie's wishes into account. Some say, "Yes, he's been a lousy father, but Annie wants to be with him, so she should be." Others say, "It doesn't matter that she thinks she wants that, it's objectively bad for her and he needs to be out of her life." (I'm paraphrasing and not thinking of anyone in particular here, so my formulations may not match exactly how you would put it.) Eglamore, clearly, falls into the second camp. I'm not 100% sold on either argument: on the one hand, I don't think severing Annie's connection with Tony against her will would be good for her (I am hopeful that we've seen and will continue to see some progress, even if it's painfully slow); on the other hand, people sometimes want things that are not good for them, and it can become necessary to rip off that band-aid. The chapter 52 retrospective actually touches on both sides: Tom points out that the situation isn't great and Annie's not dealing with it quite as well as she says she is, but he also points out how a lot of other characters assume that Annie needs to be rescued without giving Annie any say in the matter.Very much this [emphasis mine]. As one obvious example, I'm not aware of anyone asking Antimony how she feels about living with her father besides Tony himself offering her the option here and here. And both times she apparently happily agreed. Based on what Jones is hearing from others as this chapter unfolds, I wonder if her comment " they wonder about your mental state" could also be about Antimony's choice to live with her father in addition to any lingering effects of her recombination. So far, we've seen all of Antimony's acquaintances express the opinion that the recombination has improved her, but unprompted, they also all have disapproved of Tony's ongoing behavior towards her. Excellent point, we might have been led to believe this was about the fusing, when it could all be about Annie's living arrangements. The mind cage is super vague, so even that could be a reference to this situation. |
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Post by blazingstar on Apr 13, 2021 5:11:48 GMT
blazingstar : This thread is a little more like what I thought of recently when talking about hate for one of the comic's characters. I wasn't confused by the hate for a fictional character - I was specifically concerned by the hate for Kat, whose reactions I thought were pretty normal / reasonable from a certain perspective (teenage girl who has seen her loved one engage in increasingly risky and mentally unhealthy behavior). I perfectly understand the hatred for TONY, who, unlike Kat, I think almost all members of this forum have agreed is straight up abusive. Abusive parents trigger a lot of hate, and understandably so imo. I'm waiting for a Tony redemption, but until that day, by all means, please continue to hate him haha. |
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Post by speedwell on Apr 13, 2021 8:24:29 GMT
blazingstar : This thread is a little more like what I thought of recently when talking about hate for one of the comic's characters. I wasn't confused by the hate for a fictional character - I was specifically concerned by the hate for Kat, whose reactions I thought were pretty normal / reasonable from a certain perspective (teenage girl who has seen her loved one engage in increasingly risky and mentally unhealthy behavior). I perfectly understand the hatred for TONY, who, unlike Kat, I think almost all members of this forum have agreed is straight up abusive. Abusive parents trigger a lot of hate, and understandably so imo. I'm waiting for a Tony redemption, but until that day, by all means, please continue to hate him haha. Just thinking about this... As I had the sad duty of saying to a young friend recently, the fact that a parent is abusive is a separate consideration from whether they meant to be abusive, or whether cultural standards would have considered their parenting to be abusive. Tony plainly gets no pleasure from being harsh and distant, and doesn't do what he does out of malice or hatred, but that's not the important thing; the important thing is whether he is actually doing the basic minimum of emotional work necessary to be a good colleague, friend, or parent (he isn't). Whether this failure is because he's just lazy, literally missing the capacity to adapt and cope, or under some sort of etheric geas (mind cage?) isn't clear. I will say that he didn't appear to have his mysterious inability to get along with more than one person at a time when he was on his grand mystical research tour. All that taken into consideration, I don't *hate* Tony; I would just consider him something to work around socially the way I would have to work around an obnoxious work colleague professionally. |
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Post by drmemory on Apr 14, 2021 2:09:20 GMT
At the risk of derailing the Tony-haters club and the budding Jimmy-should-grow-up club, I have to ask... what about the other thing Idra brought up? Idra says "I think it's odd you make your kids live away from their parents as it is". Um. Is she referring to the kids living in dorms? Or something else? Like, are they actually required to live separately? If I remember right, Kat has her own place, near but not with her parents, so it seems she's maintained living separately during the crisis. I would expect that most kids would move home once school was closed unless they had a pretty unhappy home life. Has this ever been mentioned before? Making the kids live away from their parents? Anja didn't disagree and actually kind of made it sound like... policy. Is that the case? When Tony invited Fannie to live with Cannie and himself, he didn't make it sound like any sort of protocol violation, but then school is actually closed at present so that's not really evidence. Honestly, I don't care all that much, questions about robots and such are much more important to me, but I am pretty surprised to see this pass entirely without comment.  Maybe it's something everyone else already knew but I didn't?
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Post by DonDueed on Apr 14, 2021 2:38:49 GMT
At the risk of derailing the Tony-haters club and the budding Jimmy-should-grow-up club, I have to ask... what about the other thing Idra brought up? Idra says "I think it's odd you make your kids live away from their parents as it is". Um. Is she referring to the kids living in dorms? Or something else? Like, are they actually required to live separately? If I remember right, Kat has her own place, near but not with her parents, so it seems she's maintained living separately during the crisis. I would expect that most kids would move home once school was closed unless they had a pretty unhappy home life. Has this ever been mentioned before? Making the kids live away from their parents? Anja didn't disagree and actually kind of made it sound like... policy. Is that the case? When Tony invited Fannie to live with Cannie and himself, he didn't make it sound like any sort of protocol violation, but then school is actually closed at present so that's not really evidence. Honestly, I don't care all that much, questions about robots and such are much more important to me, but I am pretty surprised to see this pass entirely without comment. Maybe it's something everyone else already knew but I didn't?
I'm not British, but as I understand it, it's not uncommon for children there to be sent to boarding schools where they spend most of the year entirely separated from their parents and siblings (unless those siblings attend the same school).
At Gunnerkrigg, this seems to be the norm for most students -- their parents are not residents of the Court and even in those cases like Kat (and Annie of late) the kids live separately in dorms. This all changed after Loup's attack and now some of the kids are living with parents. Others seem to have remained in the Court (Jack, Paz, et al) but are living in ad hoc situations rather than the dorms while in "lockdown". Possibly some students have left the Court entirely but we haven't seen any such cases.
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Post by warrl on Apr 14, 2021 4:11:53 GMT
And we won't, as long as the focus stays on the Court. They aren't there.
Oh, and yes, it has been common in Britain - particularly in the middle and upper classes - to send kids to boarding schools, for a few centuries at least. In consequence, the "school novel" is a well-established genre of fiction in Britain - Harry Potter being in many ways a typical example that also happens to be well-known in the US.
Before that, and overlapping with it, many boys were sent off as apprentices at young ages, and would likely have even less contact with their parents than the kids in boarding school have. You may remember in Dickens' A Christmas Carol Bob Cratchit had lined up an apprenticeship for his eldest son - who looked, to me, to be just on the cusp of puberty.
For that matter, at least in some versions of the movies Scrooge himself was - at slightly younger age - taken from a boarding school and put into an apprenticeship, hardly getting to even glance at his parents in between.
Even earlier, noble children were often "fostered" with other noble families - to encourage alliances, to scout a different assortment of prospective mates, and to learn ways of doing things different from what their parents did in hopes that they would find some way of combining techniques that was even better. And young noblewomen often grew up attended by servant-girls who grew up with them, said servants getting to see their families only on rare occasions.
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Post by DonDueed on Apr 14, 2021 15:55:41 GMT
And we won't, as long as the focus stays on the Court. They aren't there. Oh, and yes, it has been common in Britain - particularly in the middle and upper classes - to send kids to boarding schools, for a few centuries at least. In consequence, the "school novel" is a well-established genre of fiction in Britain - Harry Potter being in many ways a typical example that also happens to be well-known in the US. Before that, and overlapping with it, many boys were sent off as apprentices at young ages, and would likely have even less contact with their parents than the kids in boarding school have. You may remember in Dickens' A Christmas Carol Bob Cratchit had lined up an apprenticeship for his eldest son - who looked, to me, to be just on the cusp of puberty. For that matter, at least in some versions of the movies Scrooge himself was - at slightly younger age - taken from a boarding school and put into an apprenticeship, hardly getting to even glance at his parents in between. Even earlier, noble children were often "fostered" with other noble families - to encourage alliances, to scout a different assortment of prospective mates, and to learn ways of doing things different from what their parents did in hopes that they would find some way of combining techniques that was even better. And young noblewomen often grew up attended by servant-girls who grew up with them, said servants getting to see their families only on rare occasions. You might also mention the monasteries, which in the Middle Ages took in boys to be trained for the priesthood. This was often the fate of second (and later) sons of nobles, who would not inherit any part of the estate but could potentially become powerful and influential as members of the "second estate". This might actually be a better allegory for the Court in some respects. |
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Post by drmemory on Apr 16, 2021 16:38:01 GMT
I see. So if I understand correctly, Gunnerkrigg Court is presented more or less like a boarding school (which we knew, due to the explanations of how the class naming and structure work, and things like that), and it is normal for the kids to live the whole school year in the school without their parents. Huh, did not know that. Thanks for the info!
It is pretty interesting seeing Idra's outsider view of how the court does things. She obviously isn't always getting it quite right, as her cultural background is so different and she has only seen a limited amount of what is going on. Like, someone who knows how boarding schools work probably wouldn't have phrased things the way she did.
Also, I think her current audience consists of people (and one golem or something) who have made GC their lifetime home. Jones brought both Jimmy and Donald in at very young ages, and I believe they've all lived there most of their lives as well, modulo the occasional vacation. So her insights and observations are pretty jarring to them (and to us) because we're so used to seeing everything filtered through a GC-centric worldview. Having grown up with the court and lived there most or all of their adult lives, they probably have a pretty strong consensus about what constitutes "normal".
In Idra's view, family is very important, and she doesn't get Jimmy's desire to keep her away from Tony. I'm guessing she doesn't know about the personal history there, the Jimmy -> Surma -> Tony triangle. Perhaps she'll be learning it soon? Really, I don't think she needs to know - if Jimmy can't make a better argument than "He should be kept away from her because he sucks and stole my girlfriend" then he deserves to lose the debate. Something like "When he came back, without warning, after abandoning her for several years, he immediately humiliated her in front of her entire class, on purpose, in the worst way you can imagine", might be more effective and even fair. But I bet she would still view that as a family matter that can and should be worked out by the family. I'm not a huge Tony fan but that seems very fair to me!
Idra's comment on a possible crush is almost certainly based on direct observation from when the Annies showed up at Eglamore's place that one time. I can see why she thinks that, and do not know if her conclusion is correct. They WERE acting funny.
Idra's comment her her being spoiled... I do not entirely understand. I get parts of it - as others have said, she was kind of a lazy brat when she showed up in the elven village, and I'm sure word got around fast. We were even told that was the first time she ever had to sweep a floor or anything! So that's a bit spoiled for sure. The stuff about having Coyote's attention - also true. As far as we've been told, Coyote pretty much just wanders the forest as he pleases, often with Ysengrin in tow, and it isn't normal at all for him to befriend and hang out with a teenage girl, human or not. So he certainly treats her as special. The part I don't get is "all the attention of your court". Um. The Council or whatever certainly is aware of her, and is quite angry with her. Many of the kids don't care for her too much - she still only has one really close friend and a handful of not-as-close friends. I don't feel like the court as a whole pays that much attention to her. So maybe she's mistaken about that part, as she has limited information, or maybe I don't really understand what she is claiming. /shrug
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Post by warrl on Apr 16, 2021 17:31:16 GMT
Idra's comment on a possible crush is almost certainly based on direct observation from when the Annies showed up at Eglamore's place that one time. I can see why she thinks that, and do not know if her conclusion is correct. They WERE acting funny. They were acting like kids of an age where their bodies are starting to think about sex and their brains are confused by the concept, being faced with recognizable and strong evidence that adults they regularly associate with have just engaged in sex. |
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Post by flowsthead on Apr 16, 2021 17:47:59 GMT
Idra's comment on a possible crush is almost certainly based on direct observation from when the Annies showed up at Eglamore's place that one time. I can see why she thinks that, and do not know if her conclusion is correct. They WERE acting funny. They were acting like kids of an age where their bodies are starting to think about sex and their brains are confused by the concept, being faced with recognizable and strong evidence that adults they regularly associate with have just engaged in sex. Not to mention Idra showing her naked ass to Annie. That would be uncomfortable for anyone. |
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Post by silicondream on Apr 18, 2021 3:22:16 GMT
End of the week. Time for a text wall! I do think that the white room = good for Annie is something I disagree with, just because all of the strength/emotional balance that Annie undergoes largely happens outside of the White Room (see: Ysengrin destroying her blinker stone, the Annies confronting each other, etc). I’d certainly agree that the White Room isn’t the only thing that helped Annie grow during that period. But Ysengrin destroying the blinker stone is a great example--in the short term, that hurt Annie more than it helped. She was less emotionally stable, less powerful in the Ether, and more of a danger to those around her. It took focused meditation in the White Room for her to make up that lost ground and then get even stronger. I would also point out that the scene with the Annies confronting each other was basically the White Room redux. Her friends stuck her in a large, isolated space to work out her issues--and unlike Tony, they actually did lock her in! If that was helpful for her, then the White Room definitely was. True, although it’s possible that he only ever worked on the Omega device under duress--first to get the resources to try to cure Surma, and then to save Annie from the Court’s wrath. Not that that will excuse him if it turns out to be a functional Death Star or something. He had the OTP with him, and he and Don must have been on the same page, or Don would never have been able to decrypt it. And he started the message with Antimony's name. But then he made the message about something completely other. He could have said something to Antimony, even "I'm OK and thinking about you," but instead it's "Antimony, tell Don I need the following equipment sent to me via Microsat 5," etc. But once we see his retelling, we learn that the message wasn’t meant for Antimony at all; she should never even have known about it. It was meant to go directly to Don, or someone close to Don, who would decode it and send him the equipment. Annie’s name was only included as part of the encryption, but--maybe because of supernatural interference, or because Tony’s emotions affected the astral targeting system--it went to her by mistake. I know you interpret it differently, but I think Tony was being literal when he said he never meant to involve her. Don’s speculation that he contacted Antimony deliberately was simply wrong. I would say that giving Annie any information at that point would be a bad idea; not only would he be implicating her in his illicit research, but he’d be asking her to assist him in mutilating himself. Tony is generally hyper-protective of Annie and I can’t imagine he’d involve her in that deliberately. On the “two years of total silence” thing, I would point out that Tony spent that time in hiding from the court, trekking through the wilderness and meeting mysterious personages, torturing his mind and body in order to become some kind of sorcerer, and eventually ending up on some other plane of reality. We don’t even know whether he experienced it as two years; maybe he was comatose or insane or time-shifted. It seems quite possible to me that contacting Annie then was simply unworkable--and again, since Tony was on the run, any communication with her would place her at risk. It being out of character for him is exactly why I believe it was a performance for the Court. It certainly wouldn’t be out of character for Llanwellyn, who arranged and conducted Annie’s previous public humiliation. (And concluded it by banning Annie from visiting the forest and demanding Reynard, just as Tony did.) Which doesn’t necessarily mean that the Court handed Tony a dialogue script or anything like that; their directives are rarely so explicit. I just think Tony knew what it would take to convince Llanwellyn et al. that Annie had Learned Her Lesson and Changed Her Ways. (No clue whether Llanwellyn really has a "faction", by the way; it just doesn't seem like he has absolute control over the school. I'm guessing that he works for the Council of Ominous Silhouettes That Apparently Run Everything, rather than vice versa.) I doubt it. We saw him drink himself into a blubbering stupor with Don, and he didn’t act like that all. He condemned himself plenty of times, but he didn’t say a single harsh word about Annie. Or anyone else, for that matter, except the collective Court leadership. In or out of control, Tony seems almost incapable of genuine aggression. Granted, but Tony did say that she needed a place with “less distraction,” and the White Room is definitely...that. It certainly doesn’t resemble any other residential space in the Court, for students or staff, so I figure he probably had a hand in choosing it. This may also connect to “that business with James” that Tony mentioned. Despite saying he was glad that Renard was dead, Eglamore’s been weirdly friendly with him since their first appearance. I wonder whether Tony blamed Eglamore for overlooking the threat Renard represented. I blame Surma considerably more for that, since 1) Annie was constantly by her side, 2) she was presumably well informed about her own family history, and 3) she was the expert in all the supernatural BS that plagues Annie’s life. Tony may have assumed (as working fathers with daughters often do, whether justified or not) that Surma gave Annie all the important Talks. We did see Tony training Annie in self-defense, and I’ve wondered whether her eclectic knowledge about dissections and such was learned from him. Well...the main thing Tony knows about growing up in the Court was that he was incredibly bad at it. Again, he may have figured that Annie would do best simply by following in Surma’s footsteps. I suspect that Tony was convinced of Renard’s harmlessness even before confiscating him. He certainly knew Annie was lying about turning over control of Renard, and wasn’t inclined to do anything about it. Again, I think this was a show for the Court; as far as they know, Renard is still under Tony's control. As for the Forest visits...considering how often something in there tries to kill Annie, I think Tony was exactly as cautious as he needed to be. Unless Tony learned about the eavesdropping later, he probably isn’t even aware that Annie knows he played a part in her illness. And I can understand why he wouldn’t want to tell her, because then she’d realize that: 1) she inadvertently helped him cut his hand off, and 2) her very existence killed Surma and may still be preventing Tony from bringing Surma back. Plus he’d have to talk about the Omega Device then. Of course, Annie in fact knows most or all of this already. And if I were to define Tony’s biggest failing as a parent, it’s underestimating the resourcefulness and resilience of his daughter. As I see it, he’s constantly been trying to protect her from knowledge and experiences that might hurt her, and that probably would let a duller child lead a safe and normal (by Court standards) life. But Annie’s inherited a double dose of adventurousness from her parents. On her own, she’s guaranteed to learn just enough to put herself in danger. If Tony had taken her into his confidence early on, she could have grown up as his junior partner and perhaps been safer and happier in the end. ...or, she might have run off and made some suicidal pact with Mysterious Entities to resurrect her mom. You can never tell with Carvers. |
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Post by todd on Apr 18, 2021 13:49:20 GMT
(No clue whether Llanwellyn really has a "faction", by the way; it just doesn't seem like he has absolute control over the school. I'm guessing that he works for the Council of Ominous Silhouettes That Apparently Run Everything, rather than vice versa.) I think we've seen more of the Headmaster than the other high-ranking authority figures at the Court (whoever they are) simply because he's in charge of the school portion of it, which the story focuses on since Annie and Kat are schoolchildren. The school's just one division of the Court - the part dedicated to training the next generation of Court experimenters. Of course, this raises the question of why the Headmaster is the highest-ranking Court official present during the diplomatic meetings with the Forest (such as the one in Chapter Fourteen), if this is the case. Maybe it stems from the "school side" of the Court being more prominent, thanks to Annie and Kat's nature. Or maybe the Court is deliberately using a "school facade" for its own purposes, trying to draw attention away from the rest of the Court.... |
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