[2456] "...I've lost a daughter."

[Nnelg]

...I actually felt like we'd lost an Annie, too; only I didn't speak up because everyone seemed exclusively positive here.

[TBeholder]

Hmm. Tony never was a "glass half empty" guy.
Was he already getting used to Annie interacting with herself? Or simply always wanted more kids? =)

Also… will Antimony occasionally "split" again? Whether on contact with some other magic nonsense, or maybe from being too exasperated for only one Annie, or something?

[Gemminie]

Panel 1: Establishing shot. We're transitioning to another scene. There are a couple of ships out there, one of which is relatively close to shore and clearly not ocean-liner size.

Panel 2: More establishing. Now we're seeing the streets, with no one in them.

Panel 3: To quote MST3K, we're establishing the hell out of this shot. Here's the entrance to the Carvers' house. We can assume, then, that we're returning to the present time, without a label to that effect. I suppose it's possible that Jones might have talked to Tony before the incidents at the start of the chapter, but it's simpler to assume that we're just returning to that continuity. Jones has, therefore, already greeted Annie with her warning that some are questioning her sanity, and Annie and Kat have already gone away with a "Haha, that's great Jones, let's talk sometime."

Panel 4: Jones is in the house, facing away from us and thus probably toward someone, presumably Tony, who is speaking.

Panel 5: Finally we see Tony. He's expressing emotion. Question about whether he can open up when alone with Jones: answered. He appears not to be wearing shoes again; perhaps he just doesn't typically wear them around the house. And he feels like he's lost a daughter. Which, in a way, he has: he previously had what felt to him like two daughters, after a second one mysteriously emerged from the Forest, and now he has one again. But which one does he feel as if he's lost? The one whom he was able to open up to emotionally, or the one he wasn't able to open up around? As usual, things are likely more complicated, and he doesn't feel exactly as if he's lost a specific one. But as often happens with analyzing one page at a time, this is just getting started, so we'll get a better feel for the flow of the conversation once we see more pages of it.

[phantaskippy]

This one hit me different. My family is a bit weird, specifically my sister and I are a lot alike and not many people think like we do. I know I'm not unique in this way, just bear with me.

My daughter is just like us. She thinks and interacts like us, but she's also a lot like her mom. Every once in a while it'll be me, my daughter and my sister hanging out and being our goofy selves and the other side of my daughter will pop up, and it breaks the little illusion of our clique of like minded people.

To me, forest and court Annie would be like splitting my daughter into two versions, one that captures the side that is more like me, and one that captures the side that is more like my wife.

For Tony, that would give him a daughter he could more easily relate to in court Annie, and one that he couldn't, forest Annie, who also happened to be incredibly like his dead wife.

I think we are seeing a complex thing here. Tony got to see what he should have had, or more appropriately what Annie should have had this whole time. He realizes even more how incredibly stupid and selfish he has been.

I think his "lost daughter" is both the breaking of the relationship with the Annie that was easier to relate to and the realization that the distance between them is his fault. He doesn't have the relationship he should have had, a relationship he got a glimpse of with court Annie, because he was wallowing in selfish pity instead of being a father.

Now what he will do with that, whether he finally takes steps to make things better or goes back to wallowing in selfish pity, that's up to him.

[ctso74]

Apr 19, 2021 12:54:58 GMT TBeholder said:

Or simply always wanted more kids?

Ouch. Hadn't even thought of that.

Apr 19, 2021 7:19:05 GMT glyphomatrix said:

Apr 19, 2021 7:09:02 GMT flowsthead said:

I brought this up in another thread, but the Court really needs therapists.

Jones should make it another part of her vocations, 'among other things'. A therapist with a rich experience stretching back to Hadean Eon.

Jones: "Yes, I did raise Sigmund. Rather clingy."

[silicondream]

Apr 19, 2021 7:28:49 GMT csj said:

Based on his personal turmoil re; his relationship to Surma and its effect on his parenting, I'd say Courtnie's active decision to more closely ape the former's appearance and the like is a rather opaque factor.

And, in particular, Courtnie’s decision to ape Surma’s relationship with Tony. I don’t mean that Annie’s in love with her dad or anything, but when children lose a same-gender parent, it’s quite common for them to try step into that parent’s role within the family. Courtnie worked hard to be Tony’s surrogate partner, emotionally speaking, and Tony worked equally hard to resist that.

Apr 19, 2021 8:05:15 GMT machiavelli33 said:

Evidently, Tony took the appearance of a second Annie as "I have a second daughter now" - and even though he intellectually knew they were the same person, emotionally he was leaning to the idea of having two children.

And they weren’t the same person, in any ordinary sense. They had different memories, and were slightly different ages, and had separate egos and emotional states, and made different decisions. They were very similar, but not consciously connected to each other. Most of Annie’s acquaintances chose to view them as the same person because it was less existentially horrifying, but Tony is a sciencey type and he doesn’t do comforting illusions. (Neither does Kat, which is why the whole thing drove her nuts too.)

Man.  If this were a comedy strip, there'd have to be some recurring gag for Tony to lose his ice cream every time he's given some, or something.

Yuuup.

It seems to me that this is the central tragedy of Tony’s life. He is incredibly concerned with boundaries, and responsibilities, and giving each person their due. But he fell in love with an immortal Phoenix-entity that grows and sheds personalities like feathers. Sometimes she’s a single girl or woman, sometimes she’s a bound pair of dying mother and growing daughter, sometimes she’s a human girl with a separate angry fire-self, sometimes she’s two girls.

And everyone else knows this! Almost everybody who was close to Surma, whether mortal or spirit, instinctively recognizes Annie as her continuation. (Don was nice enough to deny it in “Microsat 5," but he had the usual reaction when he first met Annie.) Renard’s and James’ love for Surma morphed seamlessly into affection for Annie. The psychopomps perceive that Annie has inherited Surma’s entire soul and all of her supernatural responsibilities. As for Coyote, I’m not sure he even recognizes Surma and Annie as different people. As far as he’s concerned, Fire Head Girl went away for a while and came back shorter and with different hair.

But Tony can’t accept this, partly because he’s Tony and the boundaries thing, and partly because one of the Phoenix-selves is his wife and another is his daughter, and a father who confuses the two is a monster. So he’s spent his life trying to keep them separate...with very limited success.

First he spent ten years trying to technologically “disconnect” Annie and Surma so they could coexist. Didn’t work; Surma died. Then he left Annie behind, went halfway around the world and cooperated with the psychopomps to bring Surma back from the void...but they were still connected and Annie almost died. Tony literally summoned Surma’s ghost out of Annie’s body without meaning to.

So, okay, Surma and Annie can’t coexist, and Surma’s permanently dead but Annie’s alive and in danger. So Tony comes back to the Court, and almost loses his mind when he sets eyes on Annie because she’s grown up a bit and is obviously Surma, at the same age when he first knew her. And she’s recreated most of Surma’s emotional bonds in the Court and Forest, and she’s wearing the same makeup that began Surma’s and Tony’s conscious flirtation. This is the point where Tony lashes out verbally, for the first and only time in their history.

But he holds it together, and quickly rebuilds a fatherly relationship with Annie...even if it’s kind of formal and distant because he was only really relaxed and open with Surma, and Annie is NOT! Surma. It’s a bit strained when they move in together and Annie tries so hard to act like a daughter-wife--while still wearing that damn makeup!--but it works.

Then Forest Annie appears. Now Tony has two young women in his life again, and he’s still determined to treat them as two separate people who deserve two distinct relationships. He even lets some of “Surma’s Tony” come out around Forest Annie, because she’s less fixated on him and unlikely to take it the wrong way. And it still works; even if Courtnie is still a bit vexed that she can’t get as close to him, both girls seem to be happy.

And then they both disappear and he has one Annie again. Did they die? Did the original Annie die too, and now he’s on Annie #4 with a lost wife and three lost daughters to mourn? What does this Annie need from him, and how long will she last? And if the Phoenix is molting personalities extra-fast these days, is the original Surma going to reappear?

It must be maddening.

And it makes me think that Tony, Surma, James and Jones kind of paired off in the wrong combinations. James is not a deep thinker, and has a fairly relaxed attitude about death, and could cope with the Phoenix’s identity changes without much angst--and if Annie was his daughter, he’d be less attracted to her and wouldn’t need Jones’ reminders to treat her appropriately. Tony would do equally well with Jones, because she's a fellow outsider, doesn’t need to be protected from anything, and is always, only, and unalterably herself.

But Surma followed her heart, and Jones never abandons a partner, so.

[drmemory]

You know, Tony actually tries to be a good father. It doesn't go that well due to his personality issues, but consider:

He returned to the court so they wouldn't throw Annie out for cheating and the forest stuff. Huge life decision!

He agreed to be the one to tell her she had to repeat a year and to confront her about the cheating. While his presentation wasn't good at all, it's the job of the parent to be the bad guy in this sort of situation, is it not?

While he was quite abrupt and even harsh about many of the things he said after his return, he has since changed his mind on almost everything he said then. He gave back Renard when asked. He let her go back into the forest after doing his homework and realizing she had been doing good work in the forest. He even allowed Cannie to wear makeup again, which had to be hard - the makeup obviously reminds him of his dead wife.

He has kept up on her schoolwork. When Annie split/shifted, he kept up with both of their homework plans. I bet they have individual lesson plans! I'm sure he hasn't forgotten that the court requires she honestly keep up on her schoolwork and is following through to make sure she keeps up on it so when school resumes she'll be in a good situation - better than previously - and will be able to rejoin her class.

When the second Annie showed up, he invited her into his house and his life.

With Fannie, I think we've been seeing what he wants to be like with his daughter(s). Warm, friendly, doing things together, etc.

Clearly, the man has issues, but here I think we're seeing that he accepted the second Annie as a second daughter and will miss her. I imagine this is more nuanced - who knows whether he feels like the new Annie is the original or one of the pseudo-sisters? Either way, he clearly feels loss.

I'm glad he's able to open up to Jones. I was hoping that would be the case. Maybe we'll learn more about him now.

[frogspawned]

Apr 19, 2021 9:03:25 GMT V said:

I'll toss in a guess: what we see here is Tony's drowning in blaming himself.

It must be said that he handled the situation quite rationally from the very beginning, one of the first things we saw him do was even taking responsibility for Forest Annie and actively defending her when others wanted to keep her under guard. Rey may have been joking that he had two daughters but I think he never really took it any other way, despite treating them differently. That just underlines how much they were two individuals in his eyes.

And now one is gone. He hasn't seen them much since the merger, has he? I assume he was just spending the whole time overthinking stuff. He must have been aware how his relation to Court Annie was hurting her. By living with her and having her assist the surgery, he even got somewhat closer to her (and nicer, comparing to his assessment of Annie's work earlier), but his sudden amiability towards Forest Annie later dwarfed all these small steps. It's quite possible that the recent events made him realize this and that he believes now it's Forest Annie that stayed and Court Annie is gone for good. That he lost her, specifically, by pushing her away. That maybe, if he was able to force himself behave better, things might have just stayed that way.

Marrying Surma he knew he could never get two children (a luxury, by the way, not enjoyed by any of his friends, either), he's not the kind of man who would forget and move on, and especially not so when Annie is grown up. But suddenly that's where he is and in my eyes, he's quite relishing it, in his own way. And now one is gone... and in his head it's entirely his fault... again.

Good points.

re: multiple children though i'd like to mention that that might not have been a factor in his calculations: he thought he'd be able to help Surma live because there's no logical (non-etheric) reason she should have to die. But like you say, he's quite prone to blaming himself- Even if she didn't fault him for failing, he did.

Donnie's told us that even the smallest things matter to him, and that's no small thing.

Apr 19, 2021 11:50:22 GMT fia said:

This forum is pretty funny guys.


An uncharitable interpretation of the forum:

Annie fuses and the forum freaks out like wait what this can't be normal!!! AAAAA
And when we are shown characters who just kind of accept it it is like WHY ARE THEY NOT CONCERNED
When Jones is concerned the forum is like whew
But then Anthony gets brought up and stuff gets spiky
And now we see Anthony is the one guy who is also concerned about Annie going from 2 to 1 and the forum is like HOW DARE HE

anyway this is the uncharitable take; I know the activity is not due to the same persons throughout, just a kind of collective phenomenon. It's fun to observe though anyway.



Here's my take:
From the beginning when Annie split I was super distressed because on no view of personal identity is it possible for one person to become two people and that first person to still exist as the first person.
After a while I got used to it and accepted that now we had two people.
When Annie re-fused I was concerned that Annie post-fusion may be quite different metaphysically from Annie pre-fusion; it is also the case on many accounts of personal identity that if two people fuse into one person, the later person is not the same as either of the earlier ones.

So we have not one but two discontinuities. However! This is Comic Book Logic, and in comic book logic it might be possible that the Annie of today is the "same person" as the Annie before fusion, and her being two people was just kind of an anomaly.

But Tony strikes me as a Parfettian. (More on Parfit here on the IEP). Fission is less of a problem because one person can "survive" as two people, even if the two people are non-identical to the original. Parfit can even be quite jovial about the possibility of fission. What's so bad about there being one more person who is continuous with you? It's like you've survived + 1 ! Going from 1 to 2 is a bonus, it's not like death or dying at all.
But fusion is a different matter; if two people fuse into one, the one may be continuous with the two, but there is one fewer person than before. Going from 2 to 1 is a -1 operation. It's just as if someone had died - when you go from 1 to 0 people who exist.

For present Annie, she may not be experiencing a problem; she is not the one who is "dead". But to Tony, who had formed a relationship with each of the Annies, and now has a relationship with one other Annie who is not quite either of the other two, it must feel like a loss. And he must be able to recognize it's largely in his head because his daughter doesn't feel like it's a big deal, so he's probably processing it privately as usual. Poor dude.

I think this is expressed very well. I had always assumed that because continuity was preserved with Cannie he was more awkward around her: the perceived guilt of killing her mother still lingered but Fannie - whether conjured from thin air with Cannie's memories or brought over from another timeline or whatever - did not have a mother he was responsible for killing, because he only killed "one" Surma.

[ffkonoko]

Apr 19, 2021 7:06:26 GMT shinkaii said:

That's a harsh thing to say. Lost a daughter? So he didn't feel like court Annie was his daughter?

That feels like an incredibly awkward stretch to be negative to Tony.
I'm seconding what others have said, that he obviously felt like they were BOTH his daughter, he felt like he had two individual daughters and now he has only one again. I'm sure this will only be further clarified on the next page.
And yes, I'd put this strongly into the zone of "even though he acted differently around them, he did indeed still care strongly about both of them". Much in the same way as he cared strongly about Brinnie, but acted differently around her than he did when he was alone with Surma.
Convenient that the comic provided that to contrast and compare with.

[pyradonis]

Apr 19, 2021 12:54:38 GMT Nnelg said:

...I actually felt like we'd lost an Annie, too; only I didn't speak up because everyone seemed exclusively positive here.

Actually I'm sure I wasn't the only one insisting that a forced fusion did kill one or even two persons. But maybe that part of the discussion was drowned out among the general confusion over the thing happening so unexpectedly.

Apr 19, 2021 14:57:19 GMT silicondream said:

 As for Coyote, I’m not sure he even recognizes Surma and Annie as different people. As far as he’s concerned, Fire Head Girl went away for a while and came back shorter and with different hair.

What makes you think that? Coyote mistook Annie for Surma when they first met, but apart from that I cannot recall any hint that Coyote sees them as the same person.

[lisanela]

Oh I love that Tony feels he lost a daughter - it kinda reminds of the ethical questions brought by a great Star Trek Voyager episode named "Tuvix": two members of the crew (Tuvok and Neelix) are merged after an accident and become another, new being (Tuvix). The crew mourns for the crew members while getting used to Tuvix (who's cheerful and competent). When they're finally able to separate Tuvix, he cries out that it would be execution: in the end, they have to make a choice between who lives and dies, acknowledging that Tuvix is a unique being.

Of course Tony doesn't have a choice here but it's nice and makes sense narratively that he saw them both as different unique people and not a problem to fix. Even though Annie is happy now as a reader her sudden merging was pretty shocking and I wanted them to stay separate and support each other as basically sisters. I really hope this means he can still talk to her, though maybe not as freely as he was able to with Forest Annie. 

[antiyonder]

Does make me wonder. Has Tom ever mentioned any of his favorite pieces of entertainment? You know Star Trek and say 1990s Spider-Man?

Heck TNG even had Riker revealed to have spilt into two in his past in a way that meant both were real.

[Bandolute]

Yeah, well. Depending on how Anthony's been treating fused Annie, she probably feels like she lost a dad. A few months of getting along out of a whole life's worth of distance -- going back to how things were must be tough! But maybe we'll be able to get to the core of his weird issues with Annie in this discussion with Jones.

Also, this is only partly relevant, but it's been percolating in my head: feels crummy that Court Annie standing up to her dad about the make up issue (off panel during the 6 month time skip) has been recently reframed as a childish action since putting the makeup away for good is apparently a mark of maturity and personal growth. I remember being proud of her for that, but the story's moral framework seems to be saying it was a bad move on her part, possibly damaging her relationship with her dad further, just to cling to her mother's memory in an unhealthy way.

All of this Tony stuff is terribly uncomfortable to me. I never quite understand its trajectory, but I have this uneasy feeling that somehow it's going to be framed as Annie's fault that he's like this. Or not his responsibility, somehow.

[flowsthead]

Apr 19, 2021 13:22:57 GMT phantaskippy said:

For Tony, that would give him a daughter he could more easily relate to in court Annie, and one that he couldn't, forest Annie, who also happened to be incredibly like his dead wife.

I've always assumed it was the opposite, that he associated Surma with Court Annie more. It's hard to be as open with his daughter because he sees so much of Surma in her. Surma wore makeup even in the Forest ( www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=791 ) so I would think the one with make up reminds him more closely with is dead wife. Hence also making her remove her makeup when he comes back. It would then be easier to relate to Forest Annie since she's like a different person then, and he won't have as much baggage with her.

[flowsthead]

Apr 19, 2021 17:30:31 GMT Bandolute said:

Also, this is only partly relevant, but it's been percolating in my head: feels crummy that Court Annie standing up to her dad about the make up issue (off panel during the 6 month time skip) has been recently reframed as a childish action since putting the makeup away for good is apparently a mark of maturity and personal growth. I remember being proud of her for that, but the story's moral framework seems to be saying it was a bad move on her part, possibly damaging her relationship with her dad further, just to cling to her mother's memory in an unhealthy way.

Are you talking about this panel? www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2439
I didn't take that as reframing it as childish but as a reflection of which of the two personalities is more dominant.

[foxurus]

Apr 19, 2021 17:30:31 GMT Bandolute said:

Also, this is only partly relevant, but it's been percolating in my head: feels crummy that Court Annie standing up to her dad about the make up issue (off panel during the 6 month time skip) has been recently reframed as a childish action since putting the makeup away for good is apparently a mark of maturity and personal growth. I remember being proud of her for that, but the story's moral framework seems to be saying it was a bad move on her part, possibly damaging her relationship with her dad further, just to cling to her mother's memory in an unhealthy way.

I don't think the two things are really related to each other, actually. Anthony said, "You will not wear makeup because I said so and it reminds me of your mother." Court!Annie said, "I will wear my makeup because it makes me feel closer to my mother and your inability to separate it from your grief isn't my responsibility." And Fused!Annie said, "I will not wear makeup because I want to move on from my grief and there's less obtrusive ways to feel close to my mother." (Thinking about her mom every morning as she puts it on is a lot, and likely sets the tone for the rest of her day.)

Anthony's complaints weren't about how Annie was remembering her mother. They were about him and how it affected his grief. Court!Annie standing up to him was brave and mature because it showed that she was pushing back against letting her father's grief control her. And Fused!Annie putting the makeup away is brave and mature because she's pushing back against letting her guilt about her mother's death control her. Both events show her moving away from her parents' negative influences so that she can be a healthier and more independent person.

(Even if I wish she felt differently about the makeup because I miss it aesthetically.)

Apr 19, 2021 7:39:53 GMT arf said:

(I notice he can interact with Jones.)

Well of course. He's quite capable of talking to one person at a time, and Jones isn't even a person at all!

[Polyhymnia]

Apr 19, 2021 17:59:54 GMT flowsthead said:

Apr 19, 2021 17:30:31 GMT Bandolute said:

Also, this is only partly relevant, but it's been percolating in my head: feels crummy that Court Annie standing up to her dad about the make up issue (off panel during the 6 month time skip) has been recently reframed as a childish action since putting the makeup away for good is apparently a mark of maturity and personal growth. I remember being proud of her for that, but the story's moral framework seems to be saying it was a bad move on her part, possibly damaging her relationship with her dad further, just to cling to her mother's memory in an unhealthy way.

Are you talking about this panel? www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2439
I didn't take that as reframing it as childish but as a reflection of which of the two personalities is more dominant.

The words on the the top (gone but never forgotten) made me see it not so much as childish—> maturity but as moving forward from a certain expression of grief. She seems to have made peace with her mother’s death and moved on from defining her life by it. She doesn’t need the makeup as a reminder, and it doesn’t mean that she’s disrespecting or forgetting her mother to move on, whereas she used to feel guilty about wearing/not wearing it and seemed to see it like a duty:
Ambivalence toward the makeup after detaching from the unnatural Surma probe: www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1053
Conflicted feelings about the symbols of memory/grief (see the last two panels of the first one, specifically how Annie attacks herself and the logic she gives for why the makeup and necklace are important).
www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2119
www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2120

I actually agree that getting the makeup back was a sign of growth and standing up for herself and asserting what’s important to her. I just think that choosing to stop wearing it for her own reasons reflects her growth from that moment when she got it back. As I see it, she went from wearing it and being forced to stop, then realizing it was important to her so she needed to stand up for her right to use it, then confronting herself in a way she’s never had to before, eventually coming to terms with her own grief. As a result, she better understood why she wore the makeup and realized it no longer held the importance it used to for her, and that it was okay for her to let go. She’s secure in her own memory and healing and can let go of the past.

I think it’s significant that she keeps wearing the necklace that references her own name, given *to her* by Surma for her very own, and stopped wearing the makeup that she wore in memory of and imitation of Surma. At the beginning, everyone mistook her for her mother. I think it then served as a way to keep the memory alive. Now, she doesn’t feel like she has to any more. I think both are healthy expressions of grief and healing.

The makeup page reminded me of the empty page after Mort died:
www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1353
And the “Dulce Decorum Est.” inscribed on the wall, or “it is sweet and fitting,” reminds me that a theme of the comic is the struggle between memory, grief, and moving on, for the past inevitably affects the present (Jeanne, Ysengrin, even things like Alistair and the fairies). It is sweet and fitting to move on (to or from death). Grief is good, and yet so is moving on after we have sat with it.

(The phrase in fullness saying “ Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” or “it is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland,” (thanks Wikipedia), fitting in a sort of tragic, ironic way, given the nature of Mort’s death)

Also, on a different note, though the comparison is imperfect, I think Tony in some small way is feeling like Annie did after Coyote and Ysengrin combined, where she liked/loved them both in her own way but now has no idea how to deal with the new entity formed from them. (Not that I’m saying Annie is Loup—she’s awesome and seems way less unstable and prone to *intentional* mass destruction). He’ll have to figure out this new person that’s both of them but also new.

[Polyhymnia]

Oh man, now I’m thinking about the separation of Annie a lot more! The first literal separation happened with the blinker stone, but an argument could be made about the Surma-probe when she was in the hospital.

Annie's living life
Tony comes back, shaking her whole paradigm
Traumatic attachment (to her mother)
Confrontation with the aspect of herself she doesn't want to think about (homework shame, possible crushes, grief over Surma) as Zimmy pokes through her psyche
Separation from Surma
End with makeup

Annie's living life
Tony literally comes back, shaking her whole paradigm
Forcible separation of herself from her emotions via blinkerstone to deal with everything
Ysengrin forces her to recombine (forcing her to process her emotions and situation)
Assertion of will (getting Reynard back)

Annie's living life
Things are going well with Tony and then Coyote does to Ysengrin what Ysengrin did to Annie (forced recombination, though his is his memories with an additional gift of strength)
Annie tries to fix the problem and ends up split. One Annie asserts her will and starts wearing makeup again.

Annies are living life and Not Dealing with each other.
Friends force them to confront each other.
Annies have to deal with their emotions (both uncomfortable ones like grief and embarrassing ones like crushes)
Annies have super strong power. They start working together and standing up for themselves.
They confront Surma in Zimmingham: they quarrel, but it's not natural since they've moved past it. This is actually Zimmy. (https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2424) and through teamwork, get through it.

I guess I just hadn't realized how often Annie's detachment/plurality has come up as she's dealt with her parents. There are a number of confrontations that escalate to the point where she literally has to face herself, not her ether-emotions or Zimmy prodding at her emotions. Sprinkled throughout it are steps she takes to assert herself and confront others once she's addressed the disconnect within.

[DonDueed]

It occurs to me that this scene is taking place mere minutes after Annie and Kat left the house (or at least I presume that's where they'd just been), and Annie was in no mood to stick around.

Was that the first time Annie had been with her father since the recombination?

If so, it seems things didn't go too well.  Maybe this means that Tony was unable to relate to her, as had been the case with pre-split Annie and with Courtnie.  This could be very bad news indeed for both Carvers, and would explain Tony's comment about losing a daughter -- he really did lose the only daughter he could relate to.

[machiavelli33]

Apr 19, 2021 14:57:19 GMT silicondream said:

It seems to me that this is the central tragedy of Tony’s life. (etc etc etc)

Yo, good take.

[warrl]

Apr 19, 2021 8:37:42 GMT bicarbonat said:

Apr 19, 2021 8:05:15 GMT machiavelli33 said:

*A* daughter.  As opposed to THE daughter, or perhaps his daughterS.  

100% agreed. I'm surprised that so many people are taking this dark/heartless interpretation. For all of his faults and difficulties, one thing the remains true is his love for his family. Doesn't show itself like the Donlans, but it's there. And he is likely abnormally triggered by loss because inability to reach out or intervene is his deepest wound.

I can maybe cast a bit of perspective on this. I've known five couples who lost a child who was past age 2. For some it was an only child, but for one it was their second child and for another it was the second of five - which tells you they'd been together a while. (And he died of a bad reaction to a medication, with no instances of the same sort of reaction to that medication existing in the medical literature, so there certainly was no basis for either of them to blame the other for the death.)

Not one of those couples was still a couple two years after the death.

It's THAT emotionally disruptive.

[Sky Schemer]

Apr 19, 2021 7:06:26 GMT shinkaii said:

That's a harsh thing to say. Lost a daughter? So he didn't feel like court Annie was his daughter?

Not necessarily. Maybe he just doesn't know where she went and has a penchant for word games.

[Gemminie]

It's easy to forget, but to us Forest Annie seemed more "real," because we followed her continuity, and when she returned to the Court, the sudden appearance of Court Annie took her completely by surprise.

But to almost every other character in the story, including Tony, Court Annie seemed more "real," because they followed her continuity, and when Forest Annie emerged and returned, that took them completely by surprise. One of them had been away for several hours (though it felt like minutes to Court Annie), while the other had been away for months (though, again, it felt like minutes, but she went deeper into a time-slowed Forest that was time-stopped all the way in).

Renard was an exception, because he could easily tell by ethereal means that they were both real, and he knew that this wasn't beyond Coyote's power (and therefore Loup's power).

When Forest Annie returned, Tony went by the cold hard evidence – there was nothing to indicate that Forest Annie wasn't real. But that's his intellect talking. His feelings (and he does have them, although usually they're switched off/distant/inaccessible) are another matter. Still, he seems to have emotionally accepted Forest Annie; she just may have felt "discontinuous" with the Annie from before. That might be why he treated them differently? We saw that Forest Annie was able to let go of Surma but unsure how to remember her, while Court Annie was able to remember her but wasn't sure how to let go of her. It seems that Recombined Annie can both remember her and let go.

Not that I'm really going anywhere with this. Tony says he feels like he's lost a daughter because he was treating each of the two Annies as his daughters (though in different ways, when they were alone), and now there's only one again. 2 - 1 = 1.

[blazingstar]

I haven't been able to read the page all day, and now that I finally have...seeing it makes me want to cry.

I expected Tony to be more open, maybe more vulnerable and talkative, there was a good chance the "I can only be myself when I'm around one person" rule might apply to Jones, so maybe...but I didn't expect all this.

In typical Gunnerkrigg Emotional Whiplash fashion, The Broken Man resurfaces again, and I can't handle the feels. 

[jocobo]

For once.....I have nothing bad to say about Tony.

This is a fair and real reaction and I thought it was disturbing how no one else (in comic) seemed to view the fusion as a kind of death. Someone with independent thought and agency was just....gone. And no one seemed particularly bothered.

I'm actually still kind of hoping it can be undone but...we will see.

[maxptc]

You know, Tony doesn't really seem to hold back when asked about how he is doing in a one on one setting. We might be getting some major Tony backstory, which would be really nice since he is still rather mysterious. Between the way loss hits him and his general detached persona I'm really getting worried about what happened to his parents.

[pyradonis]

Apr 19, 2021 17:23:22 GMT lisanela said:

Oh I love that Tony feels he lost a daughter - it kinda reminds of the ethical questions brought by a great Star Trek Voyager episode named "Tuvix": two members of the crew (Tuvok and Neelix) are merged after an accident and become another, new being (Tuvix). The crew mourns for the crew members while getting used to Tuvix (who's cheerful and competent). When they're finally able to separate Tuvix, he cries out that it would be execution: in the end, they have to make a choice between who lives and dies, acknowledging that Tuvix is a unique being.

Of course Tony doesn't have a choice here but it's nice and makes sense narratively that he saw them both as different unique people and not a problem to fix. Even though Annie is happy now as a reader her sudden merging was pretty shocking and I wanted them to stay separate and support each other as basically sisters. I really hope this means he can still talk to her, though maybe not as freely as he was able to with Forest Annie. 

Oh yes, that episode was already referred to once or twice in the forums during this arc. I haven't seen it (yet), but from what I've heard it sounds similar. A living being with its own personality was killed to bring two others back. In GKC, it appears that two living beings with distinct personalities were killed to bring one back, and we don't know yet if the one we have now actually is the one from before or an entirely new being... Although some would argue what Captain Janeway did was infinite times worse because it brought Neelix back.

SPOILER: Click to show

Of course, saving the lives of main characters has always had the higher priority in Star Trek. Everytime consoles on the USS Defiant's bridge explode felling redshirts left and right, Dr. Bashir does not bat an eye, but the second a main character is downed we see him rushing to their side with a medkit frantically trying to save their life.

[quinnr]

I feel like the narrative structure in this chapter is very similar to the Living Stone chapter--the chapters following Jones seem a bit more disjointed in a way, more of a series of vignettes with the cast and locations quickly rotating around Jones--as opposed to the typical narrative following a certain set of characters through some event. The level of nuance in this comic is just so crazy sometimes!

[Gemminie]

Apr 20, 2021 4:45:16 GMT jocobo said:

For once.....I have nothing bad to say about Tony.

This is a fair and real reaction and I thought it was disturbing how no one else (in comic) seemed to view the fusion as a kind of death. Someone with independent thought and agency was just....gone. And no one seemed particularly bothered.

I'm actually still kind of hoping it can be undone but...we will see.

And the problem is that we still don't know exactly what was done – either by Zimmy (or by Annie with Zimmy's help) last chapter, or by Loup in chapter 68/69. But then, it's kind of parallel to the end of chapter 51, where we spent all of chapter 52 not knowing what Annie had done to herself, and in chapter 53 it was finally shown, and in chapter 54 it was undone (sort of, but it had its aftermath, and I question whether Annie ever truly recovered; it may have made it easier for Loup to split her, for example). I expect the same general pattern will unfold – we'll spend a while not knowing what's happened until suddenly it'll be shown, and it'll have side effects that'll become more and more serious, and then it'll be undone ... in some way that'll have its aftermath. This is a very vague prediction, of course, but it's all happened before. One could argue that something similar happened before chapter 1, when Annie battened down the hatches on her emotions after her mother's death, though not necessarily in a supernatural/etheric way, and in chapter 6 they broke loose, but fortunately she'd found a friend to be there for her when it happened. Or the fact that she'd found a friend allowed her to let them loose.

Anyway. There's a lot of suspense right now, not knowing, but that's one of this comic's characteristics, and I enjoy it. "The suspense is terrible. I hope it'll last." (Oscar Wilde, or Willy Wonka, take your pick.) I'm sure something's happening that's more complicated than it seems on the surface, and I'm sure we'll eventually find out what.

None of the characters have been sure about the two Annies since Forest Annie appeared, and now that there seems to only be one Annie nobody's sure either. They're probably all waiting for the other shoe to drop, just as we are. With Annie there's always something stranger waiting just around the corner. They've probably learned that it's not worth worrying about. Why isn't Kat worried that one copy of her best friend has apparently vanished? Well, either Annie's already explained it to her in some satisfying way, or she hasn't. If she hasn't, would it seem likely that Kat would leave it alone? Not to me. I think Annie would want to be fair to Kat and would explain it. And in fact she might have explained it to others as well. But it's hard to say. Evidently, though, one person not satisfied with the explanation she's given him is her father. But it may be that he's gone back to being emotionally wooden around her, so she can't tell whether her explanation is enough information for him, and so she hasn't given him enough data.

"Father, the two of me have come to an understanding, and now there is only one of me," she may have said.

"I see," Tony may have said.

"It's ... a bit difficult to explain."

"Many things are."

"So ... you understand?"

"To an extent."

"Good, I'm glad we had this talk."

[drmemory]

I think the Kat part is easy - whatever it is that has happened, she told her best friend immediately.

I'm more worried about why Jones is investigating Annie's mental state. That really seemed to come out of nowhere, and we've never seen Jones do anything like that before. Also, you can be sure that Jones will get the nuance in what Annie said.