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Post by todd on Apr 23, 2021 0:01:01 GMT
Perhaps there's some compulsion to have a child, to ensure the continuation of the line (maybe prodded by the "fire elemental" essence within)?
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Post by flowsthead on Apr 23, 2021 0:12:20 GMT
I have no idea what 2 is referring to. The fire elemental aspect still exists. That's 1 down and 1 to go (potentially) for someone they live. Easy for Annie to avoid, sure, but the same could've been said for Surma. I still have no clue what you're talking about. A little more detail would help. Are you suggesting that it would be emotionally better for the fire elemental to cease existing? It's part of Annie. I imagine if it were to cease existing, then so would she. |
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Post by drmemory on Apr 23, 2021 2:15:06 GMT
A couple of brief comments: I don't think we have any information on the "normal" lifespan of a fire elemental, if there is such a thing. Much less a... hybrid? Not sure of the best way to say that. Perhaps becoming a psychopomp will be Annie's route to immortality? If she doesn't just become a goddess in her own right, of course. Obviously there is more to be learned about Tony. I'm going to resist commenting on this latest page because I feel like it's maybe page 2 of 6 or so? Perhaps more.  He's a deep guy! I'm still not convinced we're seeing a true, finalized merger of the Annies. Zimmy didn't say she was going to fix Annie's problem for her, she said "I know something that will help Carver understand herself a little better". I'm inclined to take her at her word. |
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Post by pyradonis on Apr 23, 2021 10:40:54 GMT
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V
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I just think it's a pity that she never wore these again.
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Post by V on Apr 23, 2021 10:46:44 GMT
I'd like to but your a has href="". |
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Post by pyradonis on Apr 23, 2021 10:56:21 GMT
I'd like to but your a has href="". Sorry! Link fixed. |
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Post by beaukm on Apr 23, 2021 13:43:19 GMT
I'd like to but your a has href="". Sorry! Link fixed. I came back to comment just this!— that the importance of Tony saying it felt like he saw an imposter w/ Surma’s face is heightened by the Annies having seen just that with the Zimmy illusion. |
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Post by saardvark on Apr 23, 2021 13:55:37 GMT
here's a weird thought: what if you gopped the current rejoined Annie... would she separate into Fannie and Courtney again? (i.e., Zimmy somehow merged the two together using Zimmingham majicks, but if someone really believed fused Annie were "unreal", they could GOP her into back into F!Annie and C!Annie) |
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Post by silicondream on Apr 23, 2021 16:18:43 GMT
As for Eglamore, the interaction is actually a singular one—and on retrospect I don't actually think there were any more—: Eglamore reflexively fixes Annie's tie, in one page. There were one or two other scenes. Jones first warned Eglamore to watch his step with Annie three chapters earlier, and of course there was “SURMA!” back in Chapter 7. I think the tie-fixing is when it finally clicked with him that he should change his behavior. He's the one who thought the forest made a Surma clone to get at him, and obviously Annie's underage, so his perceived wife clone was underaged, therefore it's weird to have immediately assumed "wife" on his part, and that was what I was getting at. Why would that be weird? Tony’s known Surma since they were both underage, and the GodDogs don’t care about that stuff. Coyote was like “Oh hey, Surma, lemme sniff ya” when he first met tween Annie. The Joker’s the weird one. Don’t blame Bat-Dad for trying to be prepared. ...maybe it should? If the murderous mom-stalker who pressured Annie and Kat to kiss doesn’t seem skeevy, the box might need retuning. Annie has exactly two non-skeevy older males in her life: Tony and Don. Everyone else flirts with her, attacks her, or both. And no, Eglamore wasn’t deliberately skeevy; he’s a teacher with some conflicting feelings, not a child predator. He just needed a couple of reminders that students can pick up on these things. Wait, what? How would Tony have known that Surma already handed Annie over to the psychopomps? And even if he did, why would he make his newly-bereft young daughter talk to them again? Annie hated the psychopomps at this point, and with good reason. Tony felt obliged to seek them out, but there was no need to get Annie involved. Especially in some wildly dangerous and traumatic quest to resurrect the dead. At first, he fully intends to die. (And is probably going to die, whether he likes it or not.) Later, the Court wakes him up from his coma and he promptly sells himself back to them for Annie’s sake. If there was any time in the middle where Tony was considering life as a deadbeat dad, it was extremely brief. For all anyone knows, Surma still would've died in her mid to late 30s even if she hadn't had Annie. Or maybe she would've lived longer. No one in their family line has chosen not to have a child. We know that because Annie exists. True, but that doesn’t mean other elemental hybrids didn’t make that choice. Maybe the first-generation phoenix had sisters, but their lines died out. Or maybe this has happened with separate lineages of water-people or air-people or whatever. Coyote certainly seemed to find the situation familiar. Plus, Surma’s ancestresses may have had children at very different ages. If one of them conceived at 17 and another conceived at 40 and they both died right as the child hit puberty, it would be easy to see that motherhood was the trigger. Or maybe etheric beings like Coyote and Renard can literally see the fire being drained into the child, and they know there’s nothing left of the mother’s soul at the end, so it’s just obvious to them. All wildspec, but since the GodDogs and the humans both seem so certain about it, I imagine they have some evidence. Indeed. For instance, if the phoenixes do die at an early age no matter what, could Annie’s physical and psychological instabilities be a symptom? Maybe she has to spawn a permanent daughter-self, or else she’ll gradually dissolve into a chaos of ephemeral personalities. There might be 2 n Annies coming back from the forest after all! |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Apr 23, 2021 16:53:44 GMT
As for Eglamore, the interaction is actually a singular one—and on retrospect I don't actually think there were any more—: Eglamore reflexively fixes Annie's tie, in one page. There were one or two other scenes. Jones first warned Eglamore to watch his step with Annie three chapters earlier, and of course there was “SURMA!” back in Chapter 7. I think the tie-fixing is when it finally clicked with him that he should change his behavior. Your link got proboarded. Here it is again (hopefully) #380 (wherein James is warned to watch his step) Also the comic where he tries to replace Antimony's tie with a clip-on without thinking of her consent is here: #476 |
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Post by bicarbonat on Apr 23, 2021 21:11:11 GMT
The fire elemental aspect still exists. That's 1 down and 1 to go (potentially) for someone they live. Easy for Annie to avoid, sure, but the same could've been said for Surma. I still have no clue what you're talking about. A little more detail would help. Are you suggesting that it would be emotionally better for the fire elemental to cease existing? It's part of Annie. I imagine if it were to cease existing, then so would she. No, I'm not. That extreme scenario is literally part of my point. The fire elemental isn't evil, it's just a part of etheric nature. But it is a threat to all three of these individuals because its removal or propagation spells the death of yet another loved one. None of them has begun to come to terms with that, regardless of their other emotional progress re: Annie. There's literally nothing that they can do in the face of this terrifying & frustrating fact, despite their tremendous skill sets. Hence: trauma, therapy. |
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Post by silicondream on Apr 24, 2021 5:53:29 GMT
There were one or two other scenes. Jones first warned Eglamore to watch his step with Annie three chapters earlier, and of course there was “SURMA!” back in Chapter 7. I think the tie-fixing is when it finally clicked with him that he should change his behavior. Your link got proboarded. Here it is again (hopefully) #380 (wherein James is warned to watch his step) Also the comic where he tries to replace Antimony's tie with a clip-on without thinking of her consent is here: #476Thank you, sir, |
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etera
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Post by etera on Apr 24, 2021 15:16:48 GMT
I mean, I feel like if anyone was pushing for a kid in that relationship it was probably Surma. Based on when the bug landed on her clipboard, and had hundreds of eggs, and to her it was the most magical thing in the world. A wealth of precious babies.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Apr 24, 2021 16:56:03 GMT
While you can never really judge what people are thinking inside, I have trouble imagining Anthony as someone who's life goals featured raising a child. It is possible. Maybe he recognized some lack in his life that he wanted to fill, or wanted to have a kid as an opportunity to do things better than his parents did, or maybe he wanted to become a substitute for a parent he lost one way or other and in doing so find solace.
If anything Anthony reminds me of a friend-of-friend from college who married because he didn't want to be single; they (as far as I know) only had one kid and for the first few years whenever raising the kid became inconvenient he tended to refer to the child as "her project" as a way to defer responsibility. I am happy to say that after those first few years he got much much better. He did have friends who helped him take an interest in the kid through engaging with them both, which makes me suspect that if Surma and Anthony had stayed in the Court (or near enough) then the Donlans would have helped both of them.
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Post by speedwell on Apr 24, 2021 18:16:16 GMT
While you can never really judge what people are thinking inside, I have trouble imagining Anthony as someone who's life goals featured raising a child. It is possible. Maybe he recognized some lack in his life that he wanted to fill, or wanted to have a kid as an opportunity to do things better than his parents did, or maybe he wanted to become a substitute for a parent he lost one way or other and in doing so find solace. If anything Anthony reminds me of a friend-of-friend from college who married because he didn't want to be single; they (as far as I know) only had one kid and for the first few years whenever raising the kid became inconvenient he tended to refer to the child as "her project" as a way to defer responsibility. I am happy to say that after those first few years he got much much better. He did have friends who helped him take an interest in the kid through engaging with them both, which makes me suspect that if Surma and Anthony had stayed in the Court (or near enough) then the Donlans would have helped both of them. It was never not going to happen. I can easily imagine Tony as a work colleague opening up to me after a few drinks in the hotel lounge on a business trip. People generally find me all too easy to open up to, as a rule (I have no idea why this is so or why I invariably project "nice", heh). I imagine Anthony saying something like this: She needed a baby. I tried to talk her out of it because of her health thing, but she said, "You have to trust me; I'm sick and tired of being reminded of my mom, and it may never happen, anyway". It's like the need for a baby was burning her up inside. We had fights about it. She started to say I didn't have it in me to be a proper father anyway if I couldn't bring myself to empathise with her. When I told her I also doubted my fitness as a potential father, that just sealed it for her; she just had to prove me wrong. What finally broke me was when she said that if we couldn't be a proper family, even for just a few years, then she was going to find someone who was willing to have a family with her. I knew who she meant, and I knew what a disaster that would have been. I love my daughter, but... [drinks] |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Apr 24, 2021 20:17:12 GMT
Though it's long-standing forum speculation that Surma (and the other women who carried the fire) face a compulsion to have a child and pass it on that's never been in the comic or answered on formspring. It's been formsprung that Surma could have lived to an old age if she didn't have a child so at least waiting longer was apparently a possibility. In fact, Renard said " if Surma ever had a child." So... Why did she have a child when she did? Maybe it was an urge of the mundane biological sort. It may have just been that Surma was satisfied and believed that she'd had enough life, if that makes any sense; it's been formsprung that she was in her mid- to late-thirties (and had been married a couple of years or so) when she died, so she had Antimony in her late 20s, so she may have felt that her life was stable and it was time; she was getting older and wanted to have a child while she was still young enough to keep up. I think that's reasonable, but it's still speculation. It's also been speculated on the forum that Anthony may have thought that he could prevent her death and that may have been a factor in why/when they had a child as well as why Surma married Anthony, though much of that speculation preceded Ch. 64. Jones once said that he had little patience for things that didn't "fall into a scientific category." It was formsprung that Anthony never had much interest in things etheric and didn't believe in them until he couldn't deny them anymore. From those two tidbits it's been speculated maybe he didn't take the whole die-when-passing-on-fire thing seriously. He had been trying to cure Surma before she died though we don't know exactly what that entailed and questions about him transferring the fire back were never answered. |
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Post by silicondream on Apr 24, 2021 22:17:16 GMT
I see that one wanted to destroy her, the other wanted to watch her for a while first, and then they went to war over that. All allotropes of Antimony are mutually corrosive, but some pairs can coexist longer than others? I came back to comment just this!— that the importance of Tony saying it felt like he saw an imposter w/ Surma’s face is heightened by the Annies having seen just that with the Zimmy illusion. It’s also worth remembering--and maybe only I need the reminder--that Tony has literally encountered an impostor with Surma’s face before. He raised a phantom Surma himself, who then turned out to be attached to Annie’s soul and draining the life out of her. For all anyone knows, she was never completely laid to rest. Maybe she’s still possessing Annie, or trying to, just as Annie displaced her mother originally. Tony has to keep guarding Annie from Surma, or from the Psychopomps’ mirage of Surma, or from his/Annie’s memories of Surma, or from…. There’s a reason (ok, probably several) that Tony’s mind cage looks like a Necker cube; ambiguity is his nemesis. The Phoenix is an impossible object, and each of its interpretations conflicts with the others. Of course Tony goes momentarily emotionally cross-eyed whenever he sees Annie in a new light--he has to make a snap figure-ground judgment over which bits are his family and which bits are trying to kill and replace his family. And the correct answer is usually “all of the above.” I mean, I feel like if anyone was pushing for a kid in that relationship it was probably Surma. Based on when the bug landed on her clipboard, and had hundreds of eggs, and to her it was the most magical thing in the world. A wealth of precious babies. Even through they probably weren’t actually babies but parasites. Still, Surma’s own life cycle was designed by Junji Ito so she may not have seen a difference! Hurray for positive outlooks. |
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Post by speedwell on Apr 24, 2021 22:37:43 GMT
If it was a real-life couple, Tony would have been someone whose mental state led him to be overprotective in a toxic, desperate way, and Surma would have been the kind of woman who refused to let anyone tell her what to do, at the risk of being tragically wrong. Tony would have withdrawn from Surma sexually as much as possible so he didn't cause her harm (failing occasionally, and beating himself up for days until Surma's next period), and Surma would have gone slightly crazy thinking that her desirability was over. Tony would be a workaholic in an attempt to feel relevant in an environment where he felt safe, and Surma would start thinking about cheating, in a vague attempt to feel desirable again while striking at Tony for his emotional withdrawal. Each of them would feel like the only person interested in saving the marriage, imagining the other to be dangerously indifferent and blind.
Ok, sorry to drag you through the bad marriage swamp, folks. But now I bet "have a baby even if you know you're bringing a terminal illness on yourself" doesn't sound so crazy anymore.
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Post by Gemminie on Apr 25, 2021 0:51:20 GMT
True, but that doesn’t mean other elemental hybrids didn’t make that choice. Maybe the first-generation phoenix had sisters, but their lines died out. Or maybe this has happened with separate lineages of water-people or air-people or whatever. Coyote certainly seemed to find the situation familiar. Maybe, but there's no evidence of that. The way it's portrayed, elemental-human unions are extremely rare. And it seemed to me as if Coyote was guessing. "Your ancestors were some manner of fire elemental, I suspect," Coyote said. He suspects? If he knew anything with certainty, would he say "I suspect?" He's theorizing, just as we are, only he can see the Ether and we can't, but he still can't see into the past or future. It doesn't sound to me as if he's directly seen anything like Surma/Annie/etc. before, and he may only know anything because he observed Surma for several years. And he may have seen fire elementals; it seems there are some of them around somewhere. But I submit that Coyote was making an educated guess. OK, sure, but do we know this happened, or that it didn't? If any of the family ever knew this information, it seems to have been lost. Whatever Surma knew, she didn't pass it down to Annie. We don't know if she passed it to Tony, and if she did, there's no evidence of that. So this knowledge may not have been passed down to Surma either. This sort of one-sided family tree is highly susceptible to breaks in continuity of knowledge from one generation to the next. Not only are there no siblings/uncles/aunts/cousins on the mother's side, the prolonged death of the mother is probably very taxing to the father, and I'm betting not all the husbands stuck around to watch their wives slowly die – and there's nothing preventing the father's death from some other cause during that time. Perhaps at other times there were large numbers of paternal uncles/aunts/cousins around to support the dying mother and her child, but it certainly wasn't that way for Annie, and I'm guessing it wasn't like that for Surma either, because where's her family? No, I think there's no such information to be had. As far as we know, they've seen Surma and Annie, and that's it. There's no evidence that Coyote, Renard, or Ysengrin has seen any others. Also, there's no evidence that Coyote or Renard saw Surma while she was pregnant. She seems to have left the Court before getting married, and we have Word of Tom that she didn't get pregnant until after she and Tony were married. However, Coyote, Renard, and Ysengrin all had ample opportunity to observe Surma and Annie at other times, and Coyote played on how similar Surma and Annie appeared in the Ether. Well, Annie's still something around 16, or so, so I doubt the ticking bio-ethereal clock is an issue yet. We don't know what happens if she doesn't have a child, because of course that's never happened. |
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Post by warrl on Apr 25, 2021 3:57:37 GMT
Coyote has been in Britain and just across a canyon from the Court for a very long time - since before Jeanne died.
He expressed certainly that Surma having a child was what caused her death, and that the same will happen when (and if) Annie has a child.
But he only suspects that one of Annie's ancestors was a fire elemental. Explicitly not certain.
The certainty, therefore, cannot come from familiarity with human/elemental hybrids. It can only come from watching some of Antimony's ancestral line that went through that process within range such that he could observe. Surma was apparently not within that range. I would expect it to take at least three generations to be confident that the constant cross-breeding with pure humans would not quickly dilute the effect.
It is not the least bit implausible that Surma, her mother, and her grandmother were all born at the court.
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Post by wies on Apr 25, 2021 5:40:36 GMT
Gotta say reading this whole discussion was fascinating and as good as reading the comic. Thank you all. As for my thoughts: It did make me uncomfortable that he "hated her" and was "filled with a blinding anger" (by the way, double eye motif in one panel! "blinding" and that big veiny Tony-eye) , but as has been pointed out, he did not leash out and tried to be as friendly towards to her as possible. Sure, part of that might have been he couldn't consider her fully his daughter. (Not as in: this is suuurmaaaa! but just: "this is not my daughter")
But...I think most parents would also take a long time to consider a sudden double of their child like that. It is an extremely unusual situation.
I also just want to highlight this sentence because it is an important thing that is easily forgotten in heated moments:
I'm strongly opposed to judging people for what happens inside their mind if they're already aware of the problem and doing their best to not turn those inner mechanisms into external action. For me, not what you think but what you do reflects on your character. Like, if someone helped someone, while all the time thinking "I don't like helping you!" is it not still a good thing they did help? It is toxic to presume one must have a mind rubbed clean from all destructive emotions like anger and envy. Because it is toxic in itself to rub those emotions out. Because they tend to come out of the same source as the constructive ones like genorisity and care: our love (in the most broad sense) for ourselves and others. To grow, to become more mature than a child that due to inexperience gives easily in to rage or consuming sadness, is to embrace the shadow within and learn to express its emotions in a safe and healthy way. Which is not the same thing as losing yourself into them. Like, that is what the chapters of Annie when she cut away her fire away (heh, it is nice that fire figured as the Shadow in this story) were about, and it is something that Tony has largely been unable to do so. He wants to do something instead of"just" introspect, and if he can't do something, why, then he prefers to run instead. But he is now introspecting. Without being drunk, this time. I hope one day he will express himself also more like that towards Antimony. |
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Post by Gemminie on Apr 25, 2021 6:40:43 GMT
Coyote has been in Britain and just across a canyon from the Court for a very long time - since before Jeanne died. He expressed certainly that Surma having a child was what caused her death, and that the same will happen when (and if) Annie has a child. But he only suspects that one of Annie's ancestors was a fire elemental. Explicitly not certain. The certainty, therefore, cannot come from familiarity with human/elemental hybrids. It can only come from watching some of Antimony's ancestral line that went through that process within range such that he could observe. Surma was apparently not within that range. I would expect it to take at least three generations to be confident that the constant cross-breeding with pure humans would not quickly dilute the effect. It is not the least bit implausible that Surma, her mother, and her grandmother were all born at the court. Slightly implausible, I think, because neither Coyote, nor Ysengrin, nor Renard, nor anyone else has ever mentioned this. It could still be possible, but it seems unlikely. There'd have to be a good reason why nobody's ever mentioned Surma's mother if she'd been born at the Court. Especially Surma's grandmother, whose name was also allegedly Antimony – nobody would have mentioned her to Annie? |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Apr 25, 2021 7:36:32 GMT
If it was a real-life couple... The reason that Anthony reminds me of that friend-of-friend I mentioned earlier was because he was so blissfully happy to be with her that he was content giving her whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it, which she was very happy with at first. However, I think Anthony and Surma could never move on to a phase where Anthony was sufficiently discontent about something. The main reason for that is the Court. Even if he wasn't disappearing now and then for missions just his connections alone would make normal rules and probably organizational common sense not apply to him. If he wanted time off he could get it, likely in whatever quantity and with little or no notice and it was best not to ask questions about where he went when he disappeared. If he didn't want to interact with a coworker he didn't have to, no matter what that would require. Short of slaughtering multiple people on the table I suspect he was unfirable; any effort to do so would probably result in that person being fired instead. Money wasn't really an issue so he couldn't be motivated or demotivated through compensation. Maybe he was avoided and hated but he didn't have to care. If Surma had stuck around another decade or so I figure Anthony would have evolved at least some strategies of getting his way with small things now and then but she planned out her ideal exit and left him holding the Antimony (alas figuratively, not literally). If that had happened he might adapt the experience to some tactics of parenting between "issue command" and silence. |
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Post by silicondream on Apr 26, 2021 6:17:59 GMT
The way it's portrayed, elemental-human unions are extremely rare. Was that ever stated? Coyote certainly said that there are many human hybrids living in the Forest and/or the Court. Given all the post-humans and trans-humans and half-dryads and People From Cardiff that Annie’s met in just a few years, I’m inclined to believe him. And of course Coyote’s older than the Court, and has traveled all over the world meeting all sorts of mythological creatures. The phoenix/ouroboros/grain goddess is a common trope; who knows how many Annielogues he’s met? Well yeah, he’s Coyote. He never gives anyone a straight answer, that’s his thing. Maybe he’s just unsure about the exact identity of the elemental, or maybe he’s unsure about it being “fire” as opposed to “smoke” or “magnesium” or “antimony,” or maybe he’s actually sure about every last detail and he’s just messing with her. All of those possibilities are compatible with him knowing that her general “kind”--whatever that may be--is limited to one adult incarnation at a time. Coyote can see into people’s dreams, wear other beings’ lives like clothing, become the moon, and retroactively hang the stars in the sky. The Norns themselves declared him a higher power than they, and according to Loup he knows everything except what he chooses not to know. I’m wouldn’t presume that clairvoyance is beyond him. But, again, Coyote is hardly a reliable narrator. Renard, on the other hand, is always truthful with Annie, as we were reminded in “Fire Spike.” So if Renard says that “we all” knew about Surma’s fate, and explicitly includes Tony in that group, I’m going to take that as fact for now. I agree entirely, and ramble about this below--but astute observers might still piece together some important facts. “The mother never lives to see her daughter marry” is a fairly glaring pattern, and could show up in anything from local legends to parish registers. Yup. Between that and the way Coyote fails to recognize Annie in “Meetings and Re-Meetings,” I think it may simply be obvious to etheric beings that the “fire” in Fire Head Girl is unique and immortal, but the “girl” part has to get swapped out every few decades. Hopefully. Although between “shifting”, Loup’s time shenanigans, and Tony’s experiment, who knows where Annie’s clock is at. She’s always burned hotter and brighter than Surma, and now her firepower has doubled, and we all know what that means for a candle… ...ok, now I’m just depressing myself. She’ll be fine! There'd have to be a good reason why nobody's ever mentioned Surma's mother if she'd been born at the Court. Especially Surma's grandmother, whose name was also allegedly Antimony – nobody would have mentioned her to Annie? Most people at the Court barely mention Surma to Annie, and she barely mentions Surma to them. When Surma was ready to spawn and die, she cut herself off from the Court; conversely, she told Annie almost nothing about her own past. For someone who previously held one of the highest-profile Court positions, Surma was incredibly good at erasing herself from public history. I can easily believe that earlier generations were the same way, especially if (like Annie) they weren't Court officials. To speculate based on Annie and Surma: The Phoenix usually lives on the edge of human society. Short-lived, extremely private, spends a lot of time in the Ether or the Forest or other lonely places. People know of her, in fact her deeds make her a momentary celebrity. But most people are either creeped out by her, distantly worshipful, or fiercely loyal, so they either never learn her secrets or refuse to spread them around. Combined with her own life cycle and the self-censoring between mother and daughter, each new generation of the Phoenix ends up socially and (psychologically isolated) from her past selves. And that’s probably a good thing, most of the time. It’s much easier for mortals to see her as a quirky young woman, who coincidentally has an uncanny resemblance to her mother, and beyond that nobody really remembers her family history so they just don’t worry about it. If you get too attached to multiple generations of the Phoenix you turn into Tony, and nobody wants to be Tony. Come to think of it, Jones probably envies the Phoenix a great deal. She’d like to live a series of ordinary-ish lives with her mortal companions, but her agelessness triggers periodic “BURN THE WITCH/ARREST THE IMPOSTOR” social crises. A cycle of death and rebirth might be much more convenient! |
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Post by aline on Apr 26, 2021 6:57:10 GMT
I imagine Anthony saying something like this: She needed a baby. I tried to talk her out of it because of her health thing, but she said, "You have to trust me; I'm sick and tired of being reminded of my mom, and it may never happen, anyway". It's like the need for a baby was burning her up inside. We had fights about it. She started to say I didn't have it in me to be a proper father anyway if I couldn't bring myself to empathise with her. When I told her I also doubted my fitness as a potential father, that just sealed it for her; she just had to prove me wrong. What finally broke me was when she said that if we couldn't be a proper family, even for just a few years, then she was going to find someone who was willing to have a family with her. I knew who she meant, and I knew what a disaster that would have been. I love my daughter, but... [drinks] Disagree. Tony said to Donnie that he "promised he could help" with Surma's maternity-related illness. He was obviously on board with the baby project and quite optimistic as to the outcome in the beginning. Why else would he have made a promise like that? The fact that he could not, in fact, help, and that he'd been the one who made her pregnant, would have put a lot of stress on family relationships even with someone less prone to angsty social awkwardness than Tony. For her whole childhood, Annie wasn't just a daughter, she was also a living ticking clock to Surma's death that Tony was racing to prevent. Surma's line "He *still* loves you very much" also suggests Tony's behavior changed as Annie grew older, Surma grew weaker, and Tony failed to find a cure for her illness. We all know the disaster of a father he was after Surma died, but it doesn't mean he never wanted it, or didn't enjoy parenthood when he still thought his wife wasn't going to die from it. |
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Post by speedwell on Apr 26, 2021 8:48:07 GMT
I imagine Anthony saying something like this: She needed a baby. I tried to talk her out of it because of her health thing, but she said, "You have to trust me; I'm sick and tired of being reminded of my mom, and it may never happen, anyway". It's like the need for a baby was burning her up inside. We had fights about it. She started to say I didn't have it in me to be a proper father anyway if I couldn't bring myself to empathise with her. When I told her I also doubted my fitness as a potential father, that just sealed it for her; she just had to prove me wrong. What finally broke me was when she said that if we couldn't be a proper family, even for just a few years, then she was going to find someone who was willing to have a family with her. I knew who she meant, and I knew what a disaster that would have been. I love my daughter, but... [drinks] Disagree. Tony said to Donnie that he "promised he could help" with Surma's maternity-related illness. He was obviously on board with the baby project and quite optimistic as to the outcome in the beginning. Why else would he have made a promise like that? The fact that he could not, in fact, help, and that he'd been the one who made her pregnant, would have put a lot of stress on family relationships even with someone less prone to angsty social awkwardness than Tony. For her whole childhood, Annie wasn't just a daughter, she was also a living ticking clock to Surma's death that Tony was racing to prevent. Surma's line "He *still* loves you very much" also suggests Tony's behavior changed as Annie grew older, Surma grew weaker, and Tony failed to find a cure for her illness. We all know the disaster of a father he was after Surma died, but it doesn't mean he never wanted it, or didn't enjoy parenthood when he still thought his wife wasn't going to die from it. Thank you for updating me with new information from today's page. |
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Post by aline on Apr 26, 2021 10:35:20 GMT
Disagree. Tony said to Donnie that he "promised he could help" with Surma's maternity-related illness. He was obviously on board with the baby project and quite optimistic as to the outcome in the beginning. Why else would he have made a promise like that? The fact that he could not, in fact, help, and that he'd been the one who made her pregnant, would have put a lot of stress on family relationships even with someone less prone to angsty social awkwardness than Tony. For her whole childhood, Annie wasn't just a daughter, she was also a living ticking clock to Surma's death that Tony was racing to prevent. Surma's line "He *still* loves you very much" also suggests Tony's behavior changed as Annie grew older, Surma grew weaker, and Tony failed to find a cure for her illness. We all know the disaster of a father he was after Surma died, but it doesn't mean he never wanted it, or didn't enjoy parenthood when he still thought his wife wasn't going to die from it. Thank you for updating me with new information from today's page. I didn't read today's page before posting this. I posted at 8:57 and it updated at 9:00. The new page suggests I got one thing right and one thing wrong (he was on board with pregnancy but always had trouble relating to Annie). But both opinions were based on previous pages. |
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Post by pyradonis on Apr 26, 2021 12:11:17 GMT
Perhaps at other times there were large numbers of paternal uncles/aunts/cousins around to support the dying mother and her child, but it certainly wasn't that way for Annie, and I'm guessing it wasn't like that for Surma either, because where's her family? No, I think there's no such information to be had. Huh. Right. Where is Surma's damn father? There'd have to be a good reason why nobody's ever mentioned Surma's mother if she'd been born at the Court. Especially Surma's grandmother, whose name was also allegedly Antimony – nobody would have mentioned her to Annie? Nobody, including Surma, mentioned that Surma was the Court's medium, nobody, including Surma, mentioned what was the reason she was dying, and so on, and so on. Nobody, including Surma, telling Annie anything has ample precedent and very little explanation so far. So... Why did she have a child when she did? Maybe it was an urge of the mundane biological sort. It may have just been that Surma was satisfied and believed that she'd had enough life, if that makes any sense; it's been formsprung that she was in her mid- to late-thirties (and had been married a couple of years or so) when she had Antimony so she may have felt that her life was stable and it was time; she was getting older and wanted to have a child while she was still young enough to keep up. I think that's reasonable, but it's still speculation. Correction: It was formsprung that she was in her mid-to-late thirties when she died, which was right before the beginning of the comic. Annie was eleven or twelve years old at that point. So Surma was in her mid-twenties when she had Annie. Not exactly the age where an average person decides "I have lived a full life, now I'm ready to spend another dozen years in a hospital and then die.". |
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Post by Gemminie on Apr 26, 2021 13:42:39 GMT
The way it's portrayed, elemental-human unions are extremely rare. Was that ever stated? Coyote certainly said that there are many human hybrids living in the Forest and/or the Court. Given all the post-humans and trans-humans and half-dryads and People From Cardiff that Annie’s met in just a few years, I’m inclined to believe him. And of course Coyote’s older than the Court, and has traveled all over the world meeting all sorts of mythological creatures. The phoenix/ouroboros/grain goddess is a common trope; who knows how many Annielogues he’s met? Haha, I see what you did there. Anyway, that link doesn't work, so I can't see what you're referring to, but sure, there are a lot of supernatural/mythological creatures in the GC millieu, but the way Coyote talks about it, he can only imagine how a human-elemental mating would have worked; he doesn't know. That means it hasn't happened in the Forest since he's been there, as he's probably aware of anything that happens in the Forest, especially something that unusual. I've been calling her an "elemental scion" in my headcanon, but anyway, sure, Coyote could be messing with her, but he also might not be, and he's never given any indication that he knows anything more than he can simply sense just by ethereally looking at Annie as she is. I'm just saying that "X could be true" is a long way from "X is true." Maybe, but I haven't seen any evidence that he can see into the past or future other than remembering what he's directly seen with his ethereally augmented senses. I accept that Tony, James, Don, Anja, Renard, Coyote, Ysengrin, and others knew that Surma would die if she had a child. I'm not entirely sure how that knowledge came about, but I'm assuming Surma knew it from her mother, and she from her mother, and so on, making it very odd that Surma didn't pass it on to Antimony. But knowledge of one ancestor who had a child at 17 while another waited until 40? If those things ever happened, which is not guaranteed, we do not know that it would have been passed down. That's if the family lived in the same place for generations, which is not known, and by the way, what town would we be talking about? We've been shown nothing about Surma's family or even how or when Surma came to the Court. We don't know whether she was born there or whether she was brought there, or the circumstances by which she was brought there if so. If Surma told anyone about her childhood at another place, we've never seen them talk about it. My best guess is that Surma wasn't born at the Court, because then someone still alive would have known her mother's name, but nobody's ever mentioned it. But if that's true, we have no information about where she was born. The lack of information is rather glaring, really. There would almost have to be a compelling reason for all of these characters to keep all of this quiet. I think you're right about that. Beings native to the Ether can, I think, pretty clearly see Annie's fire self. Even "Snuffle"'s friend, the former rabbit, seems to have relied on his ethereal senses to identify her and didn't recognize her when she'd cut off her fire self. They can tell she's not just a human. That's something I'd worried about too. But I think the story has dropped enough hints that a lot of other things are different about Annie that her destiny is probably not going to be the same as her ancestors'. She's shown no drive toward procreation so far. There's an indication that she has, or had at the time, a crush on someone, but who that is we can only speculate, as she's done nothing about it, probably (but not certainly) indicating it's someone unavailable. What? Yes they do; Annie's talked about her mother with people who knew her, numerous times.i like this story; I can't tell whether things really happened that way, but I can easily imagine that they did, quietly living apart from most of the world. There might have been times when she married into a large family that understood what would happen, but most of the time that likely didn't happen. Although I'm not sure what you mean by "turn into Tony." Tony was already the way he is. |
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Post by pyradonis on Apr 26, 2021 17:44:21 GMT
We've been shown nothing about Surma's family or even how or when Surma came to the Court. We don't know whether she was born there or whether she was brought there, or the circumstances by which she was brought there if so. Tom answered the question: "How did Surma and Anthony come to attend the Court?" with "The Court wanted them." While it is not 100% unambiguous, I think we can safely assume both Surma and Anthony were born outside the Court. |
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He's a deep guy!
