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Post by Gemminie on Jul 12, 2021 17:06:00 GMT
Coyote did tell Annie that the Court was "man's endeavour to become God". He also told her that when he arrived to Gillitie Wood, "the humans sought to tame the powerful creatures" leading him to create the ravine and the Annan Waters. As I've mentioned before, I think we need to take Coyote's statement about the Court being "man's endeavour to become God" (the only time in the comic that this statement has been made) with caution. This is: a) Coyote's perspective (drawing on his knowing how the ether has created gods and mythical beings, which presumably only a very few other people in the Gunnerkrigg-verse know - and I doubt that the Court leadership is among them) and b) spoken with an agenda (to manipulate Annie's perspective of the Court). Coyote's statement is true in the sense that the outcome of the Court's experiments with the ether will result in humans having godlike powers (especially if what's happening to Kat is indeed part of that outcome - though, from what we've seen so far, I don't think that Kat becoming the robots' goddess is part of the Court's plan or something that it even suspects as yet), but I still don't think that the Court have suspected that. I think it more likely that the Court's attempt to steal Coyote's powers is motivated by: a) neutralizing a potential threat and b) studying the ether. I've always taken Coyote's "man's endeavour to become God" statement as a commentary on human technology. I mean, humans can either just be hunter-gatherers for their food, or they can engage in agriculture and start taking the random guesswork out of it. They can be nomadic and move to wherever the climate is comfortable right now, or they can build homes and create their own interior environment. They can either walk somewhere or invent vehicles, and so on. Rather than just accepting what's given to them (etheric tenet), they usually instead choose to technologically arrange things the way they want. Humans everywhere do this. The only difference is that the Court's trying to use the Ether in addition to their other tools. |
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mzpx
Junior Member
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Post by mzpx on Jul 12, 2021 17:17:04 GMT
Discovering how to control and manipulate something does not necessarily lead to actually making changes, it's just part of the process of understanding in science. E.g. synthetic biology is primarily used to better understand the natural world, only a small part of it is about creating new products. In fact, science often discovers that the system is more complicated than previously thought when it tries to manipulate the real world and goes back to the drawing board/introduces strict regulations. The military, for example, has always been a great patron of the sciences and people have discovered all kinds of interesting facts about the world in the process of trying to create new inventive weapons. Sometimes it creates the internet, sometimes it's a new way to destroy the world, amirite. This tends to frustrate scientists, who would often prefer just getting on with doing science rather than jump through sometimes farcical loops to get funding. No one can possible predict whether research on e.g. fruit fly memory will actually lead to the cure of Alzheimer's, and writing pages after pages pretending that it will is a huge resource drain, not to mention limit the avenues of exploration. What it will do is give us an understanding on how memory works in an easy-to-track system. Having to justify biological research with a reference to curing diseases is really only the product of neoliberalism (and in the UK in particular, Thatcher, whose own work on soft-serve ice cream in industry had an impact on her approach) and the jury's still out on whether it's a good way of doing science. We haven't really had a big fundamental discovery(/treatment) since the 80s and the lack of incentive to do truly blue-sky research is arguably part of that. The mRNA vaccines are case in point - the fundamental research underlying them really struggled to get funded in the 90s and it took a pandemic (when we are throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the problem) to allow utilitarian thinking to justify following it up. Who knows for how long we could have had mRNA vaccines for otherwise. Sorry, sore point!  Obviously, all of that is debatable, as Jones says in my avatar. Going back to the Court - so you are saying that they are fundamentally utilitarian and learning about the ether is just a means to an end? I guess they are wrapped in so much bureaucracy that that is entirely possible. It'll be interesting to see. |
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Post by warrl on Jul 12, 2021 18:58:50 GMT
Heck powers does Coyote even have? Seems like he makes new ones up when the mood strikes. The ability to make up new powers (and then actually have them) at will would be a very useful power to have... |
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Post by bicarbonat on Jul 12, 2021 22:31:52 GMT
Attempts by the very human beings (symbolically) who give you being might seem like a big threat, no? If even that is stale, he's a lot more trapped by the pace of things than we credit. Think of it: he could go anywhere, mess with anyone or anything. Coyote's an Indigenous American trickster, and who knows when he's last claimed North America as his official stomping grounds. Seems like harassing animals < running a centuries'-long arms race & chill with the same group of human beings. This really underscores the aforementioned idea: if his place of origin is on the back-burner/smaller stakes, what does that mean about the place that he's made his official stomping grounds? All stories are victim to the constraints of "Here" - i.e., all things cannot be shown happening in all places, resulting in the place of focus skewing significant. But even with the necessary focus on Gunnerkrigg/Annie, his deliberate choices here are intriguing, unlike the psychopomps, who appear to gravitate to their "patrons." |
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Post by pyradonis on Jul 13, 2021 0:17:00 GMT
That idea has been postulated again and again, but it won't work. Kat saw the guys from the RotD as humans in scary masks because that's what they are - she is not fooled by Etheric illusions, but she sees real Etheric beings just like they are. She saw psychopomps and ghosts just like the others did. She also was pulled into the Etheric distortion on the cruise ship like everyone else. So it could be the other way around. We see Coyote as a weird dog flopping around and charming Annie. But Kat may see him for the more sinister and dangerous being that he really is. Now that is an interesting theory! I hope it is true.
I just love Coyote going: "ooh, good effort this time! C+, almost there, guys! This time I felt a tickle." But this makes me think Loup might wake up with even MORE of a bad temper once he understands what they tried to do. How will Coyote fix THAT? Fix it? He'll have a good laugh while the chaos unfolds. |
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Post by rylfrazier on Jul 13, 2021 0:52:48 GMT
Saying "Coyote is playing a long game" might indicate a more detailed plan than he actually has - it seems more like Coyote is reactive and has been playing the same game for a long time.
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Post by SilverbackRon on Jul 13, 2021 2:09:48 GMT
Saying "Coyote is playing a long game" might indicate a more detailed plan than he actually has - it seems more like Coyote is reactive and has been playing the same game for a long time. That is more Coyote's groove anyhow, he is all about the funsies in the moment. He is having the time of his life right now, even if he is dead! |
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Post by Runningflame on Jul 13, 2021 2:19:09 GMT
Saying "Coyote is playing a long game" might indicate a more detailed plan than he actually has - it seems more like Coyote is reactive and has been playing the same game for a long time. That is more Coyote's groove anyhow, he is all about the funsies in the moment. He is having the time of his life right now, even if he is dead! True! But the great Coyote can have funsies in the moment and play the long game at the same time! He is very smart, after all! |
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Post by maxptc on Jul 13, 2021 2:32:39 GMT
Saying "Coyote is playing a long game" might indicate a more detailed plan than he actually has - it seems more like Coyote is reactive and has been playing the same game for a long time. See this makes sense to me. Maintain chaos for the Humans seems like a long term master plan. |
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Post by dramastix on Jul 13, 2021 3:18:29 GMT
Seems like harassing animals < running a centuries'-long arms race & chill with the same group of human beings. This really underscores the aforementioned idea: if his place of origin is on the back-burner/smaller stakes, what does that mean about the place that he's made his official stomping grounds? All stories are victim to the constraints of "Here" - i.e., all things cannot be shown happening in all places, resulting in the place of focus skewing significant. But even with the necessary focus on Gunnerkrigg/Annie, his deliberate choices here are intriguing, unlike the psychopomps, who appear to gravitate to their "patrons." I think of it more in the American Gods vein of godhood - the version that stuck around in the American West is Coyote, but isn't quite the same Coyote as the one who settled in Gillite Forest. |
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Post by rylfrazier on Jul 14, 2021 0:10:11 GMT
Seems like harassing animals < running a centuries'-long arms race & chill with the same group of human beings. This really underscores the aforementioned idea: if his place of origin is on the back-burner/smaller stakes, what does that mean about the place that he's made his official stomping grounds? All stories are victim to the constraints of "Here" - i.e., all things cannot be shown happening in all places, resulting in the place of focus skewing significant. But even with the necessary focus on Gunnerkrigg/Annie, his deliberate choices here are intriguing, unlike the psychopomps, who appear to gravitate to their "patrons." I think of it more in the American Gods vein of godhood - the version that stuck around in the American West is Coyote, but isn't quite the same Coyote as the one who settled in Gillite Forest. Tom's cosmology /mythology is somewhat vague, but there are some interesting ideas. For example, the idea that Jones has always existed and has always looked like a current era human raises some interesting questions, it's possible that for whatever reason whatever created her created her with a plan for her to "match" right now and at no other time, but it's also possible that the way time works in the GC universe is different and that actually Jones was inserted retroactively from the present or the future or from outside of time into the entire history of earth. Similarly Coyote, Reynard and other etheric characters might be more formless by nature and might be adopting human - derived or appointed traits sort of loosely within the time stream - for example, Rey was something else before Annie's mom named him Reynard. It's possible Coyote was something else before someone said "oh you're like the trickster spirit, Coyote" and he decided it fit. |
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Post by mturtle7 on Jul 17, 2021 6:51:25 GMT
I think of it more in the American Gods vein of godhood - the version that stuck around in the American West is Coyote, but isn't quite the same Coyote as the one who settled in Gillite Forest. Tom's cosmology /mythology is somewhat vague, but there are some interesting ideas. For example, the idea that Jones has always existed and has always looked like a current era human raises some interesting questions, it's possible that for whatever reason whatever created her created her with a plan for her to "match" right now and at no other time, but it's also possible that the way time works in the GC universe is different and that actually Jones was inserted retroactively from the present or the future or from outside of time into the entire history of earth. Similarly Coyote, Reynard and other etheric characters might be more formless by nature and might be adopting human - derived or appointed traits sort of loosely within the time stream - for example, Rey was something else before Annie's mom named him Reynard. It's possible Coyote was something else before someone said "oh you're like the trickster spirit, Coyote" and he decided it fit. Renard was the fox Renard long before Surma showed up - the name she gave him was Reynardine the demon. But your point still stands, I think...especially considering just how demon-like he started behaving not too long after Surma called him that new name, and how all the adults introduced him to Annie only as Reynardine and not Renard. And the way they're portrayed in the Coyote comic really gives the impression of alien beings on a higher plane, who are influenced in certain ways by human myths but also clearly have their own independent existence beyond us...I might even describe them as trying to act like their mythological counterparts as much as they can, except for the times when the original parts of their personalities shine through, in ways we can only begin to comprehend from our limited perspective. It's a very interesting and original way of portraying gods and legends in an urban fantasy setting! |
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Obviously, all of that is debatable, as Jones says in my avatar. 
