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Post by imaginaryfriend on Aug 20, 2021 17:11:46 GMT
Clarification from my previous post: "Loup" is connected to the Wood through Coyote's power. I think the geometric shapes are the Wood sorta-atomized and formed into units by his mind as he struggles to control things he ideally shouldn't. Who else would "Loup" allow to walk right up to him and kill him? Making sure that could happen was one of the reasons Coyote's plan took this long. Why should he allow her to do it? Why does he have to allow it all? Give the Tooth to Parley - who is an experienced swordswoman, by the way, while Annie knows nothing about fighting with a blade - she teleports next to Loup and kills him. That would be my plan for dealing with Loup IF it is decided he has to die. There are a 100 things that can go wrong with letting Annie do it, even IF she would agree. Because he loves her. |
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Post by basser on Aug 20, 2021 17:40:22 GMT
On a more serious note I'm pretty sure Coyote said somewhere or other that Ysengrin severely lacks imagination or creativity, so one assumes all the cubes and circles and such are just a means to represent how Ysengrin can only really process things in a simplistic linear way. (As we already knew from how his lessons to Annie mainly boiled down to "physical strength = power", with little apparent understanding of the subtle power machinations Coyote favors - probably why Coyote found him so pathetic.)
If that's the case then all the cubes stacking up would, I imagine, be a quite literal invocation of the wall Ysengrin puts around his anger, formed of the sad little simple shapes that're all his mind can create. Annie might then be compelled to stab ole boy in the heart not because he's a danger, but because he's a pitiful old wolf trapped in a prison of his own design and she doesn't want to watch him suffer.
Kind of reminds me of watching my stepdad's decline with dementia, actually. By the end it became clear the man we'd loved had died years ago and all that was left was a simpleminded goblin wearing his skin. I felt nothing but relief when he had a stroke and his body was finally able to pass on with the rest of him.
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Post by rabbit on Aug 20, 2021 17:48:40 GMT
Maybe SOMEONE has to kill Loup, but right now there's no reason it has to be Annie. Pyradonis' comment got me thinking: When none of the psychopomps came for her mother, Annie took her into the ether. When none of the psychopomps could overcome Jeanne - in fact, several had been destroyed by her - it was Annie who created the plan to release her. Whatever is about to happen with Loup, it will be some kind of transition. What if there is some quality that Annie possesses that make her the uniquely suited for this task? In other words, if she kills* Loup, it is not because she has to so much as she is the only entity in the GK world who can? * Given the pain Loup appears to be in, I am not sure whether it would be "killing" or "setting free" |
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Post by Gemminie on Aug 20, 2021 18:06:03 GMT
Impressions as usual: James urges Aata to get his people out, Shell runs away, Aata seems not to be leaving himself, and James, Parley, and Cvet are probably around somewhere. Meanwhile, Annie moves in to face Loup. But this page's first panel is completely out of physical context. Just where are we looking here? There's some dirt and grass, and then the forest floor is deconstructing itself into cubes and spheres of dirt and stone. The farther away into the distance we get, the darker it is. But where is Loup in this picture? There's a serious amount of curvature here too, as if we're looking through a fish-eye lens.
In the second panel, though, we see Annie, still aflame, looking at something in astonishment. It's probably not too much of a leap to assume that it's the first panel's weirdness that she's staring at. And then in the third panel we see Loup – only his head is recognizable, because his body has lost its shape, merging with the ground. The only place that isn't cracking into basic geometric forms is Loup's head itself, unless you count the root/tentacles that are still whipping around everywhere. This leads me to believe that Loup is in the center of this and that in at least one direction the Forest is collapsing into a formless void as in the first frame. Perhaps it's only in the away-from-the-Court direction that's happening, but maybe it's in all directions. The background is the dark green we've been seeing plus some dark red light that looks as if it's emanating from Loup's red stripe (Coyote's strength).
Loup seems to lose even more definition in the fourth frame. In the background we see root tendrils, stone spikes, red energy, and dark green forest all reaching skyward, and in the middle ground there's what's left of Loup's head, as the ground, fully cracked in a spiderweb pattern with Loup at the center, seems to be falling away around him – either that or he's rising in the center. The frame boundaries themselves are unevenly divided, looking like the whole page is cracked. And in the final frame there's a close-up of Annie's face, still aflame, looking on with a great deal of worry. What is going on here? Loup seems to be merging with the Forest while destroying it (or allowing it to fall to ruin) at the same time. What happens if Loup destroys himself?
Edited to add: Since the Court is in some ways a force of order, while the Forest is a force of chaos, and since I seem to recall someone saying that the Court would have overtaken the Forest long ago if it hadn't been for Coyote, perhaps the geometric shapes we've been seeing since the chapter began are a symptom of the Court's ordering principles attempting to overrun the Forest? Perhaps what we're seeing here is exactly what would happen if Loup stopped trying to control the Forest, and now that he's been distracted (he earlier accused the Court people of coming here to distract him), the ordering force has found a way in? Is Loup retreating into the Ether to escape his fate? Will the chapter end with no Forest in existence, just a vast plain of flagstones, or perhaps a cliff overlooking a deep abyss, and with Loup's whereabouts unknown?
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Post by rylfrazier on Aug 20, 2021 18:21:27 GMT
Nice to see Tom still has the ability to throw curve balls even after all these years of reading the comic. Good stuff, very curious to see what will happen next.
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Post by csj on Aug 20, 2021 19:54:34 GMT
'turn into an earth-type, everyone loses their goddamn minds'
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Post by Per on Aug 20, 2021 21:53:31 GMT
"I WANNA PLAY EUROGAAAAAMES"
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Post by pyradonis on Aug 21, 2021 0:08:17 GMT
...its over. The Forest is over - or, at the very least, shall never be the same ever again. We see what's happening immediately around Loup - I can only imagine what the rest of the Wood looks like, right now. With how badly everything is going to pieces, there's zero chance that anything familiar will remain, even if trees manage to regrow - landmarks, mountains, monuments, villages, all of it. Perhaps if killing Loup "unkills" Coyote, regrowth can be had relatively quickly. Otherwise... With a bit of luck, the rest of the Forest is still in stasis and mostly unaffected... But I won't be surprised if it is devastated.
Give the Tooth to Parley - who is an experienced swordswoman, by the way, while Annie knows nothing about fighting with a blade We haven't seen Annie get any sword training - but we know she has an effective amount of martial-arts training (we caught a brief glimpse of one session, and she's used it effectively on at least two occasions), and we know she asked Eglamore about sword training (the page after she got the Tooth). So it seems a stretch to assume she has no sword training. On the contrary, it is a stretch to assume she has it, when she once asked about it and in the over 50 chapters since then there was not one panel or sentence even hinting at her actually taking even a single lesson. She seems to be good at martial arts, which would of course help if she were to learn swordfighting, but giving this as a reason why she should have sword training would be like assuming that because Annie knows Spanish, she must also know French.
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Post by warrl on Aug 21, 2021 0:13:09 GMT
We haven't seen Annie get any sword training - but we know she has an effective amount of martial-arts training (we caught a brief glimpse of one session, and she's used it effectively on at least two occasions), and we know she asked Eglamore about sword training (the page after she got the Tooth). So it seems a stretch to assume she has no sword training. On the contrary, it is a stretch to assume she has it, when she once asked about it and in the over 50 chapters since then there was not one panel or sentence even hinting at her actually taking even a single lesson. There is no contradiction between not-assuming she has sword training, and not-assuming she doesn't. |
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Post by pyradonis on Aug 21, 2021 0:21:00 GMT
Clarification from my previous post: "Loup" is connected to the Wood through Coyote's power. I think the geometric shapes are the Wood sorta-atomized and formed into units by his mind as he struggles to control things he ideally shouldn't. Why should he allow her to do it? Why does he have to allow it all? Give the Tooth to Parley - who is an experienced swordswoman, by the way, while Annie knows nothing about fighting with a blade - she teleports next to Loup and kills him. That would be my plan for dealing with Loup IF it is decided he has to die. There are a 100 things that can go wrong with letting Annie do it, even IF she would agree. Because he loves her. You didn't actually believe that when he said it, did you? Annie surely didn't. Maybe SOMEONE has to kill Loup, but right now there's no reason it has to be Annie. Pyradonis' comment got me thinking: When none of the psychopomps came for her mother, Annie took her into the ether. When none of the psychopomps could overcome Jeanne - in fact, several had been destroyed by her - it was Annie who created the plan to release her. Whatever is about to happen with Loup, it will be some kind of transition. What if there is some quality that Annie possesses that make her the uniquely suited for this task? In other words, if she kills* Loup, it is not because she has to so much as she is the only entity in the GK world who can? * Given the pain Loup appears to be in, I am not sure whether it would be "killing" or "setting free" Should that prove to be the case, I still hope that, like in the other two cases, Annie does it of her own decision and not because fate forces her to. It should also be noted that in both cases, it was not about killing Surma or Jeanne and her boyfriend, but about guiding them into the Ether after their deaths. Annie has so far never killed a sentient being (I doubt the wisps are truly sentient).
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Aug 21, 2021 3:11:41 GMT
Clarification from my previous post: "Loup" is connected to the Wood through Coyote's power. I think the geometric shapes are the Wood sorta-atomized and formed into units by his mind as he struggles to control things he ideally shouldn't. Because he loves her. You didn't actually believe that when he said it, did you? Sidestepping the philosophical debates on what love means in general and in this context, how "Loup" differs from Ysengin, and making an allowance for him being a wolf who might bite anyone nearby from reflex when in pain or when trapped, yes. No geometry dash, just her walking right up while maybe dodging an errant root or two. Probably true, but more the fool she. |
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Post by dramastix on Aug 21, 2021 3:52:06 GMT
Can't help but wonder what this all sounds like. If Gunnerkrigg does make it to the small screen, I imagine the Foley artists are going to have a heyday with Loup's breakdown. Rushing wind and howling noises? The creaking sound of bending wood?
Hehe, Foley....
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Post by mordekai on Aug 21, 2021 11:54:31 GMT
This page unsettles me. It looks like Loup physically fusing with the forest and at the same time everything crumbling apart. Looks like an intro to a boss battle. Maybe Gillitie Wood was always a part of Coyote? The same way he was the lake in the dead goose tale? If he made himself forget that he was the forest, then he wouldn't be lying when he said that he came to Gillitie Wood from America because he heard about Renart and Ysengrim... he didn't remember the forest was a part of him when he heard about it... |
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Post by blahzor on Aug 21, 2021 15:21:11 GMT
This page unsettles me. It looks like Loup physically fusing with the forest and at the same time everything crumbling apart. Looks like an intro to a boss battle. Maybe Gillitie Wood was always a part of Coyote? The same way he was the lake in the dead goose tale? If he made himself forget that he was the forest, then he wouldn't be lying when he said that he came to Gillitie Wood from America because he heard about Renart and Ysengrim... he didn't remember the forest was a part of him when he heard about it... would in theory explain how he controls it with ease and Loup doesn't but would be like what we suspect already Coyote is still hiding things from Loup so he doesn't remember |
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Post by drmemory on Aug 21, 2021 16:43:13 GMT
Two things.
1. Loup is showing a lot more Coyote than he has before. Maybe he had all that blue, red and white under his chin and it just looks like more to me because he's sort of expanding? Anyway, a lot less brown at present. A sign of letting go of rationality?
2. The blocks remind me of the way they show reality being messed with in the Marvel universe. Like when Wanda took people out, they sort of dissolved into blocks. Is this the opposite of that - Loup making something? He's clearly warping reality, not just himself, but you can't tell just from this page what he's going for. Makes me wonder what the others present are seeing - does it look to them like it looks to us? Annie is good at seeing ethereal things, Kat is not. I don't think we really know where Shell, Eglamore, Parley, and Cvet fall on that perceptual spectrum.
I'd be pretty happy to just see a page where each panel showed what one character is seeing at this moment!
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Post by beaukm on Aug 21, 2021 17:17:58 GMT
I see Loup has gotten interested in cubism now. Grated minds think alike... I came to post essentially the same thing... I don't even wanna know what a grated mind looks like. I would imagine it would look something like what we're seeing on this page... As to the conversation happening on why it has to be ANNIE to do the job of killing Loup, I imagine it technically doesn't have to be but Coyote either knows more than he's letting on (which is, like, assumed...) about her ability to do that, and/or he wants her to walk him to the afterlife because he has one more big secret to impart to her. |
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Post by pyradonis on Aug 21, 2021 19:27:05 GMT
You didn't actually believe that when he said it, did you? Sidestepping the philosophical debates on what love means in general and in this context, how "Loup" differs from Ysengin, and making an allowance for him being a wolf who might bite anyone nearby from reflex when in pain or when trapped, yes. No geometry dash, just her walking right up while maybe dodging an errant root or two. Probably true, but more the fool she. You're actually saying Annie is foolish for not believing Loup loves her? The mentally unstable guy who has repeatedly threatened her as well as her friends and her home, attacked her friends and her home, blackmailed and pressured her into doing errands for him, has split her in two, has evicted a whole people from the Forest because he was insulted from something she said, and has just tried to impale her at least twice?
I know I'm the first to complain this comic has some messed up relationships between certain characters, but come on.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Aug 21, 2021 22:27:03 GMT
Sidestepping the philosophical debates on what love means in general and in this context, how "Loup" differs from Ysengin, and making an allowance for him being a wolf who might bite anyone nearby from reflex when in pain or when trapped, yes. No geometry dash, just her walking right up while maybe dodging an errant root or two. Probably true, but more the fool she. You're actually saying Annie is foolish for not believing Loup loves her? The mentally unstable guy who has repeatedly threatened her as well as her friends and her home, attacked her friends and her home, blackmailed and pressured her into doing errands for him, has split her in two, has evicted a whole people from the Forest because he was insulted from something she said, and has just tried to impale her at least twice?
I know I'm the first to complain this comic has some messed up relationships between certain characters, but come on.
Yep this guy right here. The same one who offered to make her very happy.  |
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Post by sleepcircle on Aug 22, 2021 16:03:25 GMT
I see Loup has gotten interested in cubism now. Grated minds think alike... I came to post essentially the same thing... I don't even wanna know what a grated mind looks like. fava beans and a nice chianti.......,.,..... |
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Post by jda on Aug 23, 2021 0:46:24 GMT
I see Loup has gotten interested in cubism now. I don't even wanna know what a grated mind looks like. fava beans and a nice chianti.......,.,..... Hannibal likes this |
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Post by drmemory on Aug 27, 2021 0:47:38 GMT
Has anyone else told Annie they love her? I can't think of any time that's been said out loud. Which would imply that Annie doesn't have a lot of experience with such things... She's usually shown as pretty socially inept, though sloooooowly improving as she matures. The merger probably helped too, if that's what happened. I think Loup thinks he loves her. I'm not gonna get into an argument about what that means or whether it is really love, but look. Both entities that went into his making love her in their own way (even if they didn't say it out loud, it was obvious). Virtually his first actions were attempts get her to stay with him. Do you really think he wouldn't have tried to make her happy (in the way he views happiness)? Remember the boy/girl/other offer? The attempt to convince her she'd be happier there where she could be herself than in the court where they are uncomfortable with her predilection towards the etheric sciences? I think he meant it, in his own way. That doesn't mean it would have been a good idea for her to take him up on it. Also, I bet a lot of his current issues are due to not being able to reconcile his love for Annie with Coyote's plan for her to kill him. He doesn't want to die, he doesn't want to kill her, and he's a kid in some ways. A very frustrated kid, because Coyote just whispered something to him telling him about the tooth and the plan and why the plan is a wonderful plan and has to happen.
Interesting that Coyote talked to them separately though. Makes me wonder how the information provided to each differs. 
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Post by lurkerbot on Aug 28, 2021 0:36:30 GMT
Has anyone else told Annie they love her? I can't think of any time that's been said out loud. Surma telling Antimony that " he still loves you very much" is the only vaguely similar occasion that comes readily to my mind, and such a second-person statement, possibly made with ulterior motives, is definitely not as authentic as being told this first-hand. |
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Post by drmemory on Aug 30, 2021 3:45:47 GMT
Has anyone else told Annie they love her? I can't think of any time that's been said out loud. Surma telling Antimony that " he still loves you very much" is the only vaguely similar occasion that comes readily to my mind, and such a second-person statement, possibly made with ulterior motives, is definitely not as authentic as being told this first-hand. Yes, that seems right. I can't remember anything else like that.
For that matter, I can't really remember too many people even complimenting her looks, much less her as a person! Is Ysengrin the only one? I remember him calling her beautiful. Oh, and I think Coyote called her a "fine, pretty girl", or maybe he only said that about her mother.
In short, she really hasn't had a lot of positive feedback in her life. Not so much as a bad boyfriend! If Kat ever said anything along those lines I do not remember it - I remember her complimenting Kat but not the other way around. One of the elves negged her (I think that's the word) when he said she looked better without them face paints, but that's a backhanded compliment at best. God, even her father can't talk to her, much less give her typical parental support when she feels bad! I can't believe I never noticed this before.
Poor girl! 
I'm sure someone will point out what I've missed here.
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Post by pyradonis on Aug 30, 2021 16:51:51 GMT
Surma telling Antimony that " he still loves you very much" is the only vaguely similar occasion that comes readily to my mind, and such a second-person statement, possibly made with ulterior motives, is definitely not as authentic as being told this first-hand. Yes, that seems right. I can't remember anything else like that.
For that matter, I can't really remember too many people even complimenting her looks, much less her as a person! Is Ysengrin the only one? I remember him calling her beautiful. Oh, and I think Coyote called her a "fine, pretty girl", or maybe he only said that about her mother.
In short, she really hasn't had a lot of positive feedback in her life. Not so much as a bad boyfriend! If Kat ever said anything along those lines I do not remember it - I remember her complimenting Kat but not the other way around. One of the elves negged her (I think that's the word) when he said she looked better without them face paints, but that's a backhanded compliment at best. God, even her father can't talk to her, much less give her typical parental support when she feels bad! I can't believe I never noticed this before.
Poor girl!
I'm sure someone will point out what I've missed here.
The one who said he preferred her without "face paints" was Ysengrin here. |
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Post by drmemory on Aug 31, 2021 4:54:40 GMT
Ah, ok. Kamlen asked why she wore dem paints on her face on the previous page, and I got it mixed up with Ysengrin's comments. So a couple of the elves were at least nicer to her than, say, her fellow students and teachers.
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Who else would "Loup" allow to walk right up to him and kill him? Making sure that could happen was one of the reasons Coyote's plan took this long.Why should he allow her to do it? Why does he have to allow it all? Give the Tooth to Parley - who is an experienced swordswoman, by the way, while Annie knows nothing about fighting with a blade - she teleports next to Loup and kills him. That would be my plan for dealing with Loup IF it is decided he has to die. There are a 100 things that can go wrong with letting Annie do it, even IF she would agree.
