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Post by ctso74 on Jan 24, 2022 15:30:38 GMT
Nope. Nothing to worry about there.
Renard didn't sniff him out, and he had Renard's attention. Loup could have been testing that out, before planning a strike on Renard. Now that he knows the Court is leaving, he may bide his time.
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Post by Per on Jan 24, 2022 15:43:15 GMT
This helps explain Loup's fascination with pipes.
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Post by bicarbonat on Jan 24, 2022 16:37:16 GMT
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Post by drmemory on Jan 24, 2022 16:46:22 GMT
Well. I wonder how much of Loup's "irrational, mostly Ysengrin" persona was an act? This seems more like something Coyote might have done!
If Jerrik was made up out of whole cloth, using shapeshifting rather than possession, then I'm a bit surprised that Robot didn't notice the extra robot appearing. But, perhaps he just isn't watching that closely.
Or, perhaps the pipe inspecting robot was Loup all along. Coyote could be in more than one place at once, and he's certainly tricky! Like, was this all Loup? Now that we know he is capable of subtlety, a lot of options open up! Or maybe it's a team effort, and Loup was swimming in that robot's ocean, and they made a deal.  "I AM the ocean and everything it may contain", even if that happens to include a forest god!
Seriously, Loup is learning all this new stuff, about technology, robots, the court, etc., while interacting with people and new people pretty closely WITHOUT freaking out and giving himself away. I'm really impressed, and thinking we're finally seeing some of his Coyote side.
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Post by bedinsis on Jan 24, 2022 16:54:46 GMT
Did I somehow miss when Loup was established as attracted to Annie? Or was the "clue" the fact that Loup-in-the-form-of-Jerrek reacted to Annie, since he has a hidden agenda in getting close to her? I said the same thing, but it began with an F.  Fohhhh dear? That doesn't mean anything! Clearly she meant "ohhhh fear". Which is an admittedly odd way of expressing fear, but we all have our quirks. |
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Post by maxptc on Jan 24, 2022 17:13:16 GMT
Did I somehow miss when Loup was established as attracted to Annie? You did miss this, when she first meets Loup he confesses his love, asks her to move in and takes that shape of a man and women in an attempt to woo her. |
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Post by bedinsis on Jan 24, 2022 17:22:40 GMT
Did I somehow miss when Loup was established as attracted to Annie? You did miss this, when she first meets Loup he confesses his love, asks her to move in and takes that shape of a man and women in an attempt to woo her. I read that as: 1. Loup being deceptive, and bad at it. 2. A love that is Platonic in nature, not an attraction. |
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Post by fia on Jan 24, 2022 17:40:17 GMT
*slow clap for Tom*
I do get cookies for guesses sometimes... but Tom sure is good at an unexpected reveal. *tilts hat*
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tlo
New Member
haha my avatar is great. Past me was hilarious.
Posts: 29 
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Post by tlo on Jan 24, 2022 17:53:08 GMT
all this tells me is that if we take jerrek and subtract all the jolly elfsberry, we'll finally know what ysengrin's humansona looks like
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donna
New Member
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Post by donna on Jan 24, 2022 18:53:02 GMT
Going back to the start of the chapter, the Dover Demon zeroed in on Jerrek then started dancing around in front of the Seraph. Perhaps it was trying to warn them. Yesssss! That was the c..loup… not the crush. Who wouldn’t have a crush on Annie? But Loup does of course. But that alone wouldn’t be enough of a clue… |
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Post by mturtle7 on Jan 24, 2022 19:15:27 GMT
Did I somehow miss when Loup was established as attracted to Annie? Or was the "clue" the fact that Loup-in-the-form-of-Jerrek reacted to Annie, since he has a hidden agenda in getting close to her? When I first saw today's page, I definitely had a moment of "Oh that makes perfect sense with Jerrek's crush on Annie!" which was immediately followed by "Wait no it actually doesn't make sense at all...does it?" And so I had to go look this up.
Basically, Loup's love for Annie is kind of a screwed-up, uninhibited, version of Coyote and Ysengrin's love for her combined. Neither of those relationships had any real hint of romantic or sexual attraction (pretty sure that's not even just my aro-ace bias talking, this time at least), and while Loup did technically offer to be a handsome male/female/whatever companion for Antimony, it's pretty clear in context that that was just one of the many things he was childishly offering her because he thought they would make her happy - no particular attraction was involved on his part. So Jerrek's crush-like behavior (blushing, stammering, staring, not-staring, etc.), while it certainly could be considered a sign of "love", was clearly not even close to being a sign of the same kind of love that Loup showed Antimony, in the same way that Jerrek's personality was not even remotely close to Loup's.
So I'd say that Jerrek's apparent crush was almost, but not quite, an actual clue. Loup could be pretending to be attracted to Antimony as a good excuse to constantly be around her, or maybe, as others have been speculating, there's actually a real Jerrek somewhere inside there who's genuinely attracted to Antimony, and Loup is just rolling with that. Personally, my money's on the former.
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donna
New Member
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Post by donna on Jan 24, 2022 19:17:49 GMT
Did I somehow miss when Loup was established as attracted to Annie? Or was the "clue" the fact that Loup-in-the-form-of-Jerrek reacted to Annie, since he has a hidden agenda in getting close to her? When I first saw today's page, I definitely had a moment of "Oh that makes perfect sense with Jerrek's crush on Annie!" which was immediately followed by "Wait no it actually doesn't make sense at all...does it?" And so I had to go look this up.
Basically, Loup's love for Annie is kind of a screwed-up, uninhibited, version of Coyote and Ysengrin's love for her combined. Neither of those relationships had any real hint of romantic or sexual attraction (pretty sure that's not even just my aro-ace bias talking, this time at least), and while Loup did technically offer to be a handsome male/female/whatever companion for Antimony, it's pretty clear in context that that was just one of the many things he was childishly offering her because he thought they would make her happy - no particular attraction was involved on his part. So Jerrek's crush-like behavior (blushing, stammering, staring, not-staring, etc.), while it certainly could be considered a sign of "love", was clearly not even close to being a sign of the same kind of love that Loup showed Antimony, in the same way that Jerrek's personality was not even remotely close to Loup's.
So I'd say that Jerrek's apparent crush was almost, but not quite, an actual clue. Loup could be pretending to be attracted to Antimony as a good excuse to constantly be around her, or maybe, as others have been speculating, there's actually a real Jerrek somewhere inside there who's genuinely attracted to Antimony, and Loup is just rolling with that. Personally, my money's on the former.
I seriously hope Loup simply took over an otherwise uninhabited New Person body. I hope he’s not holding some guy hostage! |
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Post by blazingstar on Jan 24, 2022 19:42:11 GMT
"I think I'll keep it like this for now." Perhaps Loup!Jerrek's little forelock is meant to resemble the stripe on Loup's forehead. Although it's probably just a visual representation of how the readers can never see him the same way after this page.
Thank you all for reading this chapter about boys getting their hair cut.
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Post by Viridian on Jan 24, 2022 19:43:28 GMT
I just wanna say that this chapter has been excellent and I can't wait to see where we go from here
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Post by blahzor on Jan 24, 2022 20:54:36 GMT
This is the closest we've seen Loup/Coyote to Kat, he's looking so hard at Annie Kat is just a blue blob like everyone else
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Post by arkadi on Jan 24, 2022 21:06:39 GMT
Of course Annie can't just get a boyfriend. It had to be an unhinged, homicidal reality warper. *Hrrmph* 
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Post by pyradonis on Jan 24, 2022 22:36:22 GMT
Well. I wonder how much of Loup's "irrational, mostly Ysengrin" persona was an act? This seems more like something Coyote might have done! You did miss this, when she first meets Loup he confesses his love, asks her to move in and takes that shape of a man and women in an attempt to woo her. I read that as: 1. Loup being deceptive, and bad at it. 2. A love that is Platonic in nature, not an attraction. There are many types of attractions one can have to another person that are not necessarily physical. Basically, Loup's love for Annie is kind of a screwed-up, uninhibited, version of Coyote and Ysengrin's love for her combined. Neither of those relationships had any real hint of romantic or sexual attraction (pretty sure that's not even just my aro-ace bias talking, this time at least) I'm allo and I agree.  Of course Annie can't just get a boyfriend. It had to be an unhinged, homicidal reality warper. *Hrrmph*  I am 100% sure Annie wouldn't have considered Jerrek a suitable candidate for a romance if there was no Loup in him. He was like a kid at the onset of puberty having a crush on a young teacher. |
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Post by drmemory on Jan 25, 2022 0:30:02 GMT
I remember that, and wondered at the time why Renard had an impression of Loup so opposite of what everyone else thought. I guess I thought he was just really happy to see Renard, whom he doesn't hate, but perhaps there was more to it?
It was only one aspect of Coyote's personality, the happy boisterous one (not the sneaky schemer), but still, I can't remember any other time we saw even that much! Most of the time, we got cranky old Ysengrin (mumble mumble humans must die mumble mumble) or immature brat Loup.
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Post by maxptc on Jan 25, 2022 1:59:53 GMT
I read that as: 2. A love that is Platonic in nature, not an attraction. I agree that there is no sexual aspect to the love Coyete and Loup have for Annie. Having said that the behavior is described as love, is obsessive/possessive while also consistently being flirtatious. That isn't platonic imo and is very similar to a crush, albeit one that doesn't involve sexual feelings. Edit: Also, willing to shape shift into a male or female to please Annie, which is sexual as heck even if he doesn't really think that way. |
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Post by TBeholder on Jan 25, 2022 2:23:21 GMT
The crush on Annie was a sneaky clue the whole time. "Hard to remember" was a sneaky clue the whole time. But yes, in this case hiding interest would be harder and less foolproof than suggesting an acceptable interpretation. I'm curious if that means the original New Human is in there, or if it's just Loup now. The crush might be from Loup, or it could be convenient for Loup. Was there ever "original"? Looking back, "Jerrek" never demonstrated knowledge of anything an ex-golem would know and Loup possibly won't. Vague "something to do with pipes? I think?" was the largest piece of information he offered, ever. He just followed Pink Eyes, made faces, asked a few parroting questions and allowed talkative Lana to make up a plausible story for him. |
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Post by SilverbackRon on Jan 25, 2022 2:37:44 GMT
It is true that Loup does not have Renard's gift of body stealing back, so how did he do this? Is it just a made up body? I don't think so. Loup may not be able to steal human bodies, but we have seen possession of robot bodies long ago. I think Jerrek has been hijacked. I guess my biggest question is why didn't Annie or Renard detect etheric shenanigans when they first met Jerrek? It should have been plain as day to one like Rey. |
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Post by speedwell on Jan 25, 2022 2:51:38 GMT
It is true that Loup does not have Renard's gift of body stealing back, so how did he do this? Is it just a made up body? I don't think so. Loup may not be able to steal human bodies, but we have seen possession of robot bodies long ago. I think Jerrek has been hijacked. I guess my biggest question is why didn't Annie or Renard detect etheric shenanigans when they first met Jerrek? It should have been plain as day to one like Rey. That is actually what I intended when I posted above - Loup could not hijack a living body, having given away that power, but he could have arranged to take over a robot body through other means (as dr. memory pointed out elsewhere, perhaps through "seeding" or some analogous process) and then have his essence placed into a New Person body by the Angel Robot or others of Kat's loyal, naive production line crew. I'm guessing that the robot body that Loup took possession of was the water engineer bot's discarded body after the events of She Gave Them an Ocean. (And how poetic that the little water infrastructure engineer, comfortable with directing measured quantities of water through precisely controlled mechanisms, suddenly had to become comfortable with water as a chaotic, overwhelming, multidimensional, even semidivine entity larger than himself.) |
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Post by DonDueed on Jan 25, 2022 3:25:18 GMT
A subtle detail: Jerrek-Loup listens in on Annie with his left ear, which appears to actually shape-shift to wolf form (since he has to unshift it when Lana returns).
But his right ear -- the one that Coyote bit off -- remains humanoid. It seems there is no wolvish ear there to be extended, even now.
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Post by Runningflame on Jan 25, 2022 4:12:37 GMT
Thank you all for reading this chapter about boys getting their hair cut. That would have been lovely. But that's not this chapter. This is a chapter about a not-boy not getting his hair cut! [uncanny valley intensifies] (I love the art style in panel 1.) |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Jan 25, 2022 4:34:02 GMT
Is anyone else wondering how much of what we saw of Jerrek was an act? Maybe Loup thinks learning to be more and less than a god will help him escape his fate. Welcome to the forum! In hindsight, assuming Jerrik was "Loup" and only "Loup" all along, his fright at seeing the Dover Demon might be because he was worried that he might get outed. It's also possible that, thinking humans are afraid of monsters (or whatever) and that the New People (Cylons?) are like humans, he decided he should act very afraid even though he knew the DD wouldn't be able to tell who he really was... and in so doing maybe overdid it a little. Being Jerrik puts "Loup" into a good position to scout out what the Court and Antimony et al is doing with minimal uses of etheric ability so I figure that's what he's doing. Aside from that, he's a wolf in the tall grass. He's waiting for a target of opportunity but may already have some notions of what he wants to do. I suspect his priority will be Antimony. If I were him I'd be looking for access to Antimony's house/bedroom to steal the Tooth (assuming he doesn't know where it is/who currently has it). I might also be interested in swiping Diego's arrow (which may be useful on its own) and disabling Kat's system, and maybe framing Antimony for those things to reduce the number of allies she has and what they're capable of, hopefully making her more vulnerable. Convincing the Seraphs that Antimony is an obstacle for their angel doing as much as she can for robotkind would probably be easy. If Jerrik was made up out of whole cloth, using shapeshifting rather than possession, then I'm a bit surprised that Robot didn't notice the extra robot appearing. But, perhaps he just isn't watching that closely Yeah in order for there never to have been a real Jerrik in the first place there would have to be enough NP(C?)s running around now that not only Robot but everyone else involved can't remember all of them, which I am skeptical of, or else some sort of workaround. "Loup" probably has the mojo to force that somehow but I would think altering reality that much would draw Zeta's attention. It wouldn't surprise me if there are other robots who are having trouble remembering their past since their memories are substantially different from the ones they're making in their new bodies; they just wouldn't process the same. Inspecting pipes was also pretty routine, most likely not much to remember for an NP(C?) who did that before. Additionally, why would "Loup" choose pipes as a previous job instead of something he would have more expertise in, like forestry? |
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Post by maxptc on Jan 25, 2022 5:01:12 GMT
Could Loup have found one of the Robot chips and been reborn into a new person body? I don't see why he can't replicate being a computer chip if he found one.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Jan 25, 2022 5:27:03 GMT
Could Loup have found one of the Robot chips and been reborn into a new person body? I don't see why he can't replicate being a computer chip if he found one. Probably? He could also have seen them digging up robots and disguised himself as a buried disabled robot complete, just because they appeared important since they were being recovered, then decided to just go along with it when he had his CPU pulled. Using a robot for infiltration has arguably worked before and I take Ysengrin (therefore "Loup") as a dogged strategist rather than a brilliant one, sticking to what works, but I think either of those possibilities would take too much time and restraint. Disguise or Nubod hijack would be much faster, and with hijcking he doesn't have to maintain a fictitious identity long if he jumps from Nubody to Nubody. |
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Post by justhalf on Jan 25, 2022 6:22:45 GMT
That explains his attraction to Annie I guess Not necessarily? You probably didn't mean it this way, but the implication in your statement is that he wouldn't have been attracted to Annie otherwise, which we have no reason to assume. At least in Bayesian probability, having another variable which gives a high prior to an event can be said as an explanation. In this case the probability of random person falling for Annie is something, but the probability for Loup falling for Annie is very high. So knowing that it is actually Loup makes the event much less "surprising" (since the probability of happening is higher), and so kinda "explains" the event. (Don't take this personally, I was just trying to give another perspective on how saying that the statement doesn't imply that Annie will absolutely not be loved) |
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Post by justhalf on Jan 25, 2022 6:28:11 GMT
You did miss this, when she first meets Loup he confesses his love, asks her to move in and takes that shape of a man and women in an attempt to woo her. I read that as: 1. Loup being deceptive, and bad at it. 2. A love that is Platonic in nature, not an attraction. The confession can be said as a joke or non-serious, but I definitely wouldn't call it deception, since Loup was shown to be intentionally exaggerating his expression. Also, since Loup transformed into (handsome and pretty) human form to somehow (albeit jokingly) try to match Annie preference, I would say that it (the joke confession) wasn't intended to be platonic. Also, Loup used words like "my love". Finally, the part that gave some seriousness into this otherwise seemingly joke confession is when Loup was enraged and said "Ysengrin love for you is real!", which when Annie pointed out the present tense in it, Loup didn't deny it. But all that said, there is indeed still some joke component in Loup's expression of love so far (except the enraged part), so take the love/crush with a grain of salt, though it will still be in character for Loup to continue the joke even in Jerrek's body. |
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Post by drmemory on Jan 25, 2022 7:18:32 GMT
You know, if I had superpowers, like being able to look into the ether, I'd like use them all the time. Just sayin'.
Especially if I knew there were some sort of god-like creature hiding nearby! But really, I think just curiosity about what the NP look like in the ether would cause me to take a peek anyway. Does Annie totally lack curiosity, or what???
We've seen her use her ether-vision in the court in the past, like when she tried to spy on Renard (poorly) a long time ago, so it isn't like the court is surrounded by a power-suppressing null field. Also when the two Annies checked each other out right after Forest Annie returned. |
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"I AM the ocean and everything it may contain", even if that happens to include a forest god!
