[2580] "You will find it IN the Court."

[imaginaryfriend]

"Loup. Looooup. Use the force, Loup."

[madjack]

"Perhaps even Ysengrin will help you find what you seek!"

This might explain why his disguise has the same green eyes as Ys had. He's either trying to use it to evoke Ys's memory in Annie, or is flat out letting a part of Ys guide his actions while in said disguise, or something.

Edit: This only twigged when rationalising the above out: the robot's and Ys' eye colours are the same. 0, 255, 0. Perfect misdirection from Tom, there.

[imaginaryfriend]

I still think "Loup" basically is Ysengrin, just with Coyote's power and a few tweaks he thought would make him an ideal god. The trouble is that the humans still won't acknowledge him properly (what he thinks is proper, anyway) and chief among those is Antimony, which I think means that Antimony will be the key (though he may need interactions with others in order for him to come to that conclusion). For him to even get a shot at getting what he wants "Loup" has got to go. That and the power of Coyote is too much for him anyway.

[aline]

Feb 2, 2022 8:15:54 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

I still think "Loup" basically is Ysengrin, just with Coyote's power and a few tweaks he thought would make him an ideal god.

I don't. Ysengrin had many flaws but he was honest even in his brutality. Straightforward. He didn't play games. He either ate you or didn't. This whole "let's split Annie in two to confuse everybody and amuse myself while using it as pressure to force people into advancing my agenda", that was very much a Coyote kind of mind game.

Coyote told Loup he was "less than the sum of his parts" and I feel like Loup is inferior to both Coyote and Ysengrin on pretty much every metric that matters.

[imaginaryfriend]

I think he regressed because he's drunk on power. Nearly all the limitations he once had are gone. It's like he's a pup again (though I'm unsure he was ever a pup). He says/does things that are unnecessary, almost silly, because he can.

[bicarbonat]

Somewhere, the Headmaster is doctoring up his Metamucil with Glenlivet like he has nary a care in the world.

Buddy, you've got a big storm coming.

[Jelly Jellybean]

Loup seeks for the reason Coyote wishes Loup to die?  Maybe Coyote wishes Loup would die because Loup includes the parts of both Coyote and Ysengrin that are driving some of Coyote's beloved humans away.  Maybe Coyote thinks that the humans will stay if the humans think Coyote and Ysengrim are gone.

[Ophel]

Hmm... Do you think when he says "I want you to die", Coyote refers to not just Loup, not just Coyote and Ys, but his self as, and the idea of, a deific entity of the ether?

Do you think Coyote wants Annie to kill him so that he can just return to "normal", to the mundane?

Maybe, do you think, that on some level, he agrees the Shadow Men wanting to make a place without Ether?

Why would he agree? Maybe he just thinks "it's more 'fun' to be mundane"? Maybe he's the other angle of Shell's argument that "it's not fair"?

I can't articulate exactly what I'm trying to say. But what I can say is that, well, I certainly think it's quite Coyote of Coyote to think like this.

Why then did he not let the Shadow Men capture him? Because of all the following:

1. They're being disrespectful to Coyote and he's none to keen to being disrespected, of course.

2. Coyote doesn't like it that a plan goes smoothly just like that. That's no fun.

3. Coyote definitely doesn't want to end the fun just like that. This episode with Loup is a halaballoo Coyote hasn't had experience to for centuries!

4. Coyote is teaching everyone that they really shouldn't just mess with, or underestimate, someone with literal powers of mythic gods. Coyote can do far worse than let just let Loup go loose.

5. Hahah!

[sleepcircle]

Feb 2, 2022 10:39:44 GMT bicarbonat said:

Somewhere, the Headmaster is doctoring up his Metamucil with Glenlivet like he has nary a care in the world.

Buddy, you've got a big storm coming.

that is one of the funniest things i've read on this forum in a long time

[maxptc]

I wonder if Coyetes plan is to have Loup figure out what the Court's full plan is, then sacrifice himself so the Court has its massive source of ether. Why I don't know, but why else would Loup willing die?

[fia]

If Ysengrin will help Loup figure out why Coyote wants him to die, it will have something to do with either love (of Antimony or Coyote or something), or faith (in himself?). Is that too trite a theme for Tom? I don't know. Friendship is a key driving force in the comic otherwise, and love has featured more than once. I'd be surprised if there was never any point made about the significance of faith. Coyote gets his power from that – call it superstition or belief or what have you.

I don't think humans have to believe in Loup for Loup to have omniscience or omnipotence or anything like that, but perhaps it matters whether he thinks of himself, now having all these powers, as limited or not, and whether perhaps what he's missing is something like empathy or the ability to take up the perspectives of others (not literally? but maybe that's what missing the body-snatching ability symbolizes in some respects). If he's fundamentally flawed and cannot overcome that lack, then it makes sense that even Coyote, his progenitor, would prefer him to die.

[csj]

It is what ysegrin thought coyote should've been that makes the difference

[drmemory]

Loup sure does look angry on this page! Deranged even! I guess he wasn't pretending at that point. Looking forward to see how he reacted to Coyote saying what he said. Did he immediately calm down, take control, and put on a show while setting up his move to the court? Or what?

Interesting that Coyote didn't mention to Loup that he intended Annie to kill him. Maybe we'll get one more page, showing the rest of what he said? At this point, he doesn't seem to know about the dagger and hasn't been told that Coyote wants Annie to use it to kill him (them, really). More to come, I'm sure!

Perhaps we are about to see Loup let Ysengrin out and ask him for help.

[saardvark]

Feb 2, 2022 10:11:19 GMT aline said:

Feb 2, 2022 8:15:54 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

I still think "Loup" basically is Ysengrin, just with Coyote's power and a few tweaks he thought would make him an ideal god.

I don't. Ysengrin had many flaws but he was honest even in his brutality. Straightforward. He didn't play games. He either ate you or didn't. This whole "let's split Annie in two to confuse everybody and amuse myself while using it as pressure to force people into advancing my agenda", that was very much a Coyote kind of mind game.

Coyote told Loup he was "less than the sum of his parts" and I feel like Loup is inferior to both Coyote and Ysengrin on pretty much every metric that matters.

Yes.  And ultimately, it looks like Loup may have been limited to be exactly what Coyote wanted him to be, and no more.  Meaning, some of Coyote's powers, wisdom, control were purposely secreted away, and Loup never allowed to absorb them.  So Loup is, in the end, an unruly plaything/construct of our semi-deceased Forest god: an enraged, deranged Ysengrin decorated with fragmentary shards of an incomplete Coyote.

[imaginaryfriend]

"Loup" is also (more or less) Ysengrin's ideal; he's (more or less) what Ysengrin always aspired to be while being subordinate to Coyote and thought he'd achieved when he got Coyote's power (more or less).

And that's another reason "Loup" needs to die.

[speedwell]

It occurs to me that Loup is designed carefully to be the diametrical opposite of Renard. Renard is an adult, socially adept, relatively calm and quiet, insightful, rational, self-controlled, protective, and capable of both love and remorse. Loup is selfish, violent, childish, lustful, wild, irrational, demanding, and incapable of the slightest bit of empathy. Is Renard what Loup is being told to seek within the Court? Will some sort of contest between them form part of the end game? Or will Annie restore Coyote's tooth and in that way give Renard the chance to take Loup's body? There are many ways a tension between Renard and Loup could play out.

[drmemory]

The more this goes on, the more confused I am about who/what Loup is. The theory seems to be that by killing and eating Loup, Ysengrin was able to take all of his power, at least all that he hadn't given away. A few of his memories had been hidden away, by Coyote himself, but the only actual power that didn't come along seems to be the body taking one - which frankly doesn't seem that important, relatively speaking.

Coyote gave Ysengrin his strength, pretty much expecting what was going to happen. I'm sure he understood what was going to happen far better than we do even now! So Ysengrin used that to attack Coyote and eat him. Consume him, whatever. And that gave him Coyote's powers, and memories. Not too far out of line from other stuff in mythology really.

Where I get lost is, why did this cause the creation of a new personality?  Why Loup, instead of:

1. Ysengrin, with Coyote's powers and memories added

2. Coyote, basically overwriting the less forceful Ysengrin

Instead of either of these we got Loup, who claims to be a new creature.  In fact, he is!  Even Coyote says this!  But why???  Even Ysengrin and Renard both acknowledged that Loup was a new creature, though Renard thought he had more Coyote in him than Ysengrin.

I can think of very little that has happened that is similar at all to this - where two entities combined and created a new one.

1. Forest Annie + Court Annie = Super Annie (or however you care to think of current Annie)

2. Pipe robot + Loup (or maybe Coyote, depending on what happened and when) = Jerrik

I"m probably overthinking this, but what else is new? 

[imaginaryfriend]

What is personhood? Ysengrin was having his memories stolen to keep him on the track Coyote wanted so when he got Coyote's power (more or less) and most of his memories he also got some of himself back. Before that, he was still Ysengrin though he could not have interacted with Antimony in the more positive ways he did without Coyote forcing it. I would also argue that just by existing as a superior canine Coyote was something that defined Ys' existence and place in the world. After he got Coyote's power he no longer had the role that he did before; he was free to be whatever he wished and additionally had the ability to modify himself, therefore I'm inclined to say that "Loup" is not just a kludge of Ys and Coyote parts but also the result of some conscious mental changes to manifest Ys' ideal of what a dog god should be. However, Ysengrin isn't/wasn't a god. The end result is not stable. The outcome of just Ys eating Coyote would be boringly predictable; I think pre-modification Ys would not have cared about managing the forest (or anything other than his rage, really) and therefore would have been more stable but whatever he does sooner or later he's going to remember that he was Coyote all along. That's why Coyote cultivated his relationship with Antimony and secretly gave her the Tooth. With her as something important to "Loup" (as opposed to just another human who doesn't respect him properly and thus just another thing to rip apart and eat) she's an irritant and an unflattering mirror, a literal and figurative knife pointed right at the heart of "Loup." He knows she's a threat now, which is why he's not confronting her openly and playfully as he did before. As this threat, she's another way things can play out, possibly in a constructive way.

TL;DR: "Loup" is Ysengrin with Coyote's powers and some memories. He is a different person in that he is not Ysengrin or Coyote, but that's only meaningful because since Ys=/=Loup they can be separated. I think Antimony's going to do that literally and he's going to let her but he needs to go through some stuff to get to that point.

[saardvark]

Feb 3, 2022 20:20:22 GMT drmemory said:

The more this goes on, the more confused I am about who/what Loup is. ...
Where I get lost is, why did this cause the creation of a new personality?  Why Loup, instead of:

1. Ysengrin, with Coyote's powers and memories added

2. Coyote, basically overwriting the less forceful Ysengrin

Instead of either of these we got Loup, who claims to be a new creature.  In fact, he is!  Even Coyote says this!  But why???  Even Ysengrin and Renard both acknowledged that Loup was a new creature, though Renard thought he had more Coyote in him than Ysengrin.

I can think of very little that has happened that is similar at all to this - where two entities combined and created a new one.

1. Forest Annie + Court Annie = Super Annie (or however you care to think of current Annie)

2. Pipe robot + Loup (or maybe Coyote, depending on what happened and when) = Jerrik

I"m probably overthinking this, but what else is new? 

Maybe a (very nerdy!) Math/Physics/Engineering analogy will work:

If personalities are thought of as multi-component vectors,  combining them is best thought of mathematically as not a dot product, but a *cross* product.  Meaning, their combination is more complex than simply adding together the components - and not restricted to the plane that the two of them define, but rather is free to head off in an entirely new and different direction.  Combining Ys and Coyote is more than just adding their personality traits together - their combination can interact in complex ways to produce something quite new - and can head of into rather different, even surprising directions.

Think torque.... and apologies for the nerd-out!

[drmemory]

Feb 4, 2022 0:17:26 GMT saardvark said:

Feb 3, 2022 20:20:22 GMT drmemory said:

The more this goes on, the more confused I am about who/what Loup is. ...
Where I get lost is, why did this cause the creation of a new personality?  Why Loup, instead of:

1. Ysengrin, with Coyote's powers and memories added

2. Coyote, basically overwriting the less forceful Ysengrin

Instead of either of these we got Loup, who claims to be a new creature.  In fact, he is!  Even Coyote says this!  But why???  Even Ysengrin and Renard both acknowledged that Loup was a new creature, though Renard thought he had more Coyote in him than Ysengrin.

I can think of very little that has happened that is similar at all to this - where two entities combined and created a new one.

1. Forest Annie + Court Annie = Super Annie (or however you care to think of current Annie)

2. Pipe robot + Loup (or maybe Coyote, depending on what happened and when) = Jerrik

I"m probably overthinking this, but what else is new? 

Maybe a (very nerdy!) Math/Physics/Engineering analogy will work:

If personalities are thought of as multi-component vectors,  combining them is best thought of mathematically as not a dot product, but a *cross* product.  Meaning, their combination is more complex than simply adding together the components - and not restricted to the plane that the two of them define, but rather is free to head off in an entirely new and different direction.  Combining Ys and Coyote is more than just adding their personality traits together - their combination can interact in complex ways to produce something quite new - and can head of into rather different, even surprising directions.

Think torque.... and apologies for the nerd-out!

No worries, quite liked it!

I'm quite sure Ysengrin isn't good at physics.  Wasn't.  Whatever.  So I still have to wonder, usually to myself, what he thought was going to happen.  Would he have done what he did if he had realized he would be replaced or superseded by Loup?

I have to imagine he was expecting something like "Ysengrin + extra power" to result, rather than "Loup".

I feel like Ysengrin had a plan that went awry.  One of the things that went wrong was the rage-inspiring discovery about how Coyote had been stealing so many of his memories for so long, while taunting him.  Until that point, Ysengrin loved Coyote and intended to take his power so he could kill all the humans.

I mean, even here I was still thinking we were seeing Ysengrin with Coyote's powers added.  It wasn't until Loup announced himself that we knew that we weren't seeing Ysengrin with Coyote contained inside him and his hair repaired.  Then here, we see confirmation that Ysengrin thought he was just stealing Coyote's power and knowledge.  Then, on the next page, he says "... Loup took control ...".

So that's what I'm poking at here - what is Loup, and where did he come from?  Unexpected byproduct (cross product?) of what Ysengrin did?  Something created by or caused by Coyote?  Related question: When Ysengrin said "Something is... missing..." and was chomped for his trouble, what was he talking about?  Ysengrin + Coyote - <something> = Loup???

I wonder if maybe Loup isn't entirely a result of Ysengrin killing and consuming Coyote, but rather something else.  What if he was an entity kept captive inside Coyote, released as part of all of this?  Sorry, that one is totally wildspec.