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Post by drmemory on Jun 3, 2022 21:37:13 GMT
While it is true that the Norns said Annie saves Kat from becoming Dark Kat (paraphrased, obviously), I'm not convinced we've seen the actual event happen yet. I really think she's still on that trajectory. Very much so. Also, nice to see Renard actually acting like the adult in the room. Which he is... I dunno if its true they said that. Implied sure, but implications are tricky things I dont always trust in stories, vaguely worded ones even less. Saving herself, better path and major changes to the world isn't the same as saying Annie prevents dark Kat. Maybe she just prevents darkest Kat. Maybe she stops dark Kat before she goes to far. This would definitely make sense with your Kat is still on that path idea, maybe Kat isn't getting "saved" by Annie until she has become mechdemon Kat, and who knows what that saving will truly be. Fair enough. It seemed pretty strongly implied though! Still, I could definitely believe that we aren't at the inflection point yet, the point where Kat gets so bad that Annie has to intervene. Not sure what that will look like, but probably words rather than fire giving how things go around here.
You know, Annie isn't anti-court. She's just nice and tries to help people and other entities. Kat is more technology-focused, but I'm more worried about her discarding ethics in her pursuit of knowledge than actually siding with the court. The most conflict we've seen by far has been between Loup and Annie, and it was all initiated by Loup, up until the court tried to steal his power! In fact, have we seen anyone who is actually anti-court? Worried about, yes, actively opposing... not that I recall?
I feel like I'm heading somewhere with this but can't quite get it to come into focus. Loup knows Coyote wants him to die after acknowledging his plan is awesome, and Annie thinks she is supposed to be the one to kill him (we don't actually know if what Coyote told Loup is the same as what he told Annie!). So Loup is hiding in the court, trying to figure out what Coyote is after. Kat, largely nudged along by Robot, is focused on making ever-more powerful technology, with a bit of ether thrown in, and using it to evolve the robots. The robots worship her as an angel, again largely thanks to Robot. The court, meanwhile, wants to move and not take anyone that uses etheric powers along, and for some reason thinks they need a large amount of etheric energy to accomplish their goals. This is all going to collide, clearly, but I just can't quite see how it fits together. Maybe the predictive AI Omega has a better view of things.
As for Dark Kat, Kat already has saved many of the robots, perhaps most of them, and seems to want to help them further. Not sure why she thinks the court would be onboard with that even if they stayed. So... maybe the big confrontation will be Kat vs. the Court? Once it becomes clear how they feel about the NP thing, and perhaps take action on it. I feel like if the felt she needed to do something really bad or violent to save her "children", she'd definitely do it.
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Post by Runningflame on Jun 4, 2022 3:51:34 GMT
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Post by saardvark on Jun 4, 2022 12:58:10 GMT
Except he is not hating her for herself, for who she really *is*, he's hating her for being a false image/reminder of Surma. Once he gets to know her as an authentically separate, unique person, this hatred melts away. Its more hatred of what Annie reminds him of, his own hubris, failure, inadequacy and horrible loss, rather than Annie herself (tho he is certainly disappointed at her cheating).
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Post by Runningflame on Jun 4, 2022 14:04:28 GMT
Except he is not hating her for herself, for who she really *is*, he's hating her for being a false image/reminder of Surma. Once he gets to know her as an authentically separate, unique person, this hatred melts away. Its more hatred of what Annie reminds him of, his own hubris, failure, inadequacy and horrible loss, rather than Annie herself (tho he is certainly disappointed at her cheating). Yes, and he acted on those feelings in a way that was actively ruining Annie's life, like theonethatgotaway was saying. (Though to be fair, Tony seems to have realized pretty early on that what he was doing was wrong... he just had a really hard time changing his ways.)
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Post by saardvark on Jun 4, 2022 14:20:54 GMT
Except he is not hating her for herself, for who she really *is*, he's hating her for being a false image/reminder of Surma. Once he gets to know her as an authentically separate, unique person, this hatred melts away. Its more hatred of what Annie reminds him of, his own hubris, failure, inadequacy and horrible loss, rather than Annie herself (tho he is certainly disappointed at her cheating). Yes, and he acted on those feelings in a way that was actively ruining Annie's life, like theonethatgotaway was saying. (Though to be fair, Tony seems to have realized pretty early on that what he was doing was wrong... he just had a really hard time changing his ways.) agreed.
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Post by Polyhymnia on Jun 4, 2022 17:11:07 GMT
It might be splitting hairs, but I would say Tony was angry/hateful, and his anger/hate was directed at Annie and because of Annie, but it was not because of who Annie *was* so much as *Annie-the-figure*. In other words, he was angry, and it was directed genuinely at Annie and triggered by Annie (so he can be said to be angry at her), but it wasn’t coming from a sincere belief of “I hate my daughter and she is bad,” but represented an emotional response that conflicted with his cognitive side. A sort of “intellectually, this is my daughter and I should love her and she has done nothing to me to cause these feelings, but emotionally I feel angry at her for not being my wife and being the reason my wife died and looking like my wife.”
Not that that excuses his behavior towards her. Just bringing up that our emotions and emotional reactions can run counter to our values, and it’s possible to feel genuine anger at a person while realizing intellectually, there seems to be no deserved reason for our emotional response, or that our feelings seem disproportionate to the trigger. So he can be angry, and angry at her, and also not have any grudge against her personality, actions, or character, and not *want* to be angry. He felt hate towards her while also knowing there was no justifiable basis for that hate, and regretted it. (Now it’s his responsibility to deal with those feelings in a way that doesn’t hurt her, and I think he’s working on it).
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Post by pyradonis on Jun 6, 2022 13:55:25 GMT
In fact, have we seen anyone who is actually anti-court? Worried about, yes, actively opposing... not that I recall? Ysengrin, I guess, and likely his army. Not that either of those has been around much as of late.
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Post by drmemory on Jun 7, 2022 7:09:22 GMT
In fact, have we seen anyone who is actually anti-court? Worried about, yes, actively opposing... not that I recall? Ysengrin, I guess, and likely his army. Not that either of those has been around much as of late. Ysengrin? Sort of, but I took it as part of his blanket hatred of humans rather than a specific hatred of the court. I may have misinterpreted of course. It seemed like he and Coyote insulted the headmaster a fair amount but it just wasn't as pointed as I would have expected, especially after fighting a war against them! Of course we don't know any details about said war and how it ended... His army though - I'm not sure if they hate humans, like Ysengrin, or the court specifically. Don't know if it matters - I wouldn't want to meet any of them in a dark alley! Or forest...
I find it kind of odd that nobody routinely complains about the court. Not even Annie and her crew, who know what they did to Jeanne. Nor Kat, who knows what Diego was like. In fact, she seems quite happy to benefit from his work. We have seen a little bullying and such, so it's not like there aren't any normal teens around, but the ones we see a lot are incredibly nice. These are some mighty calm and accepting teenagers!
If I were in the court and aware of some of the stuff they did, I don't think I'd be so calm and accepting - I'd be watching my back and plotting my exit strategy. NOT planning to move with them. Might not vent about them much but I certainly wouldn't forget what kind of stuff they are capable of. I'm not real political and not woke at all (nor anti-woke), but I do pay enough attention to the company I work for to make sure they aren't like harvesting souls or funding uprisings or making employees disappear or the like. I'm simply old enough to know that most things blow over and the grass isn't really greener, but also cynical enough to watch out for patterns of really bad behavior.
The only ones I can think of that have even mentioned wanting to escape the court are Arthur and Juliet - their desire to get Arthur a body "close enough" to human to leave and survive outside really seems to be their core motivation. We don't know if they hate the court or dislike it or just want to escape it or what. I think it was a matter of them wanting to stay together and that the court had a policy of not letting robots leave, ever, but I didn't quite catch why staying in the court long-term wasn't a solution.
Thinking about it, I bet the only reason they (Juliette and Arthur) are still here is to protect Kat until she doesn't need it any more, but maybe the whole NP thing derailed their previous plans.
Addendum: The version of Ysengrin inside Loup said something about the court being far worse than he dreamed. Maybe it's as simple as that - nobody understands how bad they are! Only a few know the details of what was done to Jeanne even, and it would be easy to blame that on the old management rather than the current.
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Post by todd on Jun 7, 2022 13:22:39 GMT
Ysengrin? Sort of, but I took it as part of his blanket hatred of humans rather than a specific hatred of the court. I may have misinterpreted of course. It seemed like he and Coyote insulted the headmaster a fair amount but it just wasn't as pointed as I would have expected, especially after fighting a war against them! Of course we don't know any details about said war and how it ended... His army though - I'm not sure if they hate humans, like Ysengrin, or the court specifically. Don't know if it matters - I wouldn't want to meet any of them in a dark alley! Or forest...
I find it kind of odd that nobody routinely complains about the court. Not even Annie and her crew, who know what they did to Jeanne. Nor Kat, who knows what Diego was like. In fact, she seems quite happy to benefit from his work. We have seen a little bullying and such, so it's not like there aren't any normal teens around, but the ones we see a lot are incredibly nice. These are some mighty calm and accepting teenagers!
If I were in the court and aware of some of the stuff they did, I don't think I'd be so calm and accepting - I'd be watching my back and plotting my exit strategy. NOT planning to move with them. Might not vent about them much but I certainly wouldn't forget what kind of stuff they are capable of. I'm not real political and not woke at all (nor anti-woke), but I do pay enough attention to the company I work for to make sure they aren't like harvesting souls or funding uprisings or making employees disappear or the like. I'm simply old enough to know that most things blow over and the grass isn't really greener, but also cynical enough to watch out for patterns of really bad behavior. The only ones I can think of that have even mentioned wanting to escape the court are Arthur and Juliet - their desire to get Arthur a body "close enough" to human to leave and survive outside really seems to be their core motivation. We don't know if they hate the court or dislike it or just want to escape it or what. I think it was a matter of them wanting to stay together and that the court had a policy of not letting robots leave, ever, but I didn't quite catch why staying in the court long-term wasn't a solution. Thinking about it, I bet the only reason they (Juliette and Arthur) are still here is to protect Kat until she doesn't need it any more, but maybe the whole NP thing derailed their previous plans. Addendum: The version of Ysengrin inside Loup said something about the court being far worse than he dreamed. Maybe it's as simple as that - nobody understands how bad they are! Only a few know the details of what was done to Jeanne even, and it would be easy to blame that on the old management rather than the current.
I suspect that what Ysengrin really hated the most wasn't so much humans as the notion that he and his fellow etheric beings were created by human imagination and had no independent existence. But you can't inflict violence on an idea, so he was taking it out on the humans out of frustration. We don't know if the "monstrous inhabitants" of Gillitie Wood were aware of this idea (probably not, Coyote calling it a secret implies that he wasn't sharing it with many people - probably only with Ysengrin and Annie), but I suspect that they had many motives. Grudges over the original quarrel that led to the Court and the Forest being separated. Love of fighting is likely another (I wonder whether a lot of those assaults on the Annan Waters to get slaughtered by Jeanne were really driven, less by hatred of the Court, and more by a desire to pit themselves against Jeanne and display their might - it would have made a great piece of irony if the Court's "Jeanne scheme" had wound up encouraging attacks on the Court in this manner). I think that the Court does a good job of concealing its darker aspects (which, as I've mentioned elsewhere, are largely due to its fear of the Forest - every bad deed the Court committed that we know of - from the murder of Jeanne on down - was connected in some way to its desire to safeguard itself against the Forest. If it had managed to keep on good terms with Gillitie Wood, or had not had the Wood adjacent to itself, would it have stooped as low as it did?). The bulk of the children suspect nothing - and are probably distracted by the surface elements (spacemonaut games, oddball robots, etc. - in the early days of the webcomic, most of us probably thought of the Court as just a fun place, before we started learning about things like what the Court's founders did to Jeanne). It's possible that what discourages those who suspect the truth about the Court from leaving is "Where would they go?" - they may be unfamiliar with the outside world, suspect that it would be hostile to robots or people with etheric talents, and see staying at the Court as the lesser evil.
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