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Post by eyemyself on Jul 8, 2024 19:01:00 GMT
Omega seems to have some serious consent issues. Yeah, she does. |
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Post by Igniz on Jul 8, 2024 22:47:23 GMT
Omega tried to sell the "put one's abilities in the service of others" and "the suffering of one for the benefit of many" speech, but it all came down as a mere façade in true political fashion, with her line of "I just want to live" evidencing her as egotistical, selfish and arrogant, only thinking in her self-preservation. Omega is giving me "habituated to being the smartest person in the room?" vibes, which I suspect may be her fatal flaw. [...] she seems to mostly react to [Annie] as thought it's a fun diversion rather than a serious threat to her plans. That, as well as the fact that, by assuming the body of an NP, she falls under Kat's jurisdiction, who has been officially recognized as the keeper of those souls. Both things, along with her soon-to-be (but still apparent) kidnapping of Tony, may lead to her downfall—and, maybe, that of the Court's plans as well. |
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Post by mturtle7 on Jul 8, 2024 23:45:35 GMT
Narratively, I think that's the most likely next step. Annie can't resolve this conflict if the adults resolve it for her. That, and Annie will have a hard time resolving the situation if Omega isolates her from everyone who could help her. Because while Omega is acting very smug and contrarian I don't think she's hostile or malicious. She likes Annie because she's interesting, and she likes Anthony because he reminds her of her love. So I don't think she's thinking of hostages, just "we want different things and I'm going to try and make sure I get my thing even if I have to sabotage your attempts at getting your thing, but I'm not going to harm you." Yeah, that's pretty much how I see this too. She's not really the type to take a hostage right off the bat when things break down, because that would put too much of the focus onto her. She doesn't want to be the villain here, she just wants to be the audience! So she'll exert the exact minimum amount of effort to interfere and push things the way she wants them to go, then pretend that didn't really count as interference, and cheerfully go right back to watching events unfold. |
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Post by drmemory on Jul 9, 2024 4:12:10 GMT
Even though she's being beaten emotionally by Annie, she's still going to try and find out how the bubble is affecting others. She already knows one of the NP is dead because of it. But, hey, she can form her own body now so it's a fair trade, I guess. She does, and she could (somewhat) justifiably blame it on Annie. But the thing is, she's at least 100 years old, probably a lot more (Tom wasn't specific about when her earlier history happened so we don't know exactly). I mention this to point out that she's seen a LOT of people live their lives, from birth to death. I'm certain she has a very different perspective on things than we do. Probably more similar to that of Coyote or one of the psychopomps, if I had to guess. The fact that she wants to see the court succeed after all she's seen over the years makes me think we don't know enough about them. This is the court's fault of course - they are quite secretive - which is why I'm so excited that Omega is actually telling us stuff about them, apparently honestly!
Omega knows how much evil and good the court has done, which, and this is an important point, WE DO NOT. We know of one evil thing that Diego did. Was this typical of what the others in the court did in his era? How about over the decades or centuries? Was it a matter of policy, or was Diego just a dick? The others involved seemed to think it was a little sketchy if I remember right. I remember others questioning parts of the plan, and whether it specifically had to be done the way it was and whether it had to use Jeanne... We also know Aata and company tried to steal Coyote's power. What we don't know is how much the court has done over the years that is unambiguously evil and how many people they've helped and in what ways. Heck, we don't even really know why they want to go to a world without ether - we have Shell's theory on that but even she admits she doesn't know a lot about what the court is up to.
I don't feel qualified to judge Omega based only on what we know so far. Is she perfect? No. Neither is Annie. Neither am I.
Is she justified in the way she's thinking about Zimmy? Probably not, but I have to wonder what led her to think that way, given her huge knowledge base and lack of practical interpersonal experience. The thing to worry about here is Coyote and the ether - we still don't really know Coyote's plan nor why said plan exists. Omega and the court may be making decisions based on faulty and incomplete information, thanks to our favorite agent of chaos. 
Consider this - if Coyote is doing what he's doing because the courts plan will, say, destroy all life on the planet, then nothing Omega is doing and nothing that happens to any of the individuals we know and love really matters that much, relatively speaking. But we don't know that any more than we know what the court has done over the years. I don't see how it's ok for Coyote to trick and manipulate everyone for goals he hasn't revealed but it's a huge deal for Omega to try to get a life, while being honest about it. Is he trying to save the world, or what?
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Post by drmemory on Jul 9, 2024 4:37:21 GMT
BTW, lest you be thinking Omega is taking hostages or tricking people or whatever, please allow me to remind you of how we got where we are.
Annie (and Renard) figured out there was something funny about the dark haired girl. Annie confronted her, while she was walking around looking pretty happy to be alive. Omega tried to escape! Annie got sucked along because she wouldn't let go. When she told Omega she just wanted to help her friend, Omega actually helped her, and took her to Robot, and helped with that situation as well. Then Annie tried to find out what else she could do, and while Omega couldn't take her to Coyote or Zimmy, she could take her to most of her friends or Tony. Omega got excited to meet Tony and took her there.
Since then, she's been answering questions like no court member we've ever seen before. She hasn't threatened anyone or done anything bad that I can see. Annie is assuming that the distortion is bad for Zimmy, without real evidence, and she doesn't like Omega's opinion on this. Seems easily resolvable - find and ask Zimmy, and if there is an actual problem, deal with it.
So far, Omega has done nothing bad to anyone, as far as we know. Quite the opposite - she's been quite forthcoming and helpful, and clear about what she wants. Which is to help the court finish their plans and to keep her body. As far as I can see, she hasn't tried to trick anyone into doing anything nor even lied. Despite Renard's comment about Omega showing her true colors, I'd say she's been showing them all along.
Honestly, I haven't decided if I like her or not. I just think Annie is jumping to conclusions without even exploring options. Fire headed girl has a temper!
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Post by Sky Schemer on Jul 9, 2024 4:59:41 GMT
So far, Omega has done nothing bad to anyone, as far as we know. I think you are misunderstanding the reactions on here. People don't dislike Omega because she's done something wrong. People dislike her because she's a horrible person. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Jul 9, 2024 10:04:16 GMT
I'm not sure if Omega is a bad person or not but I do believe she is manipulative, she'll do whatever it takes to survive and assist the Court, and she doesn't respect other people's autonomy. That last part may be because she doesn't believe in and/or understand the concept because of her unique perspective, or it may be because she's a complete sack of crap. I'm not sure Anthony's a hostage as such; I think there's a decent chance Omega isn't as aware of how things around Antimony have been working as we readers are and she might think that Anthony is the one who built the Noobs. Even if not, she may be about to bwip Anthony away to convince him to help her without Antimony around to provide another point of view on what their priorities are, and if he's more inclined to help because he's nervous about being elsewhere in the distortion so much the better. If she does know the score she may be planning to leverage Anthony to convince Kat to help her make her a new permanent body, and again if there's some intimidation going on that will help her get a "yes" she is almost certainly okay with that. However, if she is planning on taking Anthony into the distortion to maroon him there as a hostage or arrange a meeting with Surma so that he'll hopefully become an ally in keeping the distortion going, those would be douchebag moves.
[edit] Like almost every human on the planet, I expect Omega believes that her motives are solid gold and she uses the methods that she must. She is probably telling the truth on this page when she describes what she thought and what her immediate motives are and is leaving that as a final thought before doing whatever she's about to do in the hope it will make Antimony moderate her response. (Hey, I'm about to totally transport your dad somewhere against his will but I have like double-good reasons for it, yaknow!) We can infer that Omega thought that she could convince Antimony and Anthony or at least hamstring them with doubt and confusion (though she says she should've known better) which makes me think Omega actually doesn't know much about Antimony after she fell from the bridge, she's making assumptions and inferences. [/edit]
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Post by silicondream on Jul 9, 2024 11:31:26 GMT
Possibilities: 1. Omega is lying about all of this, and is evil. I don't think that is the case - she's too open and blunt. She's about as well-socialized as Annie, actually. Maybe a little less so, even though much older - her actual experience talking to actual people while being a person is incredibly limited. Anyway, I think she's telling the truth as she sees it. 2. Omega is being misled by the court. They are evil. This seems more possible than the first possibility. We know that some court members have done some evil things (e.g. Jeanne and her lover). That doesn't mean that the court is entirely or even predominantly evil. 3. The court itself is being misled. Either by external entities (like the ones that tricked Tony) or by Coyote. Who knows? Personally, I think it's likely to be: 4. Omega is neither lying nor misled; she's factually correct, at least as much as any other character we've met. The Court has done more good than harm on the human level, its future plans are likely to do yet more good, and the distortion is a net benefit for the sentients nearby. The last point is particularly easy to argue. Recreating the Forest doesn't just help the elves, it helps all the other beings displaced by Loup's war: fairies and animals and Dover Demons and whatnot. That's thousands of sentient lives. Annie objected that the distortion's Forest is "all illusion," but when has that ever not been the case? The Forest was always a manifestation of the local deities, whether Loup or Coyote or his predecessors. Zimmy is simply the newest addition to the pantheon. And speaking of, we know that Zimmy's issues are worsened by depleting the ether around her, and temporarily relieved by ether-charged rain. Now she's in some kinda weird symbiosis with two genuine etheric nature gods. It is entirely possible that she feels better than ever before. Heck, maybe she can be the new Forest's rain goddess. As for the rest of the distortion, Kat's area seems safe enough, so that's the New People taken care of. Aata's probably turned his area into a Pure Land-style paradise where Shell and other humans can shelter. Sam died, sucks for Sam, but he didn't seem that bothered by dying. Besides, it was proximity to Annie and her bad memories that killed him. Most "normal" people in the distortion may actually be in less danger, because they have fewer traumas and less etheric power to manifest them. Obviously there are some particularly nasty areas, but the original Forest had its danger zones too. Even monsters need somewhere to live. I don't think the resolution's going to be as easy as "Omega's lying/deluded and the distortion sucks and the Court sucks so get rid of them all." Annie's probably going to need to make a hard choice. …also, 5. Omega's being economical with the truth to deceive the Court's masters, not to deceive Annie. This close to the Star Ocean, she's probably under surveillance like everyone else. Why not announce loudly that she loves the Court and everything it stands for and would never interfere with its plans? Related to this possibility, I can imagine that Omega's true allegiance might be to the Court that's staying behind, not the one that's leaving. All the ether-gifted humans and the Foley kids and the New People are still around, and they're all sympathetic to the Court's ideals. With the human supremacists off-planet, and Kat steadily gaining knowledge and power, it would be easy to reform a more diverse and egalitarian Court. Then they can rescue Zimmy, if she needs rescuing, and if it's worth losing the new Forest and all. The fact that she wants to see the court succeed after all she's seen over the years makes me think we don't know enough about them. This is the court's fault of course - they are quite secretive - which is why I'm so excited that Omega is actually telling us stuff about them, apparently honestly! It's partly the Court's fault, but it's also Annie's fault. We readers follow her perspective and the perspectives of her friends, and Annie doesn't really know or care about ordinary humans. When she was small, she socialized with psychopomps instead of the human staff, patients or visitors at the hospital. At the Court, she ignored her classes, made almost no baseline human friends, and took a job that meant she'd mostly be working with nonhumans in the Forest. Her interactions with ordinary humans, like the lower-level Shadow Men and the containment suit folks, are almost entirely antagonistic—and we've never seen her try to foster a closer or friendlier relationship with them. Annie will put tons of work into figuring out Coyote or befriending Ysengrin in between dodging his murder attempts, but regular people don't interest her enough for that. Well, unless they're already dead. The Court could be doing a ton of wonderful things for a ton of people, and Annie would never really know. Kat probably knows a little more, since she's always been academically and professionally involved (and was close to Paz), and that's why she tends to be a bit more sympathetic to the Court perspective. Almost certainly not. Sir Young had to browbeat the upper echelon into going along with it, and then covered it up because it would have been shocking to the Court as a whole. The Artilleryman refused to participate and left in disgust. Diego himself was racked with guilt over it, and probably would not have gone along with Sir Young in the first place if he wasn't blinded by jealousy. I think Annie would have run into a lot more vengeful ghosts and things if the Court was doing that stuff on the regular. And let us recall that Annie is extremely imperfect, from the perspective of many, many people. The Court thinks she's a screwup, the elves think she's a screwup, Red thinks she's a selfish manipulator, Jones and Eglamore have called her out several times, and the Donlans just…refrain from judgment. (Which was less than ideal when one of them was her homeroom teacher.) Almost the only people who have thought carefully and decided that Annie is genuinely good at her job are Kat and Tony—who are both geniuses, but also crazy biased. (Oh, and Ysengrin approved of her mediation style. But that was mostly "good job terrifying people and kicking ass.") Omega tried to sell the "put one's abilities in the service of others" and "the suffering of one for the benefit of many" speech, but it all came down as a mere façade in true political fashion, with her line of "I just want to live" evidencing her as egotistical, selfish and arrogant, only thinking in her self-preservation. That seems like a…maximally uncharitable interpretation, especially since Omega's very next sentence was "And I want the Court to succeed." Is Zimmy "egotistical, selfish and arrogant" because it bothers her that (as she believes) Annie and Kat are trying to kill her? Healthy people value their own lives. I think Omega said "I just want to live" to put a human face on her argument. Annie's been ignoring the big picture in favor of "you need to drop everything and help this one person I care about," which is the same thing she did several years ago to Zimmy herself, and did again with Jeanne. Omega's simply pointing out that she's also a person with desires and needs, deserving the same consideration as Zimmy, and so is everyone else inside the distortion. The big picture is made up of a whole lot of little pictures. Honestly, it seems like Omega sees this as a teachable moment for Annie. She accepts that Annie has a different set of values than herself, but she has no reason to change her mind until Annie brings her new data or finds a hole in her logic. That's how scientists do. Oh yes, and while I'm being charitable: Omega might be absconding with Tony simply so she can have a real conversation with him! After all, he can't leave his mind cage while Annie and Renard are around. If she wants to know what he really thinks and feels about the current situation, she needs to take him somewhere more...private. |
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Post by Hatredman on Jul 9, 2024 14:57:55 GMT
3. The court itself is being misled. Either by external entities (like the ones that tricked Tony) or by Coyote. Who knows? I'm sure there are other possibilities. Let's not forget that transparent person from the beach meeting. Who are they? Are they future Kat? Future Tony? Future Omega? Future Gamma? Someone else? Whoever they are, I bet they are the entity misleading the court. |
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Post by TBeholder on Jul 9, 2024 19:57:22 GMT
Omega is giving me "habituated to being the smartest person in the room?" vibes, which I suspect may be her fatal flaw. She's had centuries of knowing what everyone is going to do and being able to predict everything vs. the relatively infinitesimal time Annie has been around creating chaos in her predictions - which she seems to mostly react to as thought it's a fun diversion rather than a serious threat to her plans. And even more to the point, how much Omega really had to think, when she knew all the answers? |
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Post by Sky Schemer on Jul 9, 2024 23:13:54 GMT
I'm not sure if Omega is a bad person or not but I do believe she is manipulative, she'll do whatever it takes to survive and assist the Court, and she doesn't respect other people's autonomy. Sounds like a horrible person to me. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Jul 10, 2024 7:58:11 GMT
I'm not sure if Omega is a bad person or not but I do believe she is manipulative, she'll do whatever it takes to survive and assist the Court, and she doesn't respect other people's autonomy. Sounds like a horrible person to me. She probably is, though I'm waiting a bit to see if something else happens. Will Omega display a redeeming feature or some sort of limit to what she will do? This is a weird situation and the stakes are high. I've been trying to analogize the situation to something possible in real life so I can figure out how I'd feel in Omega's place and examine the ethics involved... and so far I haven't been able to. There's too much etheric stuff going on. It's true that people are never at their best under stress... but I think it's also true that you see who people really are when they're under pressure. "At their best" usually means showing others the face they want others to see. My guess is that Omega right now wants to retrieve the literal brain-in-a-jar that's all that's left of her and have someone build her a real artificial body rather than trying to finagle her current existence in the distortion into something permanent (there's implications there but I'll go into them later in another thread). She wants to live, that's understandable, though it should be remembered that her brain-in-a-jar status is the result of her own choices whereas Zeta's situation is largely not the result of Zeta's choices. |
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Post by TBeholder on Jul 10, 2024 12:28:04 GMT
but it all came down as a mere façade in true political fashion, with her line of "I just want to live" evidencing her as egotistical, selfish and arrogant, only thinking in her self-preservation. |
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Post by Sky Schemer on Jul 10, 2024 16:02:08 GMT
She probably is, though I'm waiting a bit to see if something else happens. Will Omega display a redeeming feature or some sort of limit to what she will do? Even terrible people can do good things. And we've certainly learned a little bit about why she is the way she is. There is obviously more to her than just being the antisocial villain of the moment. |
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Post by eyemyself on Jul 10, 2024 16:37:05 GMT
Omega tried to sell the "put one's abilities in the service of others" and "the suffering of one for the benefit of many" speech, but it all came down as a mere façade in true political fashion, with her line of "I just want to live" evidencing her as egotistical, selfish and arrogant, only thinking in her self-preservation. Omega is giving me "habituated to being the smartest person in the room?" vibes, which I suspect may be her fatal flaw. [...] she seems to mostly react to [Annie] as thought it's a fun diversion rather than a serious threat to her plans. That, as well as the fact that, by assuming the body of an NP, she falls under Kat's jurisdiction, who has been officially recognized as the keeper of those souls. Both things, along with her soon-to-be (but still apparent) kidnapping of Tony, may lead to her downfall—and, maybe, that of the Court's plans as well. Excellent point! And it directly connects to Zimmy’s prophecy that Annie will kill Loup and Kat will kill Zimmy using Omega. Thwarting that prophecy w/Kat choosing to spare Zimmy instead of Omega at Annie’s behest could be what the Norns were referring to when they said Kat’s friendship with Annie would change the whole world. |
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Post by pyradonis on Jul 11, 2024 18:15:49 GMT
And let us recall that Annie is extremely imperfect, from the perspective of many, many people. The Court thinks she's a screwup, the elves think she's a screwup, Red thinks she's a selfish manipulator, Jones and Eglamore have called her out several times, and the Donlans just…refrain from judgment. (Which was less than ideal when one of them was her homeroom teacher.) The only elf I can think of who said something along that line is Khepi, and that was unreasonable AF back then too. Coyote had orchestrated everything from the beginning to the end, and Loup had forced Annie to do stuff, but sure, Khepi claims that everything was the fault of Annie doing "too much meddlin'".
Actually the last time we saw any tree elves, they were very happy with Annie, believing she was somehow responsible for the new Forest they found themselves in. Wrong again, sure, but they're definitely not thinking Annie's a screwup.
And what do Red's hypocritical accusations count? I'm not going into that because there was half a chapter in the comic itself dealing with that.
Jones and Eglamore have called her out several times, so what? They're adults, Annie is a teenager. You shouldn't expect any person to be "perfect", and certainly not any adolescent person. And the last times Eglamore turned up he was gladly working together with Annie, even sending Parley to get her when Loup showed himself.
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Post by silicondream on Jul 12, 2024 6:39:35 GMT
And let us recall that Annie is extremely imperfect, from the perspective of many, many people. The Court thinks she's a screwup, the elves think she's a screwup, Red thinks she's a selfish manipulator, Jones and Eglamore have called her out several times, and the Donlans just…refrain from judgment. (Which was less than ideal when one of them was her homeroom teacher.) The only elf I can think of who said something along that line is Khepi, and that was unreasonable AF back then too. Khepi was speaking for almost all the elves. She said, "You know the others won't be talkin' to you," and the Annies sadly concurred. Idra was the only one to speak on Annie's behalf. And Khepi was right about that; she just didn't know the details of the meddling. The only reason Loup even exists is that Annie crippled the Court's defenses by freeing Jeanne, in response to which Coyote granted Ysengrin his strength, correctly anticipating that Ysengrin would use it to attack the now-vulnerable Court. And the reason Loup threw the elves out of the Forest is that the Annies told him they were needed to find the Lake Water, then pissed him off with a lecture on how he should be more like Ysengrin. Of course these things are also the fault of the gods involved, but the inscrutability and destructive power of gods is why mortals are supposed to be very very careful when dealing with them. Annie spent most of the comic doing things that risked upsetting the fragile peace between the Court and the Forest, and it's not surprising that the numbers finally came up against her. They credited the Court as a whole for the new Forest, not just Annie. They addressed her and the New People collectively as "Court", and then mingled enthusiastically with the NPs. Those particular elves probably didn't even recognize Annie herself, because "Court" is the label they use when they don't yet know someone's name.I don't expect her to be perfect, or anywhere near it. But for that exact reason, when she's in a dispute with Omega—someone with incredible powers of clairvoyance and prediction—I also don't assume that she's right. Omega may or may not be lying or malicious, but she almost certainly has a better grasp of the facts of the matter and the consequences of potential actions than Annie does. Well, yeah. She's the only Forest Medium and, up to that point, the only human that Loup didn't violently hate. Eglamore had Parley bring Renard too; any port in a storm. (Unless Loup told Eglamore to summon them both, because they were the ones he wanted to punish.) And then Eggs was appalled to learn that she and her friends had been antagonizing Loup by continuing to try to capture him, even after the last attempt ended with the destruction of the Forest and half the Court. Annie herself characterized that as "my mistake," though Kat certainly shares the blame. I did say "thought carefully." Armless Frog Dude passed on a bunch of ridiculously exaggerated stories about Annie, which *Snuffle* immediately /doubted. The only accurate story of a medium's great accomplishments was *Snuffle*'s, and that was about Smitty. I'm not saying that most sentients don't like Annie, or that she hasn't earned various people's gratitude. But the only arenas in which she's consistently competent are combat, charming etheric beings, and guiding the dead. She's not, yet, a reliable general problem-solver. *Edit* I should perhaps add that I'm unhealthily addicted to advocating novel points of view, and Omega is the latest representative of such. I'll probably hate her like everyone else in three weeks. |
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Post by TBeholder on Jul 12, 2024 8:11:08 GMT
Anyhow, repeating this suggests that Meg’s idea of the distortion is the fun playtime not for real, then back in the box when it ends.
She does not take it half as seriously as she should. When will someone suggest (at last) to count Annies? :]
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Post by drmemory on Jul 21, 2024 17:35:47 GMT
So far, Omega has done nothing bad to anyone, as far as we know. I think you are misunderstanding the reactions on here. People don't dislike Omega because she's done something wrong. People dislike her because she's a horrible person. She doesn't seem that bad to me. Certainly no worse than, say, Aata or the Headmaster.
I've been sticking up for her partially due to that, and partially as an experiment. I strongly disliked Aata (evil buddha) from his first appearance, and a lot of people disagreed strongly and stridently. So this time, I thought I'd give Omega the benefit of the doubt... and got a similar reaction.
Sigh.
If nothing else, she's far more understandable - we still don't know the backstory of Llanwellyn or Aata or even Zimmy. We get little glimpses into what they do, but have no idea why they are the way they are. I'd think people would be more sympathetic to Omega. She's had a hard life.
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