|
Post by fatexx544 on Mar 9, 2009 20:54:16 GMT
The experience is traumatizing because her mother died. Having to lead her to death wouldn't have greatly added to the trauma (on the contrary, speaking to her mother before she left might have lessened that pain).
The reason she is mad is that NO ONE showed up. Annie had been at the hospital for months (perhaps years) and seen almost all the psychopomps numerous times showing up for every last person that died. But none of them even bother to attend Surma's death, when they obviously respect her so much? That hurts.
|
|
|
Post by sebastian on Mar 9, 2009 20:57:31 GMT
WTF!!! I'll never try to speculate about this comic anymore*. I could have never foresee this in a thousand years. *no, not really.
|
|
|
Post by sandjosieph on Mar 9, 2009 21:06:55 GMT
I'm still wondering what Surma's last words to Annie were.
|
|
|
Post by fjodor on Mar 9, 2009 21:22:20 GMT
Maybe Anthony went off to have a serious talk to the chief-psychopomp, if one exists.
I'm actually gonna run over to the questions thread to ask.
Still a bit baffled by today's page.
|
|
|
Post by nevermore on Mar 9, 2009 21:23:49 GMT
Hey... Am i the only one who finds it a little odd that Antimony aparrently left the hospital just after her mother died to join the school, putting her at about 11, but in the scene there of her mother's death, she's a waist high child?
|
|
preus
Full Member
Posts: 246
|
Post by preus on Mar 9, 2009 21:24:32 GMT
'mom'? Is Kat American now?
|
|
|
Post by wombat on Mar 9, 2009 21:31:43 GMT
Hey... Am i the only one who finds it a little odd that Antimony aparrently left the hospital just after her mother died to join the school, putting her at about 11, but in the scene there of her mother's death, she's a waist high child? Yeah, I found that odd too. Maybe it was just to emphasize how young she was.
|
|
gary
Full Member
Posts: 121
|
Post by gary on Mar 9, 2009 21:36:48 GMT
I don't see how carrying your mother to a door when you know she's dead is more traumatic than watching some eagle-faced guy do it. Maybe it makes sense that Annie is angry at the psychopomps, but I don't think it's as horrible as you're all saying. My own feeling is that it's simply something that a ten/eleven year old shouldn't have to deal with. In the same way that cleaning of and disposing the body is something that shouldn't be left to the child. There's a reason why, in real life, adults try to spare children having to face stuff like that. And I do think there's a fundamentally a difference between having to be responsible for Surma's spirit and not fall apart and having the luxury being able to zone out and grieve while someone else deals with the practicalities. I suspect that that's why Annie's so angry. Because she was the one, shortly after a deeply traumatic event, who had to deal with everything in ushering Surma and stuff, and we have no idea how difficult that might be, while the pyschopomps, whose actual job it was, weren't even there. Incidentally, do we know exactly when Anthony left the country? Because if it was around the same time, then ouch.
|
|
|
Post by lingus on Mar 9, 2009 21:41:34 GMT
Chills...
Just... yea.
But as to people's speculations, I'm not convinced people have it right. I think there's something else going on here. I don't think it was simply that Surma was a medium and therefore couldn't be escorted by a biased party. That sounds too... shallow to me. I think it is all intertwined with what happened to Surma, what happened to Anthony, and what happened at the Court, and just... everything. I think everything is interrelated, and that it all goes a lot deeper. It seems everyone is thinking very surface level here... and I think the comic has proven to be anything but.
|
|
|
Post by petrockx on Mar 9, 2009 22:32:14 GMT
Wow, how unexpectedly cruel.
Thus begins a whole new level of speculation regarding why antimony's father isn't around.
Also, this is somewhat off-topic, but I'm wondering if there are any readers out there who have lost either parent at a young age?
|
|
mjh
Full Member
Posts: 179
|
Post by mjh on Mar 9, 2009 22:57:12 GMT
It seems everyone is thinking very surface level here... and I think the comic has proven to be anything but. I have to agree. I’m a getting weary of speculations anyway. Until today, the prevailing theory to explain Annie’s cold, if not outright hostile attitude towards the psychopomps was that Muut (or another guide) had taken Surma away from her, that she had begged him to leave her mother alone, but that Muut had insisted on following the rules, whatever those rules were. This supposedly traumatic experience would have alienated Annie from the psychopomps. This theory lead to one inevitable conclusion: If things had gone the way Annie had wished, the psychopomps would have left Surma alone – to haunt the hospital floors forever, or whatever alternative there was. This, one had to assume, would have spared Annie the trauma. And now it has turned out that this supposedly less traumatic scenario was exactly what had happened. The psychopomps had left Surma alone. And again, everyone is suddenly so sure that this must have been an even worse experience for Annie. Huh? This sudden switch from “Annie would naturally hate the psychopomp who took her mother” to “Of course Annie would hate any psychopomp who did not come for her mother” is going a bit too fast for me.
|
|
|
Post by Shunpike on Mar 9, 2009 23:10:18 GMT
Oh God - no wonder she's so closed up emotionally. How...dismal. (for lack of better words)
The comic has been quite dramatic lately and has revealed more in a couple of chapters than in 6+ of the previous chapters.
edit: Notice how Annie has (basically) the same expression in every panel she's shown in? Hope she isn't on the road to closing up even more than before.
|
|
|
Post by King Mir on Mar 9, 2009 23:16:27 GMT
First of all: Wow. Well done Tom.Totally unexpected, yet it totally fits. Second, this puts this page in a new light. Previously I and probably most others assumed that Annie called Ketrak "immensely busy as always" because as an insect guide he is busier than your average psychopomp. But this revelation suggests another possible reason why she said that. She could be expressing an anger at Ketrek specifically for being too busy when see needed a psychopomp. If true, this implies that the excuse the psychopomps gave for not being their for her mother could be contorted to mean that they were too busy. Now I think it unlikely that they were actually too busy, after all as far as we know there was no war or major plague going on and therefore no so the deaths that day would not be more numerous then any other. The theory that I put forth is that the psychopomps did not come because not one of them was immediately notified of Surma's death, as would happen if a person died within each of their jurisdictions. If one had happened to show up it would not have been the rules to help, but they were all else where. This can be contorted to suggest that they were too busy to stop by at that vital time. And that is why Annie says "I'm sure you are immensely busy" Ketrak. It's an instinctive jab at the psychopomp for not being there for her mother. Only instinctive because she does know that Ketrak would never have been one to escort a human anyway. Yet Annie still associates guiding with Ketrak, so the instinct is their. This is supported by the bruskness of her greating and farewell to Ketrak. Though her smile in explaining to kat diminishes the argument. Third, people keep talking as if the reason that no guide cam was because Surma was a medium. I disagree. A meduim as described by Jones is a mediator between the Court and the Forest. It is an official court position. Such a responsibility should have nothing to do with psychopomps, and I suspect previous court mediums did have someone come for them. Rather I suspect the reason nobody came is a result of Surma being friendly with various psychopomps, which put put her outside the jurisdiction of any select few of them. So instead of a whole lot of them coming to let her choose as with the boy, no one came.
|
|
|
Post by Max on Mar 9, 2009 23:23:05 GMT
Actually, I think she was being legitimately polite to Ketrak, which would make sense given that, as an insect guide, he would bear no responsibility for abandoning Surma.
|
|
|
Post by sandjosieph on Mar 9, 2009 23:24:41 GMT
Or maybe Surma told the psychopomps specifically not to take her so she could have the last words with her daughter.
Various things Surma could have said... Be strong... I love you... Don't do anything that I wouldn't... If you see your dad, give him a stern talking to... Buy low, sell high...
|
|
picaro
Junior Member
Dandy Highwayman
Posts: 66
|
Post by picaro on Mar 9, 2009 23:36:23 GMT
To thine own self be true?
I agree with fatexx, it was more that they abandoned her when she needed them, she had to go through that completely alone, the loss of her mother AND the leading of her mother to the afterlife. She had no "friends" or support network outside the psychopomps.
Preus that was discussed before, mom is also a regional variant in England.
|
|
|
Post by sebastian on Mar 9, 2009 23:57:56 GMT
Hey... Am i the only one who finds it a little odd that Antimony aparrently left the hospital just after her mother died to join the school, putting her at about 11, but in the scene there of her mother's death, she's a waist high child? Just look at her in the first comics, she was smaller then. This is probably the first comic I've seen where you can actually see the characters grow, but it happen so slowly that you can not notice it if you don't pay attention
|
|
snes
Full Member
BANNED
Posts: 164
|
Post by snes on Mar 10, 2009 0:28:04 GMT
The page has passed the 300-comment landmark and it's only been up for, what, 18 hours?
|
|
|
Post by sandjosieph on Mar 10, 2009 0:43:37 GMT
I've noticed that most of the talk here seems to be more about Annie and the psychopomps while leaving her mother as just another soul to chartered off. What if Annie's mum was waiting for a psychopomp but none showed up so she told her daughter to do the escorting? And the final thing she said to her daughter was "Never show sadness". Maybe that's why Annie hasn't really talked about her mother as it makes her sad but she's still trying to comply with her mother's final wishes.
And to think that just a few pages back some people were calling Annie a Mary Sue.
EDIT: Or she could have said, "Never show anger..."
|
|
Neats
New Member
Posts: 38
|
Post by Neats on Mar 10, 2009 2:49:49 GMT
Hey... Am i the only one who finds it a little odd that Antimony aparrently left the hospital just after her mother died to join the school, putting her at about 11, but in the scene there of her mother's death, she's a waist high child? Just look at her in the first comics, she was smaller then. This is probably the first comic I've seen where you can actually see the characters grow, but it happen so slowly that you can not notice it if you don't pay attention Does anyone else think that current Annie in the last panel also looks a little younger than usual? It's subtle, and it may just be my imagination, but it seems like her expression and the way she's holding herself are slightly more childlike than we've been seeing her lately, and remind me of flashback Annie in chapters 8 and 16.
|
|
|
Post by Mezzaphor on Mar 10, 2009 3:58:45 GMT
|
|
|
Post by ethelmercaptan on Mar 10, 2009 5:33:43 GMT
|
|
|
Post by inhumandecency on Mar 10, 2009 7:27:49 GMT
This sudden switch from “Annie would naturally hate the psychopomp who took her mother” to “Of course Annie would hate any psychopomp who did not come for her mother” is going a bit too fast for me. This is a good point, but it doesn't actually seem that odd to me. A child is going to be upset about her mother's death. She's going to be upset at whoever was involved with it, in any capacity. It doesn't have to make sense. The only difference now is that we've learned the psychopomps might have done something legitimately out of the ordinary, instead of just presiding over her mother's death and thus being superficially responsible for her grief.
|
|
|
Post by penguinfactory on Mar 10, 2009 8:59:29 GMT
About the whole "was this traumatizing to Annie" thing- I don't think there's any real point speculating, because evidently it was on some level, or she wouldn't be so mad at the psychopomps.
|
|
|
Post by hyrune on Mar 10, 2009 9:31:43 GMT
Hmmm. I've been reading the comments people have been leaving concerning how mediums might not have a psychopomp of their own, and Jeanne, and how she might just possibly be a medium herself. I like this theory; it highlights why Muut and company want to help Jeanne - in her lifetime, she would have interacted with many of them, becoming something close to a friend to some (perhaps even many) of them. But they can't bend the rules. So, if like people have been saying, a medium must be led to the afterlife by the new medium he/she has been mentoring, this puts young mediums in a certain amount of risk. And we can speculate that Jeanne did die young, perhaps violently and unexpectedly ("we did nothing").
Of course, this particular take on the theory has one major flaw, and that is that as psychopomps Muut and co. are simply interested in Jeanne because she IS their jurisdiction (i.e., a spirit who has not passed on), not because she's a medium and they feel any special kinship with her. Also, Muut clearly should have known her name if she'd been an active medium. But he could be lying. Or (to add another layer to the tragedy) Jeanne is actually a medium but somehow no one ever realised it, meaning she simply died... and waited... and waited...
|
|
mjh
Full Member
Posts: 179
|
Post by mjh on Mar 10, 2009 10:57:36 GMT
This is a good point, but it doesn't actually seem that odd to me. A child is going to be upset about her mother's death. She's going to be upset at whoever was involved with it, in any capacity. It doesn't have to make sense. The only difference now is that we've learned the psychopomps might have done something legitimately out of the ordinary, instead of just presiding over her mother's death and thus being superficially responsible for her grief. I think the point I really wanted to make is that our theorizing here has proven to be quite baseless, and we should try not to make the same mistake again. The human mind is prone to jumping to conclusions, probably because there was an evolutionary advantage to being fast (but sometimes wrong) rather than being always right (but also dead, due to being too slow). When we stumble upon something that needs to be explained, we tend to invent some explanation and we don’t care too much about things like plausibility and internal consistency. It had seemed so natural to assume that Annie would have wanted the psychopomps to leave her mother alone when she died, so Surma could have stayed with her. Okay, Surma would have been a mere ghost and probably couldn’t have accomplished much; she might also have been confined to the vicinity of the place where she had died. But she had been incapacitated and bedridden for years, so it wouldn’t have made that much of a difference. Family life could have resumed and on the whole it would have been a lot of fun – my mum can go through walls and all that. But then again, maybe not. Now we know that all those handy assumptions were wrong, even when they had served so well to explain the unexplained. And what do we do? We start making new, different, but equally baseless assumptions and marvel at their power to again explain what is left mysterious. That’s why I’ve grown weary of speculations.
|
|
|
Post by warrl on Mar 10, 2009 15:16:48 GMT
So you're speculating that our future speculations will all be wrong.
I think you're wrong. ;D
They may MOSTLY be wrong... but that's part of what makes the speculating fun.
|
|
|
Post by nevermore on Mar 10, 2009 19:54:03 GMT
Hey... Am i the only one who finds it a little odd that Antimony aparrently left the hospital just after her mother died to join the school, putting her at about 11, but in the scene there of her mother's death, she's a waist high child? Just look at her in the first comics, she was smaller then. This is probably the first comic I've seen where you can actually see the characters grow, but it happen so slowly that you can not notice it if you don't pay attention Yeah, i know that, but there's a difference between a charachter aging over the years a comic takes place, and aging from being what looks like little more than a toddler to being an 11 year old kid in the space of... a few weeks? Months at most?
|
|
|
Post by sinkinglikeastone on Mar 10, 2009 20:19:51 GMT
Well, I'm sure there is a reason for no one showing up to guide Surma, its just that like everything else about the ether Annie has a very limited grasp as to why things are happening the way they are. Annie and Surma had contact with the spirit world so maybe it was some sort of innitiation for Annie, a learning tool, we don't know what Surma knew about everything we just know what Annie knows, and as I said earlier Annie doesn't know all that much, because she really hasn't had anyone to teach her with her mom dying and everything. In the comic so far there has been a reason for everything that has happened, so I'm sure there is a reason for this too. Just Annie doesn't know. She is after all still young.
|
|
mjh
Full Member
Posts: 179
|
Post by mjh on Mar 10, 2009 21:36:32 GMT
Yeah, i know that, but there's a difference between a charachter aging over the years a comic takes place, and aging from being what looks like little more than a toddler to being an 11 year old kid in the space of... a few weeks? Months at most? For one thing, we are comparing the size of Surma’s astral body to Annie’s physical one – is this comparison even valid? And then, what we see is how Annie remembers the scene – she might have felt smaller than she actually was at the time.
|
|