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Post by penguinfactory on Sept 23, 2009 10:19:04 GMT
Dawww. I love the panel where Annie makes the blinker stone say "hello Kat". Her facial expression in the second last panel is priceless as well. I think I've said this before, but the extent to which Tom had built up the relationship between Kat and Annie really makes me suspect there's going to be some sort of major falling out between then at some point
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Post by wombat on Sept 23, 2009 10:50:05 GMT
Dawww. I love the panel where Annie makes the blinker stone say "hello Kat". Her facial expression in the second last panel is priceless as well. I think I've said this before, but the extent to which Tom had built up the relationship between Kat and Annie really makes me suspect there's going to be some sort of major falling out between then at some point Aw, that would be so sad! I loved her blinker stone message too.
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Post by Jiminiminy on Sept 23, 2009 11:03:26 GMT
I have a bus to catch, so this'll be quick. One, I don't think that, thus far, Jack has actually told a plain lie, just some very uncomfortable truths. Belief is entirely personal, but I think I'll take his word more seriously from this point. Two, John isn't good on the spot. I mean, he could've at least said 'Sorry I didn't see her' or something. Third, if I had anything to offer, I'd take you up on that wager. But I don't. Still like to see that picture though.
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Post by todd on Sept 23, 2009 11:11:47 GMT
I think that Jack's got a point - but it's generally difficult to accept a truth when the person telling it tells it in an unpleasant way.
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Post by fidodo on Sept 23, 2009 11:48:58 GMT
Or is John himself just shy? I can't think of anything that Annie has done to deserve a reputation as being unsocial, other than just simply being unsocial. She's never snubbed anyone, she's never failed to converse with someone that started talking to her, she wasn't a big downer at the Power Station outing, she's not a brainiac like Kat who alienated people for being a "teacher's pet" in their eyes (beginning of Ch 18)... so what reason would the other kids have to think she's not okay? It's highschool. People make assumptions, project things on each other, gossip, exaggerate, etc. That's what happens. I think Tom is doing a great job making the social dynamic realistic and not one sided like most other comics do. Also, being unsocial is more than enough for other people to be unsocial to you. You gotta reach out to be reached out to. Annie is unsocial which means their first assumption is that she doesn't like people. Add that to this being highschool and you get the rest of the kids making assumptions. But... notice how they react to her in panel 7 of this page when she gives them that magical fire. Smiles. Appreciation. "Thanks!" To me, those aren't the reactions that people would have if they thought she was an Ice Queen. Whatever they may think of her celebrity status, I do not believe that they think poorly of her personally. Yeah, they're inviting her to hang around and what does she do? Says "okay..." and walks away. Imagine you're being nice to somebody, complementing them, basically inviting them to hang out and have fun, and they act very cold to you and walk away. You might not think badly about them, but you'll assume that they think badly of you. That's not how you make friends. I'm sure that nobody dislikes Annie, but they don't think that she wants to be around them.
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Post by idonotlikepeas on Sept 23, 2009 11:50:33 GMT
Hm. Based on her dialogue in this strip, I wonder if Annie is going to try to push Kat away "for her own good".
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Post by todd on Sept 23, 2009 12:00:45 GMT
Someone brought up something at the TVTropes forum for "Gunnerkrigg Court". We've felt at home with Annie because we've seen almost all the story from her point of view (with a few exceptions, such as the whole of Chapter Twenty-two). But how would we have responded to Annie if we'd only seen her through the eyes of her classmates (other than Kat)? Would she have seemed almost as creepy and unsettling as Zimmy?
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jon77
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Post by jon77 on Sept 23, 2009 12:42:56 GMT
Two, John isn't good on the spot. I mean, he could've at least said 'Sorry I didn't see her' or something. That's quite true, we saw him stutter on the rooftop when he met Margo (I think), and one of the other guys teased him for it.
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Post by Snes on Sept 23, 2009 12:58:00 GMT
That's quite true, we saw him stutter on the rooftop when he met Margo (I think), and one of the other guys teased him for it. That's because he and Margo have a thing for each other. He's shown no such thing for Annie. Was Jack right? Do all the kids think Annie is a weirdo behind her back? Would they be more open to Kat if Annie wasn't around? Tune in next time, kids!
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Post by nikita on Sept 23, 2009 12:59:09 GMT
Someone brought up something at the TVTropes forum for "Gunnerkrigg Court". We've felt at home with Annie because we've seen almost all the story from her point of view (with a few exceptions, such as the whole of Chapter Twenty-two). But how would we have responded to Annie if we'd only seen her through the eyes of her classmates (other than Kat)? Would she have seemed almost as creepy and unsettling as Zimmy? Maybe not creepy, but yes. She's a bit like her father. Doing stuff nobody else knows about (medium classes, visiting Gillitie Forest) and in general being somewhat distant. By the way: Funny how Kat mediates between the medium and the normal people.
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Post by Rasselas on Sept 23, 2009 13:08:25 GMT
I've had an experience in school where my mother was a teacher as well, and one of the most feared too. Other kids were afraid of approaching me because they thought if they slighted me in some way, my mother will unleash unholy hell. What it looked like from my perspective was that they were avoiding me because something was wrong with me. It were a mess! So these things can get complicated, viewed from different perspectives, and every scene can contain its own tiny version of Rashomon.
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Post by wanderer on Sept 23, 2009 13:27:53 GMT
I made a comment on the page, but I'll repeat it here. It's really probable that people are just intimidated by her. She's sorta got this aura of... solitude and untouchable ness. Some of the kids may even like her but don't know how to approach her. I'll go with this one, although some of you other people have brought up good points as well. But there's this feeling to Annie of being seperate from others. Something altogether different and apart from other children. Now, we as readers have seen breaks in that image, like Annie cheerfully running barefoot through the halls of the Court, but the other students haven't seen that side of her. To them she is something distant and untouchable. Something to be watched and maybe even admired from a distance, but not to be approached.
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mjh
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Post by mjh on Sept 23, 2009 13:32:55 GMT
We've felt at home with Annie because we've seen almost all the story from her point of view (with a few exceptions, such as the whole of Chapter Twenty-two). Well, not exactly from her point of view – we know about her etherical scar when she doesn’t seem to be aware of it herself, we know that Zimmy can see the scar and stuff like that. Also, we’ve been witness to the conversation between Kat and Reynardine in the cellar (Chapter 18) and so on. Still, we’ve mostly been following Annie and so we can understand what she does since we know what she’s experienced. Her classmates will know little or nothing of her adventures or about her life before she came to Gunnerkrigg Court. She was told to keep quiet about the whole Reynardine affair (end of Chapter 3). After she had broken the school rules and got detention for it (Chapter 9), it is surely understood she isn’t supposed to talk about what had happened after she fell from the bridge, or that she had been on the bridge at all, lest other students would be incited to try the same. Annie isn’t the talkative kind anyway, so it isn’t likely she has told anyone except Kat about the meeting with Coyote and Ysengrin, or about her trip to Gillitie Wood. For this reason I don’t think she would be regarded a celebrity by her classmates, as some suggested. And not because of her mother either, since most likely nobody would know who she was. Of all the students, the only one who has ever mentioned Surma was Parley, but as a medium in training she’s supposed to know about her. So to others she would naturally just appear to be genuinely odd, a loner, preferring old books to the company of her classmates, being strangely out of touch with popular culture or indeed the world normal kids grow up in, suggesting research projects even her best and only friend thinks are gross, and carrying with her a demon wolf that obeys her commands and appears to be genuinely dangerous. She can call herself lucky if her image is just that of the haughty, unapproachable ice queen.
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kefka
Junior Member
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Post by kefka on Sept 23, 2009 13:38:56 GMT
Maybe not creepy, but yes. She's a bit like her father. Doing stuff nobody else knows about (medium classes, visiting Gillitie Forest) and in general being somewhat distant. This is a very good point. The other kids probably see Annie like we did Anthony in Ties. ("geez, who speaks like that").
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jon77
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Post by jon77 on Sept 23, 2009 14:18:53 GMT
Maybe not creepy, but yes. She's a bit like her father. Doing stuff nobody else knows about (medium classes, visiting Gillitie Forest) and in general being somewhat distant. This is a very good point. The other kids probably see Annie like we did Anthony in Ties. ("geez, who speaks like that"). I think that analogy is quite good.
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Post by Casey on Sept 23, 2009 15:30:25 GMT
Excellent points all around in this thread overnight, and I can't say that I really disagree with any of them. Remember I do agree that there are reasons why the other kids think she's different. I don't disagree with that. I just think that Jack is wrong or lying about everyone thinking she's an ice queen. I think they're maybe slightly in awe of her but I don't think any of them think of her in the way that Hyland thought of her mother and her friends.
There's only one point of contention I will take, and it's minor. Someone several posts back said, in response to my pointing out how much they appreciated Annie giving them the fire... the poster said "well look at how they're looking at her in the first panel of that page." I have looked at that panel, and my interpretation of it is that the kids have frowns on their faces from the events immediately preceding the page-turn. They're dejected about failing to get fire and being cold... NOT making a "oh here comes the freak" face. This is, of course, subject to interpretation, and I do see your point of view. I just think that, within the context of the things that were happening at that moment, their expressions make a lot more sense being attributed to those events, and not to the approach of Annie.
And now I'm leaving for that math test! (In case anyone cared.)
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Nut
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Post by Nut on Sept 23, 2009 15:58:13 GMT
Being something of a loner at school myself, I always thought Annie separated herself from the others for similar reasons that I do. Although the students at the Court are living with a magical backdrop, they’re still very much ordinary teenagers that are just trying to make it through their classes. Annie has a much more serious interest in magic, and a personal need to learn more about what’s going on around her. If the other kids at Gunnerkrigg Court are anything like most students at a typical high school, they’ll be caught up in popular culture and social drama within their peer groups, which are issues that Annie just doesn’t care about. That alone would be enough to separate her from her classmates. She’s been told not to talk about certain aspects of her adventures and probably wouldn’t be inclined to reveal much about them anyway, which leaves her with no stories to tell and no common ground with the other students. She can relate to Kat because they’ve shared experiences, but she probably feels it would be too complicated to explain her background to kids who have no idea what she’s been through, and that doing so might get them involved in a dangerous situation.
The other kids probably do want to make friends with Annie, but because Annie’s interests take her far out of the way of the other students’ everyday lives, she doesn’t get much opportunity to interact with them. As far as I can tell, she likes it this way, because it prevents her from getting distracted by mundane problems and allows her to focus on the more important questions of the Court. The result is that she rarely talks to anyone and appears to be avoiding other children, and nobody knows much about how she spends her time. She’d be friendly if she had the opportunity, such as in her interactions with Gamma, but the opportunity just doesn’t come up. This makes it awkward when Annie has to spend time with her peers, such as in the current camping trip, because everyone else already knows each other and she ought to be part of their group of established friendships, but she isn’t.
In the end, I think Annie just isn’t suited to this group of peers. She’s more than an everyday student; she has more in common with the teachers running the Court than with the kids. She needs to be able to talk to people who can understand and shed light on the issues she cares about. She may get over her awkwardness, but she’ll always be most comfortable with psychopomps and experienced teachers/mediums who can relate to what she’s dealing with.
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rageboy
Junior Member
just like real cows! only with lasers.
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Post by rageboy on Sept 23, 2009 16:08:25 GMT
ALLRIGHT, LISTEN UP PEOPLE! I am going to make a Gunnerkrigg Wager! I wager one piece of sucky Gunnerkrigg art, hand drawn by me, that -if- Annie does go do "the fire thing" again, someone around the fire will ask her to stay with them. If Annie doesn't do "the fire thing", all bets are off. If you take the bet and no one asks her to stay by the fire by the end of the chapter, you will (each) get one sucky piece of hand-drawn GC art from me. If someone -does- ask her to stay, then each person who takes the bet will have to draw -me- a hand-drawn piece of GC art. I don't care if it's sucky as long as it's as good as you can do. No intentionally sucky art. Who wants to take this wager? Does this include Kat or Zimmy/Gamma? I'll take this bet anyway because drawings are fun and I don't mind losing but excluding Kat at least is probably an important stipulation
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Post by Max on Sept 23, 2009 16:23:14 GMT
This might be getting off-topic, but could somebody from the UK explain some British naming etiquette? I've noticed in the recent pages that Kat and Annie only address people by their first names, like in panel 6, whereas others address them as Donlan or Carver, like in the last panel. I am wondering if there is something to be taken away from this in terms of how the two groups view each other.
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Post by the bandit on Sept 23, 2009 16:57:42 GMT
ALLRIGHT, LISTEN UP PEOPLE! I am going to make a Gunnerkrigg Wager! I wager one piece of sucky Gunnerkrigg art, hand drawn by me, that -if- Annie does go do "the fire thing" again, someone around the fire will ask her to stay with them. If Annie doesn't do "the fire thing", all bets are off. If you take the bet and no one asks her to stay by the fire by the end of the chapter, you will (each) get one sucky piece of hand-drawn GC art from me. If someone -does- ask her to stay, then each person who takes the bet will have to draw -me- a hand-drawn piece of GC art. I don't care if it's sucky as long as it's as good as you can do. No intentionally sucky art. Who wants to take this wager? I won't take this wager (because I think it likely), but I'll offer a counter-wager of sucky art: I bet that there will be verbal indication that the Queslett students do or did consider her anything synonymous to an ice queen (stand-offish, doesn't like them, not interested in being friends with them but only Kat, unapproachable, weird, creepy, etc.). I would lose if no verbal reference to any deterrent to them being her friend occurs. If they just figured she was busy doing her own thing / just happy hanging with Kat, that would also be a loss for me. If no clear true/false resolution of Jack's ice queen accusation occurs by the end of the chapter, all bets are off. If the resolution occurs visually and not verbally and a dispute of interpretation breaks out, I will most likely concede but reserve the right to seek a Word of Tom to settle the matter.
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emrie
New Member
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Post by emrie on Sept 23, 2009 17:18:28 GMT
I just read all of Gunnerkrigg Court the other night, and am re-reading it again to catch all the nuances, and I think there are some very important things to remember in assessing Annie's social situation. But first, here's an example of how Annie *is* a loner. www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=444 - Page 444 Note the comment from Tom at the bottom: "Correction: it's why YOU were invited, Kat (Annie technically wasn't invited)." Of course, once Annie's brought along by Kat, everyone seems to be fine with her. But all through the Power Station Incident, she doesn't take part in the chit-chat, letting Kat do all the talking. She only speaks when directly confronted by Zimmy. A lot of this is familiar to me. Like many here, I identify with Annie. That scene at the campfire was pretty much the story of my early teens, where I couldn't read social cues properly at all, like I think Annie can't. In my mind, it was imposing on people to stay in a social situation like that unless you were explicitly *asked*. I never wanted to push into situations where I wasn't wanted. Now in my case, the reason was a combination of a naturally shy personality with some really bad experiences with bullying as a younger child. In Annie's case, I think it's a reticent personality, inherited from her father, mixed with no experience of socialization with children her own age. She grew up in a hospital, with a bunch of psychopomps as her companions. She doesn't need to be disliked for people to be uneasy about her. They can be uneasy just because she doesn't react in the ways they are used to. Kat, on the other hand, is approachable. Even people who are disposed to like Annie might find it easier to get to her through dealing with Kat. But... There's the magic. Which may actually make some of the kids dislike and/or fear Annie. Gunnerkrigg Court isn't Hogwarts. Being powerfully magical here isn't always a plus. The Court acknowledges and tolerates magic. It uses it when it must. But its great aim is to transcend magic through science, and it places little value on the Forest, and those who seem to have Forest-like powers. The hope of the Court is that a day will come when everything that seems magical can be explained by scientific methods. Kat has earlier expressed this view to Annie and Anja, though she might by now have enough data to modify it. In the Family Ties chapter, we saw how the previous generation shunned and disliked Surma and Anja for their magic connections, even though the two girls will eventually become very useful to the school for those abilities. I don't really see any evidence that the Court's attitude has changed. For one thing, they only have two books on Mythology in the ordinary library. Science reigns everywhere supreme.
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Post by Mylian on Sept 23, 2009 17:21:18 GMT
Annie's message isn't mirrored. I would have expected it to be, since she's writing for herself to see only. Why would you think that she's writing for herself to see only when it's a message to Kat? An extremely simple practice message, but a message to Kat nonetheless.
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Post by Aris Katsaris on Sept 23, 2009 17:22:41 GMT
Welcome to the boards, emrie!
I believe that to be a great analysis, btw.
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Post by Per on Sept 23, 2009 17:32:52 GMT
THAT HAIR
I'm now wondering whether you can blink a blinker stone from, say, one hand to the other and back, or if you can just blink it from "away" to "not away".
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Post by Mishmash on Sept 23, 2009 18:08:13 GMT
This might be getting off-topic, but could somebody from the UK explain some British naming etiquette? I've noticed in the recent pages that Kat and Annie only address people by their first names, like in panel 6, whereas others address them as Donlan or Carver, like in the last panel. I am wondering if there is something to be taken away from this in terms of how the two groups view each other. In boarding schools and private schools (posh schools I suppose would be the catch-all term) teachers traditionally call students by their last name. This would extend to students calling each other by their last names too, but friends like Kat and Annie would call each other by their first names. This is quite an old-fashioned thing and doesn't really happen much anymore in my experience - I think Tom has The Court work this way to highlight what an old institution it is.
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Post by xanbcoo on Sept 23, 2009 18:11:36 GMT
Kind of frustrating that it's John who came to ask for the stone. He's not exactly the most forward and willful boy in their class, so it's hard to read his reaction.
Though I think nikita has it on the money. The other kids see Annie like Anthony's friends saw him. Annie's behavior could easily be misconstrued as weird and antisocial, especially if there happen to be rumors flying around that she'll sic her pet wolf on anyone who bothers her.
Also "Hello Kat" reminds me of "Hi Dad" from A Goofy Movie. :3
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Alex
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Post by Alex on Sept 23, 2009 18:58:29 GMT
I identify with Annie because I can make magic fire.
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unctuous
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doesn't usually get such compliments
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Post by unctuous on Sept 23, 2009 20:30:55 GMT
Who wants to take this wager? I'll take the case! erm, wager! I'm already prepared to lose, ohoho. Ugh, I just knew his remarks would make her insecure. It's such a manipulative thing to do that I can't feel anything but dislike for that guy/spider.
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Post by Ulysses on Sept 23, 2009 20:43:55 GMT
I want to second the person who said that Jack has probably been spreading stories about Annie, but I can't remember who it was. Nobody seemed to have a specific problem talking to her before, even if she didn't exactly put herself forward.
Casey, I take your wager! Personally I think that if it turns out Jack did say something Kat'll go straight to his tent to have it out with him, but if he didn't and it's just John being awkward Kat'll say something along the lines of "if you don't want to talk to her you can freeze!", or something. I don't think that fire's getting lit but I'll take the wager anyway, because wagers are fun like gambling but you don't lose money.
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Post by Mishmash on Sept 23, 2009 20:49:22 GMT
I feel sorry John, he is so much in the wrong place at the wrong time. I know when I was at school I wouldn't just walk up to someone I had never spoken to to ask them to a favour, so if I needed to talk to someone unfamiliar I would approach them though a friend of theirs who I did speak to.
I get the impression that this is what John is doing, perhaps he has spoken to Kat a few times in class but not to Annie, who is quieter. But because Kat is all upset about what Jack said she is taking it out on John and making him seem like a bad guy! Such bad timing.
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