qmarx
Junior Member
Posts: 59
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Post by qmarx on Oct 10, 2009 20:02:21 GMT
Actually, the creepy face spiders are going to save the day.
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Post by judgedeadd on Oct 10, 2009 21:41:10 GMT
Jack is become Spider-Man.
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Post by todd on Oct 10, 2009 22:20:41 GMT
I suspect that Bob and Eglamore were making up the part about an emergency, simply because there's no way that they could have gotten back to the park that quickly if they were away at the Court. Though I'm not certain about the whole thing being just a prank or test that the teachers were playing on the students - if it was, that makes the open speculation that the children have about it being a prank like, say, the detective in a detective story announcing (in such a way that the reader knows) who the murderer was *before* catching him.
Another probable hint that the teachers are behind this: Marcia says that Eglamore was supposed to be there to protect the children from the ghost. But most of the kidnappings (Paz's, certainly) took place at night, when Eglamore would have been sleeping in Bob and Marcia's house rather than camping outside with the children, even if he hadn't been "called away" - so he wouldn't have made much of a protector under those circumstances.
I think that people might be dismissing Tom's statements that the third girl in the photograph wasn't Jones or Gamma's mother because a lot of his footnotes are jokes rather than serious information. (And maybe they also think that it would make more sense, since the other five children in the photograph all have major roles in the story andthey might have found it strange for the third girl to be a Valkyrie who only has a brief cameo in Chapter Twenty-two and has done nothing - so far - to affect the present-day part of the story.)
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mjh
Full Member
Posts: 179
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Post by mjh on Oct 10, 2009 22:44:59 GMT
As one commenter pointed out, this is the second time Annie has been around fire that wouldn't hurt her. Actually it is the third time: www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=412. Annie has known how to create non-consuming fire with her blinker stone even well before her blinker stone lessons with Anja.
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Alex
Full Member
Posts: 165
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Post by Alex on Oct 10, 2009 23:11:54 GMT
I suspect Bob and Eglamore's emergency was "we haven't gone fishing in a while".
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Post by katybee on Oct 11, 2009 2:17:08 GMT
Ooooooh! This was an awesome strip, and exactly what I thought might happen when the kids started planning.
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Post by Snes on Oct 11, 2009 5:25:04 GMT
Okay, so it's the second time she's been surrounded by fire that wouldn't hurt her.
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Post by warrl on Oct 11, 2009 6:08:49 GMT
Additionally, the ability to set things (and people) on fire ala Stephen King's firestarter would probably be pretty close to the most devastating combat magic conceivable. I mean, you could trump it by, say, strategically nudging an asteroid or something, but really that's not terribly useful on a tactical level. <rant> Firestarter (the movie - never read the book) really ticked me off. Aside from the wanton psychological brutality, aside from the pointless killings, aside from a level of stupidity rarely exhibited by anyone who doesn't think they have power equivalent to a national government standing behind them... Bigger and bigger effects is not all there is to "control". It isn't even the most important part.[/u][/size] There are two basic aspects to control, and the people in charge of that operation were only ever interested in one. The other, Charlie was at least as bad with at the end of the movie as she was at the start. You want a CONTROLLED firestarter? Here, see this box of matches? There are twenty matches in this box. (Take one out.) This is what they look like - they are all pretty much the same. Here's how easy they are for an ordinary person to light (light one, hold it as it burns). And if the head of another match gets close to that fire (take out another match, hold it in the flame - poof) you see what happens. Now, there are eighteen matches left. Light one. Just one. Don't let the others burn. With what they were training Charlie to be, she could eventually maybe blown up a city. If they had actually taught her control, she could remove the need to do so. </rant> Totally on a different subject... in panel 2, doesn't Marcia look a lot like the girl in the top left corner of this picture?
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Post by King Mir on Oct 11, 2009 16:38:11 GMT
Pity that Tom still needs to spell things out in the commentary at the bottom. (I don't think that the story's that difficult to follow - at least, as long as you read it as a serialized graphic novel and not a "gag-a-day" strip. Maybe the people who express their confusion over the story are reading it as the latter.) Funny, a commenter said the same thing about us: I like how you have to explain everything to us or else the folks in the forum will freak out. Jiminy Cricket, 09.10.2009, 9:05am #
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Alex
Full Member
Posts: 165
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Post by Alex on Oct 11, 2009 18:12:53 GMT
Guys, I'm pretty sure Tom is just making fun of us.
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Post by Casey on Oct 11, 2009 18:13:44 GMT
From that writer's perspective, maybe they were referring to the on-page comments as "the forum".
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Post by Rasselas on Oct 11, 2009 19:42:23 GMT
I've just noticed something, were the teachers spying on the camp? Because Eglamore says "I knew playing with that blinker stone would be dangerous". Okay, he would have known that Annie has one, but it's only an issue if she's doing stuff with it in public. And he immediately jumped to the conclusion that the huge fire means something went wrong with Annie using the blinker stone for fire. Ergo, he's seen her do it, somehow!
I'd blame the laser cows, except they hate Eglamore and I think the trees are more likely the spies anyway.
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Post by Aris Katsaris on Oct 11, 2009 20:55:17 GMT
In the previous comic, the brown haired kid claimed the fire started after some etheric-related attempts that Carver did (drawing out the ghosts) -- it makes sense that Eglamore would think it was something she attempted with her stone.
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Post by King Mir on Oct 11, 2009 20:58:27 GMT
Also, didn't someone say in the last thread that soon enough we'd see Annie surrounded by her own blinker fire and completely unharmed? Nice call, whoever that was! That was me, though that wasn't a prediction so much as wishful thinking. I wasn't expecting it to happen in the next few pages, despite the retrospectively obvious possibility. I was just thinking what I'd like to see the stone do. From that writer's perspective, maybe they were referring to the on-page comments as "the forum". It's possible, but I don't think so. Seems to me the regular commenters don't think highly of us. In the previous comic, the brown haired kid claimed the fire started after some etheric-related attempts that Carver did (drawing out the ghosts) -- it makes sense that Eglamore would think it was something she attempted with her stone. This made me realize that Matt's explanation of what happened, was not a lie. Carver was "trying to draw the ghost" and the trees did catch fire. The teachers were the ghost, and she drew them out. ;D
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Post by Mishmash on Oct 11, 2009 21:34:47 GMT
I love how Tom put a facetious remark explaining what happened so as to put an end to all the speculation going on here about whether the fire was real, and the response is to start discussing exactly what Tom meant by the remark and who it was aimed at.
This forum just NEEDS to have something to speculate about. It is cute.
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Post by wynne on Oct 11, 2009 23:26:59 GMT
Hey, without uncalled-for speculation this forum would consist of all of us blathering on about what pretty colors Tom uses, or something silly like that.
Not that Tom doesn't use pretty colors. ;D
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Post by hal9000 on Oct 12, 2009 4:50:47 GMT
<rant> Firestarter (the movie - never read the book) really ticked me off. Aside from the wanton psychological brutality, aside from the pointless killings, aside from a level of stupidity rarely exhibited by anyone who doesn't think they have power equivalent to a national government standing behind them... Bigger and bigger effects is not all there is to "control". It isn't even the most important part.[/u][/size] There are two basic aspects to control, and the people in charge of that operation were only ever interested in one. The other, Charlie was at least as bad with at the end of the movie as she was at the start. You want a CONTROLLED firestarter? Here, see this box of matches? There are twenty matches in this box. (Take one out.) This is what they look like - they are all pretty much the same. Here's how easy they are for an ordinary person to light (light one, hold it as it burns). And if the head of another match gets close to that fire (take out another match, hold it in the flame - poof) you see what happens. Now, there are eighteen matches left. Light one. Just one. Don't let the others burn. With what they were training Charlie to be, she could eventually maybe blown up a city. If they had actually taught her control, she could remove the need to do so. </rant> Totally on a different subject... in panel 2, doesn't Marcia look a lot like the girl in the top left corner of this picture?[/quote] I'm not sure I follow your metaphor about control, to be honest. Additionally, I think the book is better than the movie.
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Post by Yin on Oct 12, 2009 5:22:58 GMT
Power vs control- the amount of fire she could produce is not equal to the amount of fire she could easily control.
Or, to use another metaphor: you've got a glass that you want to fill with water and carry from point A to B. You want to get as much water as possible across in one trip. Now, you could fill the glass to the brim, but you might not be able to get all that water across because you would spill some. So the reasonable thing to do is to fill it maybe three quarters full or four fifths full, because you can carry that much across without spilling it.
Right?
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rageboy
Junior Member
just like real cows! only with lasers.
Posts: 91
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Post by rageboy on Oct 12, 2009 6:56:08 GMT
Kind of like The Sorceror's Apprentice?
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Post by Yin on Oct 12, 2009 6:57:23 GMT
Yep.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Oct 12, 2009 8:30:32 GMT
This forum just NEEDS to have something to speculate about. It is cute. Consuming mass media is a passive activity no matter how enjoyable. The human mind is hardwired toward activity and to that end desires to act so that enjoyment might be prolonged or increased. By not being obvious the comic invites speculation. Passive consumption of media is transformed into an activity by speculation. The forum provides an outlet for that speculation, reinforcing some ideas and tuning out others; from a loosely associated aggregation of spatially-distant persons a collective made of and distinct from the persons which compose it emerges, a collective which begins to think of itself as a "we" and the rest of persons as a "they." That's right, folks. We have Fandom.
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Post by Robo Alchemist on Oct 12, 2009 12:43:11 GMT
Actually, power comes from the ability to control. Power </= Control. the amount one would produce can never exceed what is being controlled, because if it can't be controlled then you couldn't make it in the first place.
Let's say this: You have 20 matches, burn one, set another on fire. You have 18 matches left, just as was said before. again, light one and only one while leaving the matches in the box. Impossible to someone without the ability to control.
But let's say that you do happen to have the ability to control the chemical process that goes on in matches. You could easily place the 19th match next to any one of the other 18, stop the reaction from ever occuring in any of the other 17, and boom you accomplish your goal. But if you have this control over the reaction in general, why should you stop at a mere match? Toss the 19th match, and focus on any one of the 18 with just yourself. You have the ability, so you can make one of the matches combust and keep the other matches at bay.
And it doesn't stop at controlling combustion. If you can control the rate molecules, even atoms themselves, hit each other, you can control the very makeup of those particles as well.
With this in mind, the "no spilling water" test becomes easy. you could even just toss the glass, and make the water particles you're working with lighter than the air beneath it, thus causing it to "hover" it's way over to your destination. or heck, just walk over to your destination, pick a random object, and change the atomic make-up of the object so all atoms resemble those of hydrogen and oxygen, and make them bond together.
All the while that these things take place, you'd also be controlling the radioactive energy coming out of these things so nothing except the thing you're working with would be changed or harmed by any outside force.
I mean, you wanna talk about devastating combat "magic"? try shooting One single atom of whatever at the earth at mind-bending speeds, using your control ability, and watch half of the world turn into a smoldering, radioactive crater. and even one further, if your control is something close to godliness, just take every single atom in the earth, tear them apart into individual amounts of energy, photons, quarks, etc., and stand back on what ever other planet you're on.
Tying this back to GKC, this may also be the "science/how" of how things like blinker stones and such may work. it's simply a shiny rock, until something sentient comes along and uses it to command (in this case fire) any object the stone can connect to. Tom once said that there were blinker stones of all types that could control all sorts of different things. He also said that those who dwell in the forest don't need blinker stones, that most of them have the "control" as a natural talent/ability. Coyote is an excellent example of that, as he is able to shape-shift (change is chemical and even atomic make-up), has control over celestial bodies (said he placed the stars, and grabbed the moon for Annie), even the power Ysingrin has over the trees that coyote gave to him.
So..with this logic....this could probably lead us to other topics which could count as spoilers. If so, and if this is anywhere near right, please don't kill me, Tom.
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