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I just re-read The Fangs of Summertime starting from that linked page (it is a law of the universe to re-read linked chapters, it seems), and noticed this line that Coyote whispers to Annie when he invites her to the Forest: "You cannot trust the people of this place. Come visit me in my forest where we may talk. No harm will come to you, I swear it." I initially thought "You cannot trust the people of this place" was a warning, but it was actually an observation. Annie couldn't bring herself to trust people at the Court (or anyone, really, even with Kat she kept parts of herself hidden), and Coyote noticed. It is super obvious, but I didn't catch it the first time or in any previous re-read, so it's a nice detail. I love how this comic keeps showing more new details every time you read it. That takes some crazy planning.
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Jun 24, 2013 23:46
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Kennel posted:It's totally impossible to read just one strip, isn't it? Today's binge taught me that, for whatever reason, Coyote never mentions Annie by her real name (although he tries twice). I've wondered about that. He calls Surma (at least when talking about her), Ysengrin and Renard by name, but everyone else is just nicknames. Also, more deception! He never said that Annie would learn to control her inner feelings by staying in the forest. No wonder she came back wilder. Now I have to go and re-read the entire comic and wonder just how much Coyote messed with everyone all the time. 
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Jun 25, 2013 07:04
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Rasselas posted:Recently, I found myself missing the old angular head designs. I found the early art different and interesting, along with the weird atmosphere and setting. I started reading early on, around Fangs of Summertime, I think? While the art has certainly improved, I get a bit annoyed when people emphasize it, as if it was bad in the beginning. I don't think it was, and I occasionally miss some of the old stylistic quirks. Going back to this, this is how I feel about the early chapters too. They were very unpolished and tentative compared to what the comic has become now, but the way Tom did the curious character design, the kind of simple backgrounds but very atmospheric angles and the careful choice of color palettes he used were what caught my attention at first and kept me reading until the story actually got rolling properly. I actually liked better the art style where his lines were at their thickest and his character design had smoothed out, but before he started drawing Annie more like a young woman than as a child. Not that I don't like the improvements and the experimental touches he has more lately, mind. It's just that now the art seems more... kind of standard, I guess? Really, really well done, but not as distinctive in style as it was earlier.
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Aug 19, 2013 21:57
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dyzzy posted:Coyote's up to his tricks again Her clothes are also turning gray and getting the Ether Vision texture too (it's more noticeable on her green blouse).
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Sep 13, 2013 17:54
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Cat Mattress posted:There's a problem with that. Surma's gone to the ether and the only thing left of her soul is Antimony. Anthony might not know that, though, if he truly never cared for nor respected the Etheric sciences, like Jones was telling Annie.
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Mar 20, 2015 20:01
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Cat Mattress posted:The microsat stuff and the interdimensional bone scalpels do not seem like the work of someone who never got into etheric sciences. Oh, right. Plain old mad science, then? But I really hope that speculation doesn't pan out. At this point I'd take "trying to save the daughter he resents, through risky life-threatening ways, just to finish the job he started with Surma. Also, still a jerk" over "trying to revive Surma".
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Mar 20, 2015 20:08
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In any other story, the author would make Kat be completely unsympathetic to Annie just to really drive in the "everything and everyone is against the protagonist" point and milk it for cheap drama for a few chapters until the inevitable reconciliation, but Tom doesn't do cheap drama, so instead we see that Kat is upset about the cheating, yes, but she knows that things like that can be worked out later, first she needs to make sure Annie knows she still has her best friend's support, no matter what. I love this comic.
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Apr 2, 2015 19:42
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YF-23 posted:If this is the court's doing, the timing is important. Did something happen that the court would decide it's a good time to mess with the forest? The nightmare cruise adventure might have been a catalyst, but there's no clear connection here. Antimony's cheating is something the court could utilise whenever it's most convenient to them, it's a one-use card they can call. I'm pretty sure this is all Anthony's doing; if the court wanted to antagonise the forest they'd make a show of it instead of having Anthony unceremoniously announce it to her in private. It seems more likely that this is Anthony trying to get Antimony to catch up with her studies properly. Maybe they heard of Annie and Smitty's idea of opening up the Court and the Forest to each other and didn't like that. This chapter is a direct follow-up to Annie delivering the rabbit's soul to its new human body, right?
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Apr 6, 2015 01:11
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mr. stefan posted:I think this is what bothers me the most. These are the same kids who. when presented with a bunch of teachers trying to pull some idiot scheme on a camping trip, responded by hacking a hard of laser cows to take control of the situation and steal the teacher's house. They have thoroughly demonstrated that when teachers try to gently caress with them they respond in kind. The sheer amount of passivity expressed not by Annie, but by everyone else is highly out of character. The difference is that Anthony is Annie's father, and the kind of control he exerts over her is absolute because she allows it, after a lifetime of being conditioned to it. That's what so sad about this. She can disobey teachers and other adults because they don't have that sort of emotional hold over her.
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Apr 27, 2015 20:25
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Until I read the responses to the page here, I actually thought the white floor in the picture was a circular bone thing, like the ones protuding into Annie in "Divine". (The cracks do give them a bone-esque air, no?) The bone things are no longer directly embedded in her, but the circle hovering around her head was to show that Tony's influence is still there and can't be severed as easily as a Zimmy ether punch; it needs to be banished in another way.
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Apr 29, 2015 21:28
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mr. stefan posted:I have every expectation that Gunnerkrigg's school exists solely because either the founders or the people they brought had children and wanted to shove them somewhere while they did the ~important work~ of making gods out of men. Apparently this is the case, from the wiki's archive of Tom's Formspring: Word of Tom posted:Who established the school part of Gunnerkrigg Court? As for students paying for tuition: Word of Tom posted:What are the school fees of Gunnerkrigg? Other fun questions and answers reminding us the Court is a super nice place: Word of Tom posted:Has the court ever engaged in hostilities (armed or otherwise) with entities or foreign powers other than the forest? Word of Tom posted:Has the Court ever have to deal with foreign powers desiring etheric technology?
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May 2, 2015 04:25
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This page: http://gunnerkrigg.com/?p=848
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May 19, 2015 01:54
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And face no consequences from Anthony?
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May 22, 2015 19:18
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Splicer posted:So her dad really didn't have any ulterior motives for putting her in a giant white room full of nothing. Ditocoaf posted:These last two pages, with her "I can't deal with you right now", and the fact that this separation seems to be using the blinker stone as leverage, make it seem thankfully temporary. (I mean, we'd already assume it isn't irreversible because of story reasons, but this flashback helped.) What if Annie specifically requested a room that large and empty and Tony obliged seeing nothing wrong with that arrangement.
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Jul 20, 2015 15:44
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SynthOrange posted:I dont remember any promise?! The only thing that comes to mind was the promise of arranging a reunion between the fairy and her rabbit friend student transfer.
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Sep 28, 2015 14:49
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The first thing I thought from this sequence was that both Janet and William agreed to let William "date" Annie for a while to cheer her up and to make her socialize more, which has the potential to backfire disastrously once Annie inevitably finds out she was being pity-dated. But now that no one guessed that before me I'm not so sure I read this situation right.
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Feb 12, 2016 21:05
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Wittgen posted:It's Annie guys. That's Annie's hair phasing into focus through her anonymous disguise. Jeanne attacks and kills the monster to protect Parley; Annie falls over dead in the real world. The second part of the plot can finally start.
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Aug 29, 2016 17:32
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Annie, you forgot Ysengrin's Forest Diplomacy lessons.ElMaligno posted:Violence will be the answer
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Sep 9, 2016 16:24
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I don't know if this comment in the last Cityface page is supposed to be humorous or something darker: Muddy Message received, City Face. Decoding... No, I didn't like him either. You are right to express concern about his trustworthiness, and surprisingly, I am also intrigued by Thalassanoides ichnofacies . Congratulations on your information-dense code, best buddy! 11 Nov 2016 | 1:47 AM
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Nov 12, 2016 20:03
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Lt. Lizard posted:I think that where you fall on the whole cloning issue depends on how you perceive the Arbiter(and its interpreter ghost buddy): Is he a voice of the narrator giving you an objective explanation of what has happened, or is he just another character in the story that can be confused into giving wrong explanation by unexpected circumstances around Annie (ie: there being multiple godlike being interfering with her)? drkeiscool posted:reading this arc of the comic has made me fully understand something that's been lurking in the back of my head for awhile, and it's that, for at least a year of stuff happening in the comic or more, i just haven't felt anything about any of these characters. i don't really know what's at fault specifically, but at some point i feel like the comic stopped being a comic, and now it feels like it's all exposition. which maybe isn't entirely fair of me to say, since siddell is clearly an excellent artist and clearly has thought ahead about the story here, but... i just don't care about these characters anymore, and i've only been reading the comic out of habit, since i've been reading it for years now. Same here. I think it's because the adventure and focus on friendship of the earlier arcs have now taken a backseat to solving Annie's problems with her dad and, to be honest, I just don't feel I can agree with whatever the author is trying to get at with Tony as a parent? It really feels like we are sorta skipping ahead over the actual healing of the damage Annie has accrued from her upbringing, and just showing us how her supernatural shenanigans have helped her come to terms with the fact that her parents were flawed people. It also feels like she hasn't really stopped repressing how she really feels at Tony. She's cold to Eagle Reaper guy, she burned Ysengrin, she manipulated Jack's feelings, she spurned Mort, she basically lashes out at everyone except for the person she is truly angry at, and now we're having her be all cool beans towards her dad and it feels like we just didn't address the real problem? It also doesn't help that it's been ages since Annie herself narrates her life so it feels like we are outside her head and can't see her processing all this and evolving as a person. edit: I am not unsympathetic to Tony, but it's like we're supposed to feel more sorry for him than for Annie, the actual child here who didn't have control over her life and ended up rebelling at school and playing with Coyote since that's basically all she could choose for herself. isasphere fucked around with this message at 18:40 on May 12, 2021 |
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May 12, 2021 18:37
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I don't know if this is playing into how frustrating this last stretch of story is, but ever since Annie spent that summer in the forest the comic has felt off. Is that when she stopped doing the purple narration boxes herself? Because ever since she came back from the forest I've felt disconnected from her, I really miss her stating her thoughts and feelings as events unfolded, like we saw earlier in the comic. It's like we're reading a third person book that used to be in first person and it feels weird. edit: Also the narrative itself seemed more sympathetic to Annie's feelings of abandonment and loss when it was following her in first person, than it does now. isasphere fucked around with this message at 23:21 on May 19, 2021 |
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May 19, 2021 23:17
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Oh, right, I was thinking of the Microsat chapter. And I completely forgot about the narration in the evacuation section. I really miss following Annie's thoughts directly.
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May 20, 2021 18:30
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tbh I'd feel way less wary and have more faith that the narrative is going somewhere satisfying if it wasn't for the specific things in the text below the pages in this chapter. "We are all one person." "Kind of explains it." "Say what you want." "It's not much but it's something." But particularly this one: "She isn't looking for a pat on the back." Is that Tom talking to the audience or just commenting on the comic (like he often did in the past), or is this still Annie's perspective leaking out of the pages? Because if it's Annie, yeah, that tracks with a teenager trying to make peace with her situation and her usual defiant streak. But if it's Tom...
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May 25, 2021 04:57
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coolusername posted:I think that's my problem, then. Annie and Kat was like... the heart and emotional core of the comic? To me, at least. This is exactly how I feel about the comic's evolution, thank you for putting it into words more succintly than I could. In retrospect, freeing Jeanne from her curse was kind of the point of no return for plot points being resolved by the initiative of the protagonists. It was also almost too quick and neat, but they did almost lose Smitty and Annie definitely lost Ayilu and Red as friends/allies. Everything else after that just sort of resolves like the author is in a hurry to get over with each plot beat in order to get to the parts he actually wants to draw.
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May 30, 2021 16:52
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Rereading those linked pages, I had completely forgotten about Ysengrin warning Annie about the Court: https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2027 "They mean to take you away!" Where to, though? For what purpose? Is it linked with whatever is going on with Zimmy that makes her think she is Annie when in the other dimension? (Like with Annie's hair color latching onto Zimmy like a pest in that one chapter and everything?)
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Jul 13, 2021 02:41
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It's weird to see Reynard relegated to being the Voice of Reason in any argument.
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Jun 2, 2022 16:59
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Joe Slowboat posted:This really stands out to me, especially since he mixes extremely obvious and reasonable concerns like "hey Kat why do you want complete freedom from moral and regulatory constraints" with extremely gross "well sometimes ladyfolk need to be protected physically, but you didn't hear that from me and you're on your own when you get in trouble for it." Yeah, it used to be more balanced, didn't it? That Reynard's point of view wasn't 100% reliable, but he had good insights every now and then as a creature from the forest. I think the last time I remember it being not-forced was when Kat was processing that she liked Paz and she talked to both Annie and Reynard and they both supported her and explained their own worldview while wondering if the other would be harder to talk to about the topic. That was funny.
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Jun 3, 2022 02:52
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M-maybe Annie does know Jerrek is Loup and she is playing her cards so close to her chest that she's not telling anyone, not even Kat and Reynardine? For once taking advantage narratively of the fact that we are no longer privy to her thoughts? Please?
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Jun 6, 2022 21:31
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Tiny Myers posted:Young, capricious lordling who is far less intimidating than the more powerful antagonist he is derived from, who was foreshadowed to be the real threat for most of the comic Characters repeatedly under-reacting to world-altering events in favor of humorous asides. Important character development happening off-screen, the only evidence of which being characters going "source: just trust me bro".
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Jun 29, 2022 02:20
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Riot Bus posted:It did actually happen, yes. The entire narrative actually rewrote itself to justify her behavior. Vriska also drove a teenager girl (who was in some way emotionally dependent on her for her own self-image (for convoluted multi-timeline reasons (the girl was also Vriska))) to tears after humiliating her and demolishing her psychologically, and then the girl's best friend ditched her for Vriska... hold on a second this is no longer funny isasphere fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Jun 30, 2022 |
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Jun 30, 2022 17:31
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Tiny Myers posted:Not just best friend, girlfriend. They kissed. I had forgotten that they were girlfriends, right! As for the spoilered bits... I didn't know those things had happened but I'm also not surprised after reading that weird document that went on about the troll empress's life on Earth in uncomfortable detail. You know what, at least Gunnerkrigg for all its awkward parts never outright crosses the line over to depravity. Like, I don't trust Tom's judgement anymore on many things, as an author, but I still see parts of the story I fell in love with in the first place, and they remain, at least from outward appearances, sincere attempts at telling a story for the sake of the story, not at playing weird gotcha games with the reader over and over.
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Jun 30, 2022 22:44
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Dogwood Fleet posted:Even if we saw him with a copy of "How to Talk to Your Teenage Daughter" and then miserably fail at interacting with her would go a long way. He doesn't have to do a good job, I just want to see him try. Splicer posted:Write her a note! Or show him struggling to write her a note! Replace the entire "no my father is good actually It's frustrating to me that this page was apparently intended to be something like the above suggestions, but it fell below the mark because it felt like it skipped a step or two in the process we were never allowed to see. Like, I couldn't put my finger on what it was until Tiny Myer's post above, but that's it. All we saw in the comic was: 1. Annie was traumatized. 2. Kat was rightfully mad on her behalf. 3. Tony comes back and traumatizes her some more. 4. Kat and Tony go have science times off-screen and Kat forgets about Annie's trauma. 5. Annie tries different unhealthy ways of dealing with her emotions including the magical but nothing works until... edit: I misremembered, it was worse? better?: 6. Wolf dad cheers her up better than anyone else, sadly, then Annie reintegrates her fire and we never hear from her anger and hurt against Tony again????? And then we skip to 7. They are both trying to meet in the middle but it reads as hollow because we see regret aplenty from Tony but no accountability, and we see a sort of mature acceptance from Annie, but no mourning of the childhood she left behind. Annie leaves behind her anger at her father, but we don't see how exactly she got to that part. Just that she stopped and now accepts whatever she can get from Tony. And like, that's probably the best move for a teenager still under her parent's care, but ever since the narrative has been so divorced from Annie's inner narration and thoughts it felt like she gave up and is putting on a Pollyanna brave front to fool everyone and herself. Imagine, though, if we've had step 4 never happen. Imagine if Kat had never gone abruptly team Tony, and had remained skeptical of Tony as a person, worried for Annie when she appeared suddenly with a new haircut and acting weird (she wouldn't know about Annie's fire elemental being cut off) in addition to be shunted to the weird empty white bedroom, then relievedwhen Annie showed up acting better but then upset again that Annie is again making more excuses for Tony. When is enough? Then we could have had Annie explain to Kat her reasoning. Kat could have pointed out the very glaringly missing aspect of "your father messed up and you suffered for it, yeah, he's flawed and human but you were a child" that has been missing in the last chapters. It would have made a world of difference to me if Annie at any point, at least to her closest friend in the whole world, admitted "yes, he did. I've chosen to forgive him anyway and have the best relationship with him that I can." Kat could have continued to be the audience's skeptical stand in, and then we could have slowly thawed to Tony as we saw that, actually, Annie seems to be getting better? Whatever weird father-daughter dynamic they have, it seems to work for them? And Kat could have reminded either Tony and/or Annie that if Tony messed up Annie again, well, she had her ways. She had her ways. Like, bam, narrative problem solved? isasphere fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Jul 1, 2022 |
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Jul 1, 2022 02:02
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" chapter with a single page of Annie finding dozens of balled up papers all reading "Annie I *frustrated scrawl*"
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Potsticker posted:This and basically everything Tiny Meyes posted is why I have disliked that and everything to do with how Tony has been treated in the comic after a certain point. He (Tony) has a very selfish outlook on things because he thinks about himself primarily and almost exclusively. His wife and his daughter don't seem like people to him, even, except for how they relate to him. And pairing Tony thinking about Tony (and now Loup thinking about Loup) along with the comic moving away from showing Annie's thought processes and motivations and point of view makes it feel like the comic itself is no longer about Annie's story, it's not about Annie doing things or experiencing things. This is probably the main aggravator of every problem the comic has. Every time Annie gives her personal opinion or view of the world in dialogue is a surprise to me. She might as well be a stranger, I can no longer tell where she is coming from. Before, moments like those were plot points, like when she broke down to Kat about missing her Mom, or when she got angry at Mort for giving her the Blinker stone, or her trying to flirt with Jack, or her anger at the Psychopomps in general. They were incongruous with the polite but almost unflappable persona she presented to the world and in her inner thoughts. But now it's the default. I miss Annie's story. Also Annie is/was a more likeable character because she was genuinely curious about the world and tried to help people. She was flawed but endearing. isasphere fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Jul 1, 2022 |
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Jul 1, 2022 02:13
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Tiny Myers posted:I think Gunnerkrigg Court is an allegory for the American political system. I'm impressed that this is actually coherent.
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Jul 1, 2022 05:44
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I'm still worried about what is up with Zimmy.
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Jul 5, 2022 17:21
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Tiny Myers posted:I would love to see more Zimmy, tbh. One of the most fascinating parts of the comic. Would love to know whatever this page is alluding to. What could someone as young as Zimmy have possibly done and how would it have made her this way? I had forgotten entirely about that conversation, the next chapter being the Mind Cage just completely erased it away from my mind. It also feels like the last Gunnerkrigg-flavored scene, if that makes sense.
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Jul 6, 2022 02:30
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Do people just not re-read the comic every now and then? Like, how do you forget The Skywatcher And The Angel? And okay, some chapters were light-hearted, but they were all paced well and felt like they had a purpose, whether character development or establishing something important for the plot. Tiny Myers posted:
For me the decline was The Thousand Eyes. I feel it diminished both Kat's accomplishments and the mystery of the Tic Tocs. Weird thing is, that the answer of the Tic Tocs turned out to be the theory I was personally rooting for? They were indeed a creation from Kat to search for Annie after Annie died. I just didn't think they would be from an alternate timeline, and the same bird repeated, and with magic help. I don't know if that was what Tom intended all along from the beginning, but that chapter, so soon after the Jeanne chapter, felt like Tom was getting in a hurry to solve the mysteries of the comic, but then the general pace of the comic, aside from solving those particular loose ends, didn't speed up? As far as I remember, the only other remaining burning mysteries are Zimmy/Omega and what is the Seed Bismuth, so it feels like we should be ramping up closer to the climax of the story, and yet it doesn't feel like that. Loup being introduced should have sped things up in some way. There is no tension or convincing emotional reactions or even real consequences, even when dangerous and exciting things are happening left and right. It also makes the Jeanne resolution feel less climatic retroactively? There were consequences, but they don't feel as grave as they should be. Losing Red's friendship and the birth of Loup are just not enough of a consequence for freeing Jeanne, because the guilt and introspection Annie was having from Red was cut short by Kat and Annie seems to not have learned anything in the end. Annie being a psychopomp by force is too much in the backburner, like the creepiness of the Robot Cult, which definitely has to pay off at some point but not yet. And the biggest consequence, Loup, is just not enough of a menace after his introduction. Making Loup just an edgy teen throwing tantrums without really killing anyone that has a creepy crush on Annie makes him as threatening as men that don't take no for an answer in real life, which is scary in an exasperating way, not in a "oh, the new villain of the story, cool!" way. The Court was destroyed but no one seems truly devastated or lost. Like, it just changed the window dressing and then The Court wants to move, but we also don't know enough of the Court to feel threatened by that move because they alternate from knowing too much about everything and spying on everyone, to being incompetent, disorganized fools that don't communicate with each other, but not even in a way that makes them compelling as an opposition to Annie and her friends. The only thing that felt like it had emotional impact in a story-arc way was Annie being made to repeat a school year when Tony returned and her cheating was revealed, but then we were distracted by the whole "Tony bad dad but Annie okay now" thing. I'm really buying the theory that Tom is just burned out by now. isasphere fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Jul 10, 2022 |
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Jul 10, 2022 18:55
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Dogwood Fleet posted:SSSS is very dead. I don't know if she originally intended for it to end here, but it's over now and now all of her comics are going to be about evangelical Christiantiy. If I remember right, there were going to be 4 to 5 adventures like the 2 we got where they explore other parts of the silent world, plus the alternate universe videogame with the same characters she was doing. She even reduced her comic updates from 5 pages a week to 4 pages a week, specifically because she wanted one extra day a week to work on City of Hunger, and then she went and taught herself coding to make the videogame from scratch, and was making steady progress, and then all of a sudden she said that playing and making videogames was a waste of her time, at the same time she revealed the bunny comic.
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Jul 30, 2022 23:31
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CodfishCartographer posted:I wonder if enough people stop believing in the ether, or rather start believing that the ether is fake / not real, if it'll become true? Like, the ether makes collective belief into reality, could it unmake itself? You would think that is the sort of amoral project The Court would have pursued at some point.
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Aug 10, 2022 19:49
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What I still don't get is why we should care that a bunch of randos are going to the moon and never coming back. Like, okay? Good riddance? No one we really care about wants to leave, right? Like, even if they take their seed bismuth court sprawl thing up with them, Annie and her friends can still remain on Earth, right? The only negative consequence I can think of is that they seem like they are going to use Zimmy as a battery and probably kill her, but that doesn't seem to be the angle that is worrying Annie? I desperately want to care about the stakes in this comic, help.
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Aug 17, 2022 23:17
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