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I'm deeply, deeply confused by how ownership is involved in the process of making Arthur a real boy at all. As best I can tell, something about the use of the arrow means that a copy of the ownership contract between Annie and the doll Renard is stuck in, is being applied to the new body (which being alive cannot be owned)- causing the Annies to own Arthur. But I just don't see why that would be the case, unless the point is that this is a totally left-field and unnecessary problem created by having the arrow wired up to the computEr. Basically I think this is way less clear than the dialogue would imply, and the comic isn't making it obvious that this is supposed to be gibberish either.
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Jun 1, 2019 14:14
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MikeJF posted:Kat tried to reverse engineer etheric law with what she got from transferring Renard back to Annie through the computer a few chapters back. I get that- the problem is that the actual issue for contention in the case of Arthur, which is going to shape the plot, is not actually clear at all for me even though Kat seems to get it.
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Jun 1, 2019 15:14
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I'm honestly not fond of the way the comic frames the Paz thing, because honestly... Paz thinking Annie is bad for Kat, or a bad friend, is not that hard to understand! Jealousy may compound it but Annie has not been the greatest friend to Kat around the 'going to the forest' thing, or more generally leaning a ton on Kat. Kat has kind of a martyr thing going on for Annie, and while that's not Annie's fault, Paz getting that impression wouldn't help. This isn't to say Annie deserves Paz' enmity, just that Paz isn't acting totally irrationally, this is the sort of thing that happens. But since we very much inhabit Annie Perspective, Paz is cast into a worse light.
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Apr 2, 2021 05:17
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I don't mean Paz is a saint, nor that she's right about Annie - just that her perspective is pretty understandable. Kat and Annie's friendship has been tumultuous, and Annie is not good at communicating what is going on with her at the best of times.
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Apr 2, 2021 08:45
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Really, what good father doesn't have an instinctive revulsion to his child's face to the point of thinking of them as an impostor, pretending to be his dead wife? Truly, any complaint about his parenting is just failing to understand the loving, important task of depersonalizing your child to the point that they develop intense, magically augmented dissociation.
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Apr 21, 2021 16:18
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Bleck posted:friendly reminder that not only do beings exist in this comic that have the specific ability to steal people's bodies but also this character has direct experience dealing with one of said beings directly on multiple occasions in multiple contexts I didn't say he hated his daughter. I said his reaction to her face is instinctive revulsion. That's not good parenting! In fact, it's the kind of thing that means you probably should not be parenting that child at the moment. The Court is exacerbating things by actively pushing him into this position, but Tony's inability to stop taking out his issues on Annie is not to his credit as a father.
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Apr 21, 2021 17:16
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I think 'caused her to dissociate so intensely by shaming her in front of her friends as the first time she'd seen him in literally years, that she used magic to help her hyper-dissociate part of her soul apart from her' is much more important than the specific end goal of his actions in those scenes! A good parent and a bad parent can both tell a child not to cheat, but one of them does it in a way that causes the child to experience intense distress and trauma in front of her peers, destroying her ability to express herself and socialize for a while, and one of them doesn't. I'll let you fill in which is good parenting! E: Seconding the general call for 'holy poo poo get this man some therapy' - he can be an atrocious parent and still be someone who deserves compassion and support, just, not to be parenting a child. The Court, of course, is dealing with this by forcing him to parent and not getting him therapy.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:25
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Bleck posted:friend if I were a parent of a child with a magical side whose main desire seems to be "Burn Things To Death" I would immediately make it my utmost priority to have them dissociate from it Emotionally dissociating as a consistent coping mechanism, because it's the only way to handle the world around you, is traumatizing. Like, it's a form of trauma in itself. Plus, when did Annie want to burn things to death before Tony showed up? The only way she could handle her feelings after what he put her through was to shove them out of her, and that's incredibly unhealthy. He caused that; she's a child trying not to lash out. Defending him with 'I would also cause my child to dissociate their anger about me to the best of my ability' is... not the W you think it is.
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Apr 22, 2021 02:50
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Bleck posted:yeah you're really good at switching the language into being about what you want it to be but there's a marked difference between "my child's anger" and "my child's literal magical fire powers" No? Annie's not running around flamethrowering things before Tony shows up. Is she in a good place at that point? Obviously not, but it's not because she's got a fire spirit part of her. And yeah, I assume that the adult has more responsibility to handle things well than the daughter who will do anything she can to please him, which is the situation when he arrived. Had he been even fractionally kinder or more circumspect - or even told her about the situation in private before showing up as her teacher! It would have been a far less lovely thing to do. That fire spirit wanting to throw fire around after Tony treats her in an incredibly unkind way is transparently her being angry about what just happened, and she cut it off from her because she couldn't handle her experience of him. She wasn't even able to emote or communicate with her friends after she cut it off - it's a transparent depiction of emotional dissociation. There's a reason the art turned into janky child's drawings after he confronted her, and then she cut her hair and broke off her anger into her fire spirit part - which she did because she has a habit of assuming he knows best and forgiving everything he does, even when it involves literally bifurcating her soul to make it work. This is wildly unhealthy. Tony is a hurt person, but that doesn't excuse what he's done as a father, despite all his good intentions. He is not, right now, capable of being a good father to Annie (though he was briefly capable of being a functional father to one of the Annies, which was a step up). He's not capable of being a functional person! He needs help! And the Court is happily throwing gasoline on that situation because from their perspective, Tony being a wreck and Antimony being miserable don't matter as long as they have Carver's expertise. This family is not working, and insisting that it's the child's fault their relationship is dysfunctional won't make it work. Or, well, I hope it won't, because that would make this comic miserable. E: Hell, I like Tony as a character! But he's a character who is massively loving up his daughter's life because he's an awful father, and he knows it, and instead of recovering and finding a way to slowly be in her life, he's been catapulted onto center stage by the Court. In terms of characterizing the Court as massively callous, it's a great bit of writing. But that doesn't mean Tony's a good father even a little.
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Apr 22, 2021 04:47
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Bleck posted:can't believe you'd just admit to being a bad father like this You do get that the measure of parenting is the effect on the child, right? It doesn't matter how understandable or painful one's own issues are, if you just let them play out on your children and hurt them that's bad parenting.
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Apr 25, 2021 04:32
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Daktar posted:'I got CBT!' This is a good post
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Apr 30, 2021 01:30
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Wittgen posted:Well, we do know the original was supposed to splatter against a canyon floor. This might well be the answer: Kat's been messing around with timelines enough that Annie 'shouldn't be here' in some cosmic bureaucracy sense.
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May 7, 2021 20:45
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GlyphGryph posted:And the current situation in the world is just... kind of a really boring stasis with a low level looming threat no one seems to want to do anything about. This is particularly relevant because if I wanted that, I would just go outside and experience, you know, politics and climate change.
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May 19, 2021 00:59
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I should say, that if the Tony Content had mostly been 'Tony shows up again, causes Annie to dissociate so hard the art becomes crayons, Annie uses magic to cut her fire off and has to learn to embrace that side of herself and understand her own anger, we see Tony for the wreck he is in the conversation with Donlan' I would have considered it pretty solid. That chapter nailed it: Tony is bad at being a dad, because he's a wreck, in part because occult forces and also his bosses jerked him around. He cannot actually take care of Annie or ensure her emotional wellbeing, at all, but the Court is pushing them together in a way that hurts both of them. It did a very good job of explaining without excusing, at least in my opinion, and set the stage for Annie to accept that while she cares deeply for him, he cannot be a good father to her right now, maybe ever. Instead we've had this, and the whole split Annies situation apparently leading into it, and it feels like the same ideas are being restated but in a way designed to make us even more sympathetic to Tony, because the audience didn't appreciate him enough (to the point that all of Annie's friends get turned into audience proxies to express how they don't like Tony.)
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May 19, 2021 23:56
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Sway Grunt posted:I miss Ysengrin.
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Jun 24, 2021 18:20
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Personally I think that the comic has failed to frame or structure around Annie's monologue in any way to communicate anything but 'yes, you should agree with Annie.' I've lost a lot of faith in the comic and its writing, not just because of Tony and his story but it's a pretty big part of it, mostly because of how it got longer and more central like it was metastasizing. Annie's still clearly the protagonist, but her perspective is being externally validated by everything about the comic's form and writing. One can say 'well, I know this is unhealthy, so the author/text must be framing it as unhealthy, regardless of what the actual structure of the work is doing' but, well, I really don't respect that approach to reading, frankly. Also things have just been poorly paced since Jeanne was dealt with.
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Oct 17, 2021 21:57
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I'm also very unsure what the Epic of Gilgamesh has to do with this, not least because it does actually spell out character motivations constantly... much like Gunnerkrigg Court. This is actually a very direct and didactic comic a lot of the time, in its archive. Annie learns lessons directly, mystical secondary characters spell out what the protagonists have learned or are learning, and monologues get given that are structurally supported by the comic's design all the time. This isn't a problem - the combination of an enigmatic, ambiguous surrounding with the didactic structure of 'weird child investigates things, learns some lessons' worked very well for years. But it means that Annie's speech, and the chapters orbiting Tony, are in much the same mode as many previous stories, and playing with a near-identical visual and textual vocabulary. When Annie gives a chapter-ending summary of her position, it has the same weight as her chapter-ending speech to Jones (if not more, given how many pages were involved). Gunnerkrigg Court's tendency towards directly laying out conclusions in the voice of trusted characters means the readership expects this scenario to be summarized in the same way, and if that structure's going to be subverted, more needs to be done to illuminate that or at least mark that as occurring. Also seriously, 'if you don't mind being a child compared to people who lived 5000 years ago' is such a bizarre way to frame this, especially when citing Biblical writing. About Jesus of Nazareth, famously only a subject of writing since around, oh, 2,021 years ago. Give or take.
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Oct 17, 2021 23:47
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Well, we could use the numerous chapter-ending monologue that already exist, often coming from Annie, as our benchmark for how this comic uses that convention. We can start with the Minotaur chapter - Annie lays out a very basic, honestly comical little moral about not judging a book by its cover. A better example, however, would be the use of Jones. Jones is presented as the 'impartial observer' - the Wandering Eye, the Stone. Annie's little speech at the end of 'The Stone' is all about how Jones clearly does have some kind of emotional, ethical dimension beyond being an object, and the reader is clearly intended to agree. Jones has given clearly useful and usually ethical advice before, often as the coda to other events (such as when she got a party hat teleported onto her, and immediately commented on how this would imply exactly the chapter outcome we've all just seen occurring, and why that would work). Jones' quiet assent is presented as a meaningful element of the narrative. Similarly, the end of a chapter in GK usually involves either a clear summation/moral, or a clear hook for a future event. The hooks rarely involve a trusted or sympathetic character explaining their perspective; instead they're heavy on imagery and enigmatic phrases or objects. There's a very clean, efficient narrative style - everything is either meaningful or likely to come back later. Coyote doesn't usually outright lie, in part because an outright liar is kind of narrative poison: You want the readership to have some sense of the events of the story, and to be able to proceed effectively. Even more importantly, this comic, for all its enigmas, is rarely totally ambiguous or given to tonal twists. Making clear how a thing should feel to the reader, sometimes via direct discourse, receives considerable page space and time. For one pertinent example, Tony's own summation of his own life was clear, to the point, and effective ('I almost... my own daughter!' or however it was phrased). A character whose fundamental flaw is his failure to be communicative or to handle his emotions in a healthy manner, while drunk, manages to neatly and directly encapsulate his problems and his experiences so that the reader can be brought into the loop. This is an admirable economy of storytelling, that the reader accepts this abbreviation and moves with it. It is precisely the effective, unified craft of the comic as a whole that makes 'this particular monologue is meant to be read as the opposite of every other instance' so difficult to believe. E: Jones' advice to Tony is precisely the same manner of thing. It is correct, straightforward, and an accurate description of what's wrong. He's just incapable of taking the advice and cutting the Gordian knot. That's where all the dramatic irony of her saying that comes from - and Tony knows it! Jones has accurately and dispassionately observed the situation and correctly diagnosed the solution of 'talk to your daughter and tell her about this.' That he can't actually take the advice does not make it inaccurate, only unhelpful, which is perfectly in keeping with Jones - a wandering eye, but not usually an active participant. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Oct 18, 2021 |
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Oct 18, 2021 00:47
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Hodgepodge posted:See my edit. You've summed up a bunch of assumptions and failed to consider basic characterization. Jones is an "objective" observer, but objective does not mean correct. She has no direct experience with feelings and can only provide a perspective on them from indirect observation. She has never had a feeling. She literally does not fully understand the subject she is speaking on. Whereas any human being can at least compare another's experiences with feelings to our own. We understand the subject from experience, not just observation. ...Annie literally says, in her comment on Jones, 'you actually have feelings, you're just in denial' and is presented as correct. In fact, she obviously is, given Jones' sentimental interest in humans, humanity, and the people she's close to. The idea that Jones 'has never had a feeling' is itself frankly ridiculous and called such during The Stone.* Also, calling observations about the comic 'assumptions' then not in any way interacting with the majority of what's touched on is really giving the game away. At least respond to the formal aspect in any way! *that she experiences emotions differently from most humans, and has a vastly different perspective on the world, is entirely possible, but her sentimentality is pretty overt. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Oct 18, 2021 |
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Oct 18, 2021 00:52
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Hodgepodge posted:What she literally says is:
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Oct 18, 2021 00:59
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Hodgepodge posted:On the other hand, you're having trouble with "God literally cannot be trusted in this comic, so why are you treating human protagonists as infallible? If you explicitly cannot trust God not to mislead you, why trust an even more fallible character to be perfectly reliable and correct?" And I don't think that's hard to parse, and so I'm tempted to insult your intelligence. Now I see why you're not engaging with the formal dimensions at all, huh.
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Oct 18, 2021 01:26
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Hodgepodge posted:I think you're flattering yourself a hell of lot with this term. Formal isn't a sign of some high or advanced critique; questions of form can be as basic as 'those chapters that end with a summation have, across the lifetime of the comic, been presented as both correct and available to be taken at face value.' It's a pretty straightforward recognition of a consistent structure in the comic, which is itself reinforced by the post-chapter end-notes, which are often also explicitly didactic* (to the point of recent end-notes parodying this tendency within the comic). But, y'know, you can posture however you want. *Not usually morally, but often about technical information.
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Oct 18, 2021 02:12
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Coyote is directly and horribly malevolent towards Ysengrin, he treats him in straightforwardly monstrous ways. The whole interlude with him pulling Ysengrin's memories of breaking down and attacking Annie out of the wolf's head, so as to have the pawn he needs for his future plans, is just incredibly distressing. Ysengrin is a tool to Coyote, and a plaything, and Annie is one of the very few characters who has genuine affection for the angry old wolf.
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Oct 20, 2021 04:31
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I think with Ysengrin it's more 'if he develops even a vague capacity for introspection or awareness of his own brokenness, because Coyote is cultivating that broken personality to the point that Ysengrin will do exactly what he wants him to do.' Y'know, basically straightforward personal abuse, but with deific power.
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Oct 20, 2021 06:47
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Could be an entirely fake Renard, rather than a possession.
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Nov 8, 2021 00:55
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Patware posted:absolutely buck wild to be sixteen years into this webcomic and one of the major antagonist forces is like 85% undefined I feel like a major issue here is that it felt like the Shadow Men were more defined than this, because they were leaning on Standard Shadowy Conspiracy, but now that's broken down into this bizarre incompetent blur.
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Dec 29, 2021 18:48
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While I am enjoying that we're going to get some detail on this guy, and also it was obvious he was being associated with Buddhism from a lot of things about him... ...that's a hell of a leap, Annie. There are so many ways of talking about enlightenment that exist, and the idea that one immediately jumps to 'he was a bodhisattva' is kind of funny to me. Does anything about Aata, or what Shell said, imply that he attained enlightenment in such a way as to be able to leave this world, but chose to stay? Does enlightenment in Gunnerkrigg universe mean you can attain nirvana? How would that intersect with the ether stuff we've been hearing about for years? I'm honestly excited to see what comes next, and hopefully Annie defines what she thinks 'bodhisattva' means, but I wouldn't be shocked if the term is just being used loosely to mean 'person who is enlightened' - although if Aata chose not to enter the ether in some way, but instead remained on Earth to help the program to improve the lot of humanity, that would make him more bodhisattva-like than if he was just very wise and insightful.
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Dec 31, 2021 19:24
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:I think they're people who've achieved enlightenment, but rather than embracing Nirvana they choose to remain in contact with the material world so as to help other souls also achieve enlightenment. Based on some brief research, different Buddhist sects and discourses have used the term in both senses. Which, on consideration, makes a lot of sense.
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Dec 31, 2021 21:55
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Rohan Kishibe posted:I think Tom is going for the classic "magic vs science" thing, since they've been contrasted so much in the comic so far. The mistake though seems to be that the Science antagonists seem to fundamentally not understand what science even is and the fact stated in this scene that the ether can't be understood or controlled is something that is patently untrue. Yeah, my main issue with this is that the ether obviously has deeper laws, as presented in this comic. Belief, psychopomps, even a bureaucracy for ghosts: The ether functions in ways that have been clearly outlined. We don't know much about the inner workings, but it's extremely reliable. It won't suddenly twist in your hand or do something you never expected, except in the case of Coyote, a massively powerful ether-manipulating entity that has a clear personal desire to stay incomprehensible to humans and gently caress with them. If they were overtly mad that Coyote, an rear end in a top hat dog monster, is apparently almost omnipotent... sure! I think that Coyote existing is a pretty good argument for trying to understand and control the ether in case he decides to do something like 'make another body-stealing spirit like Renard' on a lark. Arbitrarily powerful natural phenomena are a pretty good reason to figure out things like meteorology and earthquake-proof buildings. But they seem to just be mad that they can't isolate the Ether Particle, so they're going to take their ball and go home.
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Jan 7, 2022 21:44
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I just don't think 'belief shapes the ether' is particularly unpredictable or outside of control either. If it were the 'humans are always going to be the fuel and playthings of godlike entities that are clearly assholes' I would be entirely fine with it - as noted, Coyote is a great argument for figuring out how to stop Coyote. But their argument as given applies to non-etheric nature, too. We can't turn off death or toggle the gravity switch; our understanding is pretty broad, but we're still stuck with a set of results and situations that are not in fact totally plastic to human will. Ether is particularly turbulent and weird, I'm sure, but "Renard needs something to have eyes" is not actually a collapse of logic, it's just literary or conceptual logic instead of mechanical. The Court could, in fact, manipulate that, and did by trapping him. It's pretty clear that a major element of this story is the distinction between intuitive, mysterious nature and rational, knowable civilization (and how people actually live in between these operations). But the ether's intuitive, mysterious nature goes precisely as far as the author's own depiction of it as mysterious, intuitive, numinous. I don't really buy it. There are rules, and while something like Coyote gets to do whatever he wants, it doesn't seem to be because there aren't rules - it's like being ants and meeting a human. The rules of the universe just happen to favor Coyote in important ways. Again, if the reasoning was 'we can't deal with Coyote etc, and humans may never be able to, so we need a way to cut off or domesticate the ether' it would be a perfectly functional motivation. It just feels like the larger principle doesn't add up the way the comic wants it to, even as the smaller case of 'gently caress a Coyote' works perfectly well.
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Jan 8, 2022 02:14
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I feel like 'actually you're just jealous that some people can do magic' is... also the core moral position of Harry Potter on why non-wizards shouldn't get told about or try to understand magic. Shell being a muppet of a teenager of an adult is doing a lot of framing work to make this position go from 'poorly constructed but understandable' to fodder for 'lol life's not fair sweetie.' As a general rule, anyone who uses 'life's not fair' as a normative argument for not doing something about it is not really worth listening to. It is, in fact, unfair that an rear end in a top hat like Coyote is an immortal, all-powerful demigod-thing! That doesn't make the Court's obviously bad ideas for what to do about it good, but 'have you considered, perhaps, that life is not fair' makes Reynardine seem like the 'you can tell I am right because I am being calm and rational' character in that old Webcomics About Political Opinions parody. E: I had to make it but I want to be clear this isn't proving any kind of point 
Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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Jan 10, 2022 22:52
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GlyphGryph posted:I feel like its the perfect counter to "we need to do stop [thing] from happening because its unfair" by itself, because that's not really an argument worth listening to either. There are arguments LIKE both these arguments that can be good, but by themselves they are both worthless, and "life is not fair" is the superior worthless argument. "You're just jealous of my immortality, and your desire to change things just proves your jealousy" is the entire position here, though. Obviously the Court doesn't have a leg to stand on because the author, who constructs this whole scenario, does not want to give them a leg to stand on. But the fact that this means 'suck it up life is unfair' guy is the Reasonable And Correct one, pointing out how the people trying to change the status quo are actually just jealous... that's a bad look, it's a bad framework. I'm not calling for Tom's head or anything but it makes me much less interested in the Court et al. If etheric beings were not wildly more powerful than the Court/human faction, this would work better, but by insisting on dunking on the Court at every possible moment, it comes off like the weak side in a conflict is being told 'the only reason you'd want things to be different is because you're jealous' - it would be trivial to make the Court more of a genuine threat, or have them already be in a position of actual power from which they declare awful intentions, but as it's currently constructed it just comes off as saying 'grow up, mature, realize the status quo is actually fine' when The Court authorities should represent the status quo, like they did earlier on in the narrative. E: Also, VVVV Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Jan 11, 2022 |
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Jan 11, 2022 20:51
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My position is not that the Court are correct, but rather the way they are 'petulant and childish' is being mobilized to make the counterargument of 'actually it's fine that the world is like this' seem more reasonable. You might apply the same status-quo argument to Ysengrin, who is similarly unhappy with the way the etheric/material divide shapes his life. (And was being, like, metaphysically abused by Coyote for some immense period of time in order to turn him into a tool, which is also pretty hosed. Almost like 'big etheric creatures like Coyote are terrible and bad for everyone smaller, who should probably recognize their mutual interests in doing something about that' is transparently the case.) The characters most clearly framed as wise or insightful are, broadly speaking, those who accept the way things are; acceptance isn't necessarily a negative, but it very easily bleeds over into, well... 'you're just jealous of people who have what you don't have,' which... look, the idea of 'a cult of the blind who hate light' should probably outline how hosed it is to set up a fiction that operates that way? "The villains are blind people, because they're irrationally angry over the unfairness of things being set up to favor sighted people" would be way way worse than anything this comic is doing, so maybe it's not a good comparison to make this structure seem better.
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Jan 11, 2022 22:36
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Rand Brittain posted:Also the status quo is biased in the Court's favor in literally every field except that specific one. They don't make sense as underdogs. Strongly agreed! The weird framing where the Shadow Men are consistently shown to be way less powerful and competent, and the Court less organized, than previously thought works out to them seeming like underdogs when previously there was some kind of balance or even superiority from the sinister machinations within the Court. But then it was consistently revealed that Coyote is completely unstoppable, Court ideology is wrapped up in their relation to the etheric, the Court can only crudely touch on the core concerns of the comic (etheric stuff) and suddenly that's a pretty immediate, life or death question. The overall narrative structure produces an effect where the Court are petulant children and barely even have nominal power, making them the underdogs despite that making no sense for the comic's apparent intent. This is something that was much less true while Jeanne was still in place, because she apparently single-handedly made the Forest much less able to directly influence or act in the Court; that her being gone means the Court is apparently flailing uselessly is a major issue for the narrative. ...also I think that Coyote being actually quasi-omnipotent was basically a bad decision if the Court was intended to be an oppressively towering presence, since literally anyone is the underdog in a conflict with Coyote. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jan 11, 2022 |
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Jan 11, 2022 22:48
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:And then gets eaten by a wolf. On purpose, ruining the wolf's life and destroying his sense of self.
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Jan 12, 2022 01:23
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:drat imagine if the forest crew were also shown to be wildly unorganized and hosed up idiots who make rash and stupid decisions. Luckily Ysengrin is pretty sensibl- Wait okay so maybe this Loup guy i- Holy poo poo the whole forest, huh? I mean at least Coyote has a plan and that's fine and isn't deliberately just ruining the lives of everyone he's supposed to be protecting for fun... So far everything Coyote has wanted or planned has been easily within his reach and the Court's been more or less bumbling uselessly. If they're both going to have comparable narrative presences so as to create the dynamic of 'both authorities are awful' then you actually do need to make them function in parallel, rather than 'Coyote is an rear end in a top hat but ancient and knowing, the Court is a bunch of petulant children to the point that their main ideological representative is a muppet who literally today admitted she has no idea what the actual plan is and didn't even have the self-awareness to say she didn't from the word go.' Both may be presented as assholes but compare Ysengrin to Shell, or even Loup - even the most childish, broken-brained Forest god is presented as more of an adult, and more driven by real pain and frustration, than the Court's representatives who are presented as basically paper tigers who don't know what they're really doing. Maybe the author can turn that around, but, it's just not very compelling when Loup is an erratic and threatening but weirdly ineffectual monster; how much less compelling when the Court feels the same way, but without even a singular personality or the pathos of Ysengrin!
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Jan 12, 2022 22:38
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Love how the comic is immediately agreeing with Renard that this whole 'fairness' concept is clearly bullshit, and also the Court is clearly being unfair. It just doesn't seem well thought out!
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Jan 14, 2022 21:23
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Rand Brittain posted:I mean, that part is consistent. The Shadow Men have identified a genuine instance in which life is unfair; the problem is that their reaction is vastly out of proportion to the problem, causes as least as much unfairness as it solves, and... doesn't really solve the problem at all except insofar as Coyote doesn't live in New Jersey. I don't mean that the Shadow Men are not obviously reacting in the most useless way imaginable to their situation, they are, I mean Renard on the previous page went directly to "Life's not fair, your claim of unfairness is actually jealousy" and then immediately goes "ah but see YOU are unfair." He's not expressing a coherent point of view on unfairness, naturalness, cruelty or acceptance. He's just coming out with negations for each specific concept put in front of him with no thought for what position he's actually presenting in aggregate. When it would be very very easy to go 'yeah, that's unfair and pretty bad, but what's the Court's solution? Oh, it's terrible, oh well.'
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Jan 14, 2022 22:16
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life_source posted:Intensely hosed up that you think this. The elves are refugees, speaking in a certain British dialect, showing up as a vague group of guys playing soccer in alleys. The comic is absolutely framing them in a particular class position, which is being mocked by Patware here but which is absolutely present in their characterization and presentation. The idea that the forest dweller refugees are in some sense an uprooted, more traditional British group now stranded in an urban, international/deracinated Court context is absolutely present - frankly, there's a little class anxiety in the way Eglamore's new girlfriend behaves and relates to the core cast of kids of white-collar techno-sorcerers. It's not inherently bad to engage these signifiers, but it does make this scene more uncomfortable. E: And like, I'm being really soft on Tom here - it's really blatant and definitely kinda weird that this framing was put into place, but I've more or less trusted that it was going to be handled pretty well, since 'kids of Court figures encounter kids from the magical working class, have some class anxiety' makes a lot of sense in terms of the characters and their world, their age, and their development. This bit though...
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Feb 16, 2022 19:04
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Yeah, the 'robots in human bodies are basically teens' thing has been hammered on a ton with Lana and Loup-bot in the comic so far. Some of the bots are clearly older and more adult, but this pair are Obviously Teens, presumably so that Lana flirting with Loup-bot is fine and Loup-bot having a crush on Antimony was fine rather than immediately creepland. Which leads us here. Which is not a good place to be. If Tom just wanted to have Lana be flirting with other teens/robots in a less creeptastic scenario than 'cornered by strangers in an alley' it would come off differently, but this particular context is just such an incredibly bad idea. Also all the touching is really off as well! Also strangers! It's a mess, and as pointed out it makes Lana's earlier body enthusiasm/goofy flirting retroactively much less fun and wholesome. This is a real turn for the worse and it just came entirely out of left field.
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Feb 17, 2022 03:59
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