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the idea that this story swirled down the spout due to its author trying with increasing desperation and decreasing subtlety to endear its worst character to the audience, before giving up and excising him near-entirely, is fun and all but it can’t explain everything I really want to know the rationale behind “resolving” the dual Annies so abruptly. externalizing her internal conflict with a clone like that had been a good idea! especially at that stage of the plot, where there weren’t as many characters for her to bounce off of
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Jun 2, 2022 19:42
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Gunnerkrigg Court: Man's Endeavor To Become Dull
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Jun 2, 2022 20:15
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Yeah there's no one character or plot point we can point fingers at, and if it were changed or removed suddenly the comic would be good again. If Tony's relationship with Annie were better fleshed out, we'd still have Loup being a limp villain. If the dual Annies were better resolved, we'd still have the weird love triangle with Lana and Jerrick. Etc etc.
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Jun 2, 2022 20:18
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isasphere posted:It's weird to see Reynard relegated to being the Voice of Reason in any argument. 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."
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Jun 2, 2022 20:57
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Yeah, there's nothing that can magically fix the fact that we had that scene with the forest folk hitting on Lana. It's not like they would've been talking to Tony instead. I agree about wanting to know why 2annie was over so quickly. I think it was one of the most interesting developments thus far. If it was just a vehicle to explore her relationship with Tony, then Tony being excised/his part in the comic being hurried past would make it make more sense, but man, what missed opportunities. It feels like we've barely explored the results, either, like her apparently being twice as powerful now?
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Jun 2, 2022 21:42
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Felt like Tom was just tired of the two Annie idea without any real idea yet on how to resolve it.
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Jun 2, 2022 23:51
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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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for a while now renard's been a voice of reason with some let's say antiquated ideas about women, it's mostly the context that's making him sound off-key
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Jun 3, 2022 03:45
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Oxxidation posted:for a while now renard's been a voice of reason with some let's say antiquated ideas about women, it's mostly the context that's making him sound off-key I really felt like previously, Renard was never purely the voice of reason - he could be right or useful, but he always had a certain bent that made it clear he was about on Annie's level of insight. He wasn't presented as a particularly mature adult figure in the story, he was presented as her companion. Now he's being cast as the adult in the room even with characters like Shell, which means his flaws have a different flavor to them.
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Jun 3, 2022 04:30
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We've at least seen Reynard grow up a lot. He had a lot of time in magic prison to think about the fact that he killed a dude because he was horny and he came to deeply regret trying to kill Annie, though IMO they never properly reconciled over that. He's shown himself to be ready to put his life on the line for others and the moment where he really grew up was when he killed the shrimp doll monster. At least here, he's in his element. He has quietly watched human civilization for hundreds of years and was close enough to Coyote to understand that the ether has a purpose in this world. He also spends a lot of time hanging out with human adults (Jim at least) so it makes sense that he'd start to sound like one. Shell is a really immature adult, even Annie and Kat have had to check her a couple of times. She doesn't understand the ethereal world at all but she was part of a group that was trying to control it. She's angry and impulsive and while she thinks she is trying to do the right thing, she lacks Reynard's perspective and experience. So say what you will, Reynard has at least had his arc on screen.
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Jun 3, 2022 09:04
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Sorry, I'm kind of tired, but I don't really get how what Annie said stems from what Renard said. "Morality is an ongoing debate that is relative to culture, history, and personal belief" == "Fairy tales have morals, so it would be bad if we stopped letting fairy tales affect reality"? I mean, how about the fact that they've said the ether is literally the fabric of reality (literally Renard who is involved in this conversation said that yet doesn't seem concerned) and the entire system of death as they know it might stop working because it's based on taking people into the ether? Much bigger and more existential concerns???
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Jun 3, 2022 09:52
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Tiny Myers posted:Sorry, I'm kind of tired, but I don't really get how what Annie said stems from what Renard said. "Morality is an ongoing debate that is relative to culture, history, and personal belief" == "Fairy tales have morals, so it would be bad if we stopped letting fairy tales affect reality"? I mean, how about the fact that they've said the ether is literally the fabric of reality (literally Renard who is involved in this conversation said that yet doesn't seem concerned) and the entire system of death as they know it might stop working because it's based on taking people into the ether? Much bigger and more existential concerns???
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Jun 3, 2022 09:57
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this is a really loving weird page renard makes a pretty self-evident observation, if delivered somewhat dramatically. Then Annie says something completely different altogether, and speaks more than I have ever seen in a single panel? what the gently caress is going on with the pacing
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Jun 3, 2022 10:04
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A big flaming stink posted:Annie says something completely different altogether, and speaks more than I have ever seen in a single panel? 
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Jun 3, 2022 10:23
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I hate wall of text in a visual medium.
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Jun 3, 2022 10:59
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A big flaming stink posted:this is a really loving weird page This entire conversation isn't flowing properly, I feel like I need a flowchart just to keep track of what points the participants are making or supposed to be making at any given time. quote:what the gently caress is going on with the pacing This is approaching HunterXHunter levels of text-to-visual ratio in a comic.
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Jun 3, 2022 12:17
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It just comes off like uncharacteristic preaching of bad philosophical points at the audience, rather than an organic conversation the characters are having with each other. Not to mention that claiming ethics aren't ever developed in a science lab shows an awful understanding of what scientists actually do.
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Jun 3, 2022 12:33
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The large hadron collider smashing philosophers together to find the god is dead particle.
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Jun 3, 2022 13:23
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In fairness, Tom is a software engineer so he has a lot of experience working in academic and professional environments where the humanities are actively derided and ethics are routinely ignored, misunderstood, or attacked by scientists and engineers who think they've outsmarted morality. This page doesn't feel bad or out of character (except for Kat's whole thing), maybe just a bit wordy. I think people may just be looking for things to jump on here. worm girl fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Jun 3, 2022 |
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Jun 3, 2022 13:26
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Somebody who actually knows something about philosophy give me a good H philosopher for a hadron pun thanks
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Jun 3, 2022 13:27
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Splicer posted:Somebody who actually knows something about philosophy give me a good H philosopher for a hadron pun thanks Hermann Hesse? Georg Hegel?
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Jun 3, 2022 13:30
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worm girl posted:This page doesn't feel bad or out of character (except for Kat's whole thing), maybe just a bit wordy. I think people may just be looking for things to jump on here. The main issue on this page isn't characterization, it's that it has three panels and two of them feel like they come from completely different moments even though they're meant to go together. Annie and Renard say two completely different things even though the latter is meant to be explaining what the former said, made worse by the fact that Renard's argument is very easy to understand regardless. The whole page is just  too which isn't particularly pleasing to read in a comic.
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Jun 3, 2022 13:38
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Yeah, it's not that I'm looking for things to jump on, it's that I genuinely read the comic through once and said "... What" and reread it a couple more times and was still baffled. I'm glad if it read okay to some folks, genuinely, but I personally agree with the post saying they feel like they need a flowchart to understand what's happening in this conversation. The entire thing has felt disjointed and not really like they're asking the questions that would actually make sense to ask (like what Kat wants to actually do in the Court that she can't do now), more having a conversation that doesn't make a lot of sense overall solely because that's what the author needs them to do at this junction for whatever reason rather than because it makes sense with their characters. I just don't really see how what Annie is saying is derived from what Renard is saying, and yeah, three paragraphs in a single panel for something that does not deserve that much focus feels weird and bad. Could've been broken up into multiple panels or pared down significantly. But even that is something I'm willing to overlook if what she's saying actually made sense in context.
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Jun 3, 2022 13:52
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worm girl posted:In fairness, Tom is a software engineer so he has a lot of experience working in academic and professional environments where the humanities are actively derided and ethics are routinely ignored, misunderstood, or attacked by scientists and engineers who think they've outsmarted morality. Lmao what kind of an excuse is this. An average software engineer having lots of experience with academia? STEM academia ignoring and deriding ethics? I'm doing a PhD at a tech school and the ethics discussions are everywhere. My girlfriend works in a neuroscience lab and she regularly writes hundreds of pages of ethics paperwork. This is just a lovely generalization of scientists from people who watch too much TV
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Jun 3, 2022 17:02
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Tom was presumably a software engineer back when Kat and Paz were having a much more nuanced and interesting conversation about research ethics, where Kat was on the exact opposite side of where she is now, so 
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Jun 3, 2022 17:10
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Xun posted:Lmao what kind of an excuse is this. An average software engineer having lots of experience with academia? STEM academia ignoring and deriding ethics? I'm doing a PhD at a tech school and the ethics discussions are everywhere. My girlfriend works in a neuroscience lab and she regularly writes hundreds of pages of ethics paperwork. This is just a lovely generalization of scientists from people who watch too much TV I think you've misunderstood me? I said that he worked in a field where this is very common. For example some of the people who invented predator drones and accidentally whites only facial recognition software probably mistakenly thought they were making useful advances that improved the world. Some of them probably still think that. I should also take a moment to point out to you that neuroscientists aren't software engineers and ethics in medicine (while still often completely hosed, see Henrietta Lacks for some existential horror) is taken a bit more seriously than in many other STEM fields. worm girl fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Jun 3, 2022 |
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Jun 3, 2022 17:12
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No, I think it’s fair to say that worm girl posted:In fairness, Tom is a software engineer so he has a lot of experience working in academic and professional environments where the humanities are actively derided and ethics are routinely ignored, misunderstood, or attacked by scientists and engineers who think they've outsmarted morality. is a weird, cartoony vision of stem stuff, and trying to psychoanalyze Tom based on it is even more pointless than regular attempts to psychoanalyze him based on the comic.
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Jun 3, 2022 17:17
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worm girl posted:I think you've misunderstood me? I said that he worked in a field where this is very common. For example the people who invented predator drones and accidentally whites only facial recognition software probably mistakenly thought they were making useful advances that improved the world. Many of them probably still think that. So you think academics are the ones programming predators drones instead of maybe a military contractor taking something someone else invented and then loving up. Dollars to donuts the academic(s) who created it had no idea this was happening, much less see a penny of the money the contract made either. But yes, let's blame scientists in general instead. Of course unless you think people who work for companies are also academics And seriously, as far as I can tell the average software engineer has just as much of an idea about the serious ethical concerns and dilemmas in all of STEM as you do. Most of them think academia is a glorified bachelor's degree and is part of the service industry. Xun fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Jun 3, 2022 |
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Jun 3, 2022 17:17
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There's ink spilled on ethics and humane research in every STEM field afaik, but that aside we already know the Court is perfectly willing to throw away ethics and humanity for their own advancement and twisted self-preservation. The in-comic discussion is just restating what Annie and Kat should already be aware of, given what they've experienced, seen, and been told about. Except Kat's position changed at some point, and the most I'd infer about Tom from this is he felt the need to pause and give an explicit thesis statement here for how the rest of the comic is going to play out. It's very forced and honestly a visually unbalanced page with how the giant word balloons are distributed across it, but whatever.
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Jun 3, 2022 17:54
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If you think scientists aren’t concerned with ethics or morality then I don’t know think you’ve ever actually interacted with a PHD student or a scientist. Which neither has Tom apparently because this comic has always had a very pop culture concept of what science is or is not.
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Jun 3, 2022 18:11
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Predator drones Georg, who lives in cave & kills over 10,000 civilians each day is an outlier adn should not have been counted
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Jun 3, 2022 18:56
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I mean, I can see worm girl's point. I don't know about the academia side of it, but there are definitely a lot of lovely people in tech out there who are more concerned with whether they can than whether they should, including developers who have decades of experience, and seem extremely willing to put fingers in their ears and ignore or handwave obvious ethical concerns. People who are very willing to take advantage of others and destroy things to put themselves in power. I am, of course, talking about cryptocurrency, NFTs, and blockchain technologies and their effect on the planet. Also all the regular fantasizing I see about lawless libertarian paradises and cyberpunk futures, not that that's really unique to techbros. I don't think it's necessarily wrong to point out that that may have influenced his views in some way. That said, I still think the conversation and this page in particular is barely coherent, and I do think it's kind of strange of him to imply that ethics discussions don't happen in science labs, when they regularly do. Kat had a discussion with Paz in the middle of her animal testing facility! Maybe the next page will be Kat correcting her, but somehow I feel like the panel with three bubbles' worth of dialogue is not supposed to be considered a subjective opinion. 
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Jun 3, 2022 20:27
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I don't think Reynard and Annie are saying that ethical discussions don't happen at all in the sciences (I certainly wasn't) but rather that if you create a world that runs entirely on empiricism and rationality then you are leaving out all the lessons that religion, mythology, folklore, and whatever else the ether runs on have to teach. Annie adds that the results of doing so might be unexpected because despite Kat's ether-blindness, she still lives in the world that invented and relies on those stories.
worm girl fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Jun 3, 2022 |
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Jun 3, 2022 20:42
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Maybe it comes with Kat going full child mengele And then finally giant robot religion schism civil war Dead robot souls out the wazoo
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Jun 3, 2022 20:59
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Jun 3, 2022 21:24
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worm girl posted:I don't think Reynard and Annie are saying that ethical discussions don't happen at all in the sciences (I certainly wasn't) but rather that if you create a world that runs entirely on empiricism and rationality then you are leaving out all the lessons that religion, mythology, folklore, and whatever else the ether runs on have to teach. Annie adds that the results of doing so might be unexpected because despite Kat's ether-blindness, she still lives in the world that invented and relies on those stories. lmfao 
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Jun 3, 2022 21:57
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CodfishCartographer posted:Yeah there's no one character or plot point we can point fingers at, and if it were changed or removed suddenly the comic would be good again. If Tony's relationship with Annie were better fleshed out, we'd still have Loup being a limp villain. If the dual Annies were better resolved, we'd still have the weird love triangle with Lana and Jerrick. Etc etc.  ) to please him.This makes Loup a secondary character, as post-Loupocalypse we’re now focused more on the Annie vs. Tony conflict with the Coyote macguffins serving as a vehicle than…whatever it’s supposed to be now. Loup even serves as a darker parallel to Tony, neglecting the peoples of the forest in order to pursue his own selfish agenda. Gosh sounds familar, doesn’t it? Maybe 2 Annie 2 Furious provide Our Annie perspective, as Nu Annie spent those six months being the emotionally dead Dad-Pleaser and OG Annie can now see how miserable that is making her and be the impetus to see her father for the flawed man he truly is. And maybe the growing difference in the two Annie’s behavior start to spark an awareness in Tony of his abusive nature. Maybe he learns his personal baggage, tragic it may be, is no excuse to abandon his daughter and then be a cold figure towards her. Maybe he doesn’t and she learns it’s not her responsibility to fix her father. Either way, at this point Loup is far removed from the focal point of the story, and is really just a tool to put our leads in situations to force this conflict towards some kind of ultimate resolution. So the narrative would start to wildly diverge from what we now have into something different. …maybe something that doesn’t require teenaged robots.
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Jun 4, 2022 05:14
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Pants Donkey posted:Ehhhh it depends. If Tony’s whole…thing hadn’t just sorta dissolved into nothing, he likely would have been the villain/antagonist as it’d be Tony, the Sad Dad who needs to learn that abuse can happen without intent and work on himself, and Annie, the who has to learn that she’s only putting Dad on a pedestal and seeking his approval because of the damage the neglect caused and has to start being her own person and let Tony sort his own poo poo own rather than extinguish her own personality ( This does all sound good, but also sounds like you've kinda just made up a new story in your head and wish the comic had gone in that direction. Tony hasn't really been a directly antagonistic character since his return and the aftermath of that. Making him the main focus after taking care of Jeanne also wouldn't have guaranteed the Tiktoks would have ended satisfyingly, wouldn't have guaranteed that Kat's robots wouldn't have awkward teenage romance, wouldn't have guaranteed Shell would be an interesting or well-written character when she inevitably became important, wouldn't have guaranteed we wouldn't get 10-page screeds about simple concepts, etc. It kind of feels like you're saying "if the comic was good, it wouldn't be bad anymore!" and, I guess, yeah that's fair lol
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Jun 4, 2022 06:04
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You said that there wasn’t one thing to blame, which I mostly agree with, but my point is that one change like shifting the role of Tony could have the comic go down a different trajectory which would inherently lead to a different story. Tony is kind of a important character, so changes revolving around him could have steered things differently.
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Jun 4, 2022 06:11
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Pants Donkey posted:Ehhhh it depends. If Tony’s whole…thing hadn’t just sorta dissolved into nothing, he likely would have been the villain/antagonist as it’d be Tony, the Sad Dad who needs to learn that abuse can happen without intent and work on himself, and Annie, the who has to learn that she’s only putting Dad on a pedestal and seeking his approval because of the damage the neglect caused and has to start being her own person and let Tony sort his own poo poo own rather than extinguish her own personality ( The problem here is that the alternative to "Tony disappearing from the story" isn't "Tony becomes the anatagonist". It's "more of what we were already seeing". Fundamentally Tom's perspective precludes Tony as a long term antagonist.
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Jun 4, 2022 09:19
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