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Kat shrugs and grows him a new one.
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Jun 22, 2022 18:03
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Except it looks like Tails and he can’t even
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Jun 22, 2022 20:43
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Renard gets a new body from Kat and once he's inside, looks at her as if in a new light and blushes
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Jun 22, 2022 21:15
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I guess it's like burning down a house you haven't lived in for years.
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Jun 22, 2022 21:28
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I think we're supposed to gather that Loup is unpredictable and dangerous, but this is an entirely proportional response.
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Jun 22, 2022 21:39
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It's also, like... this isn't even Loup's real plan? So he's probably not even that mad and there's a 50% chance this isn't even Renard's real body.
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Jun 22, 2022 22:25
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this would make alot more sense as a narrative beat if we weren't already aware that loup was jerrek and thus not remotely surprised by their attempt
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Jun 22, 2022 22:44
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Pants Donkey posted:Except it looks like Tails and he can’t even
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Jun 22, 2022 23:47
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Rand Brittain posted:It's also, like... this isn't even Loup's real plan? So he's probably not even that mad and there's a 50% chance this isn't even Renard's real body. Loup is doing this because Renard said he wasn't taking this seriously. He's not actually mad that the kids tried to trap him (even Renard was like ???? he could have easily killed me), but after Loup ran off Jerrek was having grumpy thoughts about what Renard said. I much prefer all of this to endlessly going over plot points we already understand. Burn some more people, Loup! Cause there to be drama! Pants Donkey posted:Except it looks like Tails and he can’t even I desperately hope Tom never looks at or thinks about this thread, but if he does I hope he gets a chuckle out of this. 
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Jun 23, 2022 00:54
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worm girl posted:I much prefer all of this to endlessly going over plot points we already understand. Burn some more people, Loup! Cause there to be drama! Honestly yeah, at least poo poo is happening.
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Jun 23, 2022 00:58
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Yeah I'm saving my criticism for the end of chapter, I guess. It's really hard to even understand what the writing is going for anymore. Is all of this supposed to feel weird and stakesless? The next page hopefully answers that one way or another. My theory is still that the intention is to redeem and integrate Loup as a member of the main cast, with all we've seen so far. I wonder if this is leading towards Renard being like "eh I like this body better anyway" on the next page. I'm wondering if it's going to become clear, between incinerating a lifeless body and not genuinely attacking Renard at the start of the chapter, that for whatever reason (sentimentality?) Loup has trouble taking a life (or just Renard's?) when it's doing the act personally instead of throwing a tantrum. This is also strange when you think about the fact that Loup wanted Coyote's gifts back because he viewed himself as incomplete without them. Wouldn't Renard be unable to give it back without his original body?
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Jun 23, 2022 01:24
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Okay, did not expect this one. Wow.
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Jun 23, 2022 08:34
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For all my bewilderment, the painting style on the firey destruction is really nice. (I just wish the rest was shaded, they look very cartoon shock rather than actually upset).
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Jun 23, 2022 08:54
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I don't know, I think the cartoony reactions set up the notion that this is a wildly disproportionate move from Loup. It's a big tone shift from the first part of the chapter, and certainly not anything the characters were expecting. What really bugs me more is Loup's design. He looks OK in wolf mode, but really overall I think his look is much weaker than either Coyote or Ysengrin's and especially when he's floating around like this. He looks like a Looney Tunes character even when he's thirty feet tall moving at mach 1. He's less stylized than Coyote and more stylized than Loup so he fails at what made both of them cool. Compare https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1064 to https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2021 and https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1082 to https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2503. He's supposed to look cartoony to drive home the fact that unlike Coyote his mania is really unchecked, but he spends a lot of time being a smug DBZ villain which undercuts it for me. Both of the other dogs were way more intimidating and cool. He's supposed to be less than the sum of his parts, but for the reader that means we traded two great characters for one OK character, both visually and in terms of the story. This creates a further issue because we spent so much time getting to know Coyote and Ysengrin as friends, which should have set up some great third act reversals as Annie has to apply what she's learned about the two as allies to deal with them as enemies, but Loup doesn't really behave like Coyote or Ysengrin and his powers aren't similar, so the story essentially tossed years of setup with no payoff. When Ysengrin first ate Coyote I was like oh boy, here we go, these guys have been helping Annie grow up and trying to lure her to their side and now her final challenge as she steps into adulthood is going to be overcoming them and showing that humans can stand on their own or some poo poo. Instead we got a completely different villain who is dumber than she is and who doesn't build off of anything we've seen before. The plot really did thinnen. worm girl fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Jun 23, 2022 |
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Jun 23, 2022 19:22
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worm girl posted:I don't know, I think the cartoony reactions set up the notion that this is a wildly disproportionate move from Loup. It's a big tone shift from the first part of the chapter, and certainly not anything the characters were expecting.  No, just kidding. I just really love this analysis, especially the bit about how from the reader's perspective we traded two great characters for one OK character. The links to the pages are so sad, too, because those were such great moments. The page where Ysengrin is attacking Annie is one of my favorites in the entire comic - the way he's crawling slowly forward towards her on all fours, looking absolutely terrifying and like a wild animal and completely opposite of himself, and her expression suddenly softens because she loves him and feels pity and concern despite her (very justified) terror. The juxtaposition of those two panels is so loving great.
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Jun 23, 2022 20:59
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Looking back on those older parts of the comic and drat it was so good. The first two panels of this still makes me laugh: https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1067
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Jun 23, 2022 21:22
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Tiny Myers posted:the way he's crawling slowly forward towards her on all fours, looking absolutely terrifying and like a wild animal and completely opposite of himself, and her expression suddenly softens because she loves him and feels pity and concern despite her (very justified) terror. The juxtaposition of those two panels is so loving great. She has absolutely zero connection to Loup, so he can't provoke any of those same feelings in her or the reader. Think about how Coyote was so easily able to tempt her to live in the forest by giving her the job the headmaster stiffed her over and inviting her to spend a summer with the elves. Think about how Ysengrin got her in touch with her inner fire and showed that she was stronger than any of his minions. These two characters had a very strong bond with Annie that would have made an escalation of the conflict between the forest and the court much more interesting. Instead, they both exit the story and we get a guy who has got nothing on her and who she doesn't care about. Loup is powerful, sure, but has Annie ever been as scared of him as she was of Ysengrin in that moment? Has he ever made her sad, ashamed, or even particularly angry? The Jerrek subplot feels like a last minute attempt to try to recapture some of that, but even if she seems to respect and admire him a bit, they don't have a real connection or even a convincing fake one. It's very surface-level and I doubt we'll get time to build on it to a satisfying degree.
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Jun 23, 2022 21:46
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Goddamn, I went and reread The Stone because of this, and that chapter remains a truly fantastic piece of writing. Slow in the best way, and the accelerating time frame works incredibly well both to give the reader a sense of the immensity of its scale and set up the punchline with Annie and her teacup. I wish the comic were more like that these days.
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Jun 23, 2022 22:39
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Joe Slowboat posted:I wish the comic were more like that these days. in those days everyone reading it was sick of it and complaining about the comic everywhere :v
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Jun 23, 2022 23:50
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Mimesweeper posted:in those days everyone reading it was sick of it and complaining about the comic everywhere :v I mean, I was reading it at the time, and I certainly wasn't complaining.
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Jun 24, 2022 01:16
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I liked The Stone when it was coming out. Still like it.
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Jun 24, 2022 01:19
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Mimesweeper posted:in those days everyone reading it was sick of it and complaining about the comic everywhere :v
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Jun 24, 2022 01:25
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Joe Slowboat posted:I mean, I was reading it at the time, and I certainly wasn't complaining. Same
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Jun 24, 2022 06:37
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I was because from what I remember it read really weirdly when presented in the comic's normal update pace
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Jun 24, 2022 07:49
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Kind of weird loss.jpg energy from this page
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Jun 24, 2022 08:09
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I have never felt the comic really fit the slow drip update style, even at Tom's frankly heroic pace. It's paced much more like a book. It holds up really well on rereads though, I've done a few and it's always been a joy watching it all flow together. In the old stories, Renard has Ysengrin skinned alive and fed to a bunch of pigs, so really he's only getting his just desserts here.
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Jun 24, 2022 08:18
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This was clearly meant to be a raising of the stakes, but I still am not feeling it. He's gone from occasionally blowing up buildings that no one was using anyway, to blowing up a body that no one was using anyway. Evicting the elves was a far more sinister act than this; everything since then has felt like a lowering of the stakes. Honestly I thought Ysengrin was more threatening before he got Coyote's power.
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Jun 24, 2022 11:09
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Hah hah, you will forever be a spirit without a body! Except for the body you're already inhabiting with no downsides! And whatever body that the literal god of machines could make for you, like all the robots that I already know about!
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Jun 24, 2022 11:11
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DontMockMySmock posted:This was clearly meant to be a raising of the stakes, but I still am not feeling it. He's gone from occasionally blowing up buildings that no one was using anyway, to blowing up a body that no one was using anyway. Evicting the elves was a far more sinister act than this; everything since then has felt like a lowering of the stakes. It also feels strangely petty for Loup. He destroyed the shield and the buildings as an overreaction and by merging with the Earth itself. Completely crapping all over the Court and now he just randomly shows up, torches Reynard's body and leaves again. Loup was deranged, unpredictable and unsubtle, but this felt much more targeted. Less Loup.
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Jun 24, 2022 11:28
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To be fair, I think it is targeted and petty specifically because he's trying to get back at them for saying he "is taking none of this seriously." The real question, honestly, is what "this" is, and how he's supposed to take it seriously. Is it about Loup seriously being a threat? Loup seriously trying to get back all of Coyote's gifts? Loup seriously being a god? Destroying Renard's old body might have more to it since Loup's goal is to eventually take back Renard's gift too; if that gift is taken while he's in a body that's not his own, does Renard still inhabit the body that he's currently possessing, or is he forced back into the ashes that's become of his body now? Is Renard even able to manipulate the plush toy body he's in without the gift? Regardless, it pretty much makes giving Renard's gift back a lot less appealing, so it's still a bad call on Loup's part overall. Might've been trying to be threatening without thinking it through.
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Jun 24, 2022 12:29
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There was enough buildup to this scene that I thought there'd be a bit more than Loup being a petty jackass for two pages before taking off.
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Jun 24, 2022 12:32
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Literally lol k bye
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Jun 24, 2022 14:08
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I guess maybe he would have one day chosen to go back to the fox body. Annie won't live forever, but now he's trapped where he is.
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Jun 24, 2022 19:41
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Nettle Soup posted:I guess maybe he would have one day chosen to go back to the fox body. Annie won't live forever, but now he's trapped where he is. Here's hoping for potato Reynard. e: like I'm not saying "beep boop I am a robot why would Reynard care" of course he'd care but as an actual setback it's entirely emotional. Splicer fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Jun 24, 2022 |
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Jun 24, 2022 19:53
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Burned down your old house prank
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Jun 24, 2022 19:57
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I'm not 100 on how much a physical body even actually matters to an etheric creature like Reynard.
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Jun 24, 2022 20:00
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Splicer posted:No he's not. He'd have needed permissions to return to his body same as any other body, and with that permission he can still jump to any other body with eyes. He's no more trapped than he ever was. Having his old body fireballed sucks for for pretty major sentimental reasons but there's no "practical" consequences. More what I'm curious about is why the audience would care. Like yeah, we care about Reynard, but we haven't really been given any reason to care about his body. There's no ticking clock where he needs to get back to his body or Bad Thing will happen. He hasn't wanted to get back to his body for character development reasons. Getting him back to his body hasn't been a major goal or objective for him or any other major character. Other characters haven't been trying to get him back to his body. Like, yeah I'm sure it sucks cus he's emotionally attached to his body, but is there really a reason for the audience to care that his body got nuked beyond "oh that sucks"?
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Jun 24, 2022 20:03
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Nettle Soup posted:I guess maybe he would have one day chosen to go back to the fox body. Annie won't live forever, but now he's trapped where he is. I'm pretty sure that if she dies, he gets transferred to her next of kin like Hetty was. I don't think we ever really saw Renard express any wish to go back to his body, nor did we get any indication that it would matter. I think what is really going on here is that Coyote gave Renard the body-stealing ability foreseeing that he would get stuck and his original body would get destroyed by Loup, and then that would lead to whatever happens from here. That's fine, but without the appropriate setup it feels contrived, especially as this all happened in a five page diversion from the primary events of the chapter and not some kind of climactic encounter. We should have had it established that Renard is somehow limited or incomplete without his body and that it was a goal to get back to it, and I personally think Loup should have destroyed it during a moment of conflict when it looked like the kids had the upper hand. Imagine for instance if Kat's arrow plan had trapped him, then he held the body hostage in order to get free, and after he did so he destroyed it out of spite anyway before retreating. Everyone involved would have felt like poo poo and the incident would have felt like a logical progression of events rather than a random gently caress you hours after the fact. We actually had to waste two pages just teleporting out here, which was totally unnecessary given that they were all in a scene together earlier.
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Jun 24, 2022 20:21
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worm girl posted:I'm pretty sure that if she dies, he gets transferred to her next of kin like Hetty was. He's a familiar now though, so I have no idea what happens.
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Jun 24, 2022 21:02
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worm girl posted:We actually had to waste two pages just teleporting out here, which was totally unnecessary given that they were all in a scene together earlier. Lmao I hadn't even considered that, why waste the time between the two encounters? Just have it happen during one.
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Jun 24, 2022 21:24
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