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Wasn't the next retrospective on the mind cage? I know a lot of people had a lot of problems with that, even more so than previous chapters. He might just not want to deal with that.
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Apr 22, 2023 16:47
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Patware posted:the comic was bad long before covid people were just still getting yelled at for saying it Covid began around the point Annie was split into two by Loup. This was before Norns and long before Mind Cage, Aata or Jerek.. Whoever was saying that the comic was bad at that point fully deserved getting yelled at. 
Lt. Lizard fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Apr 22, 2023 |
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Apr 22, 2023 18:44
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The comic was absolutely getting worse by that point in a noticeable way, though. It still had highs we haven't reached since, but it was also obvious the baseline was slipping and a lot of the current problems regarding motivations and off screen versus on screen priorities and all that were definitely present by that point
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Apr 22, 2023 21:28
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To me the point where I have to say it first really dipped in storytelling quality (and not just small hiccups like Give and Take or just a subjective disappointment because of my personal taste, like the whole exit stage left with Red and Ayilu) is the sequence that starts here: https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1854 Plus the next chapter (Get Lost). We have Annie understandably freaking out that Kat suddenly is bffs with Tony, so she drags Kat to Kat's mother, hoping to get answers and it seems like we are about to get an explanation, and we instead get the story of how Surma and Tony fell in love (which was also kind of a letdown? (Surma felt abandoned by her boyfriend, so she cheated on him with the quiet guy of the group who was funny when in private once they were isolated enough from civilization. oh. we already knew Surma wasn't perfect but it felt like the whole chapter was more in service of beating the reader over the head once again that Tony was a multifacted person like anyone else.) It wasn't the first time that the answer to a mystery was postponed, like, that was the comic's whole thing! Presenting various mysteries, following various plot threads but eventually getting some answers if we were patient enough, right? But instead we have the question change from "what the hell Kat" to "why is Tony mean to his daughter and only his daughter", in one move hoping the reader forgets that this was incredibly out of character for Kat and instead shifting attention to Tony and what is his deal. But then! https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1908 Question dismissed, Annie doesn't really care. We just let her deal with her problems and emotional struggles in the privacy of her mind, where the reader can no longer see, until we get Tony explain his deal to Jones 15 chapters later, but only we the audience hear that explanation, Annie doesn't but it's okay because she didn't care anyway because she loves him and that's it. And then I realized that the author outright refused to answer a mystery and apparently hoped I would forget about it when something else appeared to distract me. A mystery involving Kat, the person who was Annie's first real friend and closest companion, the person who was slowly helping Annie come out of her protective trauma-shaped shell and be herself, who was always Annie's unconditional supporter but not afraid to tell her when she screwed up (like with Mort and the blinker stone). Kat and Annie's friendship was the emotional backbone of the comic. And this rupture was never acknowledged after the swerve into Surma and Tony flashback land. It wasn't even supposed to be a rupture at all? Annie's earlier panic at losing her entire support base one by one? Just a misunderstanding or something, or she was immature, or I dunno, whatever, moving the story along, forget about it.
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Apr 22, 2023 22:06
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Patware posted:the comic was bad long before covid people were just still getting yelled at for saying it .....gently caress
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Apr 22, 2023 22:19
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Lt. Lizard posted:Covid began around the point Annie was split into two by Loup. This was before Norns and long before Mind Cage, Aata or Jerek.. Whoever was saying that the comic was bad at that point fully deserved getting yelled at. Annie being split into two Annie's was in 2018, based on when the chapter started: https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2063 As far as when the comic started sliding down... I don't think there was a single point of failure. The introduction of Loup was a big shift for the comic. Being a singular overarching threat who declared an in-universe timer now existed before he would do something truly destructive was a big deal. The sense of urgency that adds, the way his actions and presence visibly changed the lives and objectives of everyone in the Court and forest, and the way he has personal stakes in the main character were all huge shifts in the narrative structure and tone of the story. There was always this kind of buzzing background menace or at least mystery about the Court itself, with Annie and Kat slowly stumbling on new things and more of its history and nature being revealed. Sometimes they were intentionally researching stuff, but a lot was them tripping into new revelations or those revelations being presented to them. The menace came more from the faceless indifference of the Court than any direct actions or challenges being posed. Resolving the Jeanne arc was a big deal. I think it was necessary, and interesting, and executed well, but it was by far the deepest and longest-running dilemma and the one Kat and the only real long-term problem Kat and Annie were working on at that point. Resolving that when it happened was fine, and it's the sort of mid-story thing you would resolve to escalate to a newer, bigger problem. And it certainly seemed like it was trying to connect the current state of things with the release of Jeanne, what with Coyote knowing that Jeanne is gone, and now being able to cross the river. But the thing is... I'm not really seeing how she was a problem for him before. Coyote's has time and reality distorting powers above what one angry sword ghost could combat, and it always felt like Coyote didn't bother with the Court because he didn't care to more than anything. Ysengrin being blocked from attacking by the river made sense. Then Coyote gave him all his powers and I doubt Jeanne's ghost could've stopped Loup if she was still guarding the river at that point. So I don't know, there's this distinct shift in tone with the Jeanne stories and post-Jeanne status quo, and I guess the bridge between the two feels shaky and disassociated to me. There's other elements that I don't agree with the handling of that aren't directly hobbling the narrative, but which hurt the character writing. The way Tony was handled, and Kat by extension. Everything involving Loup being so off-putting that he's become the anti-Poochie: every time he's off camera everyone goes "Thank god Loup isn't here." The way interesting potential scenes get skipped over for narration so often. They're all little things that combined weigh the comic down.
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Apr 22, 2023 23:07
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does anyone remember the page/chapter my av is from off the top of their head? I don't remember at all beyond "somewhere early" and don't want to do a multi-hour archive binge
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Apr 22, 2023 23:56
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Kinda assumed yours was from Aaah! Real Monsters
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Apr 23, 2023 00:02
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Potato Salad posted:Kinda assumed yours was from Aaah! Real Monsters nah its from when Paz got scared by the clown ghost or whatever, like a dozen posters got hit with it in the TGT thread a decade ago or smth
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Apr 23, 2023 00:06
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Cabbit posted:Smash cut to Loup looking like a pug or something after thousands of years of domestication. 
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Apr 23, 2023 00:19
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ThatBasqueGuy posted:does anyone remember the page/chapter my av is from off the top of their head? I don't remember at all beyond "somewhere early" and don't want to do a multi-hour archive binge Chapter 4: Not Very Scary https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=66 edit: That is the most beautiful terrible thing I've ever seen. isasphere fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Apr 23, 2023 |
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Apr 23, 2023 00:21
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isasphere posted:Chapter 4: Not Very Scary ty friend. also that pug is awful and should be nuked from orbit e. huh i guess kat finally ascended to full machine goddess and the court is planning on going to the moon? weird stuff in gunnerkrigg ThatBasqueGuy fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Apr 23, 2023 |
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Apr 23, 2023 00:41
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Jeanne was a great Act II climax, setting up stakes for Annie to navigate between her dual inheritance of mystic psychopomp and Court intrigue. But strangely it comes after Father has Returned/Annie and the Fire, so the emotional beats don't sit well: Annie recovers off-puttingly quickly rather than having that emotional journey be intertwined with the narrative (portending the eventual staring-into-camera-describing-how-I'm-feeling approach to narrative later on) maybe an editor would swap the ordering of The Torn Sea and Jeanne... although narratively this creates a problem where depriving Annie of her supporting cast of friends/classmates (through the artifice of being retained a year - so that she has to rely on her Medium role to find allies) would need to happen in some other way the subsequent plot elements - Ysengrin finally losing it, Two Annies, the Forest lashing out and attacking the Court/the Court taking its ball and going home, the effective irrelevance of the school year cycle and "annoying/creepy classmates IN FANTASY WIZARD SCHOOOOL" in lieu of high-stakes existential struggle between the two sides of Forest and Court - all make sense as individual plot elements to tie up the A-plot. They're the sort of thing one would pencil in for a two decade narrative to execute in the distant future. But that execution has been another matter, I guess ronya fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Apr 23, 2023 |
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Apr 23, 2023 13:50
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it's getting WORSE
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Apr 24, 2023 11:01
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peace with loup was never an option
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Apr 24, 2023 11:22
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if Kat is now a techno-empath then she’s going to see a big black cutout labeled NOT A ROBOT if Loup enters her line of sight I’d really like for this farce to end
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Apr 24, 2023 11:31
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I swear Tom is doing this on purpose at this point.
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Apr 24, 2023 12:19
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most_forced_conflict.jpg
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Apr 24, 2023 12:20
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He really is the main character now, isn’t he? Kat goes full techno apotheosis, the robot cult goes wild, Paz has run… and we don’t get the viewpoint of Kat’s parents, Annie, their classmates, Shadow, Robot, Zimmy who said Kat was going to kill her, Tony, freaking Boxbot. Nope, this is all about Loup’s character development now.
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Apr 24, 2023 12:31
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Wow he's so wacky! Haha the monster was him! But that's just semantics 🤣
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Apr 24, 2023 13:12
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catapede posted:Wow he's so wacky! Haha the monster was him! But that's just semantics 🤣 I think the joke is perfectly fine in isolation. It's just that we hate the character.
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Apr 24, 2023 13:32
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And because it's a really cheap way to completely short-circuit any interpersonal drama from Robot's doings. Whatever the hell they are. I'm sure we'll find out in an expodump within a few pages.
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Apr 24, 2023 13:34
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us with Loup now https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8OjqCgXsAQGN15?format=jpg&name=medium
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Apr 24, 2023 13:35
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Loup losing himself to the Jerrek persona has precedence all the way back when Coyote forgot who he was after becoming a dead goose next to a lake. So this in itself is fine. What is not great is that we have no tension because our protagonists are trying to stop a neutralized antagonist. So the comic feels like it has been spinning its wheels for months now until one side gets Loup to revert to his original murdergoblin self. Or, what is hopefully more likely, the Court emerges as the true Final Boss so that this farting around had more of a point to soften Loup as an ally.
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Apr 24, 2023 14:07
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I don't even hate Loup I just don't care about whatever it is he's up to.
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Apr 24, 2023 14:13
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There Bias Two posted:I think the joke is perfectly fine in isolation. It's just that we hate the character. Yeah, I actually kinda enjoyed reading that. He's such a petty little rear end in a top hat with zero self-reflection, that it feels like a fitting world view. But I still don't really get what Lana sees in him.
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Apr 24, 2023 15:56
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coolusername posted:He really is the main character now, isn’t he? Kat goes full techno apotheosis, the robot cult goes wild, Paz has run… and we don’t get the viewpoint of Kat’s parents, Annie, their classmates, Shadow, Robot, Zimmy who said Kat was going to kill her, Tony, freaking Boxbot. Nope, this is all about Loup’s character development now. Strong Lupine Protagonist
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Apr 24, 2023 17:20
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Loup becomes increasingly popular and parties with his neighbors while Annie’s circle of friends turn on her for the dumbest reasons.
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Apr 24, 2023 17:28
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gently caress off Tom.
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Apr 24, 2023 17:37
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IDK yeah I thought this one was funny ngl
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Apr 24, 2023 18:14
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it is funny, but it's just taking the piss out of a story that has no piss left
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Apr 24, 2023 19:02
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cant cook creole bream posted:Yeah, I actually kinda enjoyed reading that. He's such a petty little rear end in a top hat with zero self-reflection, that it feels like a fitting world view. But I still don't really get what Lana sees in him. He saved her from ethnic caricatures, so now she loves him forever and ever. Obviously.
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Apr 24, 2023 22:35
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PubicMice posted:He saved her from ethnic caricatures, so now she loves him forever and ever. Obviously. I wanted to protest this and say the crush came first but I re-read those parts just now and gently caress drat IT'S TRUE. Lana was originally supportive of Jerrek pursuing Annie until that terrible scene. We just switched from one type of creepy problematic thing to a different sort of creepy problematic thing.
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Apr 25, 2023 01:41
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ethnic AND classist
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Apr 25, 2023 01:48
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Honestly, I can't think about that scene. I start going through it in my head and just mentally can't believe we got a scene like that in Gunnerkrigg Court of all things.
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Apr 25, 2023 03:02
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The Dominic Deeganification of Gunnerkrigg Court
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Apr 25, 2023 03:55
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CodfishCartographer posted:The Dominic Deeganification of Gunnerkrigg Court the signs were there all along
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Apr 25, 2023 05:04
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I still vote it got Homestuck’d. Loup did nothing wrong.
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Apr 25, 2023 05:17
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Dammerung posted:Honestly, I can't think about that scene. I start going through it in my head and just mentally can't believe we got a scene like that in Gunnerkrigg Court of all things. It really stuck out at the time, as did the character reactions.
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Apr 25, 2023 05:17
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Joe Slowboat posted:It really stuck out at the time, as did the character reactions. Yeah, that's absolutely the lowest low of the comic. And that's saying something if it beats out Mindcage. It's also why even if certain more recent pages might be okay, it doesn't really help the comic unfortunately. Between the alley way elves scene, Loup/Lana, Mindcage, etc, the tone of the comic is just utterly hosed. There's just really no way to course correct after a point because we still remember all the poo poo that came before. Like this could be a really funny or interesting scene if things were different and we had genuine reasons to like Loup or worry about him. But we don't so it's just noise like everything else.
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Apr 25, 2023 07:58
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