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FlocksOfMice posted:The Tony thing still fucks with me because I was like "Oh wow, this is a super accurate depiction of how abuse feels and how easy it is to fall back into abused patterns" but no the takeaway was supposed to be "They really have let Annie run far too loose and it's good she's isolated from her friends and cohorts :3 this is for her own good" Yeah, stuff like having the adults never being present except as obstacles most of the time was fine to me since its a convention of the genre. The comic could probably do a better job of presenting reasons for why they can't help with Jeanne or the ship or whatever is going on now sure. Though I don't think that's a huge deal. But the dynamic between Tony and Annie was one of the major cores of Annie's entire emotional arc. To have it resolved the way it was is just unbelievably careless and lovely. I still think its the single worst decision that was made in writing this comic. There's a lot of competition for that particular honor sure but for me it's the worst. JuniperCake fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Feb 6, 2024 |
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Feb 6, 2024 22:05
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And apparently, people have emotional reasons why they think the finale resonates? I guess good for them, but come on.
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Feb 6, 2024 22:07
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just want to reiterate that we’ve gone through a magical retrospective journey of the comic’s major plot beats that slammed into a bald corpsey speed bump right before Tony would have appeared
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Feb 6, 2024 22:08
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Oxxidation posted:just want to reiterate that we’ve gone through a magical retrospective journey of the comic’s major plot beats that slammed into a bald corpsey speed bump right before Tony would have appeared An amusing sidebar to this is how Jerrick was first introduced with the misdirection that he was the pipes bot from She Gave Us an Ocean, and the chapter spends some time fleshing him out before the twist reveal. Then we get confirmation the placeholder mannequin boy was acutal pipes bot, but only after he's dead and the page before he phases out of the comic forever. Anyway, I hope the dark haired girl is a Laser Cow.
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Feb 6, 2024 22:21
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I hope Lana is the laser cow
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Feb 7, 2024 01:06
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Caphi posted:Lana, having stolen Coyote's strength from within and become a match for Loup (I can't even tell if this is a joke). what have you done. what have you spoken into existence.
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Feb 7, 2024 02:17
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Rat Patrol posted:aw c'mon. sometimes you love a woman and it just makes you do hosed up poo poo! Like who could even control that! I've got a handy chart: Yeah like I get that the boat trying to force everyone to cooperate was bad but honestly letting the boat become a whale would cause zero harm to anyone.
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Feb 7, 2024 09:00
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Place your bets: 1) Zimmy 2) Gamma 3) Paz 4) Loup 5) Lana 6) Robot 7) One of the old robots 8) Eglamore 9) Other (please specify)
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Feb 7, 2024 10:14
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9. Diego 
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Feb 7, 2024 10:53
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JuniperCake posted:I still think its the single worst decision that was made in writing this comic. There's a lot of competition for that particular honor sure but for me it's the worst. I'm sure there was bad writing before and god knows there's been plenty after, but Mind Cage will always be The Worst to me just via the combo of being bad in it's own right but also the death knell of any remaining goodwill Like every ounce of "wait, let him cook" just got sucked out of everyone all at once, the realization that if this is where that plot went there was no hope that anything else gets wrapped up any better or more satisfyingly
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Feb 7, 2024 12:07
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coolusername posted:9. Diego 9. Tony
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Feb 7, 2024 12:50
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9. One of the fairies
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Feb 7, 2024 16:34
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9) Just Annie accusing an innocent, causing the narrative to beat her up about it for 5 pages, before the whole thread is dropped and the character is never mentioned again.
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Feb 7, 2024 16:39
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this is my favorite page in a while! great work, tom!
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Feb 7, 2024 17:03
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Bald guy becomes an ether cog in the void, the first deployed piece of Kat's divinity engine... Or at least, the thing is the same rust color as her super form or whatever
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Feb 7, 2024 17:08
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:I'm sure there was bad writing before and god knows there's been plenty after, but Mind Cage will always be The Worst to me just via the combo of being bad in it's own right but also the death knell of any remaining goodwill This is true. The Mind Cage was the first time I saw people say anything negative about the comic out in the wild.
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Feb 7, 2024 17:17
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Bandolute posted:Bald guy becomes an ether cog in the void, the first deployed piece of Kat's divinity engine... Oh god, I hope this doesn't turn into "And Kat's numen became cogs in the great ethermachine, and it filled the void with ether from her super awesome machine, making the dead world alive again". Speaking of, we've seen Annie raked over the coals, but other than a slight oopsiedoodle when connecting to her network and Paz breaking up with her to get out of the way of the Kat/Annie ship, has Kat ever actually suffered any repercussions?
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Feb 7, 2024 17:32
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The cogs are parts of Kat's ether giant robot form, which she retroactively gains the power of. As more of them die, we'll see Robo-Kat gradually being assembled in the ether. And that is an actual serious guess. It pretty much just confirms poo poo peeps have been saying for ages about the robots dreaming their own god.
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Feb 7, 2024 17:47
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Oh god pipeboy became the first of Kat's magic ether cog godbody parts or something? And she's still just going "Haha don't call me God that's ssssoooo silly you guys" she's going to physically ascend to divinity and manifest as a giant nightmare monster and Renard will be like "KAT BECAME THE GOD OF THE WORLDMACHINE" and Annie and Kat are gonna be like "haha why are you buttering her up for" and Renard will be like "NO SHE LITERALLY TOOK OVER THE ETHER AND IS THE GOD OF THE ETHER" and Kat will be like "I dunno there are internet stars out there with more viewers than me" and it's going to be played like a comedy of errors and the errors are Kat and Annie are incapable of understanding Renard anymore I guess what is going on
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Feb 7, 2024 17:49
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Annie and Paz have both seen Mecha Kat in the ether and they were basically like ???? so it's never been clear how we were supposed to see its manifestation. e: so I reread the chapter and it seems to me that what happened in it is that Kat was directly confronted with her responsibility for the people she gave life, and said "idk maybe later," and if this wheel means what I think it means, then the decision not to make a decision in itself is what sent the robot's soul where it was always destined to go, i.e. to Kat anyway? Did I get that right? "I'll figure it out" is self-justifying and possibly the actual source of her power? Because honestly, I don't hate the intent of "Kat is powerful because she writes her own rules," but the tone - specifically, her flippancy - is the critical flaw in it. We've seen what Kat's like when she's taking science seriously! Caphi fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Feb 7, 2024 |
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Feb 7, 2024 17:51
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Caphi posted:Annie and Paz have both seen Mecha Kat in the ether and they were basically like ???? so it's never been clear how we were supposed to see its manifestation. Remember how terrible she felt about the Court trapping Jeanne with Diego as an architect and the lab mice Paz took care of? How the cruelty of those in power towards their underlings weighed on her, later contrasting with her seeing the robots who worship her as a fun after-school project? If this wasn't the moment to pay off that years-long set up then when is it???
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Feb 7, 2024 18:58
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Imo the reason Kat is acting blasé now when she previously gave Serious Science Stuff a lot of weight is because she generally disagrees with all the conclusions everyone is drawing about the ether. Animal testing is animal testing, but as soon as woowoo magic gets involved she throws out half of what she's being told about how it works. She didn't "give robots souls," she... granted robots a shape that would allow people like the Arbiter to recognize robots as alive, whereas in her mind, they were always "alive". Souls aren't something she's giving consideration to, she just think the ancient scary face guy has biases. It doesn't matter that what the audience is seeing contradicts her, because she's locked inside the mundanity filter, same as ever, only it's not just a matter of making cool magic stuff look lame (ESPECIALLY regarding the afterlife and the soul, come to think of it) but also an extension of her pretty unshakable worldview. She's still on that "magic is just science that hasn't been sufficiently explained" train. It's consistent in that way. Of course it's easy to laugh off these divinity comments when they're literally jokes to you. The world doesn't operate according to her logic. We SEE what it means to be given an body, the drastic change in scope of selfhood, and there's the fact that no previous robot had a soul before she gave them an ocean. She's wrong about how the world works, but if she keeps this up, it's probably only a matter of time until she's right, right? As for the other big ethical quagmire, bringing Diego's automata back to life, as far as she's concerned, she respected that one one robodude's death wish and his revived brethren are content with their renewed purpose. She clearly never really agreed with his concept of what "robot life" even was, uncomfortable with his viewpoint and never reconciling with it. As long as everyone around her is chill with what she's doing, and they overwhelmingly ARE, she's going to keep going. The only real naysayer was Paz, who as far as I remember, never really directly shared any concerns over Kat's behavior (except the stuff rooted in jealousy over Annie) with Kat herself. And even then, her discomfort over Kat going too far isn't really outlined in detail? It's pretty vague and nebulous. And because the comic is what it is now, I don't know if a wake up call is coming. I mean, if a man's death didn't do it, a strongly worded Annie speech isn't going to. I assume there's going to be a moment like this, where someone tries, but only because it would be bonkers to not have that happen after the metric ton of ominous buildup. How ARE we supposed to feel about Kat and robots, Tom? Seriously?
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Feb 7, 2024 19:49
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Bandolute posted:How ARE we supposed to feel about Kat and robots, Tom? Seriously? Unambiguous good. Ignore all the other stuff that suggested otherwise. Just like every other baffling conclusion this comic has come to.
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Feb 7, 2024 19:51
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I remembered this page and just realized I forgot again that Shadow existed. Remember when he was an important character? Remember how Shadow and Robot's relationship followed the big theme of the Court/Forest dichotomy and people trying to close that gap, like Jeanne and her elf boyfriend? And Annie and Kat? Magic and Science?
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Feb 7, 2024 21:31
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That page, and in particular the below panel: Really sums up the problem I have with the entire Kat/robot storyline. Robot's proselytizing, Shadow's dismay at this, the cult, Kat's control over life and death, they were all set up as something scary and dangerous. And where is ANY of that? We were teased about Robot working with Loup, but he just up and taddles on him offscreen - what was the point of that? Just a red herring? Shadow is literally gone from the comic, as you mentioned. The cult is pretty much just a funny and minorly annoying thing the robots do, and now is fully embraced by Kat accepting her role as their diety (she absolutely has, despite her "ha ha, jeez!" bullshit). And Kat has never had pushback from anyone ever about anything she's done, except for that one chapter Paz was worried she was working too hard... And then nothing came of it. Tom either set all this up without any idea of where it was going and flubbed the execution, MAJORLY changed his mind about what he wanted to do with it partway through, or is just genuinely a bad writer who actually thinks that this is an outcome that makes sense.
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Feb 7, 2024 21:47
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This is just like nightvale with the Nothing Satan
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Feb 7, 2024 21:48
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Rotten Red Rod posted:Tom either set all this up without any idea of where it was going and flubbed the execution, MAJORLY changed his mind about what he wanted to do with it partway through, or is just genuinely a bad writer who actually thinks that this is an outcome that makes sense. d) all of the above
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Feb 8, 2024 04:10
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I’ve said it before, but I still think failing to redeem Tony successfully to the mass audience/minimising what he did to Annie, using Kat as a mouthpiece and sidelining the family issues is where things started to spiral because it snapped the emotional setting of the comic and wrote off Annie’s viewpoint. Without the main pair of protags working, all you have left is loose plot points to rush through and some pretty art.
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Feb 8, 2024 04:28
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coolusername posted:and some pretty art. Oxxidation posted:
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Feb 8, 2024 06:45
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I don't think Kat's going to TAKE OVER THE ETHER, I think she's "just" going to be a Coyote-level deity.
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Feb 8, 2024 11:30
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coolusername posted:I’ve said it before, but I still think failing to redeem Tony successfully to the mass audience/minimising what he did to Annie, using Kat as a mouthpiece and sidelining the family issues is where things started to spiral because it snapped the emotional setting of the comic and wrote off Annie’s viewpoint. Without the main pair of protags working, all you have left is loose plot points to rush through and some pretty art.
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Feb 8, 2024 11:33
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Splicer posted:The Mind Cage reads to me like a direct response to people's complaints about the lack of redemption arc for Tony, doubling down and flat out telling the reader to drop it. I'm 50/50 on whether Tom was actually doing that, but that's absolutely the most natural read of it. So it's either one of the most hilarious grumpy author mouthpiece pieces of media I've ever read or "just" incredibly poorly framed. The real issue with the response is that it boils down to "he didn't need a redemption arc and was right all along, Annie needed to change" which is horse poo poo. I do think it kind of broke the comic, though it was creaking before that. I don't think Tom is a bad writer but I do think he doesn't understand why people think Tony's attitude is abusive.
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Feb 8, 2024 13:16
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Yeah Tom seems to have never been angling for Annie to have been actually abused at all and seems to have drastically underestimated how much emotional trauma would have been done to Annie by something like her father loving off into the wilderness for years right after her mom died, leaving her to be raised by an unfeeling Court. Even if you wanted to agree with the comic's bizarre moral that Annie became a wild child that needed her wings clipped, that's a massive unaddressed issue: the severe child neglect and traumatization through chronic absence. No amount of "well, he's socially awkward and has trouble with relating to others" or "he was mad because she looked like his dead wife" or "he made sure she was being Looked After" or "he felt bad about hurting her on accident during a fancy spiritual surgery" will excuse years of disappearing from your child's life during a critical period of her development, severe grief, and culture shock. Annie was ripped from everything she ever knew and didn't receive a single word from her father for years. He even said the only reason he came back was because the Court wanted to expel her. Tony has expressed no grief or regret for this. The only thing he's expressed regret over is Surma's death and "how could she live with the man who killed her mother" which is... very self-centered and ignorant to what Annie would actually be feeling. It's like all of Annie's feelings, her pain and suffering and grief, were strangely cast aside at a certain point. You see, Tony was hurt too, and felt responsible for Surma's death, and so that makes it okay, and ever since he came into the comic, it has no interest in interrogating the effects of years of neglect on Annie. It pretends that poo poo didn't exist, and any grudge Annie might have would be purely irrational, because He Had His Reasons. Like, the comic is very fixated on answering the question "is it okay for Tony to be cold to his daughter" and not the question "is it okay for a man to disappear from his child's life without a trace, after that child just lost the parent they were massively codependent on due to a literal spiritual bond" even if the latter question was raised several times. The best we got was "I was sad about Surma" and "well, he's Flawed" which is not the same as confronting him with the years of pain Annie realistically went through and asking him to actually feel anything about that or address it, and so Annie's little speech ultimately comes across as swallowing all of that pain and justifying it to herself in a deeply unhealthy manner. Sad poo poo
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Feb 8, 2024 13:45
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Cavelcade posted:I do think he doesn't understand why people think Tony's attitude is abusive. IMO this comes through in his retrospective commentary videos, which coincidentally stop just before Mind Cage because even though he doesn't understand why, he probably knows that if he posts that video he's gonna get endless poo poo about it Tiny Myers posted:Yeah Tom seems to have never been angling for Annie to have been actually abused at all and seems to have drastically underestimated how much emotional trauma would have been done to Annie by something like her father loving off into the wilderness for years right after her mom died, leaving her to be raised by an unfeeling Court. I mean, not just that. He did plenty of abusive stuff when he got back, too.
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Feb 8, 2024 13:48
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I don't get focusing on Tony being absent. If anything, the abuse he levels at her when he comes back makes his absence justified - she's better off without him. My problem is that he really minimizes the severity of that abuse - oh no, I'm "cold" to my daughter, a bloo bloo bloo. No, you were not cold, you were cruel and insane in the way you treated her. IDGAF if she was cheating off Kat, the poo poo he put her through was over the top abuse.
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Feb 8, 2024 13:51
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Don't get me wrong, I agree, his behavior is abusive, but they tried to at least vaguely address that. The comic claims it's understandable because oh, he was just so upset about how she looked like Surma, you see. Yes, you and I both know that's bullshit. But the absence gets me because it's something they never actually address even if it's shown damaging Annie in detail in early chapters. Even if the comic tries to excuse his one-on-one behavior with her and claim it wasn't abusive (lol), it never addresses the absence. It doesn't even... try. Again, the comic does a lot of justifying Tony's behavior, but while they seem to be interested in whether or not it's okay for him to act so cold and lovely to her because he has Mysterious Magic Brain Problems and wifegone syndrome, they never have him address disappearing massively from her life during a period of severe trauma. Tiny Myers fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Feb 8, 2024 |
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Feb 8, 2024 14:11
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the justification was “I lock up when I’m with more then one person and Annie reminds me of my wife so I think she’s two people” which is absolutely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs
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Feb 8, 2024 14:30
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It's absolutely insane, to be clear. I don't think any of the justifications were *good*. I just feel like the complete non acknowledgement of the neglect adds another dimension to how little the author seems to understand how much Tony's behavior would constitute abuse and be incredibly damaging to a child. It feels like the author doesn't recognize a lot of what Tony did as an issue. I still can't believe how much loving time and effort went into setting up Tony up to be this awful person and then all these reveals that were somehow supposed to retroactively justify it with the dumbest poo poo imaginable. It feels like he was saying "haha shame on you reader for judging him" then got confused when everyone started booing instead of applauding lmao
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Feb 8, 2024 14:49
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Honestly I'd be fine with that if the conclusion from Annie was more "this sucks and hurts but I've decided I want him in my life and so I'll live with it, even though I wish he would change" rather than "this is good, actually, completely fine". Also if Tony had been shown doing literally anything more than nothing to try and find other ways to communicate. Neglect is a form of abuse, even if it's neglect caused by your own broken brain - and if you realise it's neglect and just do nothing, that doesn't make you a martyr, it makes you an rear end in a top hat.
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Feb 8, 2024 14:49
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Cavelcade posted:Honestly I'd be fine with that if the conclusion from Annie was more "this sucks and hurts but I've decided I want him in my life and so I'll live with it, even though I wish he would change" rather than "this is good, actually, completely fine".  It's been said before in this thread but literally just a single page of crumpled up letters with attempted apologies to Annie. It wouldn't automatically fix everything but it'd go a tremendous way towards humanizing him. As it is now, it feels like he has no interest in his daughter's inner world or how his actions hurt her, and no remorse.
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Feb 8, 2024 14:54
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