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Apparently only the psychopomp in this party can see a bunch of strings? That's a little worrying, if it's suggestive of the Fates AKA 'the strings that determine people's destiny and when cut, their death.'
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May 16, 2016 10:56
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I do feel as if this climax is falling apart slightly because none of the character's actions seem to make sense at the moment in terms of dealing with Smitty's injuries. Why isn't Parley teleporting out to get help, why does Annie think the psychopomps can help when they've shown no previous abilities to heal or inclination to not be dicks, why don't they try getting help from the forest given the forest medium is right there near the forest and the court medium is shivved, are his powers broken, heck couldn't Annie just toss up a big fireball in the sky to get attention given how she burned the bridge chapters ago and set off a bunch of alarms, etc. Normally the mysteries of the comic make things more exciting, but right now it's less intrigue and more "But why are they doing this when there appears to be a bunch of easier solutions?"
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Jan 26, 2017 07:15
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While Kat, Parley and Smitty at least have the concepts of death and a strong friendship driving them to help out, the faeries aren't exactly fully on board with human life yet. She bribed the faeries with something that's of utmost importance to their lives (and something that might have been keeping them apart, if Ayilu and Red were separated by Red's graduation that was also caused by Annie) while also not taking into account their potential lack of understanding. Like Red, who was literally going to chop her own fingers off because she thought they could regrow in a different chapter, and Ayilu, who fakes death for attention-seeking. Both of them are fairly recent humans who haven't been fully trained and educated by the Court and who weren't considered ready to safely have what Annie's promised them, and who became humans via casual death and revival. I think the chapter pretty clearly shows that they're messing about and not at all comprehending the danger to their lives during the Jeanne encounter until Ayilu nearly dies, and now Red is pretty hosed up by it, so I think Red's call out is pretty necessary. Also, what would happen if an ex-fairy/woodland creature got expelled or in serious trouble with the court?
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Mar 11, 2017 14:12
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 I see it's tragedy time.
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Jul 17, 2017 08:29
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If he doesn't know judo yet (is it mentioned?), then this might be the formative moment that gets him to start learning. also ~burn baby burn~
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Oct 27, 2017 16:54
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I'm a little weirded out by Anja's decision to explain, to the girl being emotionally neglected and obviously hosed up, about how her neglectful and kind of abusive father is totally a cool dude when alone with other people and how Annie is living proof of her dead mother, rather than actually addressing Annie's distress. It certainly doesn't seem to be helping given Annie's gone right back to blank mask mode.
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Nov 7, 2017 02:50
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I'm definitely in the category of 'People who are sincerely finding this uncomfortable/dissatisfying and thus taking it too seriously,' it's just not a great look that the comic seems more intent on infodumping about Tony than actually keeping the focus on what Antimony's going through? She's the main character, but it becomes Gunnerkrigg court: All about Tony's perspective. Lots of flashbacks/infodumps/other characters talking about him and his feelings, what he's done, where he's coming from, etc. have established a greater pattern that makes "Now a slow chapter about him falling in love" another straw on the camel's back. So, for me, who doesn't care and has already sat through chapters of everyone talking about Tony to Annie instead of talking to Annie, I'm really quite frustrated with the direction.
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Nov 10, 2017 03:15
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I don't quite mean the chapters themselves in this case, I mean it's whenever Tony pops up as a topic so people can tell Annie about Tony's feelings/perspective/etc., dragging it out without people seeming to help Annie? But I think I'm just going to take a break from the comic, this might be a case of 'Jones flashback chapter is way better when it's over and you can do it in one go.'
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Nov 10, 2017 03:31
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Man, the existence of Mr. Tony "Let's neglect, isolate and repeatedly belittle my daughter" Jerkface is genuinely souring my enjoyment of the comic. Can someone just comment saying when he gets punched in the face, called out, or is at least out of the picture again temporarily, so I can avoid making seventeen 'and this is why I hate Tony' posts and go back to how cool and good the robot aesthetic is? It's for your own good, thread.
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Nov 29, 2017 12:12
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Coyote really cooked his goose on this one.
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Feb 21, 2018 11:29
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Wonder how Tony feels about his decision to encourage her going now.
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Oct 3, 2018 10:35
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Is it just me, or is a tiny part of Annimes hair turning to cinders? The ragged edges and the tiny floaty specs?
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Dec 3, 2018 14:35
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Bringing Coyote back makes me appreciate Loup's design and the chibi thing that keeps happening - because putting them in contrast really hammers home Loup being like, a demented cheap knock-off? He's weird and a little impressive but kinda a sonic OC, and I wasn't really into it.. until you put him against Coyote, and then suddenly he's a scruffy stuffed toy against Coyote, who immediately dominates the panels with his clean red lines/eye-catching pure black and who overwhelms and becomes the panels borders, completely surrounding and in control of the scenario.
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Nov 20, 2019 09:28
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Is this literal and metaphorical brainwashing?
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Mar 20, 2020 17:07
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I, uh.. don't get it. I think I forgot this plot point? What's the bird?
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May 25, 2020 08:24
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That’s... it? It didn’t even happen on screen.
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Mar 8, 2021 10:30
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I suppose my issue (as it stands) is we had a potentially really interesting thing - The two Annie's in heated emotional conflict and lashing out at each other in a way that really seemed like it could become an interesting character moment (some of the best emotional moments have been with Annie contending with her emotional issues: re Surma, like the bit in the comic with the tree) and instead of getting the resolution it just all got resolved off-screen. So like even if they split again, what happened here was camera panning away from interesting thing for small talk and then 'whoops it got resolved' chapter end. It just feels like it introduced an element/conflict a few pages before then tossed it in the trash.
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Mar 9, 2021 10:25
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Boxbot could parent better than this.
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Apr 29, 2021 13:16
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Irukandji Syndrome posted:I just kind of feel like this comic has been desperately trying to get me to like Annie's dad and I simply don't. Like yes, there's characters in-comic going "he's a complicated person" or "he's a bad person" or whatever on the surface, but there's also been multiple chapters now focusing on his inner pain and characterization in a way other characters haven't gotten in a long time, so I can't help but feel as if we're (supposed to be) being endeared to him. The amount of weight put on this character, narratively, as well as how often we're shown his inner thoughts and feelings, indicates importance and an attempt to get the audience to empathize. I'm here. I can understand him, the character makes sense, the motivations, etc. It's all laid out clearly, but the fact is it has been all already established, including everyone's opinions of him that we just heard all over again, and I feel like... I mean, Gunnerkrigg was always a talky comic, but a lot of it was expressed previously through the art? But it's swung really, really hard into tell, not show. We don't show flashback panels of all the characters dealing with Tony, we get quick text soundbites re-hashing their already known opinions. The entire bird resolution with the norns was sci-fi babble central telling us the plot. Big deals like Annie merging happen off-screen when, you know, that's probably worth showing, not just saying 'That happened, here's the aftermath.' I know the sequence with Jones taking several pages just to show off her ancientness was controversial for many, but I felt that was a really great example of flexing the art to carry the story. Now I feel like we're getting story beats and resolutions through monologue. Also the narrative's feeling gross in the way it's constantly positioning this relationship as needing Annie/the audience understanding why he does what he does to accept him, and not him changing his behaviours to even try and earn that acceptance over the course of time. I'm very much in the 'cool motive, still abuse' where it feels really icky that the framing of this whole thing has been all about him and his psychological state and how hard his struggles are, and how everyone doesn't understand him properly and just judges him by his surface behaviour (which is abusive) but if they knew his ~mind cage struggles~ they'd understand better. I don't know if that's the intention, but that's how it reads to me. So I'm probably just going to stop reading for a long while because I've disliked the comic's approach to Tony for a long while and it's leaving me genuinely discomfited at this point.
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May 13, 2021 09:29
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He's responsible for his actions (neglecting then outright emotionally abusing Annie to the point she has an on-screen dissociative episode and engages in metaphysical self-harm) and for his lack of action later (Being aware of what he's done and making no on-screen, serious efforts at redemption). "Expecting parents with mental health issues to take responsibility for their harmful actions is stigmatizing" is a wild take.
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May 13, 2021 11:24
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How much of all this could have been avoided if the audience had actually gotten to see the Tony that was so charming he flipped Kat’s opinion and left now-fused Annie with fond memories to look back on? Every on-screen moment we have ranges from neutral to outright horrific at worse, which makes it all ring hollow because characters saying “no sometimes he’s cool” doesn’t actually work to counterbalance the only way the audience has actually experienced him as a parent and person in the narrative, and what the text is showing rather than telling. Arguments that the narrative is tied to Annie’s perspective so we should only meet him as he is to her now fall apart when a significant portion of this emotional resolution comes from Also Annie who experienced that different Tony, with the comic now hinging a major resolution on that experience… that we as audience completely skipped. Eta: to clarify, there were tiny bits of nicer Tony with Forest Annie, but there was not actual, significant emotional story beats with them bonding significantly - what we got was “ok he’s neglecting one and treating the other like not his kid but a pal” which… yeah. I never thought I’d argue for a Tony chapter but if the options here were “we see Tony and Annies struggling and succeeding to mend their relationship with heartfelt moments while no plot progresses” or “literally a month of monologuing about the topic instead of showing it” I would pick the former. coolusername fucked around with this message at 17:24 on May 24, 2021 |
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May 24, 2021 17:12
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Tenebrais posted:We did, there was a whole chapter about Tony and Surma getting together to show his general charisma one-to-one. I don’t think that counts for what I mean here, but it’s late so I’m not conveying it well - there’s a difference between a flashback to a past with a love interest, and on-screen interactions with the protagonists of the comic, who have a completely different type of relationship and also are carrying significant baggage. It’s like.. when a movie does the flashback to the villain’s troubled past, and that one time he pet a dog and how he used to be good to shoehorn in emotional depth, but for the last 90 minutes all he’s been doing with the characters we’ve been sharing a viewpoint with is punching them in the face so the pathos doesn’t land at all. Like I edited in, I never thought I’d argue for a Tony chapter but if the options here were “we see Tony and the Annies struggling and succeeding or failing to mend their relationship with heartfelt moments while no plot progresses” or “literally a month of monologuing about the topic instead of showing it” I would pick the former.
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May 24, 2021 17:37
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Even if there’s a “psych” page coming (increasingly doubtful tho I cling to hope) I feel this was just… badly done? We’ve gone from some downright beautiful sequences with mysteries explored and solved by our protagonists to multiple back to back chapters where a deus ex machina kicks in, big important events happen off screen and are explained in text boxes/everyone monologues now, and an abrupt return to status quo followed by a draining grandstand speech where everyone stands there and recaps their feelings and the plot, emotional development, the Kat and Annie doing mystery adventures together has been gone for a while.
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May 25, 2021 06:09
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Also the fact that one page was uploaded in the wrong order and no one noticed.
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May 25, 2021 11:51
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Any idea last shred of hope for “authorial intent misinterpreted, actually meant to be seen as an unhealthy swerve” died for me with this bonus page. The framing, expressions, the author’s note saying he’s trying, i can’t see how it could be meant as anything other than an unambiguous “this is a good development” epilogue page to further hammer it in. If we were meant to have the takeaway of “no this is seriously unhealthy and glossing over his behaviour, psychological damage desperately monologued to justify it” I don’t see how this page would fit at all.
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May 29, 2021 14:35
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Pyre File posted:But the whole point is they, and the comic, have grown past that. I think that's my problem, then. Annie and Kat was like... the heart and emotional core of the comic? To me, at least. Two friends becoming best friends, learning to like each other, learning to support each other, struggling with both weird mystery poo poo like a ghost sword lady and godlike incel mystery cult, but also perfectly normal things like 'I cheated homework off my smarter friend' and 'How do I support my friend who's got family issues' and 'We're becoming adults and getting into relationships etc. that could separate us, how do we stay friends?' which you can relate to. I cared about the mysteries because I cared about the characters, and where they were going, and how they were going to deal with it. And my slow degrade of enjoyment can probably be directly put up against a spreadsheet of them separating starting from Annie repeating the year, and them slowly becoming more passive, reactive characters who just have things happen to them rather than them doing things together - Zimmy does things to them, the Norns explain things to them, the dad is crummy and the school has dark plans to them. They're not out there, being friends, pushing the plot - the plot just keeps happening to them, or being solved for them. And not just this chapter, it's been over a year of this happening? It's not Tony by itself that's making me stop after gosh like ten years of diligently checking every M-W-F, it's the entire change of what the comic is.
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May 30, 2021 06:50
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My feelings on the chapter can be ultimately summarised as feeling like this went down:
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May 30, 2021 09:58
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Imagine if the last couple of chapters had been Annie actively working on learning more about the split then after finding a solution making the choice to recombine (for whatever reason), exercising some agency and turning this stare down into Annie actually being able to genuinely say she outsmarted Loup and took back her autonomy with her own hands in defiance of his rage, rejecting his authority in favour of making her own decisions. Instead we get … her lying about doing that I guess?
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Jun 23, 2021 16:18
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The comic did just make a point that her ability to burn things with her mind has doubled in power. It’d be nice to see her rebellious fire spirit burn baby burn side again for once.
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Jun 26, 2021 17:23
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  Call-back?
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Jul 5, 2021 14:34
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I think for me, this falls flat because the fact that Annie is reacting so surprised-happy to something as basic as "your father is helping the rescue efforts tirelessly" and it seems to be framed as a big "look he really does love her! what a supreme effort he's making, rushing off without thinking! that emotional reaction!" moment, when it's kinda the bare minimum expectation for a good parent? I'd expect any character with care for their friend up to and including Boxbot to rush off if they heard something terrible was happening, to try and help. People would rush out bare foot over their pet cat escaping the house. So the fact that she's shocked-happy only underlines how little he's done to actually earn her love. And also that it's happening off-screen, which falls into the same narrative problem pattern of 'Tony charms Kat/is a great person/redeems himself off-screen,' where the audience is told he's making efforts or is magically charming not around Annie but isn't shown it, which is a hard sell in a visual medium which has already overly-relied on off-screen behaviour and long monologues. Show him covered in dust and dark-eyed refusing to leave the site until someone drags him away, show him wanting to dig through rubble with his bare hands, whatever, just... show it before we get another 'Annie is abysmally happy over the bare minimum, and we're told it's happening via dialogue' panel. This is basic humanity 101 treated as a "father wrestles shark to save their child" headline.
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Oct 17, 2021 10:06
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Mulva posted:I feel like at a certain point people just have to drop the thing they once liked because it's not something they like anymore, but I'm not going to kink-shame some masochists. Honestly I was actually really enjoying this chapter - Aata's whole deal and how he's interacting with the other shadow lady being an interesting new insight into some unexplored characters, the big flashy magic, seeming to head closer to a resolution of the long-awaited tooth knife + the whole loup situation, Coyote re-appearing, the hints of how the court works behind the scenes and their ultimate goal, and Annie interacting with some forest people. It's basically everything I like about the comic. And then Tony shows up right as I settle in, like adding durian to a fruit salad.
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Oct 17, 2021 10:49
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Sooo… does anyone else miss the psychopomps? I really liked their designs.
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Oct 18, 2021 04:40
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A big flaming stink posted:honestly i kind of find it vaguely annoying that we've heard gently caress all from them since telling annie in a huge ominous tone "you belong to us now" Yeah! I feel like the psychopomp thread keeps getting dropped and that's a shame because it's tied into Annie in a way that all the rest of the plot threads aren't. Coyote is fantastic, but the whole Coyote/Loup arc is very much centered around the Court and the metaphysics of the world and those conpiracies: theoretically any protagonist could be in that role. But the psychopomps are intrinsically bound into her powers, her childhood, her mother, her trauma, etc. in a way where you couldn't substitute another person and have it even remotely work. Coyote is very much a world plot, but the psychopomps feel like an Annie plot, if that makes sense? Plus they have some banging designs, even the early ones.
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Oct 18, 2021 08:34
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For me I keep hanging on because every now and then we get glimpses of the peak points of the comic, and I feel "Oh, we're getting back into it--!" Like Coyote reappearing, Aata suddenly showing off his magic when it looks like a character is about to die, Loup flipping out and bursting through the Court, maybe even killing a whole bunch of robots in the process, oh poo poo things are happening what's Annie going to do?! And then Annie doesn't do anything but stand there, again, having dragged out interactions with a character we have no investment in while the comic quickly reassures us no one was hurt and in fact the major threat has suddenly disappeared after his attack so plenty of time to chat about this lady's crush. This comic legitimately has some of my favourite, most beautiful panels - the Coyote story sequence - and some amazing mysteries that slowly unravelled with a whole bunch of "oh poo poo they're out of their depths is someone going to die" - jeanne - and some heartwrenching moments - Mort's second death... and all of them are frontloaded from years ago.
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Oct 28, 2021 03:54
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My problem is I was finding it super compelling, it was almost like the Good Old Days I fondly remember of the comic - Coyote reappearance, Court doing something that backfires, bringing up the coyote tooth, suddenly the stand-off between the court and the forest is broken in a huge flashy sequence of powering-up -- There was a build up where the mystery was coming together, things were clicking into place, and suddenly things were actively dangerous with Annie in the middle. And then like in two pages all that tension and build-up got popped like a balloon. "No one was hurt, oh the powered-up rampaging Loup? yeah he magically disappeared, so we can sit around and talk vaguely about things. Time to effortlessly teleport people out and I'll wait for the rescue which we know is coming because it was spelled out, and even it being her father isn't a surprise because we were informed that would happen in advance." I didn't want Annie double-fire-laser DBZ's Loup and then stabs him to pieces while someone puts the Doom BGM on, but I did want... I don't know, the tension to actually last? I wanted it to feel like it mattered that a thing just happened, and everything went from "this really feels like a huge thing, a Chekov's gun is firing" to "the consequences of everyone's actions have once again being delayed to next year." It's like taking the buried lede, digging it up, polishing it, going "Wow, remember this plot point? The extra-powered fire lasers? The knife? Coyote's memories? That headmaster guy and colleague we bought up like ten years ago? Let's put them all in a room and have a big flashy polishing sequence leading up to a potential resolution to some of it -- and then put it all back in the hole but slightly more shallow, bury all the tension-developing character-threatening bits!" It's like if in the river when they finally get to confront Jeanne, the swords are drawn, everything looks dangerous, and then suddenly "I'm not experienced enough a swordsmaster to beat her, but at least now we know a little more about Jeanne! and that she's planning bad things still! Run away!" and they all run away and stand around talking about swords, because swords will be very important when they finally do go and fight her. Also, Jeanne magically disappears and this is confirmed textually just to make sure the audience knows everything's fine and they have plenty of time for sword talk.
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Nov 11, 2021 10:59
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If they were always planning on moving, why did they have the whole process of forest creatures becoming humans still on-going? More people = more to move, right? Maybe they were trying to collect aetherically-aware individuals to help them, I'd think, but then that conflicts with Aata getting kicked out(?) for actually using his. I'd get wanting a powerful reality warper like Zimmy, but where's the benefit in continually letting rabbits and fairies in if it's adding to the transfer workload. Unless they're planning on just abandoning all of them and were just letting it go on to placate the forest side, which, I would not put past the court really. Except for the bit where the court aggressively doesn't care about the forest. Although generally the mysteries come together in a way that makes technical sense (even if not always in a way I find narratively satisfying) in this comic, it's yet to pull a Lost, so I'm going to wait and see how a bunch of the old stuff ends up reframed to explain it all on this one.
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Nov 15, 2021 13:13
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Regy Rusty posted:This information actually sheds some light on why they wanted to recruit the forest creatures. If you recall the actual purpose of them from the court's perspective was to have them process vast amounts of challenging math. I'll bet they were doing calculations related to this very project. Oooh. Right, I forgot that, I just remembered Annie in the classroom with the cool fake illusions since it was so far back. I did think there would have been stuff foreshadowing it since the comic hasn't really ever taken an unforeshadowed swerve I can think of.
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Nov 15, 2021 13:47
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If the comic ends with the court moved, everyone breathing a sigh of relief to have left the forest, and then Coyote with a groucho marx mustache saying “hi new neighbour” I will forgive everything.
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Nov 16, 2021 05:17
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The etheral siphons were holding the rain back and draining it of what Zimmy needed to make it work right. When they were taken out, then the siphons stopped siphonning the rain and it was normal again = works for Zimmy.
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Nov 27, 2021 08:09
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