Gunnerkrigg Court 8: Thrown for a Loup

[SZbNAhL]

This is the discussion thread for Tom Siddell's webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court, which updates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Previous Threads:
Gunnerkrigg Court (February 9, 2009 - December 13, 2010)
Gunnerkrigg Court 2: Small Medium at Large. (December 13, 2010 - June 4, 2012)
Gunnerkrigg Court 3: Mystery Solved! (June 2, 2012 - May 20, 2013)
Gunnerkrigg Court 4: Friends in Need (May 20, 2013 - September 29, 2014)
Gunnerkrigg Court 5: Bismuth as Usual (September 29, 2014 - August 17, 2015)[/QUOTE]
Gunnerkrigg Court 6: Fire Away (August 17, 2015 - May 24, 2017)
Gunnerkrigg Court 7: Psychopomp and Circumstance (May 25, 2017 - December 22, 2019)

[lord_khaine]

Well this is BS. Its not like Annie has anything to do with this.
Or any direct way of influencing Coyote. Besides politely asking.
They should just be glad she did not ignore them completely in the stasis field.

[Gez]

When they were in the stasis field, they were in stasis. So it's not like they were conscious of being trapped in stasis and getting frightfully bored. From their perspective, they were going on their own business when suddenly they get booted out of the forest. And it's perfectly possible they even know Loup booted them out because Annie said she needed their help -- that's the kind of things Loup would tell them while he's telling them to GTFO. And don't forget that Annie is officially the Forest's medium. She works for Loup.

So they have a lot of good reasons to be angry at Annie; at least from their perspective where they cannot know the bigger picture that we, as readers, are shown.

[Ellen]

They have a cultural taboo against interacting with Coyote.

This taboo is enforced with legends/examples of what happened to people who broke the taboo. The point of the stories is that, if you do this, bad things happen to you and to the people around you and it will be your fault.

Annie's actions as medium were part of her job. Technically, that means she didn't break the taboo. But, she was having tons more to do with Coyote than any of these elves would have. That made her suspect before things went wrong.

When things went wrong, Annie fit the criteria of "person to blame." That makes her the scapegoat.

The thing about scapegoats is that they don't have to be at fault they just have to be a person who can be blamed. These people have lost their homes and everything familiar to them. They're angry and upset and need someone to blame.

It's a more human reaction than we've seen from the people in the forest up till now. It fits how the story has been developing. Previously, the forest dwellers were, to some degree, a bit idealized. Despite Coyote being creepy and sometimes terrifying, the forest people overall seemed better and nicer than the court (which can also be creepy and terrifying). They seemed to accept Annie as one of their own. Now, we're seeing an understandable but less pleasant side of them.

[wingnutx]

I'm guessing that foot belongs to Paz.

[Chromascope3D]

Combat encounter: Start!

[RowenMorland]

I hope Paz tells us what she thinks Annie is doing fairly quickly.

[RCgothic]

At the moment it's pretty hard to see what Annies could possibly do about this situation. "Sorry for existing?"
I suspect Paz is being pretty unreasonable here unless she has a solution.

[Typewriter]

I'm guessing the problem that's being presented here is that Annie isn't paying any attention to how Kat is handling things. Kat is working to fix Annie's problems and worrying about her, and maybe feeling 'left out' now that Annie has a second Annie to hang out with. This has been sort of a recurring theme for Annie lately - she focuses on doing what she thinks is right and someone else accuses her of being self centered.

I also feel like Paz probably brought all this up to Kat and Kat doesn't think it's a big deal because she understand why Annie does things the way she does and agrees with her view of prioritizing the important things over the impacts that it has on some individuals.

[137beth]

She doesn't sleep AND she can't concentrate? One of those things is probably the result of the other.

[theKOT]

I mean, Annie isn't putting Kat first here because the entire court and forest are at risk. Paz is letting her romantic entanglements rob her of perspective. What is she, a teenager? Oh right...

Side note, the last few strips have been "Annie blamed for things outside of her/their control". I wonder if this is going to be part of a statement on the unrealistic expectations people can have on those in positions of power or authority, or if it is just a coincidence.

[Neoriceisgood]

Genuinely curious where this particular story thread will end up going, the Annies are really getting heat from all angles right now.

[Typewriter]

This is not a complaint - just an observation/thought/opinion.

Does anyone else feel like the pacing feels really weird the last few chapters? Pretty much ever since Loup appeared everything has felt very... temporary. Loup is here, there's a battle starting, Annie is split into two distinct beings. All that is happening but now we're just sort of pausing for this scene.

Again - not complaining or saying it's a bad scene or arc or anything - but I feel like there's a bunch of stuff that's just hanging around waiting for resolution. I personally can't feel myself to feel heavily invested because I'm just sort of assuming that at some point (literally at any moment) one of the Annie's is going to go away, or they're going to merge, or something. It feels like the things that are happening probably aren't important because the parts that are actually relevant to the story (character arcs?) is being told as a very small part of a bigger story (war with a god?) that feels like it's going to wind up undone or mostly 'resolved.'

I don't feel like I'm describing my thought very well, but does anyone sort of understand what I'm trying to say? I'm still enjoying it but for the first time in the years that I've been reading GC I feel rather detached from the majority of the story.

[geoduck]

It's been hinted that both of the Annies and/or the whole current timeline aren't the ones we started the strip with. Until we learn what's actually going on, it kind of puts a damper on caring what happens to them.

[Willie the Duck]

Does anyone else feel like the pacing feels really weird the last few chapters? Pretty much ever since Loup appeared everything has felt very... temporary. Loup is here, there's a battle starting, Annie is split into two distinct beings. All that is happening but now we're just sort of pausing for this scene.
...
I don't feel like I'm describing my thought very well, but does anyone sort of understand what I'm trying to say? I'm still enjoying it but for the first time in the years that I've been reading GC I feel rather detached from the majority of the story.

I think one of the big things is that we have no idea where we are going, in terms of scope, process, or even what we're addressing. Now it's usually not a great thing to know ahead of time what will happen in a story, but you do usually* kind of want to know what the rest of the story will likely be addressing (say, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, we are going after the Ark, and not building into a WWII war movie, or the like). Since returning from the forest (again), it sounds like the main protagonist group is trying to get Loup the other lost memory of Coyote back to placate him. Up until then, we didn't even know if they were going to acquiesce to Loup or try to defeat him. Is the court being helpful? What's the deal with the robots, and who is right about how best to use them?
*Exceptions and subversions exist, and of course there's always the movie/show/book that you thought was going to be a murder mystery, and then you find out that the victim faked their death to help rob a casino and it's really a crime caper, but those have to be the exception for them to be the one with the twist.

Mind you, all of these things are needed in a story (including not knowing what's going on), but that is part of the set-up, and more than a year into this arc, it's a little surprising to still be groping about in the dark, feeling for the walls in an attempt to define the boundaries of the story.

[Typewriter]

Since returning from the forest (again), it sounds like the main protagonist group is trying to get Loup the other lost memory of Coyote back to placate him. Up until then, we didn't even know if they were going to acquiesce to Loup or try to defeat him. Is the court being helpful? What's the deal with the robots, and who is right about how best to use them?

This sort of highlights a major part of the issue for me - up to this point I've felt like I knew about the same amount of information as what the main characters new. As they were discovering things we were discovering things. Sure, some times things aren't revealed as part of a twist, but for the most part you know what the character knows.

Right now I don't know what the characters know. I don't know what's going on with Annie in her home life, or at the school. I know only the basics that have been shown. It's causing me to feel a disconnect.

[KatsOfLoathing]

It's been hinted that both of the Annies and/or the whole current timeline aren't the ones we started the strip with. Until we learn what's actually going on, it kind of puts a damper on caring what happens to them.

Forest Annie/The One With Long Hair is, presumably, the original Annie that we're familiar with, unless she was somehow swapped with another right in front of our eyes. Court Annie/The One With Short Hair is evidently from another timeline. Since both of them have been "shifted", though, it would seem the timeline we're currently in (and thus, the rest of the cast) is not the original we know, and there's a third Annie lost somewhere else in the multiverse that we haven't even met yet, which Kat is invested in finding. Our Timeline and The New Timeline don't seem to have any noticeable differences from each other (since I think the divergence point was when Loup shuffled Annie(s) around), but it would be interesting to see how they've changed if/once we're returned to the original.

Speaking of, I think we're long overdue for a Kat-centric chapter. It's been a while since there's been one and it'd be nice to really understand what's on her mind lately.

[Willie the Duck]

I thought it was established that both Annies were not our original Annie.

[SZbNAhL]

I thought it was established that both Annies were not our original Annie.

It was established that neither is in the correct timeline. That could mean that neither is "our" Annie, but it could also mean that one of them is "our" Annie and she's not in "our" timeline.

[wingnutx]

I'm guessing that our Annie is in the wrong timeline.

also...

Spoiler

Show

Zimmy! This is going to be good.

[137beth]

I was definitely not expecting them to show up.

Spoiler

Show

Zimmy might be able to figure out what happened to the original Annie.

[wingnutx]

I didn't remember her as being that small.

[Zea mays]

Gamma’s done some growing.

[Max_Killjoy]

The other possibility is that BOTH Annies are "our Annie", and that attempting to figure out which one is "real" is counter-productive both in-story and from our POV.

[Ellen]

Paz was crossing a line. You generally don't get to tell your love interest's friends to go away, even if you think they're bad for her. She's also ignoring that Kat has her agency and the right to make choices, even if Paz feels they're bad ones (I'd disagree, since Kat is trying to save the robots from losing their self-identity and is working with Annie to keep the court safe from Loup).

However, Paz at least thinks Annie is actively involved in creating these problems, so there's that. She sees herself as going protecting Kat from Annie's abuse rather than recognizing she's just stepped into semi-abusive behavior (trying to control Kat and get rid of friends of Kat's she doesn't like).

It's also interesting how things have changed. When we first met Annie, she befriended things that most people would find terrifying (a minotaur, a ghost, Rey in a dragon-like body, Rey in his new body after Annie knew he'd tried to possess her, etc). They responded with apparent friendship.

Now, Annie's older and the world isn't that simple. Coyote's friendship was always potentially dangerous and Loup's is downright psychotic. People Annie knows are angry or afraid of her.

While it's hard for Annie, I like how things are changing as she grows up and are becoming more complicated.

[Iruka]

Well that solved exactly nothing.

[wingnutx]

It was useful exposition.

[137beth]

Maybe they're getting ready to deploy the Omega Device?

[Lizard Lord]

I am confused by how Zimmy defines magic. If something that "is explained by not having an explanation" isn't magic then what is?

[halfeye]

I am confused by how Zimmy defines magic. If something that "is explained by not having an explanation" isn't magic then what is?

Quantum Mechanics isn't definitively explained yet (as I understand things), but that's not magic is it?