Gunnerkrigg Court

It has. It's great.

But regardless of what's going on, even if it is infidelity. Taking it out on Tony who is sitting there in his usual stoic nature will not make you look good no matter what. This is a man not attempting to defend himself from someone larger than him by a good head or two.

God damn James is tall.

I can understand being upset, James has ever right to be upset over being cheated on. Being cheated on sucks, and I wouldn't expect him to just suck it up. I would like him to be a bit more mature than threatening Tony.

Ironically, I recall Tom saying he didn't read any of Harry Potter until after someone pointed out how similar his comic was to it.

Remember the early days, when we thought Winsbury was going to always be a recurring antagonist, and folks called him a Draco Malfoy ripoff? Good times, good times.

I don't think he really means to hurt Tony or anything. I think he's just frustrated and doesn't know what to do.

James is wrong, but at least he knows he's wrong. I think he can be forgiven, under the circumstances...eventually. Not just yet, and not for physically lifting Tony off the ground here, but for feeling the way he does. People are imperfect. They find ways to disappoint you. You still have to find the means to move past it. That goes for James's friends here, as well as for James himself (although from all we've seen it doesn't seem like he ever did move on. Which just reinforces the point, really).

Surma, is this how you "handle" things? Just wait to break up with your boyfriend before you get your smooch on. I am glad he didn't sock Tony in the face though, which is a sentence I would never have thought I would type once upon a time.

1904

jones is judging you tony

I've been wondering if Jones was perhaps an unstated secondary reason for why Surma was dissatisfied with James. We know she hated Jones, but since Jones does little to inspire any particular emotion I'm wondering if she was jealous.

Hmm... kind of a chicken-egg thing going on there. Did Surma not like Jones because she thought Jones would take James from her? Or did Surma start disliking Jones because she was the one who was "there" for James when he was available? Both seem reasonable.

Anyhow, as for the Eglamore/Surma question... I know the comic has implied multiple times that the two were dating, I don't think it was ever explicit beyond that the two were mutually interested. Not only that, but even if the two did date, it's not clear if it was a consistent relationship or if there were on/off periods. Maybe it's just me, but Eglamore has come off as a bit creepily obsessed at times, and I guess I'm just less inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Jones: Please refrain from undressing the female students.

Jones with some classic 90s hair there.

So Jones seems more like she's part of this peer group than she does with Annie, Parley, and Smit. Not quite as formal in how she's dressed, and she's already close to Eglamore.

Weird just how much we're reading into this one flashback chapter. To think that just a few pages ago we were talking about how it seemed to be moving too slowly.

>:-(
>:-(
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edited 1st Nov '17 8:38:45 AM by Millership

Speaking of which, is the story going to gloss over the fact that we never truly learned why Tony was dispatched to that random patch of jungle to begin with? Surely it couldn't have been just to watch some good ol' bug-fuckin', right?

Man, I'll be impressed if that ended up being foreshadowing for the Omega Device somehow

EDIT: Good summary.

edited 3rd Nov '17 6:04:09 AM by GutstheBerserker

I suspect the event Tony was sent to observe was in fact him and Surma falling in love.

Oh...that didn't occur to me, but it makes sense. Was the court playing the long game and hoping that their union would eventually result in Annie? For what purpose, I wonder.

Unless that plan also involved murdering Anja's mother, I can't see it.

I dunno, arranging for an "accident", or otherwise capitalizing on a situation that fits their aims sounds all too probable for the Court.

edited 1st Nov '17 10:04:22 AM by danime91

Nah, that's a bit too much of a stretch.

Hmm... while I wouldn't necessarily put it past the Court to try something that underhanded, that seems a little too dark for the comic (also, a bit more blatant than the Court usually likes to get). Now, if you were to tell me that the Court originally had a different idea to distract Donald in mind, but decided to run with sending him with Anja when her mother died in a bit of opportunism... I totally could buy that. Let No Crisis Go to Waste and all that.

Again, the big hole with that theory, to me, is that Donald is the one who brought up not being able to go on the trip. I just can't see him agreeing to manipulate his friends like that.

And I don't see why The Court would rather have Annie be Tony's daughter than James's, considering that James is just as much a Court man as Tony.

edited 1st Nov '17 1:59:59 PM by IniuriaTalis

You're assuming that Donny would have to be in on it by default if the Court manipulated it. Not necessarily - Donny might be just as manipulated as the others.

As for why choose Tony to be the father rather than James... we may not be privy at this time to the Court's reasoning. Maybe they felt that James would take it even harder. Maybe they felt that they could control the results better if Tony was the father. Maybe they didn't so much choose Tony as they were just trying for "not James."

Killing Anja's mother to get Surma and Tony to hook up is certainly the sort of thing that the Court would do, even if there's no clear motive for them to do it, but I just don't think arranging this outcome was feasible for them based on the information we have. First, Donald voluntarily cancelled in order to go with Anja (a reasonable prediction), but then Surma impulsively volunteered to go instead even though her friends tried to talk her out of it. There are too many uncontrolled factors; it isn't quite to "poisoning the king via the fish he ate via the eagle corpse it ate via the rabbit it ate", but it's getting there.

The Court while having machinations, still has a sense of logic to them. All controllable factors or uncontrollables minimized. Too many external factors that can go wrong here. Who's to say Surma's personality would've worked so well with Tony's? It's just as likely it would've ended out with the two hating each other.

I don't know if the court really did just send them to watch mollusk sex, but I'm not going to believe that the court was playing matchmaker unless I get some really strong confirmation. It was done in a very roundabout way, had a billion opportunities to fail and provides little real benefit to the court.

Also, I don't really remember offhand where the court in modern times has expressed a willingness to kill, especially to set up such a wacky scenario as this would have to be. So yeah I'm not going to ascribe them that level of villainy yet.

I can think of several times the court could have made things at least temporarily easier on themselves by whacking someone(heya, Jack), and they didn't.

It's probably best to think of the court as a corporation; functionally amoral, but not explicitly evil.