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Reunion Page 20: Several Hours Later

Reunion Page 20: Several Hours Later published on 106 Comments on Reunion Page 20: Several Hours Later

Some people have mentioned that the comments section is acting weird, so I’ll see if it acts weird on this page and try to fix it! Sorry about that!

Reunion is starting to wind down now. Golly.

106 Comments

Eerie silence and crying mothers do not bode well.

Blanch is such a good friend though.

It almost hurts how hard he’s trying to make Anthony feel better. If he blows up at Blanche after this, I’ll end up disliking him on principle, regardless of all the crap he’s gone through.

Even if he apologizes later? Stress messes up people, man…

True as that is…other people have dealt with similarly devastating life changes without being a complete ass to everyone they love. One blow up could be forgiven. He was already on the edge of a freak out and got an extra helping of mind screw. So if he repents he could be forgiven because he had just one too many straws on his back and he broke. If he is still a jerk after when he has calmed down then he really isn’t worth much to anyone. Especially if he is a jerk to Blanche. Blanche’s only fault in this was wanting to share something special in his life with his friend.

One thing I am concerned with is that Tony might not recover from the strain of this new shock before he does something regrettable in another way. Particularly because he might feel remorse for having that huge screaming fit at everyone.

I wonder how many of these people over history have never managed to adjust to their changes and haven’t been fortunate enough to get help.

Do some end up out in the wilds as REAL monsters?

He really is. Sadly, I don’t think it’s occurred to him that the way he looks right now is probably contributing to the stress of the situation. Blanche is trying so hard to be there for Tony, but his White Stag face is not a familiar one, or even one Tony would’ve associated with sentience before all this started. To Blanche, home in the Avalon = Not Having To Use My Amulet, and Tony’s freaking out enough to maybe not realise he could ask Blanche to wear the human face he knows for a while (rude as that would be, I think he’d understand). So to Tony, it’s not just that monsters exist now and he’s one of them; the friend he followed here is now a nigh-unrecognisable talking deer and thus a constant reminder that he’s left everything he knows behind.

In the long run, that might be for the best. It means that all the help and support Tony’s getting at the moment is coming from people who don’t look human, so it could force him to get used to the idea that mythological creatures can be good people who only want to help. Everyone talking to him looks equally strange, so he HAS to adjust and deal with them as people. Right now, though, it’s one more stressor piled on top of all the others, and it’s probably contributed to his kneejerk rejection of everything that’s happened.

it’s the stay puft marshmallow man!

Took me a second to decipher that, and then… OH THERE IT IS! :D

I wonder just how Anthony is going to react to the shirts, considering that they rather neatly symbolize that this is all a long-term situation he’s going to have to deal with.

That, and that’s his GHOSTBUSTERS SHIRT. Come on Blanche, he isn’t going to be a bird monster forever, do you think he wants you ruining his favorite shirt from his favorite show?

With Anthony’s current frame of mind, that is one piece of help that is very likely to backfire on Blanche.
But I am wondering who decided that specific t-shirt should be one that was modified. Ophelia, or Blanche.

indeed. but yes, he may well be a bird monster forever…

Well, according to his mother’s backstory, it is possible for Tony to be turned human. It’s just a matter of getting in touch with someone who can actually perform the spell. Given Tony’s attitude toward the whole turning into a bird deal, he’ll go for it as soon as he gets the chance.

That depends on if the spellcaster with such knowledge is actually accessible to Anthony. It could well be that the one who transformed Ophelia has died.

So this would mean that Tim has to learn of the spellcaster and learn the spell.
But going by what happened to Tim, there is not much of an apprenticeship system among spellcasters, which is why Sam’s apprenticeship is somewhat unusual. So I would venture to say that there is also not much communication between spellcasters, at all. So the chances of Tim learning of anyone else who might know of such a spell that he could be taught, would be extremely slim indeed.

Well, there’s also the fact that crossbreeds really only happen when magic is involved/screws up, so magic’s affect on them could be… questionable. Anthony’s technically a crossbreed – human/harpy, which shows through the fact that he’s a male harpy. I don’t know, I just feel like if a sorcerer/ess that could transform him back was accessible, Ike probably would have at least looked into it.

You forget that magic like that is very touchy. Tony was never supposed to exist in his current form, and only does so as a result of magic that had backfired. It’s very much a possibility that Tony’s stuck like that forever.

Not to mention that, once Tony has had time to think about, he has to wonder if he wants to be in his mother’s situation in twenty or thirty years, trying to explain his choice to his child who got screwed over by something Anthony did as a teenager.

That was why I said what I did in the second point of my reply to Overread, in the replies to the previous page.

2. That any hope for raising a family is now dead and buried. He will likely see being a harpy as being a curse, which he will want to see end with him, and not be passed on to any future generations.

That is not entirely true…people and their priorities change. Sides, he could shack up with another harpy. There are like bucket loads of female harpies who would love to have some male harpy lovin’. Also Tony could, with time, learn to enjoy his new life enough to want all the pleasures it can grant him. The problem right now is Tony is mourning the life he could have had if he had never turned harpy. Which is admittedly quite alot. It is just that this new life could offer just as much if he only gave it a chance. We can only wait and see how Tony changes as a person once he makes his choice on how to go forward from here and adjusts to it.

Looks like there are lacing holes on the shirt sides. Given that this chapter started with Blanche sewing, I suspect he did the alterations in as non-damaging a way as possible. Probably includes undoing the seams, restitching a hem on either side, and the lacing holes stitched to prevent fraying, if not eyelets.

I’ve seen shirts and pants with lace-up side-seams before (though admittedly mostly for women). So I think if they are able to reverse this for Tony, he could probably still wear the shirt and excuse the alterations as style experiments.

Am I the only one who kind of suspects Anthony is probably not in the room right now? This seems like it’s setting up for him to not be in the room.

Nah, I think he’s there. Kory mentioned that this chapter’s just about over and I don’t imagine there’d be a hang off with him gone.

Gone or gone gone? Could the use of the word ‘hang’ signify something darker than just the end of this story arc? Okay, someone had to say it. It might as well be me. :(

Nobody had to say that.

Nobody had to say it the way Carlos did. There is a line between being concerned and being ghoulish ><

I can’t see Tony wanting to let himself swing, even with all the stress he has been in lately. I dont think self harm is in him.

He did just start off this chapter by clipping his heaters and bleeding all over the place…

Papageno:
Es ist umsonst! Es ist vergebens!
Müde bin ich meines Lebens!
Diesen Baum da will ich zieren,
Mir an ihm den Hals zuschnüren,
Weill das Leben mir mißfällt;
Gute Nacht, du falsche Welt!

Unlike Papageno in The Magic Flute, Tony might experience insurmountable difficulties in tying any sort of knot properly… Even so, where is Papagena when you need her…? >:=|>

Considering that Adelle would likely have told Blanche if Anthony had gone out, I don’t think Anthony has left Pwyll House.

I’m thinking something rather simpler. Anthony is refusing to speak to those who he thinks lied to him. And with how deeply Blanche is mixed up in this mess, I wonder how long it may be, before they are back on speaking terms.

It’s “/hours/ later”, not a night or more, the room seems to be upstairs, Tony himself complained about how clumsily (read: noisily) he moves, and he definitely did /not/ fly out of the window, given recent events with his plumage. Chances that he has snuck past the Blanches are rather slim IMHO.

I’m rather curious about Anthony’s guitar.
The headstock of it, is at an angle to the fretboard and nut on the neck.

Usually you don’t have this kind of conversation until you’re the father of a teenage girl and her boyfriend breaks up with her.
Then again… Historically Harpies are all female…

Echoes of a real-life scene, here: Paul McCartney, talking to John Lennon on the Dakota apartment building’s entryphone system, during an unsuccessful attempt at reconciliation in the late ’70s. He had also brought a guitar with him, and it turned out to be the showstopper on the whole attempt – Lennon picked up the familiar sounds of a guitar being carried, became enraged by the apparent implication that they could just start jamming again in spite of everything that had happened, and cut the conversation off. Now, considering that Tony can barely hold a guitar now (if that), let alone play one, its presence might well provoke an equally bad reaction.

*silent apprehension* poor tony, I know he was a dick about it but it was still a lot for him to take in. I mean here this entire time he was so so worried about never being able to see his mom again because he was a monster,and then he finds out that his mother is the reason he IS a monster. He’s under so much stress just adjusting to this body while Blanche and his mother expect him to be the same old tony. In his position I would probably be pretty bitter too. And feel extremely betrayed that the most important and trusted people in his life were both hiding incredibly important things from him. I hope he’s ok, depressed as he is who knows what he’d do? Even though I feel like he’s angrier than he is depressed.

Frankly, I was starting to get tired of Anthony’s drama a while back. Ok, so he’s a bird monster now. There is no clear way of him ever being able to be human again. He is, however, also in the one place in the world (that he knows of) where it’s not that big of a deal, and staying with some of the few people there he actually knows and clearly cares deeply about him. His response is to go out of his way to alienate them? To be pointedly nasty to them dispute how much they’ve tried to help him adjust? We have yet to see so much as one grateful word to any of them, even when he was bleeding out all over the floor.

Personally, and this is just me talking, I don’t care. There’s no excuse for how Tony’s been acting, stress and trauma or no. And I wouldn’t be remotely upset with the Nior’s if they dumped him on his feathery butt. You’re half bird Tony. This isn’t changing. Deal with it. At least you didn’t turn into a woman, and there’s far worse things you could have ended up. Basilisk anyone?

To inject a bit of lightheartedness here, the first panel makes it very obvious that it’s just a lighter patch of fur on that deer’s neck, but in every subsequent panel the only way my brain insists on interpreting it is that the deer’s whole muzzle is a gigantic shnozz and it’s making a 8^D face.

Methinks Tony has run away. Maybe. (But where would he go and how? I dunnoooo.)

To do that, first he would have to exit Pwyll House without Adelle noticing.
Then he would have to get out of the LA without Alec and Django noticing.
Then he would have to get to that tunnel which Turboshed mentions, without any human noticing.

The tunnel itself is also plastered with cctv cameras as well, so the chances of that are remote at best.

I think with his belongings, guitar and a huge bowl of Scouse (its basically a stew. for those people not failure with the Liverpudlian dish) and he might calm down abit.

*looks it up* (Not to be confused with the dialect.) Sounds delicious and might work, unless it stirs up memories of sailors…. but then they’re in a port city.

Nope definitely not to be confused with the dialect and yes Scouse is a really nice dish amd in fact it tastes even better once it has sat for 24 hours, as the juices become absorbed into the veg. Now that my mum has moved away I miss having scouse, hers was the best :(

And where would Anthony get such a lamb or beef stew from, Turboshed?
With the Noirs being deer mythologicals, it’s doubtful that meat is on the menu.

I did not mean Tony would get it himself, Blanche may or may not get it for him, though he may not like the smell of meat he may tolerate it as a friend, and besides, green sleeves may do take away and have it on the menu.

We have evidence that being a magical deer means the Noir family are complete vegetarians rather then omnivores? I can’t recall if that came up before.

I can’t recall seeing it either, though there isnt anything wrong with it, like I said they could tolerate having meat in the house and Tony eating it, even if they do not eat it themselves.

also Scouse is usually lamb, NOT venison.

Where in any of my comments did I mention what meat goes into Scouse?
Actually Mutton was the original meat used, rather than lamb.
Which is usually from sheep that are two years old or more.

You never mentioned it at all, Turboshed.
I looked it up online.

Noting that Scouse is a meat stew, I asked my question, because it would seem unlikely that deer based mythologicals would regularly have meat dishes on the menu at home.
I never said they would absolutely not be meat eaters, though.

Wasn’t Blanche eating a burger all the way back in handshakes?

Also, further to what mage_cat posted, Blanche and Anthony have lunch at Greensleeves in Exchanges Handshakes, pages 27, 28 and 29.
On the plate seen on page 27, were more leafy greens and some sliced tomato.
I couldn’t see any meat there at all.

Blanche is such a good friend! Too bad he’s also a dumb 16 year-old who kinda messed up everything

Yes, I suppose, if by “messed up everything” you mean “shared one of the most vital and secret aspects of his life with his closest friend in the hopes said friend would be accepting of it and him.”

Blanche’s most severe wrong in all this was excessive enthusiasm. He misread Tony’s shock as acceptance, and that’s it. There was no way for him to suspect any of this, and so no way to guard against it.

Ever since, he has done everything he can think of – everything anybody seems to be able to think of – to find out how to make this right. None of it is working, and none of it is helping, and he probably has a hell of a guilt complex that he really doesn’t deserve.

This is why, for all that I understand Tony’s rage, I’m having a lot of trouble sympathizing with him. *Especially* with that blow-up at his mother. Because to me it seems like Tony’s not actually mad everyone’s been lying to him. He’s mad they told him the truth. If everyone had just kept all this weird stuff quiet, he could’ve gone through the rest of his life happily oblivious. But now he knows that there’s people who are different – people he KNOWS who are different! – and its affecting him and he has to deal with this and why couldn’t they have just kept their damn mouths shut?!?

I’m sorry if I’m harsh, but this strikes a little close to home. Specifically, it strikes a little close to a really bad coming out story, with the added issue that the person reacting badly to the truth is also trying to deny their own latent tendencies. There’s echoes here of those anti-gay, conversion-therapy promoters who love to go on about how wrong and sick LGBT people are, and then get caught literally with their pants down.

I know, Tony’s under stress and all of this is new for him and he never even suspected this was part of himself, unlike the conversion therapy folks. But if he doesn’t start dealing and come to terms with this, that’s the kind of person he’s probably going to end up.

In Exchanges Heartaches, Anthony was hoping Tim could change him back to human.
Early in Reunion, it was clear that Anthony has NOT adapted to being an allelean harpy. It’s odds on that Anthony was still hoping that Tim could find a way to undo what that Nokk Medallion caused.
Now, Anthony knows that damn near everything he thought he knew, is a lie. He stormed off to his room, in rage, and it looks like he’s point blank refusing to speak to those who he thinks lied to him.

I still think of everyone in this story arch that i feel the most for Blanche. He tried to show his best friend a secret part of himself, let him into a wonderful thing (he thought) and not only has it backfired in a way that NO ONE could have anticipated, he has both hurt a dear friend, and possibly lost one.

Kory, just wanted to let you know that I love and trust your story-telling. You have a terrific handle on your varied characters’ reactions and emotions. The way you show them is so thoughtful, clear, and realistic. Thank you for sharing them and their world with us.

I knew that’s what Blanche was doing in the first page! He’s such a good friend. I also like that he knows how to sew, since he’s a guy. I’d really love to see non-medallion creatures that feel the need to wear clothing have modified it. Like Blanche’s mum’s chair was super neat to see.

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