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Tyldak's wings were interesting. You could see them being used successfully for flight. I think Winnowil was brilliant, not cruel, in her design of him. She streamlined his entire body to cut through the air. But you see him screaming while she does it-- and she is softly smiling the whole time. To me, that image really summed everything up about her. She was bestowing a gift-- being benevolent. But she would later use it to manipulate and control him. That was the curse of it-- that no matter how free she made him in flight-- in essence, he would never be free again. And she's happy with her work, satisfied in using her powers, and smiling while he screams. Using the finger bones was clever.

I think, maybe, Winnowil was just smarter than the current crop of healers. She was a (evil) genius-- and they are just ordinary people with a skill.

I think Ember came up with the best explanation for how Windkin's wings would work. They don't fly for him, like Tyldak's did-- but they might help him glad once he gets up so he can maybe take a rest for a while or exert less effort. Maybe that would help him go longer distance.

The important difference for me is that Windkin's sacrificed nothing for his wings. The poetry of Tyldak was that he made this significant spiritual and physical sacrifice for the sake of his dream. He was willing to physically deform himself and put himself in thrall in order to follow his passion. That says volumes about him that Winkin's fairy wings just don't communicate. Windkin's gave up nothing, and apparently, consequently got less. But he retained more, so heck.

Differing priorities.

@zadzi-- he probably was pasted into the panel.

Zadzi wrote:

I just turned the page and saw them in action...ehhh. I don't know. I think it's because when you saw Tyldak flying, it was somehow believable and you could see the movement. I don't really see it with Windkin's wings at all. He looks like he's perfectly still and pasted into the panel.  
This shouldn't be bothering me this much.

He was perfectly still. Not like him and Aroree were flying around in circles over everybody's heads.

You're probably right, Lunakat.

And I love what you wrote about what Winnowill did for Tyldak. I completely agree. She was a genius, and probably so happy to actually use her powers that she poured herself into it to the extreme. Watching that transformation has always been one of my favorite scenes because it does show a lot about sacrifice.

I have jelly wings too. They show up around forty.

Trollbabe

I understand why Windkin wants wings, but those jelly wings would be completely useless for flight. They have nothing running through them to make them stiff, they have no connection to his body on the opposing side so they can't be used to catch air like a parachute, and if he were flying through the sky at fast speeds, they'd just flop around above his arms due to lack of opposing anchor point. The wings he made for himself made more sense, being stiff.

Hahaha! He hits the jetstream and they go into hyperflop mode.... *sounds of flapping flesh*

If he wanted fairy/preserver wings, why couldnt a shaper just draw a pair from his back. No issues with arms then,he could carry something and not spoil areodynamics or whatever. Make them fleshy versions of the preserver wings, maybe make them a little more like Tyldak's with bony spars.

I can see an argument against this, that he has no nerve/muscle links to connect them so he could use them to flap or whatever. There are many instances where shaping was used to create extra shapes that were functional (or presumed functional), some weren't even Elves (the shapechanged creatures Winnie made, such as dogs with extra snake heads), some,like the Wavedancers, had fins and whatnot, which are basically underwater wings. This would make more sense to me.

But when you're stuck in frills and gimmicks mode, you gotta put frills and gimmicks on stuff, I guess.

Yes, the healers are running out of things to do, so they need to make jelly-wings, impart immortality, and do cosmetic surgery before they all go Winnowill.

You mean "as", not "before". Im not convinced Winnie's youthful experimentation and her later mad science arent a typical escallation of the same psychosis brought on by the lack of daily challenge.

I always got the impression Winnie was so happy while forming Tyldak's wings because she got to cause pain.

And we don't really know that Windkin's wings are jelly wings, none of us have ever had a chance to actually touch them.

FWIW ... I found Tyldak with his pterodactyl wings and flight-optimated body more attractive than Windkin with those loose skin attachements. *sigh* I'll get used to it - once I manage to stop thinking about it. As far as functionality is concerned ...

TrollHammer wrote:

You mean "as", not "before".  Im not convinced Winnie's youthful experimentation and her later mad science arent a typical escallation of the same psychosis brought on by the lack of daily challenge.

This I agree with. Seeing her in various panels creating his wings you could tell she was so absorbed in the task, put so much into it, and there was a mad genius to it. Like she was finally able to give and was getting that deep fulfillment from it, and yet got so carried away with the task that she didn't even seem to really notice Tyldak's pain. Granted, she created his wings from the substance of his own body -- that alone is pretty cool, but I'd imagine it's probably damn painful.


Just as an aside, when I initially read Winnowill's story, I felt terrible for her. Especially that part when she's laughing like crazy and running, going, 'They do not need me anymore'. Blue Mountain was a terrible, terrible place ... a 'beautiful trap'. She was a bloody healer for god's sake, and couldn't even do what she was born to do anymore. Even her causing those little 'accidents' among the gliders, while horrible, is somewhat understandable.
Leetah had the complete opposite problem and was needed for every scratch and cut and the village was completely dependent on her while she enabled. Can you guys imagine though what would've happened had she not been given the chance to heal anything ? Ugh.

Anyway, I keep giggling every time I read the term 'jelly wings'. I don't even know what it means but it seems so fitting. No, those things do not look very effective at all, sorry.

It never made sense to me that a person could turn into a sadistic, child-abusing, megalomaniac just from getting bored. That seems completely ludicrous.

Eh... its not just pure boredom. Its thousands of years of boredom and uselessness, in a cold place without affection. We sit around for an hour waiting for someone and think "gee, this is boring," but Winnie was in an unpadded cell, locked away from the world, effectively in a straight-jacket (but without the theoretical comfort). Tyldak's transformation was one event in nearly ten thousand years of solitude and uselessness... Smelt was another, and we dont really know of any other things she got to have as a personal accomplishment. For those rockshapers that had a mountain to occupy their time and attention, a flesh shaper had little else to do that manipulate the flesh around her... to a degree she was just doing what everyone else was doing... but stone has no will of its own.

As to Tyldak's transformation, I think she didnt have a true reference to work from, and initially it was experimentation. I think that, while the other healers have learned from each other and can easily form flesh without pain, Winnie began without reference but found she liked it, and perhaps dragged out the experience for weeks, months, or even years (a decade would be as a day in their long lives), and not care about the suffering side of it.

Yeah, I don't think of it just as 'boredom' - it's horrendous stagnation, both collective and personal. Your people stop reproducing and also stop dying , that is literal stagnation and you cannot do anything about it even though you keep asking and trying, and keep getting shot down (Voll). I'm not defending the cruelness of her genocidal ass so much as I kind of get how someone would get to that level if pushed far enough. Everyone reacts differently. Voll was bitter and distant and removed. Winnowill went batshit. Gliders kind of just followed, brainwashed as they were.

Tbh, sorry, no.

Like, okay, she was locked away, but that was by personal choice. She could have left anytime. That's not the same, and comparing it to solitary confinement, a torture method, seems kind of ridiculous, given that there were all these people everywhere.

Honestly, Winnowill isn't a convincing character to me in general, I guess.

Yes, it was a personal choice, an enormously effed up wrong one. And she did leave, didn't she? When she went to find the preservers for Voll and found Smelt instead. But I think it was too late by then. She'd already snapped.
I just feel a lot of compassion for her when I got her backstory. And then she was all disproportionately batshit. I don't feel the compassion anymore though, she's such a bloody cardboard cutout, a cartoon really. There's been no evolution of the character, she's 'made a choice' to go from terrible to insanely evil to just insanely as well as laughably evil, which I find unbelievable.
Rayek and Winnowill were two darker characters that I initially preferred because they didn't seem to 'fit' anywhere due to circumstances, and further alienated themselves as a result as all the while they seethed with this broader, grander vision.
I have personal connection to that, from one point of my life, so it's sort of a soft spot for me.

Still, their characters have been devalued and poorly treated in writing, and are being put out in such a polarized way now. They've both been occasionally compared to Haken, and at some point Timmain said 'Haken was our passion, driving us forward'. It's sadly symbolic to have these two characters that represented drive and passion be so devalued in the story, making it now rudderless and lacking in real vision.

I sometimes wonder if it's part of the Pini's effort to be more 'mainstream' in their comic or something.

There seem to be many story threads being resolved in FQ. I mentioned in another topic that there are enough subplots to fuel a few different EQ titles, like they had in the 1990s.

Zadzi wrote:

Yes, it was a personal choice, an enormously effed up wrong one. And she did leave, didn't she? When she went to find the preservers for Voll and found Smelt instead. But I think it was too late by then. She'd already snapped.
I just feel a lot of compassion for her when I got her backstory. And then she was all disproportionately batshit. I don't feel the compassion anymore though, she's such a bloody cardboard cutout, a cartoon really. There's been no evolution of the character, she's 'made a choice' to go from terrible to insanely evil to just insanely as well as laughably evil, which I find unbelievable.
Rayek and Winnowill were two darker characters that I initially preferred because they didn't seem to 'fit' anywhere due to circumstances, and further alienated themselves as a result as all the while they seethed with this broader, grander vision.
I have personal connection to that, from one point of my life, so it's sort of a soft spot for me.

Still, their characters have been devalued and poorly treated in writing, and are being put out in such a polarized way now. They've both been occasionally compared to Haken, and at some point Timmain said 'Haken was our passion, driving us forward'. It's sadly symbolic to have these two characters that represented drive and passion be so devalued in the story, making it now rudderless and lacking in real vision.

I sometimes wonder if it's part of the Pini's effort to be more 'mainstream' in their comic or something.

SO MUCH AGREEMENT. I also really felt for past-Winnowill when we get her backstory. To me it made so much intuitive sense, not that anyone who was bored for thousands of years would become a megalomaniac -- Blue Mountain is full of elves who were no worse than detached or cynical or cowardly and maybe also kinda racist -- but that the circumstances in Blue Mountain combined with a particular sort of personality could absolutely produce a Winnowill given the right circumstances. If she already had a tendency toward being control issues, being denied the ability to exercise what power she had would be one way of pushing them into overdrive. After a point, she only had the opportunity to exercise her vocation -- and maybe more importantly, knew she would only ever have that opportunity -- if she sneaked and lied and caused harm. It became a feedback loop that rewarded those things, even though she knew it was sick and wrong. And then on top of everything else, her meditation upon the egg revealed that that would be all she would have to look forward to, forever, until the death of the world.

Actually, it's kind of fascinating to me how Blue Mountain's origin and culture, created to try and preserve what Voll perceived as the "original" elfin culture from outside influence, resulted in different reactions when the Wolfriders showed up. By that time Voll knew things were going horribly wrong in Blue Mountain but couldn't articulate why, so when presented with evidence that outside Blue Mountain elves were living and breeding and thriving, he found that fascinating and a sign of hope. Tyldak is forced by Recognition into confronting the Wolfriders' dual nature and is simultaneously attracted and repelled. But Winnowill -- one of Voll's biggest original supporters in keeping the elves safe and separate from the world around them -- had her secret shame over Two-Edge combined with the fact that she already had a plan for eventual "healing" that she was extremely attached to (the Great Egg and taking the Gliders all into space, with or without their consent). So she was like "Nope, screw these tainted outsiders, I know how we're going to survive, and it's me who's gonna make it happen."

Along the same lines, I find it horrible but also unsurprising how Winnowill takes exactly the wrong lesson from the business with Smelt and Two-Edge. To protect herself psychologically from the unforgivable things she did to them, she decides that her actual mistake was mixing her blood with theirs, mingling with the world outside. It lets her conveniently foist her own guilt off onto them because of who and what they are instead of dealing with the fact that she treats other living beings, inside and outside her species, like objects to move around to get her own needs met.

That kind of interestingly twisted psychology is a lot more compelling to me than the later stuff where she's pretty much just sadistic for the fun of it, seemingly without any kind of endgame in mind. Previously, her actions are in service to, as you say, a larger, grander vision, albeit one that's driven by her own festering issues.

The "Ask Elfmom" topic on the old Scroll of Colors forum had a question about Winnowill, and Wendy described her as not being able to get past her own pain (paraphrasing). Fitting description.

I prefer the earlier Winnowill who had reasons for what she did, not the one we saw in KotBW post-time jump, and later storylines.

My BFF says that the main difference between a hero and a villain, is that a villain feels that his pain eclipses everyone else's, and a hero feels his pain is just something to fuel the prevention of other people's pain.

That's a wonderful distinction, Kathleen!

My BFF is the wisest man I know.

Direct mail marketing doesn't see to be losing speed in the USA.  I still get loads of mail advertising everything from pest control to cosmetic surgery.  Every supermarket opens with a couple of pounds of mailings.

I'm voting third party, but I have gotten at least four pieces of mail from "Donald J. Trump."  Normally I get four-color oversized postcard mailings from candidates for President, House, Senate, Attorney General or County Supervisor (the suburban equivalent of a mayor.)  These slick mailings look expensive, and often include negative messages about the opposing candidate.

In contrast, Trump is sending me plain white envelopes, clearly marked with his name, with plain, straightforward material enclosed.  I think this tasteful approach is more effective than the other mailings.

Then again, people pay six bucks for the National Enquirer.

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