SPOILER WARNING FOR GUNNERKRIGG COURT (if you wish to read it before this, page 1 is here)
I am in TEARS after the newest page of Gunnerkrigg.
As a point of context, I started reading somewhere around 2017/18. I think c65 was my first chapter I experienced as it released, so everything before then was a binge.
So way way wayyyyyy back in c36, Annie accidentally gives a fairy a name
And then a little bit later Jones tells her not to sweat it. It's big for their lives, but this happens from time to time anyway.
Then c61 is all about Red giving a name to her crush bestie. And it's huge for them. And then we never see them again because fairies, even once they become human, are utter bastards and have no grasp of the reality they inhabit.
And nowhere is that clearer than two pages ago. Bugsy, who has had her name for ages, simply cannot grasp the idea behind one of the most constant events of the world. Dying
Because getting a name is all that they're here for, and she's just around to (pretend to) supervise. And look how well she was doing!
If the other former fairies can't handle it, that's their fault. They all have their jobs to do, and some of them just don't get it right
But then we see Annie break through to Bugsy, and we see the first emotion ever come to her, the first time Bugsy doesn't show apathy. We see wrath. The wrath of injustice, of indecency, a rage against another constant: exploitation
And now... how do they free the others? Stop them from dying too? It must be complex, it must be the hardest thing for a fairie to do, it must be so complex just like this "death" thing is complex.
The fairies are being drained of their life and will never get a name if it doesn't stop. So Annie does one of the hardest things for a fairie to do.
Annie does something complex. Something we've only seen one other person do in all 95 chapters thus far. Something she did once before and thought it a catastrophe at first. Because how can the court drain the life of the nameless and soulless if they're not nameless?
The power of a name is present in a lot of fae-based folklore. The modern jokes around it even hark back to that mythology, and in Gunnerkrigg Court the power is beyond even the most invasive, immoral force seen yet. A force that would take everything from children, especially that it would take from the "different" kids.
Annie does something so simple, yet beyond comprehension, and it saves a life, and clearly will save more. None of those lives will be denied again, because they have a name. A name that everyone can hear.
I think the Court should rethink the enemies they're making in their desperation to escape the greater one.
