Question Coyote

I didn't search hard, and maybe it is hiding, but let me ask this since we seem to be off on one of the various rabbit trails we follow in discussing To Seal Our Happiness part 3 among other things, so; Is there a discussion thread on Coyote, his attributes, his motives, his powers, his goals, his intentions?
Do we actually trust him when he says that he is not the enemy of the 'people'?
The 'people' were really not at all united before they met the invaders, which is one reason why the invaders prevailed and almost all the tribes were at least diminished, some disappeared.
How powerful is Coyote?
What is his relationship to the sacred clown?
Well everyone else chime in with more thoughts, and if there is a discussion thread on the trickster already, I guess the moderators ought to merge this with it...

His intentions? To guide The People. He views himself as a teacher. He wants what is best for The People.

His lessons seem cruel because they are always rooted firmly in truth. The truth can be vicious, it can be painful, it can be mean, cruel, relieving, calming, reassuring, liberating. He taunts, teases, and riles up people because they don't lie (to others or themselves) when they get emotional. He clearly hates hypocrites and the sanctimonious. His interactions with Kayda have often been to make her stop lying to herself, or stop complaining and do what she can to help others in need.

Do we trust him? He can't doesn't lie, and has admitted that he does what he does for the betterment of The People. He just might do it in a way they don't like.

Uniting the nations is Kayda's job.

How powerful is Coyote? Very. The Academy's extensive system of wards mean nothing to him. Carson's powers and experience are nothing to him, Wakan Tanka cannot overpower him (at least not directly without clouding her connection to Kayda), he can drag anyone he wants into the spiritual realm and manipulate it at will. If you look at the myths of Coyote and Raven, there is very, very little the two are not capable of doing.

Heyoka? Both of them make people pause and think, which is the whole point. Coyote speaks only truth, Heyoka spoke only in lies.

I don't think that Heyoka spoke in lies so much as in contradictions and opposites. Thus if there was hunger Heyoka might say the tribes have plenty of food. It wasn't that he thought the tribes had food or that he was trying to convince them that they had food, but rather another way of making them look at the truth.
It isn't that the truth is vicious, so much as that the truth has no care for our feelings. The truth is gravity. It exists and is what it is no matter what you feel on a particular issue.
Well I would expect that Coyote would be beyond anyone else's control, unless he partially submitted himself to that control... And yes Coyote has always gone where he wants to go. After all he is Coyote, and the whole of the land belongs to him. The people? They are somewhere between a chew toy and pups needing to be taught the way of the pack...
At least those are my thoughts for now.

I've always been of the opinion that Old Man Coyote was of the 'Mess with their heads until they come to their senses' school. Towards the end of 'The Final Trump', Nick Harrow tells his daughter, 'You don't wise up a schnook by coddling them; you treat them like a schnook until they wake up and smell the coffee.'

I think that Coyote would agree

I would like to add that as a child, Coyote stories were the only ones I remember ever being part of a school curriculum. A few other spirits were mentioned, like Thunderbird, but only Coyote stories were taught.

That's interesting, because we only learned about Raven, who's from the opposite end of the country, when we clearly grew up in Mishibijiw, Thunderbird, and Nanabozho territory, and didn't learn about any of them or Coyote.

Nanabozho, Coyote, and Raven all have very similar myths associated with them.

For those who perhaps had issue with Coyote's visit in To Seal Our Happiness, consider things from his point of view. Kayda choose to be the vessel of Wakan Tanka. When she did so, she made great speech about how she was keeping her future daughter from suffering, and yet, Danica, whose predicament she is at least partly responsible for is a source of mirth to her. She's teasing her brother, not really realizing what he had been going through, which was also emphasized in the events of The Evil That Men Do. Granted, Kayda didn't actually see Danny get outed, but she has heard about it.

Coyote, in his own way, reminded her that if she wants to play the noble self sacrifice card, she needs to be caring about things all the time. Of course, that's just my opinion, who can really know the mind of a being like Coyote?

E. E. Nalley wrote: For those who perhaps had issue with Coyote's visit in To Seal Our Happiness, consider things from his point of view. Kayda choose to be the vessel of Wakan Tanka. When she did so, she made great speech about how she was keeping her future daughter from suffering, and yet, Danica, whose predicament she is at least partly responsible for is a source of mirth to her. She's teasing her brother, not really realizing what he had been going through, which was also emphasized in the events of The Evil That Men Do. Granted, Kayda didn't actually see Danny get outed, but she has heard about it.

Coyote, in his own way, reminded her that if she wants to play the noble self sacrifice card, she needs to be caring about things all the time. Of course, that's just my opinion, who can really know the mind of a being like Coyote?

Honestly? The Coyote Interruption here ruined the realization and reconciliation scene and made them worthless for me, plain and simple. Because Mister Learn To Swim By Being Thrown Into A Lake decided of Telling It to Kayda, and went the hypocrisy road by being as roundabout and assholish as possible for delivering when it became clear not even halfway in what he was about to say, and the rest was just lording over his aetheric bastard's superiority, except that's okay when he does it.

The story stopped being about Kayda learning the lesson by herself here, realizing how incredibly shitty was her treatment of Danny, perhaps even drawing parallel to her own real bad experiences, because she wasn't allowed to learn until Coyote, an incarnation of Plot Device so obvious you can see and hear the plot warp around him when he appears to flip on the switch allowing the developpment to happen, withtout leaving any chance to Kayda to do her own learning and being as smug, condescending, and controlling as possible he could during the whole process, squashing any possibility for her to form her own answer until he force-fed him one. Because the plot stopped being about Kayda here and was about Coyote fucking over his newest toy and how he was the only one being in the 'verse perfect enough to make it move forward.

Coyote appears? Plot stalls, and characters aren't allowed any meaningful development or action, except negative and harmful ones, because it has to be about Coyote Being Perfect And Doing It Himself, or Shoving His Paws Through A Proxy So Hard You See The Paws When They Open The Mouth. If I read about Kayda, or Lanie, Or Tansy, i want to read about their development, their successes, their failures, their stories. Not How Coyote Proves His Perfect Awesomeness By Ruining People Life And Hogging All Meaningful Developments And Actions Of The Story. Except The Fuckups. Meatbags Are There For This. And This Only.

Something tremendously hypocrite coming from an asshole professing being a sink or swim teacher. And I already have a biais against this way of teaching. What if the schnook can't smell coffee because he has a cold, or don't want the cofee for x reason? Personal experience tainting I guess, but I had, have, a bad habit of having clues flying over my head, or overthinking them, leading to results similar to the former. So when I see that happen, my first reflex is 'uhuh, and if the pupil begins drowning? You finally fucking tells in a plain way what's up, or you tsks and are smug about how this loser who never saw water before deserved it anyways, and why did they have to be so stupid for not figuring out the sense of my fou blinks in random succession when I never told them anything meaningful before?

Most of the Coyote stories I've read show him as anything but perfect. Scheming, horny, lying, overconfident, arrogant, and lazy, but not perfect. It's also commonly fatal to underestimate him, because he plays to win.

With Kayda, he does have a legitimate problem in that she doesn't have enough time to heal and grow into her power at a more customary pace before Kodiak and Company throw her (and Lanie and Tansy) into the front lines of this ancient war with the Bastard.

Just another reason to not call up that which one isn't ready to dismiss or put down, and to choose one's Mentors carefully.

I think what is missed in the Coyote--Kayda interactions is that Kayda keeps saying she is ready for the big time, and to be honest she has had some good luck with opponents that underestimated her, but eventually (especially maybe with Kittylicksitbut) something is going to survive long enough to learn and come back loaded for a bigger fight. Then she may be SOL yet at the same time she whines when she has to deal with Coyote. And while Coyote is an agent of chaos it is not necessarily true that he is an agent of evil. Rather part of his teaching is to keep the people from becoming complacent.
Also I do not think that Kayda was doing anything except possibly driving Danny/Danica into the arms of her enemies. It was past time that someone paddled her butt. Coyote was rather gentle about what he did to her. He seems to have some ability to cast an augury of the future, how accurate that prediction will be remains to be seen...

null0trooper wrote: Most of the Coyote stories I've read show him as anything but perfect. Scheming, horny, lying, overconfident, arrogant, and lazy, but not perfect. It's also commonly fatal to underestimate him, because he plays to win.

With Kayda, he does have a legitimate problem in that she doesn't have enough time to heal and grow into her power at a more customary pace before Kodiak and Company throw her (and Lanie and Tansy) into the front lines of this ancient war with the Bastard.

Just another reason to not call up that which one isn't ready to dismiss or put down, and to choose one's Mentors carefully.

A shame this one doesn't know anything about this. Because it looks like the asshole we saw here so far in this 'verse can't do no wrong, and only him can move the plot in a meaningful way, and is given Plot Mandated Karma Houdini Warranty. And it's always applauded. And just because he's factually not wrong doesn't mean I have to swallow his Kool Aid, especially when he makes the plot about his rotten hide by being The Only Allowed Source Of Developments...

Anne wrote: I think what is missed in the Coyote--Kayda interactions is that Kayda keeps saying she is ready for the big time, and to be honest she has had some good luck with opponents that underestimated her, but eventually (especially maybe with Kittylicksitbut) something is going to survive long enough to learn and come back loaded for a bigger fight. Then she may be SOL yet at the same time she whines when she has to deal with Coyote. And while Coyote is an agent of chaos it is not necessarily true that he is an agent of evil. Rather part of his teaching is to keep the people from becoming complacent.
Also I do not think that Kayda was doing anything except possibly driving Danny/Danica into the arms of her enemies. It was past time that someone paddled her butt. Coyote was rather gentle about what he did to her. He seems to have some ability to cast an augury of the future, how accurate that prediction will be remains to be seen...

This is my thought as well.

Sone of Kayda's biggest flaws are her arrogance, impatience, and stubbornness. Fueled from her inferiority complex. Getting into the right math classes, heroics, learning magic, martial arts, we've seen it time and time again. She wants to be a big shot? She needs to start acting like one, instead of a child (which she is) playing at being one.

Danny is being lured to enemies because Kayda isn't acting like the mentor she should be to her brother-sister. The Witch is dating him, ffs!

Coyote doesn't have time for Kayda to come to her senses on her own. She's too busy playing spy with Lanie and Tansy. Or involved in the trap for HM. Or Gearheads, or finally getting into some technical track classes like she's always wanted. Or running The Nations.

One of the other Poesies might have brought it up too, but none of the freshmen KNOW Kayda well enough to tell her. Angel might have, who knows.