[531]The first step

4th panel Annie looks a great deal more like a full grown lady.

I really enjoy Muut going full-on Magical Lecture Mode as well.


On an unrelated note I just saw the upper right-hand corner of the site. Mort is awesome.

The general consensus, I think, is that it's kind of like...an alternate world. Kind of like where Annie was roaming with blink magic. And where things that work etherically draw their power.

Amazing art again on this page. Do I see correctly that Annie wears some sort of aura or crown in the aether?

Rereading 135, I'd say Mort may very well be a pshychopomp in training.

I have no doubt that Kat wants to know if there's any way she can be involved in the mess.

No way she's gonna be keen on letting Annie confront Jeanne, alone.

I take it as more of a visual cue to show her "awareness". Or something.

About Kat's question... I think she's gonna ask about Mort. If Muut can contact him or something.

Yes! I noticed that too. It's the kabbalistic "sefira" of "Keter" (lit. "Crown" in Hebrew) - the one that links our natural bodies to the supernatural, or the head chakra.

Maybe it's foreshadowing...

I actually wonder if the scar on Annie's cheek is one of those Matrix-esque things, that stays as long as she believes she was etherically wounded by Jeanne. In that sense, she wasn't really harmed - only she thought she was. That might explain why Muut didn't really consider a danger factor when he gave her the stone.

If the blinker stone helped pull Jeanne to her, and that was where she got cut - it'd make sense that the scar shows up in any "alternate" world like Zimmy's wackoland, and Blinker-World.

I have a suspicion that going to actually help Jeanne will finally reverse the scar, or at least give it a new meaning that won't be as "I got hurt and screwed up when I had a chance to help her" in her mind.

'We' refers to the psychopomps collectively rather than Muut himself.

Tom didn’t employ his ‘etherical’ drawing style there, so I don’t think she was in the aether. Furthermore, the Fairies saw Jeanne too. And of course, Jeanne had been quite visible all the time, only on the other side of the river. You don’t need to wander into the aether to encounter a ghost. According to Mort, Jeanne crossing the Annan was unheard of: “That sucks about the ghost with the sword. That isn’t supposed to happen. Crossing the Annan waters and all …”

He seems to be using “we” whenever he is talking about all the psychopomps or on their behalf. But he is also talking in the first person on several occasions, for example on www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=338: “I do. She is a very gifted individual.” and “I am going to visit a friend in room 426.” And again on www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=136: “Now, I must attend to other matters.” and “I only escort the dead. I do not decide someone’s fate.”

Annie was wearing blue throughout chapter 18 (S1), for example.

Try to remember, her mother was the most important person in her life, and she saw her taken away by a psychopomp. (most likely)
She isn't selfish, she is grieving. After all, why SHOULD she help psychopomps?

The argument from the drawing style may not be decisive if taken in isolation, but all the arguments taken together are, in my view.

We know that ghosts are somehow able to affect the living; Mort does it all the time. When a ghost creates a spider out of thin air (or maybe turns into a spider), this spider is visible to everyone present, and you don’t have to enter the aether to be able to see it.

But when Annie went into the aether to spy on Reynardine, neither Kat nor Anja took notice; her encounter with Reynardine was something she alone experienced (and Reynardine, of course).

Jeanne had been in plain view all the time Annie had spent on the Gillitie shore of the Annan waters, well before she received the stone. After Jeanne had crossed the river, the fairies saw her as well; in fact they noticed her first, probably waking Annie who was still asleep.

So, all the details suggest this was an example of a ghost entering into the sphere of the living, while nothing suggests it to be a case of someone entering the aether to encounter a ghost within its own plane of existence.

Furthermore, all we have learned about blinker stones tells us they are a mere tool (“training wheels, basically”, to quote Tom); a blinker stone does nothing on its own. At the time, Annie knew how to use the stone to make fire (which had gone out by then), nothing else.

We know that Annie is ‘attractive’; she attracts ghosts. That Jeanne would want to come over wasn’t surprising, while her being able to cross is. If something as simple as having a blinker stone would have sufficed to allow a ghost to cross the Annan waters – supposed to be an impenetrable barrier for physical and etherical beings alike – it surely wouldn’t have gone unnoticed during all those years?