[1833] Can you draw a picture?

[Nepycros]

Annie is... talented.

It occurs to me that she's wasted a great deal of her school years slacking off and/or cheating. It may be time to consider that Annie, for all her etheric talent, may actually be below average when it comes to academics.

[arf]

Kat, you are a hairball.

[ST13R]

I guess they don't do much arts & crafts at GKC?

[Lizuka]

Antimony doesn't really seem so much below average to me as just generally lazy and kind of too much of a hothead and free spirit to properly focus on schoolwork. Less that she can't do it and more that she doesn't care to put in the effort.

[youwiththeface]

I'm starting to wonder if Diego's golem technology actually plucks souls from the ether and traps them. The arrow, then, would've been a logical extension of that.

[Fishy]

I see two bears high fiving.

Just considering that this is the ether we're dealing with, I'm not going to discount the possibility that Annie got that drawing 100% right.

[Nepycros]

May 19, 2017 7:05:07 GMT Lizuka said:

Antimony doesn't really seem so much below average to me as just generally lazy and kind of too much of a hothead and free spirit to properly focus on schoolwork. Less that she can't do it and more that she doesn't care to put in the effort.

But that carries its own consequences. We can't go pretending she has all the skills she needs, and is just too lazy to utilize them. Part of school is to teach you what kind of thinking skills you need to develop and hone.

If she "put in the effort" in a desperate moment, she might not have the prerequisite knowledge to achieve an objective, given that she intentionally avoided performing the work by her own merit.

I actually think we should expect to see a difference in Annie's conduct in the coming months. Bear in mind Anthony is trying to reign her in (with very limited results). Pains me to say it, but if she comes away from this with a good academic ethic, all the better.

[OGRuddawg]

May 19, 2017 7:05:07 GMT Lizuka said:

Antimony doesn't really seem so much below average to me as just generally lazy and kind of too much of a hothead and free spirit to properly focus on schoolwork. Less that she can't do it and more that she doesn't care to put in the effort.

Annie is definitely perceptive and bright. I think she is a different type, or style of intelligence, so to speak. She is perceptive and empathetic more so than academic or analytically intelligent. To put it in simple terms, she is more Forest than Court when it comes to her personality and learning style. She can think on the fly, and handle situations a lot of 15(?) year olds could not. To call her lazy is a bit far fetched, at least when it comes to overall intelligence. Academically, your speculation holds a little more merit.

[dard]

Shouldn't they have had that conversation BEFORE they encountered that deadly ghost lady?

Kat: "Look here! I improvised a phased pulse rifle in the 40 watt range!"
Annie: "Great! What does it do?"
Kat: "It should blow up stuff!"
Annie: "Why don't you try out on the rock over there?"
Kat: "Why bother? I am sure it will work! Let's go!"

Kat could not have tested the containment unit, but for that little device there is Annie as a test subject. At the very least she should have told Annie its intended purpose before going down the rift!
Now, wait, she COULD at least partly have tested the containment unit by putting her little device into it.

[Sauzels]

"in case" is two words dammit Tom

May 19, 2017 7:06:29 GMT Fishy said:

I see two bears high fiving.

Just considering that this is the ether we're dealing with, I'm not going to discount the possibility that Annie got that drawing 100% right.

I think we're supposed to be seeing pretty much the same ether as whoever's perspective we're borrowing at the moment. Then again I guess we didn't see Kat's angel form until the end of Divine, but Zimmy seems like kind of a special case.

[quark]

I am a little confused as to why this page exactly hints at Annies less than average capabilities.
She can't draw? I can't draw either, especially something that I just saw for a minute and am asked to remember and draw from memory later. Kats angel Form is something that scared Zimmy to death, and it's equally terrifying to Annie, so it's entirely understandable that she also can't find words.

I wish we saw more of Annies perspective in "The Other Shore", because poor Kat is right - she never gets to see the cool stuff!

[zbeeblebrox]

At this rate, Annie's never going to be able to take over art duties after Tom dies. He's going to have to will his comic to another character.

[Lizuka]

May 19, 2017 8:09:56 GMT zbeeblebrox said:

At this rate, Annie's never going to be able to take over art duties after Tom dies. He's going to have to will his comic to another character.

I'm pretty sure Zimmy and Gamma will handle it.

[turion]

May 19, 2017 7:04:45 GMT arf said:

Kat, you are a hairball.

It does look like that spot on the back of her head!

[freedomgeek]

I get the impression that if Annie was a better artist Kat would be freaking out right now.

[Deleted]

Don't you even know dignity when you see it, Kat?

Edit:

[ST13R]

I see it now:

Kat = City Face

[Thing]

Obliviously this is what's happening here.

[faiiry]

I come to the thread and we're talking about Annie's schoolwork instead of the fact that ANNIE IS FINALLY CONFRONTING KAT ABOUT BEING A GIGANTIC ROBOT GOD! This is a pivotal moment!

I have to admit that the whole golem/device/ether thing is not making a whole lot of sense to me no matter how hard I try to wrap my head around me, but hey, as long as I can still generally enjoy the story, I'm good.

[Jelly Jellybean]

An in comic drawing of the Mecha Angel...

Now Kat needs to leave it laying around for Paz to stumble upon.  Annie and Paz can individually believe they saw an etheric hallucination, but denial becomes a lot harder once they know someone else has seen the same thing.

It is much more likely that the bots will see the sketch, but I don't know if the bots will recognize it as the Mecha Angel, and if they do, I think they will keep it to themselves.

[Jelly Jellybean]

Sorry about the double post, but as a completely separate thought...

And then Coyote said... if you were interested in the story about me disguising myself as a dead goose, in a bush, next to a lake, and tricking myself into believing it; then let me tell you the story about another god who disguises herself as a girl so well she believes it and the fun I am having with that.

[Trillium]

May 19, 2017 11:05:45 GMT faiiry said:

I come to the thread and we're talking about Annie's schoolwork instead of the fact that ANNIE IS FINALLY CONFRONTING KAT ABOUT BEING A GIGANTIC ROBOT GOD! This is a pivotal moment!

You say that like it is a secret Kay's been keeping. She has no idea what she looks like through the etheric lens or that the robots are creating a religious belief around her. I'm sure Kat would be appalled.

[spritznar]

May 19, 2017 7:54:08 GMT quark said:

I am a little confused as to why this page exactly hints at Annies less than average capabilities.
She can't draw? I can't draw either, especially something that I just saw for a minute and am asked to remember and draw from memory later. Kats angel Form is something that scared Zimmy to death, and it's equally terrifying to Annie, so it's entirely understandable that she also can't find words.

I wish we saw more of Annies perspective in "The Other Shore", because poor Kat is right - she never gets to see the cool stuff!

plus, didn't tom say in the retrospective for divine that kat's mechagod form was supposed to be a bit incomprehensible and mind boggling? "somethng which could not really be percieved in a 3d space" he said... i certainly don't blame annie for not being able to draw that

[ohthatone]

Needs more happy trees.
(youtube Bob Ross if you don't get the reference)

[todd]

May 19, 2017 11:05:45 GMT faiiry said:

I come to the thread and we're talking about Annie's schoolwork instead of the fact that ANNIE IS FINALLY CONFRONTING KAT ABOUT BEING A GIGANTIC ROBOT GOD! This is a pivotal moment!

I've noticed that the commenters tend to talk about the side things at times. Have a pop culture reference or a Boxbot gag or something like that appear on the same page as an important moment in the story, and people tend to discuss the former with far more enthusiasm.

Also, we haven't had any new insights in Kat's etheric form - just Annie telling Kat about it for the first time. So there probably isn't much new we can say about it.

(As for Annie's performance, I've wondered at times if her investigations into the weirdness at the Court might be partly responsible - that the time Annie was spending sneaking around, trying to figure out what was going on, was the time that she should have spent studying and preparing for tests. But Anthony mentioned that she was doing well in a couple of classes, like history; if the cause was "too busy delving into the Court's nature", all of her classes should have been suffering.)

[spritznar]

May 19, 2017 11:05:45 GMT faiiry said:

I come to the thread and we're talking about Annie's schoolwork instead of the fact that ANNIE IS FINALLY CONFRONTING KAT ABOUT BEING A GIGANTIC ROBOT GOD! This is a pivotal moment!

what i find most interesting (and potentially frustrating) is that annie seems to be ascribing what she saw to the device kat made rather than concluding that what she saw... was kat... i mean, it makes sense for her to not immediately think the eldritch abomination she saw was the etheric essence of her best friend when there's a weird diego inspired device she can blame. honestly it has me second guessing, is it just the device that causes that look? if kat entered the ether another way would she still look like that? except paz seems to have seen it in the torn sea... but that was in zimmy's timey wimey reality bending fog so... nothing is conclusive and it's slowly driving me to drink

[spritznar]

May 19, 2017 12:45:15 GMT todd said:

for Annie's performance, I've wondered at times if her investigations into the weirdness at the Court might be partly responsible - that the time Annie was spending sneaking around, trying to figure out what was going on, was the time that she should have spent studying and preparing for tests. But Anthony mentioned that she was doing well in a couple of classes, like history; if the cause was "too busy delving into the Court's nature", all of her classes should have been suffering.)

i wouldn't be surprised if the court had more intense than average science and math requirements. they seem like a very science focused place. i mean, the double-slit experiment kat was doing in chapter 17 isn't something i saw until i was a freshman in college... idk, maybe kids these days are learning stuff earlier but still

anyway, i figure annie just doesn't have a math and science aptitude and the court really pushes math and science courses

[phantaskippy]

I think it would make sense to Annie to see the Beautiful Robot Angel tearing apart an illusion that Annie saw as real, not as her friend, but as the effect of the device tearing into what was to Annie a very real place.

It would make more sense believing it to be the effect of the device, more than Kat herself.

Also I imagine what Annie saw when Kat picked the lock was, to her, the unmaking of the place she was in. Imagine someone solving an M.C. Escher painting like a Rubix Cube. That's my imagination of what Annie was seeing, only with a lot of Incomprehensible and Beautiful Robot Angel mixed in.

Characters who need to see that drawing like now already: Robot, Paz, Coyote.

Dang it the plot feels like it is going to just fly right now, which means I'm preparing myself for something completely different for like 9 months and then next March Reynardine sees that drawing and is like, "Who drew Kat?"

(I'm kind of scared the plot is going to take off and all the fun we've had dancing around it will end, I mean, what's Doctor Disaster up to? Can Kat sneak off into the forest with Annie? Let's follow Paz around for like 20 comics, anything would be great.)

[Zox Tomana]

Seems that Kat's arrowhead can be safely removed from its pedestal without any apparent concern about the arrow itself. Interesting, however, that the arrowhead is intended to disrupt etheric connection. So, perhaps because Annie was etherically trapped, it couldn't pull her out of the ether, and Kat got dragged in instead? One could imagine that the power of the arrow reached through the attempted disruption and pulled whatever was on the other end through into itself.

Regarding why it and the arrow are together: I could still stand by my bit about them being similar devices and thus convenient to store together, the arrowhead's pedestal being intended to keep it from having an AOE on etheric stuff nearby. Alternatively, if there is interaction between the pedestal and the chamber as saardvark suggested, the power of the arrowhead could theoretically be being used to prevent entry of etheric beings/energy *into* the chamber just as the chamber is intended to keep the power of the arrow *in*.

[faiiry]

Personally I'm not going to criticize Annie for her drawing. For someone with almost no drawing experience who needed to quickly scribble a representation of this ridiculous thing, I think she did pretty darn well. Let's remember that Annie does not have an eidetic memory, and it's been a while since she has seen Kat's etheric robotic form, and also the fact that the Robot God Monster cannot be perceived accurately in 3D space. For what she saw, and what she remembers, she didn't do horribly. I don't think I could accurately reproduce the...er, robot thingy...without staring at a picture of it, and I'm older and have more practice drawing than Annie does. 

I also don't think her drawing ability correlates to her schoolwork, and I don't think either of those correlate to her intelligence. I think it was made pretty clear in the story that Annie is not stupid or lazy; maybe she's not even untalented in the sciences. She's simply too proud to ask for help.