[2825] Miss Annie, do you know what's happening?!

[justhalf]

First time seeing new people in the ether, I think?

[jda]

WELP. It is official (to me) now: New People are Seed Bismuth People

[laaaa]

I find this legit scary. I mean, they seem harmless enough, but what IS seed bismuth? Does it have a conscience? Goals? Before, I was under the impression they were like you and me, and that they'd have a similar presence in the ether, but they seem unlike any other being.

[bicarbonat]

Immediately makes me think of Gemminie's recent post re: seed bismuth.

Since they are Kat's creations, that puts her pretty much in the flow of the seed, even if she's not aware (reminded of some line in CS Lewis's Narnia books about doing things in Aslan's name without knowing him or maybe even believing in him).

For some reason, I'm also thinking of Evangelion and poor Asuka... Kat and Zimmy may be a little alike, in that they have connections to fearsome transformative power. But Zimmy struggles not to run from it, while Kat free-falls.

[blackmantha]

The rest of their shapes are pretty indistinct. Probably the result of getting re-bodied, and then having their body slowly shape their mind. In a year or so they'll probably be much more defined, and with more individual differences as well.

[gpvos]

So Annie has apparently seen New People in the ether before (even though we didn't). Their ether presence seems rather... minimal. And indeed bismuthish.

[arf]

Does this mean... seed bismuth is new people??

It may be just the distance but... what colour are their eyes?

[basser]

Still kinda feelin like this is all just a convoluted plan to get robo-sapiens off the ground as the new dominant species, free of the ether cause they're tethered to a freaky techno-goddess instead.

Also obviously Annie gonna have to fangstab some Zimmy/Coyote/Loup monstrosity at the heart of all this. I've played enough video games to know how this ends.

[King Mir]

Aug 18, 2023 7:09:12 GMT laaaa said:

I find this legit scary. I mean, they seem harmless enough, but what IS seed bismuth? Does it have a conscience? Goals? Before, I was under the impression they were like you and me, and that they'd have a similar presence in the ether, but they seem unlike any other being.

I don't think being of seed bismuth changes their nature. Their philosophy is likely still that which they inherited from being robots. Indeed, it may well be that robots themselves grew out of the seed.

The interesting thing is that they are glowing in the either now. Even humans do not glow like this, unless they project themselves. This might be because they are inside an anomaly, or maybe it's because two of the three beings which caused the anomaly have a special regard for them: Coyote hates them, and Loup loves one of them. Perhaps ironically, being the subject of Coyote's ire makes them more etheric, because an etheric being thinks they are a real and formidable threat. And another fell in love with one.

[torontoregonian]

They look like a cross between the Shadow people of the Forest and the faceless denizens of Zimmingham. Creepy!

Annie says they seem real, but I remember Zimmy's comment at the Power Station: "Sometimes real people don't (have faces) neither..."

[Blitz]

Aug 18, 2023 7:37:20 GMT gpvos said:

So Annie has apparently seen New People in the ether before (even though we didn't). Their ether presence seems rather... minimal. And indeed bismuthish.

No I think we have, they appear greyed out and dull like the bodies of Forest creatures in court.

[blahzor]

the seed bismuth that grew the court only came about when the EU forced Kat to impliment USB-C-Wireless

[Gemminie]

Annie is still focusing her senses on the Ether, judging from the black background (probably symbolizing the vast majority of the Ether that Annie can't see) and the increased color definition and more complex shading, when two of the New People approach her. She sees them as vaguely humanoid purple blobs of light with eyes, and with what looks like a bismuth crystal near their hearts (it's the chapter icon!). She recognizes them as New People, and states that they seem real, whatever that means. Has Annie ever used her Ether vision while in a Zimmy distortion before?

She says the New People "look different in the Ether now," which could just mean that their appearance in the Ether differs from what they look like in the physical world ... but the "now" suggests that she's looked at them in the Ether before, and in this distortion they look different from what they looked like in the Ether before. I wonder why that would be ... it probably has to do with whatever is going on to create this distortion. Coyote may or may not still think that Zimmy is the "new god" who created the New People, but at the very least he went into this thinking about the New People (and with one of them inside him).

Back in the physical (?) world, or at least back in the distortion where Annie isn't looking into the Ether, one of the two New People asks Annie whether she knows what's going on – a natural enough question, considering. I'm not sure what Annie can tell them. I mean, she said the distortion had to do with Zimmy, and she can probably guess that Coyote and Loup are involved, because she saw the direction they went in, the same direction the distortion came from. But other than that, she doesn't know much; nothing quite like this has ever happened to her before.

[Corvo]

I knew it! They are actually buildings! No one will tell me that girl doesn't look exactly like a post office!

[drmemory]

Isn't this the first time we've seen Annie look in the ether from within Zimmyland? When she checked Renard I didn't think about it but now it's obvious. I'm sure someone will promptly correct me if I'm wrong about this.

One implication is that Zimmyland is NOT in the ether, right? Lots of surprises happening, and I'm sure more to come!

Just to stir things up, I'm going to speculate that those things that look like decks of playing cards in their chests are their interfaces to Kat. Once she shows up in her mechagoddess form, we'll see that many of her robotic tentacles go to her NP. I'm saying that her link to the NP is because of the "new contract" and is separate from her new powers, which are due more to giving her a built-in network interface than anything else. I almost feel like she could have had those powers all along but needed to go through an evolution that let her feel like they were based on science and made sense - the implant may have been more of a mental unlock than an actual power-up.

[Gemini Jim]

Are they all still standing around in the foreground? That is, maybe they haven't walked beyond the frame into the picture yet?

So maybe Annie's wasting her time analyzing everything, because the funhouse weirdness of Zim-Coyote Land (or whatever) doesn't start until you cross that boundary.

[ctso74]

No one saw that bismithness in robots before. Did it start with Kat's rebodying, or was it from Diego's days, but previously too small to see? A small seed, no relation intended.
Buckle up, NPs. If it's true Zimmyngham, you're in for a ride.

[pyradonis]

Aug 18, 2023 7:37:20 GMT gpvos said:

So Annie has apparently seen New People in the ether before (even though we didn't). Their ether presence seems rather... minimal. And indeed bismuthish.

Considering that regular people with no Etheric connection look greyed out and dull in the Ether, while these guys are glowing, I wouldn't exactly call their Etheric presence minimal. More like... diffuse? Unfinished? Raw?

Aug 18, 2023 15:19:12 GMT drmemory said:

Just to stir things up, I'm going to speculate that those things that look like decks of playing cards in their chests are their interfaces to Kat. Once she shows up in her mechagoddess form, we'll see that many of her robotic tentacles go to her NP. I'm saying that her link to the NP is because of the "new contract" and is separate from her new powers, which are due more to giving her a built-in network interface than anything else. I almost feel like she could have had those powers all along but needed to go through an evolution that let her feel like they were based on science and made sense - the implant may have been more of a mental unlock than an actual power-up.

The things in their chests are most likely bismuth crystals. But that makes it even more plausible for Kat to have some connection to them, at least under the amplifying influence of an Etheric distortion. Interesting theory about the implant unlocking powers Kat could have always had in an "acceptable" way!

[blahzor]

Aug 18, 2023 16:47:19 GMT ctso74 said:

No one saw that bismithness in robots before. Did it start with Kat's rebodying, or was it from Diego's days, but previously too small to see? A small seed, no relation intended.
Buckle up, NPs. If it's true Zimmyngham, you're in for a ride.

Annie and Rey are always around them so this new free flowing blob form is new in the distortion

[imaginaryfriend]

I wonder if the bismuth appearance of something like this is unique to the Court tech or if it's something common to people who aren't tech-savvy when they look at something complex through the ether. If Antimony knew the basics of whatever the Noobmenz are running she should be able to see more, but would it still look like a bismuth crystal to her, or is that a visual metaphor (or semi-metaphor)? Is the Court symbol the one for bismuth because people see the sort of etheric tech they once used as having an appearance of bismuth or does Antimony see the bismuth symbol because she knows its the Court symbol and her mind is using that as a metaphor to help her process what she's perceiving?

I'm inclined to think that it's not something that's exclusive to Court tech, just that the Court is the most advanced in this direction, and in the ether any etheric-derivative work-around tech would look like bismuth to a human who knew something about alchemy or chemistry. Not just any etheric tech would look like bismuth to someone looking at it via the ether. To put it another way, I think the bismuth appearance is something that's rooted in-universe through literal bismuth crystal appearance, extended through human bodies of knowledge (some pseudo-knowledge) regarding bismuth, and by how fit the metaphor is as a crutch for understanding what's happening. In other words, it's another example of something in the comic that's semi-metaphorical.

[Daedalus]

Hey, given the time travel themes already explored via the Norns, who else thinks that the original Seed Bismuth, the one that grew the Court, was a creation of Kat's which rippled backward through time? Creating a closed time loop?

ALSO, the Cult of Kat stands ready to welcome our goddess...

[mturtle7]

Aug 18, 2023 11:17:34 GMT Blitz said:

Aug 18, 2023 7:37:20 GMT gpvos said:

So Annie has apparently seen New People in the ether before (even though we didn't). Their ether presence seems rather... minimal. And indeed bismuthish.

No I think we have, they appear greyed out and dull like the bodies of Forest creatures in court.

I thought the same, but now that I'm looking through the archives, the only place we've seen the New People like that is here, during Loup's little flashback in Chapter 84, and it's actually sorta unclear whether that second panel is actually in the Ether or if it's just Loup stopping time for a moment. So now, like many others here, I'm REALLY confused about just how significant the current page's revelation is supposed to be...

Aug 18, 2023 15:19:12 GMT drmemory said:

Isn't this the first time we've seen Annie look in the ether from within Zimmyland? When she checked Renard I didn't think about it but now it's obvious. I'm sure someone will promptly correct me if I'm wrong about this.

One implication is that Zimmyland is NOT in the ether, right? Lots of surprises happening, and I'm sure more to come!

This is another one where my memory didn't quite match what I found in the archives. Frustratingly, in "The Torn Sea", Annie looks into the ether several different times while she's in Zimmingham...but she always does it using her blinker stone, which is outside of the distortion at the time! So the current page is, in fact, the first time she's ever done this! ...On screen, at least. It's technically possible she tried it in "Spring Heeled, Part 2", since we never actually saw what the real Annie was doing in that scene. And she definitely never tried it in any of the other times she's been in Zimmyingham, so...yeah.

[davidm]

For more fun, we can also have whitelegs/spiders and cult leader robot enter the fray!

[pyradonis]

Aug 19, 2023 10:30:36 GMT Daedalus said:

Hey, given the time travel themes already explored via the Norns, who else thinks that the original Seed Bismuth, the one that grew the Court, was a creation of Kat's which rippled backward through time? Creating a closed time loop?

Oh, that theory comes up time and time again.

Personally, I hope it's not.

[hp]

Aug 18, 2023 7:37:20 GMT gpvos said:

So Annie has apparently seen New People in the ether before (even though we didn't). Their ether presence seems rather... minimal. And indeed bismuthish.

That's also how I understood that sentence.

"They seem to be real", as in "they are real people and not shadows from Zimmy's mind"

"But they look different in the ether now", meaning they had another look in the ether before entering Zermmobyl