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Post by aline on Aug 10, 2022 7:47:17 GMT
So, this isn't just a move to the next town over. Most likely it will be one way only, the people who come and those left behind will never see each other again. That brings a new perspective to the whole thing. A rather horrifying one. The ones left behind will have to rebuild a new society with less resources and will still have to deal with the threat of Loup. Or they'll have to take their chances with a normal human world that wouldn't understand them. Either way, friend and family who leave will be out of their reach forever.
Especially the fairies and animals turned human are used and discarded like tissue paper in this scenario. They left the forest behind, had to "crunch numbers" every day (probably etheric calculations of some kind for this travel through the stars) and now that they're no longer of use... Bye.
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Post by aline on Aug 8, 2022 20:20:58 GMT
So I guess we've met Omega. Nice haircut.
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Post by aline on May 27, 2022 15:39:38 GMT
Is Kat thinking of going with the Court? She's always gotten caught up in how far she can push new developments and possibilities. Despite the fact her mother, best friend and girlfriend are on the no-travel list. Anyway, the former robots weren't any strangers to self-maintenance so the answer is to leave them the means to repair and build new bodies, while slowly integrating them with the Forest People so they have a social life outside of themselves. We've already seen that will have teething issues though. I don't think Kat is planning to follow the Court, but it doesn't mean she stays. Anja, Annie and Paz wouldn't be able to follow the Court, but they can go live their lives elsewhere. They don't have to stay near a somewhat out of control magic Forest if the Court closes shop. But the New People are a different matter. They can't so easily integrate in the outside world. The Forest folks have a similar problem, but Kat presumably doesn't feel as responsible for them because she didn't cause them to undergo a critical change of their fundamental nature. Surely there are solutions like the one you suggested, but it makes complete sense that she'd worry about it. She made them... They're her sort-of new-species kids and I'm betting she's feeling guilty about shoving them into that new existence in what are very uncertain times.
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Post by aline on Apr 16, 2022 16:26:57 GMT
I don't see Annie doing anything more than being nice and humoring a young person. He has a visible crush on her but she's just being friendly. If she knew, she would be in a very different mood. And we all know what a masterful seductress she was with Jack so I find it hilarious that some people assume she's making Loup fall in love with her. He's doing that all on his own. And Annie has shown in the past that she can be extremely oblivious of other people's emotional turmoil, so... Annie is older and more mature now. And in the past three years, her experience of romantic relationships went from zero to zero. She blushed at Kamlen and almost kissed Jack that one time, and that's pretty much all she knows about love. How is she supposed to have become a seductress? Surma was very different in that regard, and afaik she was already an adult with an active love life in the scene with Renard. And again, all Annie did was smile at a boy in a friendly way... Women don't become a seductress just because men react to them a certain way. If she knew, she would be in a very different mood. And what is that very different mood? Angry, on her guard, afraid? Not sure, but she looks very relaxed in that scene and that doesn't compute with knowingly interracting with a homicidal god intent on destruction, not even counting Coyote's statement that he would "force" Annie to kill Loup. Also if it's a covert operation it's a very lousy one. She told him what she knew about the Omega device and got zero information in return.
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Post by aline on Apr 15, 2022 15:05:41 GMT
I don't see Annie doing anything more than being nice and humoring a young person. He has a visible crush on her but she's just being friendly. If she knew, she would be in a very different mood. And we all know what a masterful seductress she was with Jack so I find it hilarious that some people assume she's making Loup fall in love with her. He's doing that all on his own. And Annie has shown in the past that she can be extremely oblivious of other people's emotional turmoil, so...
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Post by aline on Apr 11, 2022 16:17:43 GMT
She may have already guessed for a while. It would be more effective to not openly say Loup and act exactly as she is to bring out Y and reason with Loup without Loup's temper tantrums. Possible, but I think she's not there yet. She has a feeling she knows him, but she's trying to rationalize it. Honestly it might be hard even knowing the extent of Coyote's power to picture Loup hiding as a hapless blushing new person. The cognitive dissonance is through the roof. But she'll work it out.
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Post by aline on Apr 11, 2022 7:34:13 GMT
Heh. She almost guessed.
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Post by aline on Apr 8, 2022 13:01:31 GMT
Did you know that it's possible to hide a member's posts: www.proboards.com/user-guide/profile-privacy/blocking-membersFor example, if it's someone's extremely repetitive shtick to come once a week to say "eww, creepy" because a character they don't like is on the page, you can just decide you don't need to read the next 200 such comments and ignore them. Do you know if that's a universal thing? I've never seen it under the Privacy settings. It should work on every Proboards forum. I does work on this one for me, and I have no special privileges.
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Post by aline on Apr 8, 2022 11:55:14 GMT
Tom: hey, it's been too long since Annie pined for somebody abusive (but who had really good reasons for it!), lemme fix that real quick. She's just smiling at him, for Coyote's sake. I don't know where you are getting "pining for him" from. Or for any other abusive character by the way, because the only one she was definitely shown to have a romantic interest in was Kamlen. Did you know that it's possible to hide a member's posts: www.proboards.com/user-guide/profile-privacy/blocking-membersFor example, if it's someone's extremely repetitive shtick to come once a week to say "eww, creepy" because a character they don't like is on the page, you can just decide you don't need to read the next 200 such comments and ignore them.
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Post by aline on Apr 8, 2022 7:50:00 GMT
Now... idk, how DOES Annie feel about the NP? Do the rules of "no relationships with robots" still apply? I don't believe for one second that she sees him as a romantic prospect. This seems to be her quietly-smiling-wise medium persona that she uses for almost everybody, especially when she's in a more protective / mentor role relative to that person. It's not the first person who's blushed when faced with that smile and none of them got to date her.
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Post by aline on Apr 5, 2022 6:14:01 GMT
I would also like to point out that the Court didn't bother to send any kind of search party after Annie fell, not even a drone or anything. I always wondered why it took the initiative of a twelve-year-old student to go, search and find Annie, while the Court officials seemed content to stay inside after one of their students had fallen into the ravine. Inaction/belief a search party would be useless because Omega said so? Tbh if a kid fell from that height I wouldn't need a mysterious future-predicting device to know they probably died. Even if there wasn't a magical thing of death that kills everything trying to cross down there. But it's still horrifying that noone but Kat tried to check.
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Post by aline on Apr 4, 2022 7:22:47 GMT
I hope we find out just how recently so it can be lined up to a known event (heh). It could be anything from the Norns allowing Kat to change the timeline, the arrow and Jeanne being freed or Loup/the NP's existence. Hmm. I think you're spot on about the first one. A machine that predicts the future is bound to be irrtitated with somebody messing with time. Perhaps the hostility of the Court towards Annie is because they linked their machine's loss of accuracy with her and think she's the one messing with them. If Annie should not have been in this timeline then pretty much everything of consequence she does would be "wrong" from the perspective of the device.
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Post by aline on Apr 1, 2022 12:54:43 GMT
Ah, so that's the purpose of the Gunnerkrigg microcosm. And explains why they will leave all etheric beings behind in the new Court. No room for magical chaos in the bubble of deterministic reality! What a sad thing, if you can't understand the whole world just make your world smaller... put your head in a bucket, easier to grasp. Truly pathetic
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Post by aline on Mar 30, 2022 15:23:31 GMT
You're probably thinking of imaginary numbers. But I think you misunderstand what they are. Most numbers "don't make sense in anything except the context of specific equations". For example take -1. You can't have -1 apple, it's not a thing. But if you're trying to calculate 4 - 3, then you need -1 to describe the result. In school we first teach kids to count in terms of "you have three strawberries, then remove one strawberry". These are easy to grasp. That's how humanity started doing math. But you can't remove 4 strawberries if you only have 3, right? Doesn't make sense. Yet negative numbers are very important to all kind of math calculations that are more elaborate than counting strawberries. If you need to keep track of income and expenses, and know if you're in debt, sudddenly it makes sense. It's the same with imaginary numbers. They're an abstract concept that's useful, but they're hard to grasp for people who don't do math for a living, because an imaginary number is not an idea you have to manipulate in daily life. But there is nothing special about it beyond that. And I don't see how it can be compared or linked to the ether in any way. Welllll... we do actually need to use complex numbers (imaginary number plus a friend) to describe experimental outcomes in quantum mechanics. I'm not good enough at theory to really explain why (I do experimental physics, so I only really need math up to the point where I can get my machines to spit out the right kind of wiggly lines) but it's mainly to do with Euler's identity and the need to have solutions in the form of eigenvectors to represent quantum states. People have tried to make quantum mechanics work with no imaginary numbers but it's just vastly more streamlined and "nice" with complex exponentials. If you felt like it you could spin an analogy to the ether, maybe? Because of its fundamental inability to be reliably predicted (because a small set of viable states makes each just as likely as the next, unlike in macro systems where one macrostate usually stands out) you have to use imaginary numbers to describe it, and that's a bummer for everyone. Definitely a reach, sure, but the thought of the Court getting all salty about having to use complex exponentials to describe magic dogs is highly amusing. Honestly the entire plan of "predicting the future" by getting rid of the pesky ether and accounting for all the atoms makes me think no one in the Court has heard of quantum physics, and they would have an absolute meltdown if they did. "All we need to do is know where every single particle is at all times"
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Post by aline on Mar 30, 2022 15:16:56 GMT
I took this as Loup's attempt to understand how Omega could track all of the atoms. Using Coyote's omniscience, he immediately realized it wouldn't be possible to track them all individually, and that abstractions would be necessary. I swear he's heading right into OOD/OOP here. That's Object Oriented Design and Programming for the slightly less geeky. I'm not sure if he's right but he could be. If Omega were a really powerful computer, it would still have to use abstractions and data structures and the like if it wanted to model enough of the details of the world to be predictive. Otherwise, it would itself have to be large enough, in the sense of memory and processing power, to contain a copy, which as Loup has properly identified, is not possible. It's not OOP. It'science. Modelling things to predict what they will do is just science. That's how we can predict how much fuel a plane will need and how fast a ball will fall. We know how objects with those properties behave (abstraction) and we make deductions on how they will behave in situations X, Y, Z ("predicting the future", I guess) Except they want to do it on the scale of the entire universe, forever, apparently. OOP just mimicks this idea inside computer programs by making objects with a set of properties and behaviors. Except they're objects we make ourselves and we are sure we know everything about them. There are no surprise properties or behaviors in a Java object to discover, unlike with stars and bird wings and human brains.
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Post by aline on Mar 30, 2022 14:12:37 GMT
Isn't it a thing in math that there are irrational numbers? Numbers that don't make sense in anything except the context of specific equations where they're the key component that makes it work? Sounds a lot like the ether, or rather beings with etheric abilities. Those numbers aren't inherently more important, they're just more relevant in certain contexts. You're probably thinking of imaginary numbers. But I think you misunderstand what they are. Most numbers "don't make sense in anything except the context of specific equations". For example take -1. You can't have -1 apple, it's not a thing. But if you're trying to calculate 4 - 3, then you need -1 to describe the result. In school we first teach kids to count in terms of "you have three strawberries, then remove one strawberry". These are easy to grasp. That's how humanity started doing math. But you can't remove 4 strawberries if you only have 3, right? Doesn't make sense. Yet negative numbers are very important to all kind of math calculations that are more elaborate than counting strawberries. If you need to keep track of income and expenses, and know if you're in debt, sudddenly it makes sense. It's the same with imaginary numbers. They're an abstract concept that's useful, but they're hard to grasp for people who don't do math for a living, because an imaginary number is not an idea you have to manipulate in daily life. But there is nothing special about it beyond that. And I don't see how it can be compared or linked to the ether in any way.
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Post by aline on Mar 30, 2022 13:54:16 GMT
Can't help but recall Kat being put on trial for inadvertently violating multiple contracts of ownership. The idea of ownership as explained then could be one kind of abstraction, which makes me wonder about the ether or whatever runs those rules. Ownesrship, period, is an abstraction, like freedom or equality. Abstraction is how humans understand and describe the world. basser mentioned Math but the truth is there isn't a single science out there that doesn't rely on abstraction in one way or another, from physics to History. Language itself is an abstraction. I don't think humans are capable of not thinking in terms of abstract concepts, it's just how we process things. The ether being born of human thought makes it also a form of abstraction. For example Coyote is the idea of a coyote. He's a bunch of properties associated with coyotes by humans, that then took life. A living idea. A living abstraction.
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Post by aline on Mar 30, 2022 11:51:48 GMT
Waiting to see where Tom is going with this. Abstraction is useful concept but also a very generic one and not aprticularly new, so I wonder how this relates more precisely to the Omega device. Is part of Coyote's plan to get Loup to care about the silly ants? I think part of the plan was always for Loup to care about Annie because Annie is part of Coyote's plan as well. Not sure any thought was given about the rest of the silly ants.
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Post by aline on Mar 25, 2022 15:38:14 GMT
Another side note, but Coyote being himself a god, if he did want to achieve knowledge of everything he may well be able to achieve this by changing the world into something that can be fully known. So that would be why he didn't try. Because if he did try, then his powers may enable him to erase the ether from the world in order to make it fully knowable. And if Coyote is capable of that, well, isn't that interesting that the Court wants his powers so badly even though they hate all things etheric?
Maybe this belongs more in the crazy theories thread. Sorry. Just feels like things maybe are falling into place.
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Post by aline on Mar 25, 2022 15:25:41 GMT
Side note but "perfect knowledge of all atoms" would not account for the effect of the ether on the world. This may be the reason the Court elites hate the ether so much. Because it remains unknowable, unpredictable through knowledge of physics alone, it stands in the way of a working Omega device. Even if you can know where every smallest particle is AND predict where it's going next ("which is impossible btw" Kat would say and she'd be right), Annie for example could barrel through that and set on fire things that aren't supposed to be on fire. So I stand by my earlier prediction that eliminating the ether from the world is a goal of the Court, as a way of reaching there predictable-world-paradise. And that probably means getting rid of etheric people and creatures.
That shadow-boss guy attempted to exist as an etheric guy that doesn't use the ether and failed, and this is such a terrible sin because it caused the Omega device to lose its grasp of what reality is supposed to be like.
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Post by aline on Mar 25, 2022 15:18:12 GMT
Coyote dodging being all knowing because then he'd never be able to forget he's just a coyote. That's something he himself explained to Annie so that's not what he's avoiding, since he already does know it. I suspect the issue is not acquiring one specific piece of knowledge but rather the ramifications of perfect knowledge, something about reaching the 100% bar that breaks the world, along the lines of what jda mentioned
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Post by aline on Mar 22, 2022 9:19:59 GMT
Not convinced. Surely the NP are as different from each other as humans. What he did wasn't so out of whack as to make him suspicious. He got a bit violent trying to protect a friend (but did not injure anyone). Annie did the same on her first school week. She's a fire elemental So you're telling me that's not something kids do in real life? There's no reason to be more careful of NP than of any other kids in the Court. If anything, who would expect Loup to defend a girl? It sure as hell took US by surprise. We discussed for pages why he would even do that. If Annie had been there she might have realized something was weird, but all she got was some second hand account, there's no way that's enough to suspect Jerrek, much less conclude that he's Loup.
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Post by aline on Mar 21, 2022 10:38:59 GMT
OK, now I'm suspicious that Annie knows who she's talking to. Thinking that they were suspicious of him and then whatever Lana said made it seem even more suspicious because he was acting like Rey would and not like the other NP's Not convinced. Surely the NP are as different from each other as humans. What he did wasn't so out of whack as to make him suspicious. He got a bit violent trying to protect a friend (but did not injure anyone). Annie did the same on her first school week.
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Post by aline on Mar 13, 2022 15:16:33 GMT
That would be quite hypocritical, considering the lengths she, her father, and her best friend went to in order to make it possible for a human and a robot -> NP to date and leave the Court to live outside as a couple. That is what the first NP body of them all was created for, in fact.
Going to disagree, Juliette and Arthur are the exception that proves the rule, their relationship was already established over several years. The others won't have that same experience with people, as Lana demonstrated. They are not an "exception" and there is no reason to take away NP's agency when it comes to relationships. What they need is information and context. They need sex ed. They need conversations with mentors. Not a bunch of 16yo overcontrolling helicopter moms.
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Post by aline on Mar 13, 2022 11:05:56 GMT
So we follow up the instance where the elf boys potentially put Lana in danger with Jerrek treating Annie as a prey? I hope this is leading up to some thematic point. I think it's another iteration of the "people are either rescuers, abusers or ineffectual bystanders" theme that Tom has been writing for 17 years. That's not a "theme".
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Post by aline on Mar 11, 2022 12:27:18 GMT
Now what is getting Annie down? I'd guess Coyote's announcement that he'd force her to kill Loup (and by extension Ysengrin and Coyote) is on her mind. There's also the Court's plans to pack up their things and leave behind people like her.
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Post by aline on Mar 8, 2022 14:00:57 GMT
Exactly how terrifying is the timeline where Kat turned evil, though? That must have been one hell of an apocalypse. I mean she's what, sixteen? How much closer can you get to actual godhood before you graduate highschool? No wonder Zimmy's afraid of her.
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Post by aline on Mar 7, 2022 8:27:58 GMT
So the Court is made from the Forest. And now Kat can manipulate it, gaining a new godhood skill that should be useful in rebuilding the old Court. Although they probably won't rebuild it as it was. Some trees would be nice.
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Post by aline on Feb 28, 2022 10:23:21 GMT
Lana is getting some much needed girl talk. I approve.
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Post by aline on Feb 23, 2022 22:14:59 GMT
Number 1 never happened except in Zimmy's head. You know, I've never quite understood that part. It kind of seems like Zimmy makes her little mind plays (for lack of a better term) based on the real personalities and struggles of the people sucked into them. At least sometimes?
Also, she can clearly cause effects in the real world, not just the ether. Did that really not happen at all, or did it get like rewound? It's been confirmed by Tom in his Youtube chapter commentary that it never happened. Zimmy remembered another time she was being chased by (human) kids, before coming to the Court, and kind of projected that on a bunch of elf kids who were just minding their business playing football nearby.
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