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Post by saardvark on Jan 14, 2019 13:32:35 GMT
Gonna call the opposite, it might be the crack of dawn and her window is on western side of the house so the first sun isn't showing there yet. Hmm, they appear to be sitting with their backs to some houses, slanted downwards and running down towards the coast, with the sun just over the horizon at their back, notably in the second panel here, as well as what looks like the railings in front of a harbour or something in panel 4. We know that the Court is located on the Western coast of the the UK, confirmed here. Which would imply that the slight sun over the horizon we see over the harbour behind them is over the water in the west, and thus just setting. you might be right, but the whole town seems rather hilly, with terrain rising away from the harbor and the river... www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2085so the street slant doesn't necessarily indicate towards harbor (= west). madjack's dawn idea makes more sense time wise, since it would be unusual for Annie to be asleep at 7pm (dusk in Scotland late September).
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Post by saardvark on Jan 14, 2019 13:17:04 GMT
high latitude, midsummer, dusk comes late... Annie might have just gone to sleep, 10-11pm or so... It's not midsummer if they're wearing those sorts of winter coats, looks more like autumn to me. I think it makes more sense if this is happening just after sundown. Plus now: speculation as to what "tests" Kat and Court-Annie have planned for Forest-Annie to prove she is real! good point on the clothes; dusk in Scotland at autumn equinox is about 7pm... Annie fell asleep early! Exhausting day, I guess....
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Post by saardvark on Jan 14, 2019 8:42:51 GMT
I love her innocent eagerness in panel three. she wants to see Kat, and probably also get some resolution of the Annie-vs-Annie struggle...
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Post by saardvark on Jan 14, 2019 8:41:16 GMT
Interesting timing. What I thought was early morning sun was streaming in Annie's window a couple of pages back. Now the stars are out. Unless F!Annie's slept all day, and it's dusk!? No matter. high latitude, midsummer, dusk comes late... Annie might have just gone to sleep, 10-11pm or so...
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Post by saardvark on Jan 14, 2019 8:33:47 GMT
hmm, not so clear. The "huh" might be puzzlement at Annie's state (hence Zimm's follow-up question) rather than her surprise at Kat seeing her. Is there evidence that Zimm can "cloak" herself? "Cloak" Gamma as well? I don't recall any, (tho could well be forgetting!) I mean, that'd explain to me why everyone is frozen and Kat is not aaah, OK! That I'll buy....
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Post by saardvark on Jan 12, 2019 12:57:03 GMT
On Divine, www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1030, first panel says that Zimmy didn't expect Kat to be aware of her presence. It happened because of Kat's ability to see through "dimensions" illusion, smoke & mirrors b*s*t hmm, not so clear. The "huh" might be puzzlement at Annie's state (hence Zimm's follow-up question) rather than her surprise at Kat seeing her. Is there evidence that Zimm can "cloak" herself? "Cloak" Gamma as well? I don't recall any, (tho could well be forgetting!)
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Post by saardvark on Jan 11, 2019 9:07:18 GMT
Actually, the guys all look pretty serious here. This doesn't look to be a "for fun" outing.... the gang has some serious business on their minds....
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Post by saardvark on Jan 9, 2019 12:10:49 GMT
More wild spec: Courtnie has told Renard that to avoid Fannie and she doesn't want him speaking to her when she (Courtnie) isn't there. For his own protection and the safety of everyone else, of course. Because Fannie can command Renard to do stuff and we don't know what her (Fannie's) origin is but it is very suspicious. And this decision was made completely separate from her (Courtnie's) personal feelings about having a double and is absolutely not petty in the slightest. Im not sure that is even wild spec ... sounds very plausible, actually!
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Post by saardvark on Jan 7, 2019 21:43:19 GMT
I just realized that we're at the beginning of a new volume. And that we've had a volume in the past that started with the introduction of a new major character, i.e. Tony in volume 6. This could be a similar situation. the new character could be C!Annie. Or F!Annie. Or both, since maybe they are both new. Gads, this is confusing....
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Post by saardvark on Jan 7, 2019 12:04:58 GMT
It's Antimony's alchemical "antimony" necklace... some of the "dealing with" will undoubtedly be a struggle about who gets to possess unique items like this, or how they share them.
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Post by saardvark on Jan 7, 2019 12:00:02 GMT
Somethingawful has decided "HER" is a stealth acronym for some shady Court department. "Human Experimentation and Research" would fit perfectly..... Im going with "Humongous Ether-powered Robot", the Court's New super-weapon to battle Loup!
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Post by saardvark on Jan 6, 2019 18:32:39 GMT
If the shadow men don't need to eat they may have been exempted from the time freeze since they wouldn't need to interact with the environment to sustain themselves. True, but, was it Eggs(?), who mentioned (plural) creature s invading the Court, which suggests more than just shadows. OK, bound dogs would be enough to use plural creatures, but to me somehow the implication was for still more...
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Post by saardvark on Jan 6, 2019 12:30:26 GMT
Since shadow men are invading the Court, that would seem to suggest that Loup has at least partly "unfrozen" time in the Forest... what might that imply going forward for Forest stability?
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Post by saardvark on Jan 5, 2019 16:16:48 GMT
I find the discussion on this thread really odd. Why is everyone analyzing Tony's actions, but not his words? I feel like his statements on this page are incredibly significant. First of all, although very far from an actual apology, Tony's first statement is a hint to Annie that he doesn't approve of his personality and/or past actions. Second, it establishes that he's found a way to relate to Annie through a problem they have in common. The last one might be the biggest. "We'll figure it this out". Tony is someone who obsesses over fixing problems. His last big one was trying to fix Surma, at which he failed. Now, possibly he sees a second chance to fix someone, maybe even a chance at redeeming himself in Annie's eyes, by fixing her split-person problem. Who knows what he thinks he's going to do to fix the situation? He might not even have an idea himself. It's just that, before now, he's seen his presence in Annie's life as unwanted and unconstructive. Now? Now he has something to work with. When I began reading Gunnerkrigg Court (I read chapters 1-61 almost two years ago, and couldn't put it down until I reached the then-current chapter), I felt that Annie's relationship with her parents was the heart of the story, and I still think so now. And this page is very important in that aspect. welcome to the forum, coastal! well reasoned post....
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Post by saardvark on Jan 5, 2019 3:15:48 GMT
We've known for the longest time that the sun rises from the woods relative to the Court so that tallies with the compass. I interpret that page in the opposite way: we're seeing the Court from the ravine (the boundary being visible at the bottom) with the first light of dawn in the east. I've always thought of left in today's page as being "upstream" and "north", though I couldn't say if this is for any particular reason. (The way the moon is shown to flip around in chapter 1 suggests this as well, assuming it's just not randomly inserted in some panels.)I agree with imaginaryfriend - Kat and Annie are looking back over their shoulders from whence they came (the Annan gorge) and see the Sun rise (in the E). So it agrees with there compass. If the GC world parallels our own, the Annan flows/flowed mostly N to S and empties into the Solway Firth (left, off map).
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Post by saardvark on Jan 5, 2019 0:59:16 GMT
As I said in a previous thread, it would be impossible for either the Court and the Wood to exist in real space in modern UK. All the territory was mapped and measured to the inch, even before satellite imaging was a thing. There is no way a virgin forest like Gillitie Forest would be ignored, it would be a Mecca for hikers, ecologists and nature lovers, and when people started to die there, both the media and the government would take notice... and there is no way the Court could conceal that even if they worked with the UK government... the relatives of lost visitors wouldn't shut up so easily...
As for the Court, there is no way the UK government would tolerate a powerful self-governed city-state like that to exist unhindered. Where are the British administration's observers and overseers?
I'm quite sure the Court and the Forest exist in some sort of pocket dimension. The Court may be officially registered as a private school so their students get real degrees, but they probably keep some facade using holograms and such to trick the government into believing they are a normal boarding school in the countryside...
I think you were taking me too literally. Of course the Court can't actually exist in the real world.... I was just speculating about where it would be located if somehow it could (eg, by putting it in a parallel dimension)...
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Post by saardvark on Jan 4, 2019 14:51:01 GMT
Hmm, my previous speculation (trying to match the comic with the real world) had the Court's port (launch point of "Torn Sea") where the river Annan empties into the "sea" (actually the Solway Firth), to the south. Wrong! This map has the coast to the west/NW, so the Court's port is perhaps at Cairnryan on the Galloway coast (W) or Ardossan on the Firth of Clyde (NW). That makes the Court truly enormous, taking up a most of Dumfries, Galloway, and Ayrshire in Scotland. (Or maybe I'm just trying too hard to shoehorn the court into the real world!) That's if the Court's "space" occupies "real" space. Sometimes, it seems like the Court may exist in its own amorphous pocket dimension. Maybe using Forest mojo, the Seed Bismuth grow into itself, and the Court is "inside" it. There's got to be a reason, to why they've stuck around a hostile neighbor, for so long. well, there's all that "ether juice" they need to power their Omega device.... or whatever (no good) they're up to..
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Post by saardvark on Jan 4, 2019 13:11:26 GMT
Hmm, my previous speculation (trying to match the comic with the real world) had the Court's port (launch point of "Torn Sea") where the river Annan empties into the "sea" (actually the Solway Firth), to the south. Wrong! This map has the coast to the west/NW, so the Court's port is perhaps at Cairnryan on the Galloway coast (W) or Ardossan on the Firth of Clyde (NW). That makes the Court truly enormous, taking up a most of Dumfries, Galloway, and Ayrshire in Scotland. (Or maybe I'm just trying too hard to shoehorn the court into the real world!)
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Post by saardvark on Jan 3, 2019 14:11:40 GMT
What are they cooking by the way? I see eggs, chopped veggies and bowl with a beater in Tony's hand... Omelettes? I think he's making a batter. Maybe it going to become fried veggies and meat of some kind? Tempura?
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Post by saardvark on Jan 2, 2019 19:11:41 GMT
I love this page! To me it seems that Tony has grown more as a person and a parent (even though it was off screen I would like to have actually SEEN that growth but eh...) He is trying to comfort and relate to her. Annie wants to help with dinner and he says "sure", with no hesitation and no sense of "don't eff up, kid." What the hey-hoo happened in 6 months?? and I'm happy that Annie finally gets to see the smile that he probably generally saved for Surma. I wouldn't be surprised to find that Tony might actually favor Forest!Annie a bit just because she is the odd duck at the moment and he can empathize. Plus I'm still of the mind that Court!Annie doesn't seem to have the same fire (metaphorically) as Forest!Annie, which Tony admired in Surma. Which would be absolutely horrible and unfair to Court!Annie if that proved true. I still feel like she's being petty towards Forest!Annie, but per a previous post, I DO understand why. heck, she doesn't have the same fire (physically/etherically)! www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2069(I know I keep harping on this...sorry!) Ive mostly come around to the idea that both are "real", tho time shifted, versions of Annie. C!Annie's fire looks wonky because it didn't "heal" back to her as well as F!Annie's did, who had to match wits with Loup. C!Annie apparently hasn't been challenged as severely, and it was apparently only in the crucible, the hot forge of mental/etheric combat with Loup, that F!Annie's break with her elemental was healed more completely.
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Post by saardvark on Dec 31, 2018 18:19:58 GMT
Mwah... Annie is a typical Siddell character; no saint no satan. But occasionally a bitch. Almost human, one could say. Yeah, she can be pretty nasty when she wants. I swear I remember a page where Kat tells Annie that sometimes Annie makes it hard to be her friend, but I can't seem to find it. Yeah, OK, you're both right, definitely nasty! But still, one of these is to a demon who tried to kill her at one point (tho the operative cause is that he just caught her cheating), one is to a guy who hurt her friend (Rey) and almost got her into bad trouble (admittedly because he was possessed), and as for Kat, it wasn't intentionally cruel, just rather impulsive and thoughtless (skipping off into the Forest for the summer without warning). Somehow her treatment of F!Annie feels somewhat different, like kicking a homeless person. Mean without cause or reason. Maybe just because F!Annie makes C!Annie feel vulnerable... maybe you're right.... but still seems almost meaner than the other cases because it doesn't even have much of any (even flimsy) justification. edit: Actually, yinglung just above (not read before this was first written) and Jim North below make good cases that maybe it is in character after all, and not wholly unjustified....
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Post by saardvark on Dec 31, 2018 12:43:08 GMT
I am also somewhat perplexed, yet not upset, by this turn of events. It would seem Tony can get comfortable around this Antimony, which begs the question whether or not he's ever done it for Court!Annie. If he hasn't.... this will be something. We might be about to get a reveal of some of Tony's speculation on the "two-Annie" phenomenon. I read this as: he thinks C!Annie's snippy behavior is amusing, and feels sure enough that F!Annie is real to be open about this (and is about to talk with about his read of the situation). Im puzzled tho too - C!Annie seems much more casually condescending and... nasty, really ... than I can remember original-Annie ever was. I mean, O-Annie had an edge, but it never quite this haughty/casually cruel. If the Annies are the result of a split of some sort, C!Annie seems to have gotten a concentration of the harsher side of O-Annie. If a time-skip, C!Annie's character has developed in some rather poor ways in the last 6 months. I suppose C!Annie is reacting very defensively, since she feels her position is undermined by a twin, but there are other ways she could approach this admittedly very odd development... C!Annie's behavior raises higher the possibility that she might be an inaccurate copy, which I didn't really think before (not my favorite resolution of the two-Annies either).
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Post by saardvark on Dec 31, 2018 12:19:27 GMT
So, I've long had a bit of a speculation that Tony's "I can only be myself when I'm alone with one person" thing is not a personality quirk, but due to some kind of Ethereal Weirdness, and that his inability to be himself around Annie had something to do with either the fact that she's a bit of a dual being (Annie & The Fire) or the residual Surma-ness in her, or a combination thereof. So if what Loup has really done is split Annie's fire in two, that might mean that each of the Annies is no longer dual or a "compound" being in the way she was before, but just a single entity. Which in turn means that Tony can be himself around them. Maybe that's why C!Annie and Tony seem a lot closer now than when F!Annie left - he's been able to relax around her and they've been able to bond properly? In which case, he might also have suspected that something was off with C!Annie, since he'd never been able to be himself around her before. Now, why Tony finds this so funny, I have no idea. except Surma was a dual being too, and Tony clearly got along fine with her... I think your other idea - residual Surma-ness, as well as constant guilt reminder ("I couldn't save her mother" later adding "I almost killed her") are closer to the mark...
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Post by saardvark on Dec 29, 2018 3:35:34 GMT
What maybe not everyone noticed: Renard says this to Tony while Fannie is still on the stairs. A subtle nod of support to F!Annie, aimed at Tony and F!Annie....
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Post by saardvark on Dec 28, 2018 14:57:40 GMT
This is in Wikipedia as "False color image of Comet Kohoutek photographed with the far-ultraviolet electrographic camera during a Skylab spacewalk on December 25, 1973". We all know what it actually is, of course. a Coyote eye is the obvious choice, or it could be Jones reentering the atmosphere.... (?)
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Post by saardvark on Dec 28, 2018 14:46:39 GMT
Since C!Annie is taller by a few cm, she may be able to give F!Annie clothes that don't fit so well anymore, so no great loss to her. We will see if the two evolve (or maybe already have) different taste in clothes tho, due to possibly somewhat different personalities. If one had to guess, it seems C!Annie is more formal, serious, traditional while F!Annie is more adventurous, close to nature, flexible.
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Post by saardvark on Dec 26, 2018 18:38:33 GMT
Anyone surprised by anything in today's update? Yes! Tony's house is FURNISHED! Good catch! Not just the lone comfy chair for staring out the window, and desk chair for staring fruitlessly at the inanimate Reynard plush toy. But I wonder how much of the furnishing was at the instigation of Court!Annie... "Come on father... we need more than a wok, a desk and two chairs(!)"
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Post by saardvark on Dec 26, 2018 3:07:08 GMT
Like "Oh, that's where the rest of you went!" Right. As opposed to, "Oh! What's all this then?", or "Oh! There's something you don't see every day." ha! Oh! ... and now for something completely different... Annie, twinned!
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Post by saardvark on Dec 26, 2018 3:03:17 GMT
that is the most humongous avatar Ive ever seen!
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Post by saardvark on Dec 26, 2018 2:00:08 GMT
So here's a scenario: Your daughter has just come back from a dangerous diplomatic trip to the Forest after an overnight stay. Soon enough the both of you and some friends and their families are safely moved to a nice coastal area away from the trouble spots. But after a week or two her etheric fox buddy approaches you and tells you that he thinks something may be wrong with her, but he's not sure exactly what, only that she doesn't seem to be the same as when she left. Well that's no good, if she's been impersonated or compromised it could be a serious security issue, even without worrying about what's actually happened to her. So you put her under observation to try to discern if something really is wrong and action needs to be taken. Observation and data assessment are two of your strong suits, so this is something you have confidence you can handle yourself, and your daughter is living with you now so that will provide plenty of opportunity to gather said data. This would explain a number of subtle clues... why are Kat and Tony so relatively unsurprised by a second Annie? Why do they seem to be more interested in observing Court!Annie's response to the new Annie?: www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2068maybe Rey had already alerted them to Court!Annie's fire elemental looking fragmentary and mal-formed, raising suspicions that something was "off": www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2069(note Kat's probing look in the last panel - looking carefully at Court!Annie's response) Wanting to hear Forest!Annie's side of things, and largely accepting it at face value: www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2072(and following pages) Kat's immediate acceptance of Forest!Annie as an equal Annie and confidante www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2074Tony actually frowning(?!) at Court!Annie's dig at Forest!Annie here www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2086Of course, each of these can be explained in different ways. But taken together, they form a cohesive, self consistent thread - I think they suggest Tony and Kat have had concerns about Court!Annie for a while, so the appearance of a second Annie was not a jaw-dropping surprise, and makes it easy to accept that she is "real" as well (at least in part).
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