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Post by speedwell on Apr 21, 2021 16:48:31 GMT
Reading forward from the page Tom linked just now, specifically upon reaching the "neither of you belong in this timeline" bit, I got the best/worst thought - what if Tony actually got the whole "saving Surma" thing 100% right, but it kept getting sabotaged by Robo-Time Goddess Kat who just flat refuses to accept a reality without Annie in it. I find this darkly hilarious for some reason. All these folks tryna live their lives and Kat just be like NO YOU WILL CREATE ME AN ANNIE, MAKE THAT TWO ANNIES, I WILL HAVE ALL THE ANNIES. And then I thought well what if Jones is some kinda ultimate Kat-bot sent all the way back in time just to make extra super sure an Annie-future results and made myself laugh some more. I mean think about it, Jones and her weird thing with Eggers? Was she tryna get him off Surma so Tony would have a chance? Haha yikes. Oh noooo and now I'm suddenly thinking well in this scenario perhaps Jones got sent ALL the way back with the job of ensuring a fire elemental gets frisky with a human to begin with? Imagine that poor dude hahah. Everything about this is terrible and I love it. Sit down right there in that comfortable chair and let me make you a nice cup of tea
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Post by saardvark on Apr 22, 2021 3:01:46 GMT
Reading forward from the page Tom linked just now, specifically upon reaching the "neither of you belong in this timeline" bit, I got the best/worst thought - what if Tony actually got the whole "saving Surma" thing 100% right, but it kept getting sabotaged by Robo-Time Goddess Kat who just flat refuses to accept a reality without Annie in it. I find this darkly hilarious for some reason. All these folks tryna live their lives and Kat just be like NO YOU WILL CREATE ME AN ANNIE, MAKE THAT TWO ANNIES, I WILL HAVE ALL THE ANNIES. And then I thought well what if Jones is some kinda ultimate Kat-bot sent all the way back in time just to make extra super sure an Annie-future results and made myself laugh some more. I mean think about it, Jones and her weird thing with Eggers? Was she tryna get him off Surma so Tony would have a chance? Haha yikes. Oh noooo and now I'm suddenly thinking well in this scenario perhaps Jones got sent ALL the way back with the job of ensuring a fire elemental gets frisky with a human to begin with? Imagine that poor dude hahah. Everything about this is terrible and I love it. Sit down right there in that comfortable chair and let me make you a nice cup of tea A nice Earl Grey? Maybe a scone and jam with that....
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yinglung
Full Member
It's only a tatter of mime.
Posts: 190
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Post by yinglung on Apr 22, 2021 17:40:05 GMT
Not sure if this was brought up before, but I wonder if Loup split the Annies in order to give her some understanding of what it means to be the fusion of two individuals.
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V
Full Member
I just think it's a pity that she never wore these again.
Posts: 168
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Post by V on Apr 23, 2021 7:21:24 GMT
Speculation: Tony's mind cage is not really a personality trait but a creation of the Court, much like Diego's arrow. Its primary purpose was to protect some top secret information, or perhaps a particular memory experienced in childhood, from leaking. That's also why the Court can entrust him with research of the Omega Device, they made sure he's physically unable speak of it to outsiders.
That it results in him suffering, and not being able to express himself under inert conditions, too? Too bad, it's for a greater good.
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Post by Gemminie on Apr 25, 2021 2:34:43 GMT
Yes, Tony's mind/body disconnect is perfectly explainable as a neurological or psychological condition, so there's nothing supernatural about it, except that it seems to lift completely under certain circumstances; can that even happen?
So, my wild speculation of the day: Tony's condition is normal. The fact that he can sometimes escape from it is what's paranormal.
Back when Tony was a kid, probably in the 1970s or thereabouts, and the concept of an autism spectrum didn't become mainstream in psychology until the 1980s, and even then they didn't use the actual term "spectrum." My theory in this speculation is that Tony was severely autistic and couldn't communicate at all as a child. Tony's parents would have seen his condition as something to be cured – apologies to autistic people of today, but that would definitely have been a common and acceptable attitude back then. In my speculative side story, they took him to one doctor after another, then in desperation they put him in an institution.
In that institution was a doctor who was from the Court, involved in the Omega Device project. He had some sort of etheric ability, or maybe some Court technology, and he used it to experiment on Tony – perhaps as Omega Device research. But he managed to establish communication with Tony's consciousness. Tony could communicate, and was able to establish a rapport with the doctor one-on-one. And Tony saw some of his research, understood it, and made some actually helpful suggestions. This made him of interest to the Court, who had him brought in. But this doctor was then unable to continue to work with Tony to try to make him better. He was good enough, as far as the Court was concerned.
So the Court told Tony's parents that they were going to give him a home and an education, as it tells many students' parents. To them, it was just a different institution, and they wouldn't have to pay to send him there. Why doesn't he want to talk about his parents? Possibly because some of the experimentation done on him wasn't that pleasant. Perhaps because they more or less abandoned him. Perhaps because his mind said to contact them, but his body just wouldn't do it. I'm not sure.
But in any case, Tony has no etheric abilities; things were done to him. And they were done to allow him to escape from his mind cage, which had been there since birth; nobody put it there. So that's the speculation. What do you think, sirs?
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Post by DonDueed on Apr 25, 2021 13:33:04 GMT
But in any case, Tony has no etheric abilities; things were done to him. And they were done to allow him to escape from his mind cage, which had been there since birth; nobody put it there. So that's the speculation. What do you think, sirs? Clever and plausible.
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Post by speedwell on Apr 25, 2021 14:11:12 GMT
Completely out of the blue (forgive me if this has been proposed before):
Tony was always a scientist and polymath. But I suspect he didn't narrow his specialisation to surgery until after the potential of having a baby solidified into an inevitable thing.
I find it a bit odd, as well, that surgery was the exact specialisation he chose. Immunology, pathology, OB/GYN, even complementary medicine would have made so much more sense. (I guess it would not exactly have furthered the plot if he had tried to create a robot with Kat by engineering the common cold virus or cooking up a tincture, heh.)
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Post by blahzor on Apr 25, 2021 19:35:32 GMT
Speculation: Tony's mind cage is not really a personality trait but a creation of the Court, much like Diego's arrow. Its primary purpose was to protect some top secret information, or perhaps a particular memory experienced in childhood, from leaking. That's also why the Court can entrust him with research of the Omega Device, they made sure he's physically unable speak of it to outsiders. That it results in him suffering, and not being able to express himself under inert conditions, too? Too bad, it's for a greater good. say he stumbled upon what was the seed Bismuth really
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Post by Gemminie on Apr 26, 2021 14:40:11 GMT
Wild speculation for today: Surma left a package somewhere in which she tells Annie everything she needs to know. That package may have been lost somewhere, perhaps given to a courier who turned out to be untrustworthy or who died, or was prevented from delivering it in some other way. Or that package is somehow set to be delivered to her at some predetermined time, such as her 16th birthday.
This would explain the glaring absence of any and all information that Surma was given by her own mother and the seemingly uncaring decision not to pass any of it down to Annie, not one iota. She did – or thought she did – but Annie just hasn't received it, or hasn't yet.
Problem with this: wouldn't Tony know about this message? Yet he's given no indication of its existence. Unless Surma kept it secret from even him. Perhaps because it's very personal mother-daughter stuff.
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Post by Gemminie on Apr 28, 2021 5:43:30 GMT
Wild speculation for today: Surma said she cut off contact with her friends when she became pregnant with Annie because she didn't want them to watch her waste away. What if that means something other than what we took it to mean? Because she also apparently had no contact with her father's family, wherever they are. In fact, there's no indication that even Tony was present at the moment after she died when Annie took her into the Ether (or wherever exactly she took her). What if Surma did all of that so that Annie would be the only one there? So that there would be no psychopomps present? So Annie would have to be her psychopomp? What if that was the reason why Surma told Annie so little? She wanted to make sure Annie was the one who took her. If family or friends had been present, their various beliefs might have brought spirit guides with them. But Surma wanted it to be Annie. Word of Tom says that no psychopomp came to collect that remnant of Surma "because that's not what they want." I think what they want is for the spirit of somebody who believes in them to go into the Ether, sustaining their existence. And Surma isn't a believer in any of their pantheons; she's more of a coworker. Whom does she believe in? Annie, I think. There's lots of speculation that Annie took Surma not into the Ether but into herself, but I can't say whether that's true or not, and that's not part of this speculation anyway. My point is that the psychopomps seem to have almost a possessive interest in the people they take. Mallt-y-nos and the Moddy Dhoo had a dispute about which of them would get to take Martin, and Ankou was a bit petulant about Jones wanting Mort to go to the RotD. Though he seems to have gotten over it by the time Mort asked Annie to take him into the Ether. I think that's because their continued existence depends on believers going into the Ether and keeping their worlds spinning, as it were. So maybe being sure to be alone with your daughter when you die is just a thing that fire elemental descendants like Surma do – or maybe there usually isn't anything left to take, but this time there was, and Surma wanted to make sure it was just the two of them. Maybe Surma was trying to make sure that Annie's life wouldn't be like hers. But my speculation is that the reason why Surma cut off contact with her friends and family, and why she didn't tell Annie much of anything, is all about that.
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Post by pyradonis on Apr 28, 2021 12:31:07 GMT
If family or friends had been present, their various beliefs might have brought spirit guides with them. But Surma wanted it to be Annie. Word of Tom says that no psychopomp came to collect that remnant of Surma "because that's not what they want." I think what they want is for the spirit of somebody who believes in them to go into the Ether, sustaining their existence. And Surma isn't a believer in any of their pantheons; she's more of a coworker. Whom does she believe in? But believing in them is not required for a psychopomp to collect one's soul. Martin didn't even know who the two psychopomps were that came for him, he thought they were just a scary black dog and an equally scary old witch. Jeanne and her man didn't even realize Annie was a psychopomp. And many people do not believe in anything supernatural at all, but their souls are still needed to be brought back into the Ether to make the world continue to spin.
EDIT: Apperently, Etheric buerocracy decides which psychopomp is responsible for whom, and it is assigned at birth.
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Post by madjack on Apr 28, 2021 12:36:55 GMT
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Apr 28, 2021 14:41:20 GMT
Maybe. One other possibility is that there were people in the Court who knew something about the fire, chief among them Jones. It is known that Surma couldn't stand Jones. Exactly why is also a topic that has been kicked around but there are several possible reasons (her relationship with Eggers, personality clash, competition/oversight as medium). Whatever the reason, Jones was at the Court and even if Jones didn't teach Surma to be a medium and therefore wouldn't necessarily teach Antimony they would have been brought into contact. That would eventually have undone all the ignorance that Surma was cultivating in Antimony regarding Antimony's fire. [edit] If belief is a reason why etheric stuff does what it does, Surma could have rationalized avoiding the difficult topic by speculating that not knowing about the dying-after-passing-on-fire thing would lead Antimony to believe that everything would be normal, and therefore be less likely to die, I guess. [/edit]
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Post by migrantworker on Apr 30, 2021 10:11:58 GMT
One of those days, Kat will break Tony's mind cage. Look how reflexively happy the robots are to work for humans. So very happy. They themselves see this as only right. ("I enjoy using my strength to help humans!"/"Yes, and you should".) It's almost as if their mind... just. could. not think certain thoughts. Kat will work on removing this limitation from the robots, and her findings will also be applicable to solving Tony's problem. Similar to how Kat's research on growing robot bodies also led her to creating Tony's replacement hand.
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Post by pyradonis on Apr 30, 2021 12:59:27 GMT
Interesting thought. In that case, Surma must have been disappointed to find out that no psychopomp at all comes for her kind.
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Post by todd on Apr 30, 2021 13:01:23 GMT
One of those days, Kat will break Tony's mind cage. I hope the comic won't take that approach; the evidence suggests that Antony's mind cage is intended to be a form of mundane social anxiety, rather than just another etheric problem like Annie becoming two Annies. In which case, having the characters solve it through etheric or "fantasic science" methods would feel wrong.
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Post by migrantworker on Apr 30, 2021 13:41:07 GMT
One of those days, Kat will break Tony's mind cage. I hope the comic won't take that approach; the evidence suggests that Antony's mind cage is intended to be a form of mundane social anxiety, rather than just another etheric problem like Annie becoming two Annies. In which case, having the characters solve it through etheric or "fantasic science" methods would feel wrong. I don't know about it being wrong, as such. I mean, Kat fixed Tony a new hand despite it being missing due to a mundane self-amputation, and nobody seemed to have a problem with that...
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Post by todd on Apr 30, 2021 13:49:41 GMT
True, but fixing psychological problems that way feels different.
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Post by blahzor on Apr 30, 2021 15:59:47 GMT
One of those days, Kat will break Tony's mind cage. Look how reflexively happy the robots are to work for humans. So very happy. They themselves see this as only right. ("I enjoy using my strength to help humans!"/"Yes, and you should".) It's almost as if their mind... just. could. not think certain thoughts. Kat will work on removing this limitation from the robots, and her findings will also be applicable to solving Tony's problem. Similar to how Kat's research on growing robot bodies also led her to creating Tony's replacement hand. she would have to know it exist. probably use the ether peeker thing she made, or you know...build him a body and transfer him into that so he has a workaround for the mind cage punishment
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Post by ohthatone on Apr 30, 2021 16:41:24 GMT
Interesting thought. In that case, Surma must have been disappointed to find out that no psychopomp at all comes for her kind. This begs the question are all those born of this fire elemental lineage expected to act as psychpomps for their mother? Does that make them all default psychpomps in general? I've always wondered assuming what renard said was true and that there was nothing left of surma to take into the ether, what exactly did annie take into the ether? Has there been an instance of a fire elemental descendant NOT taking their predecessor into the ether? What would happen if they didn't?
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Post by Gemminie on Apr 30, 2021 19:31:06 GMT
Interesting thought. In that case, Surma must have been disappointed to find out that no psychopomp at all comes for her kind. This begs the question are all those born of this fire elemental lineage expected to act as psychpomps for their mother? Does that make them all default psychpomps in general? I've always wondered assuming what renard said was true and that there was nothing left of surma to take into the ether, what exactly did annie take into the ether? Has there been an instance of a fire elemental descendant NOT taking their predecessor into the ether? What would happen if they didn't? Conversely, has there ever been an instance of a fire elemental descendant taking her predecessor into the Ether before Annie took Surma there? What if there's never been anything whatsoever to take, and that's why the guides didn't come for Surma, but this time it turned out there was something? We have no evidence either way; I just want it to be clear that it could be anywhere between the two extremes. Perhaps there's never anything, and this was a unique occurrence. Perhaps this always happens, and this was nothing unusual. Perhaps it's somewhere in between: this sometimes happens, but other times it doesn't (but if that were the case, wouldn't the guides show up just in case?). But the guides see something special about Annie, not just her ability to do the things Surma used to be able to do. They never pushed Surma to free Jeanne. They're treating Annie differently.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on May 1, 2021 16:57:46 GMT
If someone from Antimony's line dies and nobody takes them into the ether I believe they'd be Stuck. They wouldn't be stuck because something was holding them there and/or keeping psychopomps away, they'd be more like no cab fare no bus stop zero bars (no coin for the boatman) stuck. They'd only get to the ether if they could find their own way by trial and error/luck or if they could hitch a ride. Nothing necessarily happens to them though if they stay Stuck for a few hundred years they'd probably whither like Jeanne did. However, if they died without passing on the fire that's a different story. They might technically be Stuck but as a practical matter they'd be considerably less so. After time passed they'd probably figure out how to fly around, move stuff in the real world, set stuff on fire, etc. but as a ghost they might be part of some sort of ecosystem and have to avoid bugs and other predators until they got strong enough to not worry about them. And that may have happened at some point but the ghost was still able to pass the fire on to a living heir (which would make a good minicomic).
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V
Full Member
I just think it's a pity that she never wore these again.
Posts: 168
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Post by V on May 2, 2021 7:34:16 GMT
Wild spec for today: just like losing the fire leads to your death, if kept within its own immortality rubs onto you. We know from formspring that if Surma didn't have a child she "could have lived until she was very old" – but given the terseness of the answer, this does not preclude the possibility of "very old" meaning " very old". Maybe age leaves a huge mark on you and you become the likeness of Mallt-y-Nos Ankou, but you just don't die of natural causes. You know, someone who lasts a few tens of years would not be much use to the psychopomps, unless dead people can do the job (but if so, they wouldn't be worried by Jeanne killing them). Most of them have been around for centuries, if not millenia. Yet they go out of their way (even out of their rules) to get this living human girl to be one of them. So this is what they want of her, to give up having children.
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Post by migrantworker on May 3, 2021 13:20:13 GMT
One of those days, Kat will break Tony's mind cage. Look how reflexively happy the robots are to work for humans. So very happy. They themselves see this as only right. ("I enjoy using my strength to help humans!"/"Yes, and you should".) It's almost as if their mind... just. could. not think certain thoughts. Kat will work on removing this limitation from the robots, and her findings will also be applicable to solving Tony's problem. Similar to how Kat's research on growing robot bodies also led her to creating Tony's replacement hand. she would have to know it exist. probably use the ether peeker thing she made, or you know...build him a body and transfer him into that so he has a workaround for the mind cage punishment Given enough time, she will learn about it. I mean, look how unlikely she was to create Tony's new hand. She made it as part of a bargain with characters she never met before that until then were also almost completely irrelevant to the plot, and for a person she openly hated. I subjectively judge that she is more likely to learn about the true nature of Tony's condition, and of course she is now more sympathetic towards the guy.
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Post by blahzor on May 3, 2021 15:52:45 GMT
Wild spec for today: just like losing the fire leads to your death, if kept within its own immortality rubs onto you. We know from formspring that if Surma didn't have a child she "could have lived until she was very old" – but given the terseness of the answer, this does not preclude the possibility of "very old" meaning " very old". Maybe age leaves a huge mark on you and you become the likeness of Mallt-y-Nos, but you just don't die of natural causes. You know, someone who lasts a few tens of years would not be much use to the psychopomps, unless dead people can do the job (but if so, they wouldn't be worried by Jeanne killing them). Most of them have been around for centuries, if not millenia. Yet they go out of their way (even out of their rules) to get this living human girl to be one of them. So this is what they want of her, to give up having children. maybe the reason why they never came to Surma like they are coming for Annie is b/c they didn't believe Surma would bother having a kid through she told them personally or otherwise.
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Post by Gemminie on May 3, 2021 19:04:55 GMT
Wild spec for today: just like losing the fire leads to your death, if kept within its own immortality rubs onto you. We know from formspring that if Surma didn't have a child she "could have lived until she was very old" – but given the terseness of the answer, this does not preclude the possibility of "very old" meaning " very old". Maybe age leaves a huge mark on you and you become the likeness of Mallt-y-Nos, but you just don't die of natural causes. You know, someone who lasts a few tens of years would not be much use to the psychopomps, unless dead people can do the job (but if so, they wouldn't be worried by Jeanne killing them). Most of them have been around for centuries, if not millenia. Yet they go out of their way (even out of their rules) to get this living human girl to be one of them. So this is what they want of her, to give up having children. Thank you for finding that bit of Word of Tom information! I hadn't seen that one. It clears up some things. This is an interesting speculation. But wouldn't they have done the same with Surma? One key difference is that they never pushed Surma to try to save Jeanne; as far as we know, Surma never knew Jeanne existed. But they started pushing Annie to save Jeanne pretty early, before she'd started dating. But it doesn't seem as if they've been trying to influence her not to have kids. And they didn't push Surma to save Jeanne at all, let alone before she started dating, and as far as we know they never tried to influence her not to have kids.
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Post by warrl on May 3, 2021 20:17:14 GMT
Wild spec for today: just like losing the fire leads to your death, if kept within its own immortality rubs onto you. We know from formspring that if Surma didn't have a child she "could have lived until she was very old" – but given the terseness of the answer, this does not preclude the possibility of "very old" meaning " very old". Maybe age leaves a huge mark on you and you become the likeness of Mallt-y-Nos, but you just don't die of natural causes. I've read a few stories of people who'd been granted eternal life but not eternal youth. Compare the average 25-year-old to the average 90-year-old and then imagine what the average 290-year-old or 1090-year-old would be like...
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V
Full Member
I just think it's a pity that she never wore these again.
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Post by V on May 3, 2021 21:28:51 GMT
This is an interesting speculation. But wouldn't they have done the same with Surma? One key difference is that they never pushed Surma to try to save Jeanne; as far as we know, Surma never knew Jeanne existed. But they started pushing Annie to save Jeanne pretty early, before she'd started dating. But it doesn't seem as if they've been trying to influence her not to have kids. And they didn't push Surma to save Jeanne at all, let alone before she started dating, and as far as we know they never tried to influence her not to have kids. Hmm, I wouldn't know this. I don't have the time to look up all the relevant information at the moment, but somehow I've always felt that they have been treating Annie with more urgency than her mother in other respects, too. Maybe Surma was the first one they came in contact with (perhaps she came to GKC from somewhere else in the world), they realized what potential they missed and didn't want to repeat it? Or maybe Surma didn't display quite the same level of empathy with the supernatural creatures. We've seen her befriending the forest canines, but nothing like all the things that Annie seems to attract like a magnet without even trying, like Shadow 2, Mort, or so. Not only Annie encountered Jeanne, and in her first year at that, but it must have been something about her that somehow even helped Jeanne appear on the wrong shore, and she was marked by her for an unexplained reason, too. (I'm not willing to believe Jeanne would do with a scratch if she was going for a kill.) Surely, Muut has helped her brush against the ether ( "the world in which Jeanne resides") on the shore by giving her her blinking stone, but a) nothing indicates he was involved in getting her there in the first place and b) her actually appearing, in any way, on this shore was something he did not seem to expect. I guess that this "attractivity", as Mort put it, makes Annie more interesting to them that her mother was. On a tangential note, what I've always found puzzling is how various peeps consider Annie an "afterlife guide" long before she formally agrees to anything. I take it that there is a difference between helping here and there and actually being a part of the gang. Surma's would be the first case, and the same for pre-chapter 60 Annie. I think there must be some exchange between her and Muut that we did not see in the comic. I don't recall the conditions of her being "one of them" were discussed at any point, but she knows the price and knows what they want, something we don't really. But I'll be happy to be proven wrong about this. I've read a few stories of people who'd been granted eternal life but not eternal youth. Compare the average 25-year-old to the average 90-year-old and then imagine what the average 290-year-old or 1090-year-old would be like... I don't want to, not with the poor Annie :-( But yes, I imagine she would wither and would be little more than a walking wraith.
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Post by lurkerbot on May 3, 2021 23:09:03 GMT
On a tangential note, what I've always found puzzling is how various peeps consider Annie an "afterlife guide" long before she formally agrees to anything. I take it that there is a difference between helping here and there and actually being a part of the gang. Surma's would be the first case, and the same for pre-chapter 60 Annie. I think there must be some exchange between her and Muut that we did not see in the comic. I don't recall the conditions of her being "one of them" were discussed at any point, but she knows the price and knows what they want, something we don't really. But I'll be happy to be proven wrong about this. Antimony first meets Muut in the hospital and a little later helps other psychopomps there. I suspect this is why some entities presume that she's already an afterlife guide.
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Post by saardvark on May 4, 2021 2:06:44 GMT
On a tangential note, what I've always found puzzling is how various peeps consider Annie an "afterlife guide" long before she formally agrees to anything. I take it that there is a difference between helping here and there and actually being a part of the gang. Surma's would be the first case, and the same for pre-chapter 60 Annie. I think there must be some exchange between her and Muut that we did not see in the comic. I don't recall the conditions of her being "one of them" were discussed at any point, but she knows the price and knows what they want, something we don't really. But I'll be happy to be proven wrong about this. Antimony first meets Muut in the hospital and a little later helps other psychopomps there. I suspect this is why some entities presume that she's already an afterlife guide. She has the ability to be one, and even is officially one now, but hasn't been summoned to work. www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1787Though that may still come; it is at least threatened....
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