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Post by pyradonis on May 10, 2021 13:11:25 GMT
In fact, Coyote was gracious enough to complete the time loop for them. If the tic-toc had survived beyond Annie’s rescue, they would have a paradox which could only be resolved via multiple timelines. By destroying it, Coyote averted Kat’s nightmare scenario. Eh. Kat could have just deliberately flown the Tic-Toc into the cliffside. Bird broken, mission accomplished.
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Post by Gemminie on May 10, 2021 13:41:41 GMT
In fact, Coyote was gracious enough to complete the time loop for them. If the tic-toc had survived beyond Annie’s rescue, they would have a paradox which could only be resolved via multiple timelines. By destroying it, Coyote averted Kat’s nightmare scenario. Eh. Kat could have just deliberately flown the Tic-Toc into the cliffside. Bird broken, mission accomplished. Or, I mean, she could have just brought it back to the Norns' house. It didn't have to be smashed. But it did, in order for Coyote to play his shenanigan.
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Post by silicondream on May 10, 2021 15:32:41 GMT
In fact, Coyote was gracious enough to complete the time loop for them. If the tic-toc had survived beyond Annie’s rescue, they would have a paradox which could only be resolved via multiple timelines. By destroying it, Coyote averted Kat’s nightmare scenario. Eh. Kat could have just deliberately flown the Tic-Toc into the cliffside. Bird broken, mission accomplished. You want our Angel to deliberately kamikaze a perfectly good, incredibly cute, robot bird? You monster. Seriously, I'm not sure she would have. Not right away, anyway. It'd be awfully tempting to keep soaring through the timestream, dodging Court attempts at capture, clearing up history's mysteries, maybe checking out those mythical times before the Founding.... Kat is a terrible lawbreaker when gaming, after all. Or, I mean, she could have just brought it back to the Norns' house. It didn't have to be smashed. But it did, in order for Coyote to play his shenanigan. Sans smash, Chapters 8 and 14 play out very differently: no encounter with wrecked bird for Annie, probably no chance to cross the waters for Jeanne (I'm assuming the presence of the wreckage temporarily extended Court territory), no discovery of Seed Birdmuth and subsequent angry visit from Ysengrin. Paradox!
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Post by DonDueed on May 10, 2021 15:58:28 GMT
What Happened To the Annies, by DonDueed (which is me): 1. There was one Annie. 2. There were two Annies. 3. There was one Annie again. 4. ?? The End. QED! Let us illustrate this theory with an extremely simple visual diagram. View AttachmentThe true nature of each question mark is obvious, therefore left as an exercise for the reader. Clever use of radial coordinates on your chart! ;-)
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Post by saardvark on May 10, 2021 20:55:12 GMT
How about this: Annie is pushed off bridge by evil shadow-possessed Robot. Dies. Or was supposed to... Kat sends tic-tocs back in time to rescue her. Stable time loop. Annie is saved. But Arbiter senses original timeline, *neither* Annie should be here - she should have died (never even becoming "they"). Loup splits Annie. He splits her personality, not bringing in a alternate timeline Annie or anything similar. Time dilation due to lack of Forest control by Loup introduces time shift for Forest Annie. ...hence Arbiter and Brinnie detect a "shift". But it is not a shift due to different timelines or time travel (like the tic-tocs), so the Norns say its not their department either. does that solve all the ambiguities? Re-reading the archive I found this comic that kinda support your theory: www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2259In the image Zimmy's thought there is not someone picked from a different timeline, but of someone split in two. wow, nice catch! Hadn't noticed that before.....
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Post by pyradonis on May 10, 2021 21:51:41 GMT
Eh. Kat could have just deliberately flown the Tic-Toc into the cliffside. Bird broken, mission accomplished. Or, I mean, she could have just brought it back to the Norns' house. It didn't have to be smashed. But it did, in order for Coyote to play his shenanigan. I doubt Kat would have risked creating a paradox by not having the Tic-Toc end up broken at the shore, not any more than she would have risked leading her parents to the wrong warehouse.
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Post by Gemminie on May 11, 2021 1:44:04 GMT
Re-reading the archive I found this comic that kinda support your theory: www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2259In the image Zimmy's thought there is not someone picked from a different timeline, but of someone split in two. wow, nice catch! Hadn't noticed that before..... My random speculation about that is that the "unlucky" people Zimmy is talking about are people with DID, which usually develops as a result of emotional trauma ("unlucky" in that sense). It's possible that to Zimmy, what Loup did to Annie looks similar to DID.
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Post by Gemminie on May 11, 2021 1:50:04 GMT
Or, I mean, she could have just brought it back to the Norns' house. It didn't have to be smashed. But it did, in order for Coyote to play his shenanigan. I doubt Kat would have risked creating a paradox by not having the Tic-Toc end up broken at the shore, not any more than she would have risked leading her parents to the wrong warehouse. Good point. I was going to say what about the paradox of not sending the Tic-Toc back to pre-Court times, because how do the robots believe that the Tic-Toc has existed since back then? But then, if androids in the future die and go into the Ether believing in a diving being who created a mythical ornithonic, the Ether may well cause past robots to tell a tale about such a divine being and such a birdbot. It didn't have to exist in the past; only its stories do. Or Kat might make another one and send it back at some future time. Or she might pluck the Tic-Toc out of the timestream and visit the distant past, then drop it back exactly where/when she borrowed it from.
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Post by sebastian on May 11, 2021 8:11:19 GMT
Or, I mean, she could have just brought it back to the Norns' house. It didn't have to be smashed. But it did, in order for Coyote to play his shenanigan. I doubt Kat would have risked creating a paradox by not having the Tic-Toc end up broken at the shore, not any more than she would have risked leading her parents to the wrong warehouse. About the Tik-toks, even after the explanation there is still something weird about them, for example, the first time we see Coyote and Ysengrim at a Court's meeting, Ysengrim said that the bird has rooted himself into the shore. At the time I, and suppose many others did thought twice about it, because, you know, weird Court technology, but after the revelation than Kat made them, the thing came as a little weird. The impression I had was, and even from its remains looks like, that Kat made it with normal robot technology that is not supposed to grow that way (is it?). So what is happened there? Is Y lying? is it a trick of Coyote? Or there is something even weirder about the Tik-Tok(s)? Second: the mythological status of the Tik-Toks, said to be even older that the Court, it don't coumpute. In the chapters with the norms we see Kat sending the bird in the stream of time and we can see all the istances of the Tik-toks ever made and the total is 7 or 8, mostly are seen by Zimmy and/or Antimony, one from Kat's parents and only one (or maybe two, if you count the shadow controlled Robot) are witnessed by a robot at all. How could that explain the Tik-Toks entering the robotic mythos and iconographyas they did? Some etheric shenanningans? Or are we going to see more about these birds?
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Post by Gemminie on May 11, 2021 15:08:43 GMT
I doubt Kat would have risked creating a paradox by not having the Tic-Toc end up broken at the shore, not any more than she would have risked leading her parents to the wrong warehouse. About the Tik-toks, even after the explanation there is still something weird about them, for example, the first time we see Coyote and Ysengrim at a Court's meeting, Ysengrim said that the bird has rooted himself into the shore. At the time I, and suppose many others did thought twice about it, because, you know, weird Court technology, but after the revelation than Kat made them, the thing came as a little weird. The impression I had was, and even from its remains looks like, that Kat made it with normal robot technology that is not supposed to grow that way (is it?). So what is happened there? Is Y lying? is it a trick of Coyote? Or there is something even weirder about the Tik-Tok(s)? I've got a whole theory about that. Brief version: • Coyote knocks the Tic-Toc out of the air, where it crashes onto the Forest shore • Annie gets cut by Jeanne while ethereally projected (which is why Jeanne could reach her across the river), and her blood soaks into the soil • Coyote sends Ysengrin to bury the Tic-Toc in the soil watered with Annie's ethereal blood (at which time he also, er, helps the fairies) • Coyote takes away Ysengrin's memory of having done that, in the same way that he takes many other memories from Ysengrin • Coyote now knows that Court technology will grow, if it's buried in Forest soil and watered with the blood of a creature that can bleed in the Ether, so he has some idea of how the Seed Bismuth was planted (he didn't see it happen originally, as he arrived later) • Coyote did this so Loup would know all of this – Loup either already has these memories, or they're in something Loup will obtain, such as the lake water, the dagger, etc. I know, right? Either Kat's going to make another Tic-Toc and send it back to pre-Court times, or she's going to play some tricks with the Tic-Toc she made before (grab it from the timestream, do more exploring, then put it back exactly where/when she got it), or something happened in the past to cause the story of its existence in pre-Court times to spread. I mean, robots don't lie, but they will share and spread incorrect data if they believe it to be true. It may be that etheric shenanigans cause at least the story of the Tic-Toc (and perhaps an image or drawing) to circulate among the robots in the distant past. It seems quite likely that we'll find out more about this sooner or later. It remains a big unanswered question. (As an aside, it seems kind of weird that there are all these big unanswered questions around, but the characters don't ask them. However, that's not weird from a narrative point of view – it's a distraction from the story to show the characters in a chapter asking questions that aren't going to be dealt with in some way in that chapter. Of course, "dealt with in some way" could mean that the questions lead to even more questions.)
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Post by todd on May 14, 2021 21:39:55 GMT
On a lighter note: I'm not that good at uploading drawings onto the Internet, so I haven't participated much in fanart, but I recently had an image of a drawing of a two-headed Annie, one head being "Court Annie" and the other being "Forest Annie", both angrily crying in unison "Zimmy!" - representing an alternate Court where their reunion had a glitch....
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Post by silicondream on May 16, 2021 7:37:58 GMT
Thank you! Been lurking for a while haha. Yes, re-belated welcome! Then I hope you will indulge one more--and don't mind that it's physicsy again. Down with quantum! Relativity holds the key! Okay, so there's more than one definition of "timeline." One idea, which Kat's favoring, is of a chronological arrangement of events as an objective state of affairs. It tells you How Things Happened, for everybody who matters. In this timeline, Lincoln was assassinated before the Yangtze river dolphin went extinct. In another, hypothetical timeline, the dolphin disappeared first. But if that's how you remember things, either you're wrong or you live in an entirely separate universe; we can't both be right. But there's also the notion of a timeline as a perspective on the world: the chronological arrangement of events that we perceive to be the case. I.e., the sort of thing that students practice expressing by making physical "timelines" in class. In this case, things are more ambiguous. I recall myself shouting "Happy New Year!" in London immediately after the ball dropped in Times Square, but if you were zooming east across the Atlantic at that moment you might see me shouting slightly before the ball drops. And we are both right, because it depends on your point of view. The timing and, to some degree, even the order of events is subjective. Yet we can interact with each other, and argue over the timing, because we're on different timelines within the same universe. In relativity, communication across timelines is as simple as chatting with someone while moving past them. (If you like math/physics jargon you could call this a list of the proper times of events from an observer's reference frame, or the projection of the universe onto an observer's proper time axis, or a foliation of spacetime along the observer's worldline with respect to their surfaces of simultaneity. And in that case you could probably explain to me why I'm using those terms imprecisely, and feel free to do so via PM! But only assuming you click the spoiler above, but don't feel obliged!) The Arbiter is speaking of timelines in this second sense, which is why (aside from being a douche) he's so much more relaxed about the implications than Kat is. Is there a timeline where Annie enters the Forest but never comes out? Sure, lots of them. For instance, the timeline of an observer rapidly accelerating away from the Forest forever. Or the timeline of an outside observer if the Forest drifts across the event horizon of a large black hole. In either of these timelines, the Forest would appear to freeze in time, redshift, and fade to black, and nothing more would ever be seen of its future. But that doesn't actually mean anything dramatic happened to Annie or the forest at that moment; they're just beyond the observer's horizon. Is there a Kat in such a timeline who's devastated to lose her Annie? It's possible, but probably not. Most timelines are unoccupied, because there are far more ways to move through the universe than there are people to actually do it. Pretty much everyone in the Court is approximately on the same timeline, since they're physically close and nearly at rest relative to one another. Nobody ever noticed a second Kat whizzing away from the Court in a rocket at 99% of lightspeed, so we probably don't have to worry about her feelings. What does it mean to be "shifted?"I think it means that one being is temporarily granted two perspectives, which would normally be considered inconsistent. In real-world relativity this tends to require moving along a nearly closed timelike curve, because observers don't split. But Annie splits, so it's much easier to shift her; just accelerate one of her copies hard with respect to the other. In other words, Annie was living the Twin Paradox. What does it mean that both Annies "aren't supposed to be here?"I think it means that they both went through some time dilation. (Recall that Court Annie was still gone overnight in the Court's timeline, even though in her own timeline she got kicked out of the Forest almost immediately.) The Arbiter's in the Court and talking to/about mostly Court folks, so "here" is the Court's approximate timeline at the moment. All the elves are even more out of sync with it. Why is the Forest under time dilation in the first place?Loup said he froze the forest on purpose, but I think he was lying; the forest is under extreme time dilation due to his telekinetic palsy. As Coyote reminds him, Ysengrin's wood body would "shake and tremble" due to imperfect control. Well, to tremble is to vibrate: to move back and forth, exchanging speed and acceleration. The effect--at unrealistically high speeds, of course--is time dilation. How did Loup get Annie to split?I agree with most other posters that Annie's inherently divisible, and Loup just had to trigger it. I think he did this by (miraculously, magically, somehow) behaving ambiguously toward her, and her own reactions did the rest. When Annie first approaches the Forest, Loup has a few options in how to respond to her. His laugh is fragmenting as he figures out how to do more than one of these simultaneously: - Loup excludes Annie, so that she can't even walk into the Forest in the first place. She just smacks into a forcefield, or gets glamoured into walking in circles or something, and then goes home. Chronologically, this Annie would be unshifted--the "Annie that's supposed to be here." But he didn't do this, because the Court didn't meet her.
- Loup avoids Annie, so that she wanders around the Forest for subjective hours trying to figure out what's going on. That's decades, centuries, or longer in the Court timeline. This would be the Annie that never comes out of the Forest. We don't technically know if Loup did this, but the twins didn't meet a confused triplet when they came back to visit him, so probably not.
- Loup rejects Annie, so that she's tossed out of the Forest after a relatively short time. This is Court Annie. Chronologically, she's shifted by several hours. Psychologically, she just got rejected by "Ysengrin," failed in her mission, and then had to trudge back to the Court and be considered useless for six more months. I think that's easily enough to explain her particular personality quirks; she's just clinging extra-hard to her Court family and her mother's memory because she's lost so much else.
- Loup accepts Annie and has a chat, so that she spends a moderate amount of time in the Forest. Chronologically, Forest Annie is shifted by six months. Psychologically, she's the Annie we already knew with a bit of reassurance from Ysengrin's shade and a diplomacy win under her belt, so she's feeling pretty confident in her independence.
How did Zimmy get Annie to rejoin?
Really, the twins just had to get to know each other well enough that each could imagine in detail what the other had gone through. At that point the Phoenix kicked in and merged their memories, after which they were identical again, after which she didn't need two bodies because she's Annie and she does stuff like that. And all the readers...understand.
If this interpretation is contradicted by any plot points or fails to explain anything critical, I am prepared to say the word "M-theory" in a very serious tone of voice until that stops happening, so bring it.
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Post by saardvark on May 16, 2021 16:25:33 GMT
Thank you! Been lurking for a while haha. Yes, re-belated welcome! Then I hope you will indulge one more--and don't mind that it's physicsy again. Down with quantum! Relativity holds the key! ... How did Zimmy get Annie to rejoin? Really, the twins just had to get to know each other well enough that each could imagine in detail what the other had gone through. At that point the Phoenix kicked in and merged their memories, after which they were identical again, after which she didn't need two bodies because she's Annie and she does stuff like that. And all the readers...understand. If this interpretation is contradicted by any plot points or fails to explain anything critical, I am prepared to say the word "M-theory" in a very serious tone of voice until that stops happening, so bring it.
Hmm, well, you haven't really explained the Zimmy rejoining, but then I don't think anyone has successfully so far! A very creatively physicy take on it. I suspect if the Forest (and F!Annie in it) really were vibrating at near c, there wouldn't be much left but atomized goo.... I'll see your M-theory and raise you a Brane....
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Post by warrl on May 17, 2021 1:25:58 GMT
I suspect if the Forest (and F!Annie in it) really were vibrating at near c, there wouldn't be much left but atomized goo.... ... of all the land within a radius of a couple hundred miles... and the nearby ocean would be boiling steadily...
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Post by todd on May 17, 2021 12:49:10 GMT
Incidentally, the talk about an alternate timeline in which Annie died when she fell off the bridge got me wondering recently what such an "alternate Court" would have been like (it'd be tempting to have a future chapter in which Annie and Kat get a glimpse of it through some sort of "alternate timeline window", though I doubt it'll actually happen).
For a start, Reynardine will be free with Annie's death, and the Court will be desperately trying to contain him again and hoping that they can come up with a way of doing so before he possesses anyone else, as he did with Daniel and Sivo. And, to make matters more complicated, Coyote will be continuing to get Reynardine back as part of his big plan (which, in this alternate timeline, never shifts its focus to using Ysengrin, since with Annie dead, her interactions with Ysengrin which inspire Coyote to use the grey wolf for his plan never take place).
The robot religion never gets founded; with Annie, the only person at the Court who was close to Robot, dead, nobody rescues Robot's CPU, which means no need to build a new body for him, which was the catalyst for Kat's project.
Kat will probably be in an utter mess over the death of her best friend (close to her only friend at that point); it'd be even worse if she descended into the chasm to rescue Annie only to find her body; at least she has a couple of good parents to help her through the loss. Would she ever get close to Paz in this alternate timeline?
And what will the impact be on Antony, when word reaches him of Annie's death, meaning that he's lost his daughter so soon after losing his wife?
Jeanne never gets freed; I can imagine much debate on whether that's a bad thing (meaning that she and her lover go on being trapped in an undead state) or a good thing (since it means that the Court is safe from forest-folk attacks - though it could also mean that conditions between the Forest and the Court remain in an uneasy truce rather than genuine peace, and there's less hope of their developing into a healthier relationship).
The tragic cycle of Annie's family tree is ended, with no more "the mother withers away after her daughter is born" - though it makes a sad way to resolve that problem.
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Post by silicondream on May 17, 2021 23:50:25 GMT
Hmm, well, you haven't really explained the Zimmy rejoining, but then I don't think anyone has successfully so far! A very creatively physicy take on it. I suspect if the Forest (and F!Annie in it) really were vibrating at near c, there wouldn't be much left but atomized goo.... Not if the vibration was perfectly synchronized! I figure Loup subjected the Forest to a spatially uniform, temporally oscillating gravitational field. In other words: Kamlen. Shake it. *Flying tackle from Irial* Thank you, Kamlen. You couldn't raise a Brane if your li--sorry. Got a bit overwrqught. ... of all the land within a radius of a couple hundred miles... and the nearby ocean would be boiling steadily... Hey! I don't point to how Loup *SLAM*med the Forest into the Court without mass earthquakes and devastation, you don't mention boiling oceans. Everything's cool right n ow.
(it'd be tempting to have a future chapter in which Annie and Kat get a glimpse of it through some sort of "alternate timeline window", though I doubt it'll actually happen). Robot also doubts it. And also doubts it. Indeed, all of him also doubts it. *maniacal laughter* "...wait, am I missing a tween? KAT! TIC- TOC!" She wouldn't have a choice. Mirror Paz uses whips. (mf@13w I realized I'd always be too young for Nana Visitor)Doubt any word would reach him. At least before his...experiment. DEAD HAND: *reaches out and twists* SURMANNIE: Hi, husbandfather! TONY: *twitch* *metal claw holds greenglo arro out of the Waters* JEANNE: they stock amphibious molebots now, fille? KAT: they stock eleven.JEANNE: eleven? Why not tw Sacre bleu
"Why is the Annwn chasm...glowing?" --CONTINENTAL HOLOCAUST--
*COYOTE* laughed at this
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Post by silicondream on May 18, 2021 8:01:42 GMT
Oh, almost forgot. Hmm, well, you haven't really explained the Zimmy rejoining, but then I don't think anyone has successfully so far! It's hardly an explanation, I know, but I just wanted to convey that it comes down to the Identity of Indiscernibles for me. ( fia did a fantastic summarized discussion of the principle last year, as you doubtless remember better than I.) If the Annies could be made identical to one another, then they would be one another, and you'd only have one Annie left (albeit with double the amplitude, apparently). And since exchanging identities is Zimmy's shtick, it makes sense that she could help that happen. Annie is a boson, you see.
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Post by saardvark on May 18, 2021 11:43:46 GMT
Oh, almost forgot. Hmm, well, you haven't really explained the Zimmy rejoining, but then I don't think anyone has successfully so far! It's hardly an explanation, I know, but I just wanted to convey that it comes down to the Identity of Indiscernibles for me. ( fia did a fantastic summarized discussion of the principle last year, as you doubtless remember better than I.) If the Annies could be made identical to one another, then they would be one another, and you'd only have one Annie left (albeit with double the amplitude, apparently). And since exchanging identities is Zimmy's shtick, it makes sense that she could help that happen. Annie is a boson, you see. well, better than a fermion or heaven forfend, the Annies could have been each other's anti-Annie.... EDIT: (fermions couldn't have recombined, you see... a Pauli no-no ... but you probably saw that!)
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Post by rafk on May 22, 2021 8:35:27 GMT
I think the Annies apparently being just "bip" combined into one Annie sharing the memories of both, besides seeming as sudden and unnecessary as the "bip" appearance of the 2nd Annie in the first place rubs me particularly wrong because I have been reading El Goonish Shive as long as I've been reading Gunnerkrigg, or nearly as long. If Ellen was "bip" recombined into Elliott it wouldn't be treated as oh, now Elliott is more complete, it would be treated like whatever caused it fucking murdered Ellen, a separate sentient being with her own thoughts, dreams and goals even if she began as a duplicate of Elliott with only Elliott's memories up to the moment of duplication. And that's really the lens through which I have been viewing the two Annies - whatever the method of creation and whatever the point of it besides an especially convoluted vehicle for character development, they were two distinct sentient beings and Zimmy didn't even ask before combining them.
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Post by Gemminie on May 24, 2021 21:43:08 GMT
I think the Annies apparently being just "bip" combined into one Annie sharing the memories of both, besides seeming as sudden and unnecessary as the "bip" appearance of the 2nd Annie in the first place rubs me particularly wrong because I have been reading El Goonish Shive as long as I've been reading Gunnerkrigg, or nearly as long. If Ellen was "bip" recombined into Elliott it wouldn't be treated as oh, now Elliott is more complete, it would be treated like whatever caused it fucking murdered Ellen, a separate sentient being with her own thoughts, dreams and goals even if she began as a duplicate of Elliott with only Elliott's memories up to the moment of duplication. And that's really the lens through which I have been viewing the two Annies - whatever the method of creation and whatever the point of it besides an especially convoluted vehicle for character development, they were two distinct sentient beings and Zimmy didn't even ask before combining them. I mean, that's a valid worry depending on what really happened, which we've been guessing about but don't really know. But yes, I've been reading EGS for longer than I've been reading GC, so I know what you're saying. However, Ellen had a lot of experiences that were vastly different from Elliott's (for those who don't read it, Ellen was a magical creation based on Elliott's form at the time he was zapped by the artifact, so Ellen had a brand-new soul despite being in a 17-year-old body, so another magic-user helped Ellen by having her soul experience 17 years of growing up in another dimension when she was asleep and dreaming in her home dimension). The two Annies had a difference of six months' recent experiences, but their life before that was exactly identical, and many of the things they did once they caught up with each other were also the same or similar. They still reacted the same way to things, they said things at the same time, they came up with similar ideas. Both of them were sentient beings, but the majority of their thoughts, dreams and goals were the same. It's looking as if Annie was split into two parts that already existed before the split, so putting them back together may have been a lot like gluing a broken pot back together. Or not. We don't know exactly what happened. There's also the possibility that I'm keeping in the back of my head that they're not really entirely recombined and that both of them still exist within Annie's mind, or within the Ether somehow. There's only one body, but perhaps they're both still there.
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Post by rafk on Jun 2, 2021 11:18:03 GMT
I think the Annies apparently being just "bip" combined into one Annie sharing the memories of both, besides seeming as sudden and unnecessary as the "bip" appearance of the 2nd Annie in the first place rubs me particularly wrong because I have been reading El Goonish Shive as long as I've been reading Gunnerkrigg, or nearly as long. If Ellen was "bip" recombined into Elliott it wouldn't be treated as oh, now Elliott is more complete, it would be treated like whatever caused it fucking murdered Ellen, a separate sentient being with her own thoughts, dreams and goals even if she began as a duplicate of Elliott with only Elliott's memories up to the moment of duplication. And that's really the lens through which I have been viewing the two Annies - whatever the method of creation and whatever the point of it besides an especially convoluted vehicle for character development, they were two distinct sentient beings and Zimmy didn't even ask before combining them. I mean, that's a valid worry depending on what really happened, which we've been guessing about but don't really know. But yes, I've been reading EGS for longer than I've been reading GC, so I know what you're saying. However, Ellen had a lot of experiences that were vastly different from Elliott's (for those who don't read it, Ellen was a magical creation based on Elliott's form at the time he was zapped by the artifact, so Ellen had a brand-new soul despite being in a 17-year-old body, so another magic-user helped Ellen by having her soul experience 17 years of growing up in another dimension when she was asleep and dreaming in her home dimension). The two Annies had a difference of six months' recent experiences, but their life before that was exactly identical, and many of the things they did once they caught up with each other were also the same or similar. They still reacted the same way to things, they said things at the same time, they came up with similar ideas. Both of them were sentient beings, but the majority of their thoughts, dreams and goals were the same. It's looking as if Annie was split into two parts that already existed before the split, so putting them back together may have been a lot like gluing a broken pot back together. Or not. We don't know exactly what happened. There's also the possibility that I'm keeping in the back of my head that they're not really entirely recombined and that both of them still exist within Annie's mind, or within the Ether somehow. There's only one body, but perhaps they're both still there. Yeah, but I don't think Ellen being granted the equivalent of 17 years of memories in her dreams is what makes her a person in her own right. I suspect it's even one of those things that Dan wouldn't have done if writing the story from scratch as her alternate universe memories basically never get referenced ever anymore. At the very least, it is a point that so far seems to have been completely handwaved in GC with the Annies recombining, and part of why so far it seems to have been a very unsatisfactory storyline created purely for the cutesy thing of Annie talking out her mental issues with an actual embodiment of herself, until she didn't need it anymore.
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