[2769] Paz smiles politely

[bedinsis]

and Kat explains her new powers further.

[arf]

Either that, or this is where the re-education/programming begins.

"All hail the esKaton"

[bedinsis]

I wonder if Paz is avoiding telling Kat her intentions because

1. She just doesn't want to break the heart of a loved one.
2. She finds Kat in this form terrifying and she fears her.
3. She is merely being polite and letting her explain her new capabilities.

[csj]

*hacker noises*
'I'm in'

[madjack]

Apr 10, 2023 7:09:22 GMT bedinsis said:

I wonder if Paz is avoiding telling Kat her intentions because

1. She just doesn't want to break the heart of a loved one.
2. She finds Kat in this form terrifying and she fears her.
3. She is merely being polite and letting her explain her new capabilities.

1 and 3, I think. Seeing Kat so proud of what she's achieved is making it harder than Paz thought it'd be.

[shadow3]

OMEGA: You see me...I see you...

[madjack]

Edit: taking this to the wildspec thread.

[blahzor]

Classic closing of the eyes to hide emotions thing Annie usually do

[sosleepy]

Yeeeeaaah, might need a good firewall before barging into Courts network. Especially when your PC is connected directly to your brain.

I really really REALLY want to know how Court is going to deal with Kat now. Even if she's messing with them however she wants do they really have a way of stopping her? I doubt that the Court can protect itself from Loup if he decides to continue on ravaging everything. The only thing that might have a chance to stop Loup from doing so (except himself) is Annie. Losing their only diplomatic asset by directly harming Kat might prove to be devastating. The Court plans to escape, but Loup wouldn't give them a chance to do that, so they need to take the initiative back. That means they need to strike first, and Kat might have conveniently opened her mind for them for an attack no one would even understand has been made. And perhaps gaining an unwilling ally.

...there's still a chance that everything is still going according to their plan though~

P.S. Kat's face on the first panel is ominous+gorgeous!

[knowit]

Definitely reading this as a "it's too much for me but I also don't think it's something to outright condemn and don't want to discourage her" situation

[sosleepy]

Apr 10, 2023 7:17:32 GMT madjack said:

Apr 10, 2023 7:09:22 GMT bedinsis said:

I wonder if Paz is avoiding telling Kat her intentions because

1. She just doesn't want to break the heart of a loved one.
2. She finds Kat in this form terrifying and she fears her.
3. She is merely being polite and letting her explain her new capabilities.

1 and 3, I think. Seeing Kat so proud of what she's achieved is making it harder than Paz thought it'd be.

True, and i can imagine Paz, with a smile, ripping that band-aid off. Might even interrupt Kat's train of thoughts so as not to lose her resolve.

[Geekette]

I'm mostly getting "See, this is what I was talking about" from that expression. After all, Paz's compliant is that Kat's single-minded focus on her work takes her to places Paz doesn't have the strength to follow, and then immediately we have Kat - ahead and with her back to them, talking about all the new ideas she's going to try out.

Honestly, I'm seeing a lot of parallels not just thematically but also visually to the very first time Kat and Paz were seen talking; way back in the Animal Lab in chapter 29, where Paz said that the testing wasn't perfect, but it was self-regulated and she was there to stop it going to far. Tom's a great storyteller.

[Corvo]

Paz could teach Annie a thing or two about wearing masks.

[Gemminie]

Her eyes still shiny and black, Kat explains some of the things she can now do, like network visualization (I mean, this is a good thing, but it doesn't usually require an implant), searching for Loup, and finding a way to hack into Omega. Her network diagram seems to symbolize her local node as a circle labeled with the Mark of the Creator.

As Kat continues, we see her from behind and to her left, perhaps suggesting this is how Annie and Paz see her from their point of view. Kat was seeing various hovering holographic display elements, but in this fourth panel we don't see any of that, though they could be off-panel. This and the fact that she's seen from farther away make it ambiguous whether the black eyes and the holographic images are actually visible to Annie and Paz; they may only be visible to Kat as augmented-reality-style overlays to her senses. Or not.

Then, in the final frame, we see Annie and Paz. Paz is smiling happily, while Annie is looking at her and not smiling, eyebrows raised slightly. Perhaps Annie is surprised that Paz would smile at this moment.

My questions: Why is Paz smiling? I can think of three possible reasons: perhaps she's smiling politely as the topic of this thread says, expressing happiness that Kat has succeeded in a goal. I suggest that perhaps she's smiling because she knows she's about to escape this craziness. Or perhaps she's about to launch into her (doubtless rehearsed) speech about how what Kat has accomplished is so wonderful and she wants to get out of the way of all the amazing future accomplishments Kat's going to achieve and besides she misses her family and so on.

I think we know why Annie isn't smiling.

Why are Kat's eyes black? Whether or not Annie and Paz can actually see them, they might be a side effect of the holographic display. Perhaps this black overlay extends only when it's needed to project the interface on them. This might imply that others can see the black overlays but not the display elements that Kat sees.

Sudden black shiny contacts aren't usually a sign of anything good; have we learned nothing from Babylon 5?

[ctso74]

Kat: "Ha! Nothing could possibly go wrong."

[basser]

So is Kat dependent on the Court existing now cause elsewise she ain't got no powers.

[Nika]

Honestly, Paz' smile reads to me as "See, she'll be fine on her own without me"

[yellowb]

Re: Paz's smile:

Apr 10, 2023 14:43:18 GMT Gemminie said:

Or perhaps she's about to launch into her (doubtless rehearsed) speech about how what Kat has accomplished is so wonderful and she wants to get out of the way of all the amazing future accomplishments Kat's going to achieve and besides she misses her family and so on

Apr 10, 2023 15:32:10 GMT Nika said:

Honestly, Paz' smile reads to me as "See, she'll be fine on her own without me"

I think a little from column A and a little from column B is the case here.

(Edit: Paz is a little naìve is what I'm saying here)

[pyradonis]

Nice mask there, Paz.

Apr 10, 2023 14:43:18 GMT Gemminie said:

This and the fact that she's seen from farther away make it ambiguous whether the black eyes and the holographic images are actually visible to Annie and Paz; they may only be visible to Kat as augmented-reality-style overlays to her senses. Or not.

Or, the black eyes are symbolic just like the black gunk over Zimmy's eyes, and to Paz and Annie Kat's eyes still look normal.

I'm wondering about the "visualizing networks" thing. What's shown on the panel looks fancy, but not exactly never seen before. What exactly is Kat visualizing?

[mturtle7]

I RETURN! And man, am I glad I took that break. It looks like my concerns about the way Kat, her work, and the way Paz and Annie see both of those things have been...well, if not entirely resolved, at least addressed enough so that I don't feel like tearing my hair out in frustration anymore. I am so, SO, relieved that Paz finally got to clarify that she doesn't think Kat is going to end the world or something, but the new areas (omniscience, massively integrated networks) and methods (self-experimentation) of study Kat's getting into are too *stressful* for her. Arguably, it's actually super mature of her to recognize her own limits in this way and act on them without putting the blame on Kat. Although of course, on the other hand, trying to break up with your girlfriend by saying "It's not you, it's me" and "You'll be much happier on your own, you'll see" has not, historically speaking, gone SUPER well for a lot of people IRL, and for good reason.

As a computer scientist, the benefits Kat is actually getting from this implant strike me as a lot of vague technobabble, but honestly that's how 90% of the science in this comic has always been portrayed, so it's only a mild annoyance for me.

And incidentally, I agree with other people here (e.g. Nika, Gemminie) that "You'll be much happier on your own, you'll see" happens to also be the exact sentiment behind that smile in the last panel. To elaborate: Paz really really wants to not feel guilty about breaking up with Kat, so she's trying to be Very Supportive and Very Happy For Her, which I find to be an adorably flawed and human response, honestly.

[Angry Individual]

Paz next page: I'm breaking up with you.

[arf]

Apr 10, 2023 21:14:13 GMT Angry Individual said:

Paz next page: I'm breaking up with you.

Or, more pointedly: "I hope you'll be very happy together."

[guntherkrieg]

Paz: I'm breaking up with you

Kat: Oh no, you're malfunctioning, well we can fix that

[guntherkrieg]

Apr 10, 2023 15:18:13 GMT basser said:

So is Kat dependent on the Court existing now cause elsewise she ain't got no powers.

I AM the Court.

[guntherkrieg]

Kat's a Techno-Goddess
She does what she must
Because she can

[fia]

Forum Q:

Did Kat become non-human when she pressed the button that led to needing the reboot? Like, is she non-human now?

As a philosopher, my personal answer is YES. Because on top of an extended mind, which she had already begun to have before, she is fully beyond ordinary human capabilities now, and able to see and hear and "move" beyond her own body. 
But I guess some subset of her present being still involves a human body, so I'm open to contrary opinions.

[saardvark]

Apr 11, 2023 16:35:29 GMT fia said:

Forum Q:

Did Kat become non-human when she pressed the button that led to needing the reboot? Like, is she non-human now?

As a philosopher, my personal answer is YES. Because on top of an extended mind, which she had already begun to have before, she is fully beyond ordinary human capabilities now, and able to see and hear and "move" beyond her own body. 
But I guess some subset of her present being still involves a human body, so I'm open to contrary opinions.

I'd say she's trans-human, or human+ .  She has a human body (chip enhanced) and a human mind (also enhanced/altered)... so she is still at least partly human, but also More Than Human (to swipe a novel title).  An enhanced human.

[imaginaryfriend]

I think Kat is still human. She isn't the same human as she was before she activated the chip, or before the robots began to see her as the Angel, or before visited the Norns, or before she took double physics; she can do more things (things that a typical human can't understand, maybe) but she still has a human body and processes the world largely through a human brain. She's getting better and better about bending and (arguably) breaking rules but the rules still apply to her, so far.

[mturtle7]

Apr 11, 2023 16:35:29 GMT fia said:

Forum Q:

Did Kat become non-human when she pressed the button that led to needing the reboot? Like, is she non-human now?

As a philosopher, my personal answer is YES. Because on top of an extended mind, which she had already begun to have before, she is fully beyond ordinary human capabilities now, and able to see and hear and "move" beyond her own body. 
But I guess some subset of her present being still involves a human body, so I'm open to contrary opinions.

I...I get where you're from here, bud, but I think you should know that as a disabled person, any argument that says a character is officially "non-human" due to having physical and/or mental powers "beyond ordinary human capabilities" makes me WILDLY uncomfortable, because it kinda unconsciously implies that if some has a body and/or mind BELOW "ordinary human capabilities", then they are officially less than human, and that kind of logic has, uh...not exactly been used for anything good, historically. Just saying.

[drmemory]

I'd feel a lot better about this if she didn't look like Dark Willow. Also, when Paz breaks the news about her leaving... well let's just say I wouldn't want to be the one trying to leave, with someone who can basically control all technology not wanting me to leave.