[2838] "BSSSH"

[imaginaryfriend]

Three headed spiders. I guess these are the evolved versions of the one-headed one.

At least Antimony gets to do something cool now.

[philman]

That's how I want to deal with those guys who try to stop me in the street to sell something too.

[madjack]

Whatever happened to "The most horrifying looking creatures are usually the nicest?" Starting to think that either this might not be Annie or we're in the mother of all exceptions to that rule. Even in the other Zimmy distortions that we've seen others in, the only actual hostiles were when the Seraphs decided to get insistent.

There have been what looks like nasty things in Zimmy's other trips, but aside from the tiny spiders that got to Jack, only Zimmy and Gamma have been present then.

Also, imaginaryfriend your link has gotten proboards'd again.

[imaginaryfriend]

Sept 18, 2023 7:27:49 GMT madjack said:

Whatever happened to "The most horrifying looking creatures are usually the nicest?" Starting to think that either this might not be Annie or we're in the mother of all exceptions to that rule. Even in the other Zimmy distortions that we've seen others in, the only actual hostiles were when the Seraphs decided to get insistent. There have been what looks like nasty things in Zimmy's other trips, but aside from the tiny spiders that got to Jack, only Zimmy and Gamma have been present then.

It was drooling. I assume that means it was hungry and about to be very not nice. On the previous comic I was wondering if it would turn out to be... if not nice, at least not immediately hostile.

Agree. Most of Zeta's trauma was self-inflicted, me thinks, mostly from her lack of ability to control her own powers but also from beating up on herself. The whitelegs were trying to control people but they were motivated by love for Zeta* and trying to get out of her head (presumably in service to the former) and the Nobodies just inflicted memories on people (and maybe they were just memories to start with).

Now that Coyote's power is here, there's a lot more tooth and fang in the mix, it seems. Better hunting and harvesting when he's around, stronger magic... and also nastier monsters? Nastier x3?

Sept 18, 2023 7:27:49 GMT madjack said:

imaginaryfriend your link has gotten proboards'd again.

Dammit, Proboards. Thanks, it's fixed. Forgot to test it after I saved the revised post.



*It's still my speculation that the Whitelegs are psychic toxic waste, an unintended consequence of Gamma bombarding Zeta with positive thoughts and vibes to keep her power damped down.

[arf]

Annie already knows about the whitelegs and their appetites.
... although perhaps not their familiarity with "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"

[rafk]

What's that coming over the hill, is it more monsters? Is it more monsterrrrrrrs?

[blahzor]

Kama-hama-haaaaaa

[blahzor]

They will now thank Annie from freeing them from the spider body

[silicondream]

Sept 18, 2023 7:41:16 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Sept 18, 2023 7:27:49 GMT madjack said:

Whatever happened to "The most horrifying looking creatures are usually the nicest?" Starting to think that either this might not be Annie or we're in the mother of all exceptions to that rule. Even in the other Zimmy distortions that we've seen others in, the only actual hostiles were when the Seraphs decided to get insistent. There have been what looks like nasty things in Zimmy's other trips, but aside from the tiny spiders that got to Jack, only Zimmy and Gamma have been present then.

It was drooling. I assume that means it was hungry and about to be very not nice. 

Or it was trying to be hospitable. Who doesn't like a wee dram of Friendship Pheromone? Other than Annie, I mean.

[pyradonis]

Great, now you just made 'em mad.

[guntherkrieg]

BSSH please

[guntherkrieg]

Getting some major Hollows from Bleach, or a scaled down Angel from Evangelion vibes here. Top notch.

[Corvo]

Fire:1
  X  
Endangered species: 0

[Per]

It's battle manga from here on out

[ctso74]

The clicks they'll soon hear, will be translatable to: "Ah! She killed Sandy! She was just bringing a welcome bouquet of heads. Tourists!"

[Gemminie]

Annie has stepped forward to confront the spider creature, which now looks as if it has three mask-like heads rather than seizing three smaller tick-like creatures, and which has descended to street level, leaving a puddle of some kind of drool on the pavement. Her hair and eyes going all flame-y (and Renard looking fierce), Annie then blasts the creature with a huge spray of fire. This seems to leave the creature in smoldering fragments, some of which were apparently blown fairly high into the air, as we see them falling past what appears to be the roof of a building.

Then we see shadows appearing on that same roof. Seems they're more creatures, one of which has three heads like the previous one, and another one seems to have at least one mask-like head, but it's not clear whether their bodies are spider-like. So there are at least three more creatures coming.

I certainly hope Annie hasn't been fire-blasting any real people while in this hallucinatory reality, if that's what the distortion is. This seems to be more of a reality distortion as in chapter 49, though, rather than the other Zimmingham events (chapters 19, 28, 38 and 78 to some extent, and 79), which seem to have been hallucinations with people's physical bodies just standing motionless in physical reality.

How far can they have physically gotten? It doesn't seem as if they'd gone very far into the Court/Zimmingham area before the creature appeared. That is, how much more ground do they have to cover before they reach either Zimmy's physical location or their ultimate destination at the shore?

[Gemini Jim]

I know her eyes looking all red-orange is part of her transforming into Fire-Blasting Annie (TM), but it also makes her look more like the New People characters.

[Gemminie]

So since the spider thing seems to have had three heads instead of eating three smaller creatures, my earlier theory about it being directly related to Zimmy's lashing out at the three entities in Zim Grim was incorrect. Or was it? Because Annie just lashed out at the three-headed creature. The next thing that happened in Zim Grim was Zimmy pushing through a brick wall to another area where she was crowded by lots of people and almost got hit by a car trying to escape them, whereupon she ran away and hit her head on something. It looks like Annie and Co. are going to get crowded by more entities. Will there be other analogies to Zim Grim (if indeed this encounter was one)?

[Eily]

This is so strange, Annie just killed something right after only *guessing* what it might be. I was wondering if she ever killed anything before, beside an ant to get the psychopimp's attention (where she actually got told to be more careful about taking a life...) and it looks like she did in Perspective, but at least at the time it was out of anger while she was in undeniable danger. It just doesn't seem like Annie to just kill in cold blood.

Also, I do get a very similar vibe as the Perspective chapter, with a distortion of reality that made people mistake their allies for monsters. If I had to guess what she just killed, the creature looked like a weird mix of metal and grown limbs, I'd say she just burned one the actual new people.

But if that's the case, we've already seen someone believe they're Annie in Zimmy's distortion, so I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this is not Annie, but actually Robot on a power trip.

[ezpak]

I've seen so much speculation about this not being the real Annie, and comparisons to previous trips to Zimmingham, that I'm now convinced the characteristic Tom twist will be to play everything completely straight.

[imaginaryfriend]

Sept 18, 2023 19:04:22 GMT Eily said:

This is so strange, Annie just killed something right after only *guessing* what it might be. I was wondering if she ever killed anything before, beside an ant to get the psychopimp's attention (where she actually got told to be more careful about taking a life...) and it looks like she did in Perspective, but at least at the time it was out of anger while she was in undeniable danger. It just doesn't seem like Annie to just kill in cold blood.

I think it should be noted that Antimony waited until she was within its reach before using her fire. It's unclear how much time has passed from when they spotted it and when Antimony attacked but it must be more than thirty seconds; it was coming right at them, uncommunicative, and literally slavering. She showed more restraint than I would have in that position. Insects and arachnids can attack prey with blinding speed once they get that close.

Also: She probably has good reason to suspect that spider-thinger was not really real, just real enough to give one the experience of being killed and eaten some way or other. Maybe it was a coagulation of negative emotions given form and a semblance of life and frying it was no more significant than glopping a Nobody. Maybe it was a component of the Court surveillance system that had enough AI to become something else. Sure, it might have been a real spider before the distortion transmogrified it. It's even possible that it was something intelligent before the distortion (a creature from Gillite, a Diego-era robot, or even a random human from the wood or Court) but what then? What are her other options?

If they wait for it to attack first then there's the real risk they've just lost somebody, either incapacitated or dead. They can all try to run away but without knowing how fast that thing is/was that leaves open the possibility they get attacked from behind... they can purposefully scatter in different directions but that likely sacrifices one person so the rest can temporarily escape and hide... to be picked off one at a time, probably. If they somehow got away from it they'd have to worry about it stalking them later, possibly dropping down on them from a height with surprise. Antimony's fire can probably restrain it either by levitating it off its appendages or surrounding it with a fire-barrier... but only so long as she's in close proximity and concentrating. If she'd tried that she could have given the Noobmenz some time to run at the cost of no longer being close enough to protect them... when she can't know what they'd be running toward... and since more appeared she might have been flanked and overwhelmed before buying enough time to do any good.

Antimony was close enough to look Spider-Chan in the eyes and apparently judged it an imminent threat. Until/unless other evidence emerges I'm assuming she had good reason to do so and it was the right call.

Sept 18, 2023 9:27:07 GMT silicondream said:

Sept 18, 2023 7:41:16 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

It was drooling. I assume that means it was hungry and about to be very not nice. 

Or it was trying to be hospitable. Who doesn't like a wee dram of Friendship Pheromone? Other than Annie, I mean.

Not sure if joking but that isn't impossible though I think circumstances make it unlikely. It could also be vomiting up nutrients in a friendly greeting and/or proposing courtship... or even offering a mother/larva relationship to wee Antimony.

Even so, the possible downsides of waiting to see what Spider-Chan would have done in my opinion greatly outweigh the slender odds of something constructive happening.

[rafk]

Annie has far more etheric control now than her very very limited power at the time of the whitelegs adventure and can quite possibly tell etherically what's real and what isn't. She didn't go around touching the new people with her to see if anything just disappeared either.

I don't think it's at all likely she's just randomly burning things based on appearances only.

Few know better than her that people may not look like themselves in a Zimmy distortion.

[TBeholder]

Sept 18, 2023 7:27:49 GMT madjack said:

Whatever happened to "The most horrifying looking creatures are usually the nicest?" Starting to think that either this might not be Annie or we're in the mother of all exceptions to that rule. Even in the other Zimmy distortions that we've seen others in, the only actual hostiles were when the Seraphs decided to get insistent.

There have been what looks like nasty things in Zimmy's other trips, but aside from the tiny spiders that got to Jack, only Zimmy and Gamma have been present then.

Or, usually the nasties (other than Nobodies) tend to avoid Annie.

[pyradonis]

Looking at the page again, those masks(?) remind me more and more of Hollow Knight.

Sept 18, 2023 19:04:22 GMT Eily said:

[...]to get the psychopimp's attention [...]
But if that's the case, we've already seen someone believe they're Annie in Zimmy's distortion, so I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this is not Annie, but actually Robot on a power trip.

Psychopimps.

Sept 18, 2023 19:52:53 GMT ezpak said:

I've seen so much speculation about this not being the real Annie, and comparisons to previous trips to Zimmingham, that I'm now convinced the characteristic Tom twist will be to play everything completely straight.

I agree. What would be the point of using the same twist twice? Though I like Eily's idea.