[2858] "We have to get out of here!"

[imaginaryfriend]

Whoops, I was wrong about a blended Jeanne, it's just baseline ghost-Jeanne. Can't 100% be sure but she doesn't even look embiggened.

[shadow3]

RIP Saitama

[imaginaryfriend]

I guess Jeanne is targeting the Noob with the briefcase even though he wasn't the closest because it's an unknown quantity and therefore may be a threat..?

By The Way: Follicle-challenged Noob may have turned 180 degrees more or less right before getting skewered; if so the suspected-Zimmy Noob should be off-panel a bit behind him and to his left [edit] in panel 6. It may not be important but Z-Noob isn't visible in panel 5 when I think she should be. [/edit]

[knowit]

Oh yeah, they're still technically Diego's creations originally huh? The hard drives especially would be unambiguously still Diego's, without any New Personhood muddling that sort of thing.

I understand that being a bit of a sore spot, if this Jeanne has any of the originals actual motivations and memories. Hard to say when everything has been mixed together so roughly, could just be bad luck and one of the people making this distortion's memories of Jeanne as a dangerous entity. Wonder if we'll get a classic 'she died and we did nothing' or if being New People and also in danger will be enough to get them just running

[arf]

If the NP vanquish this new threat, maybe the refrain will become "We did something and she died"?

[laaaa]

This is legit TERRIFYING.
Also, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I prefer regular Zimmyworld to this, it's less terrifying!! And probably less dangerous. This is like Voldermort re-living simply because you thought of him. YIKES. Good luck escapinh in time!!!

[imaginaryfriend]

Additional thought: Since Antimony wasn't the one getting attacked I think we're past the scripted or maybe quick-time event and they can derail/change things now.

Nov 3, 2023 7:42:06 GMT arf said:

If the NP vanquish this new threat, maybe the refrain will become "We did something and she died"?

First stanza: "She died and we did nothing."

Second stanza: "Then she double-died and it was of our making."

[ctso74]

Well... that's terrifying. Do NPs have urine bladders?

[bicarbonat]

Playing all of the old (critical) hits, I see

[Gemminie]

Annie was reacting with some intensity to the realization that they were on the Annan Waters shore on the previous page, and the entire page was devoted to that one scene. It's possible that she was reacting that way because she knew or suspected what was coming, as she continues by saying that being somewhere else would be great, and right now.

And we see why; a recreation of ghost-Jeanne comes roaring across the Annan Waters. As a refresher, it was stated early on that Jeanne can't cross the river, but in chapter 8 she did – because Annie fell asleep while her blinker stone was active. Jeanne can cross the river in the Ether, and Annie projected herself into the Ether in her dreams, so Jeanne was able to attack – and then Kat showed up in her flying machine, very much in the physical world, waking Annie up before Jeanne could do more than cut her face. Now, however, this is a distortion-recreation of Jeanne, so the rules may be different, and it's possible that they all count as being in the Ether anyway, what with the distortion and all.

Motion lines and distorted background characters indicate that Jeanne is moving very quickly and that she's focusing on attacking the bald NP who's been carrying the box of CPUs, the one I've nicknamed "Dan." He looks absolutely astonished. And then Jeanne runs him through. Poor Dan! Only then does he drop the box.

One thing about GKC is that almost every page raises questions – more pages raise questions than answer them, which is why it's so satisfying when questions are answered. This one is no exception. Why does Jeanne single Dan out? Because he's carrying the box? Because she's actually planning on slaying everyone she can see and randomly picked him to be first? Because he's bald? Because there's something else that's different about him that we don't know (like what)? One thing I notice about him is that he's shown up a lot, possibly more times than the black-haired one whom Annie and Renard have been wondering about. What if he's actually the one who's a Zimmy fragment? This Jeanne reconstruction might be another. What we might be seeing here is another Zimmy internal conflict.

Or not. Coyote seemed angry that some "new god" was creating people; this Jeanne might be a Coyote manifestation, attacking not just a New Person but specifically the one carrying the "seeds" of other NP.

What will Jeanne do next? Attack more New People, or go after Annie or Renard? What will Annie and/or Renard do next – try to get them all out of here, or try to defend the New People against Jeanne in some way? This might be drawing on Annie's memories of Jeanne impaling Smitty – might she call upon the psychopomps (or distortion-duplicates of them) to save Dan, reflecting that incident? Maybe she will draw on the memory of taking Jeanne into the Ether in order to make this Jeanne duplicate go away?

[Gemini Jim]

I have to admit, when I first saw the page, I thought that One-Punch NPC had stepped in to take the hit for Annie.


Now that I realize that Jeanne was aiming for him, that's even more intriguing. After all, as others have pointed out, he's not only an ex-robot, but he's carrying that box...


EDIT: Assuming that he's not a disguised Zimmy/ Gamma/ Kat, etc. The box is probably real, even if he isn't...

[drmemory]

Well this is still better than the feared death plummet. At least we aren't mourning a splatted Annie!

But it's not good, clearly. Back in the previous scenario, Annie and Ysengrin protected the elves, then kinda receded into the background. Which I've chosen to interpret as someone needing to learn more about Annie's and Ysengrin's relationship, or at least about Ysengrin not being as much of a fool as Renard believed.

In this scenario, we're missing everyone that helped resolve the Jeanne situation before. No lucky boy, no sword girl, no flighty fairies, no Kat, no Robot. Actually, that last one may not be true - I still suspect that the mystery NP girl may be Robot, so maybe we're about to see him break cover and swordfight? To protect the other NPs and the chips?

Also, it's a bit of a mystery to me where the elements of this scene are coming from. When Annie plummeted way back in the beginning of things, Robot was controlled by a shadow and then ripped apart, Renard was a wolf toy who had been commanded not to talk. Nobody but Annie actually saw what happened after her fall - everyone else stayed on the bridge and trudged back to the court, depressed. But, with a more active Jeanne attacking, we're almost certainly really seeing stuff taken from the later big fight, where Jeanne and her BF were freed. In that case, the others I mention above were there for the original adventure. Not Renard though.

So is what we are seeing built on Annie's memories? Or Coyote's I guess, as he can know everything when he wants to... Also, I figure there will be a moral to the story that someone needs to learn, but since most of those in the original scene are missing, I do not know whom that moral is meant for nor what it will be. I like the theory that this has something to do with Diego though, and have always suspected that some or all of Diego is part of Robot...

[blahzor]

low roll for inititive

[drmemory]

BTW, if Zimmy is masquerading as anyone, that there specter looks like the best candidate. Even the teeth match!

[quinnr]

The New People on this page are giving me uncanny valley (above the usual)—the bottom left panel of this page in particular has two New People who look very similar to "Red" and "Blue" in Jeanne's dream-world.

See #1704. They're certainly not the same, but Red had thin curved eyebrows, a rounded jawline, complexion, small nose, and a mouth that frowns in a thin line like the briefcase bot. Blue has similar hair, eye coloring, complexion, and a pointed noise. (If the world is following Annie's emotional arcs, I imagine the "this was all your fault" might've been a sticking point.)

[Eily]

I wonder how tied to Annie's memories this is, and if there's a chance that we're about to jump into memories of the Court from Jane's time. Maybe literally memories of the Court actually, at that point learning that the Court itself is sentient wouldn't be that surprising

[silicondream]

Psychopomps: “OK, for saving this guy you’ll have to work on weekends too. And if anyone ELSE gets stabbed…look, just register all your friends as dependents on the company health plan, all right? We’ll explain about trading overtime hours for miraculous healings at the orientation.”

[rabbit]

Nov 3, 2023 13:30:23 GMT ctso74 said:

Well... that's terrifying. Do NPs have urine bladders?

Lubricant reservoirs.

When our NP-brother got kebab’d by that ghost-woman, I almost WD-40’d my stylish track pants!

[guntherkrieg]

Finally, some character death.

[Gemini Jim]

Apologies if anyone else has suggested this already:

What we are seeing is what Annie is seeing. What she is seeing, she is interpreting through memories that she has had - of Zimmingham, of the forest, of the bridge over troubled waters, etc.

But we are not literally seeing her memories, or even Coyote's memories, or anyone else's memories, or anything like that.


All of this started when two mad gods - Coyote and Loup - crashed into Zimmy and Gamma.

This supernatural conflict is probably affecting the Zimmy/ Coyote/ Loup distortion. Perhaps conflict is the key, which is why it reminds me of a series of RPG boss battles, or D&D.


** The obvious flaw in this theory is the Coyote Riddle Hamster. Unlike the spiders, or the moss ogre, or Robot, or Jeanne, the Riddler didn't offer any physical conflict, but a conflict of the mind.

EDIT: Also, Annie should have no memory of Coyote's desert background, but she might have a mental image of what it was like.

But all of the other "bosses" - and even Fire Annie - could be "distorted" versions of Zimmy, Gamma, Coyote, and Loup.


EDIT 2: "Jeanne" is Zimmy, who is attacking "Saitama NPC" Kat, because she thinks mad gods crashing into her must be Kat's fault somehow. But Annie is interpreting it as Jeanne.

Maybe.

[pyradonis]

Wouldn't it be funny that after all these times we saw Jeanne unsuccessfully attempt to stab someone to death, a memory of her actually succeeds?

(Yes, I purposefully said "stab", because we saw her kill "a red guy" in a flashback, but by slashing, not stabbing)

[hp]

next they'll try to help him but he'll go "GOP!" and disappear

[blahzor]

Nov 4, 2023 19:18:08 GMT guntherkrieg said:

Finally, some character death.

Naw he just has speed holes now

[arf]

Nov 3, 2023 14:52:15 GMT Gemminie said:

...As a refresher, it was stated early on that Jeanne can't cross the river, but in chapter 8 she did – because Annie fell asleep while her blinker stone was active. Jeanne can cross the river in the Ether, and Annie projected herself into the Ether in her dreams, so Jeanne was able to attack...

I hadn't thought of that explanation, but it makes sense (we see Jeanne reach through the blinker stone in 'Coward Heart', although Annie was on the same side of the river on that occasion)

[imaginaryfriend]

I'm still working on what "in the ether" means. Currently I'm trying to matrix it by nonlocality.

[jda]

Nov 6, 2023 5:35:51 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

I'm still working on what "in the ether" means. Currently I'm trying to matrix it by nonlocality.

In the Ethernet, dude.
Annie dropped a hard cable post when she fell from the bridge.