[2866] Yep it's Kat.

[imaginaryfriend]

Now the question is, which Kat is it? Is this the same Kat as is presumably fiddling with instruments and other equipment outside inside the distortion or is it a new Kat crafted from the distortion and/or the ether? If the former, is the "real" Kat conscious of what this Kat does?

...and that's the end of the chapter.

[imaginaryfriend]

Double post for bonus points! Remember when Brinnie was summoned? At first her eyes were closed, then when Anja greeted her she opened one eye... then started acting a lot less formal. Is it possible that Brinnie wasn't there in the same sense as she was when she was in the Court as a student, then popped out of her panoramic figurine display set so as to better interact with her friend?

[stclair]

Hi Kat!

[philman]

Nov 22, 2023 8:04:56 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Now the question is, which Kat is it? Is this the same Kat as is presumably fiddling with instruments and other equipment outside the distortion or is it a new Kat crafted from the distortion and/or the ether? If the former, is the "real" Kat conscious of what this Kat does?

...and that's the end of the chapter.

Oh crap, I didn't even notice the end of chapter symbol until I read your post.

Ok then, so it is Kat in her robo-goddess form.

Now for the theory-crafting: We are still in Zimmy's distortion. This mixed Zimmy/Coyote/Loup distortion was created when Coyote was looking for the new "creator" of the NP in the court, but supposedly mistook the energy from Zimmy for this. Now, at the end of this chapter, the arbitor has called forth the Angel form of the NP's creator, Kat, into the ether, where Coyote is his most powerful.

Was this Coyote's plan all along? OR at least from when he discovered Loup fell for Lana instead of Annie? To manipulate Annie within the etheric distortion in order to draw Kat/The Angel/The creator into the ether?

[Geekette]

The Interpreter doesn't look too pleased. Is this not who he was expecting?

(I knew it, it WAS meant to be Boxbot. Boo)

[arf]

Annie: Are you seeing this, Kat?
Kat (on phone): Is that.. supposed to be me!?
Annie: I know the feeling!

(Is the next chapter going to be 'Across the Distortion'?)

[arcuna]

Exciting! I don't remember who it was, but someone here once proposed that Kat would become the psychopomp for robots. It's looking like they may be right!

[imaginaryfriend]

Nov 22, 2023 9:03:19 GMT arcuna said:

Exciting! I don't remember who it was, but someone here once proposed that Kat would become the psychopomp for robots. It's looking like they may be right!

Last comic Skippy the Interpreter called Antimony a psychopomp (which may be premature or may be true by technicality atm since she agreed to work for them at some point) so Kat may be coming not only to grant permission but also for Antimony's commissioning.

[arcuna]

I always assumed that Annie's ability to escort souls to the ether made her by definition a psychopomp, even though she (currently) doesn't pursue that career.

But hey, now that school is (permanently?) out, it's a great time to start filling up that CV with some work experience!

[blahzor]

Be careful what you summon

[Loki]

All I'm getting from this is: W̴̡̻̹͓͛͗ͅḧ̴̥͙͕́́͆͝o̴̧̰͓̝̼̔̉̈́́͛ ̴̯͈́̈́̀̾d̸̙͚̲̞̔̽̑͋a̴̤̻͆̑́̀̃͜r̶̢̫͉̜̃̇́̎̕e̷̡͔͍̓̂̚ͅş̶̬͉̞̺͌͒ ̷̻͎̤̽̿̀͘s̴͈̀ȗ̶͈͍̻̯̀͌̽͝m̴̲̚m̴̨̫̌͌̃̚͝ó̴͔͇͎̱̈̔͋n̷͇͋͌̀ ̷̼͛͑̀̑͂ǘ̴̡̯̲̥͚̓s̶̖͔̘̞̑!̷̼̓

[justhalf]

Aw, didn't notice the end of chapter symbol, too. I suppose the revelation might be put on hold for a while. A new chapter usually means a break, I suppose, even though it might be short.

[gpvos]

The next chapter is the part where Kat kills Zimmy.

[novia]

Nov 22, 2023 8:04:56 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Is this the same Kat as is presumably fiddling with instruments and other equipment outside the distortion or

Present-day Kat isn't outside of the distortion.

[imaginaryfriend]

Nov 22, 2023 10:01:46 GMT arcuna said:

I always assumed that Annie's ability to escort souls to the ether made her by definition a psychopomp, even though she (currently) doesn't pursue that career.

But hey, now that school is (permanently?) out, it's a great time to start filling up that CV with some work experience!

I'd call Antimony a medium, though I don't know if medium and 'pomp is mutually exclusive if the person in question is mythic (which Antimony is a tiny bit). It's been formsprung that medium is a generic term, though Court or Forest medium are specific jobs. There's a bunch of times Antimony's referred to as a medium in the comic. For example, Mort called Antimony attractive like a medium. She took lessons from Jones in mediumship and mediation. As far as I know Antimony hasn't been called a 'pomp in the comic before the page previous to today's. Both Antimony (a medium) and 'pomps appear to take the dead into the ether but the 'pomps seem to have jurisdictions based on location and ownership of the soul while mediums like Antimony and Surma don't and therefore can mediate disputes. Psychopomps can be in many places at once; Antimony has at maximum managed to be in two places at once with help. Psychopomps can choose to be invisible and to date Antimony hasn't demonstrated that ability that I know of (though it would make her ability to wander the Court easier to explain). Now, Smitface can be a medium and as far as I know he doesn't have the ability to work with the 'pomps and ghosts the same way Antimony does, but it may be that he's just the medium so that Antimony didn't get the job. However, he's a medium in a generic sense; he can negotiate and act as a (quasi)neutral arbitrator to mediate disputes and such. By The Way Surma was a medium but Surma's mother was not exactly a medium, whatever that means. So I think Antimony has (and Surma had) the qualifications to become a psychopomp but not the opportunity, until very recently.

[imaginaryfriend]

Nov 22, 2023 11:56:39 GMT novia said:

Nov 22, 2023 8:04:56 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Is this the same Kat as is presumably fiddling with instruments and other equipment outside the distortion or

Present-day Kat isn't outside of the distortion.

Thanks for the correction, she's probably still inside the distortion and that would make summoning her easier.

[AluK]

GC reality dynamics is such that Annie ferrying Saitama to the afterlife and "back" into the Ether is what retroactively makes Kat a God-Machine and Annie herself a psychopomp.

[arcuna]

Nov 22, 2023 12:03:51 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Psychopomps can be in many places at once; Antimony has at maximum managed to be in two places at once with help. Psychopomps can choose to be invisible and to date Antimony hasn't demonstrated that ability that I know of (though it would make her ability to wander the Court easier to explain).

I wonder if some of those abilities might be the trade secrets that Ankou referred to. It wouldn't be the first time that the comic treats stuff we would consider magical and/or impossible as just a few tricks.

[hnau]

Nov 22, 2023 12:03:51 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

As far as I know Antimony hasn't been called a 'pomp in the comic before the page previous to today's.

The ROTD receptionist said "Gillitie medium and afterlife guide".

[ctso74]

I can't decide if this is more Kool-aid Man's "Oh yeah!" or "Unexpected John Cena". If in the next chapter, Robot comes out of nowhere with a folding chair, and smacks Clippy with it, we'll know.

[Gemminie]

After Arbiter Saslamel and the Interpreter call for the keeper of this soul, we have this full-page chapter-ending panel. We've seen fractures across the panel whenever Saslamel appears, as if his appearance has caused fractures in the distortion, preventing its usual operation. But now the entire frame is fractured, and in fact the center of it has shattered, with some fragments shown falling away. Saslamel still appears, but different shards of the frame show him in different perspectives, as if the action is taking place in a space outside of wherever he, Annie, and the Interpreter are. And in the middle of the frame, behind the shattered area, is presumably what's been doing the shattering: the occasionally-seen being that we've been calling the Machine Angel and other fan-invented terms, because it's only been referred to directly in dialogue once, and then only as "something special inside Kat." So the MA has been summoned and is smashing its way into the distortion much as it smashed its way into Arrowspace.

At the bottom of the frame we see Annie and the Interpreter, looking up at what's happening. I notice that the Interpreter looked happy or at least sanguine while calling for the keeper of this soul, but now they're looking rather apprehensive. A portion of the frame containing parts of both Annie and the Interpreter has cracked off and is falling away. To the lower right we see some shadows, possibly the background figures of the watching New People. And ... End of Chapter!

OK, I had been relatively certain that it would be Diego, but I've seen some cogent arguments against that. Another possibility that I raised was that it could be Kat, but I didn't think so, because she created the NPs' bodies; their souls or essences already existed before she came along. But then again, I've seen at least one cogent argument that it could be Kat. My next question, though, is whether this counts as Kat. Kat's appeared in the Ether as just Kat; she doesn't look like the MA whenever she's in the Ether or is seen from the Ether. Only under certain circumstances has the MA appeared, though always in Kat's presence. When has the MA appeared?

• After Zimmy helped Annie shake off the connection Tony forged to her soul – this was probably from Zimmy's point of view; nobody else saw it, and even earlier in the chapter Zimmy's point of view was just Kat with a pigeon on her head
• After the various protagonists regained control of the ocean liner and defeated the Seraph robots, Kat's voice came from the MA, telling them she never wanted to see them again; this time it was from Paz's point of view
• When Annie was trapped inside Diego's Arrow, and Kat used her etheric laser pointer to disrupt the connection between Annie and the Arrow, Annie saw Kat as the MA, and Kat's voice came from it again
• And now; it seems both Annie and the Interpreter are seeing the MA, and perhaps the NP are seeing it too

It seems as if the MA is some kind of aspect of Kat that appears when she's doing something amazing – except she wasn't doing anything particularly amazing the first time we saw it, and arguably not the second time either. Various theories have floated around about the MA being the effect of some future NP taking their belief of Kat as the Angel into the Ether upon death, since that can affect the past (the stars have always been there, but stories about Coyote making the stars are also true too because of this effect). It's not quite the same as there being two timelines, one in which the stars always existed and the other in which Coyote made them, because everything else is the same. It's more like two different ways of seeing the same events, and the result is equivalent. I don't know if any of this is the case for Kat, however. But what if the future NP who will eventually die and take their beliefs into the Ether (beginning with Sam here) cause a similar effect on Kat, so when something mythical happens that the NP will one day believe Kat-as-MA did, she's got this MA aspect that arises to empower her. What's going on from the other point of view? Maybe Kat got a call on the radio and has used either her etheric fountain pen or Diego's Arrow itself to smash her way to where Annie is?

Or there's always the possibility of a Dark Kat from an alternate timeline whose instance of Annie died, so she broke time to try to save her. But there's even less real information about that.

[Gemminie]

Nov 22, 2023 9:25:10 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Nov 22, 2023 9:03:19 GMT arcuna said:

Exciting! I don't remember who it was, but someone here once proposed that Kat would become the psychopomp for robots. It's looking like they may be right!

Last comic Skippy the Interpreter called Antimony a psychopomp (which may be premature or may be true by technicality atm since she agreed to work for them at some point) so Kat may be coming not only to grant permission but also for Antimony's commissioning.

She was called an afterlife guide back here. At least in some ethereal sense she's already a psychopomp at that point, and may always have been. Just when that started is unclear. Maybe at birth, perhaps because that fire elemental soul used to be a psychopomp before going into semi-retirement to inhabit a bloodline of humans? Maybe it began when Annie took her mom into the Ether – perhaps that's how all psychopomps get started, by just doing it? Perhaps Mort unknowingly made her one by going into the Ether with the belief that Annie could do this?

[fia]

Annie has helped at least 4 people into the ether (+/-1 Surma):
Surma
Mort
Jeanne
Jeanne's green boyfriend


And with the boy who died in the fire, although she didn't take him to the ether, she did serve in a psychopomp-assisting role. She was talking to the dead, which she's been doing for all her life.

She's 1000% a psychopomp, just not one with any particular jurisdiction yet. Mostly she has taken on cases other pomps can't. She's been like the private eye to their police academy.

I still think she'll end up 'pomping for the New People, unless Kat does. I can't imagine what else would draw her to being a permanent psychopomp when she doesn't have a standing desire to serve as one. But she would do it for Kat and Kat's people. Then again, maybe Kat is like Durga/Kali, life/death, and the MechaAngel is her Kali, destroyer-of-unjust, angry goddess form.

[Gemini Jim]

I love that Clippy looks as shocked or confused as Annie does. He's been such a smug little etheric snot, that it's nice to see "wait, we didn't summon a monster, we summoned that nerdy inventor girl."


My crazy theory is that Kat won't be aware that the others see her as Monster Kat, MechaKat or Machine Angel or whatever. If the next chapter doesn't cut to a week later or something, she'll say something nonchalant like "hey guys, what's up?" or even "hey, what are you staring at?" "Do I have something on my face?"

In other words, she'll be in "this is a crappy camcorder" mode, apparently unaware that she broke the Distortion with her Hulked-out entrance.

[bethanylanell]

No doubt that it's Kat. We've seen this form before.

www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1443

[thallo]

Oh, this is either going to go fantastic or INCREDIBLY bad.

It could be the real Kat. Or not. It could very well be a "Kat" created by the so very fervent believe of the New People. There was the story in the past about how Coyote "does not exist" because Humans, in the end, created him.

[rabbit]

Nov 22, 2023 17:20:33 GMT bethanylanell said:

No doubt that it's Kat. We've seen this form before.

www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1443

And when we saw the MechaGoddess form of Kat before, it was also during an etheric distortion. I wonder if Kat breaking the distortion in some way (perhaps represented by the breaking glass?) can harm Zimmy? Is this why Zimmy is terrified of Kat?

Oh, and welcome, bethanylanell  

[drmemory]

Of course it's Kat! I've been saying for quite some time that Kat owns the NP in some sense. We know that when she transferred Arthur to a NP form, she was creating a new form of life, as it was mentioned the first time we saw the Arbiter and the Interpreter. We also know that the "new contract" was based on Annie's contract of ownership of Renard's body (and thus Renard due to his Coyote-given power of body possession), and that one of the errors was that Kat was trying to apply it to a living being. Which made Kat happy because that was her goal - making the robots into real living beings.

I'm still wondering whether she's in trouble for violating the terms and conditions of the contract she signed without reading though.

The Interpreter is startled to see Kat's mecha form because he sees with his eyes, and has to be informed by the Arbiter of what is really there. For example, he thought there was a problem with there being two Annies until the Arbiter informed him she had been shifted. So no surprise there, really. He'll get over it.

Aside from the question of whether Kat is in trouble, the other interesting question that arises is what Kat is going to do with Sam's soul. Are the NP alive in the same sense as humans and insects and other natural beings, so they can be taken into the ether? Or will they be taken into Kat? Or, I suppose, do they get their own afterlife? That seems less likely but who knows?

In other words, will Kat be their Psychopomp or is she actually their God?

On a very related note, is this going to break Kat?  She doesn't always deal that well with the supernatural...

[blahzor]

bonus page is just Kat getting a phone call and walking into a room where they are all just standing still

[imaginaryfriend]

Nov 22, 2023 14:40:54 GMT Gemminie said:

Nov 22, 2023 9:25:10 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Last comic Skippy the Interpreter called Antimony a psychopomp (which may be premature or may be true by technicality atm since she agreed to work for them at some point) so Kat may be coming not only to grant permission but also for Antimony's commissioning.

She was called an afterlife guide back here. At least in some ethereal sense she's already a psychopomp at that point, and may always have been. Just when that started is unclear. Maybe at birth, perhaps because that fire elemental soul used to be a psychopomp before going into semi-retirement to inhabit a bloodline of humans? Maybe it began when Annie took her mom into the Ether – perhaps that's how all psychopomps get started, by just doing it? Perhaps Mort unknowingly made her one by going into the Ether with the belief that Annie could do this?

I'm thinking "guide" is a generic term. All psychopomps are guides but not all guides are psychopomps, like stopping some crimes doesn't make someone a police officer. Any rando who can see ghosts can probably be a spirit guide by talking them into the ether. Antimony's been a medium and a guide (whereas Smitface is a medium but not a guide) and has the qualifications to be a 'pomp; she's agreed to work for the 'pomps but to date hasn't been given any particular task or authority.