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Post by hp on Nov 29, 2023 22:29:13 GMT
Why is she appearing in her etheric form straight away while everyone else is in their mundane form? Maybe Salasmel pulled them into the ether where they and the interpreter exist, but shouldn't Annie also be in her fire form them?
I wonder what will be Saitama's reaction to seeing the angel's "true form" for the first time
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Post by Eily on Nov 29, 2023 22:46:10 GMT
I thought Clippy the Translator looked a little surprised/displeased on the last page of last chapter. It seems despite summoning her he wasn't prepared for the advent of the mecha goddess. that's assuming they did summon her. She might just be trying to reach through because she somehow knows that something happened |
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Post by Igniz on Nov 30, 2023 0:09:25 GMT
Change to Kat's perspective, and she's just standing there missing all the cool stuff.  |
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Post by TBeholder on Nov 30, 2023 0:27:56 GMT
«I bet that guy wasn’t expecting that.»
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Nov 30, 2023 3:52:03 GMT
I thought Clippy the Translator looked a little surprised/displeased on the last page of last chapter. It seems despite summoning her he wasn't prepared for the advent of the mecha goddess. that's assuming they did summon her. She might just be trying to reach through because she somehow knows that something happened Not impossible but it would be a big coincidence since the interpreter called forth the keeper of the soul right before this breakthru. Why is she appearing in her etheric form straight away while everyone else is in their mundane form? Maybe Salasmel pulled them into the ether where they and the interpreter exist, but shouldn't Annie also be in her fire form them? Remember Brinnie getting summoned? She showed up with the bells and whistles, but when she saw it was her friend Anja and she didn't need/want to intimidate anyone or put on a show she started acting and looking less formal and more normal. Now, Antimony's just... there. She could activate her fire form. I don't think anything's stopping her. She probably could be in a more impressive form because she's inside the distortion... if she wanted to be and she thought of it. Kat's getting called in for official business. She may intellectually understand that she can appear intimidating to other people under these circumstances... but I don't think it's occurred to her that she can appear (for lack of a better term) normal. That might change soon. |
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Post by mturtle7 on Nov 30, 2023 4:11:58 GMT
I thought Clippy the Translator looked a little surprised/displeased on the last page of last chapter. It seems despite summoning her he wasn't prepared for the advent of the mecha goddess. that's assuming they did summon her. She might just be trying to reach through because she somehow knows that something happened Still holding out hope for my theory that the actual keeper of Sam's soul is Becky Ground, standing in awkward silence just off to the side of the panel! |
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Post by pyradonis on Nov 30, 2023 10:18:46 GMT
In the same breath, Zimmy specifically told Annie, "I'm telling ya, you gotta keep an eye on her!" It doesn't seem like Annie listened, did she? Or maybe she just didn't know how exactly she was supposed to "keep an eye" on her best friend who is rapidly becoming a magitek-wielding god. Not just saying "ok" to the request of implanting the chip might have been an idea. I still find it weird that Annie just went along with it. |
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Post by guntherkrieg on Nov 30, 2023 10:46:25 GMT
Oh the use of hypodermic needles as eyes is creeping me out Well what do you use |
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Post by blahzor on Nov 30, 2023 11:52:22 GMT
Oh the use of hypodermic needles as eyes is creeping me out Well what do you use Soft fleshy tissue that converts light into electrical signals to the brain |
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Post by guntherkrieg on Nov 30, 2023 12:52:58 GMT
Soft fleshy tissue that converts light into electrical signals to the brain Weirdo |
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Post by atteSmythe on Nov 30, 2023 13:26:01 GMT
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Post by Sky Schemer on Nov 30, 2023 17:59:47 GMT
I strongly recommend against trying to put her in jail.
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Post by drmemory on Nov 30, 2023 20:03:24 GMT
I don't think those are hypodermic needles, exactly. I believe they are probes. A physical sign that Kat is constantly trying to connect to all electronic devices around her. Also robots and such, of course. The fact that they are trimmed into points is a sign that she does this non-consensually when necessary. You didn't assume a Mecha Goddess would be NICE, did you?  This fits with my long-standing theory that she's linked to all of her NPs. You always see her with wires and conduits going off into the distance. Since she got her implant, I suspect she now constantly connects to anything she can, and basically takes it over.
What I don't know is how much of this she is doing as an intentional act. Kat isn't exactly known for having a solid ethical base, so it may be. Without Annie keeping her more or less human Kat might be a real problem. I guess we'll see how it goes!
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Post by beaukm on Dec 1, 2023 18:03:37 GMT
Has anyone hypothesized yet that perhaps this is the original Kat from the start of the time loop? The Kat that couldn’t save her dimension’s Annie and was doomed to a darker future? “There's a version of me in some other dimension that lost you, Annie. There's a Kat out there, somewhere, that was so sad she had to break time.” www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2315“She was set to travel a dark road...” www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2426This could also be the version of Kat that kills Zimmy? www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2731Chapter 88: Page 24 "It's something inside Kat... Or something that she could become..." |
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Post by silicondream on Dec 1, 2023 23:08:19 GMT
I don't think those are hypodermic needles, exactly. I believe they are probes. A physical sign that Kat is constantly trying to connect to all electronic devices around her. Also robots and such, of course. The fact that they are trimmed into points is a sign that she does this non-consensually when necessary. Why would that be the case? Real-world multimeter probes aren't pointy to aid in nonconsensual violence; they're pointy to minimize damage/disruption to the circuit they're testing. Just like hypodermic needles are pointy so they can get fluids in and out of the body with a minimum of pain and infection risk. They look scary, but they're actually good for you--just like Kat! Also, I think this is probably Kat as seen through Zimmy's lens. Eyes are gonna look like needles to Zimmy because observation is painful to her. And because Zimmy's powers are very dangerous to herself and others, sometimes respecting other people's consent requires violating her privacy, no matter how much she treasures it. I don't think the NPs have anything that allows for a link, now that they're fully flesh. If they did, Kat would have tracked or contacted Lana while she was on the run with Jerrek. As for taking them over...quite the reverse, no? When they were robots, they already revered her, and they were easier to hack and reprogram. Kat gave them significantly more free will, which they've used to elope with insane gods and give her a warehouseful of flowers that she doesn't want. I don't see any indication of controlling behavior from her. Controlling non-sentient technology, yeah, she obviously loves doing that. But the thing is that Kat actually is nice. The whole reason she rebelled against the Court is that she doesn't think it's right to use other creatures for your own ends. She's a liberal engineer who loves manipulating things but despises manipulating people, and her biggest flaw is that she can see everyone's intrinsic worth except her own. Nah, techno-powers won't destroy her humanity any more than etheric powers destroyed Annie's. She just has to learn to use them responsibly, and she's frankly a faster learner in that area than Annie is, mostly because she carries a lot less anger. Even on her potential "Dark Path", I don't think she would ever be inhumanly evil; she'd just be like Tony used to be, bitter and self-destructive. A bitter supergenius working for the Court could do a lot of harm, of course. |
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Post by drmemory on Dec 2, 2023 7:59:06 GMT
I don't think those are hypodermic needles, exactly. I believe they are probes. A physical sign that Kat is constantly trying to connect to all electronic devices around her. Also robots and such, of course. The fact that they are trimmed into points is a sign that she does this non-consensually when necessary. Why would that be the case? Real-world multimeter probes aren't pointy to aid in nonconsensual violence; they're pointy to minimize damage/disruption to the circuit they're testing. Just like hypodermic needles are pointy so they can get fluids in and out of the body with a minimum of pain and infection risk. They look scary, but they're actually good for you--just like Kat! Also, I think this is probably Kat as seen through Zimmy's lens. Eyes are gonna look like needles to Zimmy because observation is painful to her. And because Zimmy's powers are very dangerous to herself and others, sometimes respecting other people's consent requires violating her privacy, no matter how much she treasures it. I don't think the NPs have anything that allows for a link, now that they're fully flesh. If they did, Kat would have tracked or contacted Lana while she was on the run with Jerrek. As for taking them over...quite the reverse, no? When they were robots, they already revered her, and they were easier to hack and reprogram. Kat gave them significantly more free will, which they've used to elope with insane gods and give her a warehouseful of flowers that she doesn't want. I don't see any indication of controlling behavior from her. Controlling non-sentient technology, yeah, she obviously loves doing that. But the thing is that Kat actually is nice. The whole reason she rebelled against the Court is that she doesn't think it's right to use other creatures for your own ends. She's a liberal engineer who loves manipulating things but despises manipulating people, and her biggest flaw is that she can see everyone's intrinsic worth except her own. Nah, techno-powers won't destroy her humanity any more than etheric powers destroyed Annie's. She just has to learn to use them responsibly, and she's frankly a faster learner in that area than Annie is, mostly because she carries a lot less anger. Even on her potential "Dark Path", I don't think she would ever be inhumanly evil; she'd just be like Tony used to be, bitter and self-destructive. A bitter supergenius working for the Court could do a lot of harm, of course. I don't think we're seeing Kat as Zimmy sees her. I think we're just seeing her the way she always looks in the ether. She looked basically the same when she used her mini-arrow to enter the ether during the Jeanne thing.
What I'm more worried about is, what things look like to HER. Kat has never dealt all that well with the invisible world, and I have a hunch that being pulled bodily into Zimmy's distortion will finally let her see the ether. For example, what Annie looks like in the ether. She'll probably also see Zimmy's city and spiders and stuff, and maybe already has seen some of that based on her comment!
I'm also curious about what she looks like to the robots/NP. Do they see her like normal humans do, or like Zimmy does? If they aren't surprised to see her, looking like her Mecha Goddess self, that would be pretty revealing, and put a new spin on all of those comments over the years about how beautiful she is!
As for nice or not... as I said, that will come down to whether she is intentionally connecting to and taking over everything around her, as I suspect. Even if that's the case, she may not be thinking it's a bad thing. She also already has a whole bunch of NP linked to her... possibly in a slave-like manner, possibly not.
Perhaps one of the things Annie has saved her from is thinking of the robots as tools she can use however she wishes. Perhaps not. I still don't quite see her specific dark path, though there have certainly been hints about potential "unethical scientist" behavior. You know your moral center isn't that solid when your best friend and her pet god have to team up on you to talk you out of full-on mad scientist mode! Referring to the conversation about being able to do science with no constraints, just after she first found out about the Star Ocean and plans of the court. Whether that whole thing is a scam or not, she heard what she heard and said what she said.
BTW, even if she's not seeing the ether as it is, she still may be seeing something very different than we are. Like maybe what the compressed space really looks like. That probably wouldn't be any better for her mental state than seeing the ether, and would be harder for Annie to help her through.
Reading back through your comments, another point we'll have to agree to disagree on is the freedom thing. The robots were not living. The NP are living beings, created by her with the help of the arrow and allowed by her new contact. I'd bet money that part of that contract gave her responsibility for their souls. She doesn't order them around like slaves, but that means little - Annie didn't order Renard around either, yet she had a full-blown contract of ownership.
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Post by pyradonis on Dec 3, 2023 16:54:19 GMT
She'll probably also see Zimmy's city and spiders and stuff, and maybe already has seen some of that based on her comment! That should actually not be too frightening for her - she has seen Zimmingham before, during the "Torn Sea" incident. |
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Post by drmemory on Dec 5, 2023 0:14:54 GMT
She'll probably also see Zimmy's city and spiders and stuff, and maybe already has seen some of that based on her comment! That should actually not be too frightening for her - she has seen Zimmingham before, during the "Torn Sea" incident. She did, but she was pretty much confined to one room, and distracted by the ship-who-would-be-a-whale. I guess she also saw the remote units for the ship and the Seraphs change back from their nerdbot forms. But I don't remember her ever just looking around in the insanity of Zimmy's city. I got the sense she barely noticed it. She also didn't notice that she was in her Goddess form, nor the expression on Paz's face when Paz saw that. Kat gets pretty focused!
I'd suggest she was in focused mad scientist mode, in fact. Once she realized she could control the goo to make a body for the ship, she got into it. If the Scooby Gang hadn't fixed things, I imagine the ship would even now be swimming around as a whale, stalking Lindsey. Or whatever his plan was.
It's sort of interesting how fast she got into it, and stopped worrying about Annie and the rest of the students... I've always wondered how much of her anger and subsequent whale-zapping was due to the fact that they messed with Paz, vs. the fact that they forced her to try and make a body. Heck, her first thought after was to "focus on doing more work for the robots"!
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Post by pyradonis on Dec 5, 2023 12:18:49 GMT
That should actually not be too frightening for her - she has seen Zimmingham before, during the "Torn Sea" incident. She did, but she was pretty much confined to one room, and distracted by the ship-who-would-be-a-whale. I guess she also saw the remote units for the ship and the Seraphs change back from their nerdbot forms. But I don't remember her ever just looking around in the insanity of Zimmy's city. I got the sense she barely noticed it. She also didn't notice that she was in her Goddess form, nor the expression on Paz's face when Paz saw that. Kat gets pretty focused!
I'd suggest she was in focused mad scientist mode, in fact. Once she realized she could control the goo to make a body for the ship, she got into it. If the Scooby Gang hadn't fixed things, I imagine the ship would even now be swimming around as a whale, stalking Lindsey. Or whatever his plan was.
It's sort of interesting how fast she got into it, and stopped worrying about Annie and the rest of the students... I've always wondered how much of her anger and subsequent whale-zapping was due to the fact that they messed with Paz, vs. the fact that they forced her to try and make a body. Heck, her first thought after was to "focus on doing more work for the robots"!
Thinking back, she did indeed get very focused and soon forgot everything around. Sigh. I didn't like that chapter ending at all. Nevermind that my whole class was brought into mortal danger by some robots with no patience, I should continue working on this without spending one single thought on whether this is really a good idea! |
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Post by todd on Dec 5, 2023 12:56:44 GMT
She did, but she was pretty much confined to one room, and distracted by the ship-who-would-be-a-whale. I guess she also saw the remote units for the ship and the Seraphs change back from their nerdbot forms. But I don't remember her ever just looking around in the insanity of Zimmy's city. I got the sense she barely noticed it. She also didn't notice that she was in her Goddess form, nor the expression on Paz's face when Paz saw that. Kat gets pretty focused!
I'd suggest she was in focused mad scientist mode, in fact. Once she realized she could control the goo to make a body for the ship, she got into it. If the Scooby Gang hadn't fixed things, I imagine the ship would even now be swimming around as a whale, stalking Lindsey. Or whatever his plan was.
It's sort of interesting how fast she got into it, and stopped worrying about Annie and the rest of the students... I've always wondered how much of her anger and subsequent whale-zapping was due to the fact that they messed with Paz, vs. the fact that they forced her to try and make a body. Heck, her first thought after was to "focus on doing more work for the robots"!
Thinking back, she did indeed get very focused and soon forgot everything around. Sigh. I didn't like that chapter ending at all. Nevermind that my whole class was brought into mortal danger by some robots with no patience, I should continue working on this without spending one single thought on whether this is really a good idea! It certainly struck me that the robots who planned it all never considered the possibility that it could have ended with Kat shutting down the whole project with a tone of "If I hadn't embarked on the whole 'build new bodies for robots' endeavor, all this trouble would never have happened!" It didn't, of course - instead, Kat concluded from it that she'd been dedicating too little time to it (and it probably helped that a) she felt the thrill of making a robot body and b) nobody actually got hurt) - but still.... (Then again, the planners also thought that the best way to hide something was to put up a sign saying that this particular object isn't there.) |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Dec 5, 2023 13:43:10 GMT
If the Scooby Gang hadn't fixed things, I imagine the ship would even now be swimming around as a whale, stalking Lindsey. Or whatever his plan was. Since you mention it, Moby Dick inverted would have been an interesting tangent for a chapter or two. Or at least a loose end that could at least be referenced in later works. Maybe Kat will dig Ship out of the Robot Jail and build him(?) a body in the future. |
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Post by drmemory on Dec 5, 2023 22:26:48 GMT
Thinking back, she did indeed get very focused and soon forgot everything around. Sigh. I didn't like that chapter ending at all. Nevermind that my whole class was brought into mortal danger by some robots with no patience, I should continue working on this without spending one single thought on whether this is really a good idea! It certainly struck me that the robots who planned it all never considered the possibility that it could have ended with Kat shutting down the whole project with a tone of "If I hadn't embarked on the whole 'build new bodies for robots' endeavor, all this trouble would never have happened!" It didn't, of course - instead, Kat concluded from it that she'd been dedicating too little time to it (and it probably helped that a) she felt the thrill of making a robot body and b) nobody actually got hurt) - but still.... (Then again, the planners also thought that the best way to hide something was to put up a sign saying that this particular object isn't there.) Yes, agreed! I never did see how they could have predicted the outcome they got. Not only did Kat go right back to work and get even deeper into Diego's weird science stuff, she also didn't seem to spare a thought about whether it was the right thing to do. In fact, she even more or less forgave the Seraphs later, when it turned out she could get something out of it! So there were no lasting consequences for them.
Maybe this is evidence for Robot being in a time loop? Groundhog Day stuff...
Anyway, the Seraph thing is a bit of a pattern with her. Another example is when she resurrected the Golem robots because she needed more slave labor. She didn't re-resurrect the one she had re-killed, but she DID try to hide what she had done from Annie. Which makes it seem like she knew it wasn't good, on some level. And even though she has created her own race, has her own supercomputer and her own factory, has nearly magical powers to control technology and teleport things around, she is still hungry for more and to be able to work without any of those pesky limitations standing in her way.
It could be worse. At least she didn't try to make a mind control device to make Paz stay. Nor has she made a synthetic duplicate (yet).
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Post by silicondream on Dec 10, 2023 2:07:43 GMT
I don't think we're seeing Kat as Zimmy sees her. I think we're just seeing her the way she always looks in the ether. She looked basically the same when she used her mini-arrow to enter the ether during the Jeanne thing. Whoops, you're right! She did have a visible needle tip in that scene too, so it doesn't have anything to do with Zimmy's perspective after all. I’m pretty sure the Seraphs saw her as a Machine Angel when she cast them out, but otherwise I think they perceive her as human. One robot’s narration mentions the tears spilling from her eyes, for instance. The robots do perceive (some) humans as beautiful, presumably because Diego designed them to appreciate Jeanne. Robots falling in love with humans are common in the court, so I don’t think they need to see Kat’s mechasoul directly to find her attractive. It does seem like her powers give her a charisma boost with them, though, the same way Annie was magnetically attractive to etheric beings even before she learned to manifest her fire self. I just don’t see any functional evidence of such a link. If the NPs were linked up, Lana couldn’t have gone into hiding with Jerrek; Kat wouldn’t send Annie a radio in Zimmingham instead of pinging the NPs directly; Robot wouldn’t have needed to hold off on his transition so he could keep linking to the remaining CPUs and leading them through the Ocean tutorial. But, agree to disagree. More the opposite, I think. Annie was happy to use robots as tools when she started out. That’s why she assembled Robot in the first place, to carry out a task for her. She was considerate enough to grant him his freedom afterwards, which puts her ahead of most of the Court respect-wise, but he was still fundamentally a tool to her. Kat, by contrast, never asks the robots/New People to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit them. It’s actually remarkable how little she depends on robotic assistants for her work, considering that technical assistance is what Diego created them for in the first place. It seems to be a principle of hers that she ought to serve their needs, not vice versa. And Kat’s always hated the idea of using another being as a tool. That’s why she freaked out on Paz about animal testing. Annie doesn’t like coercion either, but she doesn’t loathe it like Kat; that’s one reason she gets along with Coyote and Ysengrin and the general might-makes-right vibe of the Forest. Annie’s not a predator herself, but she can respect them. And she doesn’t mind putting people at risk for a worthy cause, as Red pointed out. I don’t want to say Annie’s less moral than Kat, but she’s definitely more pragmatic. Well, first, Annie and Renard didn’t have to talk her out of anything. The entire conversation was about a potential move that Kat was explicitly never planning to make. They were scandalized that she would even think about making it, but that speaks more to their insecurities than Kat’s lack of moral fibre. Girl’s allowed to imagine. Second, nothing Kat said was particularly mad. Her claim was simply that humans are ethically conscious enough to plan their own research programs without supernatural intervention. Why should random bullies like Saslamel and Ysengrin control our lives? That’s a fairly standard position for us secular types. Obviously many religious folks are going to disagree with it, but I don’t think either side is insane for thinking what they think. If Kat was claiming that other mortals had no moral authority over her either, I’d be more worried, but in that case she wouldn’t be thinking about emigrating with the Court. Court culture has a lot of flaws, but it does value regulation and collective oversight. Note the plural when Kat says “ we know the difference between right and wrong.” Not by the psychopomps’ definition. But they were sentient and possessed of emotions and desires, so I would consider them alive and say they deserved freedom. Annie certainly did order Renard around, most recently when Forest and Court Annie were trying to prove they weren’t impostors. Annie hasn’t given Renard orders lightly since their fight in “Fire Spike”, as a matter of respect, but she’s always had the power. Kat’s never shown anything like that with the NPs. I’m not disagreeing that she has responsibility for their souls, I just don’t think that equates to direct control over their behavior. In the same way, the psychopomps are keepers of human souls, and that allegiance is apparently passed down from parent to child. (Hence the difficulty with the ghost boy Annie helped, whose parents belonged to different faiths.) But humans still retain their free will in life, so far as we know. |
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Post by todd on Dec 10, 2023 13:08:02 GMT
If the Scooby Gang hadn't fixed things, I imagine the ship would even now be swimming around as a whale, stalking Lindsey. Or whatever his plan was. I might have mentioned this before, but the ship's own goals in the scheme strike me as another case of "The robots really didn't think through this". After disrupting the cruise like that, there's no way that the Court would have tolerated such behavior. The ship's only hope, I suspect, would have been to flee into hiding with Lindsay (assuming that she'd have gone willingly with him - which I doubt, though the ship seems to have been blinded by desire), for a life in exile. (Though I've found it tempting to wonder whether the ship really was longing for Lindsay, or whether it was playing a part that the Seraphs had instructed it to play, to keep Kat from suspecting the real goal. That cry of "It is the only way!" did feel over the top to me. If so, it raises the question, again, of what the Seraphs were thinking, using something like lusting after a married woman - well, married alien giant sea-creature - as the ostensible reason - though at least Kat was too excited by what she could do to give thought to what it was going to be used for, until Paz brought it up. Of course, only Tom can answer that question.) |
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Post by pyradonis on Dec 10, 2023 16:22:13 GMT
Kat, by contrast, never asks the robots/New People to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit them. It’s actually remarkable how little she depends on robotic assistants for her work, considering that technical assistance is what Diego created them for in the first place. It seems to be a principle of hers that she ought to serve their needs, not vice versa. What about when she reactivated all the old golems because she needed more manual labor? |
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Post by drmemory on Dec 11, 2023 4:15:00 GMT
If the Scooby Gang hadn't fixed things, I imagine the ship would even now be swimming around as a whale, stalking Lindsey. Or whatever his plan was. I might have mentioned this before, but the ship's own goals in the scheme strike me as another case of "The robots really didn't think through this". After disrupting the cruise like that, there's no way that the Court would have tolerated such behavior. The ship's only hope, I suspect, would have been to flee into hiding with Lindsay (assuming that she'd have gone willingly with him - which I doubt, though the ship seems to have been blinded by desire), for a life in exile. (Though I've found it tempting to wonder whether the ship really was longing for Lindsay, or whether it was playing a part that the Seraphs had instructed it to play, to keep Kat from suspecting the real goal. That cry of "It is the only way!" did feel over the top to me. If so, it raises the question, again, of what the Seraphs were thinking, using something like lusting after a married woman - well, married alien giant sea-creature - as the ostensible reason - though at least Kat was too excited by what she could do to give thought to what it was going to be used for, until Paz brought it up. Of course, only Tom can answer that question.) That whole thing was really sketchy, especially in hindsight. Did S13 entice ship into that scheme? How could he possibly have predicted that the outcome would be failure (on the ship's part) and success (on his part, where success is defined as making Kat resume her work)  That really seems like an unlikely series of events to have happen, and I don't see how it could have been predicted. Now if somebody were playing with time, and that was actually one of many attempts, that's a very different story.
The only victory condition I can see for Robot is just what happened - Ship got all of the blame, Robot escaped with his reputation unharmed, the other Seraphs sacrificed their reputations with Kat, and for some reason I still fail to understand, Kat decided all of this meant she should redouble her efforts. If basically anything else had happened, we would have ended up with a creepy whaleship stalking Lindsey, or Robot included in the banishment, or all of the robots chastised (or maybe overridden or jailed) by the court, or at the very least, Kat not working to evolve robots at all costs.
Nor do I think that the immediate result, Kat starting to focus on work again, was the last thing Robot was trying to control. For example, that was the first and last time Paz ever saw Kat's mecha form, and that is what planted the seed for her leaving later.
So we have (and have had for a very long time) Coyote trying to control the future (probably playing Groundhog Day), Omega trying to predict the future, the Court trying to create a future w/o the ether or Coyote or other beings that can use the ether, and Robot trying to control the future as well. No wonder things have gotten so complicated! That's not even including the other unscrupulous supernatural beings around (e.g. psychopomps) nor the others who have made predictions (e.h. Zimmy). Oh, then there are the ones who actually control time - the Norns!
Ultimately, I don't trust that we really know anyone's motives. Coyote? I'm guessing he's trying to stop those who would break the world by breaking the ether. The Court? Ugh. Those guys. I wouldn't be entirely shocked to learn that they were responsible for creating Kat and sending her down a dark path. Annie seems to have thrown a wrench into that plan but the day isn't done yet. The current plotline ought to clarify things for Kat but it's hard to say which way she'll go with it. Robot? Definitely following an agenda, but we don't know for sure what that is, or who created it. Is someone pulling his strings? Does he have Diego stuff in there at all? What did he pick up from S1? If we're seeing HIS time loop, how did it start? All of this time stuff just makes it worse...
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Post by silicondream on Dec 11, 2023 10:44:57 GMT
In Defense of Kat, continued…. That should actually not be too frightening for her - she has seen Zimmingham before, during the "Torn Sea" incident. She did, but she was pretty much confined to one room, and distracted by the ship-who-would-be-a-whale. I guess she also saw the remote units for the ship and the Seraphs change back from their nerdbot forms. But I don't remember her ever just looking around in the insanity of Zimmy's city. I got the sense she barely noticed it. Would you expect her to? If I and my partner were prisoners being menaced by a ghostly zombie cyborg whale groaning "MAKE ME FLEEESSSSSHHH," the architecture outside would be way down my list of priorities. I think it’s ok to look away from your girlfriend momentarily while you’re busy dealing with the creatures who threatened her! Kat attended to Paz properly a few seconds later. Not mentioning what she’d seen in the meantime is on Paz, not Kat. As for her Goddess form, Kat’s never been able to perceive it herself. Just part of her general ether-blindness, presumably. At this point in the story, Zimmy was the only one who’d even vaguely mentioned that she looked etherically scary, and Kat’s memory of that meeting was corrupted so I'm not sure she even remembered. And then snapped out of it four panels later, the moment Paz started talking to to the ship. After that, her attention was on their conversation for the next three pages. Kat only started working again once Paz was threatened, and she obviously wasn’t enjoying herself at that point. Jack and Jenny had their moment of "Wow, this is awesome" too. I don't think that makes them "mad" scientists so much as young scientists; even if they're in a dangerous situation, adventures and new data are still momentarily exhilarating. Well, to some degree, sure. There were three possible ways to rescue the class: outfight the Ship and Seraphs, persuade them to stand down without getting what they wanted, or comply with their demands. Annie and the other students with combat-relevant powers were working on #1, Paz tried #2, Kat was on #3. If the other students had failed—or if the other robots hadn't come to their rescue—then helping the ship transition would be the only option left. I don't think that would have led to it stalking Lindsey, though. Kat wasn't anywhere near completing her research at that point, and if she made up for it by building the Ship's body out of etherflesh, it probably couldn't have survived outside the distortion. Plus, the Court would have simply done away with it if it wasn't properly serving as Lindsey's research partner anymore. (Recall that, as it turned out, the whole trip was a Court experiment to see how the students endured the Star Ocean. Lindsey was presumably a confederate in that experiment, just as Bud was secretly monitoring the students on their night out.) I don't think anyone stopped worrying about anyone else; they were just busy trying to fix things. We didn't see Annie or anyone else expressing worry about Kat & Paz, either, but I'd assume they still felt it. Jack spent a lot of time muttering about Zimmy, but then Jack's obsessed. Thinking back, she did indeed get very focused and soon forgot everything around. Sigh. I didn't like that chapter ending at all. Nevermind that my whole class was brought into mortal danger by some robots with no patience, I should continue working on this without spending one single thought on whether this is really a good idea! Given that almost every other robot in the comic showed up to rescue the students, I’m not sure why it should have changed her mind on the project. The Ship and the Seraphs were the only threats, and the Ship went to CPU jail while the Seraphs were cast out and barred from transitioning. Why should the rest of the robots be punished for their crime? That would be like renouncing [insert your favorite civil rights movement here] because it contained a couple of violent radicals. Also, considering that the New People don't seem to be physically superhuman, helping the Ship and Seraphs transition would have made them less dangerous to humans, not more. Even a whale isn't as much of a threat as a sentient ship with a tech-savvy robot crew. It certainly struck me that the robots who planned it all never considered the possibility that it could have ended with Kat shutting down the whole project with a tone of "If I hadn't embarked on the whole 'build new bodies for robots' endeavor, all this trouble would never have happened!" It didn't, of course - instead, Kat concluded from it that she'd been dedicating too little time to it (and it probably helped that a) she felt the thrill of making a robot body and b) nobody actually got hurt) - but still.... I think the Seraphs assumed that Kat would react like a robot—which, to a large degree, she does. As the golem said, "To be still is death, because if we are not useful then we are nothing." Kat really wants to be useful. To give up on a project because it's too much trouble would be to abandon her duty: the correct response is to work twice as hard and make sure that no one else has to be troubled in the future. (People like this tend to forget that burning themselves out is causing trouble to the people who care about them.) Making the Ship's body reminded Kat that the transition project was feasible; being coerced by the Ship and the Seraphs reminded her that some robots are desperate to see it happen; being saved by the other robots reminded her that pretty much all the robots are desperate to see it happen, but most of them aren't dicks about it. Hence, redoubled motivation. In fact, she even more or less forgave the Seraphs later, when it turned out she could get something out of it! When did she forgive the Seraphs? They were still outcasts even after the New People were created. Or that she feared Annie would think it wasn’t good, which isn’t precisely the same thing. It wouldn’t be the first time Kat hesitated to approach Annie on a delicate topic, and Annie has strong opinions about what to do with the dead. But yes, I do think Kat was conflicted about her decision. She wanted to help the modern robots, but also to respect the golems’ autonomy. So she made what I’d consider the best possible compromise: honor the one golem’s request to stay dead, but revive the others so they could make their own choices. Naturally, they decided life was worth living again now that they had a new way to serve their descendants. That’s a win in my book. It’s worth remembering that resurrection would be a no-brainer for humans in the same situation. We generally resuscitate people who’ve attempted suicide if we can, and if they wake up physically healthy but still wanting to die, we treat them for depression instead of finishing them off. Oh, and the golems aren't slave labor; they're religious volunteers. The now-dead one was perfectly capable of attacking Kat, ignoring her, or making its own requests to her. Presumably all the others could do the same. In fact, we saw one at work and it was busy thinking through its own decisions. But of course she is! She’s challenging the leadership of the Court, which also has nearly magical powers to control technology, space, and human memory, plus an even better supercomputer or whatever the heck Omega is, and has been doing all this for hundreds of years longer than Kat has. If she wants to help the people she cares about—and at this point that’s a lot of people—she needs to get stronger. Isn’t that what heroes are supposed to do? Parley’s a one-woman army at this point, with a baby kaiju for a partner. Annie can shoot lasers, move stuff with her mind, and carries a god-slaying blade and an immortal fox demon slave who can kill with a glance. No door is shut before Jenny & Jack, though many stand ajar. Why shouldn’t Kat be able to power up to ridiculous levels? Kat, by contrast, never asks the robots/New People to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit them. It’s actually remarkable how little she depends on robotic assistants for her work, considering that technical assistance is what Diego created them for in the first place. It seems to be a principle of hers that she ought to serve their needs, not vice versa. What about when she reactivated all the old golems because she needed more manual labor? That was specifically to revive the Court-hacked robots. Kat didn't ask the golems to work on her supercomputer or her factory pocket dimension or her interface chip; she asked them to help their own descendants survive. That's the only reason she was comfortable seeking their help at all, I think. |
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Post by pyradonis on Dec 11, 2023 15:05:47 GMT
Given that almost every other robot in the comic showed up to rescue the students, I’m not sure why it should have changed her mind on the project. The Ship and the Seraphs were the only threats, and the Ship went to CPU jail while the Seraphs were cast out and barred from transitioning. Why should the rest of the robots be punished for their crime? That would be like renouncing [insert your favorite civil rights movement here] because it contained a couple of violent radicals. I didn't mean that Kat should have decided to stop her work completely, just pause for a while and think if the way she's going about it is right. In the aftermath of the Torn Sea incident, Kat thinks everything that happened is all her fault...Because she has taken too long! Not maybe because she shouldn't have allowed the robots to make her into their deity in the first place, or promise to make biological bodies that can interface with CPUs; or maybe because she finally realized that everything she does and says has ramifications on robot society.
That whole thing was really sketchy, especially in hindsight. Did S13 entice ship into that scheme? How could he possibly have predicted that the outcome would be failure (on the ship's part) and success (on his part, where success is defined as making Kat resume her work) That really seems like an unlikely series of events to have happen, and I don't see how it could have been predicted. Now if somebody were playing with time, and that was actually one of many attempts, that's a very different story. My guess? He didn't really care about whether the ship would get a new body or not (one less variable), just correctly predicted that getting to build a working body from magical clay would fascinate Kat enough to want to continue. Which is not unreasonable if one knows Kat. I also think he didn't have any big problems with making the other Seraphs take the blame, considering how they had previously treated him. |
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Post by todd on Dec 12, 2023 13:18:57 GMT
Given that almost every other robot in the comic showed up to rescue the students, I’m not sure why it should have changed her mind on the project. The Ship and the Seraphs were the only threats, and the Ship went to CPU jail while the Seraphs were cast out and barred from transitioning. Why should the rest of the robots be punished for their crime? That would be like renouncing [insert your favorite civil rights movement here] because it contained a couple of violent radicals. I didn't mean that Kat should have decided to stop her work completely, just pause for a while and think if the way she's going about it is right. In the aftermath of the Torn Sea incident, Kat thinks everything that happened is all her fault...Because she has taken too long! Not maybe because she shouldn't have allowed the robots to make her into their deity in the first place, or promise to make biological bodies that can interface with CPUs; or maybe because she finally realized that everything she does and says has ramifications on robot society.
Kat (and Annie, for that matter) most likely overlooked this because most of the "robot religion" scenes took place when the human characters weren't present - when it was just Robot preaching to the other robots. (Well, Shadow2 was there in some of those scenes - and looking uneasy about them, which raises the question of why he didn't alert Annie and Kat to them). Not to mention that the robots come across as so obviously "comic relief" that it's easy to underestimate them. |
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Post by blahzor on Dec 13, 2023 4:46:51 GMT
I didn't mean that Kat should have decided to stop her work completely, just pause for a while and think if the way she's going about it is right. In the aftermath of the Torn Sea incident, Kat thinks everything that happened is all her fault...Because she has taken too long! Not maybe because she shouldn't have allowed the robots to make her into their deity in the first place, or promise to make biological bodies that can interface with CPUs; or maybe because she finally realized that everything she does and says has ramifications on robot society.
Kat (and Annie, for that matter) most likely overlooked this because most of the "robot religion" scenes took place when the human characters weren't present - when it was just Robot preaching to the other robots. (Well, Shadow2 was there in some of those scenes - and looking uneasy about them, which raises the question of why he didn't alert Annie and Kat to them). Not to mention that the robots come across as so obviously "comic relief" that it's easy to underestimate them. Shadow ain't trying to get robot in trouble on some young love shh |
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That really seems like an unlikely series of events to have happen, and I don't see how it could have been predicted. Now if somebody were playing with time, and that was actually one of many attempts, that's a very different story.