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Post by philman on Dec 1, 2023 8:07:16 GMT
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Dec 1, 2023 8:10:20 GMT
This Kat looks harder to push around than the one Skippy talked with before.
Hopefully next page we'll get some dialogue regarding what Kat's experiencing.
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Post by pyradonis on Dec 1, 2023 13:55:34 GMT
Are those green and red tendrils, or is there blood running through the red ones? And I'm interested in what Kat is experiencing right now.
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Post by ctso74 on Dec 1, 2023 15:46:52 GMT
Well she does have a new haircut.
"Crazy" as in event notifications are going off, and the system viewer is seeing stuff that's impossible? Or "crazy" as in the keyboard has turned to pudding, she can taste sound, and can see the back of her own head?
Because those are very different kinds of "crazy".
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Post by Gemini Jim on Dec 1, 2023 16:02:14 GMT
Well, we don't know what Kat has been experiencing while Annie has been leading the NPCs around the Annie in Wonderland holodeck simulation.
But she (again, assuming that this is the real Kat/ the Kat on the walkie talkie is real, or that there aren't two Kats - normal Kat and Mecha Kat) didn't sound panicked about the Distortion earlier. so whatever happened must have happened after the Bridge.
Maybe the NPCs started acting weird when one of their own died?
Maybe it started when she was summoned into Annie's personal Distortion hell?
Maybe... "the Noobs have been acting like I'm some sort of monster!"
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Post by Gemminie on Dec 1, 2023 16:10:52 GMT
The format is the same as what was established on the last page of the previous chapter: the Machine Angel or whatever we want to call her appears with a black background, and in the foreground are shattered shards of some kind of space, presumably the place where Annie and the Interpreter were standing before Saslamel and the Interpreter called for the keeper of Sam's soul. They don't seem to notice that the space they're in is fractured.
The Interpreter clarifies that what they're looking at isn't the person they talked to "last time," but Annie replies that it is the same person, meaning that they intended to summon Kat, and that's who they've got, but Kat doesn't look the same. Annie explains that she's seen this apparition before. So this is not a case where the MA appears alone – Kat's voice comes from it. Kat recognizes Annie and says that "everything's going crazy," wondering what's going on.
Various lancet tips, tendrils, and antennae seem to be reaching either toward or away from the MA, or both. This is already the most we've seen of the MA in a single chapter.
The fact that Annie and the Interpreter are experiencing no distress and in fact aren't even mentioning that their space is shattered suggests to me that they aren't aware of it. From their point of view, they're just standing in a hallway, possibly with Arbiter Saslamel hanging out right there, and Sam's ghost, and all the other NP too. I'm guessing that when the Interpreter summoned Kat, he wasn't aware of the current problems with teleportation in this distortion, and Kat is being pulled through the fragmented space – we saw how well that worked for the radio. This might kill an ordinary person, but not Saslamel and the Interpreter, and apparently not Kat either: as often happens when Kat has an extraordinary challenge, the Machine Angel aspect appears and powers her up. Perhaps the lancets, tendrils, and antennae are parts of the MA that have been severed and are trying to reunite with the whole. Or perhaps they're just representations of her connections to various technology that's sending her input.
I almost forgot: We just got confirmation that Kat is indeed the keeper of Sam's soul, and likely all the souls of the other New People as well. Not the owner, the keeper – they've said before that a being can't own another being (cases of slavery certainly exist and have existed historically, but they may not be supported by ethereal contracts, or at least not the same kind of contract as with ownership of objects). What does being the "keeper" of a soul entail? Maybe it just means something like a guardian – nothing drastic can be done to that soul without the keeper's consent? Maybe it's something similar to Annie's ownership of Renard's body before he switched to familiar?
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Post by blahzor on Dec 1, 2023 16:25:38 GMT
did they talk to her before or after Kat's haircut? maybe that's why he doesn't remember her
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Post by csj on Dec 1, 2023 16:43:51 GMT
Or "crazy" as in the keyboard has turned to pudding, she can taste sound, and can see the back of her own head? if you have projective synthesia you might not be crazy at all (just adam neely) |
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Post by Gemini Jim on Dec 1, 2023 17:01:50 GMT
Well, this theory was completely wrong: 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?" But this one is still in play: I predict a lot of "what?" reactions from Kat, one way or another. ("A NPC just died." "What?" "And you have to be a 'pomp." "What??" <- insert Harry/ Hagrid meme here.) |
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Post by beaukm on Dec 1, 2023 18:06:53 GMT
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Post by silicondream on Dec 1, 2023 18:52:56 GMT
Well she does have a new haircut. "Crazy" as in event notifications are going off, and the system viewer is seeing stuff that's impossible? Or "crazy" as in the keyboard has turned to pudding, she can taste sound, and can see the back of her own head? Because those are very different kinds of "crazy". Not so different for Kat now, I imagine. Distortions in her cybersenses are probably as just as disorienting as organic hallucinations & illusions would be. That's the downside of turning yourself into the system viewer. |
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Post by blahzor on Dec 3, 2023 22:15:24 GMT
okay i finally looked. they did talk to her before the haircut. as it was before Norns visit
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