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Post by silicondream on Mar 29, 2024 8:21:46 GMT
Robot interfered in Kat's life a lot. I'm still not sure that's the worst of his sins, but it's clearly a bad thing to do! Without him, she'd almost certainly still have a girlfriend I doubt it. Paz was obviously worried and unsettled about the stuff with the robots, but the things they really fought about were Kat's relationship with Annie and her tendency to sacrifice everything for her work. Paz was always going to need a partner who was more focused on her and building a normal life together, and less on pulse-pounding science heroism and changing the world alongside her best galpal. Also, without Robot, Kat might never have gotten close to Paz in the first place. Kat only visited her veterinary clinic in "A Bad Start" because she found a baby pigeon outside her new lab, which she'd moved to in order to work on Robot's new body. And Kat and Paz only had their deep conversation because Kat was already fascinated/frustrated with this work. Kat would absolutely have come to the attention of the Court; her teachers were going nuts over her work as early as Chapter 5. She's their most talented engineer since Diego, in like a dozen subfields. And three chapters later, Kat flew down to the Annan Waters alone in an improvised aircraft to rescue Annie. She was always a risk-taker. Arguably, Robot is the main reason her risk-taking hasn't destroyed her yet. Kat didn't ask him to become her secret bodyguard, but he was a good one. He was also responsible for getting the Seraphs to place her under their protection instead of reporting her to the Court, and for negotiating a non-aggression pact with Loup that protected her. He's overprotective, not underprotective. *EDIT* Oh yeah, and her robot-related work is what gained her new allies in Tony, Juliette and Arthur, who made sure the Court didn't find out about her illicit activities. On the contrary, Kat had Annie and Paz implant the chip because she didn't want to involve the robots. They would never have let the Angel risk herself like that, at least not without triple-checking everything first. Absolutely none, I think. The precipitating event for Kat's dark path would have been Annie's death at the bridge, and in that timeline Robot would never have entered Kat's life. God, no. None of the Court's elite researchers are typical. She'd still be alienated from most of her classmates, she'd still be getting up to whatever weirdness with Renard and Annie, and she'd still be deeply dissatisfied with how the Court does things. And I would bet that she'd be worse off, because she'd be focusing more on taking down the Court and less on improving it. Working with the robots gave her an immediate, concrete way to do good and feel useful, and provided valuable training in empathizing with nonhumans. And it allowed her to mediate between Annie and Tony, because there was a project they could all work on together. Robot didn't make her capable of reading three-dimensional machine code, nor did he make her supernaturally attractive to half the robots in the Court. I think her technopathy is a matter of birth and upbringing. |
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tibert
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Post by tibert on Mar 29, 2024 9:02:16 GMT
I wonder how much of Kat's predicted dark path was due to Robot. Absolutely none, I think. The precipitating event for Kat's dark path would have been Annie's death at the bridge, and in that timeline Robot would never have entered Kat's life. I find your whole post convincing, with just some nitpicking on this point. I imagine FIK (First Iteration Kat), by the time she went to the Norns - later than current Kat (more than 3 years then?) -, would have thoroughly examined every aspect of Annie's death (which reminds me once more of MNP's reaction to Shadow). Robot's CPU retrieval would have looked different, but I don't think Kat would have failed where Annie and Renard have succeeded. Actually, I think that, narratively, the reason Kat was stuck in the school science lab was because Annie and Renard had to get close to each other with a common adventure. Kat's presence would have disrupted that because she would have been the natural problem-solver in this specific situation.
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What would have Kat's robot disguise looked like?
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Post by silicondream on Mar 30, 2024 11:33:47 GMT
I find your whole post convincing, with just some nitpicking on this point. I imagine FIK (First Iteration Kat), by the time she went to the Norns - later than current Kat (more than 3 years then?) -, would have thoroughly examined every aspect of Annie's death (which reminds me once more of MNP's reaction to Shadow). Robot's CPU retrieval would have looked different, but I don't think Kat would have failed where Annie and Renard have succeeded. But if Kat got to Robot's CPU much later, it might have been destroyed or damaged during testing. And I doubt she would have ended up friends with him, regardless. She was probably pretty emotionally guarded after losing Annie. I should also mention that I don't believe in the "iterated Kat" theory. I think the whole alternate timelines idea was based on Clippy's guess of what had happened with the twin Annies, and he was probably wrong, because a) the Norns couldn't fix it like he thought they could and b) Zimmy helped the Annies fix it by fusing back into a single girl, not by disappearing back to their own timelines. (The current Annie remembers everything that both Annies experienced, I believe.) As far as I can see, there's only one timeline, and Kat's rescue of Annie is a causal loop within it. The many visits the Norns describe are all from this Kat's present and future; she was just "younger than usual" this time because this visit was her first. Of course the Norns are aware of the possibility that Kat would not save Annie and thus herself, but that alternate history would also be causally self-contained. I see no reason to think that it really "exists" or influenced the current timeline in some way. So while Kat was worried that there was another timeline where she was "so sad she had to break time," she was wrong about that. She didn't have to break time, just complete it, and she was assisted by Annie rather than motivated by her loss. I'd agree with that. Kat has to be absent from a lot of scenes because she's just too competent. If she was in the distortion with Annie, for instance, with all her techno-powers intact, there's a good chance she could have saved or resuscitated Sam. Dark Kat wouldn't need a disguise; she'd have a swarm of those Court hardware overrides, only self-propelled. She'd just zombify every robot in her path, if they didn't bow before her obvious Angelicality. That, or she'd kill Boxbot and show up wearing his face. |
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Post by Hatredman on Mar 30, 2024 21:38:27 GMT
But if Kat got to Robot's CPU much later, it might have been destroyed or damaged during testing. That's not what @tilbert said. He said that Kat went to the Norns later. I was prepared to dispute that, because in my mind the "multiverse Kat" was already undisputed Canon, but: 1. You have a very good point. 2. I myself don't like the GK Multiverse Hypothesis. Heck, I don't like the Many Worlds Hypothesis in real life! Gives me the creeps!. I urge you all to read Dresden Codak! Kimiko Ross is Dark Kat! |
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Post by silicondream on Mar 31, 2024 0:37:14 GMT
But if Kat got to Robot's CPU much later, it might have been destroyed or damaged during testing. That's not what @tilbert said. He said that Kat went to the Norns later. I understand that, but it's hard for me to imagine Kat using Norn-assisted time travel to retrieve Robot's CPU without rescuing Annie herself, in any timeline. Either she would save them both, in which case it would no longer be the "dark path," or she would only use the Norns for surveillance of the past, in which case she'd still have to go get Robot's CPU by conventional means, and much later than Annie did in our timeline. I don't feel it's particularly more creepy than other plausible theories that imply a multiverse or infinite ergodic universe, in particular inflation theory. In all those cases there would be an infinite number of variations of you and your life somewhere. Many-worlds seems plausible to me simply because I find the postulate of wave-function collapse clunkier than the existence of alternate worlds. Permanent superposition makes more sense to me. Just my gut feeling though. |
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Post by blahzor on Mar 31, 2024 15:44:53 GMT
there really is at minimum 2 universes. The thing is there's no idea if the other one kept existing. and there are non-linenal timelines in this one
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tibert
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Post by tibert on Mar 31, 2024 21:46:46 GMT
That's not what @tilbert said. He said that Kat went to the Norns later. I understand that, but it's hard for me to imagine Kat using Norn-assisted time travel to retrieve Robot's CPU without rescuing Annie herself, in any timeline. Either she would save them both, in which case it would no longer be the "dark path," or she would only use the Norns for surveillance of the past, in which case she'd still have to go get Robot's CPU by conventional means, and much later than Annie did in our timeline. Actually, I was mentionning the meeting with the Norns as the limit event after which Kat would have no more incentive to learn about the circumstances of Annie's fall. I don't think Kat would have needed the Norns to know about Annie being pushed by a robot. Renard and Eglamore were there. The next step would be to discover where are sent bad robots. Kat may get busy on that even before the time of Annie's chance encounter with the seraphs in "Mainly involves robots". Not feeling like arguing with that one, since Kat's emotional trauma is my all-purpose superglu to patch the holes in my MNP = FIK theory. All the meetings between Kat and the Norns taking place in the same timeline for different purposes? It's true Kat has a big todo (tohavedone?) list: - insert the anti-Loup shield protocol in the court robots instructional code (EDIT: Oops! Already explained...)- enable angel recognition in all robots - install the Prophecy Generator in Robot - feed the Court with the observations from Tony's notebook to build the Omega fraud - plant the seed bismuth - put a leaflet for the science fair in Gamma's path so she convinces Zimmy to take part - neurally program the distortion generator in Baby Zimmy's brain - put the stars in the sky (mandatory god job) before Jones opens her eyes. - neutralize the cursed teapot before it destroys the multiverse Busy girl! More seriously, Verdandi says "you usually have a mechanical bird with you", meaning that Kat's encounters with the Norns are usually about sending the Tik-Tok back in time. It also means the Norns have several meetings with Kat to save Annie, unless Kat builds several Tik-Toks for different purposes in the same timeline. Also, when Kat asked what happened the first time, Verdandi says she can't tell in a way that suggests there is a first time. Otherwise, why didn't Verdandi say "Kat, we all know you are supra-mega-clever, so don't take offense if I tell you that, knowing how Time works, your question doesn't make much sense."? ... ... ... Tom must be very busy with his other works. Let's not bother him asking for this drawing. |
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Post by silicondream on Apr 1, 2024 19:35:59 GMT
Actually, I was mentionning the meeting with the Norns as the limit event after which Kat would have no more incentive to learn about the circumstances of Annie's fall. I don't think Kat would have needed the Norns to know about Annie being pushed by a robot. Renard and Eglamore were there. The next step would be to discover where are sent bad robots. Kat may get busy on that even before the time of Annie's chance encounter with the seraphs in "Mainly involves robots". Ah, I see. I think it's probably the latter, since apparently Tic-Tocs have had enough prominent appearances in the distant past to be incorporated into robot mythology and be thought older than the Court. I imagine that a older Kat will use them for lots of temporal scouting jobs...until at last she sends the shapeshifting, ultradurable T-T-1000 back to the primordial Earth and it assumes the form of an unemotional blond lady. Multiple Tic-Tocs could also explain why the one that Coyote slapped down took root and grew into some sort of mini-surveillance station. I don't think current Kat could or would have built that feature into the prototype. There could still be a first time from the Norns' perspective, even if their temporal ordering doesn't match the outside world's. Maybe their first visit is Kat's last, or something like that. As long as it's in her future, they probably can't give details for paradox-avoidance reasons. Or maybe telling her that her question doesn't make sense would already be too much information to give a supra-mega-clever genius, because she'd use it to construct a forbidden theory of non-linear time and catastrophe would had been going to ensue. |
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Post by Hatredman on Apr 2, 2024 21:47:41 GMT
Also, when Kat asked what happened the first time, Verdandi says she can't tell in a way that suggests there is a first time. Otherwise, why didn't Verdandi say "Kat, we all know you are supra-mega-clever, so don't take offense if I tell you that, knowing how Time works, your question doesn't make much sense."? There could still be a first time from the Norns' perspective, even if their temporal ordering doesn't match the outside world's. Maybe their first visit is Kat's last, or something like that. As long as it's in her future, they probably can't give details for paradox-avoidance reasons. It all makes perfect sense*. In her future incursions, Kat may always elect to meet the Norns earlier (from their perspective) so that it would not interfere with what she's already done. And, in the Court's perspective, also earlier so she can alter even more distant events. She may even go back to Diego's time. And that's how the ornitonic mythos started. * Expressed in dollars and cents
Pounds shillings and pence
Can't you see
It all makes perfect sense |
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Post by drmemory on Apr 3, 2024 1:48:58 GMT
Robot interfered in Kat's life a lot. I'm still not sure that's the worst of his sins, but it's clearly a bad thing to do! Without him, she'd almost certainly still have a girlfriend I doubt it. Paz was obviously worried and unsettled about the stuff with the robots, but the things they really fought about were Kat's relationship with Annie and her tendency to sacrifice everything for her work. Paz was always going to need a partner who was more focused on her and building a normal life together, and less on pulse-pounding science heroism and changing the world alongside her best galpal. Also, without Robot, Kat might never have gotten close to Paz in the first place. Kat only visited her veterinary clinic in "A Bad Start" because she found a baby pigeon outside her new lab, which she'd moved to in order to work on Robot's new body. And Kat and Paz only had their deep conversation because Kat was already fascinated/frustrated with this work. Kat would absolutely have come to the attention of the Court; her teachers were going nuts over her work as early as Chapter 5. She's their most talented engineer since Diego, in like a dozen subfields. And three chapters later, Kat flew down to the Annan Waters alone in an improvised aircraft to rescue Annie. She was always a risk-taker. Arguably, Robot is the main reason her risk-taking hasn't destroyed her yet. Kat didn't ask him to become her secret bodyguard, but he was a good one. He was also responsible for getting the Seraphs to place her under their protection instead of reporting her to the Court, and for negotiating a non-aggression pact with Loup that protected her. He's overprotective, not underprotective. *EDIT* Oh yeah, and her robot-related work is what gained her new allies in Tony, Juliette and Arthur, who made sure the Court didn't find out about her illicit activities. On the contrary, Kat had Annie and Paz implant the chip because she didn't want to involve the robots. They would never have let the Angel risk herself like that, at least not without triple-checking everything first. Absolutely none, I think. The precipitating event for Kat's dark path would have been Annie's death at the bridge, and in that timeline Robot would never have entered Kat's life. God, no. None of the Court's elite researchers are typical. She'd still be alienated from most of her classmates, she'd still be getting up to whatever weirdness with Renard and Annie, and she'd still be deeply dissatisfied with how the Court does things. And I would bet that she'd be worse off, because she'd be focusing more on taking down the Court and less on improving it. Working with the robots gave her an immediate, concrete way to do good and feel useful, and provided valuable training in empathizing with nonhumans. And it allowed her to mediate between Annie and Tony, because there was a project they could all work on together. Robot didn't make her capable of reading three-dimensional machine code, nor did he make her supernaturally attractive to half the robots in the Court. I think her technopathy is a matter of birth and upbringing. I don't agree with much of what you said, but also don't really want to make an argument thread happen. So, I'll bite my lip, and keep my response to a minimum:
When I said she would not have come to the attention of the court, I clearly meant "in the context of being surveilled because she was doing things they wouldn't like". The court would probably have noticed her for her intelligence and science fair projects but before Robot's influence, she didn't do anything risky or anything that we know they would have disapproved of.
I'll stop there - clearly you have a very different interpretation in mind of all the events we have seen and I gain nothing by trying to adjust said interpretation. You are welcome to your opinions, just as I am welcome to mine.
I will, however, revive one of my own older theories. I've always suspected that Kat may have been on a Dark Kat path from the start. Making friends with Annie and thus being lured into learning about the ether is what pulled her off of that path. Was Robot part of the Court's plans? Were the NP? Not sure.
The wilder theory is that the Court may have created her on purpose, trying to control the future using Omega's predictions, but I don't have as much evidence for that one.  |
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Post by silicondream on Apr 3, 2024 7:00:02 GMT
I don't agree with much of what you said, but also don't really want to make an argument thread happen. So, I'll bite my lip, and keep my response to a minimum: I'm not sure about this weird new "using the Internet for something other than interminable arguments on undecidable questions" idea, but I'll try to be brief as well! I just suck at it. I'm afraid I still disagree. Before she met Robot, Kat had already gone AWOL to rescue Annie from the Annan Waters, decided to investigate the true purpose of the Court with her, colluded with her in harboring Renard and Shadow, and helped her figure out how to steal Robot's CPU. Her main illicit activities later on were helping Annie free Jeanne, and hacking the Court's computers (hence the chip in her neck) to learn more about Omega and the Star Ocean; neither of those were instigated by Robot. Kat's a fairly rebellious kid who's best friends with Annie, the Court's most rebellious kid. At least as long as Annie was around, she was always going to get into trouble. I'd also point out that Kat's current lack of surveillance and her good status with the Court is due to Robot's impact on her life. The Court doesn't know most of what she's done because the Seraphs, Tony, Juliette and Arthur have covered her tracks. And the Court is extremely interested in the prosthetics she's developed, like Tony's hand, which is a spinoff of her robotics research. And finally, I'd note that Best-Timeline Kat is likely supposed to rebel. The Norns said that she and Annie would "bring profound changes to the world," and Gamma said that she would "lead the Court itself in a better direction." Dark Kat is probably a resentful but obedient Court employee, like Tony used to be, or else an unsuccessful "problem kid" like Jack Hyland. Our Kat criticizes and fights the worst aspects of the Court, but is so dang valuable that the Court has to respect her anyway, which seems ideal to me. But mine are RI—*ahem* likewise. I wouldn't disagree. She was pretty miserable socially before Annie came, and she would have been forced to become more Court-conformist, which would not have been a good thing. A Kat who held power within the Court, but who was as badly adjusted as Tony and as unscrupulous as Llanwellyn or Aata, could have been a serious problem for the world. Never mind that if she developed her Machine Angel powers without any ether-connected friends to guide and support her...who knows what would happen. Doesn't seem too wild to me. If they had a prediction as specific as Annie's death, they could certainly have one about Kat's birth. And they've obviously got some way of locating children like Eglamore, who wasn't noticeably superpowered but had mythic connections and exceptional potential. Perhaps a lot of these kids were conceived thanks to Court influence. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Apr 3, 2024 7:24:11 GMT
Re: Dark Kat: A component in Kat's character is that she is a legacy in the Court. The Court has been bringing in gifted people for generations and grooming them in its particular philosophy and culture. If I remember right Donald grew up in Scotland but Anja's backstory wasn't filled in* so she might also have been a legacy. Either way, Kat's at least a 2nd gen herself; she grew up in the Court and the Court is normal for her. Her parents have probably shielded her from much of the surveillance and the office-politics-writ-large but these things have been going on in the background of her life since she was born. She probably hasn't thought about it much but the way the people in the Court think and the way they do things is her normal. Whatever's going on (or not) with Omega, Kat already is something of a creation of the Court.
*Anja's got an accent and there are hints that she may be from eastern Europe somewhere or something like that... but it hasn't been nailed down and even if Anja was born elsewhere she's still a legacy if one of her parents came up in the Court.
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Post by Hatredman on Apr 3, 2024 16:14:55 GMT
*Anja's got an accent and there are hints that she may be from eastern Europe somewhere or something like that... but it hasn't been nailed down and even if Anja was born elsewhere she's still a legacy if one of her parents came up in the Court. Tom has already revealed that she is Romani, which I believe is a clan of Spanish Gypsies (Romani Gitanos). EDIT 2: I've just learned (through Wikipedia) that calling the Romani with any other name than Romani or Roma is considered a racial slur - and that includes the word Gypsy. I did not know that and I apologize to anyone and everyone that reads this. I will leave the original post unedited so people can learn from my mistake. EDIT: a little Googling and Wikipedia never hurts. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people Compare to Anja:  |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Apr 3, 2024 20:50:20 GMT
Took me a good while to find the sources but yes Anja is confirmed Romani and her family is originally from Spain but they apparently moved around a lot and she didn't spend much time there. Calling her a gypsy may be a slur but Kat has been called one in the comic. Anyway, my point is that Anja may have one or more antecedents who might have been belonged to the Court. The magic talent probably ran in the family and the Court collects people with talents. There's no evidence for it but it hasn't been ruled out either, so Kat is at least a second generation legacy and maybe more. |
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Post by Hatredman on Apr 5, 2024 13:50:34 GMT
Calling her a gypsy may be a slur but Kat has been called one in the comic. I think Tom is (and was at the time) aware of the fact that using that word is inapropriate, and used it on purpose to underline how much of an asshole Renard was being.
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tibert
Junior Member
Posts: 65
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Post by tibert on Apr 6, 2024 20:08:00 GMT
I urge you all to read Dresden Codak! Kimiko Ross is Dark Kat! Maybe she is... Attachments:
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