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feetnotes posted:I bet Zimmy is like the “negative” to Omega’s “positive.” Somehow the etheric byproduct of Omega’s prediction engine gets dumped onto Zimmy and results in the zimmyverse manifestations. Annie did mention they look alike. oh nooooooooooooooo
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 00:26 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 15:11 |
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feetnotes posted:Oh wait is Kat going to “kill” Zimmy by recombining her with Omega? Are we pulling a reverse 2 Annies here? A Piccolo/Kami thing? that would also quite handily relate to how/why the 2 annies situation was cleared up with a stint through the zimmieverse so
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 02:24 |
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Wait, following that logic: Does that mean that Zimmy killed both Annies? Is our original protagonist gone?
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 02:38 |
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isasphere posted:Wait, following that logic: Does that mean that Zimmy killed both Annies? Is our original protagonist gone? she's been gone a long, long time
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 22:26 |
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:that would also quite handily relate to how/why the 2 annies situation was cleared up with a stint through the zimmieverse so No that makes sense, so that can’t be it
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 23:34 |
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I stopped paying any real attention to this comic a long time ago. Are we supposed to know who Omega is or is this another new character?
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 15:49 |
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...Yes, to both, I think? Any talk of Omega from actual knowledgeable people has happened off-screen; we only have Annie's broad strokes description of it to Jerrek/Loup, and she described it as "the omega device". She also hadn't seen it, and only knew of it because of her dad telling her about it off-screen.
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 15:53 |
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Omega was the mysterious project that let the Court predict the future. Annie's parents bonded when Tony was sent on a mission to observe an Omega prediction. Omega is also the project that was the big mystery early on in the comic where the court was doing ether experiments. This plotline was left hanging for a very long time and then a man in a hawaiian shirt explained over drinks to two reacting heads that the court was actually planning on leaving the planet*, and then Annie revealed that her dad explained offscreen what Omega was, killing the two biggest mysteries in the comic in a row of flat exposition and an off-screen exposition. Now Omega is apparently actually a girl like Zeta and Gamma are. Ok! I'm sure we're going to get a quick exposition about what the mystery plot of the story has been once more. *this also answered the question of how could the court possibly be so big! It exists on a different dimension! Except it was never really established that "where" is the court was meant to be one of the mysteries sufficiently so it just kinda came out of nowhere? Also, again, it was explained to us not by the main characters figuring it out but the guy who used to be in charge of it explaining it while Annie and Kat interrupted his date. Sort of like the time where the Two Annies plotline was resolved in a distortion zone for no reason. Or like how the entire plotline with Robot, which has been running since the first chapter, was resolved in a distortion zone kinda ineffectually and perfunctorily. Or like how--
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 18:23 |
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FlocksOfMice posted:Omega was the mysterious project that let the Court predict the future. Annie's parents bonded when Tony was sent on a mission to observe an Omega prediction. Omega is also the project that was the big mystery early on in the comic where the court was doing ether experiments. This plotline was left hanging for a very long time and then a man in a hawaiian shirt explained over drinks to two reacting heads that the court was actually planning on leaving the planet*, and then Annie revealed that her dad explained offscreen what Omega was, killing the two biggest mysteries in the comic in a row of flat exposition and an off-screen exposition. The Omega-Zimmy connection was hinted at here, it seems: https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2701 But the problem is that every single aspect of the comic is all weirdly disjointed. Character arcs advance at random paces, sometimes incoherently, with important changes often happening off-screen or contradicting what had been established. Characters behave in non-sensical ways at times too, just for the sake of advancing through each plot beat. Like, not just out-of-character, but sometimes in ways that seem like they are actors playing badly in a theater play, and as soon as the scene is over they move on. Mysteries are revealed and implotant plot points happen with important ramifications that aren't really followed up on. Like Loup ravaging the Court, that should have caused more long-time emotional turmoil than we saw, not just the weird cultural clash between forest people and humans. Or the thing with the people leaving the planet being erased from the world retroactively. No one seems to be panicking about that part? Your friends and possibly family who choose to leave, just retconned away from existence, from your memory? We can handwave how something so magical is happening via techno-whatever, but you can't sell a sense of internal logic if characters don't react with plausible emotional realism. Unless you are playing a comedy, I guess, but Gunnerkrigg Court had previously balanced comedy and emotional poignancy well. Like, for example: Annie and Kat finding out that Jerrek was Loup from Robot off-screen. That should have been a big blow to Annie, who is just recently recovering from the turmoil of Tony returning to her life. It took her years to gain confidence and make friends other than Kat. She took a big emotional blow when she was held back a school year, and slowly recovered over months when her friends rallied around her. So someone she had so many mixed feelings about (the jerk Loup containing her dear friend Ysengrin) having been under her and everyone else's nose this whole time, after she confided in him about the secret Omega Project? She must have felt betrayed, foolish for letting him in, mildly insecure about her social skills and ability to tell who she can trust and who is lying to her face? What did Kat think about this too, with the numans being her big project and responsibility? But because this all happened off-screen, in the middle of other big plot advancements, it lost that emotional weight and catharsis for the readers. We were just beginning to... ideally, I guess, connect to Loup's struggle to become a good person, but because we cut away from Lana's death and his fight with Coyote straight into Zimmy land and forgot all about him, that momentum was also lost. Big plot things happen that should be changing the status quo a lot more than we see, but we jump into another thing before we can see how the characters are holding up emotionally. tl;dr: The story has lost its previously carefully maintained emotional and character continuity. Characters only react to important events for a little while and then move on to the next plot beat, which now that we have big end-of-story plot things happening make everything feel both rushed and dragging on. isasphere fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Apr 28, 2024 |
# ? Apr 28, 2024 19:12 |
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We were really supposed to care about Omega and remember its in the background influencing things, but when all you ever get is it mentioned occasionally with no elaboration or investigation, it kind of doesn't stick in your brain. This was supposed to be a big shocking reveal, but instead it's just, "oh, huh, yeah, that thing." I care much much more about the fate of characters I care about, like James, Smitty, Parley, and Jones. But I guess that's not what this comic is about anymore. Rotten Red Rod fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Apr 28, 2024 |
# ? Apr 28, 2024 20:29 |
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isasphere posted:The Omega-Zimmy connection was hinted at here, it seems: https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2701 Panic about what? Who are you talking about?
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 02:26 |
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christmas boots posted:Panic about what? Who are you talking about? Jokes aside, how did this not throw everyone in the Court into social chaos? This should be having on-going consequences, right? Like, we had Paz's family decide to peace out, is anyone else following? How are people not revolting? How was this not the last straw? The Court got attacked, they have robots running a barrier 24/7, they kept being attacked by forest creatures, then they had to welcome in forest people, now the whole Court project is falling apart after like... centuries? And we only had a brief sequence of people being dazed at the beach and Annie and Kat talking to Aata and Shell and being grumpy about it and... that's it? Generations of people dedicated their life to pursue science at this place. Workers had their children live and study at the Court. The headmaster was also lost and confused. Why do we keep having the person or people who are calling the shots being a mystery while at the same time having the people whose lives are ruined by their decisions so indifferent to those decisions and the people making them? The Court's leaders being a nebulous shady organization vs children who are powerless to really dig into the mystery or really do anything about it was okay at the beginning but it's getting ridiculous now that Annie and Kat are older and the organization is fragmenting. isasphere fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Apr 29, 2024 |
# ? Apr 29, 2024 02:58 |
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isasphere posted:Jokes aside, how did this not throw everyone in the Court into social chaos? This should be having on-going consequences, right? Like, we had Paz's family decide to peace out, is anyone else following? How are people not revolting? How was this not the last straw? The Court got attacked, they have robots running a barrier 24/7, they kept being attacked by forest creatures, then they had to welcome in forest people, now the whole Court project is falling apart after like... centuries? And we only had a brief sequence of people being dazed at the beach and Annie and Kat talking to Aata and Shell and being grumpy about it and... that's it? Clearly they already left. Nobody is freaking out because nobody remembers them now
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 03:12 |
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Loup love story ... ... ... ...LOUP LOVE STORY
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 08:06 |
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no no more romance please
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 08:51 |
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Guys what are you talking about it's just a man and a woman of similar age in a room it's quite a stretch to assume it would immediately break into heterosexual romahahahahahahahahhaahahaha wild guess zimmy is their child or great great grandchild or some poo poo
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 12:20 |
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Out of all the possible ways to wrap up the Omega mystery, "Oh, yeah, she was just Zimmy's grandma and no one thought to ask Zimmy" is possibly the lamest way to explain it... which is why that's what's going to happen, isn't it?
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 13:11 |
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Begemot posted:Clearly they already left. Nobody is freaking out because nobody remembers them now This is my out there explanation for no [insert fav character] updates in so long
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 15:06 |
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That guy put the Omega computer in sleep mode.
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 15:15 |
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Twenty Four posted:That guy put the Omega computer in sleep mode. at least it can still send tweets
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 15:55 |
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Decent art Can't wait to be continuously disappointed.
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 17:00 |
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Wait so Omega is related to Zimmy, right? Her mom or sister or something and Zimmy is the reject the Court doesn't give a poo poo about beyond containing? Did anyone already call that one? That's why she was taken for her. (I feel like there was a point where Gunnerkrigg as a work would have laid better setup about this.)
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 17:05 |
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I kinda like the art. Prolly the grandparents is my guess too.
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 17:14 |
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Hey thread. Continuously forgetting that Zimmy is battery plan B is the kind of stuff that gets a thread called a mock thread. gently caress all has happened in the past... ages... so it's not hard to retain the few things that did.
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 17:18 |
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We're gonna be in the distortion for like 2 more years aren't we
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 19:33 |
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in terms of "using the distortion as a vehicle for going through a sequence of flashbacks to abruptly collect many disparate pieces of context" probably yes
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 19:42 |
Is this guy the Gunner?
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 22:49 |
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I wonder if Tom will try to drag this out until chapter 100. The pacing gives me that vibe.
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# ? May 1, 2024 08:25 |
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top notch art on these pages
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# ? May 1, 2024 11:08 |
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Very Mike Mignola, I like it.
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# ? May 1, 2024 11:16 |
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rudecyrus posted:I wonder if Tom will try to drag this out until chapter 100. The pacing gives me that vibe. On the other hand, the lower right hand corner of today's page has some kind of symbol like an alternate chapter-end mark, so this interlude may be over for now?
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# ? May 1, 2024 11:20 |
That was there at the top of yesterdays page too, I don't think it means anything other than "sepia toned flashback". Edit: Oh, it was the top of the first page, skipped for the second and at the bottom on the third. Maybe it's indicating that we're going to skip ahead?
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# ? May 1, 2024 11:25 |
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Or at least "These three pages are one event". We may go forward, we may go further back. Probably going to to forward in time though.
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# ? May 1, 2024 11:34 |
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rudecyrus posted:I wonder if Tom will try to drag this out until chapter 100. The pacing gives me that vibe. The pace seems perfectly fine to me? There's a lot happening over a few pages.
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# ? May 1, 2024 12:42 |
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Bonster posted:The pace seems perfectly fine to me? There's a lot happening over a few pages. for now
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# ? May 1, 2024 13:07 |
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you don’t have to make a snide little “ohhhh wonder how this is gonna suck” every drat page. you can just not post
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# ? May 1, 2024 13:16 |
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Oxxidation posted:you don’t have to make a snide little “ohhhh wonder how this is gonna suck” every drat page. you can just not post
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# ? May 1, 2024 13:19 |
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Bonster posted:The pace seems perfectly fine to me? There's a lot happening over a few pages. The past few chapters have had a really odd pacing where not a lot tends to happen for a while, then suddenly multiple things are being brought up at once and then almost immediately ignored or brushed off (See the whole "Annie demands to know who Omega is, gets interrupted by Shadow, Shadow asks who Omega is and Annie replies saying "I unno, it doesn't matter""). While Tom's dedication to the M-W-F schedule is admirable, I do wonder if the pacing would be much more consistent and tighter if he were working at his own pace. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind having pages of just artwork conveying that they're on foot, it's just taking awhile, it's just when you end up with multiple plot threads being dumped on you at once and then just kinda discarded that's annoying.
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# ? May 1, 2024 13:31 |
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Oxxidation posted:you don’t have to make a snide little “ohhhh wonder how this is gonna suck” every drat page. you can just not post it was a comment on how the recent chapters have this super uneven start-stop-start momentum, where important things are highlighted to tease the plot forward, but then the characters get distracted/interrupted or spend too much time going from one place to another, which significantly affects the tension and intrigue
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# ? May 1, 2024 14:51 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 15:11 |
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Randalor posted:The past few chapters have had a really odd pacing where not a lot tends to happen for a while, then suddenly multiple things are being brought up at once and then almost immediately ignored or brushed off (See the whole "Annie demands to know who Omega is, gets interrupted by Shadow, Shadow asks who Omega is and Annie replies saying "I unno, it doesn't matter""). While Tom's dedication to the M-W-F schedule is admirable, I do wonder if the pacing would be much more consistent and tighter if he were working at his own pace. I didn't read Annie's comment to Shadow to mean "I no longer care who she is," I read it as "You don't need to worry about who she is (because I'm dealing with it)." Same reason she didn't approach Omega until after she was done talking to Kat; for whatever reason, she doesn't want to involve anyone else in dealing with the weird mystery girl she thinks might be Zimmy.
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# ? May 1, 2024 15:33 |