Gunnerkrigg Court: would you still "oh, robot" me if i was a worm

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > BSS: Bisexual Super Son > Gunnerkrigg Court: would you still "oh, robot" me if i was a worm

«‹›2 »

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Rei_ posted:

Every single one of them is a robot re-enacting the four years that led up to the mutual destruction of the Woods and the Court. The entire landscape is one giant animatronic memorial and the girl with the white hair in between chapters is the tour guide.

"They died, and we built a Theme Park."

# ¿ Oct 23, 2010 01:27

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 21, 2024 11:17

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Aeldaar posted:

what's the boxbot joke?

Boxbot is terrible. Robox is awesome.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2010 10:44

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

EoRaptor posted:

So, quite a mess. I think it was a spiritual/magical effect (The court would call it etheric). Surma, with high spirit potential, would be particularly vulnerable to this type of thing. It was probably something she picked up before conceiving, but didn't understand what the result would be until after. Likely, she realized the consequences the moment she did conceive, and an abortion wouldn't have helped, killing her anyway. Anthony felt he could intervene, but failed. Every time he saw Annie, his failure was stood there and looked him in the face, leading to a very mixed bag of feelings.

I suspect they both knew what would happen under normal circumstances, but Anthony and Surma believed they'd found a cure up until some point after Annie was born. It merely delayed the onset of symptoms for a few years, resulting in Anthony racing desperately to fix the cure, and blaming himself for the failure, as above.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2011 10:14

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Hopefully, Shadow 2 was watching from the floor.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2011 11:58

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Kuros posted:

How very of Parley.

It does seem a bit careless of her. Robot doesn't seem armed, and perhaps Robot silently stepped closer to look at the blade just as Parley was turning.

Oh well. Kat can build him an even more humanoid body, now.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2011 21:00

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Of course not. Jones is of Bajor. They're into the whole ear-grabbing thing.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2011 01:07

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Cestrian posted:

Renard said he knew. He said they all did. I still think he thought he could cure it, that he could have a daughter and wife both, and the flashback where he's so distraught is him realising that he can't. Though I admit that's just a theory.

I'm inclined to agree. I get the feeling that, had they not done whatever it is they did, Surma would have died at Annie's birth, and they'd have never known each other. But whatever treatment they were using eventually stopped working.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 23:47

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Fecha posted:

I mean, related to both points, he held her hand at knifepoint all summer telling her not to talk to the forest people about his tooth. That's definitely a bad side of him, and we first saw it in relation to his tooth. Maybe it's also related to his secret.
It's not like I wish doom upon Annie, but her being all smug and comfortable in the forest would make it all the more intense if something dangerous happened.

Shadow 2 is a Forest Person, isn't he?

# ¿ Jul 10, 2012 01:45

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

DarkCrawler posted:

The Phantom isn't really immortal, they are just a bunch of guys whose sons become Phantoms after them.

The Jones is dead. Long live the Jones.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2012 16:44

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Parahexavoctal posted:

Oh, I'm sure she can. But this is Gunnerkrigg, so she doesn't feel the need to do so.

I'd guess that, after thousands of years of observation, she can pull off a much more convincing human emulation than she currently shows, and that the reason she doesn't is partially because she doesn't feel the need to, and partially because experience has taught her that humans react better to thinking of her as a mysterious yet flawed creation than as a godling who walks the soil.

Tangentiall, we've got another reason she isn't a robot: All the Gunnerkrigg Court robots have emotions, or reasonable facsimiles thereof..

# ¿ Nov 16, 2012 14:48

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Pester posted:

Jones, tell me your best story.

She claims neither to have emotions nor creativity. She probably cannot tell a good story.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2012 15:05

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Splicer posted:

Indistinguishable to everyone but Jones. Jones knows she is faking it, ergo they are fake. A P-Zombie does not know they are faking it because there is no "they" to "know".

(though as before, I think she has/had emotions and is just severely psychologically damaged)

I would lean towards "Jones can fake having emotions /much/ more convincingly than she currently does."

However, being an immortal, ageless, indestructible being, who is apparently better than humans in every possible way generally gets you classified as "god" or "monster," If instead, you appear to be a flawed creation of an ancient society lost in the mists of time, you're not as dangerous to the human ego and people are less likely to make annoying and inconvenient attempts to worship or destroy you.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2013 12:20

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Roland Jones posted:

Well, while Adam probably doesn't deserve Hetty's torment, I'm not so sure about his sister. Leaving something like Hetty to a kid without telling them is not the greatest thing to do, and apart from that all we know about her is, well, that she trapped Hetty. Probably deliberately; I'm assuming that accidental captures are rare. Now, there could have been good reasons for this, depending on what Hetty was like before she spent however much time trapped in a doll, but we really don't know anything there.

One thing that strikes me is that Hetty says that Adam's sister left Hetty to him in her diary, not in her will.

Bizarre baseless speculation: Hetty isn't actually bound to Adam, she only thinks she is, and her nearly single-minded pursuit of revenge against a child who actually hasn't wronged her keeps her from actually exerting the effort to snap the remaining bonds and break truly free. And whoever's responsible for keeping track for the bound creatures in the Court lets this continue because the torment of one child pales in comparison to what a free Hetty would do.

Alternatively, Reynard's been recruited for a sting operation.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2013 13:34

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Looks like the cursed body has broken at least once before, and someone's put it back together.

Wonder if Hetty remembers who put her back together the last time?

Necause repairing it that well looks like it took a lot of effort. Possibly the kind of thing someone would do for his sister's most favorite doll.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2013 10:06

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Forgall posted:

Even if she can't move much faster than human, 1000 feet of earth won't be much of an obstacle. Since no material can withstand her strength, she could just swim through solid ground like we swim through water. Your best bet would be to throw/teleport her to the other side of the planet, then it'd take her half a year to walk back.

Edit: or just throw her into deep space.

"She is Jones. She is probably immortal. Definitely indestructible. And above all, unstoppable. Nothing can stop Jones. And nothing ever will."

(Original Uatu quote from What If v2#13 "What if Professor X Became the Juggernaut")

I can think of a couple fates worse than being thrown into space for an indestructible immortal, but most of them make emergency retrieval much more difficult. At least Jones doesn't appear to get bored.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2014 22:35

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Bussamove posted:

Plan B: If the ship can't become flesh, turn Lindsey into a robot! Then she'll have to love it!

When the incarnate diety of your fanatically held religion excommunicates you in front of your fellow fanatics, you usually don't get a chance for a plan b.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2014 19:31

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Yeah, it's starting to look like they didn't think through how badly this could go.

That said...

The last time we saw Red and Blue, they were sitting down. The Dream Projection characters are standing. Significant?

# ¿ Oct 12, 2016 08:18

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

MikeJF posted:

Holding it back so she could really do some damage on the first strike, I see.

Had better work, because if it gets tried again the consequences will probably be...severe.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2016 10:05

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

FronzelNeekburm posted:

Sometimes doing the right thing is worth the cost, although Annie probably didn't think that through.

But if she wants to shut this argument down, she can just mention the price she's going to be paying. Everyone else came out safe and sound, but we don't know what bargain she made.

Nah, that's /really/ not the thing to do. The thing to do is sincerely apologize to everyone involved, like she should have immediately after this Jeanne thing was completed.

Because if she explodes and says , "Well I made a dark bargain to get us all out of the mess I engineered," it's not going to help the situation. Everybody involved is probably still in a fair bit of trouble. Possibly including Jones, if Team Annie didn't tell her about what was going down before it happened. In that case it's a betrayal of the trust Jones put in her, as well.

The Headmaster clearly does not like Annie's Amazing Adventures, and can make a decent case for coming down hard on Annie and gang for her recklessness if the details get out.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2017 11:35

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Ditocoaf posted:

As Tony tells it: She told him, but he was certain he was such a good doctor that he'd be able to figure out a way to save her.

(Also, Surma's flaws have already been illustrated. We don't need to have a chapter where a character broadly eulogizes "attention, Surma was a terrible person and here's why".)

I'd gotten the impression that the /only/ reason Antimony knew her mother at all is because of Tony's medical expertise; that in all previous cases, the mother died during, or immediately after childbirth.

I also suspect that what the psychopomps demanded from Antimony was a rejection of something Tony did/is doing/will do to potentially /fix/ the issue of issue with Antimony. So "You belong to us now" is not "You get us souls when we ask," but instead "You return to the way things were, and die in childbirth, as the Rules intended."

# ¿ Mar 18, 2017 20:44

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

This seems like a huge tactical error, to attempt to even appear to blackmail Kat in fro9n of her fanatical prophet, and steal blessing she was making for him specifically

Makes me think that they're either not surveilling Robot as well as they should be, or they're setting him up for a sting.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2017 09:39

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Mazerunner posted:

yeah they literally just handed Kat all the blackmail material she could ever need

Whoever watches these watchers is probably aware of this, too.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2017 08:39

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

KaosMachina posted:

http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1871

Oh, she hates bugs and thought there'd be other people there. WHOOPS.

This doesn't /quite/ jive with Anja explicitly saying "It's a month-long trip! And you'll be spending it alone...with Tony!" two pages back.

Is Surma just bad at paying attention to what people actually say to her?

# ¿ Aug 16, 2017 10:42

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

I kind of wonder if this was the Court (possibly Kat's) decision that "We don't actually /need/ to develop a landing system for her" or just Jones deciding "It appears that nobody knows where I am right now, and I'm not getting recovered, so let me do some calculations, then I'll throw one of my shoes very, very hard to deorbit myself."

# ¿ Oct 5, 2018 12:55

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Man, missed my chance to predict this one, but to be fair, my speculation was more on the side of "At least one Antimony has emerged from the forest in the intervening months, but the court identified them as fakes."

It seems unwise to face off the two Annies this soon, unless the Court is absolutely sure that the Annie they have is real, and that the Annie that's in the room is harmless.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2018 11:18

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Splicer posted:

No reason he didn't duplicate both

You have a point, there. Creating two duplicates lets Loup keep the /real/ Annie in the forest with him, regardless of the outcome of negotiations with the court.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2018 11:23

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Space Cadet Omoly posted:

Come on man, Paz doesn't know all that poo poo. She just wants to make sure a potential shape-shifter/doppleganger/changeling doesn't make her girlfriend feel sad.

That said, you shouldn't say this to a shapeshifter unless you're sure of its motives and powers, or at least pretty sure you can stop it.

Because a shapeshifter that is good enough at pretending to be Annie to possibly fool Annie and Reynard might also be fairly good at pretending to be Paz if a Paz suddenly isn't around...for some reason.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2019 02:15

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

What if this isn't actually an Arbiter?

# ¿ Jun 3, 2019 10:07

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Makes me wonder. Either

1) That timeline's Loop was either willing to give up their Annie, or unable to prevent this timeline's Loup from taking her, or.

2) There is only one Loup across the timelines.

Seems like the latter is the most likely situation.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2019 10:51

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Cat Mattress posted:

Looks like it was this very Loup that did.

"Where is Antimony? Is she safe? Is she all right?"
"It seems that ... in your hunger ... you killed her."
"NOOOOOOOO-- wait, I can fix this."

# ¿ Jun 17, 2019 10:20

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Dienes posted:

Why am I getting reminded of Tuvix?

I'm thinking more Transformers #70.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2019 01:26

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

IMJack posted:

Huh, is the implication that the Court is a termite mound and therefor not quite the same as ants/humans?

Or am I overthinking it?

Termites are taxonomically cockroaches, after all.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2020 20:23

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Classon Ave. Robot posted:

I thought she was crying about the fact that one of the Annies was taken from another timeline and will have to either be banished from this world or leave the other timeline with a very sad Kat who's friend got killed at age 17 as far as she knows.

The information that we currently have is that neither Annie is from this timeline. What happened to this timeline's Annie is unknown.

maltesh fucked around with this message at 12:59 on May 21, 2020

# ¿ May 21, 2020 12:21

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

"Er, yes..thinking they were Elgamore's was an unfounded assumption. That's exactly what it was."

# ¿ Jul 24, 2020 14:11

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

dragon enthusiast posted:

Inspiration flashes and Kat shifts a version of herself from another universe so she can both spend time with Paz and get into hijinx with Annies

"Actually, I was hoping you would take my timeline's Paz."

# ¿ Aug 19, 2020 20:43

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

BobTheJanitor posted:

Mr Hilbert runs a fine establishment, my only complaint is that I've been walking to my room for the last hundred years and it never gets any closer.

It's your own fault for not paying the surcharge to get everyone else to change rooms.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2020 19:26

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

Daktar posted:

That last panel. That is the smug face of someone who knows she's going to send the tic toc back through multiple time loops.

And then is knocked for a loop when thirty Kats from alternate timelines pop in with their Tic Tocs. "Oh. Guess you didn't ask us to help catch your Annie in this timeline." "Kat, don't be rude. Her timeline, her causality loop.."

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 20:00

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

FronzelNeekburm posted:

"So, it turns out I'm a goddess. Wanna go get ice cream?"

"We're putting a pantheon together. You want Nature, or just Animals?"

# ¿ Oct 22, 2020 20:06

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

dragon enthusiast posted:

why is a surgeon making weather spreadsheets

Look, I discovered that the National Weather Service had an API, that Google Sheets had extensive scripting support, and I was bored!

(Not a surgeon.)

# ¿ Nov 9, 2020 17:24

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 21, 2024 11:17

maltesh: May 20, 2004; Uncle Ben: Still Dead.

I can't help but wonder if this is also a representation of what Reynard sees about himself; Ostensibly he's part of the circle, but still an outsider in the court, rationalized as "This gives me the perspective to see what's really going on."

# ¿ Feb 5, 2021 14:23

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > BSS: Bisexual Super Son > Gunnerkrigg Court: would you still "oh, robot" me if i was a worm

«‹›2 »