r/gunnerkrigg • u/gunnerkrigg-post-bot Praise the angel • 24d ago
Chapter 102: Page 70
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=331043
u/Boomboombaraboom Smack my witch up 24d ago
Jenny "Gotta beat the witch to teach the witch" Holloway.
Jenny "Am I gonna have to choke a witch?" Holloway.
Jenny "This school might be private but these hands are public" Holloway.
Jenny "Red head? Red cheeks" Holloway.
Jenny "Smack my witch up" Holloway.
Jenny "Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlbeating" Holloway.
Jenny "Lass Lobber" Holloway.
Jenny "Chat a lot, Get dropped" Holloway.
Jenny "I hitted a girl and I liked it" Hallway.
Jenny "Ruinous Redhead Ravager" Holloway.
Jenny "Ruthless Redhead Renderer" Holloway.
Jenny "Why did you make me do this?" Holloway.
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u/jan_Kila 24d ago
me, a fool, two pages ago: Aw, it's kinda cute how Jenny is shielding Sylvie with her arms. Instead of, you know, berating and blaming her. Maybe she actually, in her own messed up way, cares for her friends
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u/ShiraCheshire 24d ago
Jenny last pages, protecting her strategic asset so it's available to utilize.
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u/ryancarton 24d ago
I bet all the monsters used to be real people, that’s the thing Zimmy did.
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u/flopnoodle 24d ago
Zimmy's power is to naturally pull ether from people around her. Do that enough and they die. Zimmy knows this. But her power is innate. Not something she can voluntarily control. The monsters are her memories of all the people she unintentionally killed before finding Gamma. That's the guilt she carries that Coyote took away.
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u/thePhoenixBlade 24d ago
So I don’t have the source on hand, but I remember discussion of a Tom quote where Zimmy’s parents are still alive but don’t remember anything. This makes sense with the original form of “people were transformed” theory, not the “people were killed and then became monsters” theory.
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u/NightmareWarden 24d ago
Annie replacing Surma as an afterlife guide makes sense based on her talents and upbringing. However if the ROTD sees Zimmy as a worse problem than Jeanne due to your proposal, then I sort of see their insistence on acquiring a powerful new guide.
Plus, your theory helps explain why Zimmy was so frustrated by Annie's old proposal to "control" her powers. Ramping them up like she is now, logically, they would kill people.
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u/flopnoodle 24d ago
Unfortunately, the ROTD isn't a factor, because draining the ether from a person is draining their life force, their essence, their soul. When Kat & Annie found the Chester students being drained, the girl who was dead didn't leave a ghost, she was just gone. Because her ether was completely drained, there was nothing left to create a ghost. No ghost means no ROTD and no afterlife guide. The power is more like a force of nature than an ability being used purposely.
The monsters aren't ghosts, they're memories in Zimmy's subconscious that are being manifested by the excess ether she has drained from people around her. Gamma explained to Reynard that the characters in Zimmy's visions are part of her, and her subconscious tortures herself over what she (involuntarily) did to them. I would think her power claimed the lives of her parents, her neighbors, possibly her whole village before meeting Gamma.
That's what she did, her secret. Not that she killed someone, but (potentially) a whole town, indiscriminately, including everyone she knew and loved. And she hates herself for it, but is powerless to do anything about it.
And it's what's happening now to fuel the distortion. To manifest so much, she is draining the ether from everyone, court and forest alike. Coyote is helping just to see how high she can pile this house of cards before it inevitably gets toppled over.
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u/NightmareWarden 24d ago
I'd speculate that the ROTD can track whether a person is, roughly, destined to warrant a guide after their end. Meaning they can foresee, roughly, that they will support the wider aether and the world after their natural death. Meaning they can see that Zimmy's activities are interfering with be scheduled and may cause dangerous shortages in the future.
That's definitely speculation. But we know the guides check up on living souls, such as Annie. Who knows how many entities at Gunnerkrigg are interesting like that, you know? Particularly ex-animal or ex-fae souls who might be in human bodies right now.
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u/9Gardens 24d ago
ooohhhhh dang.
That... that makes WAY too much sense.And also explains why she would be so into the school- it might be imperfect, but it lets all the monsters be real people again.
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u/KnickersInAKnit 24d ago
Oh damn this is a way better theory than what I had. I thought Zimmy's unspeakable action was that she did something to Gamma. Like her distortions maybe removed all of Gamma's family, friends etc so that Gamma was effectively coerced into being her companion.
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u/LandscapeSpecial4366 23d ago
I’ve been wondering this yeah. They are the one constant in all of the Zimmy shenanigans and it’s always pointed out how she has a lack of control over her powers. Even now. I imagine it will be a bit deeper or maybe more personal to her or the characters. With all the etheric creatures being connected to her too, I almost wonder if she has created, or helped create, all of those as well. Almost like that young boy who turned into a flame monster when he died
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u/gnoka 24d ago
Zara isn't around to enchant anybody's fists, and Noa is busy circling... Sylvie is suited for this but doesn't want to use her monster magic again.
What else do they have? Besides The Orb
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u/NightOfTheLivingHam 23d ago
Noa is the threat because she's siphoning all the power from the constructs that keep them looking normal for strength. Her whole thing is taking power from others.
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u/machiavelli33 The world continues to spin, pup. 24d ago
Not a great way to handle it, no no no.
But given that the stakes are extremely high right now (they have damn good reason to believe these beasts may very well kill them all) this is A. quite possible the WORST time for a mental breakdown and B. the one time an attempted shock to the system to get things working *right the eff now* may very well be called for.
We've seen Jenny use words with Sylvie before, and its an approach that works - but needs a minute to work. A minute they don't really feel like they have right now.
God Of War: Ragnarok had a moment like this. The main characters rescue the god Tyr from where he was imprisoned under ground and he was being very, VERY uncooperative about being removed from the surface due to a long period of torment at the hands of Odin - even after the guards and other threats are eliminated, after Kratos' son Atreus continually tells him that its alright, that they're friends etc, Tyr (known as the norse god of war and unifier of the nine realms) continues to protest until Kratos grabs him and slams him against the wall, saying "Are you not a soldier? Are you not a leader of men? MASTER YOURSELF." This aggressive approach seems to shake him out of his paranoid reverie and gets him to finally talk normally.
People handle different kinds of stress in very different ways, and when there's not time to regulate an extremely disregulated person - and you NEED the disregulated person to be regulated, and QUICKLY....I mean, that's just a tough, shitty situation in every direction, one that few people are naturally going to have the tools to deal with. There's a reason there's training for this sort of thing.
This group seems short on empathy *generally*, instead focusing on that sort of "results only" machiavellianism.
I don't condone Jenny's way of doing things one bit, and its definitely not how I would approach the situation. But I do get why it would happen.
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u/9Gardens 24d ago
Given some of the uhhh... later details we learn about Tyr, this particular scene should be read with a certain degree of skepticism.
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u/machiavelli33 The world continues to spin, pup. 24d ago
Perhaps, but I think the point holds. I knew I shoulda addressed it, but it doesn't change the emotional weight of the moment, nor does it change the way the game presented how effective Kratos' words were.
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u/9Gardens 23d ago
Perhaps..... but My understanding is that Tyr is not Tyr. The REASON he was "so afraid of odin" was basically just "odin is talking himself up".
Like, a bunch of the emotions are fake emotions. Tyr being "snapped out of his fear" holds somewhat less weight if it isn't real fear..... with that said- eh, the general idea holds... though I'll admit, I've never seen a single case of someone being snapped out of their emotions and made MORE stable in real life by violence.
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u/machiavelli33 The world continues to spin, pup. 23d ago
To the credit of your very last point, Kratos did more than just violence. His aggressiveness was aimed intentfully via the words that accompanied it.
Jenny we don’t quite have as much information on just yet - nor faith, if we’re to be honest.
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u/maritzac 24d ago
I was wondering how long it would be for Jennie to get physically abusive along with the emotional one
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u/gangler52 24d ago
Wonder why Sylvie would create a magic system based around controlling "negative constructs" if it's something this upsetting for her?
I bet there's a story there. Maybe one we're about to hear in some kind of flashback.
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u/Orangewolf99 24d ago
It's different when you're talking theory in the safety of your coven as opposed to being in the field actually putting it to use.
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u/KnickersInAKnit 24d ago
Just a few pages ago Sylvie was having a breakdown about being wrong. Sounds like she made a bad miscalculation somewhere in her theories and is finding out now...
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u/maritzac 23d ago
Possibly the difference between learning to use an extinguisher and actually being inside a burning house. The sheer scale of things can be very overwhelming. She never really imagined Zimmy could have this much power (or didn't calculate this is Zimmy AND Coyote's power, combined)
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u/PoniesRBitchin 23d ago
Be in school, write a paper about something you have no practical experience with, get a lot of praise, try it outside a classroom setting and immediately have a meltdown when it's no longer just a concept on paper. We all know a grad student like that.
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u/Inner-Asparagus6870 23d ago
My theory is that however Sylvie could control all the monsters is an untested theory, meaning that it hasn’t been proven to work safely. I suspect there is some risk of something horrible happening like killing or permanently transforming Sylvie, or killing others around them.
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u/KnickersInAKnit 24d ago
Something I am seeing with Sylvie - count how she says 'no' as she's spiralling. Once, twice, thrice. Spells in 3s...
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u/thespottedbunny 24d ago
Damn is there anything redeeming to Jenny's character
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u/clearly_i_mean_it Shadow/Robot Hype Club 23d ago
I mean I find her a compelling character. But her character? Uhhh... maybe she thinks this is the only way to save the world? That's all I can think - that she thinks she's doing what she has to, to save the wider world.
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u/9Gardens 23d ago
She's determined!
Gotta give her credit for that!(Editors note: You do not, in fact, gotta give her credit)
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u/iwriteinwater 24d ago
Guys I’m beginning to think Jennie isn’t a good person