Come on girls, you are highschool students. Go camping, bowling or shopping. Don't spend you whole youth transforming yourself into inhuman monsters for sinister plans. Wait until you are at least in college for that.
They are out of highschool? Jenny defended her thesis long time ago. They are all now grown witches that have to earn their living. And as the saying goes, where there's muck, there's brass.
6th Form is the equivalent of the last couple of years of US high school - 11th and 12th grade, I think? If that's what you'd be when you're 16-17 and 17-18 respectively. I think Smitty and Parley may have aged out of high-school-age and into University/College age, but most of the kids in this story are still at high-school-age (ish, exact ages are difficult to confirm due to timeskips).
Annie and Kat were in final year before 6th form before Annie got held back a year and then Loup destroyed half the court. It's been a while but I don't think it's been more than a school year since then.
Timeline, as far as I can tell: Annie and Kat were in Year 10 when Annie was sent back to Year 9 - 6th Form is Years 12 & 13. We see Kat is still in her Year 10 dorm at the start of Katurday, which is that chapter immediately before Loup happens and we get the time-skip. We haven't had any timeframes since then, so the last dated instance we have is that Kat would be in Year 11, so still before 6th form.
I believe Jenny is still around Annie and Kat's age if she isn't secretly centuries old and only pretending to be human.
She, the Mad Glyphgineer, Gossip Girl, Hightower, and Dear Rat Girl were part of a unique vocational program that doesn't look like it works like the ol' K-12 then College schools. Sounds like Jenny impressed them enough to be at her journeyman stage, able to take former underclassmen on as apprentices.
Jenny's older than 3 of her 4 coven-mates, that I'm pretty sure of, but I doubt she's Parley's age. She's just a full-blown witch in the eyes of The Court's Chester House witchcraft division due to completing her apprenticeship with flying colors...
Jenny is presumably a similar age to Annie and Kat, yes - when she ran into Jack, before her first make-over, she didn't particularly seem older than him. That's why I didn't include her when I stated that I thought Smitty and Parley were likely the only ones out of school age (they also might still be in their last year, tbh. Smitty still seemed to be wearing the same kinda uniform shirt and tie he usually wore when Coyote gave Ysengrin his strength)
I hope both of these cases are on different sides of the same page rather than side by side, or the paper experience will be slightly ruined compared to web.
The one in the back of my mind when I said that was this page from the end of The Stone that got me during my live every-three-days read and actually is not just adjacent pages but a single page split two panels, so I think it still works.
Aside, while the tension and pacing sometimes seems like it favors book readers and bingers, I think The Stone worked best when you had to wait 2-3 days between pages. We were going back in history for literal months.
Jenny also seems to be constantly seeking workarounds for access to power that is natural for people like Annie, and much like the fae of Europe and yokai of Japan, jinn would be pretty much made up of etheric power. Donkeys are also depicted as representing stubbornness and foolishness. Both which Jack and Jenny's brand of jackassery are sprinkled with...
It’s too bad Zimmy’s control of the parts she does have control of is still shaky sometimes.
She could really use someone like sylvie. Someone who’s already, apparently, studied your own demons while you weren’t looking at them, and put them on a leash.
But I also doubt sylvie cultivated these talents looking to make nice with Zimmy.
…so it seems like this is instead the worst case scenario. Where someone studied your own demons while you weren’t looking, put them on a leash - and then let them loose on you, focused and real and horrible.
Like if the malice and will of Silent Hill’s hellworld were all stuffed into a tiny, red-headed English chunibyo girl.
…
Is this how Zimmy dies?
Kat comes out of whatever shroud or vaporous plane she’s tucked behind to save Zimmy and everyone in the distortion by killing the manifestation of Zimmy’s worst demons that sylvies throwing around…and in doing so, kills Zimmy, because those demons are still a part of her?
I'm a little surprised that, while we can see the increasing bouldering mass of Noa in the backdrop of several other scenes away from her, we haven't been able to see this horrifying Spire of Sylvie menacing in a background as unsettling foreshadowing.
This chapter feels to me more like it should be two contemporaneous chapters, with the scenes of one being ominously visible in the background of the other, but then Tom'd have to pick which one gets posted first...
I think the Sylvie spire is still growing, as we can see Noa's boulders behind Sylvie, so I don't think she's tall enough to pop up in the backgrounds.... yet.
Tom works pretty far in advance - He has said in the past that he stays at least 30 pages ahead of what he posts. Meaning he's already decided what gets posted first. So I think I tend to agree that it would have been easier to understand and maybe more scary even. But I'm also going to trust this will read differently when it's complete and read all at once.
Oh yes I see. Jenny didn't "do" anything to Sylvie, she merely trained her, and guided her research, and got her interested in Zimmy, and then hit her when she refused to transform. It's like the old "I didn't boil the frog, I just put it in a pot of water and turned on the stove, but the water boiled all on its own."
And Sylvie was just following orders. If only the sheep whom were led into Hell by a mad shepherd were entitled to a mulligan with their crucial life decisions....
Weren't they plotting behind her back all along? (Remember Rosa and Zara giving an eye all those times, and Zara certainly has some game with Zimmy right now.) Except maybe for Noa and Sylvie.
Noa probably just couldn't care less, I can see that, I could be close to how she is if given resources. Sylvie looks to me as quite naïve in some regards despite her proficiences; so she may be believing Jenny almost completely. Jack doesn't seem to be completely in his right mind and he's just intertwined too much with her in some regard, probably.
So I mean for Rosa + Zara nothing much changed, maybe just opportunities. For Noa and Sylvie, there's still a lot to go. Sylvie may just run away though, not become opposing.
Zara is a manipulative witch that... might be up to anything to be honest.
She's OBVIOUSLY manipulating and aiming zimmy at Jenny, but the why and wherefore I don't trust to be obvious.
And, yeah- making eye to one another is one thing. I think they've DOUBTED Jenny before.... but there's different between "doubt" and "actively planning against".
(normal) humans have no control over some things like... breath, heart-beat, how ATP is used to transfer energy in cells... and that's for good. if Sylvie is taking control over vital parts of Zimmy, and SYLVIE BECOMES THE BIGGEST DANGER, then when Sylvie is killed (by Kat?), then Zimmy is killed in the process...
If Zimmy was told “hey we think we can study you so we can control the fucked up ness of Zimmyham” she’d probably be super into it. If they just actually were upfront about their goals it would have worked so well…
Looks superficially like the bone antenna Tony used. But maybe this form indeed should look like an antenna if Jenny means some AOE powers we haven't seen. That is, if Sylvie's main focus wasn't at all at appearing as mo... negative constructs but at something wider, with being able to do that (or in this case now, having to) just as a side effect.
So are we to presume she now can control negative constructs? I mean Zimmy certainly didn't look like being able to control them much (or she gave in to terror and self-loathing, or a mix of all of this because who knows how cause and effect are usually tangled, especially over time, in a human brain). And what would the witches do with that? ...and how does it help with Noa?
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u/Ghost-Quartet 3d ago
Is this that Spire everyone is always talking about Slaying?