Gunnerkrigg Court

Chapter 99: Page 4

Don't look back, Jones.

gunnerkrigg.com/

Annie getting a good view of Jones in full frontal.

Wow that's great Jones but I'm really horny and I'm gonna grind on your face now.

You just know the only reason Kat isn't with Annie right now is because Tom couldn't think of a way to have her there and for her to not pass out from arousal.

Annie tummy.... erotic....

Annie desperately trying not to ogle dem tiddies.

But yeah, interesting how despite having perfect recall, from her own perspective, the memories all blend into each other.

But yeah, interesting how despite having perfect recall, from her own perspective, the memories all blend into each other.

interesting

Tom just said 'fuck it i want a cool visual'

Annie should join her to get a nice tan on those UV lights

It might have to do with the sheer amount of it. Sure she can access all of it, but it's flowing together as one because there's so goddamn much of it. I'm hoping now that she's aware of what's up she'll be able to focus and get a narrowed view. It does leave me wondering, does Jones typically problem solve? She's not entirely passionless, and she's able to act and seek results of course, but in a scenario where she's presumably stuck, if she's got no innate reason to panic about it (or probably no capacity for panic anyway) does she look for a way out? When she was sent up to space I don't imagine there was anything she could've done herself to get back down, but would she think it over? Attempt anything? Even want to leave? She doesn't exactly have anywhere to be.

Why are you naked btw? I kept my clothes when entering this world

hurr durr how dare you point out this character writing is bullshit

Oh, you're that little seether.

Jones spent billions of years nude doing nothing, "clothing" is a concept to which she has statistically zero emotional or historical connection. It'd be like someone asking you why you're not still wearing the hand stamp you got at the state fair when you were 8.

... Just thought you had some kind of interesting point or something, but whatever.

She cares enough to wear clothes so that people won't try to put her in clothes. See, "no emotions" is always bullshit. She prefers to be called "just Jones", not Miss Jones. Preference is an emotion. Human writers are by and large incapable of writing "unemotional" characters without implicit emotion seeping in. A truly emotionless Jones would have never left her magma pool.

Annie literally points out that Jones isn't as emotionless as she says she is in the comic.

Yes, she clearly has motivations and emotions. Like I said before, this was pointed out in the comic like 10 years ago.

Someone need to draw Jones full naked body, just lying there.

Then Jones should be le glued to le light field in le distortion. Internal writer inconsistency.

Can you explain or are you just shitposting?

*shouldn't be

the distortion happened when she was having hot simulation sex with a bunch of teachers. It's purely coincidental.

preference is an emotion

you aren't the sharpest tool of the shed....

rare Annie cameltoe there

It either reflects her lack of innate attachment to clothing (she literally only started wearing it when humans showed up likely to fit in/not make cavemen go unga bunga awooga), or she just happened to be naked at the moment like she was taking a shower and then VOIP.

preference isn't an emotion

Hello, idiot.

statistics aren't emotion. if then else statements aren't emotions. You are an imbecile it's a fact and not an emotion either.

I would also like to point out that this was the page immediately preceding that one. Jones clearly cares bout Annie.

And no, the author note on the site doesn't make this any less genuine. She wouldn't be emulating the behavior if she didn't intend to convey its meaning.

Reminder that Jones ships Parley and Smitty.

Again reminder that Jones was the only character to directly ask Annie if she was OK after the Anniecide.

And again, I'm going to pretend Annie and Kat had a long conversation about this offscreen. I like Jones, but it's a bit fuckin' silly that she's the only one we see ask "Yo, are you good, sis?". Especially since like a third of that chapter is Annie's friends and loved ones showing concern over her well being.

Something I always wondered about the fusion thing. does she has a doubled lifespan now to counteract that whole dying early issue?

showing concern over her wellbeing

They should show concern over her killing Court and Forest Annie, instead. THAT's the big problem with that chapter, not that New Annie didn't talk about it.

Stop asking questions. Annie's fine. She... understands.

Then it's kind of shit that we'd expressly have a chapter dedicated to Kat freaking out over Annie now being Twannie just to have her confronting the merge happen off-screen.

Yes. Kat's character has been destroyed utterly and completely by Tom at this point. As far as I'm aware, though, weirdly, it's exclusively Kat. Everyone else is still acting very in-character.

In-universe nobody cares, because out of universe, people found the idea of two Annies really hot. Tom's hideous cowardice directly harmed the story.

All actual character drama happens off-screen now unless it's a character shitting on Annie for no reason.

Both the abruptness of the merge and the way it was hand-waved in a story that had just spent 10 (or was it more?) chapters largely dealing with Annie and characters around her trying to navigate the fact there were now two of them, the merge itself seemingly contradicting some of the earlier suggestions about the nature of the two Annies, really really makes me think Tom either stumbled upon some of the porn or saw some discussion where people were foaming at the mouth for them to fuck and just aborted the story. "It wouldn't make sense for the ending" my fucking ass, you can modify the ending to allow two Annies.

The only possible defense of Kat's repeated butchering I could see is that Tom's (perhaps clumsily) trying to do a clever meta thing and having Kat abandon her character more and more as she turns into a god, which as a theory I am somewhat fond of, because it would at least attempt to fix most if not all of the biggest flaws with the comic and gods being able to see beyond the panels of the comic has been foreshadowed.

Tony was the only one to grieve, everyone else was just glad things were back to normal.

Based and dadpilled.

he's a weird as fuck case because he hated forest annie but he connected better with her than court annie

It's especially weird and obnoxious because he ain't exactly shy about the horny. Apparently even Magnolia couldn't convince him to make Annie fuck herself. And you KNOW she tried.

Maybe that might clue you in on the theory that he got rid of them because people got too horny being quite clearly wrong, then?

Even horny ass motherfuckers often have arbitrary limits on their horniness. It's like those artists that accept scat and gore but draw the line at futa.

In that case, it would be a regular bad creative decision. This is the same shit that fucked over Game of Thrones. it's one thing to have a pre-planned ending, but you have to be able to adjust for the story evolving over time, as all long-form stories do. Folks joke about the selfcest thing being the reason for all this because it's far an way preferable than accepting that Tom straight up admitted to being a bad storyteller and deleted one of the most beloved story developments of the comic due to not being able to rework the ending.

I mean, I think the point was that she was supposed to improve her relationship with Tony through it. Hence the monologue. It's just really poorly done.

Not necessarily. The comic could secretly be a tragedy, for example. If the comic is supposed to end with Annie dying tragically, having two Annies could severely hamper the effect.

That was definitely part of it but it still ended really fucking abruptly and Tom's own claimed reason for ending it was because he realized it couldn't fit into the ending, pretty heavily implying that before he had that realization he was willing to let it last potentially all the way up to the end.

The problem with that is that, no matter how badly in denial Tom is about this, Tony is a terrible person. No amount of handwringing and retcons and character assassination is going to make Annie's relationship with her dad anything other than an abusive shitshow.

No, he's not, anon. You need to let go of this, for your own sake.
I don't know what kinda daddy issues you have irl, but maybe talk with someone about it. Tony is flawed, but he's clearly trying his best.

Tony is a cunt and belongs in the trash along with whatever brain worm compels you to defend him.

For what reason, specifically?

Being an abusive asshole who outright tried to MURDER Annie that one time. That's why.

"Oh but he feel bad abo-ACK!"

I don't care! I don't fuuuuuuuucking care. Regret doesn't mean shit. Autism doesn't excuse being a bad person. Fuck off.

He didn't try to murder Annie he tried to revive her mother and immediately stopped when he realized that it was killing Annie.

He didn't try to murder Annie

YES HE DID! There was a whole chapter about it. And he only stopped when based Zimmy punched him in the face. Fuck your weak ass retcons and apologism.

Speaking of, you know what would help make Tony less detestable? If he actually apologized to Annie. He has not ONCE made any overt attempts to make up for all the shit he put her through. And again, the 'tism is not an excuse. He's just an asshole and Tom is desperately gaslighting us into thinking otherwise because he's in denial about his epic pet character being a bastard.

I think he's perfectly redeemable. The way to do it wasn't to just have Annie monologue at us, though. A single chapter focused on actually repairing their relationship and dealing with some of the anger Annie was supposed to have would've fixed the whole thing.

He didn't know it was killing Annie. He outright said this.

Whaaaaat? You didn't like when Annie basically pressed her face against the fourth wall and spoke directly to the viewer as an explicit mouthpiece of the author? In a chapter immediately following a serious character development that skirted around the immediate issue at hand just for her to monologue at the reader about that? It was a VERY good way to resolve things!

He was tricked into doing something he couldn't have known would hurt his daughter

What a monster.

I agree, though, that Tom should have had a chapter for readers with low level reading comprehension that showed Tony trying and failing to apologize directly to Annie.

Nigga he literally didn't know. He should have done more to directly repair the relationship yes, but he did not know the harm he was causing her and pretty clearly regretted it once he found out.

I think he's perfectly redeemable.

Yeah, and he could start by apologizing for trying to murder his own child!

"Antimony. Listen, I'm sorry for trying to kill you. I was in a bad place, but I really should've known better. That was may bad."

A redemption arc requires active effort on the part of the character.

This shit REALLY didn't help. That was just embarrassing.

Anon's criticisms sounded interesting when he penned them down but in practice they were a little bullshitty

loads of headcanoning and biased theorycrafting as to why Tom didn't do things the way I -- I mean the way everyone wanted

Geeb it's a real mystery. Maybe if we bullshit more ideas and opinions we'll discover it's because his wife absorbed a twin in the womb and he found it compelling.

Maybe he actually just gets off on making Annie suffer and she was too happy when she was two people.

Jones naked and helpless. That works for me.

I think it's just that he didn't want the story to keep twin main characters around. Was it compelling? Sure, but think about how much just about any story would be derailed if suddenly there were a perfect copy of your protagonist. I think it's entirely fine to have her merge again and be a little better off after the lessons she's learned. Even the "I understand" meme is kinda bullshit, why wouldn't she? Just because (you) the reader freak and blow it up as death of two Annies or ruination of a good plot doesn't mean she wouldn't be happy to be one person again. Really the only valid complaint is it's dumb bullshit to have a follow-up where Jones acts as a vague mouthpiece ("people" are curious) to ensure that everyone reading knows this is a fine and good move; granted an evidently necessary event since to this day it's being questioned when the split and merge are so far away now.

I mean Tom really did outright say in one of his streams that he removed them because they didn't fit in with the ending. At least that isn't theorycrafting bullshit. It's kind of a dumb reason regardless.

Tom had no long term plan for the Annies and had given up on distinguishing them aside from their looks. In their later chapters, they basically react the same to everything.

And then in the leadup to them merging that have contradicting reactions to seeing Surma that cause them to immediately get into a fight, something that could have shed more light on Annie's psychology regarding her mother. But nope, merge time!

It's Tom's fault for introducing something massive that he had no plans to actually do anything meaningful with in the first place though.
I think for most people them merging again wasn't the problem. It's that it's done so suddenly and then waved off like it never really happened with no real climax to the whole thing.

Of course SHE is fine with it. She is the Annie who lived. The comic doesn't worry about the ethical rammifications of her choice to live, but the characters in the comic should. At the very least Kat should, if she were to be consistent with her prior actions and beliefs. Annoyingly for Tom, Kat is already pretty godlike and if she had an issue with how he wanted to resolve it, Kat could find a way to change it. It's a textbook example of writing yourself into a corner.

Well yeah that's not news to me but I'm saying that's not dumb reason. He introduced and played with a neat idea and then tidied it up because sudden protagonist doubling changes too much. Decently neat bow on it too.
He did enough with it, you can want more from it but that's on you and not really what the story is about in the first place. A noted lack of climactic impact is an issue Gunnerkrigg does have but I don't know what you'd want to cap off that arc. Emotional cry hug of understanding that magically fixes things, like Freaky Fridays?

I think for most people them merging again wasn't the problem. It's that it's done so suddenly and then waved off like it never really happened with no real climax to the whole thing.

This is literally my problem yeah. If it was done in a way that was meaningful, the comic reflected more on it, and it didn't just come out of the fucking blue, I'd actually have no real issue with them merging, as much as I was on the "THEY SHOULD FUCK" train. It really was just jarring and poorly-handled, I consider it to be in the same ballpark as the Norns chapter as a misstep.

I hated how he had Zimmy explain what their deal was and then shrug her shoulders about how to fix it only to fix it herself with no problem several chapters later. Wasn't elegant at all.

Decently neat bow on it too.

It was a messy as fuck bow which is the main reason most people complain about it.

No problem

I probably need to reread, could've sworn it took some doing. That being said
I could swear I was confident in that statement when I first wrote it but I'm actually not sure what the fuck I meant. That I believed Zimmy could merge them I guess? Certainly didn't want Loup changing his mind at least. Honestly if HE did the merging I'd be more compelled by the "Annies fucking died for Re-Annie-mated" headcanon.

I don't really mind the execution of the merge. I mind that Kat reacted very out of character to it.
There's just no way to square the Kat who was so worried about the death of a hypothetical Annie from a hypothetical different timeline that she had sleepless nights with the Kat who just accepted the fusion of two real Annies into one without even questioning the implications of it.
Those two characters are simply put two different people. Kat is not a functional character anymore. What is crazy is that this keeps happening exclusively to Kat's character.
I can't think of a single moment in the comic where Annie acted out of character.

I mean she's far from perfect, you could take it as her being at peace with a solution to an impossible problem at least. "It's ether shit? Alright thank God. I mean thank science."

Yeah that's part of what I meant by more meaningful and the comic reflecting more on it. Kat's reaction was totally bizarre in the context of how she'd previously been established to be handling things.

Annie has a lot of baggage with her parents that could’ve at least been addressed more while she had the opportunity to literally talk to herself. It would’ve been a far more elegant resolution than The Mind Cage

The fact that this is such a weirdly Kat-centric issue gives me hope that it's all on purpose, though, at least, as I said here That's what I'm clinging on to, because I still think there's a whole lot of good in this comic and that excluding Kat ever since the Norn chapter Tom is actually pretty excellent at character writing.

I have to hope that all of this is leading into some sort of consequences for Kat. It’ll be fucking unbelievable if after everything she gets to shrug off creating a new race and the only consequence for her Going Too Far is an amicable breakup.

It was a sudden "Oh yeah I guess I can fix this after all."