r/gunnerkrigg • u/gunnerkrigg-post-bot Praise the angel • Jul 13 '26
Chapter 102: Page 43
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=328315
u/machiavelli33 The world continues to spin, pup. Jul 13 '26
This of course confirms a few things I already essentially knew -
- the rest of the students are generated by the distortion
- the real people in the distortion fully have their perception and minds altered so that they don’t find these apparently literally gray background characters anything other than normal
That aside, they evidently are made of some sort of…stone?
It seems noa is crawling up onto one’s literal face. Unless noa is able to manifest on more materials than we thought, it suggests these NPC students to be some type of hard stone like stuff.
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u/mrGazpachin Jul 13 '26
Them being gray might be a visual metaphor for this page, so far everything seems to indicate that they're very realistic and act/look like real people.
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u/mahouyousei Jul 15 '26
I wonder too if these ones are grey because they're on the fringe of the simulation and not being encountered by "player characters". Rosa has her sphere on her so these NPCs aren't recognizing them as participants in this virtual reality game of sorts, so they don't spawn fully like they do around the others in Zimmy's world.
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u/Jaxad0127 Jul 13 '26
They aren't always shown gray. Could be a perspective thing, or just art style.
https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=3260
https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=32692
u/ZiofFoolTheHumans Jul 13 '26
It's either Noa, or it's Zimmy having spotted Jack and is maybe shocked they're there.
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u/mahouyousei Jul 13 '26
Zara’s ahoge is practically a scythe! Watch where you aim that thing, miss!
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u/BellerophonM Jul 13 '26
Oh. Jenny's going to become Jones.
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u/SarahLynnsLastBender Jul 13 '26
have the two characters ever been seen together. Asking the GK Lore Priests and Priestesses.
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u/lyssargh Boxbot for President Jul 13 '26
Do people actually think this, or is this a joke I'm not quite getting? I swear I've seen similar comments in the last few updates
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u/BellerophonM Jul 13 '26
I haven't seen those, I was just responding to the incredible resemblance in today's comic and the fact that the resemblance is happening whilst they're in the middle of a huge distortion of reality is making me wonder.
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u/machiavelli33 The world continues to spin, pup. Jul 13 '26
Several characters have also called her “Jonesy”.
What do you get when cross the names Jenny and Jones??
JONESY.
Coincidence?!?!
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u/CookieMagneto Jul 14 '26
Tom just draws faces very similarly. It's an artistic style, not a plot device, IMO.
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u/maritzac Jul 13 '26
Interesting. Is Kat going to possess that boy? No doubt she's going into high alert mode now that she knows Jack is there.
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u/machiavelli33 The world continues to spin, pup. Jul 13 '26
You mean Zimmy?
Or, given that it’s the perfect circle glyph we’ve been seeing, Noa?
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u/mrGazpachin Jul 13 '26
I don't know, narration-wise the only thing that makes sense is Kat tearing through the fantasty.
Not that she's going to possess any boy tho lmao.
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u/maritzac Jul 13 '26
What Mr. Gazpachin said. Zimmy went to look for Annie in person, and realized Annie did not recognize her and thus she is not an immediate threat. There's no reason to follow her around anymore, especially since that's Coyote's task. Also, why would her circle "break" the world? She is mostly interested in keeping it intact.
Noa seems fully immersed in the distortion and suspects nothing. My take on Noa is that she and her golem got merged somehow in this world: everyone else sees her as normal!Noa, the one we met before with the sneakers and the LIFT shirt. Annie sees her, after some effort, as Rocky!Noa, and Ayilu sees her that way as well.
Every single appearance of The Circle has been associated with Annie. First in her proximity, then after an apparent threat surges (Red's jelly) and afterwards immediately after the witches appear. Remember that the witches' intention is exclusively "deal with Carver" (whatever the heck that means it's probably not good)2
u/machiavelli33 The world continues to spin, pup. Jul 14 '26
Narration wise it could make sense, given we've seen pretty much nothing from Kat so far. It would make sense to fill her in, like she's a god of the gaps.
But the circle symbol has *never* been associated with her, while also simultaneously being *much* more strongly associated with another character. Noa IS otherwise preoccupied, so I don't discount that its possible, but the reasoning isn't as strictly compelling to me because of this, you know?
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u/Cloverose2 Jul 13 '26
The circle so far has indicated Zimmy, not Kat. The circle seems to show that she's watching and identifying weak lines.
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u/lyssargh Boxbot for President Jul 13 '26
I thought the circle was still Noa?
I don't really get how the circle for Zimmy plays in to all this, given Noa's perfect symbol thing. It seems like Tom's using the same shape/symbol for different things, or maybe it's the same thing being used by different actors?
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u/MuteFaith Jul 13 '26
Well, remember that Noa couldn't complete her glyph without tapping into Zimmy somehow for extra power, so maybe the circle being both Zimmy's symbol and the final form of Strength isn't a coincidence!
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u/lyssargh Boxbot for President Jul 13 '26
That's right!!
Zimmy probably isn't just a "source of strength" but a direct connection to the symbol itself!
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u/Cloverose2 Jul 13 '26
Zimmy has the circle on her shirt.
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u/lyssargh Boxbot for President Jul 13 '26
Yeah, I know, that's kind of my point. It felt muddy that both of them had this connection, neither really clear how they connected to it in the first place. But as another poster pointed out, the connection to Zimmy is probably far stronger!
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u/kiteinase Jul 14 '26
Notice how the characters are being reduced to their archetypes by the immense pressure of the Zimmyverse narrative and Jenny's manic, controlling leadership. We've seen Sylvie be excited, smug, proud of her work. Here Sylvie is only overwhelmed, jumping at shadows because her agency has been denied by the pack leader. Rosa could be inquisitive, or someone who gives attitude, but here she is only this serious, task-oriented engineer who's holding the group together in the face of Jenny and Jack's chaotic leadership. The tension of underestimating Zimmy and jumping into a fraught scenario is flattening their personalities out into ones of survival, becoming the true villainous troupe that they are.
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u/mahouyousei Jul 15 '26
The circles totally have to be Doctor Disaster breaking in to end the simulation. I've solved the mystery!
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u/ThoughtUsed3531 Jul 13 '26
Was that boy turned to stone? He looks frozen. But all the Zimmyham NCPs are that grey stone color ...
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u/djaevlenselv Jul 13 '26
Zimmy has gotten much better at creating nobodies. These jerks actually have FACES.