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Within the first week of my attendance, I began noticing a number of strange occurrences. The most prevalent of these oddities being the fact that I seemed to have obtained a second shadow.
My school had one of these. No wait, they had a bike rack.
Gunnerkrigg Court is an Urban Fantasy / Sci-Fi webcomic by Tom Siddell about a strange young girl attending an equally strange school.
As Antimony Carver begins classes at the eponymous U.K. Boarding School, she soon notices that strange events are afoot: a shadow creature follows her every footstep; a robot calls her "Mommy"; a Rogat Orjak smashes in the dormitory roof; odd birds, ticking like clockwork, stand guard in out-of-the-way places. Stranger still, in the midst of all this, Annie remains calm and polite to a fault.
Meanwhile, Annie befriends the technically-minded Katerina Donlan. The two serve as foils for one another: Kat's energetic, outgoing personality plays off Annie's reserve and awkwardness, catalyzing most of their character development.
Kat soon gets roped into Annie's investigations of the Court's mysteries, but every answer they receive only raises more questions: about the school, about their fellow students, about the woods just across the river, and about their own parents.
Each chapter is a self-contained Story Arc. However, after several chapters, connections begin appearing between seemingly unrelated plot threads, suggesting that everything is converging on some confrontation or big reveal—but the exact nature of the convergence remains tantalizingly (or frustratingly) unclear. Though the story draws on some dark childhood fears, there is more than enough optimism (both innocent and realistic) to offset it.
You really should start from the beginning.
The comic is also being published. The hardcover Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation, which collects the first 14 chapters, is available online and at many comicbook shops and general bookstores. * For those interested in minutia, this isn't the first print version of GC. Back in 2006, Tom published the first seven chapters as a paperback through Lulu.com. This is the reason for the "Treatise" page at the end of Chapter 7. This paperback was discontinued months before Orientation was announced. The second hardcover book, called Gunnerkrigg Court: Research will be out in the near future.
Now, for Something Completely Different, check out this article about a teacher using Gunnerkrigg as a teaching aide for his English As A Foreign Language class.
This comic provides examples of:
Setting
Narrative / Themes
- Arc Words: "She died and we did nothing."
- Adults Are Useless: Subtly deconstructed.
- Amplifier Artifact: Blinker Stones.
- Anachronic Order: Chapter 11, "Dobranoc, Gamma", and Chapter 18, "S1".
- Animal Motifs / Animal Stereotypes: Wolf, Fox, Cat, Insects, Birds.
- Armless Biped: Enigmarons!
- Artificial Limbs: Made of wood.
- Blah Blah Blah: Here.
- Blessed With Suck: Zimmy's reality altering powers would be really cool if she could control them. And if she didn't suffer terrifying hallucinations.
- Big Damn Heroes: Eglamore and Kat, on three separate occasions. Two were played straight, one was a subversion.
- Body Motifs: Lots of emphasis on the eyes.
- Brain Bleach: Kat after meeting Ketrak. "I need new eyes and a new brain!"
- Catch Phrase: Mr. Eglamore: "Ladies." (In greeting)
- The Cavalry: The TicTocs.
- Chiaroscuro
- Clingy Mac Guffin: Blinker stones - but only when the owner wants them to be.
- Cosmetic Catastrophe: The results of Kat's first attempt to use makeup were not pretty.
- Crossover Cosmology: Reynardine and Ysengrin are based off Renard the fox and Ysengrimus the wolf, respectively, from Medieval European folklore. Muut, Coyote, and the Glass-Eyed Men are from Native American myth. There's also a several ghosts, fairies, and, for good measure, a flashback montage featuring every psychopomp, ever.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: Many examples.
- Crowning Moment Of Funny: Several. Mort is especially good at bringing out the laughs.
- Also, anything involving the laser cows.
- Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming: This series is full of them, but Annie and Kat's moment in the cherry tree is probably the most cuddly. This Troper could not help going awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
- Curiosity Killed The Cast: Not the lethal kind, but curiosity starts several plots, and often proves helpful when combined with compassion.
- Curse Cut Short: Rain! Also, an odd example on the last page of Chapter 15.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The Guides; Zimmy.
- Death Glare: "Hello, Winsbury. Can you wither a little, please?"
- Deface Of The Moon: Thanks to Coyote's friendly help, Annie "may have some explaining to do". Or may not.
- Demonic Possession
- Department Of Redundancy Department: "Spacemonauts! The evil Enigmarons are threatening the Earth from their moon base on the moon!"
- Don't forget the creepy space aliens from outer space.
- Dungeon Bypass: Andrew can do this unconsciously.
- Easily Detachable Robot Parts: Sometimes.
- Embarrassing First Name: George Parley. Not hard to figure out why she goes by her last name.
- Potentially a Famous Five reference? For a while it was a perfectly acceptable name for a girl in the UK...
- In context- Basically her father was a famous psychic. Pretty much one of the best ever. So, for some reason, he decides to write the birth certificate in advance for his unborn child. He gets almost all of it right. Just the only small detail of- guess what? Gender. So, they fixed that, but didn't actually change her name.
- Environmental Symbolism
- Epic Hail: One of the many uses for Blinker Stones.
- Esoteric Motifs: Stange symbols abound at the school — although some signs are less "mystical" than you'd expect.
- Everyone Can See It:
Antimony: Andrew, she's all over you all the time.
Reynardine: Ah, has a creature ever perfected the art of denial as finely as a human?
- Fan Girl / Otaku Surrogate: Kat. Obsessed with robots, dance music (especially Orbital and The Prodigy), videogames, comicbooks, and The X Files. Kat rules. It's nearly impossible to predict who or what may elicit the next "Squee!"... Last time it was robot praying mantis' turn to be cuddled on sight (it definitely looks pretty cool, but is it Ridiculously Cute Critter?).
- Fantastic Aesop: Lampshaded. "Hmm, there's a lesson in all this." "Okay. Let's hear it." "Never let sixty angry kids use a herd of laser cows to take over your house."
- Fetish Fuel: Squee, furry fans, at Reynardine's bodacious bod! Oh, there's also Kat's LOVE for birds (although the story that introduced that particular trait is so mind-numbingly cute that it's forgivable).
- Fractured Fairy Tale: Basil's Backstory.
- Functional Magic: All kinds.
- Generation Xerox: Annie and Kat.
- Green
Rocks Lantern Ring: Blinker Stones—lenses for psychic powers, whose full uses have yet to be revealed.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: The Guardbots, Doorbot.
- Happy Rain / Redemption In The Rain: Played a bit more literally than usual with Zimmy.
- Hannibal Lecture: Jack pulls one of these on Kat and Annie.
- Hard Light: Dr. Disaster's simulations; the Glass-Eyed Men.
- Harmony Versus Discipline: In just about every sense, from magic, nature, and world view, the Court and Gillitie woods are opposed. The Court favors rational methods, control, and grey expansive industrialization. The Wood represents nature, unbound and at times terrifying.
- Ho Yay / Romantic Two Girl Friendship / Ship Tease: Annie and Kat, Zimmy and Gamma, Coyote and Ysengrin. For the complete details, see Ho Yay: Webcomics. To summarize, the issue is complicated, open to interpretation, and served as the spark for the ugliest arguments that the usually-easygoing fandom has seen. And Tom has remained silent.
- Humanity Ensues
- The Hyena: Coyote
- I Cannot Self Terminate: The Suicide Fairies.
- I Have To Go Iron My Dog
- Important Haircut: Both Annie and Kat start wearing their hair differently after the incident on the bridge. Later, half a chapter is devoted to a visit to the barber.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: "It may be empty but it's full of potential!" Kat completely unabashedly tossing off this line is just one of the many ways she's so very lovable.
- Interspecies Romance: Sort of. Poor, poor Kat...
- Also Reynardine, who was in love with Annie's mother when he was still a fox and she was still alive.
- I See Dead People
- Is That What He Told You: Annie seems to have this in her future, but it's partly her own fault: she's looking for answers in all the wrong places.
- Jigsaw Puzzle Plot
- Kid With The Leash / Restraining Bolt: Annie has Reynardine's leash. It seems that Rey is not pleased, though he springs to her defense on his own initiative.
- Lemon Wacky Hello: Cherry-induced tipsiness.
- Letter Motif: Gunnerkrigg, Gillitie, Good Hope: the letter G seems to be important. One wonders what this implies about Miss Gamma Czarnecki.
- A Light In The Distance: Annie, lost and alone in the Annan gorge, sees a light on the opposite shore. Then it gets worse
- Magic A Is Magic A: Rey's Demonic Possession follows specific rules; it's implied that that the same is true of all magic.
- Magic-Powered Pseudoscience
- Magic Versus Science: The two are compatible, but there is an ideological clash nonetheless.
-
Magitek Ethereal Sciences: a lot, but some more than other, like literally Magical Computer.
- Meaningful Echo: The line "I'll save you, little girl!"
- Memento Mac Guffin: Annie's pendant, and later the photo of her parents as children swiped from Kat's parents... and the toy wolf.
- Minor Injury Overreaction: Ysengrin and the "Spankies!" Though it turns out to be a ruse.
- Mundane Utility: What to do if you found out you got a scrying device with a "little" side-effect: a spirit can see you there? Right, you can use it to have a private talk with a spirit at will in the presence of other people. Three cheers for Annie!
- Mysterious Parent: Both of Annie's parents, though she at least knew something. Kat's parents also have odd tricks up their sleeves. She never believed in 'magic' nor saw her mother using computer, so when her mother offhandedly mentioned developing a Magitek-server before her birth was sort of disconcerting. The tattoo issue just finished her off.
- New Transfer Student: Annie, and later, Alistair. Suicide fairies.
- Nightmare Fuel: What, no mention of the weird circus Paz (the Spanish girl) runs into? Seeing that at 4:30am after having read the entirety of the Real Life section of High Octane Nightmare Fuel somehow really disturbed this troper.
- There is also the hallucinations Zimmy suffers, during which she is sucked into a cursed version of Birmingham populated by insects, giant monsters and people with no faces.
- Noodle Incident: The cursed teapot.
- No Rest For The Wicked: Zimmy doesn't sleep.
- No Sense Of Personal Space: Parley, though mostly while embracing/tormenting Smithy. Jack, in one of the latest chapters, agitated by his experience with Zimmy, invades Antimony's personal space until he's bearing down on her and she's pinned against the wall. Reynardine's reaction to this can be described as "Not Best Pleased".
- Orphan's Ordeal: Annie's mum is dead and her dad has disappeared.
- Our Demons Are Different: Reynardine, and Zimmy were called so. No guarantee the first was not a popular simplification and the second was not an invective, though.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Rogat Orjaks ("horned giant" in Slovenian) are explicitly stated to be dragon-kin, but not the same as "usual" dragons. One is quoted making a distinctly Take That remark on the subject of "those [common dragons]".
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Mort, the Ghost with the Sword, and the boy in the hospital are all different from each other. It will probably all be explained eventually. Also, the blind man's ghost we did not saw, but Kat mentioned in her letter.
- Paper Thin Disguise: Annie is clearly a robot. Just look at her antennae!
- Perspective Magic: Coyote uses this, being one of the fundamental trickster deities.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: The various Court Robots are comically incompetent in ways that are nevertheless far beyond the capability of any current Real Life AI. Probably a result of their magitek origins.
- Rotating Arcs
- School Uniforms Are The New Black: Averted, but played straight for the students who used to be creatures that lived in the forest.
- Science Fair: Chapter 5.
- Secret Legacy: Everything we learn about Annie's parents suggests that she's following in their footsteps. Kat has inherited a thing or two as well .
- Sealed Evil In A Teddy Bear: Reynardine although YMMV as to exactly how evil he is.
- Shadow Archetype: The recurring theme of duality in the narrative makes this fairly common in both characters and other elements of the world, though it's sometimes difficult to tell who or what the 'shadow' is. Clear-cut examples include the Annie/Kat duo, with Zimmy/Gamma as their shadow pair, and Jack, a boy intent on solving the Court's mysteries, serving as foil to Annie.
- Shape Shifting:
- Something Completely Different: Chapter 10: "Dr. Disaster vs. the Creepy Space Aliens from Outer Space".
- Star Crossed Lovers: Kat and Alistair.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Annie and Surma. Considering how Kat and her parents avert this, Annie's resemblance is probably plot-relevant.
- It obviously affects both Reynardine and Eglamore, at least.
- Survival Mantra: "Always remember one thing..."
- Tastes Like Diabetes: See "Crowning Moment of Heartwarming," above. The same scenes that make some readers go "awwww" make others go "ewwww."
- Teleporters And Transporters: George's power, the ability to teleport apparently.
- Theme Naming: Antimony and Surma; Zeta and Gamma; Reynardine and Ysengrin.
- What The Hell Hero: Reynardine learning about the Memento Mac Guffin bit.
- Whole Chapter Flashback: Chapter 16, "A Ghost Story", and Chapter 18, "Ties".
- Wrong Name Outburst: Mr. Eglamore shouts "Surma!" when Antimony falls off a bridge.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Zimmy's little Crapsack World looks like a sort of collective dream: they gone there and back and none of all present kids save participants ever noticed this.
Zimmy: It's only as real as you let it be.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Mort, Reynardine, Coyote.
Characters
For a more complete rundown, see the spoileriffic Character Sheet.
Meta
- Art Shift: City Face, which is canon, and a slight shift when Annie is using the Blinker Stone. (Everything is generally more detailed and her hair connects panel to panel.)
- Art Evolution: Tom is consistently evolving his art. It's most noticeable in Annie's case: Compare her design on page 18 with her design on page 437 (which, incidentally, is a Flash Back to the same scene from page 18). Most readers seem to consider the changes improvements.
- And Now For Something Completely Different: City Face
- Author Catchphrase: Actually, the catchnumber 113.
- Bilingual Bonus: A few Greek and Latin signs, and some Polish dialogue. (This troper compiled a list with translations — see the bottom of this blog entry.)
- I'd like to add that Coyote refers to Reynardine as Renard, which is french for Fox.
- Renard wasn't named for the French word for fox. The French word for fox was named after Renard.
- BLAM Episode: Bonus pages are distinctively one step away from the main continuity and may bring extra exposition, or teasers, or comedy, or something wild — or all at once.
- Comeback Tomorrow: Annie vs. Mr. Eglamore in Chapter 24. (waving a hand, after turning) "Night!"
- Continuity Nod: "Hello Annie!" — "Hello Kat". Two local ones in the same chapter: "my main babe" and "Night!".
- Deliberately Monochrome: Dr. Disaster's simulation.
- Don't Try This At Home: Here.
- Epileptic Trees: Half the reason for posting on the forum. So worn they're used just as a Running Gag.
- Spoofed in the annotation to this strip's comment.
- Flashback Effects: Textured backgrounds and rounded panel corners.
- Invoked Trope: In case Zig Zagging Trope just isn't awesome enough, here's a recursion: Tempting Fate in What Could Possibly Go Wrong way via intentionally invoking Tempting Fate and What Could Possibly Go Wrong (as tropes), snickering.
- Kudzu Plot: Comes with the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot. This troper has never been so happy to be so confused.
- Lampshade Hanging: Just take a look at this page and try to tell me it's not.
- Mood Whiplash: Chapter 6 — from upbeat to sad in a single page. Yay.
- Narrator: Two of them, actually — Annie and Tea.
- Parody: Butterfly Of Doom. Here (see also the next page).
- Running Gag: Variations of Epileptic Trees and "Oh. It's that guy."
- Silent Scenery Panel: Often used to signal scene transitions.
- Speech Bubbles: Subtle Fourth-Wall Painting.
- Spoof Aesop: "Never let sixty angry kids use a herd of laser cows to take over your house."
- Strip Buffer: A nice thick one of 30 strips.
- Take That: This,◊ directed at someone who complained that the flashbacks weren't made obvious enough. There were a few "helpful" notes for those who get disoriented by the Art Evolution, take jokes too literally or both at once.
- Uncanny Valley - Averted with a vengeance, with a magic marker.
- Webcomic Time: "That night seemed to go on for months."
- WHAM Episode: Many little twists born of Jigsaw Puzzle Plot make half of the Court's charm. Well, about one quarter actually. It's also the reason why Epileptic Trees became Running Gag.
- Word Of God: Tom Siddell frequently posts on the forum or Shout Box to clear up confusion or give background info. (See here for an index of such information.)
- Zig Zagging Trope: Sivo is a case of a Triple subversion of the Knight vs. Dragon story.
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