WMG / Gunnerkrigg Court

For theories that have been completely Jossed, see the discussion page.

And before reading this page, we suggest you, once again, to read the story from the beginning, as there will be unmarked spoilers.

As a WMG subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

---

Locations

The Court

Gunnerkrigg Court wasn't built; it grew.

Much like that TicToc on the river bank. Thus, it's like a technological forest, with the TicTocs and Robots (and possibly the Horsebot) as the local "wildlife". The Gunnerkrigg staff merely colonized the Court, converting it into a school (among other things). This would explain the labyrinthine architecture.

• That last bit has been Jossed by page 373: Humans were present at the Court's founding. But considering Jones' choice of words, it's possible those first humans were the ones who grew the Court in the first place.
• Furthermore, if the Court really did grow, perhaps the Tic Tocs are a sort of larval form. The Court unleashes them into the world where they eventually settle down and start growing into new Courts. Alternatively, they merely grow into new buildings at the Court's edge, allowing it to expand.
  • So where do snow globes and shopping trolleys fit into this?
    • TicTocs eat snow globes like parrots eat nuts?
• The "element that began the creation of the Court" was known as Seed Bismuth.** And this is◊ how bismuth crystals look. Very similar to a man-made structure, aren't they? Could it be that the Court is, in fact, a gigantic bismuth crystal?

  • More specifically, it looks very similar to the Court as seen from above (example: Annie's first ride in the trams that took her on an elevated track).
  • Seems pretty much confirmed here. Oh boy!

• All but confirmed.

Gunnerkrigg Court has taboos on directly manipulating life.

Zimmy's project that disgusted Annie (and that was remarked on as a sign of intelligence on the Cast Page) was an obviously modified microorganism. Most likely, her reality-warping helped this process.

• Perhaps Zimmy created the butt above the head creature in this webcomic.
• Considering the fact that Zimmy was clearly upset at Annie when she suggested that Zimmy should try to control her power, it seems unlikely that it was used in the creation of her project.

"It's not breaking the rules unless you get caught" is the official (though largely unspoken) policy at the Court.

First, there's Eglamore's advice to Annie to be more careful about not getting caught. Second, the setup of the dormitories' motion detectors is "pretty lame" (as Tom himself said): the terminal is in a location where anyone inside the dorm can reach it without stepping into the range of the sensor. It's almost as if it were arranged specifically so the clever students would be able to hack it.

The Men in Black from Zimmy's flashback are spying on the Court, and on Zimmy in particular.

Due to the Court's high technology and concentration of supernaturally-talented individuals, the government has a vested interest in making sure the Court doesn't abuse its power. The government is particularly worried about Zimmy; due to her Reality Warper Power Incontinence, she's one freakout away from posing a serious threat to herself and others. The Agency's means of spying include:

• The TicTocs. Zimmy and Gamma, due to their prior experience with the MIBs, know that these birds are the MIBs' eyes and ears. This is why Zimmy is so nervous about them watching her, and why Gamma refers to them as "The Thousand Eyes".
• Jones. She's a double agent, and possibly a robot built from technology similar to the TicTocs.
  • Jones is not a robot.
• That white circle on all of Zimmy's shirts. It's a tracking device, so the Agents know her status at all times.

These spies (and possibly the entire agency) are sympathetic to the Court, for the time being. Hence why the TicTocs rescued Antimony.

• Possibly Jossed by Tom: the Men in Black are Court staff.

Bismuth Seed was a person, and Antimony has something to do with it.

Not necessarily Jeanne, as stated in an above guess, but it's possible. Antimony is chemically similar to Bismuth, and Bismuth is used in some cosmetics (which provides a relation to Antimony, or kohl, and Surma's name being a type of eyeshadow as stated above). Antimony's place in the Court is to replace whatever would have died along with Surma (in this guess, not Surma herself, but rather whatever Bismuth Seed did or was). It's going to be revealed that Annie is such a powerful medium, naturally able to see psychopomps and befriend ghosts, etc., because of what she is - that which is to provide balance between the technology of the Court and the magic that it has forsaken in recent decades.

• Perhaps Bismuth is Antimony's ancestor, maybe even the purebred fire-elemental that started her family line

Queslett House is populated by kids who are going to live in the Wood

The North and South designations should also be important but I don't know how. This explains why Aly got sorted into Queslett for his week at the Court. And the opposite is in effect about the Foley house (the house the fairies got sorted into).

• Very unlikely. Remember that Queslett also has Antimony, Kat, Andrew Smith, Jack, Janet, Winsbury - are they going to turn into wood creatures too? As for Foley House, I'm pretty sure it's confirmed in canon that it's a hous for former forest creatures, so it's not much of a Wild Mass Guess.
  • it just makes sense that if Foley house is for incoming residents of the court that are from the wood originally, that there should be an outgoing house that is Foley's inverse, if there is an outgoing house, then who have we seen who has left the court for the wood? only Aly who was in Queslett for his short stay at the court. QED: Queslett house is the outgoing house.
    • Gosh and golly! Does that mean Annie, Kat, Willie and others are all going to Gillitie-ify in the future?
  • There's another problem with this theory; Surma and Anja were both in Queslett when they were at the Court. Surma died without becoming a forest person, and Anja is now teaching at the Court.

The Court is a branch or rival of the SCP Foundation

They study mysterious energies powering gods-knows-how-many mysterious items, they have a reality warper and a power nullifyer, a half-fire elemental, a Valkyrie, a teleporter, a guy with all of the luck (all of it), a pair of pan-dimentional sapient crabs, various AIs, a captured nature spirit, a minotaur, at least two ghosts, a dragon (formerly), one very mysterious and heavy lady, not to mention strained diplomatic relations with a physical god, elves, fairies, and other magical beings.

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-███ is to be housed in a standard-sized dorm room with its caretaker, along with whatever items the caretaker requires (see SCP-████). SCP-███ itself (henceforth referred to as "Reynard") does not require anything other than what a normal plush toy needs for maintenance. Internet access is denied.

Description: SCP-███ is a 2 foot (.61 meter)-tall white plush wolf. Contained within the apparently normal toy is the soul of Reynard the Fox....

Judging from the recent story about students finding the CURSED INSTRUMENTS room, the Court's containment procedures are horrible. It's amazing they haven't caused an XK world-ending-event yet.

And those weird towers are some iteration of SCP 84.

The Court's Plan never stopped.

The records of the original incident were destroyed, but the Court Powers That Be (minus Jones, obviously) are well aware of the event. Furthermore, what Annie has learned of The Plan is only the tip of the iceburg, and the Powers That Be continue to carry out the plan into the present day.

• Annie is getting dangerously close to the truth about the Court. As such, she will soon butt heads with the Court's Powers That Be, who will attempt to stop her snooping at any cost, for fear she will learn too much.

The purpose of the Court's "trying to become like God" is resurrection

The Court's current goal is to resurrect people, probably starting with Jeanne. Because harnessing supernatural powers and science to bring someone to life never ever goes wrong.

• Or they could be seeking immortality (either physical or etheric). It was revealed recently that people's minds are absorbed into the ether after they die. The court probably knows this.
  Coyote: For some there may be an afterlife, but in the end everyone is brought back into the ether.

etymology fun time! Gunnerkrigg means "the war of Gunnar"

Gunnr or Gunnar is a valkyrie from Norse Mythology, in charge of conducing dead warriors to the afterlife (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnr). A psychopomp perhaps? Krig/Krieg is a Germanic word for war. Literally, The Court of Gunnar's war.

(Gunner's name according to The Other Wiki means battle. So it could be The Battle's War, but it makes no sense at all.)

Since another Valkyrie, Brynhildr has already been in that universe, it's plausible that Gunnar exists there as well and have connections to the Court.

This suggests that either a war will break in the foreseeable future, or the Court is the result of a war between humans (lead by Gunnar) and the animals from the Gilittie woods.

The Artilleryman, the only founder we've yet to see in-panel, was the most crucial to the Court's founding.

He's mentioned but not identified in the simulation of the Court's founding, and the gang is unable to locate his final record in the RotD. His absence is starting to become conspicuous.

• And in the second link (in the RotD), it's hinted that the Court might have even been named for him. Gunner something?

Various theories why the Court has Foley House to be split evenly between genders

1. Aesthetic: They wanted to "balance" Foley House because it just seemed right for it to be split evenly, similar to Isaac Newton deciding that rainbows have seven colors because seven is lucky.
2. Purity: They wanted to give the trans-human kids a chance to pair up with each other before they start mixing with the human students.
3. Patriarchy: Excluding Foley students and "beings" like Shadow there's a lot of females at the Court who are etherically unusual. Magical girls: Annie, Parley, Paz, Kat and Jones (after a fashion), Jenny, Gamma, Zimmy, Anja, Surma, Brynnie. Magical boys: Smitty, Jack (after prolonged contact with Zimmy), Mort (after dying), Donny (after partnering with Anja). When the opportunity arose to make at least one class balanced they took it.
4. Extra challenge for females: The Forest was concerned about removing female creatures from the breeding population so they went along with the Court to make the female creatures turn male to make sure they wouldn't make this decision to leave hastily.

The Omega Device

What we know: Anthony seems to dislike it ("their blasted Omega Device") and was researching it alongside Surma's pregnancy; he was also monitored by the Court from that time to the present (Anthony used secret means to contact Donny (and Annie) in "Microsat 5" and people in the Something Awful thread theorize his house is bare because he doesn't want his privacy invaded by the Court's bugs which would almost certainly be hidden in the Court-provided furniture). Adding Coyote's statement that the Court is "man's attempt to become god"; god is the Alpha and the Omega, and there's also a Zeta and a Gamma.

1. From the comic's comments: The Omega Device is the mysterious green arrow that killed That Elf and anchored Jeanne to the Annan Waters.
2. From the Something Awful thread: The device weakens, calms, or depowers aetheric beings like Gamma does. If "Alpha" is humans gaining superpowers, "Omega" is superbeings losing them. Anthony would be quite interested in something that could turn potentially Surma and Annie into normal humans with normal lifespans.
3. The device destroys the aether. It is humanity's only shot at fighting gods and monsters like Coyote, Reynard, Ysengrin, and the violent creatures lurking in the abandoned human settlement in the Woods. That the aether is made of and powered by human souls and imagination is irrelevant since the Court doesn't seem too interested in aetheric matters aside from how to quantify it and what power can be gotten from it (Anthony and the Court were prepared for electronic surveillance but don't seem to be aware of aetheric means like Smitty's teleporting or Annie using the blinker stone).
4. With recent developments, it is likely that much like Jeanne, the Omega Device is at least partly made of a dead person infused with ether and technology.

The Court is a supernatural protection racket.

Anthony's back story doesn't seem to make much sense: he was desperate to escape the Court, saw death as a more attractive option than being dragged back, and massively resents their interference in his life. Yet he handed over his daughter (who he does love, for all he has a strange way of showing it) to them, and threatening Annie with expulsion was enough to make Anthony fall into line with their demands. However, their plan was to expel Annie from "the program" after she graduated, and was therefore an adult. Indeed, the Court seems to have a firm grasp on its graduates — many of them never left. Why would Anthony favour his daughter's effective imprisonment, living under constant surveillance and subject to Gunnerkrigg's manipulations and demands, to a life as an independent adult? Because perhaps "independent adult" isn't really an option: we saw what happened to Zimmy when she was outwith the Court. It offers a measure of protection to its devotees, keeping them in an environment where there are few people around (less collateral damage if someone's powers/experiments go berserk), allowing them the illusion of freedom (until they decide they don't like what you're doing) and educating them to a high standard. However, they want their pound of flesh: you were raised by the Court, so you serve the Court. For the rest of your life. Presumably, outcasts either can't control their powers outwith the Court/Forest environment, or there's a direct threat to supernatural beings in the more mundane world. Perhaps the Court even helps said threats locate wayward students...or tampers with the ex-students' abilities, so that they can't be used, and being Brought Down to Normal has terrible psychological effects. Either way, there has to be something fairly sinister out there, if being exiled is viewed as A Fate Worse Than Death, and the Court is happy to exploit that fear.

• There's also the fact that the Court gave Paz' family money, enough to buy a "house with a shop". Now I'm no expert but I don't think that's how a scholarship works...
• This could be the reason why the Foley kids and the ex-fairies in particular are so socially idiotic, assuming their minds can absorb etiquette lessons as easily as complex trajectory calculations: Other institutions may tolerate a high level of eccentricity from a person who can instantly calculate how get a rocket to Jupiter in their head but someone who doesn't know what a chair is called, that their name is not "Ms.", or (possibly) needs to have their name pronounced along with specific sound effects and gestures ("it's not 'Snuffle', it's *nudges face while inhaling and exhaling rapidly through the nose and being filled with the sensation of joyous reunion with their most precious person* 'Snuffle'") might be pushing the envelope — but at Gunnerkrigg you're surrounded by your own people and people who accept your culture. Why go anywhere else just to be mocked and possibly fired? Ironically this cuts them off from the a sizable portion of the very humans they wanted to meet.
  • "A Big Day" shows the Foley kids are basically being used as living data-crunchers by the Court. "Every day is the same" implies that's ALL they do. Because they can astral-project themselves into the aether and have fun while their bodies do all the work they don't know anything's amiss (imagine being paid to surf the internet all day while machines harvest your energy), plus they explicitly say "The Court will reward them with jobs" (emphasis added) with no mention of going into the wider world.
  • Counterpoint: Societal rules and customs change over time even in a place as isolated as Gunnerkrigg but math is FOREVER.

Reasons why there are no holidays in Gunnerkrigg

Aside from the beginning and end of the school year and how warmly Annie and Kat dress there isn't much to tell the passage of time unlike, say, Harry Potter where major plot points happen on Halloween (some form of attack, however from about the fifth book onward Halloween passes without indecent) and Christmas (which is usually a snowy one and the event is typically The Reveal) and other holidays like Easter and Bonfire Night get motioned as do the changing of the seasons, not to mention characters' birthdays. Why not here?

1. The Court is under a climate-controlled dome. While they can't control the sky they can control whether or not what comes from it hits the ground, hence why there's no snow in Gunnerkrigg despite it being in roughly the same place in Scotland as Hogwarts (counterpoint, Hogwarts may deliberately make snow for Christmas).
2. The Court doesn't want to give aetheric beings any more power then they already have. Coyote is extremely powerful despite (presumably) having very few active worshipers, especially now that he's living in a foreign country. Imagine how powerful Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny could be with the boost provided by a whole Extranormal Institute's worth of kids! Now imagine Santa putting the whole institute on the Naughty List...
3. The Court doesn't want to offend anyone (tree nymph: "You did WHAT to my spruce?!") and/or a majority of their researchers have Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions (or their bosses want them to think that so they don't take "random" days off).
4. Annie is the Audience Surrogate and if her Point of View is to not care too much about holidays we don't care about them either.
5. There are holiday and birthday celebrations, we just don't see them because they aren't important to the plot. For example "Get It Together" could have easily been set on some holiday or anyone's birthday but there's no reason it couldn't have been just a random night out either.
6. Tom is a militant secularist, no religions and therefore no holidays for anyone! Alternately Tom doesn't want to deal with establishing religions, holidays, birth dates, zodiac signs, etc. for every cast member so he simply doesn't address it.
7. Tom wants the story to be "timeless" so he's just accounting for climate change when Gillitie Woods is green all year round (counterpoint, it's a freaking magical forest it can look however it/Coyote wants) and Somewhere, Scotland is free of mist and naturally-occurring rain (note: ideas about typical Scotland weather come from Skyfall).

The Annan Waters

The Annan Waters are the River Styx.

The suicidal fairies needed to die to cross it. All of the people in Gunnerkrigg Court are dead.

• Unlikely. Several of the guides have shown up to take spirits away from the Court. Antimony's dead mother is nowhere to be seen, and she was fairly strongly linked to the Court before she died, so it would seem reasonable for her to be there if this was true. Also, there's Mort. If everyone's dead, what's the point of introducing a ghost?
  • It doesn't seem like Mort has ever been a human. He's just young spirit whose task is to scare people. But the theory still seems improbable, when you take Joanne's fate into account.
  • Mort used to be human. This doesn't help the theory, though, because of the above reasoning.

The Annan Waters are the River Styx's tributary.

Or rather, one of them, since it tends to originate wherever people need to travel to the land of the dead (various places in Greece, Japan). Coyote could have called in the most useful "dividing line" power that he controlled at the time (Coyote occasionally has something to do with causing or allowing death to occur properly), or from which he could afford to call in a favor (he does things like that all the time, asking for something seemingly insignificant then putting it to really devious use later).

Alternatively, the Annan Waters are the River Thames.

Gunnerkrigg and Gillitie are an alternate-universe London. And the Gunnerkrigg Underground is The London Underground.

Alternatively to that, the Annan Waters are... the Annan Waters.

It's a real river, in Dumfriesshire, which features in several folksongs. Gillitie is also a Scottish surname (though unusual).

• On the other hand, Kat writes to Annie from her summer holiday that she's "having a good time here in Scotland" — which would indicate that the Court, and Gillitie Wood, aren't in Scotland. Apparently, the Court is in an alternate universe where the River Annan flows further south, passing through northern England. (Northern England, by the way, has a more pronounced Scandinavian influence than the rest of the UK, due to past Viking invasions. And the name "Gunnerkrigg" looks Scandinavian...)
  • Perhaps it's an Alternate Universe where Gunnerkrigg Court is on the Annan Waters as they are in real life, but has the Court and Woods being another separate region of the UK unto themselves.
• Jossed by Word of God in his youtube commentaries.

The Annan Waters are the river Annan from The Hazards of Love

Gillitie Wood is the Forest Queen's domain and Gunnerkrigg was built on the other side of the river.

The Gillitie Wood

Gillitie Wood successfully attacked the Court at some point in the past.

Coyote or Ysengrin gave a Robot a tree-arm, leading to that Robot's possession by a Shadow Man. That Shadow then successfully infiltrated the Court, and possessed the Robot society's central computer. It caused numerous AI's to malfunction or go rampant; the Robots' numbers were decimated by the time the Shadow was purged from the computer. Many Robots' computing power were adversely affected by these events. The Robots are still recovering, hence:

• The use of transparent deceptions like "NO Robot Parts" and "Boring door" to hide their presence from humans,
• Doorbot actually believing Annie that robots never lie,
• The Guardbots not being properly equipped to deal with intruders who run away, and
• The barber-bot that looks like a repurposed, battle-scarred warbot. Meanwhile, the Robot's tree-arm was cut off and planted in the artificial habitat room. It grew into that cherry tree.

The Gillitie Wood is in a pocket dimension

Possibly created by Coyote or some other powerful being at some point as a place for the magical things of the world to live in response to the encroachment of human civilization and technology. At some point after it's creation, humans refugees showed up and eventually resulted in the creation of the Court. After some initial problems, Coyote split the pocket dimension in half with the Annan Waters, giving each a nearly infinite space to work with. This neatly explains both the location and scale of the Wood and Court.

You know how Gunnerkrigg Court is man's effort to become god? The Gillitie Wood is god's effort to become man.

No, no, hear me out on this. Let's start from the bottom up.

• The fairies are all excited about becoming human, to go to the Court. Among other reasons, this is so they can "learn how to be human and how to talk all proper nice like sorted". To me, this suggests a desire to be able to function in normal human society.
  • The fairies that go to the Court are apparently specially "bred" to become humans: they're born with their souls outside their bodies (already waiting at the Court?). Note that Red and Ayilu had blank white eyes as fairies and were raring to go while the fairy with the jackalope had normal eyes and as far as I recall had no intention of joining her furry friend on the other side of the bridge.
• Through the indirect actions of Coyote, Shadow became 3-D and more humanlike. Additionally, when Coyote made the glass-eyed men, wasn't he trying to make humans in the first place?
• Ysengrin's body. It's not a wooden expansion of his wolflike form. It's a wooden humanoid form, suggesting a desire to become closer to man and less wolflike.
• Reynardine's ability to take bodies is like this as well, and in fact, the reason he asked Coyote for this ability is explicitly stated as Reynardine wishing to become human so he could be with his beloved Surma.
• And the clincher? Coyote appears to be jealous, or at least admiring, of humans' power to affect the aether. "Human intellect may be a curse, but what would I be without it?" To me, all this points to some sort of pervasive desire of the Wood's inhabitants to become human.

The forest, the Court, and the river are all Coyote.

That's what Coyote was alluding to with the story of the dead duck in a bush by the lake. At some point in the past, he turned a part of himself into the court, the river, and the forest. He then grew bored; and left. He returned some time later, having completely forgotten whatever plan had caused him to make those things; or that he'd even made them at all. Those at the Court, however, panic. They're afraid of Coyote for reasons they don't quite remember. They don't KNOW that they're part of Coyote; just that they definitely don't want him examining The Court too closely. Hence why they turned one of their own into a vengeful ghost to guard the river.

The Realm of the Dead

The ROTD's appearance is based one one's experiences with death

From the comments for 4/8/2014:

Kyle: It occurs to me that the reason Annie and Mort see the dead so differently than Kat may be that they've both faced death before. Kat never has, has she?

I don't think Diego's golum counts (he's "off", not dead and Kat could bring him back if she really wanted to), and it's clear she didn't consider her "chicken wing" as much of a living thing as her robot "disciples" did; she also does not (cannot? ...yet??) interact with the ether, at least not as well as Annie and the other "unusual" Court students do. Mort was newly dead (maybe "Dracula" and the rest of the Realm's appearance became more impressive after he got used to the idea he was dead?), and Jones... while she has witnessed countless deaths she isn't "alive" and the ether has no effect on her. Annie, on the other hand, not only witnessed her mother's death but also got "what was left" to Go into the Light and is filled with etheric power.

Updated version: The ROTD's appearance is based on the above plus how one interacts with the ether and one's Willing Suspension of Disbelief

From the 4/14/2014 strip:

"Dracula": All this is just a creep show — smoke and mirrors. But the ether makes it real.

Jones and Kat are too logical and etherically weak for any of that nonsense; Mort is/was a naive child and easily impressed (he seemed to be more amazed by the "Librarian's" Stealth Hi/Bye act than his appearance); Annie's Seen It All (comparatively) and is quite comfortable with the ether so it has a lot to work with.

Mjnousak Version:The ROTD's appearance is based on how one interprets the etherial and magic in general

Anny is used to the Ether and magic, and well aware of how bizarre and weird it can get, but she takes it in stride, so it all seems weird, but mundane to her.

Mort was probably barely exposed to it at all(save for Jones), but had a childish outlook thanks to TV and stories or something similar.

Jones is perfectly aware or the Ether, how little it's inhabitants can do to her, and therfore, no matter how weird they are. she reacts mundanely to their true forms. (that and she has no emotions)

Kat acknowledges magic, but thinks it can be broken down to more mundane causes. ( All sufficiently advanced technology seems like magic. To Kat, all magic just seems like technology that is unexplained, and therefore mostly mundane with smoke and mirrors to enhance it. Thus her seeing the gigantic memory keeper and his library and small, mundane things. Because for every several thousand books, you'd only need one or two recordings. The chaotic underworld they walked through is needlessly complicated to someone like her (thus the maze-like appearance) despite being fairly straightforward. Her mind organizes it into simple things she can comprehend.

Court Staff

Jones

Jones has Only One Name.

The placard on Jones' door (panel one of this page) does not have a first initial. The placard on Eglamore's door (panel three of the same page) does. And she does insist on being addressed without the honorific "Miss".

• Obligatory name derivation, for what it's worth: Jones originated as a Welsh surname, originally ap Jones = "(child/son) of John". It's the second most common English surname, after "Smith", and unfortunately I can't find any equivalent to the "Smith that blows on the coals" for it. Yet.
• Confirmed.
  • However, Coyote disagrees. Jossed.
    • Coyote says nothing to the point on that page. Antimony says "Ms. Jones!", and Jones says "Just Jones will do". If anything, that looks like a confirmation to me.
    • Coyote calls her by a completely different name and goes on to basically state that Jones is a name she adopted. Even ignoring that, dropping the Ms. in no way indicates that she has one name. All it suggests is that she doesn't like the formality of Ms. Jones.
    • However, the linked comic could be taken just as easily as a confirmation: if "Jones" was a name she "stole", she might not have bothered with a first name.

Alternatively, Jones is the Court's ruling goddess.

During the meeting, Coyote let Ysengrin do most of his talking; Ms. Jones let the Headmaster (and the teachers, and the students) do all of her talking. And she's very knowledgeable about shapeshifting and its effects on sanity. Her neutrality between the Court and the Wood comes from her being far older than either.

• Possible further support appears on page 380: Either she's using magic to deflect the sword, or she stopped the blade with her face.
  • It seems more like she dodges it: notice how her hair moves as if she were sidestepping. And the blade bending? Fish-eye perspective: notice the action lines. Also, she doesn't grab the blade, she presses against the flat of the blade, probably showing off some mad aikido skills. That would make her Badass Normal, only it seems that the glancing cut she received while dodging closed up immediately.
  • Jones may any number of things, but she's not Badass Normal: she's too dense to either swim or stand on a rickety dock, and punches through brick walls as a matter of course. If it hadn't been Jossed repeatedly, she'd be a rather more collected Terminator.
  • There are sparks flying off Jones's face, where the blade (would have) struck her. Dodging blades doesn't do that.
  • It's entirely possible that Jones's medium power is to simply reject harm. It fits in with her untouchable and unflappable personality, and also explains why Eglamore gets routinely thrashed by her in close combat, on account of her being able to judo his sword back at him by gripping the blade with no risk of injury.
  • Note when she goes to collect Antimony from the Wood, she flat-out tells Coyote "You know I can take her if I wish." Considering that Coyote was right there, she'd have to be near his power level to be able to do something like that.
    • It may not be a pure power thing, knowing how many rules and laws there seem to be governing interactions between the Court and the Forest, there may be a 'Jones may pass freely from one to the other with anything she can carry.' It would also explain how she got in when Eglamore was stopped at the bridge.

Jones is from Gillitie Wood.

As mentioned above, she has Only One Name — because she didn't take a name until she came to the Court. She's not a fairy, as she lacks the grey eyes and pointy ears the other former fairies have. Instead, she's one of the "bunch of different stuff" that Red mentioned. Her past with Gillitie would explain her knowledge of the Woods and her neutrality between the Court and the Wood.

• She could easily be one of those "traitors" that Ysengrin mentions here, a creature from the forest who decided to become Human.

Jones is an angel of Order or similar being.

Think about it. Angels are just about the only thing that could predate humans and still look like one, and wouldn't be subject to the law of 'belief makes reality' that gods like Coyote are subject to. The only god that pretty much WOULDN'T be subject to this is a Creator god, and angels would be that god's personal staff/first creations.Angels are beings of infinite energy and power. SUNS aren't that efficient, so that explains her imperviousness to everything and why she doesn't age.Angels are tasked with all sorts of things from, "Kill all the firstborn," to "watch this rock until I tell you to move." She could be the angel of Order, with a capital 'O'. Just think... she's the current medium. Whenever shit starts to really hit the fan BOOM there she is, preparing to sort things out.It may also explain her having to 'take names.' The names of angels is largely considered much more powerful than normal names, and so to exist as a person of society she must 'take' a place of another human being, because as an angel or god of order, she cannot directly step into society as that would disrupt it. She can only take a place, kind of like the number 0, and take another one afterward. SENSE, THIS THEORY MAKES IT!

Jones is some kind of Anthropomorphic Personification of peace, mediation, or balance.

Hence the single name and the being able to grab swords by the blade.

Jones is a robot.

As Antimony suspects. This is why she's relegated to instructing future Mediums instead of serving in that capacity herself: the technophobic Gillitie denizens would never accept a robot diplomat. Some kind of super-tough synthetic skin enabled her to deflect that sword with her face.

Considering how much she looks like a real human, Jones was probably built by the same party who built the TicTocs; her true alliance lies with them rather than the Court or the Wood. Either way, Jones isn't part of the Robot Society shown in Chapter 12, as she looks far more human (yet acts more robotic) than any of those Robots.

• Before you can say Jossed, Word of God says that Reynardine can tell untruths to Annie if he believes them himself... so this theory still holds some water.
• Chapter 22 indicates that Jones was a classmate of Surma et al. — one, incidentally, who Eglamore apparently quite liked but Surma couldn't stand. Unless you argue that she takes Ridiculously Human Robot to the point of growing up....
• Word Of Tom: Jones was not taught at the Court. She knew Surma and pals back in the day, but she wasn't a student.
• Well, it has been proven that Jones is most definitely NOT a robot. This page and its author's comments can not be any clearer.
  • Unless he's lying to us...
• Could still be an android (gynoid, technically). I wouldn't put it past her to leave that out.
• Jones is not a robot, but technically she might be a Golem.

Jones is a robotic Replacement Goldfish for Jeanne.

Both of them are thin blondes. Both (presumably) have combat prowess. And both of their names are derived from the name "John".

They aren't exact matches because Jones altered her appearance and changed her name over the years. Possible reasons for this:

• Jones developed her own personality and has sought to distance herself from Jeanne.
• Jones' robotic nature is a closely-guarded secret. She changes identities every generation so others in the Court won't start wondering how old she is.
• But Jones has brown eyes. I think that if she was a copy of Jeanne, she would keep the eye color (rather than hair color) when she switched forms. A lot of the robots have green eyes, especially prevalent in the chapter Skywatcher and the Angel and especially in this comic which compares the color of Jeanne's eyes in the painting to Skywatcher's eyes. I think Diego did that on purpose, which suggests to me that either Diego would do the same to a goldfish or that the author would keep the color for symbolism's sake (he does love cryptic clues).
• I'm posting this in all "Jones is a robot" theories to cover all bases. It has been proven that Jones is most definitely NOT a robot. This page and its author's comments can not be any clearer.
• Pretty much Jossed. Going by chapter 40, she's been around wayyy longer than Jeanne. She's shown in the Pleistocene epoch.

Jones is a robot possessed by a goddess or other ethereal being.

The best of both theories. And it would be awesome.

• I'm posting this in all "Jones is a robot" theories to cover all bases. It has been proven that Jones is most definitely NOT a robot. This page and its author's comments can not be any clearer.
  • Unless he's lying to us...

Jones (Who Coyote calls Wandering Eye) is an evolved Tic-Toc (Which are called the Thousand Eyes.)

Jones is a normal human.

Just so all our bases are covered. Jones's neutrality is simply a mindset necessary to serving as Medium. Her strange knowledge is the result of years of study. Her bare-faced blade block was magic that any human in the Gunnerverse can learn. Her strange personality is just her strange personality.

• Normal people may or may not be able to block blades with their face (see Eglamore). However, normal people cannot punch through brick walls and can stand on rickety docks.
• Jossed in "The Stone".

Jones is a reincarnation of Jeanne d'Arc.

At least some portrayals of her incarnations post-martyrdom give her an ability to reject harm. While Joan of Arc is known for taking up the sword, either this Joan (and many others since the original) have an aversion to swords, or can only take up a sword for a just cause. Giving Eglamore a few (potentially fatal) whacks to entertain some students isn't a particularly just cause.

• Perhaps Jones is to Jeanne as Annie is to Surma, although maybe with some kind of moving moving of the spirit/phlebotinum thingie that's passed down moved to a different bloodline as Jeanne did not seem to have ever had a child and the fact that the court covered up her death seems to suggest that if she even had one, they would have killed it as well.
• Pretty much Jossed. Going by chapter 40, she's been around wayyy longer than Arc, let alone anyone of Arc. She's shown in the Pleistocene epoch.

Jones is the Goddess Athena.

Just a hunch.

• He-he. There were coincidences.

Jones is an aspect of Bismuth Seed.

Jones<->Jeanne (Note: Jones="Son of John", Jeanne=John). Seems perfect for a Medium between the Court and the Wood, but for some reason can't be, or isn't impartial enough. Has physical similarities to Jeanne. Can deflect swords with her face (or at the very least, she can deflect swords with her face indoors[1]). And, interestingly, she was struck by Eglamore's sword in a mirror of where Jeanne cut Antimony, though I'm not sure what that means, if anything (and if it's not just subtle hindshadowing). I thought for sure that this was/would have been here already.

Jones is setting herself up to turn a What the Hell, Hero? speech back onto Antimony.

Jones is deliberately putting others in harm's way in order to teach Carver a lesson. When things get worse, Antimony will try calling her out over what happened — and Jones will calmly turn all those accusations back on Antimony, outlining how Annie's distrust of authority made the situation worse. After all, Antimony has been withholding information and acting on her own — how were Jones and the others supposed to know the very facts she kept from them? They don't have a full picture of how dangerous Jack is, or what he's up to, or how Zimmy factors in... And while Annie has a clearer view of the whole picture, she hasn't been sharing that information. Sort of a Right Hand Versus Left Hand scenario, presuming both sides want the same thing.

...Whether or not this makes an immediate positive impression on Antimony's behavior is a crapshoot. Antimony may very well take this as further proof that she can't work with the staff, as they're willing to let others be hurt or worse just to "teach her a lesson". And given what she knows of the Court's past...

Jones is some kind of golem.

More recent issues have shown Jones to be strong enough to break through solid rock with her bare hands, and Reynardine implies that she doesn't step onto a rickety pier because she is heavy enough to just break through it. This might suggest that she is some kind of magical construct made from stone or other heavy material, perhaps even a kind of Magitek. While that might make her technically a kind of robot, Reynardine would still insist that she isn't, as he seems to be fairly insistent on drawing a line between magic and technology (or at least unable to comprehend a similarity).

• Jossed, unless aliens set her on earth.

Jones is not a robot.

Kind of out there, I know. But there are the facts that her head isn't rectangular and her skin isn't steely gray. A few other hints include the whole "Reynardine says she's not a robot" thing, and that t-shirt with Eglamore on, but really, do we even need to go further than the lack of a rectangular head? ...Mantisbot isn't a robot either. Grey skin, but a triangular head.

• Jones is for sure not a robot. If she says she wasn't a robot and really was, that would be lying, and of course, robots never lie. So she's telling the truth on page 728. And the robot who Annie met up with when she went to retrieve S13's CPU did not have a rectangular head, and he confirmed that he was a robot, so a rectangular head is not a requirement.
  • He was obviously not a robot, but just a metal golem like the mantis. That's how he didn't know that Annie didn't meet the requirements for being a robot like the rectangular head (sort of) or steely grey skin, and thought that all robots had antennae. Knights and Knaves, kiddo. Knights And Knaves.

• Confirmed, she is indeed not a robot.

Jones is the embodiment of the element lead.

Since the symbol has been showing up everywhere from the beginning, it's got to be of some significance. Traditionally in mythology, lead has Anti-Magic properties. Being a soft metal, it would explain why she can bend around a sword, and being, well, heavy, it explains why she walks across the river instead of swimming. She's just a little "touchy about her weight".

• I would think not. So far it seems that most characters who have an element/symbol associated with them only have one, and we've already seen the alchemical symbol for lead on Eglamore's armor.
• This came to my mind after seeing her X-rays.

Jones is Coraline Jones.

You know, from the Neil Gaiman novella? There's no saying Coraline's experiences with the supernatural stopped the second the left the Other World for good. Maybe she stuck around the supernatural, found her way into Gunnerkrigg and, what with her previous experience with dark forces, made herself useful.

...What?

Jones is Dana Scully.

And "that boy" that Reynard killed getting out of was Fox Mulder, if A is true.

• A: The X-Files show is a matter of the Literary Agent Hypothesis. Scully is so vehemently believing in the Christian god and nothing else super-scientific or magical because she was traumatized when one of her friend's powers went out of control, or something from the woods attacked. She was mindwiped or lost her memories on her own, and sent to live a (monitored) civilian life under a new name (Jones was a Doorstep Baby Name, and Dana Scully was the name they gave her when she was sent to the orphanage or a foster family). Shortly after she began regaining her memories once she was assigned to be Mulder's partner and acted as a Weirdness Magnet for their investigations, the two of them had their deaths faked to leave the FBI for Gunnerkrigg Court and a show was made starring Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny (originally) based on their declassified investigations.
• B: Dana Scully was seen as the perfect face for Gunnerkrigg Court during early episodes of the series, contrasting Mulder (or for Gillitie Wood and Coyote). Jones was an artificial human being raised to succeed the Headmaster, and they simply focused her mold as the character of Dana Scully rather than try to fine-tune the individual characteristics themselves. It didn't turn out too well, and the "everything is some sort of hoax" clashed too much with the "almost nothing is a hoax" mindset she would need dealing with Gillitie Wood and its inhabitants, which is why she acts in such a reserved (repressed?) manner.
  • But The X-files is shown to exist within the GC universe, to the extent that Kat has a Mulder action figure.
    • That's why, in both versions of the guess, The X-Files show exists within the GC universe.

Jones is Android 18 from Dragon Ball Z

She's not a robot, she's an android.

Jones is the child of Jeanne and the forest spirit thing.

Well, she has the looks and weird power. She is weirdly not mentioned at all when Jeanne descends to the river, but maybe the Court didn't want to kill her?

• Pretty much Jossed. Going by chapter 40, she's been around wayyy longer than Jeanne. She's shown in the Pleistocene epoch.

Jones is telekinetic.

It's how she smashed her way through the wall — she transmitted energy through her hand into the wall, which looked like she just smashed a hole in it. It's also how she won the sword fight with Eglamore — she could just make his hands loosely grip it so she could pull the sword off him.

• Jossed: She's just really tough (as in indestructible).

Jones suppresses her emotions for reasons similar to El Goonish Shive's Susan.

She is not emotionless nor always bored, but rather jaded and broken.

• Jossed, according to her she has no emotions to suppress.

Jones is Annie's (insert potential multiple Greats, depending on Jones' age) Grandmother.

This is mostly based on the apparent lineage of expressionless faces that flows through Jones to Carver the Elder to Carver the Younger, along with the general calmness when exposed to odd situations. In this situation, Jones is, of course, not her real name, but rather a handy all-purpose monicker.

• Jossed, she isn't related to anyone and as far as we know can't reproduce.

The "Jones" that Eglamore wanted in their group picture during his school days is NOT the same Jones that we know.

The fact that Jones was not educated at the Court despite the fact that Surma's group knew her (it'd be weird even considering having a faculty member in a students' group photo like that) combined with the new fact that she "steals names" indicates that the person we know as Jones is really an entity who may have stolen the identity of a student in Eglamore's age group. This is further supported by the fact that she knows much about the inner workings and history of the Court, familiar with Coyote, seems to not have much by way of human emotion but still privy to it, and has strange abilities such as the famous sword deflection. She may in fact be a much older entity on par with Coyote, Ysengrin, and Reynardine.

• Jossed: She is the same Jones and isn't on the same level as Coyote & Co.

Jones got her powers from Coyote

Surprised nobody said this earlier.

• Expanding on this with a bit of my own theory: James is actually the latest reincarnation of Jones' lover. She normally wouldn't have reincarnated so she asked Coyote to make her immortal. But the price came at losing her ability to express her emotions (though perhaps not actually lose the ability to feel, just outwardly express them), and to make things more painful, James never remembers their love in each incarnation. Even so, she remains stalwartly faithful to him.

• Jossed. She vastly predates Coyote.

Jones is a human who was given powers by some kind of Court technology and became a spy for them.

Note what Coyote calls her — 'Wandering Eye'. Seems like a pretty appropriate name for a spy. Possibly she was on good terms with the Forest and the treaty was altered to let her go into the Forest whenever she wished — after all, with the powers she was given, you wouldn't want to tell her she couldn't do what she wanted. Her powers also include the power to change shape — she stole the image of another woman called Jones, and took her name too. Whether the real Jones is alive or dead at this point in time is unknown.

It's also possible that she was formerly a student at the same time as Surma, Eglamore, Anja, and Donald who was in training to become a medium alongside Surma and thus was her rival — it explains why Surma 'couldn't stand her' — if Jones was an equal candidate to become the medium, Surma may have hated her for that. Surma became the medium and the Court, feeling that Jones' talents were too good to waste, decided to give her new powers. Jones, stung by losing to Surma, agreed and stole the identity and image of someone who may have been much more beautiful and powerful than her, and has kept it ever since as a warning to those who know her secret that she can do the same to them.

• Jossed: Jones isn't human, can't changer her physical appearance aside from styling her hair, and while we don't know exactly why Surma disliked Jones it seems Eglamore may have had feelings for her the whole time (there's also the fact that Jones came onto Eglamore the same day he found out Surma had left him for Anthony and they're now a couple of some sort).

Jones was made from one of Coyote's eyes

Hence why Coyote calls her "Wandering eye". If he can make knives out of his teeth, it stands to reason that he could have made someone to spy on the court for him.

• The one that got stuck and became a star perhaps
  • This one has a real chance to be true in this page he says to Annie to ask her about the stars in the night sky. He also says that she already knows his secret, and a piece of his body would likely know it.
  • I would say Jossed — Jones existed billions of years before there were any humans to create Coyote — but Annie's fingerprint on the moon shows that in this world myths and science are both true: Coyote says he placed the stars in the sky and Jones says the stars existed long before life on earth and they're both right.

Wandering Eye Jones has found a home in the court only relatively recently.

She insulted a condemned man and had been paying for it for 2,000 years. Not sure how this accounts for her density problem, though.

• Maybe she did so on an alien planet and as punishment got punted to the volcano world that would become earth.

A long time ago, Jones was to the Forest as Annie is now.

A sort of combination of some of the theories above. Some time ago when she was a child, Jones was Curious as a Monkey — hence the nickname "Wandering Eye" — and somehow wandered into the forest without being killed. Charmed by her innocence and magical potential (again akin to Annie), Coyote took her in, granting her powers and possible immortality during her stay. However, considering the way the forest works, by the time lil' Jones was out, she'd become a stoic Zen Survivor.

Whether or not she knew Surma and Eglamore's gang by then is up for debate; she could of stolen the name of the Jones they knew and took up her identity with her abilities, or simply took the name to let go of her past and had already come out of the forest and adopted the name by the time the picture was taken.

Jones is somehow related to Odin and his ravens.

Coyote calls her Wandering Eye and a Valkyrie specifically doesn't like her. Not a strong argument, but it could be the case.

• Seconded, probably Thought.
• Minor quibble. Brinnie (Brynhildr) wasn't the one who disliked Jones, but Surma.

Jones is a Time Lady.

Just covering all our bases.

Jones is a Star.

The eye Coyote threw so high that it became a star is her, thus he calls her Wandering Eye. Arcturus is just another name that she "stole".

• Seconded. This could also explain why she's so heavy.
• Coyote does say to "ask her about the stars in the sky" so she's probably familiar with space. Tom seems to be familiar with Neil Gaiman, who's written a few stories about people who fell in love with stars: Stardust and the short story "The Heart of a Star" from The Sandman where Dream's girlfriend, a precursor to the Green Lantern Corps, unknowingly falls in love with her own sun because Desire thought breaking up its brother's romance and dooming the star to a May Fly December Romance was funny.
• Alternately, Jones is a planet or an asteroid/comet, which would "wander" a lot more than a star.

Jones is part Earth-elemental.

Just like Annie is part Fire-elemental. It would explain the strange density, the Made of Iron abilities, and the stoic personality.

• I was actually going to add this theory before seeing someone else beat me to it, so I'll add my 2 cents on it. We've already seen that Jones is heavier than she looks, and a lot of rocks are heavy. She also took a sword to the face without a scratch, and diamond is the hardest natural substance on the planet. She could have diamond-hard skin, rendering her almost indestructible and capable of crushing anything softer than her skin. She's pretty much as old as the Earth itself, and if she is an earth elemental then it makes some sense that she came into existence at the same time as (or shortly after) the element/planet did. Stone is also a cold, hard substance and often used symbolically to reflect something emotionless (ex. a heart of stone) and Jones herself claims to be incapable of emotion.
  If she is an Earth elemental, then the fact she's still alive means one of two things. Either she's never had a child, or she may have had a few and the earth element isn't passed from parent to child the same way it does in fire elementals.
  Hey, it's about as plausible as all the "she's a robot" guesses.

Jones is Not So Stoic.

Maybe it's way too early to tell, but Jones seems to be drawn to the newly 3-Dimensional Shadow 2. Possibly it's a completely stoic version of the Cuteness Proximity, but she shows affection to him as seen when she pet his head (similar to how she pet Eglamore's 9 chapters previously) and gives him treats. She refers to him as unique in response to Annie thanking her for helping him all while he is being cute as a button.

• Shadow eating candy is the cutest thing in this comic so far. I can easily see that getting under Jones' skin.
  • Jones looks like a human but isn't. 2hadow was one of many Shadow Men but was cast out and then altered by Coyote's tooth. The difference is that Jones was alone for billions of years while 2hadow has friends.
  • Jones says she has perfect memory aside from the fact that she doesn't remember how she came to exist. She keeps photo albums.

Jones is a corporeal etheric entity

In other words, a being existing in the etheric plane which can influence and/or manifest in the physical plane. Would explain her unique physical attributes, and the reason she can't use a blinker stone. Also may mesh with the "She's an Earth Elemental/Part Earth Elemental" theory.

Jones is constantly astral projecting

In Chapter 36, we see that it's possible to astrally project while still being able to perform tasks with one's body. However, the examples shown were uncharacteristically stoic-faced, to the point Red barely spends a moment to glance at Annie. So, maybe Jones can't use a blinker stone because she's already astral projecting, that her physical feats are being augmented by her psychic presence, and that this is why she seems so stoic?

Jones is the goddess Sekhmet

In Egyptian Mythology Ra once grew so angry with humanity that he was determined to punish them; he took one of the eyes from his head and turned it into Sekhmet, the lioness headed goddess of war, and sent her to punish mankind. The problem was, Sekhmet wouldn't do as she was told, and when Ra tried to tell her she'd done enough she evaded all his attempts to reclaim her and turn her back into his eye, desiring to kill all of mankind. Ra had to get her smashed off her gourd before he could rein her in.Obviously she's calmed down a bit since then.Besides, look at her eyes and hair; don't they look leonine?

• But when Sekhmet was reigned in, most accounts had her turn (or revert back) into Hathor, the goddess of music, love, motherhood, beauty, and drink. That really doesn't fit her it at all.
  • Jossed, Jones existed long before the Egyptians could create Sekhmet.

Jones was another unlucky recipient of Coyote's power

She obviously possess power beyond a normal human and beyond what we're used to seeing from students with special abilities. Maybe Coyote gave her a power or two, but they have a terrible price just like with Ysengrin and Reynardine.

Jones is a shapeshifter of some kind

In some narratives, shapeshifters can change shape, but keep the same mass because mass can be neither created nor destroyed. So if Jones is really something larger that has taken human shape, that could explain why she is so heavy.

• Renard as a doll doesn't seem to have problems with this.
  • Renard is the size of a doll to begin with. He uses his powers to get bigger not smaller.
• Jones must be a lazy shapeshifter if she can't even age herself a little to avoid suspicion.
  • Jossed, Jones can't alter herself at all aside from styling her own hair.

Jones is a mundane human...

... who is even more mundane than other humans. As in, she doesn't have the inspiration that allows other humans to interact with the ether. So she can't use a blinker stone, and can't be affected by a purely etheric being such as Coyote.

• Maybe she's mundane on her own planet (or universe) like Superman would've been?

Jones is Exalted

She shows superhuman proficiency in areas, displays blatant supernatural abilities, as per the last few updates have shown that she hasn't aged a day in decades. It's not quite obvious what type, but I'd put money on a Sidereal, because of all the elemental/astrological motifs that are already in play.

• Personally, I'd peg her as a Chosen of Secrets. "Life is a mystery."

Jones is Galatea from the Pygmalion myth

That is, a living statue of an idealized woman brought to life to be devoted to one man. She's heavy enough to break through wooden structures but not enough do more than sink into Parley's mattress. She's hard enough to deflect Eglamore's sword but doesn't appear to have an uncomfortably tough surface. Her appearance never changes but she's always beautiful. She's a serial monogamist (as far as we know) who is also a living being created from stone by the gods (or as we know them the stars Jupiter, Venus, and Mars) who'd probably take a dim view of aetheric beings who create life just for fun.

• Expanding on this just a bit: James is the latest incarnation of Jones' lover. She did say 'she'd' always be there for him.' Given James' own love for Surma, it seems she's never told him.
• Jossed, she existed before Greece existed, though she could have inspired the myth.

Jones is Coyote's sister, creating a Sibling Yin-Yang.

Coyote is wild and chaotic, in contrast with Jones' neutrality and stoicism. She is one of the few who can walk into Gillitie Wood uninvited without being immediately killed, and has stated that she can take Annie from Coyote if she so chooses, despite Coyote being a god in his domain, which implies that Jones has at least as much power as Coyote has. He is also very familiar with Jones, calling her "Wandering Eye". Likewise, Jones is very familiar with Coyote, able to state as a fact "Coyote is no liar. Therein lies the danger." Chapter 40, due to the numerous time-skips, imply that Jones is very, very old, much older than she looks.

• Jossed, she isn't related to Coyote. She's still his foil, though.

Jones is a Six.

Looks like a modern human before modern humans? Check. Doesn't age? Check. Been called a devil? Check. Attractive and attracted to men? Check. Messes with people's minds for fun and profit? Check. Sort-of dark-skinned blonde? Check. Statuesque Stunner? She's statue-ish... Spine glows when aroused? That's private. Jones doesn't emote either because she never had a Six with more life experience downloaded into her or that was the mask she put on to cope with the outside world.

Jones is the inspiration for all the Jossed myth theories.

Goddess, demon, living statue, vampiress, reincarnation (pre incarnation?), Wandering Jew /Flying Dutch(wo)man, inspiration for roboticists — all stories about Jones passed from generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation.

Jones was created by Ancient Human Aliens (or is one)

The meteors in the background of the "Lava Page" is what brought her to earth. Time travel could be involved too.

Jones was created by human imagination and sent back in time to "become" herself

The myth-makers were vague about her age so she first appears "Once upon a time" - the point where time started to be perceived by humans/the planet. Slightly altered, she's a goddess and because nearly all gods predate humans she has to start out in prehistory.

Jones is a Watcher who quit her job for some reason

A lot of people have referred to her as an "observer" or "watcher" but what kind of watcher plays intermediary between humans and aetheric beings, plays matchmaker, helps their ancestors catch food, or has a string of loyal "boyfriends" a few of whom she's been involved with since their childhoods? If her job was to observe humanity she got tired of just "watching" a long time ago. Unless her job is to be an intermediary...

Before Jones went hunting...

She was a literal rock. The lava was her being "born" on the surface of the earth, being covered up with rock and water, and reemerging with the help of the glacier. The Cro-Magnon men thought she looked like a woman which gave her life and she's been living ever since. The problem is this works with Coyote's theory while Annie thinks Jones is an exception.

• Alternate theory: Jones is still a rock that became human, but she became human without human imagination (or even willed herself alive somehow) which doesn't work with Coyote's theory.

"The Stone" will end with

Annie repeating "What are you?" and Jones saying "Too old for this nonsense" and crumbling into dust.

• Jossed

Jones doesn't look like a human, humans look like Jones

Credit for this theory goes to someone on the GC forum (see: here. Basically, when you're the only one of your kind, you're going to take an interest when something evolves which looks a tiny bit like you, ie some sort of primate, especially when it develops a greater than usual degree of intelligence. And since you're curious about them, you'd want to study them, and you'd end up protecting them somewhat so you'd still have something to study. And the more they looked like you, the more interested you'd be so you'd protect and aid them more so the ones that looked the most like you would have an advantage over those that look less like you. Basically there was a Jonesian influence on human evolution, with 'looking like Jones' being something that was selected for.

Jones is Gaea.

She's sort of an avatar for the world itself.

• And thus, when the earth burns in its final flame, when its story ends and it crumbles into ash, so too shall the Stone.
• This also explains the timing of Jones' conception. Why not before or after, but at the exact moment of the Earth's conception? Because she is the (embodiment of) Earth.

Annie's right and Jones IS capable of emotions

The problem is just that, because Jones has lived for so long as a being with a greater than modern human mind since before humans existed and for so long, it's made her unable to comprehend her own emotions, others to comprehend hers, and all in all just difficult for everyone all around. There's bits and pieces to support this: as mentioned above, there's her fascination with Shadow, the genuine closeness she does share with her many companions over the ages, and her apparent tendency to troll people.

Jones is a Physical God of all unresolved mysteries of the world that have and ever will exist.

If Coyote's theory is true, that humans created mythical beings through the Ether, and viewing reality from the point of view of a god (as constant rather than linear), then Jones manifested to fill in the gap. She has existed since the formation of the planet, and knows things that humans will never find out because she will never tell them. And she herself doesn't even know what she is, and will never be able to peek inside her own body to find out. A bit of a Mind Screw, but Jones herself mentioned the paradox in The Stone. Jones mentioned her marks in human history, so it's possible that humans caused Jones herself to manifest after seeing these marks the same way that Coyote claims to have manifested from a man dying in a desert seeing a coyote before his death.

The paintings seen on pg. 7 are of Jones's footprints.

The main Tropes page says that these paintings are links into an Aborted Arc, but they're pictures of footprints, which are later associated with Jones and her... longevity. Perhaps they were a long-planted clue towards her origins.

Jones is a Stable Time Loop.

Specifically, an "Object Loop". A criticism of the "Object Loop" is that entropy would make it impossible, as the object would undergo infinite decay and not be in the exact same state in each cycle of the loop. Therefore, an object within such a loop would have to be entirely unaffected by entropy, maintaining the exact same state throughout the loop. Jones fits this description. She's invulnerable, ageless, unchanging, entirely immune to entropy. In the future, she might be sent back in time to the beginning of the Earth, having all her memories erased in the process, thus making her life a closed loop.

Jones is a "perfected" version of SCP-014 and SCP-275.

SCP-014 has no life signs, is immortal, unaging, and indestructible — he's also completely paralyzed because he believes he's turned to concrete; SCP-275 is indestructible and radio-opaque but also has signs of life — unlike Jones she still needs air, water, sleep, food and stimulation (lately insanely hot chili peppers (approved with good behavior) and being set on fire/electrocuted/flogged/stabbed/shot (denied)), expels waste, and gets her hair and nails cut with a laser. Jones has none of the weaknesses of being a former human; maybe they're trying to copy her?

Jones "likes" men because until very recently a woman living on her own was highly unusual

Until about 40 years ago a young(HAH), attractive, single woman living on her own who apparently needed no man would have been suspicious enough to get her rumored out of a community, assuming no one noticed she never aged and accused her of witchcraft first.

• Additionally she seems to be more intimate with Eglamore (compared to her other "companions" where she's their relative or caretaker) because — probably for the first time since she met humans — she doesn't need to "worry" about people thinking she's a demon and Eglamore is more accustomed to the supernatural than her other partners (probably) were. 'Course that doesn't explain why she bothers with humans (or anything else) at all, especially after learning we aren't the same creatures as her.

At some point, Jones will bleed...

By being cut by the Coyote fang sword.

Jones is the product of the Court

The Court is described as "man's endeavour to become god", and Jones is the ultimate product of that success. A human-like being which has existed since the earth itself, with perfect memory, impervious to any harm and imbued with unlimited strength. She is what the court seeks to create, via studying the ether, which Coyote hypothesizes leads to the creation of all supernatural beings.

• Jones verifiably significantly predates the Court. Unless they went out of their way to plant fake footprints good enough that a...anthropologist? could date several million years, I doubt it.
• Coyote's theory states that mortal belief can create gods retroactively, causing them to always have existed. If he's right, then it's entirely possible that Jones exists in the past and present because of something the Court is going to have done in the future.

Jones isn't just immortal, she's the idea of immortality/changelessness

Making her a being similar to Coyote. Legends like gods seem to be able to retroactively change past events (like how Coyote's and other creation myths can be 'true' simultaneously). Humans conceptualized immortality and Jones became its manifestation. Since she always had to exist, she was inserted into beginning of our world. Emotions or interacting with the ether (the way that humans subconsciously create myths and etheric beings create change) are not allowed to her, as they would interfere with her 'changelessness'

Jones is an experimental super Gem

The Gems were trying to make a completely indestructible Gem, and Jones was the result. But her creators had to sacrifice her magical connections and emotional capacity to make her so tough. She doesn't know anything about what she is for sure because she was lost in a Gem war before awakening.

Jones is the Earth's "medium".

Jones was created by the Earth itself to interact with its inhabitants and their culture in a similar manner to that of the Court or Forest mediums.

The phrase "Wandering Eye" is therefore very much on the nose.

James Eglamore

Dragon Slayers get their powers from a bond with a Rogat Orjak.

For the following reasons:

• Rogat Orjak are cool
• As seen in the above WMG, Eglamore's armor links him to lead, where as the Rogat Orjak make me think of Godzilla, who has nuclear breath, and so this is contained as by lead.
• Eglamore has a glowing sword for no reason (but which he seems to like to use as a projectile more than a melee weapon).
• It would seem a potent counter to Coyote's awesome (natural based) powers. (i.e. possession = infection, which also explains why Reynardine kills when he leaves a body, creating a chasm = earthquake.), and the headmaster seems far to relaxed during the confrontation with Coyote.

Eglamore and Jack's dad had a Defeat Equals Friendship moment resulting from their fight in the flashback.

It just hasn't been shown yet. This is also why Jack mentioned that his father said Surma was nice.

Eglamore is in complete denial about his relationship with Jones vs. Surma and Anthony's relationship

Eglamore cannot fathom why Surma married the apparently emotionless Anthony at the same time he starts a relationship with the actually (or so she says) emotionless Jones. Then again Jones is upfront about her shortcomings and is much better at imitating a typical human than Anthony is (she's had thousands of years to practice while Anthony's only had several decades).

Other Court Staff

Dr. Disaster's simulations are not simulations.

They actually save the world often, that's why he interrupts them during class.

• It would also have to be a time machine, since they've now gone back to before the Court existed. (And Jones would have to be actively lying about the seed bismuth.)

Dr. Disaster is The Doctor

They have similar names and Dr. Disaster seems to share some of the appearance of older doctors with the more manic, brooding mentality of later ones. Alternatively this could be a second Chameleon Arc binge.

Dr. Disaster is FLASH!

Oh-oh! Saviour of the universe!

• Now you're just being silly.

The Court's headmaster acted bored around Coyote and Ysengrin because acting bored/boring is the quickest way to get Coyote on point

If he acted flustered or angry, Coyote would draw things out and withhold information just to watch the silly human squirm; I bet it took the leaders of the Court a long time (and a lot of wasted meetings) before they figured it out...

Lindsey and/or her husband Bud will be killed.

Story-wise, this will kill two birds with one stone. It will provide an emotional moment, due to the kindness of the being(s), and it will also show how powerful that which killed her/him/them is, due to their sheer size and presumable strength.

• I think they're probably safe and will just stay in the background, but if one or both of them does get killed, I hope to god it's not by a sapient cosmic horror-trash heap.

When things get crazy and dangerous, Dr. Disaster will defend the mystical side of the conflict, and live one of his fantasies in doing so.

He may be a lover of science fiction whose wish is to be a real-life sci-fi hero, but he also has another fantasy, one more private and more precious to him. To paraphrase Tim Burton, "Randall Disaster thought science was nice, but he wanted to be just like Vincent Price..."

Randal had a crush on Jones as a student

With the recent revelations about Jones, it makes sense that Dr. Disaster, if he's always been at the Court, would've held a torch for Jones in his childhood. In his later years, he's finally gaining the confidence he needs to do something about it. It's possible he was the incredibly socially awkward young boy who got bullied by other students and Jones was the one faculty member who supported him (or the prettiest, at least), and she's been watching movies with him for years now. Considering her dynamic with Eglamore, it's not very far fetched.

Aetheric Theories

Reynardine

Reynardine was right about Annie and Kat.

Reynardine wasn't just being sarcastic about a romantic relationship between her and Kat. She silences him because she herself is in denial. Kat and Annie's depiction in the Second Treatise would also support this theory.

• On the other hand, Annie was quite supportive of Kat's feelings for Alistair, and Kat was trying to set up Annie and Mort. ("He loooooves you!") Considering Rey's tendency for snark, his comment about kissing probably wasn't intended seriously.
• Ahem.
• Tom Siddell is evil.
• A recent Formspring question answered by the author:
  Q: Is Annie considered attractive by her classmates? A: They don't really think about her —>like that, but yeah kinda. What about Kat?
  Yes Kat thinks Annie is very attractive
  • ...and Kat is a natural-born shipper.
• Second Treatise? Every single one except the First has something like that, with Kat wearing fairly masculine clothes and Annie in a dress, and holding hands at least. Let's wait and see...
  • There was no third treatise yet when this was written.
    • And there's still no fourth treatise, so "every single one except the first" here means "two out of three".
    • Now that there is a fourth treatise, the pattern is continued. Annie in a dress, Kat in work clothes, and Annie's hair wrapped around Kat's wrist as she holds two intertwined pink doves.
• The pairing makes more sense if you take into account the series' embracing of opposites attract. Annie's mother was a medium, her father (implied) more scientifically inclined. Kat's mother is clearly more magically inclined, her father (implied) more scientifically inclined. And hey, look at that! Annie is magical, Kat is scientific.
• Lindsey the merostomatazon helped Annie apologize to Kat and save their friendship. A page later, we learn she's an "accredited couples therapist".

Reynardine always intended to possess Annie's doll.

Reynardine had been imprisoned in Sivo's body for a long time. He must have known that Eglamore would never let him escape, at least not for long. When he first met Annie, he took special note of the doll she was carrying with her and her resemblance to Surma. Later, when Annie visited him in his cell, he put his plan into action, pretending that he wanted to steal Annie's body and then pretending to be dismayed when Annie was dragged out of his reach (this was all an act put on for Eglamore's benefit). You've got to admit that this all turned out well for Reynardine — he escaped from captivity, gave him the perfect excuse to hang around with the girl he is interested in protecting, and (since he is under Annie's direct control) the teachers at Gunnerkrigg Court aren't going to throw him back in jail (it's a compromise that they and Reynardine are willing to live with). One of main arguments is that normally he's unwilling to kill humans and tried possession only due to being smitten with Surma utterly, so trying to pull this on Antimony who resembles her and is of interest to him is a bit too much even if he's desperate.

• Extremely unlikely. Rey gets very close to Annie's eyes before Eglamore intervened — way too close to be faking it. Not to mention the fact that Annie straight up accused Rey of trying to kill her and he conceded the point. Even though he was trying to get on Annie's good side.
  • But he didn't truly concede! Rey just brushed this issue aside, implying "yes". As lady Jones cautioned, nothing should be just assumed when dealing with Trickster Coyote... Shouldn't it be extended to his Trickster cousin? Note that he also denies he's eager to spring to Annie's defence — though it's obviously so (and conceals any emotions towards her in general, for that matter). Which would be one of his motivations for such a plan.
  • Getting that close to Annie's eyes would likely also have placed Reynardine within possessing range of the doll, however; and while we don't get the full sequence, the subsequent strip appears to show that the possessing doesn't necessarily require a headfirst plunge. There's also the possible double meaning behind "your body": it could mean Annie's real body, or it could mean the lifeless doll body that Annie possesses.
• He could simply try to possess that doll, not expecting to get a leash with this new body — after all, it's not his own power and he has a limited experience with it. Otherwise, this plan worked perfectly: he was written off as dead once the possession attempt "failed" and later he didn't reveal himself until he was caught. Apparent "clumsiness" of the attempt speaks in favor of this theory.
• For that matter, all his "leash" can be a long-term ruse (he's a scheming Trickster, and not distracted as easily as Coyote). What he said about his condition while facing the one who can verify his honesty could be interpreted as merely being unwilling to harm Annie's property. What he said without being checked is not necessarily correct — just like his statement of powerlessnes in this body (which are soon revealed to be... not quite true) or not trying to defend Annie (which turns out to be a pile of bullshit when she faced the dominated robot and Ysengrin). Then he just claims to be weak and limited to avoid scaring her away, that's all.
  • Tom has said several times that Rey is indeed under Annie's control and unable to deliberately deceive her.
• To be fair, it's possible that he could have tried to possess her while not trying to kill her. There could be some special quality Annie has that makes it possible for Rey to possess her without her dying at the end, and he could know about it because it might have been passed down from Surma. Out there, I know, but possible.
• The author does really like to mess with the audience. This could be more of a case of him wanting Reynardine to be an morally ambiguous character. He wants to take over Annie: she's not Surma, after all, and is a sort of representation of who Reynardine lost out to (she isn't just Surma's daughter, she's Anthony's too); besides, he's desperate. But as he gets to know Annie he recognizes more and more of Surma, and develops a parental attachment to her, especially after finding out about how her father abandoned her. This fits with his prior actions when he possessed that guy to get to Surma. He loved her deeply, sure, but he was willing to kill some whom she probably cared about to get to her. He's not precisely evil or good, which is what makes the comic interesting and unpredictable.
  • Coyote stated that Reynardine loved humans, and he was clearly incredulous at the notion that Rey would have tried to possess and kill Annie, of all people. He seemed to indicate that it was because Rey cared for Surma's daughter so deeply that he ended up with her in the first place. Rey's special treatment of her at their first encounter on the rooftop, and his mental confirmation that she was indeed Surma's daughter upon seeing her necklace after she passed out, suggest that he didn't simply view her as just another human, let alone another body to steal. To be sure, Rey is a criminal due to his deliberate killings of an unnamed man (being blinded by passion) and Sivo (possibly considering his life to be less valuable than a human's?), but that doesn't mean he's evil to the point of murdering the daughter of the woman he loved simply to escape captivity. Besides, Tom has stated that Rey regrets his murders "every minute of the day" and that his current enslavement "gives him the opportunity to easily hide from the consequences". If Rey were truly that indifferent about the loss of a human/sentient life, how would he come to such a state of chronic regret when he can so easily hide from the consequences of his actions?
• Tom is trolling us all. He says he planned to have the readership split in two over this very issue.
• Further justification: if Reynardine was REALLY planning on taking over Annie's body, he would have waited until Eglamore far enough away that he wouldn't notice the switch. He certainly wouldn't have loudly announced his intentions to Eglamore who just happened to be conveniently close enough to push Annie out of way and witness the "failed" attempt.
• Chapter 43 puts this firmly to bed. He did intend to possess Annie, knowing full well what it would do. And he deeply regrets it.

Reynardine was originally going to possess Antimony to find a way to leave a body without killing the subject.

Eglamore said that the Court was researching a way to remove Reynardine without killing the host. Since it was shown that he could leave a host without dying here. He could have left the body at any time, but didn't because he was hoping for a cure for HIS condition. Taking over Carver would maybe put a greater sense of urgency on the task.

• The truth, as revealed in "Quicksilver": Rey was so desperate for freedom he was willing to kill Annie but was thwarted at the last second. He felt terrible about it and has been trying to make up for it ever since.

Annie's father is Reynardine.

Anthony could still technically be her father if Reynardine had possessed her father at the time. Coyote comes out and says that Reynardine had a thing for Surma and asked to steal bodies just so he could be closer to her. After a while, he probably got bored with human life, which was when Annie's father disappeared... Reynardine left his body and killed him.

• Tom's word on the subject: "Oh, also, Reynardine is not Annie’s dad in any way, shape or form."

Annie's mother was/was possessed by Reynardine.

She dies, Annie gets sent to Gunnerkrigg Court, a few weeks later Reynard shows up at GC and "accidentally" breaks through the roof of Annie's bunk (not just her dorm, her bunk), and ends up possessing a doll that Surma pre-treated to be (or at least appear to be) a trap for Reynard or some other being with Coyote's bodysnatching power? It seems a bit like a Contrived Coincidence. If Sivo was supposed to have been known to be possessed since before Annie's mum died, Reynardine made a deal with him that Sivo gets him to the court and provides him with an alibi for not being Surma, and Reynard provides Sivo with an alibi for anything he did shortly before his possession. "Oh, also, Reynardine is not Annie’s dad in any way, shape or form." Just like Loki was not Sleipner's dad in any way, shape, or form.

For Reynardine, the body shapes the mind.

In his normal form in the spirit realm, and from what little we've seen of him communicating from inverted Sleep-Mode Size, he acts wise enough to know how little he understands, wise enough to inform instead of pointlessly rant about how little others understand, and sympathetic to at the very least Surma and Antimony. In Sivo's body he was a straight-up Manipulative Bastard from what we saw, and from what we heard acted like a Flying Brick. In the wolf doll he is sarcastic, snarky, can be caught off guard by things his spirit realm self would probably find irrelevant... Whether he is as he is like his Spirit Realm self these days and got some Character Development since the stories of Reynard or if his body makes him feel more Tricksterish than his mind alone may yet be determined. The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body is likely one of Coyote's nerfings, hence the Pot Hole, but since Coyote (as far as we know) hasn't really done much body surfing, it may be inherent in any use of the power.

Reynardine actually did try to possess Annie but failed

We know Annie isn't exactly a normal human. Maybe the part of Surma that was passed down to Annie can't be forced out of her body to make room for Reynardine unless she has a child first.

Moro is Renard's original lover.

Being a fox, Renard didn't stick around after Moro had cubs. The events of the movie may or may not have happened, but Moro definitely died at the hands of humans. Time passes and word reaches him about the Court. Bitterness ebbs away when he meets Surma. She is very much like his beloved Moro... And for sake of lightening up this WMG, Moro is the daughter of Ammy or her son Chibi.

Reynardine wants Annie and Kat to get together, and not for the obvious reasons, either

We know that pregnancy was a death sentence for Surma and would likely be one for Antimony, too. Guess who can't get Annie pregnant?

The reason Reynardine's body-snatching kills the host is because it overwrites the original totem.

Reynardine goes in, his spirit overwrites the original spirit, and when he leaves, there's nothing left to assume control. Extrapolating from that, it might be possible to "ressurect" the bodies he's left, if their totems are extracted before he enters them.

Reynardine is totally gonna hurt Anthony

Kat gives him permission here to defend himself if necessary. Can you say Chekhov's Gun? Plus, Anthony is getting increasingly impatient with Reynardine, and probably would be likely to lose his temper with him and hurt him, setting off Kat's exception to the don't-hurt-Anthony rule.

Coyote

The events of "The Fangs of Summertime" were Ysengrin's plan that went sour. Coyote had no part in this plan, and he only took an interest in the proceedings when Reynardine showed up.

Ysengrin's purpose was to plant those seeds in the Court. His plan to do so was to call a diplomatic meeting between the Court and the Wood and to make spurious accusations (which he knew to be spurious) against the Court. The Court's denial of these accusations would give Y a pretext to fake indignation and storm out of the hall, then drop the seeds once he was out of sight. (Since Y was escorted to and from the meeting, this was his only hope of getting away from prying eyes to drop the seeds inside Gunnerkrigg unnoticed.) Y believed (rightly or wrongly) that Coyote would never approve of his plan, so he kept it a secret.

In order for this to work, Y could not have used a legitimate grievance, such as Robot S13 being sent into the forest, or the apparent kidnapping of Shadow 2. If Y had, then the Court would have attempted to solve things diplomatically. Y wouldn't have been able to storm out without either coming across like a warmongering ass, or alerting the Court (or Coyote) that something else was up. Y's plan specifically needed a grievance that (1) was false, (2) that he could convince Coyote was legitimate, and (3) that he could convince the Court that he believed it legitimate. The dead TicToc and the uniform sweater that Annie left behind provided Y with exactly what he needed: he could claim Anthony Carver had planted the bird, and it would look plausible, but it was still completely false and would be denied by the Court. So he planted the bird (and killed the two fairies who saw him, so word would not get back to Coyote), waited a few months, and then "discovered" that it had taken root, and demanded the meeting.

Coyote didn't want to be at the meeting; he only attended because protocol demanded it, or because he didn't trust his right-paw wolf-tree to behave himself. Finding the entire affair boring, he quickly focused on the only interesting person in the room and struck up a conversation with her.

When Antimony claimed the jumper as her own, she unknowingly threw a socket wrench in Y's plan. Y rolled with this and accused Annie of planting the bird, knowing that she would deny it. Y was working up to the dramatic outburst that would precede him indignantly storming out, and Coyote was just about to declare everything a tremendous misunderstanding and end the meeting, when Reynardine revealed himself.

Rey had misunderstood the situation and thought that Annie was in danger; his intent in revealing himself was to distract Coyote and Y's attention away from her. Unfortunately, this had the opposite effect: Coyote inferred from his cousin's past with Surma that there was a connection between Rey and Annie. He attempted to test this by provoking Annie so he could observe Rey's reaction. Annie's reaction to this was perfectly justified.

Y's original plan was shot to hell by this point, so he was desperately looking for some opportune cover to drop the seeds. Annie unwittingly provided him with one — he promptly faked an overreaction to the spankies, hoping that no one would notice that he was simultaneously dropping the seeds. The fact that this overreaction would kill the brat who had just humiliated him — who by all rights ought to have died falling off the bridge — was the icing on the cake that no doubt prevented Y from realizing what a bad idea his new plan was. He got a bit carried away with the act (or maybe by this point it was no longer an act) before Coyote smacked some sense into him.

At this point, Coyote realized that the meeting was a diplomatic disaster and that he wasn't going to get any more information about Rey or Annie. He put the best face he could on the situation by apologizing for his and Y's actions, and by extending Annie an invitation to the Wood. Whether he actually expected her to accept, or was just acting on desperation, is uncertain. He returned to the forest, where he no doubt administered some spankies of his own to the wolf-tree who had talked him into calling a meeting on spurious charges, then had ruined Coyote's chance of getting information on Renard and that Abalone girl.

• I just thought of an interesting extension of this theory: This was not the first time Ysengrin had tried to pull this trick. He already tried, and failed, to deposit seeds in the Court once before without success; the seeds were found and either they were moved to a different room to safely contain them or the room they were dropped in was repurposed to hold them; this room was, of course, the room with the cherry tree from chapter six, which the staff failed to make clear enough was dangerous and off-limits. These seeds were exactly the same as the seeds used to create S13's wooden arm, which makes them markedly dangerous and to be handled with care, but not if dealt with early enough (Robot was rendered unconscious for the growth period; Ysengrin couldn't do the same inside the Court). At the end of that episode, the arm, having seemingly fixated itself on Robot enough that it was safe to touch, was moved to the tree room in case it could still possess someone else. What this means, of course, is that both girls are very, very lucky to still be in control of their bodies after eating from that tree, and if they'd eaten too much more they'd have been possessed.
  • It's unlikely that the trees themselves (or anything from them) are capable of possessing bodies. Tom stated that the dog-trees in Chapter 22 were being directly controlled by the shadow-people inhabiting them, suggesting that shadow-people have the power to manipulate trees. Since there was a shadow-person accompanying Robot when he returned, the shadow-person was probably controlling Robot via the tree-arm that was fused with him.

• Rey just tried to show off his new wolf body to annoy Ysengrin (no love lost between them). Otherwise, quite possible, as the planted TicToc is about the only "offence" imaginable that wouldn't be bounced back to his own actions.

Coyote deliberately Blessed Renard and Ysengrin with Suck.

First, Coyote is an admitted Trickster God. Attaching unpleasant conditions to his gifts—either as part of some grand scheme, or just for the hell of it—is a very trickster-ish thing to do.

Second, consider Jones' warning: "Coyote is no liar. Therein lies the danger." Apparently Coyote, the Trickster, deceives others by creative and selective use of the truth, rather than through outright lies. In light of this, Coyote's description of these gifts becomes rather ominous:

Coyote: The power I gave Renard was imperfect. Why, I could possess anything with eyes and leave them unharmed when I'd had my fun! But for some reason, when Renard had the ability, any body he took that was not his own would die when it was used up.
Ysengrin, too. I gave him power over the trees, but look how he shakes like an old man!

Coyote's words clearly imply that he doesn't know why Rey and Y's gifts were imperfect, but he doesn't say so outright.

The coyote-tooth dagger is the key to sending either Gillitie/the Court away for good, or sealing the rift.

It (under the premise of this WMG) created the Annan ("could cut the very earth"), and with a working knowledge, it can reverse its original purpose and undo the rift. All I'm sure of so far is that nothing could ever go horribly, horribly wrong with a gift from Coyote, and that teaching Jeanne to wield the knife would have very bad consequences.

Coyote is Annie's father

It has been implied that her father was possessed at one point; however, we only know two beings capable of doing this, and although Renard did have a crush on her mother, her father is still alive. It has already been stated that he'll show up later.

Additionally, Coyote's behaviour towards Annie bears little resemblance to how he acts towards other cast members. He answers her questions (somewhat), and he actually seems rather protective. Not something that trickster gods are normally known for. Let's not forget his giving her the moon on a string, too.

Lastly, it would explain why her father has gone missing. If you were possessed for a period of several years, then woke up to find you had a new daughter and your wife was dead - wouldn't you?

• But according to Word Of Tom, Coyote was genuinely confused about whose child Antimony was— and he wouldn't have assumed it was Eglamore if he had done it himself.

Coyote seperated the Court and Gillitie because of the tensions being caused by Jeanne's romance.

This strip implies that Jeanne and her elf lover were causing severe rumblings between the leaders of both sides, with Coyote watching from afar. It is possible that he believed it may have eventually led to violence, which caused him to seperate both sides.

Alternatively...

Coyote seperated the Court and Gillitie solely for the sake of seperating Jeanne and her lover

.Because he seems like enough of a dick that he'd break the very earth just to mess with two Star-Crossed Lovers.

• Jeanne says the divide was there before she went to the Court.

The Court and the Gillitie Wood are heading towards a war, and the students are going to be involved in it.

Ysengrin is already trying to find an excuse to attack the Court, as previously seen when he allowed the TicToc grow into the cliffside. He will succeed, and war will start. Over the course of the conflict, Siddell will invoke Anyone Can Die, and something will happen to John. It would explain why Margo is crying over John in this doodle◊.

Jeanne's lover was Coyote shapeshifted into elf form.

We have seen Coyote shapeshift into a forest elf. Okay, this one is a bit of a stretch.

Coyote is the best deity to invite to a party. There will be a party. Coyote will show up and do his thing.

Think about it. A proper, raucous, everyone goes a little crazy party? Who do you want, some boring manifestation of order, or the universe's single greatest party animal? He's basically there to cause pranks and havoc, exactly what a party needs to become legendary.

Coyote wishes to relieve himself of his powers so he may die

It would be pretty neat.

Coyote As The Elf-Thing Is The Beast.

This is the first strip he appears in. Look at the strip number.

Coyote plans to hold Annie hostage in exchange for Reynardine.

He's got a candidate for the position of medium there, who is also a promising student and the daughter of ex-students. He might feel that the Court would trade her for Renard. He may not want to harm her, but he can still use her.

Coyote is Jeanne's elven love.

Notice the similarities between her lover and the form Coyote took to greet Anne.

• Hmmm... might be Jossed, because that would mean that Coyote no longer exists, and he still exists.
  • It's COYOTE. Stealing a girl's heart, faking his death, and going back to pretend everything is normal sounds like something he would do.
  • Utterly Jossed. They've found the elf's body.

Coyote is in a Gods Need Prayer Badly situation.

Even though he does not need the prayer's of humans to "exist" he needs their belief in the supernatual and/or their magic to be. That is why Ysengrin hates humans so much. The people he hates are directly responsible for the existance of someone he loves so he can't kill them all because that would also kill Coyote.

Annie's first encounter with Jeanne was actually Coyote.

Specifically, the time her face was slashed. This one suddenly hit me upon reading this comic. Annie was manipulated into helping Jeanne by having Coyote set up the encounter with her. In fact, I do not recall any instance of Jeanne ever appearing on the Forest side of the ravine at all, save that one instance, and Muut seemed to believe she couldn't cross.

Ysengrin

Ysengrin got in a fight with a Dragon Slayer once

Ysengrin's ear has been cut off, and stylised pictures of him show the Bismuth symbol over that ear, implying that he was wounded by Court technology. Dragon Slayers wield a glowing sword of unknown origin or nature, which is probably Court technology designed to destroy etheric beings (consider how that sword was able to quickly cut through the tree-arm of Robot, and disintegrated a tree-dog, whereas a regular sword wasn't even able to scratch a Gillitie tree). Hence, Ysengrin probably got his wound in a battle against a Dragon Slayer, which would explain his particular antipathy toward Eglamore (he seems to particularly relish the oppurtunity to attack him, and mocks him over taking orders from a young girl).

Ysengrin doesn't remember finding the Bird the first time

It was initially suspicious when we found out that the Bird from the court had been found by Ysengrin himself long before it had "sprouted" or whatever. That seemed to prove that he really was intentionally stirring up trouble with the Court. However, now that we know that Coyote has been manipulating him and stealing his memories, it's just as likely that he was actually surprised to find it again and more angry than if he had found it at the clearly accidental stage.

Mediums

Being a Medium causes death.

Surma's sickness was not caused by anything natural. Dealing with spirits on a regular basis like she would is bad for their health for some reason, most likely that human bodies were not meant for regular contact with them. Why else would she die from a chronic illness when the Court clearly has high technology? Annie will eventually suffer this fate as well. Anthony Carver abandoned his daughter because he realized there was nothing he could do to save her and he didn't want to grow any more attached to her. The Court went without a true medium for such a long period of time (and only had one before that) out of a desire to minimize the deaths. They're facing diplomatic problems with the Woods now, so they're training three mediums out of desperation.

• One note: We don't know whether or not Good Hope had access to the same technology that the Court has.
• Now that we know that the transfer of Surma's spirit to Antimony caused her death, we understand the inherent dangers of being a Medium. It also gives a reason for Anthony Carver's disappearance.
• Jossed. The reason Surma died is that she is (most likely) part fire elemental. Her "fire" was passed on to her daughter, and the same thing will happen to Antimony.

Mediums channel reality into their local area.

This is odd, as one would assume that a medium would induce unreality, but the evidence doesn't bear out. Being near a medium causes reality to assert itself (for instance, when Antimony touches the burned boy). This explains why Zimmy needed Antimony around when her eyes were going weird; for some reason, she is tainted with some sort of Lovecraftian darkness which periodically acts up. Gamma can somehow dampen the stuff, probably due to her deep connection with Zimmy, but Antimony is a strong enough medium that she can temporarily keep the horrors from escaping by being nearby.

Similarly, this explains why the ghost with the sword only managed to nick Antimony's face; Antimony's natural medium-ness repelled her unreality. If you look on the previous page, the arc the sword travels between the last frame there and the first frame of the link involves going through about half of Antimony's head; this would explain why she wasn't scalped. The mere fact that the ghost managed to wound Antimony is a testament to the strength of its unreality; after all, when she was dealing with the gecko as a child, Antimony could easily repel its fires. The sword-ghost's wound disappears when outside of the ghost's strongly unreal influence, as Antimony's natural medium-ness asserts itself. Notice, however, that the wound re-appears just before the rain washes Zimmy's horrors away, when (due to the pacing of the comic) it seems that there is a large amount of tension in the air, magical or otherwise.

• Alternately, Zimmy's illusions are different from those in Chapter 15. In Ch 15, Annie acted as latent Anti-Magic, dispelling the illusions in her immediate area, as noted above. However, Annie's (and Gamma's) dispelling effect on Zimmy's illusions seemed to be a Power Nullifier dependent on how close she is to Zimmy, while Zimmy can cause these illusions from any distance. Notice that the first time Zimmy saw the cut on Annie's cheek, it disappeared when Zimmy tried to touch it. Then the cut reappeared right before the rain came, even though Annie and Gamma were standing right next to each other — they were on the opposite side of the courtyard from Zimmy.
  • This has given me the idea that Zimmy might be an anti-Medium, who instead of asserting reality, inflicts unreality into the area, normally in the form of Eldritch Abominations and other horrors.
  • Also, by extension, this implies that Gamma may have some aptitude as a potential Medium, though her inability to speak English and her continuing presence near Zimmy may cause Court officials to either discount her as a candidate or prefer that she remain near Zimmy as a safeguard.

Mediums aren't under any of the Guides' jurisdiction.

It explains why Annie had to take her own mother. Because mediums deal extensively with the Guides and restless spirits, they may not fall under the jurisdiction of any of them.

• Expanding upon this theory, Jeanne is a Medium.
• Mediums are shown to mediate disputes between psychopomps. I posit that this is the purpose of mediums. One could not be an impartial mediator to one's own psychopomp. Therefore, no medium has their own psychopomp, and must be guided by another medium. This also means that the skills of being a medium can never be truly lost, because the spirit of the last medium cannot move on until a new medium is trained.

Spirits

The bird who ended the second City Face arc is actually Raven.

The Salamander / yellow lizard was a malevolent Fire Spirit, and it really was present when Martin started that fire.

Note the "chk chk" sound on this page: Martin was using a lighter, rather than matches. The Salamander burnt him, making him drop the lighter. The house burned down, and the Salamander made sure Martin alone survived long enough to be hospitalized. (When a building burns, the hottest part is the room where the fire starts. Martin's surviving while his family died is rather unnatural.) This is why Annie could see the Salamander even after understanding the symbolism and seeing the burning room. Judging by Martin's reaction, it's possible that he saw it as well, before he lost consciousness.

Mort isn't a former human being.

There seems to be an assumption that Mort used to be human and is now a ghost. However, that isn't necessarily true - Muut refers to him as a "young spirit", which doesn't mean he was human; you could call the psychopomps spirits, too. We've seen that All Mythology Is True (or at least most) - so something has to fill the role of Scary Thing That Goes Bump In The Night, and sure enough, Mort's purpose seems to be to scare people. If he'd been human, he might've had a better idea of how to do that- but picture him as an inexperienced spirit (newly popped...) who hasn't really got the hang of how people think yet and it all seems to click together. Not saying he couldn't have been human, but I think this is just as likely...

• This is all pretty much jossed.

Martin wasn't real.

Mediums get one shot not to screw things up. If they succeed, they get real assignments. If they fail, they die, but nobody gets their afterlife eternally mucked up. The obstacle is something that would be effectively impossible to get past if it wasn't the medium-to-be's element/style. See also what Surma told Annie.

Martin shouldn't have been real, but was.

Same as above, but with a bit of Real After All due to timely necessity.

Martin was supposed to be L's successor.

The resemblance is uncanny, and his name begins with the right letter. Unfortunately, his experiments on hand-held portable fusion went drastically awry.

Bismuth Seed is Dragonfly from Archipelago.

Mainly going on the fact that they are immensely old, immensely powerful, and both look kinda like dragonflies.

• And wait ... what if Gunnerkrigg Court takes to the sky, maybe even becomes Laputa as mentioned down in Gunnerkrigg Universe and Other Concepts... then it could crash back to Earth and become the Archipelago! It all makes sense!
  • Except for the fact that Laputa floated away ... but no, Pazu says airplanes are getting better and better all the time. Surely someone can fly up there, get it back, and crash it.

The Carvers

Antimony "Annie" Carver

Annie is Jesus.

She's forsaken by her father. She is responsible for Reynardine's apparent Heel–Face Turn. And just try to tell me this isn't symbolic. (That's the Annan Waters on that page, which, as shown above, is really the River Styx.)

• Uh, OK, here's how it isn't symbolic: It's necessary. How else would two small birds hold her? It's either her arms or her legs, and Tom didn't want to draw a schoolgirl's knickers, least of all when they're still on the schoolgirl.
  • But were they African or European?
    • Nobody knows.
• And the Court is Purgatory?

Annie's eye-shadow is protection from supernatural evil.

Consider the eye symbolism. Consider that her mum, Surma, is named after an eye-shadow that was used in the Middle East to protect infants from the "evil eye". And consider that both times Annie was supernaturally attacked (first by Reynardine, then by the Ghost with the Sword), she wasn't wearing her eye-shadow. And her eye-shadow was runny due to the rain the one time that Zimmy teleported her into Evil Birmingham.

• One interesting point was raised in the forums: When Anthony begins his vicious humiliation and isolation of Annie, what's the first thing he orders her to do? Remove her make up. She is a complete doormat for the rest of that scene.

Annie refused to kill the regional fairies partly because of her grudge against the psychopomps.

She's on friendly terms with Ketrak, and seems to merely tolerate Muut. Muut is her most significant contact with the psychopomps, being both the first she met and seemingly high up in the hierarchy (or at least the more knowledgeable of the ones she will contact), so it is likely a combination of familiarity and necessity that she interacts with him as she does. She blames all of them except Ketrak and possibly any other non-human reapers for refusing to guide her mother, and did not want to risk that the fairies would be taken by one that she could not handle meeting at that time.

Annie's cheek got wounded on the astral plane

Haven't double-checked the evidence, but: Annie can visit an astral plane, which sets up two distinct types of encounters, the real and the ethereal (which covers dreams, visions, the stone's scrying, and such). She encountered the river girl on the astral plane, and there her cheek was wounded; this is why her cheek is not wounded in real life, but the wound shows up again when she's in the astral plane.

The time when Zimmy saw the wound on her cheek, it was Zimmy's astral vision asserting itself, and then Zimmy made her vision get back to reality, so she couldn't see the wound anymore. Any time the wound shows up, it's a cue to the characters being in the astral plane, or at least being able to see part of it at that time.

• To be more precise I'm guessing Annie etheric body, the body that manifests on the etheric/astral plane, was the body that was injured.

The main reason why Antimony dislikes Eglamore is...

Because he called out Surma's name while she fell down from the bridge.

• Before that. They did get along only until he dropped a disparaging remark about her father. Anja says "James...", Annie deftly tramples Eglamore into mud and sends with Kat her apologies to Donlans who had to hear this all. Though mixing her with her mother definitely didn't help his case at all.

Annie is a descendant of Jeanne, through Surma's side of the family

We've only seen two people who couldn't have the Guides lead them into the afterlife, Surma and Jeanne. And combined with the previously mentioned theory that Diego is an ancestor of Kat's...

• Not possible. She would have died before the events of her actual death had she had a child beforehand. She doesn't show any sickness or weakness before her death, so she couldn't have given birth to a fire-elemental child. She also doesn't have red hair, which everyone mentions is one of the things that identifies both Surma and Annie's nature.
  • This only means she wasn't part of the line of descent from the fire elemental ancestor. There doesn't appear to be any reason to suspect ancestry of any kind, though.

Annie's conception is what caused her parents to leave the Court.

At some point after Surma discovered that she had fire elemental ancestry, she told the rest of the group (i.e. Anja, Donald, Eglamore, maybe Brinnie, possibly Jones) — along with the information that having a child would kill her. When she decided to become pregnant, the rest of the group was utterly furious — both at Surma for basically deciding to kill herself, and at Anthony for letting her. Surma and Anthony decided to leave rather than stay in the Court among people who could not respect their decision.

• At least partly confirmed. Chapter 53 shows that Surma wanted to leave in part because she didn't want Annie born there and in part because she didn't want her friends to see her waste away, so her conception was indeed the catalyst. As for the response from the group of friends, there's no indication that Donald and Anja were upset about it, however some indistinct conflict with James Eglamore was mentioned...knowing that James loved Surma, it's entirely possible that his reaction to finding out was exactly as WM Ged.

Annie will return from her time in the Forest prematurely

Because she'll be horrified over the Orange And Blue Morality of the Forest's denizens. I mean... Sure, Coyote seems friendly... But he's also the kind of person to withhold vital information all for his own amusement. Then there were the faries and not to mention of Ysegrine's methods of diplomacy (fangs bared, snarling, etc.) and Annie will learn that while the Court has its glaring flaws, so do the woods, and that's why it's important for her to be a Medium.

We are NEVER going to see anything more about Annie's stay in the forest

We're so Genre Savvy that we discussed every possible scenario from Training Montage to Avatar-style nature-bonding, and now there's nothing Tom can write/draw that will satisfy us.

• It's hinted at in "Divine" (though in a very symbolic manner) that Annie had feelings for or even a relationship with one of the tree elves but had to end it due to her responsibilities to the Court.
• Jossed. The "Annie In The Forest" one-shots shows us what happened in that time. As for the above: she started to like one of them... and then he introduced her to his girlfriend. Remember, just because someone's nice doesn't mean they're attracted to you.

Annie will encounter Alistair and his family during her stay.

The comic said that Kat will never see him again. It said nothing about Annie seeing him — and even if she doesn't see him, she might see his family.

Annie temporarily transferred ownership of Reynardine to Jones.

When she left Reynardine in Jones' care, she gave Jones temporary ownership. Thus, in the first page of chapter 32, Reynardine is back in his wolf form because Jones gave him permission to change.

Annie knew she caused her mother's death before Reynardine told her.

I would never have suspected this, but for a few things: Annie was the one who led her mom to the afterlife, her father probably hinted at it, and what she said when she was told was: "They knew?" The second is the biggest thing. Her first reaction should have been denial, but Annie seemed more guilty and ashamed. If she didn't know, she probably at least suspected something like that was up and hoped no one at the court guessed.

The story is being told by a future Annie on her death bed to her daughter

To prepare her of things to come and to make it easier to allow Annie-JR to send her off. Alternatively, Annie is telling her story while her daughter is taking her to the afterlife.

Alternatively, the story is being told by future Annie to her father.

She will finally run into her father and at some point need to catch him up with everything that has happened to her.

Annie and Jack's UST will be resolved several chapters later

And it will be after another visit to the Forest, where Coyote would tell her to let her feelings go, despite her inevitable fate.

Antimony will eventually have a child (presumably in an epilogue at the end of the comic), but won't keep the secret of her legacy and fate from her.

As sad as knowing she's going to die would be, she couldn't bear to put her kid (especially a kid who kinda-sorta is herself) through what she went through. She'd want her kid to be at least moderately prepared when the time came.

At some point in the story, Annie will be forced to choose (possibly permanently) between her association with the Woods, and her friendship with Kat.

Throughout the Treatises, Annie and Kat have literally started going in different directions. In Treatise One, they both face the same way - towards the viewer. In Treatise Two, Kat is looking over her shoulder at Annie, who has her head turned towards Kat. In Treatise Three, Kat is dragging/leading Annie into the Court, not looking at Annie, who has turned her head to look back at the woods. In Treatise Four, they are turned three-quarters away from each other, although Annie's hair keeps a grip on Kat. If that pattern continues, Treatise Five should have the girls facing fully away from each other (back to back?). The Treatises are based on "secret recipes" for alchemy, with everything included being symbolic of what is to come. Annie has been spending more and more time dealing with the Woods, and Kat has less and less patience for her stunts. It seems that some sort of reckoning is being built up here.

Annie's current illness is caused by the scar left by Jeanne.

That thing has been a Chekhov's Gun for ages. Zimmy was fleeing from that scar before she finally agreed to deal with whatever Annie was suffering from. All and all, it's a pretty good bet that whatever etheral poison that the dead woman's blade carries is finally starting to take its toll.

• The cut got part-healed after Coyote licked it. He only commented on the power of whatever left this, so most likely there's nothing more to it. It didn't look worse the last time it was seen. And slow "bleeding" causing a sudden collapse doesn't fit well after all this time and with her current power level.
  • The idea that Coyote would have healed the wound has been Jossed by Tom himself. Nothing has been done to treat or otherwise study it, as far as we've been shown. And Coyote doesn't always tell everything.

Annie (and possibly Reynardine) have some relation to the Philosopher's Stone

Antimony AKA the Grey Wolf is the penultimate step to creating a Philosopher's Stone which grants immortality and riches. I'm in two minds about this theory:

• Literally: Annie, Surma, and their ancestors become Philosopher's Stones or Annie is the next-to-last step in creating one, or will have the ability to create one, making her invaluable to the Court.
• Metaphorically: Annie (or her daughter) will be able to have children without dying, or at least be strong enough to remain in the aether without being recycled into it. Alternately Annie (or her daughter) will be the one to heal the divide between the Court and the Woods, or at least facilitate it — she did introduce Robot and 2hadow, after all.

Annie is telling the story to Jeanne

At the very start of the comic, Annie introduces herself to the reader, and by extension, the person she is apparently talking to. There are few recurring characters who don't know her name, and she would only introduce herself to someone who doesn't already. Jeanne doesn't, and knows so little about what has been happening at the court that it justifies telling everything that happens in the comic.

Annie will be the last Medium

The comic will end with the undoing of the divide and/or the destruction of the Court, allowing free coexistence between humans and etherics once again. Annie's destiny is to make her position irrelevant.

The events of "The Tree" will have damaging consequences for Annie's budding etheric powers.

The bonus page of that chapter - Annie cut off from her etheric hair - suggests far more than a cosmetic change. It's not clear how Anthony would inhibit her powers, but it's reasonable to assume that an attempt to do so would be made. However, the image also has odd cracks or strands in the white space between the hair on her head and everything else. Perhaps that suggests that she is still connected to her powers, however fragile that connection may be...or it might hint at something else which is causing the problem in the first place.

• This, plus the destruction of her Blinker Stone, definitely have an effect, but it appears not to be insurmountable, if Yesngrin and Renard are to be believed. Most likely the direction it's going well have Annie gaining much better control out of necessity, and ending up more capable than before.

The red tie around Annie's waist is significant.

It really stands out against her new blue-and-white world, and it's the only part of her new design that isn't an alarming echo of her Good Hope days. It also looks a little like Coyote's binding; simultaneously fitting in and yet being wildly out of place. Perhaps it's Annie's remaining "tie" to her fire powers (fire is red, after all)...or somebody else's means of binding her.

Annie is pulling a Wounded Gazelle Gambit

Why else tolerate Anthony's bullshit unless she was plotting something. Possibly something evil. Considering what happened in Chapter 52 and Annie describing it as having gone quite well to her now apparently separated fire elemental...

• More likely she just used that to bury her anger at him, anger which is now being manifest in other ways (Chapter 57) since she's not cut off from it thanks to Ysengrin destroying her Blinker Stone.

Annie isn't part fire-elemental or part-phoenix

The "fire" inside her is the first fire, that which was stolen from the gods and gifted to humanity. Symbolizing mankind's transition from natural to technological, the theft of fire appears in multiple mythologies, including Greek, Polynesian, and even Amer-Indian. In fact, according to some Amer-Indian sources, it was Coyote who gifted fire to man. Out there, but hey, this is WMG.

Annie's powers are partly driven by The Power of Friendship.

Because she's more in tune with the ether, she's more affected by human minds and strong etheric beings. Her relative isolation before was a severe limiter on her abilities just as much as her lack of understanding of them, but as she formed more friendships and connected with more people, she became stronger. While there are inner factors as well - her own understanding of her abilities and her emotions clearly have major impact - those external bonds provide a great source of strength, allowing her abilities to manifest more potently. When she's cut off from everyone in The Tree, it seems initially like she's weakened again, but it becomes rapidly clear that her powers are still there, and quite potent (roasting Ysengrin in Meetings and Re-Meetings, burning a ball in an instant in Get It Together), a signal that others still believe in her and have that bond with her - they're just not as under her control due to her own emotional turmoil.

Annie and Kat will become personifications of the Forest and the Court.

During the events of 'Give and take' we already got to see that there is a huge diference between the way Annie and Kat see the world, with Annie being intuitive and etheric while Kat is technical and analytical. Also, the robots believin Kat is an angel may actually turning her into some kind of deity, but even if it's subtler, the forest people may doing the same thing to Annie, as we get to see in 'Tall tales', which sets her up perfectly to become a forest deity, maybe even to replace Coyote.

There is more to Annie's deal with the psychopomps than there seems.

Following Annie's Deal with the Devil in Chapter 60, many assumed that Annie now works for the psychopomps. But it is very like Tom to lead us down one assumption only to pull it out from under us. Perhaps the phrase "You belong to us." is more literal. It may mean that Annie's soul (her flame) cannot be passed onto her children, and will be collected by one of the psychopomps.What this would mean for her ability to bear children is anyone's guess: best case is it won't be a death sentence for her, worst is that she cannot since she can't provide a soul.

Annie will be the psychopomp for Kat's robots.

Muut has previously stated that the psychopomps do not deal with machines, and Kat's burnt wing experiment has been referred to as the first "proper" death by the robots. So the 'pomps will have Annie be the guide for any more of Kat's experiments that die "proper" deaths.

Forest!Annie and Court!Annie are the same person.

Loup’s Trick wasn’t to create a second Annie. Loup’s trick was splitting Forest!Annie and Court!Annie into two people. Imagine if you took the contrasting extremes of your personality and put them in duplicate bodies then pushed those personality traits to their maximum limit. It’s very reasonable to assume you might find yourself intolerable.

• Forest!Annie wouldn’t defend against the Forest creatures on the train / Court!Annie destroyed them with extreme conviction.
• Forest!Annie is agreeable and peaceful / Court!Annie is selfish and combative.
  • Annie has always been selfish, but as a whole person she can regulate this. As a split person she cannot.
• They are frequently drawn in positional opposition to each other, as if two sides of something.
• Jones discusses her thoughts on the situation while an ancient Greek-like image of a woman and her doppelgänger pulling in contrasting directions is prominently displayed.
• The hair clip is extremely prominent, but there are only three instances where it’s shown on both Annies simultaneously, and in those three instances their emotional states match, e.g. they’re both surprised. I propose that the hair clip is something of an anchor between the two.
• Chapter 69: Page 26. There are two doors, and their handles mirror each other. I may be reading too much into this but this is a WMG section, cut me slack.

Loup may, through this experience, be trying to imply that he’s some complete iteration of Coyote and Ysengrin, but much better in some way. I’d believe that the integration will never be complete without the bone and tooth.

I believe the solution to the problem has already been resolved by the others: Annie needs to resolve her internal conflicts to reconnect. Forest!Annie is loyal to the forest; Court!Annie is loyal to the court.

The native Annie to this timeline is the one that died in Chapter 7

Why overcomplicate things? We already know that Annie was spliced once before when she fell off the bridge. Forest!Annie and Court!Annie both aren't native to this timeline, because Native!Annie is the one that died.

Annie and Surma

Annie is Surma's reincarnation.

Perhaps Surma was dying, and the world felt she was still needed. Perhaps a second life was a gift from one of Surma's otherworldly friends. Muut has bent the rules to help Annie, it would not be surprising that he did the same for Surma. For whatever reason, Annie is Surma, and as Annie grew up, Surma grew weaker. Surma's death meant that Annie is entirely 'alive'. For whatever reason, Surma must remain alive, so she is reborn as her own daughter. This is why Surma is so willing to send Annie off as a medium for dead spirits. This is also why everyone likens Annie to Surma all the time, and why Annie's father refuses to see her: he can't bear the sight of his wife as his child. More importantly, this is why none of the dead spirits came for Surma's spirit when she died; Surma was still alive as Annie, so it was Annie that sent her Surma self/memories to the afterlife. Or perhaps Annie's guiding of Surma only symbolized Annie letting go of her Surma self, and sent the memories to Annie's subconscious. It is uncertain how much Annie remembers of her life as Surma, especially since Annie views her Annie and Surma selves as separate entities, but it is possible that Annie's distaste for Eglamore is related to her past life. Annie's uncharacteristic maturity may also be (partly) attributed to her subconscious experience.

It is also possible that Surma's death and departure for the afterlife left Annie entirely bereft of her past incarnation's memories. Annie is still Surma, she is simply a clean slate. Annie has the potential to become a medium, and retains whatever spiritual aptitudes Surma possessed, such as using a Blinker Stone. Annie may have the potential to regain her memories as Surma, or she may be forced to rediscover her previous life through Surma's acquaintances.

Regardless of either possibility, it remains to be seen whether Surma has been reincarnated for a greater purpose, or simply to have another chance at life.

• Somewhat unclear at the time of writing (1/4/11) but this seems to be confirmed.

Surma, Annie, and Phoenixes:

A) Surma and Annie are decedents of a phoenix who left the Woods and became human (possibly Surma herself), hence Annie's literal Fiery Red Headedness. The phoenix's regeneration powers were warped when she/it became human, so instead of the "parent" returning to the egg and becoming a "child", the parent's life is passed to the child.

B) Surma and Annie are descendents of The Phoenix, and the Blinker Stone is a tiny Encron Chrystal. Annie has touched the moon, and soon she will eat the sun.

• Partial confirmation: Annie's not completely human, and the red hair/fire powers seems to be pointing to "phoenix". Nah, now it's too obvious and it'll turn out her dad's a kappa or something less flashy than a phoenix. ...What? Anthony Carver is a surgeon and kappas are known for being bone-setters and purveyors of medicine and medical knowledge.

Annie is Surma's clone, and has no biological father

Surma (and all her female ancestors) reproduce by parthenogenesis, which could have some huge ramifications for the story:

• The reason Elgamore "wasn't there" for Surma was because she got pregnant at a time when it would've been impossible (he could've been doing dragon slayer training and he knew she wouldn't cheat on him) and he panicked. (Jossed, Surma apparently left him for Anthony while he was away.)
• Anthony and Surma might not have been romantically linked: Surma could've married him so Annie would have a legal guardian, and Anthony took her death hard because romance or not she's still his friend and patient. Since he's not Annie's biological father (and because he gave her all those self-defense lessons and he trusts the Donlans) he had an easier time letting Annie go to the Court alone. (Jossed, Anthony loved Surma enough to sacrifice his dominant hand — remember he's a surgeon — just to speak with her; as for letting Annie go he assumed she hated him for failing to save Surma.)
• Even if Annie decides to be celibate forever — maybe even if she takes birth control and gets her tubes tied — she will eventually get pregnant with an identical daughter, pass on her life-force and die (it's not clear if Surma living for years after Annie's birth is normal or a result of Anthony's experiments).
• Additionally, Surma perms her hair so the three things that separate Annie from Surma and connect her to Anthony (biology, straight hair, and calm demeanor) are basically illusions.
• In "Fire Spike" Coyote says "when you have a child" (emphasis added) to Annie, and Tom's note is also "'When'?", implying Annie might not have a choice about having a child.
  • Or, more likely, that Coyote has some ability (however limited) to see the future or is trying to suggest to Antimony that he can.

Surma Stibnite/Carver

Surma was dead from the time that Antimony started her training at the age of six.

She couldn't pass on until a new medium had been trained, and Carver (Sr.) had it arranged that the hospital room in which she died would be made his office so that Antimony wouldn't be bothered while she was in the twilight between life and the spirit realm with Surma. He disappeared because he was no longer needed to keep up the charade, and left to pursue his own interests and/or his other responsiblities.

Surma died from childbirth.

See above, but more so.

• Confirmed, but not in the traditional sense.

The blinker stone belonged to Surma.

Mort somehow knew Surma (not to imply that he is Annie's dad, highly unlikely). Mort gave Annie the blinker because he felt it should rightfully be hers. Mort never brings up Surma because it would lead to mass conclusion-jumping, including that Annie would assume the two had something to do with each other's deaths.

• Second part is thoroughly jossed. He has no idea what it is and why he should give it to Annie.

Surma loved Renard

Anja claims that Surma was only PRETENDING to love Renard in order to trick him into coming to the Court. Maybe that's what she told everyone else; maybe it's even what she told herself. But she gives him the nickname Reynardine, which suggests that she really was taken in by his charms. Presumably, she must have been rather turned off by his possession (and by extension: murder) of the man that he possessed to gain entry to the court, but before that she probably loved him at least as much as Anthony Carver and/or James Eglamore.

• Nicknaming someone does not necessarily indicate romantic feelings. Depending on context, a nickname can denote anything from friendship to animosity.

Surma had to have a child at some point to keep the fire inside her - and thus her legacy - alive.

She's as mortal as any human otherwise. No one else has understood this, although it's possible some of them did but still mourn her death anyway, but Antimony ultimately will.

Surma was sucessfully resurrected by Anthony, but has started dying again

Some references to Surma's personality makes it seem that it was at least partly influenced by being descended from a fire elemental. However, when Antimony comes to the court, she seems to lack all that during the first year. Based on the flashbacks, she was much more similar in personality before that though. The mundane explanation is that Antimony was heavily affected by her mother's death. However, burying away your emotions because of some traumatic event doesn't seem particularly fire-elementaly. So let's instead look at the weirder explanation: Directly after Surma died, Antimony was sent to the court and Anthony left for his space station. On the space station, Anthony performed a resurrection of his wife, draining the fire elemental inside Antimony back into Surma and resurrected her. However, the link between Surma and Antimony wasn't broken and the fire elemental slowly started seeping back, restoring Antimony's personality, but slowly killing Surma again. The disease that affected Antimony in the "Divine" chapter was actually an attempt by her father to halt the draining of the fire elemental.

Surma broke up with Mr. Eglamore and chose to be with Anthony because she wanted to have a child.

James loved her too much to be willing to be the cause of her death by getting her with child, whereas Anthony thought he could use Science to somehow prevent her from dying once she had a child. Surma eventually chose to be with Anthony because he was willing to father a child with her. This also explains his coldness towards Annie - he sees her as a reminder of his failed experiment to keep Surma alive.

Surma had a fling with Brinnie when she was younger

Recently, Tom has been doing Gunnerkrigg Court retrospective videos on his Youtube channel, and on at least three separate occasions, has pointed out details that nobody seems to have noticed in three different chapters:

In A Week For Kat, on page 1, panel 1, there's something carved into the desk that Aly is sitting at. It's hard to make out, but it appears to read "S____ & Brunhilde[[note]] Brinnie's real name, as she is the Valkyrie Brunhilde]]". See here for a better look.

In "A Ghost Story", page 2, panel 4, there's a tree with the letters S and B carved into it, with a heart between them. Remember, Tom is specifically pointing these out in his retrospectives, so it has to be more than set dressing.

In "A Medium Beginning", Page 1 Panel 6, there's another thing written on the desk, which is the hardest to make out yet. However, it appears to be "S____ & B_____."

There are probably other indications of this that we've missed, which Tom will point out in his retrospectives... or even in future chapters? Either way, this seems to point to some form of special relationship between Surma and Brinnie.

Surma's years with Annie was caused by Anthony's experiments extending her life at the cost of her soul/spirit/etherical-half.

We don't know how long Surma would have lived; she might have died in childbirth for all we know, with all of her "essence" instantly transferring to Annie. Anthony has been described as someone who likes logic and by inference dislikes illogical things, so by his logic he's weakening a "tumor" that's killing his wife and daughter and the personality changes (assuming he even noticed) are just an unfortunate side-effect, certainly not damage to their souls/ether, which aren't things that exist.

• In "Divine" Anthony's "bone fingers" are pinning down and weakening Annie's etheric half and in "The Tree" similar-looking "bone fingers" close in on Annie, causing her pain and dampening her emotions. There's also the feisty young Surma who hates "how serious [she] looks in photos" (re: exactly how Annie and Anthony look normally) vs. the calm mother/patient Surma, though that could just be her being more mature and weakened.

If Anthony hadn't experimented on Surma to extend her life, Annie wouldn't be as damaged as she is

In "Ties" Surma already knows she's not a normal human, something Annie doesn't learn until her third year at Gunnerkrigg and only because she angered Rey. It's possible that half-elementals normally transfer their memories along with their etheric "essence" at childbirth and since Anthony sacrificed Surma's etheric energy/soul to extend her life Annie just lost untold generations of knowledge that could have helped her.

Anthony Carver

Anthony has emotions, but somehow can't express them.

Surma fell in love with him because her medium abilities allowed her to see his feelings anyway.
Thinking back on it, this could simply be a form of autism.

• From what we learn about him in Chapter 37, this looks really, really likely... or depending on your reading, all but Jossed.
• Chapter 64 shows that when he's away from the Court grounds, he's considerably more relaxed and is willing to joke with Surma. This seems to imply that he's being extremely cautious with what he says and does in the physical presence of the Court, but when he's out in the field, he can lower his guard down. Unfortunately, he learned the hard way after Surma's death that even when he's away, the Court still has an eye on him.

Anthony is still searching for a cure.

The prospect of death is still hanging over Antimony, and he already feels a failure for not saving his wife. Given his inability to save Surma, he no doubt thinks that all the time between now and when Antimony actually has a child, plus growing up time, should not have a second wasted. He knows it will be difficult.

• A related idea: Anthony is deliberately isolating Annie, both socially and physically, in an attempt to cut down on the danger of her fire-elemental half "going off" and causing damage or deaths. This could explain the sterility and size of Annie's new living quarters.

Anthony will turn out to be a major antagonist.

He's been driven mad by grief, and his idea of "saving" his daughter involves destroying (physically or otherwise) her or the court. The other main characters will rally to fight him, but ultimately Antimony will be the one who faces him down.

Anthony knows something about the history of the Court, particularly regarding Jeanne.

He and Surma left because they found out something they weren't meant to know (much like Antimony and Kat). His return will kick off the conflict that will either heal the Court or destroy it, the main characters will all take sides, and Antimony will be both the wild card and the key to ending everything, for good or ill.

When Tony went AWOL for months as a student he was learning martial arts.

Elgamore was training to become a knight, Donny was an inventor, Brynnie was a Valkyrie, Anja was magic, Surma was fire, and Tony... well, he eventually became a surgeon but a future med student isn't much help in high school, especially one where wood-botic dogs can attack at any moment. Heck, we don't even know if he wanted to be a doctor as a kid or became one just to save Surma.

• Alternately he disappeared so no one would know he was researching magic. His Straw Vulcan facade was so people wouldn't notice he was a major aetherphile.

Anthony is trying to revive Surma by killing Annie.

Divine shows that Anthony's done something to Annie that Zimmy sees as bones through the centre of her being. Tony thinks he's found a way to revive Surma by using the life force Annie took from her, and he's started the process. Whether or not whatever Zimmy does will work has yet to be seen, but he won't be happy.

• That requires a mighty conclusion leap even to the start of this. Double so given that Anthony barely conceded "that magic crap" exists at all, and only because he saw it. And now, suddenly, he outdoes Anja with her tattoo-terminals. Yeah, right.
• It's not "sudden", it's been two years (comic-book-time) since he and Annie last spoke to each other and we still don't know what he's been up to, plus he could've been dabbling in aetheric research as a student but had to keep it secret after publicly denying it.
• Didn't Anthony request for a scalpel to go to his satellite the day before Annie collapsed? Considering that the bone structures came from the sky, could that imply that Anthony intended to use the scalpel to cut something out of Annie?
  • Bit of both: He was trying to see (not revive, as far as I know) Surma's spirit but didn't realize it would hurt Annie.

Anthony is searching for a way to protect Annie from sharing the same fate as her mum.

Whatever he was doing in Divine appears to be targeted on pinning the fire elemental part of her in place. He thinks that he's found a way to keep it from leaving her and killing her if she ever has a child of her own.

• Jossed, after Surma died he gave up on the "keep Annie alive" angle and was focused on finding out why she died.

Anthony isn't up to anything.

Inspired by Zenzirouj at Something Awful:

Well, that last panel sure is a set up for a nefarious panel involving Anthony. I'm hoping it just cuts to him fixing cataracts in a 3rd world nation somewhere and Annie going "see I tolds ya"

Anthony joined the Gunnerkrigg version of Doctors Without Borders because he couldn't deal with all the illogical things about his wife's death and his daughter's life and is trying to ease his guilt over not saving Surma and abandoning Annie by helping others. The "bone pillars" trapping Annie's inner fire are just Annie's feelings which all lead back to her dad and her collapse was due to her unusual nature: smothering her inner fire has physical effects. Plus there's the fact that the previous chapter missed a great opportunity to hint at Tony's activities (it could also be that since Annie's the Audience Surrogate if she can't see her dad then neither can we). Now, watch this get proven wrong by Friday/the next chapter that features Tony.

• Of course this means that Tony just got knocked across the room in the middle of a delicate eye operation!
  • Jossed, he was up to something and the bone pillars weren't metaphors; then again he didn't think he was doing anything evil and he was indeed KO'd in the middle of an "operation".

"Mr. Carver" took public speaking classes

Throwing the readers (and Annie and the Donlans) into further confusion he speaks and acts like a normal, friendly human being and not the Tin Man we've seen in flashbacks — and then class ends and he reverts back to his "cold" and awkward personality. Alternately the "act" he puts on to lecture the students is shockingly snarktastic and his real personality is shy and adorkable.

• To cover my bases: He's still awkward and "cold", which only makes the gossip worse ("Who talks like that? He really is Carver's dad!")

I said it in site's the comments and I'll say it here (because comments aren't saved after the new page is posted): Most. Awkward. Sex Ed. Class. EVER.

At some point these kids need to learn about the birds and the bees and who better to do it than a surgeon who — as far as anyone who isn't Surma and the Donlans know — doesn't have enough emotions to get embarrassed and doesn't care how others feel? It just adds to Annie's problems from the end of Chapter 50: she's fretting about soul-extraction, apparent breeding of sapient beings (the hollow fairies), and forced gender bending at "work" while having to share Kat with Paz at home, and now she has to deal with her family issues and The Talk at school.

• Jossed: A) it appears to be biochem and B) Annie's not going to be attending that class anyway.

Zimmy gave Anthony his scar

Anthony has a scar on the left side of his upper lip, which approximately matches where Zimmy punched him.

• Zimmy also took off Anthony's right hand/arm: when she punches him that side is covered by a bright light so whatever he was doing backfired on him literally and figuratively.
• Confirmed on the first point, but Zimmy didn't take his arm off.

Top theories from the Gunnerkrigg site's comments

1. All Just a Dream: Anthony's passive-aggressive behavior is so over-the-top it seems more like Annie's having an anxiety nightmare than reality.
   • Jossed — this really happened. Well, not really really, this is a fictional webcomic but you know what I mean.
2. Bullying a Dragon (or pretty close): He's deliberately trying to provoke her into a literal meltdown so he can convince her that her powers are dangerous and should be suppressed or removed altogether. Additionally, this is likely at the behest of the Court, since they've already shown once (by snubbing Annie in favor of the less willful Andrew) that they don't really want relations with the Forest to improve, and thus would want to remove the threat Annie poses to whatever machinations they have in mind.
   • Uncertain — Annie didn't have a meltdown (amazingly), but it's still possible the Court hired Anthony specifically so he could get his daughter under control.
3. Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Picking on Annie is Anthony's misguided way of showing the class he's not going to give her special treatment just because she's his daughter, not realizing that he's still singling her out with "special" treatment. The severe punishment is appropriate for a severe crime.
   • Also uncertain — While the actual punishment for cheating is fair (more than fair, she could have been expelled), Anthony's initial passive-aggressiveness is still over the line and possibly out of character for someone who's been portrayed as being very dedicated to logical thinking (it would've been more logical to tell Annie as soon as possible so she could repeat the year and get caught up as soon as possible).
4. Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: This is really happening and Anthony is actually picking on Annie, probably because he's still really upset about Surma (Donny said the littlest things mean a lot to Anthony, therefore he must be incredibly pissed off).
   • Bit of both: he went (was forced back) to the Court to protect Annie but lashed out at her because he was unprepared for her resemblance to Surma.

Speculation on how Anthony feels about Surma and Annie's powers

He's decided that the ladies' elemental half is dangerous and should be suppressed/removed, not knowing that it's impossible and probably fatal. Alternately he's gone renegade Buddhist and wants to remove the "regenerating" half-elemental from birth-death-rebirth cycle of suffering for good.

Anthony hates Antimony, and wants to kill her to try to bring back Surma

Anthony didn't want to have a child because he knew it would kill Surma. Once Antimony was born, Anthony tried everything in his power to stop her from dying... and failed. After she died, he ran away from her death and his daughter. During Chapter 38, he attempted to perform a ritual in order to unmake Antimony and resurrect Surma.

Let's look at the timeline:

• Chapter 36: At the very end of the chapter, Antimony gets a call from her father, encoded so that only Donald can understand it.
• Chapter 37: Annie helps Donald Donlan steal medical supplies to deliver to Anthony via Microsat 5, including scalpels and what appears to be a bottle of some form of disinfectant.
• Chapter 38: The ritual occurs, and is stopped by Zimmy's intervention before Annie can die. Prior to this, Anthony has cut off his right hand using the medical supplies delivered via Microsat 5 (we never see it in this chapter, even though his left hand is clearly visible, and it appears to have been replaced by a prosthetic in Chapter 51). The ritual most likely involved a sacrifice of flesh from the father in order to steal Annie's fire and place it into a new vessel in hopes to bring back Surma.

Now, fast forward to Chapter 51, The Tree. On the first page, we see that Margo (the girl on the left in the second panel) appears to be wearing lipstick, as she is in every appearance she's made. However, she is not told the leave the class to remove it like Antimony is; Annie is specifically asked to leave because her makeup resembles Surma's. He hates Antimony so much that he can't stand to see someone that isn't his wife looking like that.

• Jossed, see below.

Inversion of the above, Anthony thinks Annie hates him

One Legged Cat at Something Awful:

"He believes she hates him, and wants nothing to do with him.

"Think about it from his perspective; he attempts to perform a delicate ether-surgery on his daughter to help her, which ends with an angry, crippling blow that's accompanied by, 'Message from your little girl, mate!'

"His career, his personal skill, and much of his value as a person is now crippled. The first thing he did after his wife's passing (or so goes my theory) is that he shot himself up into space on a desperate mission to stop the cycle; and in doing so, received a hateful, violent rebuke from his daughter, who apparently wanted none of his attentions.

"It's not very hard to believe that Tony would interpret that as 'She clearly hates me, so I should expect that when I return.'
[.....]
"And moreover, if you apply the logic of Tony coming from a place of 'Listen here you, you may not like me but I'm still going to make sure you're at least raised properly! You will call me sir, and stop hanging out with bad company (i.e. body-stealing demons) and behave! Is that understood?'

"That exchange and the one following it about cheating in school and turning in her demon-doll, would make PERFECT SENSE. From his perspective, his out-of-control daughter has lashed out violently at a family member, is cheating in school and hanging around with very ill-reputed types.

"She may not like him, but he's got to crack down if he's going to save his daughter's future!"

• Pistol Pete chimes in:

  "It also explains his peculiarly irritated reaction when Annie asks what happened to his hand. If he thinks that she caused it, his attitude's likely to be: 'You, of all people, have got NO business inquiring about my injuries.'"

• My two cents (it's possible I missed something similar in the comments): It's also an inversion of the Parental Death Blame The Child theories: Anthony blames himself for failing to save Surma and believes Annie hates him for the same reason. He took an assignment that put him out of contact with Annie for years because he believed that's what she wanted.
  • See the ads for South Paw: the daughter clearly blames her father for the death of her mother (her father picked a fight with another short-tempered person who also had a gun) and is stoic and cold. The difference is that that girl is also acting out (slapping a drink her father was trying to offer her) while Annie is trying to put up a brave front just like her dad. The problem is for whatever reason Anthony didn't see that Annie was imitating him for "strength" and not giving him the cold shoulder/silent treatment.
    • A lot of this tension could have been avoided if they just talked to each other but Anthony doesn't seem too big on being casual in a professional setting, and seeing as they lived in his hospital he was never not Dr./Mr. Carver except for the few moments he was completely alone with his spouse.
• Confirmed that he believes Annie hates him for "killing" Surma, Jossed that he's trying a "tough love" approach (he wishes he died after he almost killed her with the aether antenna but the Court found him and forced him to return to keep Annie in line)

Anthony has some kind of supernatural "influence" ability.

There is a lot of focus on Anthony's eyes when he's in "assuming control" mode...and we know how Gunnerkrigg likes to dwell on the eyes. He locks eyes with Annie when he's subduing her. It could be simply to give the impression of a cold and arrogant parent "staring down" their child, but also bear in mind the the normally fiery Annie is not wearing her make up, and now she's a total pushover for her controlling father. Could Anthony, the super-realist, actually have an ability similar to Smitty's? (Admittedly, if anything, the non-supernatural explanation — that Anthony really holds his spirited daughter in his thrall — is probably more scary.)

• That'd be funny since he's been built up as someone who hates the unexplainable, but he is the one who (according to the above WMG) apparently sacrificed his hand to do some kind of ritualistic Psychic Surgery on Annie, not to mention he's been the object of affection for half-elemental Surma and Brynnie the Valkyrie.

Anthony's harsh punishment is because he sees himself in her actions (to a point)

He only shows up in the Picture Day flashback long enough to say he has "matters to attend to" before leaving, implying he could have been doing after-school "projects" like Annie. Maybe he let his homework slip or he thought he was smart enough to get by with half-assing his schoolwork while doing something he felt was more important and suffered the consequences but he probably never thought to resort to cheating, much less to the extent that Annie did. In his autistic-spectrum mind taking away all of Annie's "distractions" will help her and keep her safe.

• Unconfirmed but his current punishments are because he's doing what the Court wants.

Anthony is super-pissed... at his friends

He probably figured Donny, Anja, and James would be parent-figures to Annie in his and Surma's absence; instead he finds out she's been cheating to such an extent (and mostly from Donny and Anja's own daughter to boot) that a whole school year's been lost and on top of that she's roommates with the creature who killed a man to be with her mother. God forbid he finds out that James essentially told Annie "it's not illegal if you don't get caught". In his mind his friends failed Annie (possibly encouraged her cheating or overlooked it out of pity); the idea that Annie wouldn't reach out to her mother's friends probably didn't cross his mind.

• Jossed, the only person Anthony is pissed at is himself.

Anthony and Annie

• Theory: If he really wanted to control Annie or experiment on her or sacrifice her to bring back Surma, why would he get a job that requires him (and her) to stay at the Court for at least year? Wouldn't it be easier to use Annie's cheating as an excuse to expel her, getting her away from everyone and everything that cares about her?
• Counter-theory: What better place to run experiments on etheric beings than the Court? I'm sure they've tried to get rid of Zimmy's powers, not to mention all those Power Nullifier charms the robots used to incapacitate the etherically-inclined students.
  • Neither, he's only there because the Court forced him to return.

Anthony is Diego's Foil

(This is here because we don't yet know exactly what Anthony is doing to Annie or why; he might not be doing anything at all and just has a very strong psychological hold on her.)

• Diego, a fat cartoony-looking inventor with hidden eyes who specializes in robots, did the right thing — give the Court an unstoppable sentinel that can kill any supernatural force that crossed Coyote's divide — for the wrong reason: he killed Jeanne and her lover because she didn't love him back (Steadman, also Jeanne's ex, may have felt the same way).
• Anthony, a slim unnervingly realistically-drawn surgeon with an icy stare who specializes (or used to) in human medicine, might be doing the wrong thing — damaging Annie's psyche/spirit/soul/personality — for the right reason: he wants to save Annie from Surma's fate of an early death by having a child. Jeanne no longer had a purpose when the Court built the bridge; if Anthony's (presumed) plan of killing/suppressing Annie's etherical half to save her human half works she may not be much better than an Empty or Soulless Shell.
  • Diego's mantra is "she died and I did nothing" — he planned Jeanne's death (and the death of her lover) and feels guilty about the fact that she died but refuses to accept responsibility. Anthony could feel completely responsible for Surma's death (and the death of Annie) because he did everything he could to extend her life but ultimately failed.

  • Nothing about Diego's actions can be described as "the right thing". He damaged the Realm of the Dead and trapped Jeanne's soul in the divide for hundreds of years. For what? If the biggest problem they had with people coming from the other side is Jeanne's lover then it wasn't a problem that needed to be resolved, so the flimsy excuse of needing a sentinel, which in any event some sort of a robot would just as easily have sufficed, a line of laser cows or something, falls apart. He did the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.
    
    Similarly, there's not really any right reason for treating someone like Anthony is treating Antimony. Even for the sake of saving their lives. Her life isn't in any immediate danger, so even if one could justify doing things that would normally be considered wrong in the name of saving lives (like killing someone) it wouldn't apply to Antimony, whose life will only be in danger 10-20-30 years from now IF she gets married and IF she has a child.
  1. "Diego's actions": His intent was wrong (revenge on Jeanne for snubbing him and attacking his robot children) but result was "good" (prevent anything from crossing the water and attacking the Court), though this is assuming that only Diego and Steadmen had a deeper ulterior motive (anger at her for rejecting a human for a forest "creature") for using Jeanne and the rest of the council aside from that one guy were desperate for such an effective barrier.
  2. "For what?": I'm pretty certain that Jeanne's lover was not the ONLY being from the forest trying to get across the water. Even hundreds of years later Surma and even Annie had to deal with creatures from the forest attacking the Court.
  3. "A line of laser cows": Laser cows were developed hundreds of years later; lasers might have been beyond even Diego (if he could've equipped his "puppet fighters" with flashy lasers he probably would have even if they didn't actually do anything).
  4. "[Annie's] life isn't in any immediate danger": From Anthony's POV her life is already one-third over and she only has about 10 more years of good health left (age ~14 now, +10 years assuming Surma gave birth in her 20s, +10 years practically bedridden, assuming either it was normal for Surma to live that long or Anthony's treatments can be replicated).
  5. "IF she has a child": When. We don't know if there's a limit (even if she's single? a virgin? had her tubes tied? had her reproductive organs removed?), but according to Coyote and reinforced by Tom's comment it will happen, which makes Anthony's search for a "cure" pretty urgent (assuming that's what he's really doing).
  • Coyote was speaking hypothetically, not stating that it is inevitable that she definitely WILL have a child no matter what forever and ever. Anthony has no ability to see the future. His actions in this scenario would necessarily be based on an assumption that he has no way of verifying. Surma died cause she got knocked up. That has no relevance to how long Annie will live. She is not, as far as we know and certainly as far as Anthony knows, inherently destined to shoot a baby out of her hoohah. So yes, it is IF she has a child. Not when.

Anthony isn't prematurely aged or drawn in more detail, he's burned

All of his injuries can be traced back to when Zimmy attacked him in "Divine": The cut on his lip is where Zimmy actually punched him, his arm got blown off by the fiery force of Annie's influence, and his face is covered in healed burns which affected his eyes, making them small and "puffy" when he previously had huge almond-shaped eyes even as an adult.

• Bit of both: while the cut is from Zimmy the rest of his injuries are due to the beating he received in exchange for talking with the psychopomps and he lost his hand making an "antennae" to contact Surma's spirit during "Divine".

Anthony's only against Annie wearing makeup because she does it like Surma's.

What in Annie's eyes is a way of keeping a connection with her mum is like a punch in the gut to him when he sees it, and he has too many issues expressing his emotions to say it in a way that would let anyone know he wants her to wash her face because it makes him too sad to stand it.

• Confirmed, he freaked out when he saw her (he feels terrible about it).

Anthony was tricked by fake psychopomps...

The psychopomps are unnerving (see: Ketrack), but they're not actively cruel, just doing their jobs. Yet while they care for Annie, they do nothing to allow her to meddle with natural cycles: Muut is fond of Annie, and feels badly for what happened to her mother, but at no point does he say "Actually, if you really wanted to, there's a way to see her again..." He doesn't even specify if there is an afterlife where they'll meet again, or whether the ether simply "dissolves" souls. All Annie gets is Moddey Dhoo's "The world continues to spin" reassurance. If they could give the little girl that they cared so deeply about some kind of reassurance, they would have (at least, given what we've seen of them). Yet Anthony, who we're given to understand has no patience for etheric matters and whose skill set sits firmly on the science end of the spectrum, was apparently handed some occult knowledge once he'd bloodied himself up a bit? Unlikely. The "psychopomps" he met may have been similar to the Wisp in Seed Bismuth: offering knowledge in an attempt to trap their target — and Anthony had too little knowledge of the forces he was tampering with know that he should be wary. That would also explain why the result of his "surgery" was damaging to Annie — the psychopomps wouldn't have put her in the firing line, but more malevolent forces would. They might have hoped to kill two Carvers with one stone.

...or real psychopomps punishing him for his hubris.

Despite his anger at the Court, Anthony is the poster child of their philosophy: humanity, through science, is entitled to command nature. We don't know if he's extraordinarily talented, but he's certainly determined. Perhaps that makes him a threat. His inability to deal with his grief over Surma made him vulnerable, and the psychopomps took the opportunity to neutralise him (instructing him to remove his dominant hand). Perhaps Annie's psychopomps are the more friendly ones, while others are vicious or vindictive. Or he was in danger of causing real damage to the Ether, and they had to act quickly to stop him.

• Variation: They were real psychopomps but for animals and supernatural creatures, and as ×××HOLiC has taught us supernatural beings who side with nature don't especially like humans. As for why they did that it's still unclear, though the faces around Surma look like gleeful and mocking.

Anthony gave Rey up too easily

Either "Rey" is just a lookalike toy or he's had something implanted in him.

Anthony gave Rey up because he gave up

He realized that his daughter was happier and safer with a bunch of psycho godlike canine crazies than her own father. Even if he already decided he wasn't fit to be a parent that still must've hurt.

• Also Coyote's words actually got through to him and he was upset that an insane god knows more about his daughter than he does.

Anthony's going to get punished by the Court

They brought him back to keep Annie in line and away from Coyote and it totally failed: Annie kept Rey out of her father's (and the Court's) hands by secretly passing Rey's ownership to Kat and didn't stop her friends from sneaking into her father's apartment while Anthony bowed to Coyote's demands and immediately gave Rey back to Annie when she asked. Possible punishments:

• First test subject of the new and improved Omega Device. Said device is like the machine in His Dark Materials that severs people from their souls.
• Being sent away to do "research". He's going to disappear as suddenly as he reappeared but still manage (to his great distress) to complicate Annie's life from the other side of the earth and beyond.

Anthony will eventually be a major ally to Antimony.

There's no denying the miserable start, but the meeting with Donnie revealed two important things: he doesn't really want to be an the Court, and he regrets how he's treated Annie. He's not a happy man, and would be very much against the court...if he had the will to do so. But he doesn't, and he concedes to authority without a real fight - much like Annie did to him. Annie's struggle against him will essentially fuel his own resistance - the stronger she becomes, the stronger he'll become. Returning Renard and getting her back to the forest were only small steps, but more will come as Annie learns to manage her anger and properly use it against him (he needs her fire, basically). In the end, they'll start working together in resistance, and he'll be more open with her like he was with Donnie, and that will drive a significant part of the endgame of the comic.

Anthony will die protecting Antimony

Something involving the Court's Omega Device or Coyote is going to put Annie in mortal danger and Anthony would be sidelined and forced to see his daughter die. This will ultimately make him snap and pull a Redemption Equals Death as he throws himself into the danger and saves her life, but dies himself.

Anthony's coldness is involuntary and somehow applies to Annie as well

So we've been told that Anthony shuts down emotionally when dealing with more than one person at a time - the only exception to this seeming to be Annie, who he stays shut down with at all times even when they're alone. What makes this even stranger is that with Forest!Annie, he doesn't exhibit this behavior - and Forest!Annie is from another timeline thanks to Loup.

• So, something about Court!Annie triggers the same shutdown as 'is in a group with more than one person present'. Maybe it's part of her being a fire elemental?

Court Students

Katerina "Kat" Donlan

Kat MUST be kept away from Coyote.

There are several possibilities as to why but for now let's limit it to A. Coyote would recognize her immediately; B. Kat is a hollow fairy (recall that Red and the others are geniuses and studying advanced mathematics when Annie visits); C. If Kat can nullify the ether, and if Coyote is a manifestation of Ether, the Kat is the only being capable of killing Coyote. How is Coyote a manifestation of Ether? Well, the appearance of the ROTD is because the Ether makes it real; Coyote said this is how he was created, and let's not forget that Coyote himself clarified that he doesn't exist.

And no, Kat has NEVER been allowed in Coyote's presence.

Kat's purple scarf was enchanted by her mum.

The Donlans knew their daughter was flying down to the river bank, and they must have known about the dangerous creatures down there. It would have been criminal negligence to allow Kat to go down without something to protect her. And Anja made Kat take that scarf. Therefore, Anja must have put some protection magic on the scarf to keep Kat safe. (This suggests that it was the scarf that drove away the ghost with the sword.)

Kat will go blind from the dual slit experiment.

She will never see again, thus letting her marry Alistair.

• How does going blind allow her to marry a bird?
  • "And she never saw him again". Thus, if she goes blind, they will be able to meet again.

Kat created the Ticktocks.

Kat created the ticktocks and sent them back in time, to record what happened.

• Confirmed for creation, but the purpose is different.

Kat grows up to be Kimiko "Thunderbolt" Ross.

look at THEM, clearly after all the interaction with hybrid tree people, Kat decides to start merging humans with technology, and a transhumanist is born.

• Thank you, I just read the whole comic in one binge and came to this page specifically to look for or add the WMG that Kimiko is related to one or both of Kat and Annie. Kat shares her interests in a lot of ways but Annie is closer in personality.
• Hey, isn't it Robot at the end of that comic? He's got those wings, and is referred to as "Robot"!
• Someone brought it up in the comments for "Thread" and, though I did think of this one I have one note: Kat isn't the "advance the human (or robotic) race *at any cost*"-type... at least not yet.

Kat is SCP-808.

Practically confirmed in-universe.

• Except the SCP-808 page has been moved above our security clearance. Care to elaborate?
  • SCP-808 was a technopath that could communicate with and manipulate machines telepathically. Based on the photo on her article, she actually did look a little bit like Kat. She was removed from SCP Foundation canon with the departure of her author, however, so the article no longer exists (except perhaps in Google Cache, but I can't find the cached version of it.)
  • Ah, isn't she the one that eventually ascended?
  • Korodzik has a saved version of SCP-808 if anyone is interested.
• More proof: Kat can read the robots' programming language, which should be impossible for a human because it's basically too complicated for reality. Which means:

Kat isn't a normal human

Being able to read the robots' programming language took her from Bad Ass Normal techno-genius. Maybe she's an android, bioroid (an android made with artificial biological parts), or cyborg and she gets upgraded during summer vacation, or maybe her parents' etherical/technological devices "irradiated" her and had a weird effect on her brain.

• Supported by how Zimmy 'sees' her in Divine. Also, the Mark of the Creator shows up when she, Annie, and Mort try to get to the Realm of the Dead (which shows its an actual "thing" and not just a symbol the robots made up), though the ROTD gatekeeper has no idea what it means (for the record Annie has the Gillitie Wood symbol for mediums, antimony alchemy symbol, and fire elemental crown; one of the last two means she's a recognized psychopomp).

Before Annie got to the Court, Kat's only friend was an imaginary sheep.

Note the proper methodology. For Science!!

Kat will not be Annie's friend again until...

Her hair "goes up" in flames! "Your hair... it goes up!"

"Divine" isn't about Zimmy rescuing Annie, it's about Kat getting over what other people think about her

Any argument Kat can make to Zimmy and Gamma is bound to backfire:

Kat: My friends think I'm weird!
Zimmy: You have other friends?
Kat: What if my parents think I'm weird?
Zimmy: You have parents?
Kat: What if Annie leaves?
Zimmy: Does your mind poison reality if she's not there? etc.

Kat's lucky that Zimmy and Gamma are just amused at how silly she's being instead of dangerously insulted like Jeanne was with Parley.

Kat isn't human.

She really IS an angel, born into human form to guide the Gunnerbots, who are earning souls.

• Alternate theory: Kat is human, but will eventually become analogous to her her Zimmy-vision appearance via magitech implants and Robot's evangelism.

Kat isn't the robo-messiah, she's the robo-satan

That is, she's there to challenge the robots on their evolutionary path (note the the and lower-case "s") and Robot especially, possibly by doing something unpleasant accidentally, on purpose, or out of necessity, which could severely damage her relations with her beloved robots. Her Zimmy-vision appearance might unnerve even the least humanoid robot: she has no eyes or eye slits (they're jammed with wires and chains), she's covered in "rust" (possibly grease, fuel, or dried blood), and her "chest piece" looks a lot like Swiss Army Knife - she has dissection tools where her heart ought to be (she took apart Diego's robots to figure out how they worked and was disappointed to find operated on "magic"; by forcing the robots to work how she thinks they ought to she'll somehow be oppressing them).

• As of chapter 93, it's actually looking like Robot is the robo-satan instead. He gets an etheric vision of himself as a red being with horns, and he later turns into an organic worm, possibly as a reference to Satan's snake form in the Garden of Eden. Considering that he's the one who turns robots into full humans, maybe he's performing a Satan-style removal of innocence on the robots.

Why Kat looks the way she does to Zimmy. (See here)

Zimmy's mind is in tune with the ether, and we see that Annie's form in that scene is similar to Annie's etheric form. Kat has been shown to be completely out of touch with the ether; when Annie tries to teach her how to feel out into it, Kat's mind instead starts deconstructing the components of a nearby air conditioning unit. So her mind isn't in tune with the ether- it's in tune with technology. So logically, she wouldn't have a normal etheric form. Instead of the spirit-type figures seen in the ether, Zimmy sees Kat as a mechanical monster.

Kat is an Adamant Caste Alchemical.

In the Modern Shard, Alchemicals are born and can grow organically. Perhaps the Donlans were able to give their daughter an Exaltation? Age aside, Kat is humanoid, but her spirit self as seen by Zimmy is a maze of metal and wires- and she's very gifted at communing with machines.

The robots' belief that Kat is an angel will become reality through the action of the ether.

According to Coyote this is a world in which etheric beings exist only because mankind's belief in them makes them real through interaction with the ether. It is quite possible that the robots have developed enough sentience that their belief will have the same effect on the ether, turning Kat into a partially etheric being. This robo-etheric nature may be what Zimmy sees when she looks at Kat.

• She will turn into the robot's psychopomp. The only time we have seen her etheric form is when she "killed" the ship's techno organic body, and the other psychopomp's don't take robots. She was allowed into all of the same parts of the Realm of the Dead as Annie and in the robot's eyes she has already killed one of the older robots and the new experimental tissue.

Kat is the Seed Bismuth.

Or at the very least related to it, explaining her affinity for machines and why the illusion of the Seed shown here looked so similar to her appearance in Zimmy's eyes.

Kat can and will create a new host for the Carver spark.

If anyone can do it, she can...and given the subplot about Annie's father, I really think someone is going to end up doing it.

Kat didn't inherit her symbol from Diego... she inherited it from her own future self

I may be misremembering things, but I don't believe the symbol was ever attributed directly to Diego before Kat inherited it. It was the symbol of their "creator", which... could be Diego... but he only directly created the original, entombed models; not the current ones. Plus, with Kat inventing the Ticktocks, Time Travel is definitely already in play.

Kat is Horus

For humor’s sake, I’m making this guess as of Dec 2020. There are three reasons.

• Bird imagery. This includes being represented as a bird even as Zimmy checked on Annie when she was in the hospital.
• Creator imagery. At the same time, it’s through Zimmy’s mind that we see the living form of creator Kat.
• Eyes. Kay’s creation was the Thousand Eyes. It is a bird. Birds - falcons in particular - are known for their eyes and their ability to see.

There’s a whole chapter about Kat caring for a bird. She goes from angry to nurturing by the end and is rewarded with design insight. It also stabilizes her to reconnect with her bird-soul (her inner ‘Horus’). And finally - and perhaps it’s just me - but if you invert Kat’s symbol it looks remarkably close to an inverted Eye of Horus.

Kat will ascend to god-hood once enough robots become living beings, and from there will declare by divine fiat that all magic is explainable by scientific means, leading to the end of existence.

• The very existence of things unexplainable to human knowledge is a unstoppable obsession of Kat’s, and has nearly driven her to madness
• Despite having interacted with literal gods, she still does not believe the current paradigm that magic is unexplainable in its operation by science
• It stands to reason that once she ascends to god-hood, she will right this mistake, which would probably result in a self-negating paradox that ends the universe.

Zimmy is some kind of etheric/psychic residue of an alternate-universe Kat who had a much harder life.

• They look alike, aside from Zimmy having been beaten up by the ether for her entire existence.
• Kat has no connection to the ether; Zimmy hardly has any connection to reality.
• Annie was unnerved in Chapter 76 when Kat uses the idiom "down that road" just as Zimmy had done recently.
• Gamma tells Renard in Chapter 79 that Kat "was set to travel a dark road...but Antimony's presence helped put her on a better path".
• Zimmy doesn't seem to grow or age; Gamma gets much taller and more adult.
• Being around Kat upsets Zimmy very easily, and Zimmy can't even bring herself to refer to Kat by name.
• The Tic Toc bird keeps finding Zimmy in Chapter 78, but Zimmy hates it (and maybe not just because it's surveillance?).

Andrew "Smitty" Smith and George "Parley" Parley

Andrew's power is more powerful than it at first appears, and has manifested itself during the Fangs of Summertime.

The chaotic mess that the diplomatic mission from Gillitie Wood turned into was ultimately resolved in a relatively neat manner: Coyote just quickly knocked out Ysengrin just when it looked like a major fight would happen and departed with him in peace. Why? Because Andrew was there. As soon as all order dissolved and the fight began, he subconsciously manipulated events to be resolved as quickly and as straightforwardly as possible.

Also, note how we can only see him smile twice — the first time we can see his face after his demonstration and the first time we can see his face after Coyote's departure. Smiling doesn't seem to be something he does very often, as can be seen... every other time we see his face. Now, in that more recent example, it might seem that this was because of Jones' compliment, but it might as easily be the satisfaction one gets out of "subconsciously creating order where there was none". I imagine that sort of thing would feel pretty good.

• This is pretty much confirmed by this comic. Note the smile again.
  • He smiles again here. Could it be that the encounter of Randy and Jones would end on a less positive note, had Smith been absent?

Andrew/Smitty is Coyote's counterpart, on the side of Order

Similar to the earlier Andrew's powers are greater than they appear WMG.

We have a recognisable entity of Chaos in the strip, the Coyote of Gillitie wood. So it stands to reason that there should be an entity of Order on the Court side of the Annan Waters as well. So who do we have within the Court, whose abilities - the scope of which have never been fully delimited - amount to manipulation of reality to promote both Order and the interests of the Court? Who is the opposite of the Coyote in that he is serious instead of playful, hidden instead of visible, and apparently young instead of ancient? Exactly.

Suppose Smitty is the true power behind Gunnerkrigg Court. The headmaster would be effectively a figurehead, descended from Steadman (who was, after all, essentially a passive character that allowed himself to be manipulated by others). As merely a student, Smitty can go places the teachers cannot, can involve himself with Annie and Kat that all the rest of the Court leadership are unable. And he can deal with things the apparent rulers of the Court are all too willing to forget about.

How long has Smitty been at the Court? Who are his family? What does his room look like? How can he be a medium, if he doesn't have access to the ether? If you think about it, there are a lot of suspicious unanswered questions. I'd be very interested in seeing what Smitty looks like in Annie's etherial vision, but so far he has been conveniently elsewhere...

Parley has Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.

Her father's prediction wasn't wrong, in a sense. She's beautiful, statuesque, extremely curvy... all the criteria for an AIS woman. She just has XY DNA, that's all.

Parley will succeed Eglamore as the Court's Dragon Slayer.

We know Smitty will be the Medium. And Parley's already training with a sword. If Jimmy Jims trains Parley to replace him, this will make her George the Dragon Slayer. Credit to Sunshine Duk for bringing this to my attention.

The incident with Parley's birth certificate was a Stable Time Loop

• When Parley's father filled out the birth certificate, he thought he was working from a vision of the birth certificate filled out after Parley's actual birth, but he was actually seeing the copy he'd made, the one with her gender incorrect.
• Alternately, Parley's father did forsee that his child would be a girl, but also foresaw that he would need to fill out the certificate incorrectly and name her "George", in order to set up a Butterfly Effect that would result in her being in the right place at the right time with the right talents and personality to do what she's done at the Court (and possibly even more important things down the line).

Zimmy and Gamma

Zimmy is actually Jenny's inner (outer?) child

We see Jenny in chapter 49, and she seems to be liked by Jack (something that mainly happened with him and Zimmy. Jenny has dark circles around her eyes, but much less pronounced, and appears to have powers too, but they are more controlled and organized. She and Zimmy are not far from each other, implying that Zimmy is a bit like her shadow or something. Lastly, Zimmy in her latest appearance, seems noticeably shorter than the other girls, implying that she is not actually aging. Add this together with the fact that Zimmy sounds like Jenny said by a kid who couldn't enunciate, and it's obvious that Jenny is actually Zimmy all grown up, and Zimmy is sort of the left-behind psychic scum from her powers. Even Kat noticed the similarity!

Zimmy's "pin"

Is just a pin. While she probably wasn't confined to a horrible orphanage like real-life orphans from Eastern Europe, she clings dearly to the few things she can call her own, like the pin and her friend/madness-dampener Gamma.

• See a pin, pick it up, all day long, you'll have a pin.
• Maybe not: high-tech tracking devices don't work on Zimmy, so something as crude as a faintly radioactive button should do the trick.

Zimmy's "pin" is a Blank Badge

Which may mean that she actually is an Invisible (if the Gunnerkrigg Court world is actually one of the realities from The Invisibles), or may just mean that The Invisibles exists as a fictional work in the Gunnerkrigg universe and Zimmy's a fan.

The place Zimmy goes to is artist Zdzisław Beksiński's mindscape

I mean, just look at his stuff.

If Zimmy survives whatever Tom has in store for her, she'll eventually find peace

In one of the rainiest places on earth.

Gamma is a creation of Zimmy's mind.

She's as real as Zimmy wants her to be. That's why she's so worried about other people touching Gamma.

• This does, however, raise the question of how Zimmy could create someone who can speak a language Zimmy herself doesn't know.
• Zimmy did know it, but unconsciously blocked it out when she made Gamma, just as she suppressed her own memory of making her, and Gamma's true nature.
  • Zimmy doesn't know it. Her power is extensive enough to let Gamma be willed into existence as a Polish girl with knowledge of the language and lack of knowledge of English. The author has stated that he made her Polish, because "there is a large Polish community in Birmingham, the city Zimmy came from" — had Zimmy lived in some other place, Gamma would be of different nationality. Further implied by how she "doesn't think about her parents", she just has none. No knowledge of English, in normal circumstances, would be believable only if she had just immigrated, but in such a case, it'd be quite a stretch to believe her parents would just let her go like that.

The Gamma that we know is a doppleganger.

There was a real Gamma, who befriended Zimmy as we saw in the Chapter 11 flashbacks, but sometime after that, she was killed by one of Zimmy's hallucinations. Then, during Zimmy's next visit to Evil Birmingham, she ran into a Nobody making a (near?) perfect imitation of Gamma, and the two have remained together ever since. Maybe Zimmy didn't learn of the Nobodies' mimicry abilities until meeting Copy-Kat, so she just thinks Gamma miraculously returned somehow. Or maybe Zimmy does know (if only subconsciously) that Gamma is a Nobody, but she accepts Copy-Gamma because she wants it to be real.

The fact that Zimmy has lost Gamma once already — and, depending on the circumstances, her guilt over the Real Gamma's death — is why she's so protective of Copy-Gamma.

Gamma is a far more powerful Medium than any of the current Medium elects.

This sort of relies on the "Mediums channel reality" Guess up near the middle of the page, here, but it makes sense so whatever.

Whenever Gamma is separated from Zimmy, Zimmy has to rely on Antimony to keep her head straight. However, Zimmy notes that Annie isn't as good as Gamma is for nulling her powers. Gamma therefore could possibly be an extremely strong Medium, but cannot ever be chosen because she needs to keep Zimmy in check. If Zimmy wasn't around, Gamma would probably be chosen for the school Medium, no contest.

Of course, it is unknown if Gamma's power only works on Zimmy or not, but hey, it's not called Wild Mass Guessing for nothing, right?

Gamma knows English.

She uses the masculine form of the surname "Czarnecki", so she most likely wasn't born in Poland. Also, here a sleep-deprived Gamma laughs at the word "butt", implying she understood it. There are two possibilities:

• Gamma is pretending she doesn't know English for some reason that hasn't been revealed yet.
• Her inability to understand English most of the time is caused by her connection to Zimmy.
  • Or, after years of being around English speakers, she has picked up a word or two of English. She interacts near-exclusively with Zimmy, with whom she can speak telepathically. The only other person she's seen talking to, if I remember correctly, is Antimony, and Annie speaks Polish. Ockhams Razor, people.
    • And it sometimes happens that females in Poland use masculine form of surnames.
    • ... No? At least not in case of obviously adjective-ish names, like Czarnecki. (This is Polish female writing, by the way.) Some names are unisex, though.

Jones is one of those Valkyries, like Brinnie — or some other "mildly divine" being.

That would explain why she's so perfect, looks so bored, knows so much and is readily acknowledged as Seen It All. And then both the list of things she doesn't give a damn about and the list of things she's invulnerable to are so long they can be entwined and then used to encircle the Court... which so far fits into the story well.

Zimmy is a supernatural creature that belongs in the Wood.

Zimmy's nightmare world is a bleak urban landscape, where the only living things are twisted machine-animal-monsters and faceless humans. The only thing that relieves her psychic static is rainfall — natural rainfall, the only piece of nature she's exposed to in Birmingham or at the Court. The reason she's so tortured is that her environment is literally hurting her. Her issues would go away entirely if she were able to go live in the Wood.

If Zimmy were allowed to enter the woods, she would damage it beyond repair

Either as the aforementioned "demon" or as a weapon made by the Court, Zimmy hungers after nature. This is why the raindrops evaporate when they touch her and it also explain her reaction to it: She devours the only natural/magical thing in the court by merely touching it and doing so makes her happy, cause her subconscious urge to destroy this natural/magical phenomena is being fed. Also, she's a friend to the main duo, looks evil and has an exploitable weakness (her dependency on Gamma). I'm not saying she's the Big Bad, but she might be his weapon or persuaded/forced to act like it.

Zimmy is not-quite-dead.

She died, possibly murdered while wandering around the city alone, but never left her body since she wasn't covered by any psychopomp's territory. Gamma was to help Zimmy like Antimony helped the boy in the hospital, but unlike Annie, Gamma gave up (though in her case, it was likely because she couldn't stand to let Zimmy die, rather than fear of the visions. If it was fear of the visions, this is why Zimmy is so protective of her even though she's the one the visions don't physically affect). Antimony has to touch the things from Zimmy's world to banish them while Gamma keeps them at bay like Antimony with the fire because Gamma has been alongside Zimmy since she first died, before they started getting stronger, and her power to banish them (either specifically Zimmy's, or the visions in general) grew in strength as they did. The reason Zimmy does not sleep is that death is "the ultimate sleep", and the dead don't require sleep.

Books help Zimmy control her powers just like Gamma and Antimony.

Suggested here. Note how, in Zimmy's first apperance, she has apparently surrounded herself with books while Gamma was asleep. This would explain why Zimmy hangs out in the library so much, and why they were going to the library in this episode.

• This is actually fairly likely, seeing as Gamma can't speak or read English and Zimmy can't read either.

Not just books, but science books keep Zimmy's powers from manifesting.

The strong connection to reality that the science texts have keeps things "real", to a point. In page 73, Kat finds Zimmy and Gamma at the end of a shelf that has an alchemical symbol on it, and she's carrying a book entitled Important Stuff (Like Science), which implies that they were in part of the Science area.

Mechanical-mindvoice-bubble Gamma isn't Gamma.

She's/it's a construct. That's how she can talk into Annie's head.

As of late in the chapter "Spring Heeled", Antimony is currently (mentally) in Zimmy's (physical) head, sort of overshadowing/possessing her.

Gamma can talk to her, and thinks she's Zimmy, because she technically is Zimmy from the outside. Zimmy is running away because there are two levels of inside Zimmy's head (the construct town and literally inside her mind), and she and Annie (unlike Gamma) are currently in both of them.

In addition to the above guess, or a variation thereof, Zimmy has made a habit of doing it.

Gamma can't notice when someone else is in ZimmyWorld if they are in her head. That's what happened to Jack. He accidentally hitched a ride inside Zimmy's mind, but for the most part Zimmy suppressed him while she was with Antimony. Whether she generally runs off when someone else spooks her and Jack was for some reason the exception or it's closer to an even mix (because some people cower in terror, some people try to ask what's going on or atttack Zimmy) doesn't really matter (yet).

Zimmy is Annie, or a creation of Annie's subconscious come to life.

See the latest pages.

Zimmy grows up to be Kath from Wapsi Square.

No logic to support this. Just... look at them.

"Zeta" and "Gamma" are code names

Code names are given to all children "adopted" by the Court; for instance, "Zeta and Gamma" could have been named "Zoe and Gina". The parents are given Class-A amnesiacs to ease (or accelerate, in Zimmy's case) the loss of their children.

Zimmy and Gamma's powers will be a key part of the story later

More exactly, Annie will want them to control their powers so that they (with the help of Parley, Andrew, and possibly Kat and Jack) can rescue and/or "control" Jeanne from her ghost status.

The He Is Not My Boyfriend scene at the end of Chapter 28 was the result of Zimmy's attempt to set up Jack with Annie.

She knew that he might eventually develop a crush on her thanks to the influence of the Whitelegs, but also knew that he initially might develop similar feelings for Annie for trying to help him out. As Zimmy is not interested in Jack, she might've tried to paw him off on Annie. So she tried to plant the idea in Annie's head by calling him her boyfriend.

Zimmy is a bug (or some other critter)!

She's a sapient, psychic, reality-warping bug that can project a human form even to the aetherically insensitive like Kat and possibly the robots. Possibly related to the "Zimmy is a supernatural creature" theory.

• Reynard calls her a demon because whoever heard of a bug that's as intelligent as a human and can accidentally break reality?
• Zimmy sees Kat as human/insect/Leatherman multi-tool hybrid which looks a lot like how some people might imagine Ketrak, the Grim Reaper of bugs. Zimmy sees messed-up things every day but Kat scares her the most, and what's more terrifying than the grim reaper, even if you have resigned yourself to dying in your own mad world one day?
• Zimmy's parents gave her up to the Court not because they were glad to get rid of their little reality-warper but because they're just bugs! (Gamma is Zimmy's "owner".)
• Zimmy always has that white "blotch" on her all shirts regardless if it's before or after she went to the Court because her body's tagged like these bees◊.
• "Nobodies" can be indistinguishable from real people and "Zimmingham" is so messed up because, being a bug, Humans Are Cthulhu and cities are just a giant, cold World of Chaos.
• "But Zimmy's POV, even at its most messed up, is always from a human's perspective IE 'Zimmingham' isn't a Mouse World, she's always wearing clothes, she doesn't think normal human size is becoming the size of a whale like the fairies do." She's always hovering at human height/sitting on Gamma's sleeve and considers her skin to be her clothes (shedding skin/exoskeleton/fur=changing clothes) or she doesn't know she's a bug.
  • In the opposite direction of extranormal animal/supernatural Gillitie Woods creature — Zimmy is a computer bug inside the elaborate MMORPG/Matrix-style simulation that is Gunnerkrigg Court.

Annie taught Gamma how to speak English after the events of The Power Station.

After Annie learned that Zimmy was intentionally mistranslating things people said for Gamma in order to isolate her and keep her from making friends beyond herself, Annie decided to take matters into her own hands and tutored Gamma in the English language. Zimmy, however, was never made aware of this and Gamma continued speaking Polish around her and did not speak English around her as it still was not very good. However, Gamma did find out that Zimmy was mistranslating things and lying to her; instead of growing upset, though, Gamma decided to humor her and now continues to pretend she did not realize what Zimmy was doing, as she still knows that if she were to leave Zimmy , Zimmy would undoubtedly go mad and die.

Zimmy is Coyote's Daughter

It would be unlikely to presume Coyote, a being of Chaos, would spend ALL of this time in the Gillette Wood since he considers the entire Earth to be his home. At one time or another he might have shapeshifted into a humanoid being, wooed a random woman, and knocked her up just to see what the act of making children the normal way was like. Unfortunately, the process of human child development was far too long for him and not wanting to speed up the process for risk of the mother's well-being, whom he had grown attached up, promptly left. Due to his scatter-brain nature though, he completely forgot he was a baby daddy in the first place. Thus, the reason for Zimmy's out of control powers stems from her own body coming to terms with essentially holding the DNA of something THAT TECHNICALLY DOES NOT EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE, which in itself CAN WARP THE FABRIC OF REALITY ITSELF.

A future storyline might come into play with Coyote finally coming face-to-face with his illegitimate daughter after finally remembering he had a daughter, as well as the implication Zimmy was only the latest illegitimate child he had and forgot about.......

Zimmy is half Crystal Gem and doesn't know it.

Her pin is her gem and like Steven she doesn't know how to harness the power, she takes a bit more Gem quality than human as well for as it was said Steven's Lion "Gems don't need to sleep" and Zimmy says she never does.

Jack Hyland

Jack has Psychic Powers of some sort.

Jack was pulled into Zimmy's nightmare world in ch 19. The only other people to get pulled in were Gamma and Annie—both of whom are known to have extranormal mental abilities. Clearly, when Zimmy flips over to Evil Birmingham, she pulls any mentalists within her vicinity with her.

• Specifically, Jack is a Technopath. He hacked the motion detector in the Queslett boy's dorm so he and the others could slip away, just like Kat did. Unlike Kat, Jack doesn't have a knapsack full of electronics with which to do any hacking. Because he doesn't need any electronics — he hacks the motion detector with his mind.

Jack is Spider (like Anansi the Trickster, but less specific), stuck to live through the life of a human after one of his tricks backfired.

In comic 614 Jack has cobwebs and a glowing spider-mark, though it's probably an actual 3-D spider shape, on his face in the etherium. Gamma doesn't perceive him as a human, even though he was stuck inside Zimmie's world at the same time as them and Antimony, and it's been shown that he can unknowingly see into and possibly enter the etherium under power from no obvious outside source.

• Check out his distinctly Coyote-like grin in this page.
  • Not to mention, the student who had the temerity◊ to snort at a tiff between gods looks awfully familiar these days...
  • But isn't that guy canonically the gardener?

Jack's soul is coming apart after being in Zimmy's world

In the above comic you can see a glowing "copy" of his head starting to separate from his body. Maybe the spider and the webs are signs that his soul became "infected" or "decayed" since going into (and becoming obsessed with) Zimmy's world.

Jack is one of those "Nobodies" from Zimmy's World

No real evidence for this, but it would explain this freaky image. And, with a bit of a stretch of this, now that he's in the real world he can semi-cancel Medium powers; look at the page again, whenever Antimony enters the astral plain to connect to her Blinker Stone her 'hair' is continuous, yet when Jack turns to face her in that comic, it breaks. It's a bit of a stretch, but not impossible in this universe.

Jack is becoming a "nobody".

The faceless nobodies in Zimmy's world are contagious, which is why she's so afraid of them. Since Gamma and Annie can make them go "GOP", they're immune, but Jack wasn't. He came in contact with one of the nobodies and is now becoming one.

• Evidence!
  • That is not evidence. That Jack is actually not the real one; the real one appears on the next page.

Jack is a Fourth-Wall Observer.

After a visit to Zimmingham, he somehow realized that he is just a fictional character in a webcomic. Initially, the shock of this discovery rendered him near catatonic, though now he got a bit better. He's still halfway insane, however.

This explains a lot of his behavior. He treats Annie and Kat without respect because he figures that if his world isn't real, he can do anything he wants without consequences. Also, his unique Medium Awareness makes him a megalomaniac - he believes that, as the only one who knows the true nature of the world, he has the right to treat everyone else with contempt.

• Jossed by Word of God here.

Jack's teasing of Kat, whose parents are teachers and Annie the medium is a cry for help

...Unless it's a trap.

Jack is becoming whatever Zimmy is.

This is shown because in this comic Jack is shown with spiderwebs and a spider, but only in the spiritual plane. Inthis one, See that second panel? Zimmy has one of those same spiders on her, only this time it's real. Also, Jack's eyes don't seem so much as "Losing-sleep" anymore so much as "Starting-to-ooze" in this comic. Just like Zimmy. He's been so deperate for answers because he wants to know both what's happening to him, and, well, because that world is batshit terrifying.

• Although it's just probably due to the lighting, look at Jack's eyes here in the fourth panel. They look exactly like Zimmy's.

• Related: Jack and Zimmy have been set up as avatars for other things. Zimmy's world is an in-between place that brings in people who a) can easily travel into the astral realm, and b) are receptive to being taken over. Gamma and Antimony have decent defenses (Gamma naturally, Antimony from her heritage and training), but Zimmy's only real defense is her relationship with Gamma (the relationship part os important, it's not just Gamma's powers), and Jack's going to fall even faster and faster as he doesn't eat, goes through a bunch of strenuous escapades, and lets whatever-it-is influence him further and further away from what most people consider sanity. Because they're spirit/energy/information-based Eldritch Horrors, sitting in the science wing of the library helps since it's full of information on what we understand reality to be. Running about outside the school and muttering conspiracy theories to yourself does the exact opposite of sitting in the science wing of the library.

Jack actually likes Annie.

He was just trolling her when he said that he likes Zimmy, the reason he didn't take the kiss is because he was nervous about actually kissing her.

Other students

Paz is a ghost magnet.

First the thing with Mort and now this? The Court pulled her because she attracts either the restless dead or ghosts that aren't actually dead people, in a way that makes her an unfit medium (since it would cause more trouble than it solved). However, the power is still useful for assisting where spirits are hiding, or determining if a ghost is not a dead person, or at least needs to be kept suppressed in a place such as the Court to avoid problems.

• That second one wasn't actually a ghost, so unlikely. Also, if she's at the court for any special reason, it's because she can talk to animals.

Janet and Willie will use their archery skills to undo the effects of Diego's device.

Possibly to form a bridge, or to fire a device that requires two arrows launched simultaneously. It may or may not be required to help Jeanne. Also, symbolism: it took one person to divide the Forest and Court. It takes the cooperation of two to reconnect them. Janet and Willie may play a role in saving Jeanne as well.

Also, it's entirely possibly that it was Janet and Willie's ancestors who murdered Jeanne and hid the evidence. The archer could be either one, but the man who watches could easily be the Headmaster, and therefore is more likely to be Janet's ancestor. This way their descendants would be correcting their mistake. Gunnerkrigg Court is already big on Generation Xerox, so this fits with the themes so far.

• Convinced that Steadman is Willie's ancestor. They've got similar hair. Also, this theory sounds a lot like something Tom would do, with the symbolism and all that.
• I think it's more likely that Janet is Steadman's descendant, due to the seemingly supernatural archery skills she shows off in Chapter 24.

Janet's arrow was so fast it just swept Willie's arrow because...

...it has a red fletching. And red wunz go fasta!

• Three times faster, to be precise.

Janet is one of the Green Arrow's daughter or granddaughter.

The red fletching is just to throw people off.

Janet, like Annie, is descended from an elemental.

Bud says that Janet's dad would go crazy if he knew about her and Winsbury. Maybe Llanwellyn is just a typical overprotective father, but the way Tom dropped in that detail makes it seem like a clue to me. If Janet is descended from an elemental, then motherhood would presumably be fatal to her, just as it was to Surma. What's the only foolproof way to keep a young woman from becoming a mother? Keep her away from anyone who could theoretically get her pregnant.

• Is motherhood fatal to all elementals? I got the impression Surma was a special case.

Winsbury used to be a female forest creature

From another website:

"Willie Winsbury from Gunnerkrigg Court was a female badger or racoon who took "the test" and became a human child.

Evidence:

1. His appearance is more cartoony/exaggerated than other human background characters. His hair goes straight up and he kind of looks like a badger.

2. Early in the comic he has a kind of prickly personality and lashes out for no reason— just like a forest creature disturbed in its lair! — but eventually he mellows out as the human side of his personality predominates.

3. We never hear about his family or background, even though we do hear about the families of other minor characters

4. In the chapter where they all sneak out at night, Janet reminds Willie to sing the boys' part of a song, and he responds "sometimes I forget [that I am no longer a female forest creature]" (note if he strongly identified as female he would be less likely to "sometimes forget" what gender he is; probably he does not care just like the jackalope Annie meets in later chapters)

5. Janet's father would go crazy if he found out that his daughter (/possible future hereditary headmistress?) were seriously dating a forest creature, because of the uneasy court/forest diplomatic situation, explaining why Janet and Willie hide their relationship."

Also, Willie Winsbury is a pretty ridiculous name, so might not have been picked out normally by human parents, and also ties in with the possibility his relationship with Janet is forbidden by her father.

Diego and Jeanne

Diego and his creations

Diego's last name is Donlan.

Hence the "DD" sign. The lab by the canals used to be his — Anja had access to it because she was dating Donald. And Donald got his near-sightedness from Diego's side of the family.

• Plus, since Tom seems to believe that Lamarck Was Right, it would explain why Kat is so good with technology.
• Additionally, in keeping with Generation Xerox tendencies, Kat has been made fun of for having a "big nose". Sound Diego-esque to you?
• Actually, if this were true, it could have a crushing effect on Kat's morale, given her recent disenchantment with the court and growing cynicism. Heroic BSoD, anyone?
• OH MY GOD. THIS IS TRUE, I'M CONVINCED.
• I love this theory, but Diego considered his robots his children, and they were the only ones at his deathbed. This combined with his grief over Jeanne makes me think he never had flesh-and-blood children. If he had siblings, it's still possible that he is, say, Kat's great-great-great-great etc. uncle or something.
• Though all things considered, Diego was an old man in the final part of the recording, so logically, he could have married and/or had children during the elapsed time. Chances would just be that it wasn't out of love is all.

Diego's robots were built to re-enact the founding of Gunnerkrigg Court.

That way, anyone who reunites the CPUs with their original robots (probably requiring the release of Jeanne's soul (Annie), Diego-level knowledge of the robots (Kat) and the passing of a number of Secret Tests of Character) can "fix" or replace anything that requires a "reboot" of the Court. For example, Ysengrin (or his predecessor) rendering the Court unusable when the Gillitie Wood inevitably overflows it (Gunnerkrigg Court being founded before Coyote made the chasm) or counterattacks the humans infringing the Wood's territory.

The grand archway in Diego's arena conceals more than just the shrine to Jeanne

It is very big, was entirely blocked with mortar (or whatever) and Seraph 1 only cut open a big enough gap to reveal the tunnel to the shrine. Diego has probably walled away more guilty secrets, or perhaps, devices to strike back at those that he ascribed responsibility for his actions to.

Diego thought that they'd bring Jeanne's body back up from the shores of the Annan Waters.

Her soul would be left trapped on the shore, and he'd have a pretty soulless doll who'd never be able to deny his love again all to himself. "She died and we did nothing" wasn't him deluding himself into believing he had nothing to do with what happened, and wasn't even really about Jeanne as the person she really was, who loathed him and loved another; it's just about her body, which Young and the others refused to let him "rescue", because even if they're willing to do some nasty things to preserve the Court, they wouldn't just stand back and allow him to rape her shell.

Diego's 'bots are powered by actual hearts.

Hear me out here. In the blueprints, their power source is marked by a heart symbol. Knowing about the natural/magical vs. artificial/technological conflict that's gone on throughout the story, and Diego's willingness to cross the Moral Event Horizon, it really wouldn't surprise me if Diego had used actual hearts — possibly harvested from creatures of the forest — to power his machines.Hell, just look at the current chapter and its title. Kat talks about the "power source" being linked to the brain, limbs, etcetera. The chapter is called "Give and Take." What does a heart do, exactly, hmm?

• Jossed, the robots' hearts, while anatomically correct, are mechanical.

Boxbot represents Diego, not S1.

Diego built Boxbot after Jeanne's death, and the reason why he made it so terrible, is because of his guilt.

Diego is Kat's ancestor.

The way the robots react to her... on the other hand... Hair colours match too.

• This would make far too much sense. ...I support you entirely on this.

The statement "She died, and I did nothing," does not have the same meaning as the majority of us have assumed.

Well, the robots probably do mean the assumed "We did nothing to stop her from being killed," but the statement did not hold the same meaning for Diego. Instead, he was saying "She died, and I had nothing to do with it." Basically, he is denying any involvement he had in orchestrating her death.

• Another interpretation: She died, and they did nothing to avenge her. "We did nothing to stop her being killed" should really be "She was going to die, and we did nothing." The actual phrasing, to me, indicates a lack of response, rather than a lack of preventative action.
• Third option! She died, and he knew (or had a theory) how to release her soul, but did nothing. And if Kat hadn't just fast-forwarded through his final record he would have revealed what that way was. Related guess; the blueprints on his bedside table were for a device to free her, and if he hadn't died mid-sentence his final words were going to be something along the lines of 'My children, find someone to build this and set her free.'

Jeanne

Jeanne IS Gunnerkrigg Court.

More precisely, her corpse is the Bismuth Seed that the Court grew out of, like what happened to the Thousand Eye bird that saved Annie from dying in the Annan Waters. "She died and we did nothing." And what are they doing here? Jeanne's ghost can't cross over the river to Gillitie Wood because Coyote created a divide that stopped the Court from overtaking the forest (she is literally part of the Court and is subject to its limitations). This also explains why Diego created a robot in his image and a robot in Sir Young's, but despite how much he loved her, there is no Jeannebot. She's all around them. She doesn't need a robot.

To make it extra sentimental/creepy/whatever, the place where her body would be if it was still in human form is where her memorial is.

• Mostly Jossed. Jeanne is alive after the founding of Gunnerkrigg Court, and after the divide.
• And she DID cross over the river - that's how Annie got that cut on her etheric face.

Jeanne was kept from outright rejecting Diego by the Court.

It's obvious that Jeanne doesn't feel for Diego what he does for her. Since Dego's defining character trait is his obsessive love for her, the Court could have seen this as a problem, as Diego's robotics made him a huge asset. If Jeanne rejected him, then Diego could have lost heart and possibly left the Court altogether. Not being able to let this happen, the Court silently ordered Jeanne not to reject, if only to keep him happy. They were nice enough to let her decide what else she could do about him. She chose to be indifferent.

• Jossed to the Jossiest Josses of Jossland. Any civility between Jeanne and Diego is now lying next to Penny.

Once the Jeanne log is over, Annie will assume she knows enough to sucessfully get her to the other side.

Due to something about the Kudzu Plot she overlooked, she will either fail horribly, or succeed just to make the situation worse.

• Jossed for now. While it depressed her for a while, Annie shows no signs of doing such a thing. However, we might want to keep an eye on Kat...
• Getting Jean to the ether IS an overarching goal for Annie now, but it seems to still be a ways away from happening.

Some factor drove Jeanne's ghost away from Annie that is connected to either Kat or the court.

Jeanne abandoned her assault on Annie the moment Kat entered the scene. Something about Kat (maybe the connection to court technology or the fact she was using very advanced technology) drove the ghost off before she could do lasting damage to Annies etheric form. The question is... what? Was it something unique to Kat, a Gamma-style nullification power? Or was it the technology? Or did Jeanne just change her mind. Has Jeanne already achieved her objective in whatever that scratch was?

• Or maybe, tying in with the Diego and Kat theories (ancestor, reincarnation, whatever), she reminded her too much of the man she hated in life so that Kat herself acts as a sort of Jeanne-repellent. She doesn't want anything to do with the creepy stalker who killed the guy she loved, and might even be afraid of Kat for some reason (Zimmy was, why not her?).

Jeanne is an alternate universe Joan Of Arc

She's a woman more comfortable with a sword than finery. Reynardine knew that she was clearly a soldier. Plus Jeanne, Joan; it's fairly obvious!

• In fact, Joan of Arc is an English translation of the French Jeanne D'Arc.

Jeanne wasn't angry with Antimony, she was angry at Parley

Jeanne said "you come here to mock me with your shining heart". Look at the the chests of the two girls: only Parley's chest is truly glowing. Parley, being in love, offended Jeanne beyond measure. Had Parley not touched Antimony, we'd have seen a much different interaction between Antimony and Jeanne.

• I don't think so somehow. Jeanne's reaction to Annie the first time was to almost kill her: Word of God says that she was lucky to get away with only a spiritual scratch. If Annie had been left to fend for herself, I think we'd be down one main character.
• Confirmed. Jeanne was pissed not because Parley was in love, but that she was too chicken to tell Smitty (the chapter's called "The Coward Heart" after all). All Parley would've had to deal with was embarrassment if she was rejected while Jeanne had to watch her lover get killed and her spirit trapped as a sentinel.
• Jeanne seems to have a similar attitude to Sasuke: "Your carefree ignorance is a mockery of the pain and suffering of me and my loved one(s) endured so I will destroy you!"

Jeanne's choker is significant

In particular, it might mean Jeanne was under the same spell Annie is under now.

• You mean the binding? Hmm... that might also be where Ysengrin had seen it before. Then again, Coyote's bindings are black with a strip of red - Jeanne's is just RED.
• My theories: Jeanne's choker is—
  • Just a choker (it just happens to be her favorite one, or a present from elf-guy) or—
  • A sign she's being punished (when we see her in Diego's recording it seems that she's under house arrest).

Jeanne is Kat's ancestor...

Again, the way the robots react to her.

Jeanne's lover was one of the Anwyn.

Annie might not have put two and two together, but given that he certainly could be called a tree elf, it's definitely possible...

• The Court guys referred to Jeanne's lover as a "traitor" so he was probably a human who became an elf. Then again it's possible that they regarded a forest-dweller who chose to be with a human to be just as bad as a human who chose to go to the forest (wrong on the first part per word of god, unknown about the second).

The blinker stone belonged to Jeanne.

Both Muut and Mort thought the ghost isn't supposed to cross Annan Waters, yet here she is. We know the stone provides not just a projection, but some sort of spirit travel, so if she was an owner, she could retain some access and use it to cross the river. Also, it was a main reason of her interest in Annie—just because she's the stone's new owner. After all, Muut set it up specifically to resolve Jeanne's issue, so it may be it's not just a necessary power-up, but also a direct connection that was supposed to put Annie in contact with the ghost in question sooner or later (presumably in other circumstances).

• This actually might have something to it. Recall also that when Jeanne was holding the Blinker Stone, Annie couldn't call it back. It was only after it was separated from her that Annie was able to get it back into her possession. Of course, that leaves the question of what happens now that the stone's been destroyed...

Jeanne was the first medium.

But she didn't understand the significance of her role. She served as a sacrifice of the Anaan Waters, which is between the Court and the Forest. This sacrifice was so that the Court could demonstrate their truce with the Forest.

Diego and Steadman punished Jeanne because she wanted to be Just Friends

• Jeanne and Diego: Diego was in love with her and made her robots, which he saw as his children. Jeanne was not in love with him and in a moment of anger destroyed his children; for revenge Diego destroyed her and her elfin boyfriend.
• Jeanne and Steadman: Word of god said the two "dated back in the day". How would you feel if your ex-girlfriend made you deliver all her secret love letters to her new/current boyfriend? Angry enough to shoot him, maybe?

Jeanne was the inspiration for SCP-1984.

Jeanne and Sgt. Chernikov were both murdered by their superiors (the Court and the USSR, respectively) to become sentinels who would kill their enemies without hesitation; years later they don't appear to know their purposes are obsolete, which presents a problem — how do you kill a very angry ghost with a literal hair-trigger temper? — which has to be dealt with by an outside group (Annie and the SCP Foundation, respectively)

• Differences: The USSR tried to "create" a ghost by making a group of psychics imagine a person but those were too unpredictable (plus they learned things from the psychics which probably didn't help). Unlike Jeanne, the Sargent who became the sentinel was already a psychopath.

Jeanne will possess Jones

Because in a story known in part for its horrifying Eldritch Abominations, nothing has yet to compare to a wrathful, hate-filled spirit that can kill anything, in the body of a being that was present inside the formation of the earth and could probably beat Superman in a contest of raw physical strength, and cannot be harmed by any known means.

Ghost-Jeanne and Fire-Annie are the same type of being

Not elemental-halves or ghosts but the Anthropomorphic Personifications of strong emotions, in this case probably "Fury" — Jeanne's fury at the Court for murdering herself and her boyfriend and leaving her to die yet never rest, and Annie's fury at her father's absence and dangerous ignorance and herself for her blind devotion to him (right now "herself" seems to be the main target).

• This stems from how similar they both look — a monochromatic supernatural female humanoid with a neutral expression when not attacking and a scrunched-up Nightmare Face when they get angry — which caused someone in one of the comments to confuse ghost-Jeanne for a half-elemental.

Robots and Friends

Boxbot and Robox

Somebody likes Boxbot.

Shocking as the idea may be, evidence does show that Boxbot has been through several design iterations, and remains in working order, meaning somebody must have been motivated to upgrade and maintain it.

• Word Of Tom tells us that there is more than one Boxbot. Unless "more than one" means "exactly two: Boxbot and Boxbot Prime", it's possible the Boxbots are just repairing each other. Which would explain why they all look so terrible.
  • Kat apparently thinks "Robox is pretty awesome".
    • Well, yeah. Everybody loves Robox.

Boxbot is the Big Bad.

He's only pretending to be incompetent.

• Alternatively, he really is that incompetent; so incompetent that his every attempt to do evil has failed. That's why no one knows he's the Big Bad.

Boxbot is an Old Shame.

Why else is Tom Siddell so needlessly hostile to the robot? Supporting this theory is the simplicity of his design; it looks like the kind of thing he could've drawn as a kid.

Boxbot and Robox will combine to form a miniature Super Robot in a future chapter

Boxbot has only arms, Robox only has legs. Their bodies can easily stack on top of each other's, with Boxbot's wheels serving as a connection mechanism. Boxbot's failure and Robox's awesome will combine like matter and antimatter, creating a new source of power known as Getter Rays.

• "Heaven itself may tolerate your brutality, but WE will NOT!" "My clumsy robotic pinser is burning! It's telling me to defeat you!" "Super brotherly combination... ROBOXBOT!"

Robox was Diego's Author Avatar.

Or at least half of it. He had someone enchant it with a "make people think Robox is pretty awesome" spell so people would at least like the Marty Stu version of him. However, he's better at making Original Characters like Seraph 1 and Life Embellished characters like the Taurobot (not the Minotaur, but the not-Eglamore bot). Boxbot was Diego's "pity me" Author Avatar, but nobody bothered to put a spell on poor Boxbot.

Robot/S1 and Shadow 2

S1 was originally representative as Jeanne, not Diego, and the robots built that show.

S1 might have been used as there was no Diego bot, unless that bot is Boxbot. That play down below was setup by the robots after Diego's death when the original line began to realize they too were passing on. The following generations were, like the humans, unable to pass on all the knowledge of what happened. So as the original line began failing they setup that scene in hopes someone will find it. That someone will rediscover this knowledge. The Seraph, the Jeanne line, was given the greatest glory of being the activator/key to activating the play. This would all reveal mostly Jeanne. The small painting of Diego was left in there as well leaving a way for a person or robot to research what happened. However, the robots being "children" and deeply in love with Jeanne due to Diego's programming didn't get the story 100% right. It is a mixture of what happened, what Diego insisted happened in denial and the robots' inability to understand what happened.

Shadow 2 is the offspring of the Shadows who entered the Court during 'Ties'.

We still don't know how he ended up there, but it's possible that he was born to the Shadows and abandoned, or that he got lost in the Court and never rejoined the others.

Robot has a scheme in mind involving Kat, possibly involving making the robots view her as a goddess or ruler, or possibly a messiah figure or the reincarnation of Diego.

He started by spreading the 'angel' title around the robot community. Then he convinced Sky Watcher, who convinced King Robot to go to Kat for help. Now he's preaching that she's got the power of life and death to the other robots. This can't end well.

• Robot is sincere: Robot truly believes Kat is the robo-messiah and will have a huge crisis of faith when she inevitably fails him. Genius aside, she's still a teenager and teens make mistakes.
  • Actually, it seems to me that Kat, like it or not, may have that role very, very soon. Just look at how she appears to Zimmy and try to explain it any other way. I'm actually kind of worried about what would happen if Robot saw her like that.
    • Consider Coyote's theory on how human manipulate the ether to make thing they believe in real and the fact that this may apply to all sentient beings including robots. It's very possible that because most court robots view her as an angel/goddess she is actually becoming one.
• Robot is a manipulative bastard or being manipulated himself: His increasingly creepy behavior isn't kosher and he's either using the robots' gullibility to stage an uprising or he's being influenced by, for instance, the Zimmingham spiders.
  • Robot has shown some creepy behaviour, yes, but if anything, it emphasizes how sincere he is in his belief in Kat; he is so enthralled with her that he feels the need to follow her everywhere and protect her from everything he perceives as harmful. All this indicates that he's seriously taking her for an angel/liberator, and has great, possibly unrealistic expectations for her in the future.

There could be a three-way battle between the Woods, the Court humans, and the Court robots

If Robot's view of Kat as a robo-messiah goes too far, he could influence the other robots to include "killing mankind" as part of their pleasurable physical activities.

That extra component on Robot's CPU with the lead/Court symbol

• It's an experiment gone awry:
  • V.1: It was one of many "aberrant personalities" implanted into random robots to test the robots'/Seraphs' ability to guard against inappropriate behavior. We've already seen that it's Court policy to put the robots in their place as "appliances" if they start being too affectionate towards students (mainly female students, apparently — possibly a leftover of Diego's obsession with Jeanne), so it's understandable that any other unusual behavior wouldn't have been tolerated, least of all worshiping a student. S13 was caught and dismantled but luckily for him he was found by Annie.
  • V.2: Robot was deliberately implanted with religious feelings to see if a Robot Religion could happen (probably not, at least if Annie hadn't rescued Robot). Kat inventing Organic Technology that could turn the robots into a full-fledged, flesh-and-blood intelligent species that could influence the aether and turn her into a god wasn't planned.
    • V.2.1: Robots being able to influence the aether and turn their object(s) of worship into divine beings was planned and someone is playing a long con in the Court's pursuit of (in Coyote's words) becoming gods.
• Also from Something Awful:
  MikeJF: I suspect the extra bit on robotic CPUs are basically a very efficient, small version of part of Diego's heart, some essential driving component of them to allow the symbolic ethetic instructions stored in the CPU to work. I mean, we know that the robot computational code is literally the same symbols as on Diego's hearts.

Other Theories

The Gunnerkrigg Universe and other concepts

Gunnerkrigg Court shares a universe with Ava's Demon

Gunnerkrigg court is TITAN's Paradise. First off, it is established in both comics that magic and technology exist. Second, Ava's Demon is shown to be galaxy wide and that there are planets that are completely dedicated to education. Does that sound like anyplace we know of? Also, limbo in Ava's Demon looks an awful lot like the Ether

The Singularity concept will emerge as and maybe become a main theme of Gunnerkrigg

Right now it is still in the accidental, minor or very subtle foreshadowing gray area, but look at how much of the story is focused on two opposing worlds with a few people acting as mediums who can remain unbaised. Unbiased is usually defined as being untouched by either side of an argument. But note how each side is, well, so full of jerks and jack asses. Take the two most recent arcs as of writing this. Skywatcher and the Angel which setup an evil court allowing for a big opening for the great and nice Forest, only look what Coyote does? A great many reminders about how he is not good, but chaotic neutral at best, whose actions caused great strife and a cold war for the "lolz".

At this point look at how many singularity like beings and events exist. Reynard when possessing the doll takes a robotic angelic cyborg wolf look, and frequently displays cyborg/robotic appearances in this body. Ysengrin went the other way, instead of becoming "one" with tech, but the woods and nature. The Bird With a Thousand Eyes, mistaken for a living creature at first, then revealed to be robotic, but then shown it's remains can "grow" like living thing. Robot is becoming more human in personality as Kat works on perfecting his Android body. The whole test concept of forest creatures becoming humans, or pretending to be in Marcia's case, and humans becoming forest creatures.

The absolute divide of the river isn't. The whole story is about the falling angel meeting the rising ape and having a three way with a robot.

All the characters are either aspects, representatives, avatars, etc. either nature or technology.

This idea is long and kind of crazy, so bear with me. It also incorporates a bunch of ideas from this page and a lot of chemical/alchemical symbolism. The Court, we have been repeatedly told was grown from the Bismuth Seed. As it has been said before, bismuth is a chemical element. But I will go further and put everything into chemical symbolism: The Gillite Woods, etc., being natural and organic, can be represented by either carbon or oxygen, both non-metals. "Straight" humanity's symbol/ability seems to be technology, symbolically represented by transition metals, such as iron: Diego's robots, Jeanne's sword, Steadman's arrowheads, Kat's inventions.

Eglamore is a special case: his 'dragon slayer' armor (which coincidentally, is more like dragon RIDER armor, considering his friendship/partnership with the closest thing to a dragon we've seen) bears the alchemical symbol for lead8, is both the material humans use for modern weapons (bullets are made out of it), and in addition to being toxic to living things, it is also used to shield from as well as the result of nuclear radiation. He also posses a glowing sword, the only real example of Power Glows in the technological Court, reinforcing his connection to nuclear power. (To me, this symbolizes both his role as the Court's counter to the Wood's, and specifically Coyote's, power, and the source of his power, (another WMG, see below).)

Jones, as has been previously guessed on this page, is linked to the Court itself, and thus to Bismuth. Since she is one with the court, this explains why Eglamore thinks/knows he will lose if they fight "indoors". (Or he may just be faster/more agile than she is, given her weight, and so would benefit from the natural obstacles, much like his also specifies "at close range") This also explains/reflects her close relationship with Eglamore, as lead and bismuth are right next to each other on a periodic table. Bismuth is a transition metal, and so is her purpose, and that of the Court: to commune, negotiate, and transition between the "metallic" humans, and the "organic" woods.

Antimony is another transition metal, and as a medium, that is Annie's role. Also, she is mentored by "Bismuth" Jones, which is in the same period as antimony, one row down.

The Gunnerverse is the present day of the Girl Genius 'verse.

Word Of Tom says that the story takes place in "a current year", and that Britain's queen is not Elizabeth II, but a fictional queen. This could easily be Her Undying Majesty, Queen Albia. Presumably, schools like Gunnerkrigg helped unusual children channel their talents for constructive purposes, preventing the destructive infighting that had ravaged Europa from taking root in the British Isles. This, and Britain's independence from the Wulfenbach Empire, allowed the U.K. to evolve into a society nearly identical to ours.

The name "Gunnerkrigg" already exists in the Girl Genius 'verse: it's the name of a guesthouse in Mechanicsburg. Either the school in Britain and the inn in Mechanicsburg are both named after some third source (probably Scandinavian), or the Mechanicsburg innkeepers fled the city (possibly during the turmoil that's arisen since Agatha returned). Seeking to start a new Court as far from Sparks and Technology as possible, they settled in a magic forest in northern England.

And Kat is obviously a Spark.

• Kat and Annie are the long-distant descendants of Tavrek and Agatha, respectively. Just look at this (symbolism-laden) page. On the same side as Kat is: a radio tower and a rocket, something that looks a lot like the Aaronev sword-and-gear heraldry, the symbols for mercury and bismuth (symbolizing Tavrek's unpredictable allignment), and she's also dressed almost as a Bifauxnen. Annie mainly just looks a lot like Agatha.
  • Thus essentially making her Antimony Heterodyne? On a semi-unrelated note, however, this troper would love to see a Fan Fic wherein Jaegermonsters show up at the Court, claim Annie as the long-lost Heterodyne heir and try to get her to make the Court the new Castle Heterodyne. Hilarity would ensue, as it so often does when Jaegers are involved.
    • But Kat is way more sparky than Antimony...
• The Minotaur under the library is obviously a construct. He may or may not be as old as he claims.
• Jones and Higgs could well be either related or otherwise sharing a common origin. Think about it. Jones; unflappable, superhuman abilities, mysterious, breaks walls, blonde. Higgs; unflappable, superhuman abilities, mysterious, breaks walls, blond.

Sonic The Hedgehog is also in the Gunnerverse.

Tom Siddell is himself a student at the Court. (See page 296 and the picture of Tea (white-haired girl) on the Art page.) Tom Siddell beat up Sonic the Hedgehog once.

This ties in nicely with the aforementioned Girl Genius crossover theory, as WMG has proven that Sonic is also the future of the GG-verse.

Ditto Platinum Grit. This is a big 'verse.

Science! Magic! Mysterious spirits! Even more mysterious family backstories (complete with photos of the last generation looking a lot like this generation)! A castle that's as damn well big as the plot damn well needs! A suspicious lack of clearcut villains in the recurring cast!

Basil the Minotaur is the Minotaur from House of Leaves

In both stories, the Minotaur is a misunderstood son of Minos who is victimized by Jerk Jock Theseus. This also cements the "Johnny is nuts" theory, since the Minotaur is clearly a nice guy (a "homie", in his words).

Gunnerkrigg Court takes place in the Hellboy universe

The author has said Hellboy is one of his influences. Eglamore's office is very Mignola-esque, and Mort has obviously seen a few of the in-universe Hellboy comics.

• More on that...

The cloaked, bearded figure in panel 1 is Rasputin.

I have absolutely no evidence, other than this would be really, really cool. Maybe the Court is linked to the Ogdru Jahad somehow?

The Court is a bardo, and the inhabitants are geniuses.

The robots are wonders and the inhabitants of the woods are manes.

Gunnerkrigg takes place in the same world as JoJo.

Annie is a developing Stand user and somehow related to the Joestars. Jones is a Pillar (Wo)Man who achieved "Ultimate Lifeform" status (which is why she can be in daylight), except she's not evil like Cars. Ether is just a different way of saying "the Ripple". The Blinker Stones are related to the Red Stone of Asia. Eglamore and the previous Dragonslayers are Ripple Warriors.

• Plus, there's a lot of beings with etheric selves, or Stands. Except that there's no Bow and Arrow, they just have these selves by existing, and only those who have access to the Ether can see them in the same way Stand users can see other people's Stands, but normal people can't see them.

Hair correlates to etheric power in some way.

Bear with me. When Annie uses the blinker stone, we can often see her hair swirling around. Note that before she starts the blinker stone, her hair is straight, but after, it has a slight curve at the base. Her mother's hair is a freaking bush. Mrs. Donlan's is calmer but very swirly. Kat gets similar swirls, and while she doesn't seem to be etherically sensitive she might be repressing it due to her science-only biases. Parley had a swirl at the tip of her ponytail (not in the current chapter, however) and Andrew has what appears to be lively, possible curly hair. Jack had straight, spiked hair until his excursion in Zimmingham, where he gained curls around his face. Zimmy's hair is perpetually tangled, and when you see the transformation from Annie to Zimmy you see that Annie's hair starts curling more. On the other hand, Gamma, who is an etheric sink of sorts, has perfectly straight hair, and Jones, who cannot use a blinker stone, has very straight hair as well.

Machinarium takes place within the Court

It's in some distant, forgotten corner of the robots-only area where pollution is so bad that it's deemed unsafe for human habitation, and it has slowly been forgotten by the human inhabitants of the Court, even as its robot inhabitants have forgotten the existence of humans.

About the sigils.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who didn't notice that the sigils used in the "sky messages" can be seen as a very abstract way of representing certain messages and ideas. Cubish tripod shapes that vaguely look like computer monitors, flowing lines that resemble giant bird-ish shapes... ect.

The figures look like two computers with feet standing next to a vague winged figure. From a distance, it also looks like a face with monitors serving as eyes and the shape at the middle being a nose and mouth. Possible rough translation: "Will you let us speak?"

This figure in the last panel looks like a bird with outstretched wings. Possible rough translation: "You can enter."

This page shows the same sigils, but sent up in the opposite order. This means that the sigils being used change meaning based on when they are sent. Specifically: these mean "can a representative come" and "a representative can come".

On this page, the shape looks a lot like Khepi and her hair. It could mean something like "Tree-mother" or "Protector Matron". The hair looks like it is curling around a dot, which could represent one of her children. In this case, the sigil could mean something like "Protector Matron welcomes you" or "Protector Matron will house you". The flowing symbol on the blue banner with the dot on the end looks a bit like the one used when we see Khelpi. Considering the streamers, I wouldn't be surprised if it the flowing with the dot did mean "welcome".

• An easier solution: it's their sign and Antimony enters their territory.

Everyone is playing a pre-destined role in a larger chain of events and these roles have existed since the beginning of the court.

Basically what I'm saying is this: each generation that has lived at the court has had some sort of role to play. It starts with Steadman the Archer, Sir Young the first Dragon Slayer, Diego the robotics guy and Jeanne who I think was the first medium (she lived at court, but communed *ahem* with the forest as well). Fast forward to the current time of the story. Either Llanwellyn or Winsbury are the Archer(s), Eglamore is the Dragon Slayer, Kat is the robotics whiz and Annie is the prominent medium who communes with the forest.

Like Diego, Kat has a very close personal relationship and devotion to the medium, Annie. Their friendship is mutual, but what if things are headed in the same direction as before? Annie will become increasingly sympathetic for the forest (perhaps take a lover there?) and turn away from Kat who will become distraught and angry. Perhaps the ghost at Annan will be released; Annie is attempting to figure her out and that could lead to releasing her from the waters. Without a ghost, whatever seal was made so long ago would likely expire. They would need a new seal. Maybe where things are headed is that Annie and Kat must make very difficult choices about where they stand. Maybe they will find themselves in the same situation as Diego and Jeanne where Kat might be placed have to consider killing the person she loves the most (but who has spurned her) for the good of the Court. Maybe the crux of this narrative will be that these people are faced with the same choices, but hopefully don't make the same mistakes.

• Gunnerkrigg Court appears to be home to a long series of recurring roles, and Eglamore is clearly the Dragon Slayer from the kids' parents' generation. We know that by the time he was Kat and Annie's age, he'd been singled out for the role; perhaps we should be looking for Eglamore's successor.
  • Oooh! What if Parley was Eglamore's successor? She's got the skills, and I doubt she'd turn down being a Dragon Slayer!

The Court, the Woods and double-crossing.

The Court and the woods represent Order and Chaos respectively. The two sides are engaged in an eternal conflict behind the scenes, with both sides wishing to have a leg up on the other. The purpose of the mediums is as diplomats to prevent this conflict from turning into a full-scale war. The three current mediums represent different facets of the war; Smitty is Order, Parley is Chaos, and Annie is a mix of both. The conflict is dying down, but there are elements on both sides that want it to flare up again. Ysengrin is obviously one of these people, although there may be others.

There are traitors in the ranks of both sides. Reynardine was originally on the side of Chaos, but Surma managed to get him captured as a prisoner of war. He then swapped sides under Annie's control. Zimmy is a being of Chaos, but is not interested in the war; Gamma is Order, and is there to stop Zimmy from destroying reality. Jeanne and the Elf were tired of the war when it was at its strongest. The last traitor... is Anthony Carver.

Carver was originally on the side of Order as a Gunnerkrigg student. However, he later swapped to Chaos without telling anybody. This is why he's so distant, and also why his Microsat 5 appears to be killing Annie. Annie is the key to ending the war, being in between the two sides. Anthony wants it to go all-out, so he needs to take out the biggest tool Order has.

The Court was/is/will become Laputa from Castle in the Sky.

This explains several things about the Court:

• The Seed of Bismuth is not bismuth but aetherium, probably the giant aetherium crystal keeping Laputa afloat. I can definitely see aetherium growing a city, especially such an indestructable one.
• All the advanced technology works the same way.
  • In particular, the robots from both verses have a large number of mechanical working parts inside them, but they're made of some superstrong metal or ceramic and have no visible power source. Diego's golem code even looks like the Laputan geometric pattern designs!
  • And this even more so.
• The Court is apparently "man's effort to become God", and guess what? Laputa sent down the fire of heaven that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament and was referred to as Indra's Arrow in the Ramayana, and the Laputans were worshipped as gods by the ground-dwellers!

Miscellaneous

The cherry tree will become very relevant in a future arc.

If Robot's tree-arm was removed after hardly more than a year, if that, the cherry tree (as big as it is) is likely to have required much more purification and observation before the staff could be sure that it was safe to move to the park. My specific guess? The fruit contains a weak Elixer of Truth, and anyone who doesn't know about, notice, or try to resist the effect starts saying what they feel needs to be kept within, and the tree will intentionally never be purified so that the effect (be it this or something else) can be made use of.

• Sort of confirmed in "Divine"- the tree is powerful because of the memories it evokes in Annie.

Humans can become animals, ex-human animals can become aetheric beings, aetheric beings can become gods

A quick one before Friday proves me wrong: The reason Coyote and Reynard love humans and why Ysengrin is so angry is because they all used to be human. Say a guy loves Native American myths, especially Coyote. He travels to the US equivalent of Gilitie Woods and passes the test to become a coyote, and his antics and knowledge of Coyote's lore later give him a promotion to The Coyote (possibly earning or stealing it from the previous Coyote). The difference between Coyote and Ysengrin & Reynardine is that while they got the promotion to aetheric beings they aren't nearly as powerful as gods so when they wanted to appear humanoid again they had to borrow (Ys) or steal (Rey) bodies, which didn't go too well: Rey can't Body Surf as well as Coyote and murdered a guy to get close to Surma; Ys is so reliant on his prosthetic body his real one is wasting away.

• This ties into the Court's experiments: they're trying to "become like god(s)" without giving up their humanity. All we've seen of that is Jeanne and Zimmy.
• Aaaand... Nope! At least not for Coyote, he's something (actually nothing) else.

---