Gunnerkrigg Court

She'd probably reply "something that don't exist."

Edited by sgamer82 on Feb 5th 2020 at 2:19:39 AM

That's literally what she said on Monday.

But yeah, that's just semantics. Yes, there is a whole dimension out there with its own natural laws and beings. As people would gain more understanding of it they would start naming things in it. Phenomena that do things typically attributed to magic may as well keep their old names. Or they may get new ones (etheric science of the Court), it doesn't exactly matter what the name is.

Like, the whole discussion started from Annie saying that Kat could previously accept the unseen as something that exists beyond her (i.e. what Zimmy seems to be suggesting is proper procedure here), but now she is getting obsessed with figuring it out instead. But instead of addressing the meaningful point she kinda went off to rant about the dictionary used.

the semantics are kinda important here because the world "magic" implies powers beyond human comprehension and trying to understand the rules is an exercise in futility

kat's whole shtick is doing science to understand stuff

Not necessarily, in a story like this. Magic A Is Magic A and all.

that's more of a device for the audience to keep us sane than for the characters in a story itself

we've known that if an apple falls from a tree, it will fall and hit the ground eventually. it took an obsessive nerd named isaac newton to mathematically define and break down the full interaction, and then he died of mercury poisoning because he was trying to obsessively define the immortality.

I disagree. Plenty of stories in modern fantasy heavily feature the characters coming to understand the workings of magic or the equivalent. "Magic is only magic if you don't understand it" is an entirely arbitrary concept.

Like, I'm a biologist by training and inclination, that's the framework I see things through. There's broad overlaps in disciplines but if you start talking quantum or similarly deep physics I'm not gonna get it.

just like a physicist might struggle with the deeper weirdness of biology. There are always multiple ways of viewing the world, something we've been seeing already with the two annies. Even the same person, their conditions changed slightly, have varying views on the same events.

I'm on the Sufficiently Analyzed Magic side of things. I consider Magitek systems and such, while providing interesting opportunities for worldbuilding and integrity of the setting, also removes the sense of wonder from magic. There always should be (is?) a thing in the fantasy world that's beyond human comprehension. It's what fantasy should be about.

Zimantha seems to be suggesting that there are some things that just fundimentaly aren't possible to explain. They may work consistently, or even to rules, but it's not possible to observe why they happen.

2263

One way of reading what she said is that magic is impossible to explain. Another is that once it's explained it's not magic anymore. But I don't think she meant the latter.

I dunno why we had to hear this again from Zimmy. Like, we've been told this over and over again that trying to explain magic is pointless. It works because it works.

Edited by Arha on Feb 7th 2020 at 3:21:27 AM

I’m not sure what the problem with calling it magic is, then?

So like.

does Zimmy have a pair of gaping holes in her face?

Black sclerae and irises?

yikes.

I think it's some sort of weird gunk?

Yeah, it's black gunk. She wipes it off in the rain and we see she has red irises but otherwise normal eyes.

Edited by Elfive on Feb 7th 2020 at 1:11:13 PM

So does she just have her eyes closed constantly?

I was more assuming that it's clogging up her eyes, but she can still see fine?

I dunno, she's weird.

She's Zimmy is what she is.

...She's not still gaslighting Gamma, right?

We have no confirmation either way on that, but I don't really see why she would have stopped.

It's weird magic gunk. It can't be just scrubbed away and only vanishes when her magical weirdness is suppressed by the rain.

Also she still probably is.

Edited by Adannor on Feb 7th 2020 at 9:44:12 PM

It's been a while. How does Zimmy gaslight Gamma?

Zimmy lied to Gamma about how other students thought Gamma was stupid. All to make sure that Gamma wouldn't make other friends.

This is why I don't really like Zimmy.

Edited by M84 on Feb 8th 2020 at 9:19:09 PM

Yeah, Gamma doesn't speak English, so Zimmy "translates" for her over their mental link. And she says that all other students hate her, that they say she's stupid and ugly, etc. Annie dodged that by speaking Polish herself, but didn't follow up in any way on Gamma revealing the gaslighting.

I do wonder if Zimmy legitimatly believes that the other students think poorly of Gamma. Like, Zimmy thinks Gamma is the only good thing in the world and is really defensive of her, so I do wonder if she is predisposed to think Gamma is under appriciated.

Tom explicitly said on his Formspring that Zimmy was "straight up lying" to Gamma about it. She loves Gamma, but she's also a bit possessive.