Discussion WMG / GunnerkriggCourt

Mort the ghost is often implied (by Kat, at least) to have feelings for Annie, who had previously helped the dead boy Martin. It's not made clear what happens after you leave with one of the psychopomps, so it's still plausible for Martin to come back and follow Annie. Since accepting his death, he's achieved peace, explaining Mort's cartoonish appearance and the lighthearted tone the comic takes when he's around (contrasting Martin's tragedy). And well, (cough) their names sound kinda the same.

• Maybe the fact that he had a blinker stone is explained by the circumstances around his death. And the stone was red, just like the fire-lizard's eyes.
  • This one is Jossed. He got it from Muut.
• Jossed by the Word of God, probably.

• The first portion of Chapter 47 shows who Mort was and how he died.

• To the comment above, the Stone was not given to Mort by Muut. Rather, Muut used the excuse of Mort requesting him to pass the Stone to help Antimony keep warm, because the Psychopomps are not allowed to interfere with situations concerning the living.

It's obvious that Mort has a huge crush on Annie, and it seems that he is about her age. (Or was about her age when he was killed.) The boy Reynardine possessed probably had some attachment to Surma, otherwise he wouldn't have chosen him. Annie is very much like her mother, to the point that all the supernatural creatures who don't know of her mother's death think she is her mother.

• Word of God says otherwise.

• The first portion of Chapter 47 shows who Mort was, and how he died.

And it will tell something about Annie's staying in Gillitie Wood that not even Kat knows.

• Jossed. The last tale is told by Janet and Winsbury, and has no relationship to the main story, so far.

Relations between Jeanne, Diego and Sir Young were shown in chapter 25.

I'm basing this mostly on the fact that the monument has the Bismuth symbol on it, and the laser cows don't cut the grass anywhere near it; they are designed not to for fear that they may accidentally damage the seed. This may also be the basis of Ysengrin's scheme; have his seeds grown inside of the Court so that their plants will end up in the park. Then, either the plants themselves will attack the Seed, or he will use them to teleport into the park (he seems to come out of one of the tree when he greets Eglamore and Annie) and attack the Seed himself. Alternatively, he wants to take control of the Seed.

• Jossed.

...Yeah, basically what I said above. Kat made the time-travel machine, because she obviously has INSANE TECHNOLOGY SKILLS.

• Jossed with Chapter 25.

Reynardine posits that the large robot is a "representation of someone involved in [Jeanne's] death." Based on the large robot's muscles, imposing size, and charging style of combat, he strongly resembles Eglamore.

• Bordering on Jossed- Diego was around when the Court was founded; this implied Jeanne was killed when the Court was founded or within a few years. Eglamore is clearly shown as a school-age child at the Court, so he'd need time-travel to do it. Except this is WMG...
• Jossed with Chapter 25.

The robot that appears in front of him during his description is the one fought by Diego's robot in the staged combat.

• Jossed with Chapter 25.

I take back the Eglamore-Killed-Jeanne guess — Eglamore's predecessor, Sir Young, killed Jeanne. Gunnerkrigg Court has shown strong Generation Xerox tendencies, so Eglamore and Sir Young are probably similar (see "Eglamore Killed Jeanne" above). Plus, it explains why the robot cows won't clean up the monument to Sir Young — Diego built the Court's robots, and if he had a grudge against Young, he could program them to let the monument get covered up. And here's the kicker — the enemy robot from the duel is visible next to Sir Young in his first mention.

• Jossed here Diego put Jeanne up to her fate out of spite, and later blamed Sir Young for "forcing" him to do it.
  • Sir Young still supported it and helped with the plan. But yeah, this is mostly Diego's fault.

It has been established that humans can move from the Court to Gillitie Wood and gain new bodies. Compare Ysengrin to Mr. Thorn, seen here in a flashback. They're identical in stature and clothing coloration. Ysengrin's fur pattern resembles Mr. Thorn's beard. Mr. Thorn expresses an attitude that he claims diverges from that of the rest of the Court. This may be why he crossed over to the wood and hates those who leave it. Even the name fits woodland imagery.

• Extremely unlikely. Ysengrin has been Renard's partner/opponent for a very long time (presumably as early as medieval times, as this is where the stories about him originate).
• Reynard and Isegrim are part of French medieval folklore. The story goes that a young king and queen seek out a wise, forest-dwelling sage for advice on how to be good rulers. He tells them the story of how King Noble dealt with the trickster Reynard. The good King Noble fails many times to bring the wily fox under his control until at last he figure out that the best way to beat the trickster is to play to his sense of pride. Reynard is made ambassador to the human world and is strongly implied to be the sage who tells the story. Isegrim was a wolf who was, at one time, friends with Reynard, until Rey played a trick on him that cost too dearly.

This one's coming straight from the forums. If events played out the way it looked like at first glance, Muut's claim that he gave Annie the blinker stone so she could help deal with Jeanne falls flat—she probably wasn't stuck there long enough to freeze to death without it, the stone had nothing to do with Jeanne's attack, and the only aspect of the gift giving which affected her curiosity about the ghost was Muut's comment that Jeanne was out of his reach. Sounds like a bogus excuse, but what if the stone did have an effect? It was stated explicitly by both Muut and Mort that Jeanne should not possibly have been able to cross the river, and we saw here that she can explore with the stone but can be detected by ethereal beings while doing so. So perhaps Annie herself crossed the river to Jeanne, but was snapped back to her real self when Kat arrived. This explains why the scar only appears at certain times—she doesn't have a physical scar at all, but instead her ethereal/astral/whatever self was cut. After all, we've only seen it three times since then—when she was sucked into Zimmy's mind, when she was exploring with the blinker stone again, and when she was with Zimmy in the chapter where Gamma needed to rest. Two out of the three are inside minds rather than physical bodies, and for the third we know that Zimmy tends to make the illusory become real when Gamma isn't there to help.

• The explanation Muut gives may not fall quite so flat- maybe they weren't expecting her to be able to help so quickly, but thought it was a good idea for her to have the stone immediately.
• The thing is, the fairies were able to see Jeanne's ghost when this happened, which would not have happened if it were Annie that moved rather than Jeanne.

That robot did look an awful lot like a Rogat Orjak. Reynardine's "guesses" about the scenario aren't the result of making inferences but because he was there (when he said them, he was trying to impress Annie, or make her think he's smarter than he is which could be useful later, or maybe he was trying to get their sympathy on the side of the monster, i.e., him).

This also explains his disdain for Diego - he doesn't dislike the guy based on the principle of his distant worshipfulness of Jeanne, but because he actually met him.

This could also be why Jeanne took a swipe at Annie - she sensed her connection to Reynardine.

• Without going into time travel or certain human characters being much much older than implied - like by hundreds of years - this is entirely impossible. Sivo was a good friend of Eglamore, pre-possession. When Reynardine leaves a host body, he kills it. And the court was, from all appearances, created hundreds of years ago. There is no way Eglamore could have known Sivo before he was possessed if Reynardine-as-Sivo killed Jeanne. Anyway, it's strongly implied that the beast was supposed to be Sir Young.

• Jossed with Chapter 25.

Like Pygmalion and Galatea, Diego built her and fell in love with her. "She died and we did nothing," because she was just a robot. Muut said that she's beyond the Guides' reach because they don't do Robots.

Jones is to Jeanne what S13 is to S1: an Nth-generation simplified replica.

• Jossed with Chapter 25.

Either she'd already been possessed by the time she came to the Court, or she encountered him in much the same way that Annie did, only without the presence of a dragon-slayer. Either way, the other five of their group didn't realize she was not herself until Reynardine switched hosts, killing her. This explains how Reynardine knew Surma, and also why the Donlans and Eglamore are so uncomfortable with Annie keeping Rey around - they've already lost at least two friends to him, the girl in the photo and Sivo.

• Jossed.

Recent events have perhaps twisted our views of these two enough for this to be possible. She likes tormenting Zimmy for the hell of it.

• Jossed.

Unfortunately, like a wolf-dog or an inbred white tiger, something went wrong in the mixing and she's cursed with a Slasher Smile, Black Eyes of Evil actually Tears of Blood and Red Eyes, Take Warning and some sort of reality Glamour Failure.

Her being at least part demon is supported by her pointed teeth and her red eyes.

• Jossed.

This very unnatural arrangement is the reason for the static in her brain, for her red eyes and the black gunk covering them, and for her never needing to sleep. Also, owing to her dual nature, Zimmy has one foot in the Etherium and one foot in the physical world. So when she sees "things that ain't supposed to be there", she isn't hallucinating, but seeing real Ethereal beings — and some of these try to use her as a bridge to enter the physical world.

And Reynardine called Zimmy a demon when he first met her.

• Though Zimmy may be a demon, the idea of it possessing a recently deceased body seems unlikely. Word of God says that Reynardine can possess dead bodies (hey, they have eyes too!) but he wouldn't be able to keep the body from decomposing, meaning it would cease to be useful in a matter of weeks. The same would presumably be true of a demon possessing a human.

• Jossed.

Both her parents have magic powers, so Kat would presumably have some proficiency with magic herself. And Kat was insistent that the protein crystal formation — not the antigravity itself — was the subject of her science fair entry.

• And they're both purple!
• Most likely Jossed by the Chapter 18: Kat is utterly shocked by the very conception of Magitek, so she couldn't have designed such a device. At least not intentionally.

• Reynardine didn't shapeshift while possessing Sivo either because he didn't know how, or because, by the time Antimony saw him, he had no chance of escaping quietly, so his best hope was to attract as much attention as possible.
• Jossed.

Again, dualism: the Annie/Kat duo and Zimmy/Gamma duo are group foils and/or counterparts. Annie and Kat have been supporting each other in their different ways about equally. Since Gamma is helping Zimmy deal with her Power Incontinence, Zimmy must be supporting Gamma in some equally important way.

• It may not be mystical, but Gamma cannot speak English (and thus speak with almost anyone in the Court) but can telepathically speak with Zimmy. I'd go so far as to say this is less a guess and more "true".
• Confirmed recently, with the caveat that Zimmy isn't exactly a reliable translator.
• Birmingham has a large Polish community. The only reason that Gamma is dependent on Zimmy for translations is because she left Birmingham to attend Gunnerkrigg with Zimmy. So as far as we know, if the two girls had never met, Gamma would be just fine, but Zimmy would be even worse off than she currently is. The gist of this guess is that some aspect of Gamma's life was (in some as-yet-unseen way) screwed up prior to her meeting Zimmy, and she is better-off for having met Zimmy.
  • Gamma may have been abused or abandoned before Zimmy found her. Apparently her family did not object to her wandering around Birmingham with a demonic truant girl, or being spirited off to the Court. And Zimmy was only convinced to go to Gunnerkrigg when their recruiters told her that Gamma would be safe there. Gamma's very nature keeps her safe from Zimmy's visions, so Zimmy must have been concerned with protecting Gamma from something else in Birmingham, when she consented to enrolling in the Court school.
• Sorta Jossed: Tom said via his Formspring account that Gamma only stays because Zimmy needs her, and that she's free to walk away if she ever wanted to.

That girl, now grown up, has a child (about Annie and Kat's age) and they're both hiding from evil forces. Anthony is looking for both of them because it is important that the child attend Gunnerkrigg and meet Annie and Kat (thus filling in the only missing piece of the Generation Xerox at work). This is why Anthony completely dropped off the radar: it was the only way to find Girl #3 without giving away her location to those who would harm her.

• Alternatively, Anthony had expected to find her and return before anyone noticed he was gone, but he was intercepted and captured.
• Jossed.

Similar to "Jones is a normal human", it's been shown that people who are likely to be good mediums in Gunnerverse have unique (as in different for everyone) supernatural powers of some type; Annie's supernatural magnetism, Smitty's order-inducing powers, probably Zimmy/Gamma's thing, Parley's hoped-for psychic powers, etc. Jones had the misfortune of a power very, very unsuited to being a mediator (in fact I imagine it being almost useless in most diplomatic negotiations, assuming the Fangs of Summertime arc was an exception). She made up for this by working very hard at every aspect that was under her control, making herself as perfect a medium as she could. The neutrality, the knowledge, the secrecy—all things she intentionally worked on in an attempt to be a good medium despite her superpower being combat prowess. The fact that she shoehorned fencing into the training for potential mediums may actually be her ego slipping in and subconsciously striving to make her powers relevant. So aside from the years of training and her tough act, she's no less a normal human than anyone else in this story.

• The only problem with that theory is that Jones is not a medium. She's been working at the Court at least since Chapter 9 (we see the door to her office here) yet Gunnerkrigg has been without a medium since Surma's departure.
• And she could be called when Ysengrin came to Court and they had only two would-be Medium kids. More likely she represents one of other sides or is perceived this way.

Word of God says that Jones isn't the girl in the photo, but she looks exactly like her. And if she's a robot...

• Jossed.

Dualism is a frequent motif of the comic, and Gillitie Wood and Gunnerkrigg Court are clearly counterparts of each other. Since Gillitie Wood is ruled by a Physical God, it makes sense that the Court would likewise be ruled by a deity. This deity's presence would be expected at the meeting between the Court and the Wood. The Headmaster is, of course, in charge of Gunnerkrigg (the school, at least); him being a god would also explain his strange appearance, his complete indifference during the meeting, and Janet's reaction to Mort.

• Jossed.

The portal she formed is in the shape of the Valknut, which is one of Odin's symbols. Clearly, he's the "old man" Brinnie mentioned.

• Note: This theory was proposed on the GC forum within hours of the revelation of Brinnie's name. Then it was almost immediately confirmed to be true by Tom.