Gunnerkrigg Court/Recap/Volume 03/Chapter 025: Sky Watcher and the Angel

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Gunnerkrigg Court
volume {{{vol number}}}, chapter 25,
Sky Watcher and the Angel

Cover page	#632
Length	29 pages
See also	Wikia article Author's retrospective video
Preceded by	[[Gunnerkrigg Court/Recap/Volume /Chapter 024: Residential|Residential]]
Followed by	[[Gunnerkrigg Court/Recap/Volume /Chapter 026: The Old Dog's Tricks|The Old Dog's Tricks]]

WARNING! The contents of this recap page may include unmarked spoilers for this chapter and previous chapters. As mystery is a major element of this work, spoilers should not be taken lightly.

Tropes used in Gunnerkrigg Court/Recap/Volume 03/Chapter 025: Sky Watcher and the Angel include:

• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Antimony tells Kat that "Andrew and Parley have become unbearable [...] ever since she teleported us to her bedroom by accident":

Antimony: They can't even look at each other now. [...] It's so painfully obvious they like each other. But now they act like enemies!

• Berserk Button: In the old robot's memory, Jeanne quietly disagrees with Diego's support for the Court's push to purge nature from their side of the Annan Waters and quietly tells him "That's enough" when he offers to "make as many mechanical companions" as she wishes to replace the trees she mourns, but then becomes enraged when he says that she "need never think about" the unidentified man she loves, to whom Diego subsequently refers as a "traitor".
• Confused Question Mark:
  • Kat gets one when Sky Watcher wordlessly flies out of the shrine to Jeanne and out of Kat's workshop to tell the robot king of the shrine and its angelic guardian, Kat.
  • The robot central administrator gets one when Antimony waves to him — presumably, he doesn't recognize her without the antennae-headband she was wearing in chapter 12.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The S1 robot body remains kneeling in the shrine to Jeanne, where Kat left it in chapter 18 after removing S13's CPU from it.
  • Antimony's first appearance, in which she talks to Kat outside Kat's workshop while wearing a tan coat on a cold day, parallels the flashback at the end of chapter 18, in which Surma talks to Anja outside the same building while wearing a very similar coat on a similarly cold day.
  • When the robot king takes Kat and Antimony to watch the old robot play back its memories, they pass by the "friendly central administrator" robot from chapter 12. Antimony waves to him, but he doesn't seem to recognize her without her robot disguise.
• Everyone Can See It: Antimony tells Kat, of Andrew and Parley, that "It's so painfully obvious they like each other" although "now they act like enemies".
• Face Doodling: The robot king draws on his own face with a marker to control his facial expression to show emotion. According to the author, it's because the robot king has found a way to express emotion that the other robots respect him.
• Get Out!: In the old robot's memory, Jeanne tells Diego to "Get out!" when he mentions her unidentified Love Interest of whom Diego says Jeanne now "need never think"; Jeanne then follows up with "Get out you horrible little man!" when Diego responds by insistently professing his love for her.
• Metaphorgotten: In a conversation about Andrew and Parley's Belligerent Sexual Tension, Kat fails at quoting Tennyson:

Antimony: I thought love was supposed to be a good thing. Kat: Oh it totally is! But uh... I dunno. Better to have loved and lost than to be... dead or something. Antimony: I don't think that's how the saying goes.

• Narm: In-Universe, when the robot king emerges from the shrine to Jeanne having drawn tears onto his face, his entourage exclaim that it's "A sad face! The saddest face!" and hold their heads in grief, whereas Kat clearly finds it hilarious.
• The Reveal:
  • When Antimony inquires about the tic-toc depicted at the top of the robot king's standard, a standard-bearer robot says that the tic-toc was not made by Diego, "was created by a divine being and sent to watch over us all", and is "said to be older than the Court itself".
• Robot Religion: The robots seemingly have made the shrine to Jeanne their own, adding extra decorations that presumably have some symbolic importance to them (most prominently, a symbol for an electrical ground) and cleaning the surrounding area. Robot S13 calls Kat an angel and the mechanical monster he fought in S1's body a demon. S13 convinces Sky Watcher to accept Kat as an angel, and Sky Watcher in turn converts the robot king.
• Sickly Green Glow: The mysterious, sinister "device" of Diego's that the Court use in their plan "to fortify the Annan Waters" glows a pale green.
• Tantrum Throwing: When Diego pushes Jeanne's Berserk Button (q.v.), she dashes to the ground all the little robots he had made as gifts for her, shouting that she hates him over his plea that she spare the robots.[1][2]
• Thank the Maker:
• Too Important to Walk: The robot king travels on a litter borne by robots that seem to be designed for the task.

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