GTS – Page 204 – Kidd Commander!

GTS – Page 204

by Aria on January 5, 2024 at 7:42 PM

academic curiosity

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Evan Cross

poor Toulouse, so much research without any answers ;-;
D

Curious… Those are some rather interesting reset conditions.

I’ve seen many reset conditions over my experiences with loops in such stories.

Many stories feature a fixed end point, which can forcefully be triggered by the victim dying (Most famously Groundhog Day).

Some don’t feature a fixed end point, but can be forcefully triggered by the victim dying(e.g. Edge of Tomorrow, Happy Death Day) or another condition. In some cases they also have additional conditions to sustain, end or restart(in Edge of Tomorrow the victim could only loop while certain blood was in their system or in one story I read, the victim could, at any point say “this is wrong, I want to restart” (or something like that) and loop at any time).

Some feature multiple people, allowing some to continue the loop after one party dies/until other conditions are met.(no good popular examples of those off the top of my head).

This one seems to be a mix of the last two (“no fixed end point with conditions” and “multiple people”, but only partially), but with something different that I can’t quite figure. Based on my experiences, I’d assume Toulouse is “the victim” (or in this case, the primary). So, if he dies, reset is natural.

The loop seems to be playing with extra conditions though, which protects Gramma, Phin, Ulrich, Agatha(also, presumably the Tain and Brokenspecter), who are all important to Toulouse… exceeeept why aren’t Junie and Jonesey protected(or are they? We haven’t seen a body yet.)? What about the people at the house? The Preachers? Other important(in a feelings sense) members of the caravan? And yet it protects the caravan itself(To what degree? The land? The people? Some combination?)?

Perhaps most notable however, is that Noon is protected. Why? Some of the others have interesting questions, but they could all fall under “important to Toulouse”(assuming, in the crew’s case, that Phin became important enough to Toulouse to trigger the first loop and that in subsequent loops, or the same, Ulrich and Agatha did as well)… but the ship was out of it before they met Toulouse in this loop. Did Noon participate in the first loop?(if so, why did they go to the caravan the first time, if not…) Has Noon been out every loop? Assuming Toulouse met Noon zero times, he has no reason to put value in Noon. So then “important to Toulouse” feels like the wrong condition. But what then is the condition?

Other things I considered were “people attached to things outside the loop” (The ship and Agatha as starstone beings, Phin as one with Brokenspecter(linked to missing parts), the Caravan through its saints(assuming that the spiders are false)… but what links Ulrich, Gramma?) or “godlike beings”(again, what links Ulrich, the Caravan?– though it might explain things about Gramma). It feels like I’m close to getting it, but not entirely there. I’m considering multiple conditions, but that doesn’t feel correct either.

Gosh, this is really getting to me!(In a good way! I want to dissect it!)

Other things I’m considering:

Some loop stories feature a main looper who can extend(and in some cases retract) “loop status” to other people. Maybe he unknowingly partially extended it to one in the crew? That’d explain why the ship is protected and the crew and Gramma(since I doubt, say, Agatha would want to protect her)… unless, maybe the protection is solely based on who was important the first time;

Maybe Toulouse is the “primary victim”, but the conditions are set by a second or third party(e.g. Jonesy might consider Toulouse, the crew, Gramma(his babysitter), and the Caravan important, but not himself… but then Toulouse would’ve likely noticed it looping if Junie went missing, or their parents);

Maybe it’s not who dies, but what their dying triggers. Maybe their deaths trigger other events that lead to a swift end, but don’t end things themselves(Toulouse assumes it’s related to these deaths, but maybe that’s bias. How instantaneous was the first loop. “[…]since her dying was the last thingto happen before time started repeating” Actually the last thing or the last “important” thing?

Lots of questions, but no clear answers yet. Feels like we’re getting close though.

—

One last thing. A thought occurred to me. These loops aren’t consistent on the inside, but I think time is progressing on the outside(many probably already assumed this, based on Phin’s calls reaching Jo), but not just now… “before” the loop.

One of the last things to happen before Noon disapparated was that the compass went crazy. What if it didn’t. What if, the whole time the loop has been running, even though the inside has looped, the outside hasn’t. Caravan. The… island? floats down a river… no description of how long or fast.

What if… the loop starts before the ship hits the ground, the moment when the compass “fails”. In that moment, they are briefly at every point the caravan has been at on the river during the loop. Noon isn’t… whelmed by Toulouse(as the damage when he steps in might imply), but by, in that moment, being subject to (a) dozen(s of) versions of its connections to “the starstone network”. I imagine that might throw one for a loop. (then being cut off in the loop might prevent recovery– though alternatively, it could just by that the stone is a “point of contact” separate Noon themself, or that connection is inherent and noon couldn’t enter the loop because it’s not as fragile a link as “Wi-fi”). Just a thought.
- Departure_Dave
  
  I kind of assume that groundhog day has a fixed reset time (midnight) and that when the protagonist is dead he’s not conscious enough to understand the perception of time, leading to the perception of an “instant” reset.
  
  I like the thoughts on Noon, though.
  - D
    
    [1993 Groundhogs Day spoilers. Would hide but it’s core to the 3rd paragraph onward and hiding just the spoilers would make it illegible, yet likely still spoilerific indirectly and hiding the whole paragraphs including non-spoilers seems frivolous.]
    
    Could be, but since only one person(unless they covered that in the sequel VR game I’ll play someday, but still haven’t– no spoilers please ^^) is experiencing the loop, the difference is semantic.
    
    Story-wise, whether death or time limit after death is the key to a reset doesn’t matter, but I tend to assume that death is a guaranteed failure of a loop condition and therefore a restart condition, because the loop has an end condition that needs to be checked at the end of each loop.
    
    My train of thought revolves around “can you die before the day’s end and still have broken the loop? (basically, in a one day loop, you fulfil the loop ending condition, and then die before reaching the next day). If the loop checks whether or not you’ve completed it at any point, then you might briefly meet it’s condition, only to fail immediately after and assume you still have it’s safety net. Common theories about Groundhog’s Day are that its end is conditional on Phil becoming a good person or that he needed a “perfect day” to stop the loop. In either case, Phil starts off a miserable selfish person who keeps having bad things happen.
    
    Throughout, his situation improves(his personality is a bit more of a rollercoaster). If the condition is that the day be perfect, he could only nail that if he lived through it. Could you really call a day perfect if it killed you unnecessarily? That’d be grounds for immediate failure, so I’d see the loop reset immediately, as, while a screwup could be salvaged, leading to a different variation of “perfect”, death would make perfect impossible, no matter what, in an other magic-free world.
    
    If however the condition is merely that he become a good person, he could wake up on his last day, help save someone he hasn’t before and accidentally die in the process. If the loop checks throughout the day, and his death is not a failure condition, than theoretically, the next day should go on. If however, the condition is no only that he be a good person but remain such, then the moment he’s dead during the day, he fails to meet that condition.(I suppose he could become good, get injured, then die the next day after fighting the injury, but who knows if the loop would fight that)
    
    In the end, it doesn’t really matter if he resets because he dies or because he is dead he perceives nothing until the reset, but I’ve always read it as the former.
pseudorandom

Oh, his tattoos—or “”tattoos”—change when he’s agitated. I don’t know why I didn’t consciously notice that earlier. Neat! Also, Good Question! Potentially even more existentially horrifying. Good Shit OP.
Elkian

You good, Toulouse?
everentropy

Undoomed by the narrative- it won't let you go that easy