As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- Antimony's refusal to accept help from the adult staff at the Court, and why she went about trying to solve mysteries all by her lonesome can be confusing at first. It's often dismissed as simply necessary to keep the entire story from being resolved in two chapters. Then, about the time that Ch 14 was going up, it becomes clear that Annie's independent nature was a result of her unusual childhood—her years at Good Hope Hospital had taught her to solve her own (and other people's) problems all by herself. But what's really brilliant is the realization that because she doesn't seek help from the adults who actually know what's going on, Annie's solo snooping and problem-solving actually makes things worse: She nearly gets killed a few times, and then she almost triggers a diplomatic incident between the Court and the Woods. In other words, the "kids are smart and Adults Are Useless" setup was actually being deconstructed by the comic. It also helps that in later chapters, Annie seems to be maturing and learning to accept help and advice from others.
- From scenes in the ether, it's apparent that a person's appearance in the ether is in some way connected to their nature or character. In particular, their hair: Annie's hair seems to be infinitely long, while Anja's and Parley's hair in the ether is longer than their physical hair, but not infinitely so. Also, the separation between the physical world and the ether is weaker in Gillitie Wood, particularly for creatures of the etherium, like Suicide Fairies. In light of that, the freakout over Red's hair in Ch 15 ("Your hair! It goes up again!") takes on a completely different meaning: Ayilu wasn't pushing Red away (solely) because she's shallow. Ayilu was pushing Red away because she came from a world where personal appearance is inextricably linked to character and personality, and she failed to realize that this was not true in the human world.
- Shadow 2 was vital for creating the story of the webcomic itself. See, if Annie was not inclined to confront him that night in the hallway, we would have never figured out that he needed to get across the bridge. And if we never figured that out, Annie would have never built a robot for him to ride across. If Robot had never gone across the bridge in the first place, he wouldn't have come back across in chapter seven. Annie would have never fallen off the bridge, making it so Coyote and Ysengrin never organized a meeting, and Coyote would have not invited her to the forest to expand her knowledge of her etheric powers. Along with that, Annie would have not discovered Jeanne, or have a reason to create a new body for Robot, and Kat and Annie would have never located Jeanne's shrine or learned about the story of Diego.
- Reynardine, on Diego: "A coward's shrine, made in tribute to a woman he loved from afar... Do you think a woman like that could ever feel anything other than pity for such a runt of a man?" Who is he really talking about- Diego, or himself?
- When Parley teleported everyone to her bed
, Jones was sinking much further into the mattress. - When Robot and the others see Kat taking care of Jeanne's shrine, they interpret her as an angel. Because she's beautiful, sure, but in religious texts, there are three ranks of angels that serve to guard and protect God. To them, Diego is a father, but Jeanne is a friggin deity. And if Diego built them to love her just as he does...well...
- The reasons why Antimony dislikes alarms are because of what happens on this page and this page.
- Robot's speech bubble has the usual outer shape and color but has a different shape and color on the inside because Robot's not the one talking.
- The robots said that "the court grew from the seed Bismuth." Bismuth is a metal that chemically resembles antimony.
- In "Give and Take" the resurrected robot describes the robots we've seen in the series as "elegant designs", as well as other superlative adjectives. This seems almost funny at first to the reader, as the resurrected robot (who belongs to the robots created by Diego himself) looks impressive and majestic while the modern robots look like cubes at worst and pragmatic at best, in the case of S-13. The thing is, the robot has different criteria than the human one. For him a good design is one that works best in its own movement and its functions, and the modern ones are probably this. He looks better on a human aesthetic, which would be superfluous on the eyes of a robot. So, indeed, modern robots have a more wonderful design.
- Consider the storyline of Chapter 13: Kat meets a boy, develops affection for him (whether it be a crush or "real" love, it still affects her quite a bit), but eventually has to let him go due to circumstances beyond her control. In comparison, consider Diego's story: he meets Jeanne, develops affection for her, but eventually realizes that she will never return the affection. And finally, think of the difference between their reactions: Kat accepts the loss with surprising equilibrium whereas Diego basically ruins everything for Jeanne as well as for himself. It seems that Chapter 13 is a way of comparing/contrasting Kat's personality with Diego's, especially given how both of them are heavily involved with the robots.
- Why do Jones's x-rays look like this? It's not because she's completely solid, made of some uniform material: it's because the x-rays, like everything else, can't penetrate her skin.
- Of course Reynardine supports same-sex relationships. He's a fox who fell in love with a human woman. He's the last person that should criticize an unusual union.
- A combination of Fridge Brilliance and Fridge Horror. Why does Mort look so terrified when the Count leans in to whisper friendly advice to him in this strip? He probably isn't exactly seeing what we're seeing. "Dracula there knows a thing or two about cool costume ideas" indeed.
- Mort feels satisfied with his time on Earth now because this is about when he would have died of old age.
- Mort's first appearance occurs in a hallway with three words in Latin ("Dulce et decorum") written on the wall. Those are the first words of a famous poem, written in the wake of WWI, about the evil of war. At the time, it seems like an odd but creepy touch. In retrospect, it's suggestive of just how far in advance the comic was planned.
- In Chapter 15, wherein Red is trying to win back her fairy friend, she tells Kat "Wassername is gonna see me and come crawlin' right back." To which Kat responds, "You don't even know her name!?" Come Chapter 36, both Annie and the readers come to learn that this is because, before they leave school, the former fairies don't have names.
- The fact that Anthony hasn't realized why Reynard is not obeying his orders: Because he's been away for three years, he doesn't understand the significance of the change in the symbol on Reynard's face, indicating that Kat is now the owner of the doll. If he had been there for his daughter, he would have noticed the change in the symbol and likely could have figured out what it meant.
- Coyote telling Anthony that he could eat him and only Annie would care could be seen as more than a show of kindness. Coyote was reading his thoughts and probably decided as punishment to say something like this so he could make Tony feel miserable over his Death Seeker attitude as that would be even more guilt over what he has done to his daughter.
- The sign says "CURSED INSTRUMENTS"!
- Shadow gets Robot unusually flustered by petting his new arm, which has a sense of touch like a human's. Looks like innocent exploration on Shadow's part — except he knows exactly what it's like to get a new body that can feel. The cheeky fellow knew what he was doing!
- Chapter 17's title (Medium Beginnings) seems to only be about Annie starting to take mediation lessons. However, the author commentary for the chapter reveals that this is also when Siddell started drawing his pages digitally. Thus, it's the "beginning" of a new "medium" for the comic.
- Anthony just returning Renard to Annie is hilariously anticlimatic but there is sound reasoning for it. Firstly Coyote has more or less thrown their plans out the window and, considering he read Anthony's mind, likely knows about all their plots for Annie. He makes it clear that anything done to Annie will not be wise so the Court can't do anything. Secondly Anthony was acting under duress to start with so he would be more than happy to stick to the Court and undo some of the psychological damage he caused his daughter. Finally he probably doesn't want the spirit that was in love with his wife and was there for his daughter when he wasn't around anymore than necessary.
- Why is Jones so insistent she's not a robot? Because robots can be understood. She cannot. Robots can break. She cannot. Robots can be made. She is alone. Robots...can feel, as is shown throughout the comic. She cannot. Or so she says. Basically...robots in this comic are NOTHING LIKE JONES AT ALL.
- Doubles as Fridge Horror: during Annie's trip in the ether in "Neither", her hair grows longer and more flowing/fiery—a sign of her return to her 'roots', her tapping back into her fire elemental and court medium powers. It's also a clue that she's been gone from home a lot longer than she thinks.
- Annie is unexpectedly denied the role of Court Medium, which goes to Andrew instead. Eventually, we find out that the Court was getting really ticked off about her dealings with the forest, but an alternative explanation is that Andrew's unconscious ability to mess with probability and create lots of order and good luck for himself couldn't help but tip the balance.
- Coyote's theory states not only that human belief and imagination creates gods like himself, but that it does so retroactively. Mortal belief does not merely create gods, it causes them to always have existed. If this is so, it explains Kat's etheric form. In the ether, she already is the god that the worship of the robots will make her. Note the resemblance between Kat's etheric form and Coyote's, and how those two are the only ones with such surreal etheric forms.
- Annie joins Queslett North halfway through Year 7 (= sixth grade), which happens to have exactly one spot left for a female student. She spends most of her first few weeks at the Court alone, unsupervised, frequently going outside and/or bending the rules. Much later, we realize that the Court knew full well that she would be coming in January and expected her to go fall off the bridge soon after her arrival, so they let her run around and do whatever largely without consequence - which is exactly how the events of the story got underway.
- In this bonus strip (of unconfirmed canonicity), Antimony asks Kat to "show [her] some of these 'video games'". One round of Grand Theft Auto later, Antimony finds herself unable to sleep thanks to all the causeless violence. One midnight fridge raid for the viewer later, it sinks in that Antimony wasn't unable to sleep because of the game, but rather because of how cheerfully Kat caused the aforementioned violence.
- Reynardine stated that everyone knew that having Antimony would kill Surma. Including, in his words, "[Annie's] damned father! Especially him!" Especially? Does this mean he always knew having a kid with Surma would kill her, and simply didn't care? There's also the implication that as of a man of science, he thought he could defeat the process, allowing Surma to live with Annie normally. He failed, which would be part of the reason he abandoned his daughter (she's a very strong reminder of that failure, not to mention his dead wife). His guilt is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that "everyone" includes Surma. Whether the fact that it was just a risk that both of them were willing to take makes the fridge horror better or worse is debatable.
- It's funny that they chose to name her Antimony, which is a highly toxic chemical element. Could have a nasty undertone when you realise Annie's existence caused her mother's death. Surma's own name is kind of unfortunate, as well. In Finnish it means "unnatural death". And guess what Surma's surname means? "Stibnite" is a sulfide of ... wait for it ... antimony.
- "Surma" is Russian for "antimony". "Stibnite" is derivative from "stibium" - "antimony" in Periodic Table. All their names, while sounding differently, mean the same.
- Coyote's Establishing Character Moment in The Fangs of Summertime is when he bursts out laughing after hearing that Antimony is Surma's daughter, cracking a joke about Mr. Eglamore being her father. Once you get to The Reveal, however, this makes that scene much more disturbing, as it means Coyote just learned that Surma was either dead or dying, and he doesn't care at ALL. Even without the scene mentioned above where he removes Ysengrin's memory, it's still quite obvious that Coyote is much more evil than he initially appears to be.
- With the revelation that spirits brought to the ether forget about their lives, several of Annie's references to missing her mother in earlier chapters take on another light: Because Annie had to personally bring her mother to the ether, she would have had to watch as Surma forgot about everything she'd shared with Annie, including the fact that the girl was her daughter.
- It's implied that the reason Kat sees the realm of the dead stripped of all glamor is because the robots' belief in her as an angel is turning her into a god of similar power herself. Let's just make that clear, Kat is potentially becoming a being like Coyote, something we may have already caught a glimpse of through Zimmy's perspective.
- In Chapter 50: Totem, we see Coyote remove the life from the rabbit. His exact words: "But see here, I hold the mind, the will, the life of our friend"! Now combine this with The Rant when Ysengrin and Annie reconcile in Crash Course. Lastly, Word of Tom is that Ysengrin's power over trees is draining him. The conclusion? Coyote isn't just stealing memories. He is slowly but surely eating Ysengrin's soul.
- In Chapter 53: Annie and the Fire: Remember that really sweet conversation in Chapter 37: Microsat 5? The one between Donald Donlan and Annie as they raided the Court for medical supplies to send to her father? The one where Donald reassures Annie that her father was a real person with emotions who actually cared for her on some level rather than a distant idol who wanted nothing to do with her? Turns out that as they were having that conversation, Anthony was in some cavernous hell. Oh, and the medical supplies that Donald so blithely gathered up for him, letting Annie help and even press the big red button (presumably to help her feel like she was helping/connected to her dad)? Anthony used those to CUT OFF HIS OWN HAND — and possibly damage his daughter in the process. You have to wonder how Annie and Donald are going to feel about having given him the means to do so...
- More a fridge Tear Jerker, but by all accounts the Surma-Antimony Death By Child Birth is completely natural for their lineage. This means that if and/or when Antimony decides to have children of her own, she's putting a hard limit on her remaining lifespan. And unlike(?) Surma, she'll know it, too.
- We've seen all along that Tony (a brilliant scientist) has been heavily involved for years in researching and testing the Omega Device. We finally learn in Chapter 84 that Tony has explained it either to or in front of Annie: it is meant to track every atom in the world and thus predict the future. But only shortly later, in Chapter 86, Aata says with disturbing nonchalance that the Omega Device has been acting erratic for a while. The first wrong prediction was that Annie was supposed to arrive at Gunnerkrigg Court and then fall to her death only shortly later from the bridge to Gillitie Wood. For everything since, with Annie alive and well, all bets have been off. Aata's admission is basically Fridge Horror anyway (the Court did nothing about what they fully believed would be the preventable death of a child), but it raises questions about Tony - who is in deep with the Court - and whether he knew that his daughter was supposed to die at the age of 12.
