#Castle Heterodyne

[leletha-jann]

Headcanon in which I should be sleeping:

The speaking voice of Castle Heterodyne is the combined voiceprint of all the Heterodynes the Castle has ever known.

It started with Faustus, of course, because the Castle's mind was originally a print of his. He taught it to speak. But it learned more from Faustus' children, and from their children, and so on. It listens. It records. It plays back. It took its voice from them. As accents and dialects shifted over time, the Castle picked up those from its Heterodynes too.

It's an average - the Castle isn't playing back a word from one Heterodyne, a word from another, and so on like some kind of newspaper-patchwork ransom note. It's just...all of them. At once. Overlaid and combined and remembered.

A chorus of treasured, beloved ghosts giving voice to their home.

Sound and music and harmony is what the Heterodynes do, after all. A chorus is a multitude, a multilayered thing, in harmony and counterpoint, and that's what heterodyning is. Their voices are the thing that distinguishes them from other Sparks. And isn't the Castle one of the family, originally, after all? Shouldn't its voice be from the family, too? It can't sing the way they do, but it speaks with their voices.

When the Castle speaks, isn't it the family speaking? It's the generational memory of the Heterodynes. Wouldn't it preserve their voices, too, and make them its own? Their bones in its crypts, and their voices in its halls?

You'd never notice, to listen to. Hundreds of years of sound and speech, absorbed, merged, and made into something new. But the Castle remembers its family, in the ghosts and fingerprints layered into its own voice.

Agatha's voice will be in there, one day. And as the Castle loves her, listens and replies to her, knows her as true family and its rightful master, perhaps she already is.

[big-ass-magnet]

If I never manage to post this fic, I want everyone to see this line I think is very funny.

[pizzazz-merchant]

ok can we talk about hiw agatha and the castle's relationship, specifically in like Heirs of the Storm, is the funniest shit ever. like heres this insane sentient building, and the mad genius who commands it, and theyre going to do some bert and ernie bullshit and youre going to love it

[girl-genius-comic-tourney]

Round 4 (semi-finals)

[aelloposchrysopterus]

I often think about buildings, both real and fictional.

But there's this one fictional building. One with a personality and a penchant for practical "jokes". One that's lonely and maybe just needs a hug, or someone to play with its mechanical squid. Or someone to scratch that itch it didn't realize it had. Or someone to tell it what to do and how to be useful. An invading army to crush. Outsiders to perplex. Someone to use its library. People to fix it before it dies.

Yes, Castle Heterodyne lives rent-free in my mind and I want to give it friends. And that is why I write fanfiction.

[bethany-sensei]

Nobody tell ART about Castle Heterodyne

[calmingpi]

Fun on the beach

[kawaiibarbariansublime]

Agatha haz a hookshot. Nine out of ten Links approve.

[the-scarecrow-of-aus]

I glanced at this post when it was first posted but tumblr refreshed and I couldn't find it again, my mind however jumped right to mechanicsburg from girl genius on how the inhabitants act after generations of mad scientist:

Then the question is, how many fenton works creations are installed in amity park over the years?

I saw a thing talking about how the Fentons are so unhinged bc they were the first mad scientists, marry other crazy people, raise their kids to believe that they're the normal ones or something, and the cycle repeats. Fentons are genetically wired for mad science and/or supernatural bullshit.

I also read a fic that mentions that Amity's town history museum was called the Fenton Family History Museum because they're synonymous, those people were there in the beginning and will be there til there is no Amity.

Just, imagine an Amity Parker in Gotham complaining about Gothamites being a bunch of wusses because "that's barely even mad science, where's the homemade tank? The cheeto bombs? The risk of complerly legal vivisection? The portal to the afterlife in that one kid's basement?"

Bc you see, Amity Parkers have been predispositioned to believe Fenton Mad Science TM is the standard. For centuries.

Now isnt that something to look int- wait what do you mean legal vivisection?

A passing remark to the Joker bombs looking pitiful compared to ones back home causes Gothamites nearby to do a double take at the figure walking with their pal.

A colleague talks to another colleague how cars are far less tank like here and how traffic is so calm in Gotham rush hour that it's a breath of fresh air.

A roommate complains that the smog doesn't feel as bad to breathe in as their hometown and they almost miss the poor air quality.

[leletha-jann]

I do love the soundtrack that Bear and Cat made for the Girl Genius: Adventures in Castle Heterodyne game, but in terms of musical portraits of Castle Heterodyne, have you considered:

J.S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

(yes, you DO know this music - or at least the first minute or so)

The Castle sounds like this.

[big-ass-magnet]

the castle:

[maxwellelvis]

I’ve got a fancasting idea for a hypothetical Girl Genius adaptation:

Gianni Matragrano as the voice of Castle Heterodyne

(Timestamps:  7:34, 13:30, 16:30, 19:13, 19:43, 23:23, 23:57, 27:26)

[leletha-jann]

Congratulations, this joke I dug up out of your archive is now BASICALLY CANON.

(from the Story with Franz)

Excellent work by all involved, and now this page is so much funnier if I assume the prompt is the backstory to Lumi's comments.

A Heterodyne gets so fed up with the Castle badgering him for heirs, that he organizes a scavenger hunt in the Castle and invites a good chunk of Mechanicsburg kids over. He of course, has the more dangerous and private areas sealed off and the Castle is given strict orders to make sure the kids don't get injured or killed. Halfway through the hunt, he looks up at the ceiling and yells, "IS THIS ENOUGH CHILDISH LAUGHTER AND PATTER OF LITTLE FEET FOR YOU?!" The Castle sulks for a week afterwards.

Sounds pretty Heterodyne…except for the safety precautions.

[girl-genius-comic-tourney]

Round 3

[aelloposchrysopterus]

In another motivation/way to incentivize myself to research tunnels, I am posting some of my other current mutli-chapter GG fic: The Spark's Guide to Structural Engineering

Chapter 1: In Which the Siblings Meet

I had started to become lonely. Sure, I had friends around, but Moloch had long ago wised up to my sense of humor and stopped me from having fun with anyone. And sure, I could have had fun with the visitors, but I hadn’t had, well, any in quite some time. I was left alone, in the same vein as an unattended child at a railway station is left alone. I was waiting for somebodies to come back, and those somebodies sure thought they were my parents or grandparents or older responsible relatives. But here’s the catch: I never had parents or any relations. I’ve always been looking for people to play with, not to raise me.

Admittedly, my sense of humor is a bit juvenile. I am a big fan of practical jokes. There is nothing wrong with that until, well, you do it every day for years. Even I was starting to get bored of the trip wires and locking people inside rooms. But unfortunately, my talents have never translated over into another form. Practical jokes are all I can do, and with Moloch’s decree, I was left alone and, frankly, bored.

I had had a playmate once. With her, life had never been boring: she would play with me whenever I wanted. We had the kind of games that would go down in history, the kind that I will never be able to forget. Those games had often ended with somebody yelling at us about letting the squid out, or something about my favorite toys getting loose, or something about safety hazards. But she had left too, along with those who I call my parents. I had not seen her in a long time.

I was trying to gain some little amusement from playing with my toys when I suddenly felt something shift in the air. A visitor. In my domain. I must ready myself for the games to come. I quickly made sure my eyes were focused on this mysterious visitor. It appeared to be a young lady, likely around eighteen. Old enough to not come here without a reason. She had dark red hair, much like Papa’s, and glasses, similar to those of Mom, and wore an outfit that reminded me of Dad’s. There was something special about her.

“Hello?” She called out.

A little dingbot rolled out of hiding, bearing a placard that read Please proceed to the Exam Room.

“Um,” she said. “Where is that? And what exam?”

The dingbot flipped its placard. Follow me. Your questions will be answered… if you don’t die.

“How reassuring,” she said. But she followed the dingbot anyhow, chattering away as she walked. “I don’t know if there’s anybody listening, but I might as well keep myself company.” She artfully leaped over a landmine hidden in a staircase. “I don’t know why I’m here, not really.” She ducked a swinging axe like it was second nature when she turned a corner. “My mothers just told me to come to Mechanicsburg.” She narrowly avoided a spider ready to cocoon her as it dropped from the ceiling. “And then I met that von Mekkhan guy and he dragged me here. He didn’t say much of anything about why I had to come here and alone.”

She was dodging all my playthings with ease. It was almost instinctual. Heterodyne? She kept babbling about this and that, how at the University of Paris she’d nearly gotten expelled due to her propensity for explosives-making, how she had nearly been assassinated as a baby, how her mothers had spent all of her childhood trying to stop her from singing. She was anxious, that much was clear, spurting nonsense about how this exam better not involve mechanical engineering because she’d never understood how to make things move right. Poor child. She truly was young and unprepared for either failure or success.

The doors to the Exam Room swung open and she gingerly stepped her foot forwards. She immediately slipped on the giant mound of skulls, rolling and sliding down the heap to land at the foot of a clank. In other days, with other candidates, I would have laughed. But I felt a kinship with this young woman and did not laugh.

She seemed to register the gravity of the situation quickly. “Am I going to die?” She screamed this at the clank, at the walls, at the dingbot, anything conceivably withing earshot. “Am I going to die?”

The clank unfolded itself to reveal its true seven-ton glory with its sharp teeth. It raised its head, then dramatically lowered it to face the candidate. “That depends on if you pass or if you fail.” It grinned uncannily. I was, for the first time, perturbed by it. I had seen this a million times before. I knew the story behind each and every skull on that heap. I had some control over it. Yet this time, I worried for the young woman. I must be going soft. “Give me your arm.”

“What?” She frantically tried to scurry backwards up the skull pile. She was unsuccessful, sliding down each time she got a foot up.

The clank menaced its way towards her. She froze as it took her arm in its jaw and bit her, and then she let out one of the most pitiful wails of anguish that I had ever heard. I could feel the clank processing the data. Within seconds, I knew what it had tasted. One-third Wulfenbach. One-third Sturmvoraus. One-third Heterodyne. The new mistress is here.

“Welcome home, sister,” I said.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH,” she screamed, and then fainted.

Read on AO3 | Next chapter (AO3)

[calmingpi]

Last nights stream was centered around mapping the video game version of castle heterodyne, so heres my current layout of the castle entrance. It look a ridiculously long time to convert it to pixels. I did not include the platform above faustus' statue yet, as its such an elevated level compared to the rest to begin with and i was having trouble keeping it straight with the rest of the floorplan