#Girl Genius

[champagnensunshine]

[calmingpi]

Its still really funny how agatha was like ok we arent going to bother searching for gil we have things to do and hes good at this sort of thing

Meanwhile gil was being good at that sort of thing

[girlgeniusonline]

The Fourth page of the Girl Genius comic! Along with a message that we are mercifully undamaged after this big "bomb cyclone" wind storm that hit Seattle overnight, the latest page is now live over on our main site, and our BackerKit store is open. Enjoy!

[professorfoglio]

Girl Genius for 11/20

Once again I'm in a situation where we have to grind out a few extra pages so my colorist and I don't have to work on Thanksgiving. Plus we have that MTG show in Houston (December 6-8). Guess I'll go complain to my boss. Everybody's got the right to complain…

[the-knifeketeer-and-stabby]

Love the implication that there are government-owned meme sites, unlike this reality, where Russia...

(glances over shoulder)

does nothing at all.

wht kind of memes do you think they have in europa

[dracothulhu]

YOU'RE LISTENING TO 102.3! MAD! SCIENTIST! FM!

(Evil laughter, thunder cracking)

WHERE WE DO NOTHING BUT SHOW THEM ALL, SHOW THEM ALL, AND SHOW THEM ALL!

(Chainsaw revving, screaming)

THIS AIN'T YOUR WULFENBACH RADIO STATION! [Radioactive by Imagine Dragons]

[sweethysteria]

[brawltogethernow]

Way before poly seemed on the table the killing shot that ended the possibility of ship wars in Girl Genius was entangling the love interests' backstories, so now if you prefer one of them particularly you WANT to hear more about the other one because his nonsense is informing YOUR guy's nonsense.

[sagaduwyrm]

Something that interests me about Girl Genius is the way that the Heterodynes are consistently portrayed as the worst of the worst despite being pretty reasonable by Spark standards.

This is not to say that they are reasonable by normal people standards, or that they were anything approaching decent people. This is pointing out that compared to other sparks, who figured out they could conquer places and immediately started the Long War, the Heterodynes have had little to no large scale negative effect on the world.

Evidence: Zumzum

While in Zumzum Agatha finds out that the Heterodyne raids rolled through the town "every four years or so, sure as the moonrise" (Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess). Despite this the town is, though small, prosperous. They have a fully staffed guard and enough spare income that the circus was initially planning to remain for three days.

Compare this to the numerous dead towns noted to be littering the wastelands. Sparks regularly render towns unlivable or dead. The Heterodynes, however traumatize them and steal their stuff, but still leave the towns they raid capable of functioning. From this we can assume that, despite what we are told, the Heterodynes are not only capable of self-restraint, they're good at it.

Evidence 2: Heterodyne Creations

The Heterodynes left an enduring legacy in the form of constructs, clanks, and the castle. Many of these are hundreds of years old and yet have little trouble functioning. This means that the Heterodynes not only build to last, but their descendants are willing to put in the time for upkeep rather than get distracted and focus on the next big thing.

The Heterodynes are the only sparks with so many creations still running around. Other sparks, like Van Rijn, do have some creations that have lasted the ages, but nothing compared to the sheer quantity of the Heterodynes.

Also, consider the jägerkin. The jägers are some of the most important Heterodyne constructs, and have acted as the core of their army and their honor guard for more than half a millennia. Despite this, they don't have levels of speed or strength much beyond average, at least as far as spark constructs go. Instead, they're noted for their remarkable survivability. This again suggests that Heterodynes prioritize longevity to a remarkable level for sparks.

Evidence the Last: Europa still Exists

I repeat myself, after two centuries of off and on spark warfare, significant amounts of Europa is unlivable. The Heterodynes had ten centuries and Europa was fine. Do the math.

However, despite this show of consistent reason, the Heterodynes are constantly described in story as evil incarnate. I'd like to posit that this suggests both that in-story lore should be taken as unreliable, but also that the most dangerous sparks aren't the flashy, fire and brimstone assholes. It's the consistent, intelligent ones who know when to back off and when to press that are the real danger, and it's for this reason that the continent fears Heterodynes. Not because they're uniquely capable of destruction, but because they know when not to destroy.

The Heterodynes are the oldest dynasty in Europa. To everyone with the slightest understanding of how sparks work, this is terrifying.

Also, here's a post that tries to answer why the Heterodynes are uniquely like this. You should read it. It partially inspired this.

[champagnensunshine]

[prokopetz]

In retrospect, I should have been suspicious about the fact that the plot of Girl Genius was moving so quickly.

[inbarfink]

It’s really fascinating to compare the way Agatha handles the Heterodyne Legacy compared to her father and uncle. Because these are the two known generations of ‘Heroic’ Heterodynes after a long, long legacy of the Heterodyne family being known primarily as Evil Bastards - but they have such a totally opposite relationship with that villainous legacy.

Bill and Barry grew up deep inside that Evil Heterodyne Legacy and know all about how truly rotten it really is. Their father was an Old Heterodyne to the bone and an Extremely Reprehensible Human Being. Like, not just Cartoon Evil Overlord stuff - according to the Novels, he forced Bill and Barry’s mom to marry him by threatening her family. And he tried to kill them because they weren’t evil enough to his tastes. 

And when their mom killed him to protect her sons, the Castle killed her in retaliation. The very manifestation of the Heterodyne Legacy has cost them their beloved mother who just saved their life. And all of this in addition to the fact a non-evil Heterodyne was really an unthinkable concept when the Boys started - meaning they had to work extra hard to distance themselves from their family if they wanted anyone outside of Mechanicsburg to trust them.

And Heterodyne Boys worked very very hard to prove to the world that they’re not monsters. Both to fight off against the constant suspicions that they were monsters, and because they most likely wanted as little to do with their father’s legacy as Spark-ly possible. For them the Heterodyne Legacy was mostly kind of a Curse, the thing that tormented their mother and killed her and almost killed them, the thing that makes people wary of them.

And as such, they distanced themselves from anything that’s even remotely to do with that old legacy of monsters, from anything evil or scary or messy or ugly. Much to the chagrin of the Castle, the House of Heterodyne’s many other monsters, the Jager Horde Mechanicsburg’s proud Evil Minion population and many others who felt abandoned by them for the sake of PR.

Then there’s Agatha Heterodyne. And it’s not just that Agatha grew up in a post-Heterodyne-Boys world where the general populace associates the family name less with evil barbarous mad kings and more with good-natured heroism. Where even those who remember the Old Heterodynes are at least willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Where even those who would like her to be like the Old Heterodynes are at least willing to give her some wiggle room to express herself....

It is all of that, but more importantly Agatha didn’t grow up as a Heterodyne at all.

She grew up as Agatha Clay, with the Spark-Suppressing Locket that dulled her mind and made her a miserable klutzy mess who couldn’t do anything right. She grew up hating the constant feeling of being powerless.

And discovering that she’s a Heterodyne came up… pretty close to realizing she’s a Spark, and both of these revelations gave her a certain kind of Power that she never got to have before. She is now both a powerful Spark and a powerful political player in this grand Europa political chess board. 

And as much as she has the same heroic values and upbringing as the Boys did (courtesy of Barry and the Construct Duo), not growing up so up-close-and-personal with the worst consequences of the Old Heterodyne’s evil means she’s not as immediately repulsed by it like the Boys were. 

She encountered all of these old monstrous pieces of the Heterodyne Legacy - the Jagers, the Castle, Mechanicsburg, even just the fear her name can put into people’s hearts - not as the Evil Legacy Forced Upon Her. But stuff that was taken away from her, and she had to earn back. And in a world stacked so heavily against her, so determined to rob her of her agency and newfound sense of power, these things represent the assertion and security of her power.

For the Heterodyne Boys, the worst thing they could ever imagine being was monsters - like their father and the rest of their family was. For Agatha Heterodyne, the worst thing she could imagine is being powerless again. She would take being seen as a monster a thousand times over being condescended and ignored ever again. 

Being seen as a monster isn’t actually all that bad at all, she discovered. 

All of these things together make Agatha not quite the second generation of Actually Heroic Heterodyne or just another link in the Old Heterodyne Legacy - but another new kind of Heterodyne altogether. One that can both retain a moral code and embrace the family’s monstreness at the same time. 

[big-ass-magnet]

Mechanicsburg: he's my rotten soldier, my sweet cheese, my good time boy

the rest of Europa, on fire: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

[annoyinglandmagazine]

[leletha-jann]

Headcanon future scenario (either postcanon or post-the OT3 getting together) where it dawns on Europa that three of the absolutely most major political powerhouses on the continent are allied - something that would normally be a matter for a library's worth of complicated treaties - on the stated basis of "MINE".

...our cuties are figuring it out, OK, but to the long-suffering bureaucrats keeping the Empire running, this is a political disaster. They do not know what the hell is going on or what the rules are.

But Agatha and Gil and Tarvek do not have TIME to sit down and draft treaties, and they are damn well not going to let anyone else do it FOR them.

What emerges out of this is known as "the Agreement", because that's how the Triumvirate refer to it. Agatha's not supposed to do that? Oh, the Agreement says she can, actually. Does Tarvek have the authority to do that? Sure, it's in the Agreement. Going to take this all the way to Gil? Somehow, whatever it was, it was in the Agreement.

No one actually knows what the Agreement is.

The traveling Heterodyne shows drama it up into a dread document written in demon blood on human skin, dripping with oaths so powerful they scorch the eye. Great special effects, fun prop design work, zero expected accuracy.

Quite a lot of people, including the Valois dynasty, try to insist that the Agreement doesn't actually exist. Or sometimes that they know the terms and they're this-and-such (they do not know. Seffie is going to murder someone with their own teeth).

Except it does exist, because the Triumvirate is acting as if it does, and that carries a lot of weight in Europa.

Very observant people and our main cast, however, know it exists, because they've repeatedly seen Agatha and Tarvek and Gil all check a matching notebook they all seem to have, and write stuff in it. (A copy of the notebook got stolen once. The thief discovered it was in three-Sparks-invented-this-for-fun depths of code, and then did not survive.)

What no one knows is that it's the same notebook, triplicated with the same Skifandrian technology that created Zeetha's expressive headband face...

...aaaaaaaaaaand it's basically a group chat on the theme of guys I did a thing on 100% bluff, here are the details, if someone asks...and they will ask...back me up on this OK?

They'll figure out the formal treaties when Europa is not on fire, and in the meantime, whatever it is...

...it's in the Agreement.

Or it is now, at least.