Archive of Our Own ^beta

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We meet him as a very shouty zombie and it’s nothing like what we might have expected from the earlier mentions -- or especially the novels where we meet him before. The prologue is set as he prepares to marry Euphrosynia.

He’s been carrying on a correspondence with her, which leads him to believe that she’ll come willingly. He was drawn both to her looks and to her intelligence before knowing who she was. Despite what the opera imposes, there’s no sense of destiny here -- he doesn’t think of her as his destined bride in any sense. He just likes her.

He’s very annoyed with the Muses, who’ve been getting more obscure and allusive since the actual fighting ended, but relieved when they do talk to him directly. He also says that he would have taken care even without their warning -- he is going to be bedding a Heterodyne!

He doesn’t like fighting, is surprised to find himself nervous before a treaty when he usually only feels that way before battle and is more in his element with diplomacy. He’s turning over the relative benefits of keeping everyone distracted by fashion vs taking half an hour to unbutton his pants -- for the sake of peace, he concludes, he’ll wear the damn pants.

...And then we get him furiously melting his way through everything.

Of course, he’s corrupted, but the Jägers seem more familiar with this side of him. Dimo’s memory of “smasher and slasher” is hardly less terrifying. Not liking to fight doesn’t seem to mean he wasn’t good at it. He does say, in the prologue, that the point of war is to make it so unpleasant the enemy wants to stop. Brutality is a way of achieving that.

He takes Prende with him, too, which surprised me. He sees her as having been holding him prisoner, but when she begs he does take her. The Muses annoyed him, but he doesn’t treat Prende like an object -- he’s hurt by her betrayal and accepts her plea.

Also, the explanation that Klaus’ overlay is him but not all of him makes me wonder about Andronicus. Especially if his consciousness is in the crown as I theorised before, there’s a possibility it’s only a partial copy of the bits a Heterodyne most wanted to preserve.

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And ways in which he’s like an Old Heterodyne:

• Very sincerely against mind control.
• Forcing someone to do your bidding in ways that aren’t technically mind control is different.
• Forcing people to marry you is also fine.
• Has a very loyal army of constructs that he loves deeply and keeps his promises to.
• They still fight and die for him. That’s what armies are for.
• Feels loyalty in return to those who are loyal to him -- he puts down his followers with as much dignity as he can give them after Andronicus controls them.
• Is used to getting his own way to the point he just doesn’t hear “no”.

All of which adds up to me being a little fond of him, the way I am of Agatha’s terrible ancestors. But he’d be a terrible person to rule Europa.

Even aside from the poor morals, the Heterodynes in general don’t have the attention span for Empire, and I’m not sure he does either. Conquest, sure, but one thing you can say for Andronicus is he enjoyed the work of maintaining an Empire more than the bloodshed of gaining one. I don’t think Martellus would.

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Gil relaxing when Tarvek’s around is 50% “Tarvek makes me feel safe and also he can handle some of the things I was staying awake 24 hours because no one else could” and 50% “If he’s not where I can see him he’s probably out there getting poisoned and/or kidnapped nothing good has ever happened to him when I’ve let him out of my sight ever”.

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Thinking about Gil and Tarvek and I think the thing is, if you shoved them both in a group of people and told them to find the spy they’d both do it. But in different ways.

Gil’s a detective. He’s been trained in observation and already has heightened senses. He does the Sherlock thing -- only this is Girl Genius not Sherlock Holmes so that actually does come with drawbacks about making assumptions. That said, he can still follow the evidence to the most likely conclusion quite often. He’s also prone to hyperfocus -- he can be painfully oblivious to one thing if he was figuring out something else. But if he’s looking for an answer there’s a high chance he’ll find it.

Tarvek’s a diplomat. Where Gil goes for physical details, Tarvek goes for motivations. Gil usually knows what people are doing without the slightest idea why they’re doing it. Tarvek knows what people want and therefore what they’re doing. The downside of that is if he’s wrong about motivation he’s going to be wrong about almost everything else (see: Gil in Paris). He’s much less likely to hyperfocus, in fact he’s more hyperaware in general -- missing anything is far too dangerous. He almost certainly knows something about everyone in the group by the end of it, even if Gil might find the spy first. Then, when he needs to know the next thing, he’ll have a serious head start.

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I love the way everyone seems to regard the Sparkhounds primarily as dogs? They are Tweedle’s private construct army, but they also chew his library books and his entire family is kind of... ugh, Martellus’ dogs.

I feel there’s a way they’re very similar to and different from Jägers at the same time. They’re a super-loyal and packish private army with a reputation for not being subtle and a fair amount of Wild Hunt symbolism. But Jägers approach it from the human side and aren’t particularly stupider for being Jägers. They’re also... hmmm... respected, in a sense? There’s definitely a case of the more subtle people on Agatha’s side going, “ugh, this situation was already complicated enough and now it’s full of Jägers” but the Sparkhounds are regarded as animals. They also put up with it more, whereas the Jägers get passive-aggressive if you treat them like that.

Tybalt is... okay, this is a bit of a random thought, and I’m not even sure it is the armour that changes them... but he reminds me of fairy stories where someone takes animal form? Then when they shed the animal skin they can be human and if you destroy the skin it’s... sometimes a good idea and sometimes not. (Picturing Tybalt having his armour destroyed by a beautiful young Sparkhound. Sorry, I said it was a tangent.) Anyway, it’s interesting that he actively likes being human and gets upset when he has to shed his armour.

Do they socialise as humans, though? Or do they shed the armour when they’re on their own and stick to being dogs around each other? Because when they are dogs, they’re very doggy, I don’t think they’d live in barracks so much as adapted kennels.

Like, compared to other constructs, really doggy, actually. The Talpini live in burrows and have burrow mates, but they also wear clothes, get married, etc. Especially considering moles are solitary, they’re very much adapted towards human. The bears, too, live in a clan and use weapons. The Sparkhounds? If they’re not actually in human form they don’t carry weapons and -- unlike Krosp and the bears -- easily drop to all fours. They can even pull a sled. I can’t think of any other constructs that are quite so firmly on the animal side while still being intelligent. And rather than adapting them permently away from that, as most Sparks seem to do when they go from “attack animal” to “private army”, Martellus gave them a temporary way to be smarter and more bipedal that they can just take off.

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Tarvek tends to be considered as the Heir to the Lightning Crown, but he’s also Prince of Sturmhalten, and that has its own thematic elements.

Sturmhalten was built by the Storm King, but he didn’t like it. He preferred the fancier parts of the job, more removed from the straightforward need to stop the Heterodyne advancing with whatever it took.

Sturmhalten’s not an easy place, it’s a fortress right next to the most dangerous town in Europa. It’s a place with a job to do, a place that is damn near indestructible because otherwise it would have been destroyed.

(Interesting that Gil, tank that he is, has the free floating, impossible to pin down Castle  Wulfenbach, while Tarvek’s home is a sturdy fortress.)

Up until Bill and Barry, when the job was no longer necessary, and corruption from within the Knights of Jove notwithstanding, it seems to have done that job, too. Sure, the Heterodynes raided, but the people of Mechanicsburg treat the Princes of Sturmhalten with the contempt reserved for people trying to restrain them (and worse, succeeding). The Princes of Sturmhalten are mentioned fighting Heterodynes, or even trying to reform them. They don’t have the deep connection to the Heterodynes that the Storm King had, but they were a constant and unignorable, while he was one of a kind, ultimately bested but still inspiring jealousy years later.

The thing is, while the Storm King was an Empire builder, the Prince of Sturmhalten is there to stop an Empire being built by the wrong people. Tarvek’s definitely not the moral compass of the main trio, but he can be something of a restraining bolt. I thought it might be an interesting perspective to consider him from, anyway.

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Apparently it takes 15 people to support one full time soldier in a medieval community.

Mechanicsburg is a mid-sized town, maybe a population of 20,000.

This suggests a standing army of 1,300, roughly.

There are probably at least a thousand Jägers. There’s enough for them to be a force and community in their own right.

Mechanicsburg can cheat a bit, Jägers are easy to supply in terms of food, and raiding adds to what they have to use as supplies. But this is still an army that has cavalry and needs specialised weapons, and also Jägers are not the kind of army that does public works when not fighting. They just hang around.

At the times when Mechanicsburg had an Empire we can probably assume they demanded either troops or money to hire troops from their conquered cities and the army was both much larger and much less Jägery.

At times when Mechanicsburg had shrunk back down to its natural state as one small town with terrifying potential, the army may consist almost entirely of Jägers.

“Riding with the Jägers” is the colloquial phrase for raiding, but raiding seems to be most of what the Heterodynes do. Most of their wars are fought under those terms – they turn up, pillage and leave. They have pictures of the state they’ve left towns in and quite often that was not a fit state for keeping afterwards.

The people who do ride with the Jägers are described by OMD as young. Also, we know for a fact that Carson did it, and Carson had a position he already knew he was going to inherit. For him, it was only a matter of time before he had to go home and take up his life.

I feel like it’s a bit that way for many of them? You either find a reason to go home, build a home, grow up or you… don’t. OMD did. He found someone he wanted to settle down with. The Jägers didn't… they chose a path where none of those things would ever really be possible.

(I suspect Jägers have a reputation around Mechanicsburg less for being dangerous to women than for being fickle. They have other priorities and a poor sense of how time passes for humans. Don’t lose your heart to one.)

There’s also banditry which seems… more ad hoc, less involved with the Heterodyne, and less gendered. When we get the “descendants of bandits” line and pictures of the Mechanicsburgers looking ominous it’s the women just as much as the men. If raiding involves travelling, banditry is more of a local thing (there are plenty of passes), as is smuggling. Old people and women can participate there.

And if the town is attacked, everyone but young children will fight.

Leaving me with the feeling that the divisions in the town are less “military vs civilians” than “raiders vs citizens” which… sounds similar, but citizens are not civilians (etymology aside), and it’s less that they don’t fight than that they stay close to home and do other things as well as fight.

An addition I made after the Ivo story:

It looks like I was on the right lines with the difference between military and bandits, but the banditry is less ad hoc than I thought.

The people running it are a kind of upper class. Landowners even, given grants similar to the grants other places would give cavalry. While the military in Mechanicsburg is, odd as it feels to apply the word to Jägers, purely professional. They're not given land to support themselves, they get paid.

I think you could probably sign on with an Old Mechanicsburg family without going through the Heterodyne or feeling it affected your loyalty to them. It's more a business venture.

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Gil and Agatha are load-bearing characters in terms of plot. A few others -- mostly Klaus and Lucrezia, are too, but they're villains. Agatha is the protagonist. Gil's plot-bearing tendencies are more about the romance novel portion -- like a lot of love interests he gets the B plot and both characters get a fair amount of story and development as they come together.

I think Gil, from the start, was set up as Storm King in all but blood, although at that point we didn't know who the Storm King was. But he has a lightning generator when Agatha visits his lab, which later plays into the lightning swords Agatha makes and starts a thread of them building on one another's work to make lightning. Eventually leading to Gil tossing lightning around. His relationship with Von Pinn and her turning out to be Otilia were also set up, although we didn't know about the Muses so there's no way to see that coming.

Tarvek's a bit different. I think his arc existed to introduce the concept of the Storm King and the Muses. Iirc it's word of god he got a bigger role because Kaja liked writing him so much (he's her favourite, Agatha is Phil's), but I can't remember what their intentions were otherwise. It's pretty common, though, for them to have characters that are very important to an arc but die or leave at the end of it.

But, Sturmhalten is a very  tight arc for Tarvek, his character and role within it mesh nicely.

Afterwards he's sort of, uh. I think they retconned him into Gil's past a lot, honestly. Which, I have no complaints about! I adore their relationship. But you have a situation in the Castle arc where Gil's presence is absolutely necessary to the plot -- he's the entire reason Klaus doesn't bulldoze the place -- and Tarvek's is… helping the dramatic tension, since him being ill raises the stakes more than if someone else had been, but he's not necessary. Like the Jägers, in a way, he's filling roles that could be filled by someone else because the authors find him more fun.

His claim to be the Storm King gets bolstered emotionally, sometimes by giving him stuff that Gil had previously, like including him as someone raised by Otilia.

He and Gil also get a sort of… previously, Gil was capable of guile and detective work, we see that in the Airship City (he's not using it for good, but he does fool Klaus). But with Tarvek around he becomes less capable at things that are split off to be "Tarvek's things". Things like Tarvek running the Empire for a little while, too. It's a really cool moment! But it's also basically Tarvek doing exactly what Gil would have done five minutes earlier to give him a cool character moment.

And then in this second story arc it just feels like they don't quite know what to do with Tarvek. He keeps being shuffled out the way of the plot, which seems rather unfair to him since he is present and they put him there. But the whole confrontation with the Storm King passed with his main contribution being plugging the Castle in and telling Grandma who Zola was. His time in Paris passed without him picking up on the weasels -- which is kind of a unique plot to him. Agatha getting the information on them to Gil may make that redundant anyway.

If they want him to be sharing Gil's plot they need to send him back to Gil, I think, so they can rule together.

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Assuming the Muse of Time is Lucrezia, a timeline:

1. Lucrezia is born somewhere between 1830 and 1850.
2. The Geisterdamen find her. I think I remember something about them turning up near her family’s summer home in Novaya Zemlya, but I can’t source it. Novaya Zemlya is confirmed to be the location of her family’s citadel in Airship City.
3. She appears to act as their goddess without time shennanigans for a while. She appears to them always in the same aspect, throughout the same period of time. She probably gains access to “prophecies” left by herself, which may have influenced her decisions.
4. This young Lucrezia is certainly not innocent. She appears to be the one who made the wasps, rather than inheriting them from an earlier/later self, since she was able to accept a bargain to make Sparks immune. She certainly plotted with Aaronev and appears to have left him anti-aircraft monster shooting guns (Klaus recognises them as the Other’s work -- and, yes, they really do shoot the slime monsters at the aircraft.)
5. She sends Klaus to Skifander and marries Bill. Either Skifander is almost impossible to travel to or from without portals or she had some reason to think Klaus would be imprisoned there.
6. Lucrezia was attacked. By a later self? By someone else? Her plans were left in disarray, Castle Heterodyne was damaged, and she fled to the Geisterdamen in “high distress”.
7. She appears to have done nothing until Agatha was born. There is a six month lull before the Other starts attacking in earnest. It’s unclear whether the purpose of Agatha was always for Lucrezia to replace her mind -- the engines that would accomplish it don’t seem to be built yet.
8. Lucrezia leaves Agatha with the Geisterdamen and goes somewhere else. Where? Is this the start of her timeloop to the past? Since Bill and Barry both fight the Geisterdamen (they talk of those, plural, who came) with no mention of her, it seems likely.
9. Lucrezia travels throughout time. Or possibly leaves the time stream completely? It’s hard to say what her first, from her personal perspective, entry point back into time is.
10. During her travels, Lucrezia transforms herself, which may be a sign she is still aging in her own timeline. She goes gradually from human to the Lady of Sharp Crystal (the anomaly) who is mostly machine.
11. One place she regularly goes is to the Silver City where the Geisterdamen consider her changes to be different aspects and find the Lady of Sharp Crystal the most terrifying to deal with.
12. Another place is the library, where Robur’s machine seems to give her an easy entrance point to the time stream and she entertains herself visiting Van Rijn. She does this in many different forms, so it seems to remain entertaining to her for quite a while in her subjective time.
13. At one of these times he traps her. This does not stop her from continuing to visit him when she’s freed (he sees her as the Lady of Sharp Crystal), but 200 subjective years in a bottle may explain why the LoSC is so angry. (It was a really stupid plan. Unless he really thought he could hold her until the end of time, it was only ever going to annoy her.)
14. Does she realise the one who freed her was her daughter? ETA: This is the only Lu aside from LoSC who goes further forward than the original Lu, and she seems to return to the past before she learns anything.
15. Also, at some point, Euphrosynia. What happened between them, why Euphrosynia vanished, whether Lucrezia intended to take her or whether she just got too close to a time anomaly, is all a mystery.
16. It seems likely Lucrezia creates the Geisterdamen. This may be why they “read” as revenants, they simply bear the mark of their creator. Vrin claims that they were created for the battle where they fought to keep Agatha. “But still we had hope. For we had been given a task. Our only task, the reason we had been created. We were to protect the Holy Child. Protect her from those whom we knew would try to steal her away from us.“
17. Lucrezia seems to travel most widely as LoSC, perhaps because she’s truly got the hang of her time travelling powers by then. It’s LoSC who is seen in Ancient Greece, who Robur sees, and who is finally the one to travel past the End of the Prophecies and enter what would have been Lucrezia’s future if she hadn’t begun time travelling.
18. The Prophecies contained what Lucrezia knew when she went back -- that Agatha would be born, that the Heterodyne Boys would come for her -- but nothing further. The Geisterdamen did not know they would lose the battle and Lucrezia does not seem to find out until she returns as LoSC. At which point she is angry.
19. LoSC “purges” all the clans to the point the Geisterdamen are seriously afraid that she will kill them all. Then she forces them to embark on a “great building” during which almost two hundred more of them die. Then she sends three thousand of them to the “Shadow World” to find Agatha.
20. The “great building” seems likely to be connected to the Beacon Engine? This may also be the point at which heresy starts among the Geisterdamen. These people, in this era, have only been used to the “Joyful Aspect”, a young Lucrezia who enjoyed their adoration and helped grow strong crops and healthy babies. She’s suddenly returned as a monster. Do they doubt the divinity of all Lucrezias, or only LoSC?
21. At first I assumed Lucrezia only remained as the beacon engine. Why else doesn’t her main self interfere with the plot? But there seems no reason for LoSC to vanish after accomplishing all this. Perhaps she still rules in the Silver City. Are new Lucrezias copied directly from her or from a copy of her? Would a new Lucrezia summoned now have three more years worth of knowledge of what is happening in the Silver City, or not?
22. It seems as if LoSC doesn’t go back though. There is a clear watershed of knowledge. No Lucrezia before Agatha was taken by the Heterodyne Boys knew for sure that Agatha would be taken, despite otherwise sharing knowledge across time.
23. Eventually, when Agatha reaches the Silver City, she will probably confront LoSC, who will, for some reason, respond by opening a window to point contemptuously at Agatha’s younger self.

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Some fairly disorganised thoughts.

Most clanks are neuter but, disappointingly, use masculine words without comment. The Castle calls the Beast “brother”, Gil calls the Castle “Monsieur le Chateau” (although “chateau” is masculine which may be a factor?). It’s hard to imagine “sister” or “Madame le Chateau” passing without comment.

Queenie may be the exception to the rule, either on a meta-level because she’s an analogue of Agatha or because Zeetha gave her a feminine name. I was going to complain about the only feminine dingbot being the only one to get gendered pronouns, but actually I think that’s a fandom thing so I can only blame myself. In canon, Queenie gets referred to as “it” while still a Mysterious Orb and then I don’t think anyone uses a pronoun at all?

The Muses are female and appear to identify as female, which makes sense because they’re aesthetically female and aesthetics is a big part of who they are, since they’re works of art as much as practical creations.

Otilia winds up in a female body as Von Pinn and while she’s acutely dysphoric for a number of reasons, gender doesn’t seem to be one of them.

(On a tangent I have a headcanon that the Castle would dislike singular “they” because, as a being that actually is plural/fractal but identifies strongly as individual, it would feel not misgendered, but misnumbered.)

Sexuality gets a bit weird for clanks. They definitely can’t have sex and are unlikely to desire it, but some of them may take an interest.

The Castle is programmed to preserve the Heterodyne line, which includes taking an interest in whether they’re having sex, but it goes beyond the clinical and often comes off as a huge voyeur. “Wulfenbachs are known for their oversized weaponry”? It doesn’t seem interested in sex on its own behalf, which is just as well because every way I can imagine the Castle implementing that is horrifying, but comes off as cheerfully pansexual and enjoying oggling people.

Von Pinn is... ambiguously something with André. I mean, she’s driving him off and beating him up, but the students already know it takes her longer to get rid of him than any other Jäger. Plus, that’s what he sees as flirting. It’s hard to say how she sees it.

Romantically, the Castle may have an interest in Otilia. I’m not sure, but I’d see it that way if they weren’t clanks, I think? They’re not really friends, but the Castle is very insistent on preserving Otilia, even when she tries to attack its Heterodyne, and tells Agatha that she was no threat and there was no need to hurt her as if it's ever objected to hurting anyone else.

It also seems perfectly happy to have her taking command of its wayward systems.

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I think one of the things meeting Prende has done is explain some of what Otilia was feeling as Von Pinn. The Muses have what seems to be a kind of GPS -- Prende is able to consult internal charts to be sure they’re in Paris -- and also perfect time sense -- Prende knows exactly how long she’s been underground watching over Andy.

As Von Pinn, Otilia wasn’t only dealing with a bunch of senses she’d never had before, she was missing at least two very important ones. It was probably really disorienting to even be able to be lost. Also, this may explain her obsession with her watch and time keeping. If she can’t sense time passing in herself any more, she’s going to hold on really tightly to the thing that lets her navigate it anyway.

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For all the times Gil and Tarvek have been at each other’s throats we’ve only had one situation where two people duelled over someone they both loved.

And it was Agatha and Tiktoffen over the huge murderous death trap building.

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So, this is the account of Barry’s disappearance from the novels:

They had all lived together happily for several months, and Uncle Barry had made the occasional trip while leaving Agatha in the care of the Clays. Agatha had vague memories of a growing tension amongst the grownups, which culminated in a late night argument she could dimly hear from her bedroom. The next morning, the tension appeared to have cleared and Barry announced that he was going on another trip. A lengthy one, that might take as long as two months. He had written three times: once from Mechanicsburg, the home of the fabled Heterodyne Boys; once from Paris; and over a year later, a much travel-stained letter, full of disquieting and vague ramblings, that was found to have been slid under the Clays’ front door while they had been outside the city picking apples. 

It was the last they had heard from or of him.

I’ve wondered before why Mechanicsburg and Paris and it occurred to me today that there’s a possibility I hadn’t considered. What if he was looking for a safe place for Agatha to be a Spark?

It starts with an argument with Lilith and Adam which, I hope they’d mind the locket. I can see them feeling that they understand why he did this, but also that Agatha can’t just live her life like this. So, an argument about Agatha’s safety vs her wellbeing.

By the next morning the argument seems to have been resolved -- so either they’ve given way or Barry has -- and then Barry sets out for Mechanicsburg. The safest place for a baby Heterodyne he could think of, even if he doesn’t like it. But Mechanicsburg seems to have gone over to Klaus and its defences are in too poor a state to fix without Klaus noticing the fixing before it’s done. Especially with prisoners inside the Castle.

So he sets out for Paris. Paris is a safe place for Sparks and decidedly not under Klaus’ control. But the Master hates Heterodynes, won’t let any in the city for more than 72 hours, and there may have been Geisterdamen in the tunnels already. There’s certainly rather a lot of Aaronev’s family in the city.

Both times he sends a letter.

Then, something happens. Maybe he still had other places to look, but if so it sounds like he never made it there. A year later he’s possibly been on the run continually, is afraid to come home and actually talk to them, and may not be entirely sane.

With evidence Agatha may be in even more danger than they’d thought and no way of knowing what else to do Lilith and Adam leave the locket on.

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I love Jäger deception.

Jenka uses her real name in both roles and has for 200 years.

Higgs gets flustered when poked on certain subjects, including the subject of Jägers, and lies badly when he needs to explain why he knows something.

Maxim and Oggie show up disguised as Jägers.

Gkika stayed in Mechanicsburg under her own name, living in her OWN BAR.

Such sobtle Jägers.

(To be fair to them it often works because people don’t see Jägers they aren’t looking for.)

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The thing with Jägers is it’s often fascinating to try to untangle where behaviour is coming from even though it’s probably impossible.

For instance, Jägers are often very tactile, have little sense of personal space, and can get rough and grabby. Possible explanations?

Cultural: Their subculture is very tactile. It’s also military, encouraging friendly fights and playful aggression. There’s an expectation Jägers will need to “blow off steam” so they don’t ever have to learn to calm down. It’s a high stress environment even for people who love fighting - - Jägers could die tomorrow or live forever - - so their culture encourages forms of stress relief that can look mean from the outside.

Sensory: Lower tactile sensitivity can be associated with high pain tolerance. It would also make battlefields less overwhelming. So it’s plausible the Heterodynes tweaked it - - especially since Jägers are sturdy and don’t need as much pain sensitivity. As a side effect Jägers would likely need more and rougher touch not to feel touch starved.

Psychological: Jägers can be very packish, to the point the Heterodynes may have enhanced that instinct. Touch and play fighting are often important forms of communication between pack animals. Hat fighting especially might be a way to test out where they stand with one another.

Some thoughts on other Jäger senses:

Scent - - Always much better than human but in a very similar range to one another. If one Jäger draws another’s attention to a scent they can always smell it. The fact that the Heterodynes used scent to put in a pleasure response to themselves might mean they did some very specific optimization here.

Hearing - - May be better than human. Despite some issues with Jägers having things sneak up on them it doesn’t really seem to be worse (they’re just bad at paying attention). Jenka’s phrasing of “you got the good ears” seems to imply it’s a pretty random thing and mostly left to chance. Dimo can pick out Agatha’s voice even when it’s being used by someone else to speak Geister, though, so there may have been some very specific tuning in this sense too.

Sight - - This seems to be even more random, especially since their eyes mutate to have vastly different appearances. Dimo’s are either reflective or glowing. One background Jäger wears smoked glasses implying he landed with very sensitive eyes. In the side bit where the Jägers accept a Hugo, Maxim (as Cheyenne) cheerfully thanks humans for being a trichromatic species, leaving me wondering if not all Jägers are.

Touch - - Probably less sensitive than humans, and broadly in the same range as one another (see above).

Taste - - The sense itself doesn’t seem stronger or less strong but preference has been drastically broadened. I don’t think we’ve yet seen a Jäger dislike anything - - oh, wait, Maxim complained about the beer. I think he just didn’t like it having changed in the last twenty years though. Preferences seem widely similar. Bugs, for instance, seem to be especially liked by all of them, and Othar makes use of knowing they all like fudge in his twitter. If the Heterodynes did this on purpose then it makes sense to have your soldiers happily eat anything and bugs are a cheap source of protein.

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Mechanicsburg considers itself a thousand years old. This suggests it’s counting from when the H’trok-din decided to make a permanent settlement rather than from when Faustus decided civillians would be a nice thing to have around the place.

Knife, the H’trok-din’s son, built the first Castle in 1042, so as a very rough estimate we can probably just go with Mechanicsburg being founded around 1000.

(As an aside, I find myself wondering if, on the other side of Europa, the Battle of Hastings was still about to happen in 1066.)

This still only makes Mechanicsburg 900 years old, but I will give them the rounding.

(Note: all of this relies on assuming the story takes place starting in 1892, not 1992. This would make Mechanicsburg the 1000 years old it claims, but introduces other problems, mostly with the timing of Spark-ized historical figures.)

Van teases Agatha about “fifty-generations of lowered expectations”, and I doubt he’s actually counted, but combined with the 1000 years figure it makes each generation about twenty years. Which is plausible. Heterodynes should certainly reproduce young if they want their town to stop looking vaguely worried every time they do something dangerous! (The Castle doesn’t stop at that, either.)

Between Knife and Faustus (around to build the Castle in 1298) we’d expect roughly 13 Heterodynes, but we only know of the two who had the biggest impact. Vlad, who made the Jägers, and Egregious, who blew up the Dyne. We know they came in that order, too, but not how long there was between them.

...we also seem to lose the priestesses of the Dyne during this time period. By Faustus’ time there’s no trace of them. They’ve either become indistinguishable from the Heterodyne army and its followers, left or died out. What did they think of the Jägers? They saw the H’trok-din as chosen by the goddess for his ability to withstand the water, what did they think of Vlad’s experimentation with making more people able to withstand it?

After Faustus we get a period of about 300 years before the next named Heterodyne is born, Lazurus in 1575. An estimated 15 Heterodynes.

Robur has to come during this period -- Agatha refers to his notes as being older than Van Rijn’s and the Castle remembers him. (The Corbettites were very ahead of their time, if they already had railways operating back then.) ETA: A helpful anon has pointed out that the Castle says Robur was 300 years ago, putting him in the 1590s, possibly as Lazarus’ father or grandfather.

Dagon seems likely to belong to this period, if only because Skull Queens scouring mountains seems to belong to a Europa pre-Storm King. On the other hand, all sorts of strange things happen daily in Europa, so who knows?

In 1575 Lazarus Heterodyne (we only see a fragment of the name on his grave but @readalong has told me this is his name in word-balloon free art) is born. I’d been thinking he was probably a cousin or half-brother to the Black Heterodyne, but looking at the dates again he’s quite likely to be a father or uncle.

In 1596 the Black Heterodyne is born.

In 1625 Lazarus dies for the last time, having presumably been revived (after being buried?) in 1602,1604,1609 and 1614.

In 1655 the Black Heterodyne dies.

In 1676 Andronicus was about to marry Euphrosynia. By this point Clemethious was the Heterodyne and his adult son seems to have been handling much of the military. His adult daughter is, of course, about to be married. The Red Heterodyne isn’t mentioned, and so is probably dead.

It seems like Clemethious has to take over directly after the Black Heterodyne (or possibly the Red, it’s still unclear which was the Heterodyne), and was probably descended from one of them.

Lazurus, the Black (or the Red) Heterodyne, Clemethious, and Bludtharst, covers at least eighty years.

The last three Heterodynes pre-Agatha will cover a bit less than a century, leaving us with one more century unaccounted for between the Storm King’s disastrous attempt to marry Euphrosynia and Bill and Barry’s final confrontation with Lu.

The only Heterodyne we can definitely place in this period is Dante, the Good Heterodyne, who was making bets with the Prince of somewhere built during Andronicus’ reign. Considering the Cathedral seems to have been around long enough to be interwoven thoroughly with Mechanicsburg tradition, I’m inclined to place him earlier, perhaps as Bludtharst’s son or grandson.

Saturn’s father, That Guy Who Magnetised Children, existed within living memory of the oldest townsfolk, so perhaps seventy or eighty years ago.

If you’re willing to both use Secret Blueprints dates (a bit dodgy) and things the Secret Blueprints only implies (dodgier still), Bill might be born in 1834 and Barry in 1836. The Blueprints say that Bill took control of Mechanicsburg at “a young age” alongside a picture of him and Barry at 16 and 14 respectively. It more definitely says they adventured for 23 years.

Agatha, of course, has been the Heterodyne for the last nineteen years even if she didn’t know it.

(As a last note, I would like you to consider that even 900 years is a remarkably short period of time for your family to repeatedly all get lost especially when you frequently have three overlapping generations living together!)

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Jägers seem to be self-sufficient to a startling degree. Take them out of Mechanicsburg, as Klaus did, and they’ll arrange themselves into a self-contained army in their new environment. The only mention of orderlies serving Jägers is when Klaus assigns a Lackya as one as punishment.

Are Jägers used to humans or others doing things like cooking or cleaning for them? Cooking is one of the things that comes up as a hobby for Jägers, and they have wildly different dietary... if not needs, then certainly preferences... from humans. It’s a bit hard to imagine the messy, disorganised Jägers doing their own cleaning, but then it’s also hard to imagine them wanting squashy humans they have to be careful of in their private spaces. Not to mention, cleaning is another area where Jägers have just slightly different standards. They dislike soap (I suspect they don’t like the smell) but probably groom themselves, rinse and pound dirt out of their clothes, and scrub floors down with plain water. They’re grubby, not filthy or crusted with dried blood. If they don’t like doing the cleaning I expect there’s usually someone who deserves a boring task to do.

That applies mostly to the Jägerhall. I expect Gkika employs humans to do the cleaning, but humans are more in evidence in her place in other roles, too.

Gkika’s is a weird as heck place. The Jägerhall is essentially barracks. Gkika’s is a hospital/bar/brothel, all run by a General. The hospital part is the most obviously necessary, Jägers cannot get medical treatment from human doctors. On the other hand, we haven’t seen any Jäger doctors either. It’s not clear whether Gkika is in charge of Jäger medical care or literally is Jäger medical care in the absence of a Heterodyne. I expect she at least employs human nurses to see to bandaging and other non-intrusive stuff. Gkika’s rank may be partly because she runs the hospital -- it’s a vitally important part of Jäger services.

The bar part seems to be partly... well, it’s easier to keep Jäger patients in line if there’s alcohol. It’s also worth noting that painkillers and anaesthetics seem not to be much more in evidence in Girl Genius than they were during equivalent historical periods. Getting really drunk may be the best anyone can do for chronic pain. It’s also just useful for Jägers, even uninjured, to have a bar that is theirs, where antics and property damage are accepted (if probably charged to their tab) and humans are allowed but at their own risk. Humans aren’t employed in the bar except as the floor show, either. Waitressing is done by, presumably sturdy, clanks.

The brothel part may be for the tourists, we don’t hear much about it except that it exists. Or it may be that that’s another area where a bit of special training on Jägers helps. Not that they’re likely to be rough, but a) many of them have a masochistic streak b) they’re nearly indestructible. A little training on the sorts of things they might ask for wouldn’t go amiss.

Rank among Jägers seems to mostly follow a normal army structure but with a slight looseness to account for instinct. Dimo seems not to have been promoted so much as... he was acting like a General, therefore he was a General.

The difference between commissioned officers and NCOs seems to be maintained. Jägers with education seem to start with higher ranks, or at least be promoted (relatively) sooner. Jorgi, by the mutations and the fact a blacksmith had the resources to educate him, doesn’t seem that old and Maxim is younger than Dimo and Oggie, but they’re the two captains we meet.

Zog may outrank the other Generals in times of war, going by Khrizhan’s formal announcement to him when they realise war must happen.

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Preeetty sure Gil is deliberately being a jerk here, but it’s not a bad question, is it? The Jägers he’s asked have said they don’t know, which might just mean it’s a rather personal question they’re suddenly being asked, or might mean they really don’t.

The Jäger candidates are most likely drawn from the people who ride with them. A demographic Old Man Death describes here for us. Young men who didn’t care what happened to them.

There’s an element of gangs or organized crime, as well as the obvious military ones, to the Jägerkin. From the family terms they throw around to the internal code of honour. The Jägerbrau itself has elements -- although the way it works is by necessity not design -- of hazing, initiation, or even Russian Roulette. You suffer excrutiating pain and the chance of death to be part of this group.

Tarvek’s asking a different question. Not “why would anyone become a Jäger?” but “Why would a smart educated person become a Jäger?”

Jorgi’s answer is flippant, but maybe there’s some truth in it too. Vole still wanted to burn down the world.

And, fifteen? Even if he’s counting from when he was old enough to first understand his father, or perhaps to when he left home rather than to when he was offered the brau, it doesn’t sound like he was very old.

So you have a demographic of people in their teens or early twenties, people who don’t care much what happens to them and don’t expect anyone else to either. The kind of people who would be drawn to crime or gangs, because they’re looking for somewhere to belong and half-expect to die young anyway.

What the Heterodyne offers -- what might be too embarrassing to tell a nosy Spark asking nosy questions -- is the promise that they will be loved and valued, even in a harsh, possessive way.

Vlad made Jägers as soldiers and companions (according to the Secret Blueprints). Heterodynes are isolated, the sole Masters in their town of Minions. They don’t have friends. But Jägers get some of the leeway of court jesters, their unquestionable loyalty and dependency meaning they get a licence to tease. Dimo’s “get your own pants” attitude didn’t strike me as odd, but as something Agatha could probably put an end to if she got mad enough about it to command him. As long as she doesn’t, he’s allowed to play (and how much of “borink” as a description of Bill and Barry means “they wouldn’t play with us”?)

Jägers are wildly attention seeking. They clown for each other, for outsiders, and probably for their Heterodynes. As long as it doesn’t interfere too much with work, amusing your Heterodyne is a good thing.

Heterodynes are hedonistic, usually. I think a lot of what I’m trying to say here is... Heterodynes want to have fun. Often considerably more than they actually want to conquer a thing. They chose people they could have fun with, people who shared their idea of fun. Heterodynes are gleefully destructive and so are Jägers. Whether they were angry -- looking to burn down the world -- or just reckless and uncaring, they could come away covered in someone else’s blood and smiling. Soldiers who can do the work but take no pleasure in it are no fun to ride with.

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Talking about it made me realise that I probably overstated the case when saying half of what they ate would give a human food poisoning.

• They eat a lot of raw meat, especially when travelling, since they eat what they can hunt. They don’t avoid Spark-made animals, but there’s no indication those animals were poisonous. As far as we know they don’t eat carrion.
• They eat other people’s food, which is, of course, food made for humans.
• They eat bugs. Most bugs are non-poisonous and not eating bugs is really more a European cultural thing than a human thing anyway. Jägers seem to really like bugs, but the bugs they eat are probably not poisonous. (Oggie does eat, and try to offer around, his own ear parasites, which is both icky and a potential pathogen problem, but I don’t think the ear centipedes were poisonous.)
• They eat sweets and pastries. With bugs, if they’re not sharing with humans.
• They eat glue. Given that the circus are making it on the road I would guess this is animal glue -- bones, hooves and/or hide being boiled -- which is basically unpurified gelatin. Humans probably wouldn’t want to eat it before the salt, grease and calcium has been leached and definitely wouldn’t want to eat it at a strength that could stick their jaws together, but it’s not really harmful.
• Oggie eats a raw meat and greasetrap sandwich. This was what had me wondering about food poisoning. First, because meat that’s been sitting around a sandwich shop is honestly probably more of a risk than a monster you just killed yourself, second, because I have no idea what the consequences of eating the contents of a grease trap would be for a human but I’m pretty sure it’s not healthy in there.

So, um, conclusion. Jägers mostly don’t eat things that would actually be deadly to humans, they’re just weird. Oggie is even weirder and apparently at least thinks he’s immune to food poisoning.

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One of the things I like about Girl Genius is the language. The various construct groups -- the bears, the Sparkhounds, the Jägers -- have their own consistent syntax.

And both Sparks and Jägers have words that the group uses to refer to themselves vs. words others use to refer to them.

“Spark” is what Sparks call themselves. Not solely, it’s the general term these days (which is itself a mark of how much power Sparks have in that society) but Sparks will nearly always use it. “Madgirl/madboy” is a slang term, not quite a slur, but the people using it are usually not Sparks and don’t like them. When Sparks use it (”show them what kind of madboy they’re dealing with”/”I’m the evil madgirl with the deathray and the freakish ancestors”) it’s usually to make a point.

Jägers kind of have three terms. “Jägers” is neutral. Everyone uses that, including them. “Jägerkin” seems to be their own term for themselves, usually used to refer to the pack as a whole as “the Jägerkin” but also used as a description (”ve iz Jägerkin”). People who use it tend to at least know them well. “Jägermonsters” is a bit more of a loaded term. It’s not used just by enemies and it’s not a slur -- Klaus uses it sometimes -- but it’s not used by Jägers. They’ll happily call themselves “monsters” and count themselves in fast if anyone mentions monsters near them, but in a way... that’s proving a point, too. If people are going to look down on them they won’t find Jägers being ashamed of what they are.

(Whether they do regret being monsters... is a complicated question. They regret their lost humanity and take pride in their new abilities. They call the people of Mechanicsburg and their Heterodynes monsters, too. They feel detached from humanity, but close to each other. They made their own choice and they will never, ever be ashamed of it.)

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The Castle says that the family has been missing before, and either they’ve gone missing an impressive number of times in 600 years or there’s been an impressive number of imposters each time. Jenka cheerfully announces that the town has been lost several times.

What if these are the same times? What if Heterodynes just keep their Jägers close, so usually when a Heterodyne goes missing they’ve got the army with them?

The Jägers can’t possibly be a huge group. Klaus refers to bringing “the Jägermonsters” to Beetleburg as if he’d brought all of them. They live in one building in Mechanicsburg. Their creation requires ten times as many candidates as it produces Jägers and Mechanicsburg is not a huge town. Even over Mechanicsburg’s whole history it would have been hard pressed to produce more than 10,000 Jägers, at a generous estimate, and while they don’t die easily they do die. I would guess there are 1000-2000 Jägers alive at the present time and that this is probably a higher number -- the Heterodynes have been creating more Jägers than they’ve been losing -- than at times in the past.

In Saturn’s time they also appear to have been most of the army. The phrase is “riding with the Jägers”, implying the Jägers were the main group and humans were supplementary. At times when the Heterodynes were actually at war they presumably had a bigger human army. But for raiding and... whatever kind of silliness getting lost in tunnels for two years over bats counts as... Jägers are clearly a good choice. They’re also made with the assumption that a Heterodyne will be fixing them. Sending them off to battle without a Heterodyne seems like it would lead to more problems than keeping them close and patching them up. So, I propose that whatever the human army was doing, at least the majority of Jägers were the Heterodyne’s personal troops. If they were split it was usually between members of the family. (The Red Heterodyne had a bunch of them in the tunnels, but presumably left his brother the Black Heterodyne some too).

Basically, when Bill and Barry charged off to do something reckless and stupid, the difference from the Jägers’ point of view was that they were left behind.

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I was going to say that Jägers appear to have a social structure somewhere between an army and a wolf pack but, more accurately, they have a social structure (and temperament) somewhere between an army and a pack of hounds. Particularly scent hounds such as foxhounds or beagles.

Described in several breed standards as "merry", they are amiable and typically neither aggressive nor timid, although this depends on the individual. They enjoy company, and although they may initially be standoffish with strangers, they are easily won over.

Beagles are intelligent but, as a result of being bred for the long chase, are single-minded and determined, which can make them hard to train. They can be difficult to recall once they have picked up a scent, and are easily distracted by smells around them. They do not generally feature in obedience trials; while they are alert, respond well to food-reward training, and are eager to please, they are easily bored or distracted.

Beagles are excellent with children and this is one of the reasons they have become popular family pets, but they are pack animals, and are prone to separation anxiety,^[44] a condition which causes them to destroy things when left unattended.

From the wiki page on beagles.

They want to please but don’t listen, hate being separated from the pack and, oh yes, yell when they’re on the trail of prey.

The bloodthirsty tendencies probably come from their human side -- they were all already raiders -- combined with newfound hunting instinct. When not on the hunt they’re usually friendly, if a bit indifferent to social mores.

They don’t hold position and meet the enemy, they engage to bring down prey, surrounding, harrying, wounding and then killing them. It’s easy to see why the word “jägers” would be applied to them. Even when engaged with a larger group Oggie’s trick allows the Jägers to be the ones attacking from all sides. They have to be very outnumbered to fight on the defensive.

Like hounds they lack discipline when on the chase and very nearly the entire pack runs out of Mechanicsburg after a retreating army. They call each other onto a trail with the famous “ve hunt” and, while it might be a side effect of being detached and therefore unranked, Dimo, Oggie and Maxim can all equally call one another into a fight.

In some ways anyone using a pack of Jägers has to be a huntmaster as much as a commander. Jägers aren’t stupid and they don’t need to be treated like animals, but they are easily distracted and get caught up in things. Gil, at a point where he’s not used to being the heir to the Empire, fails to give clear instructions or command attention.

Then again, hounds, by training and instinct, respond to humans. Jägers, by training and instinct, respond to Heterodynes. They’re all much more attentive around Agatha.

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I was thinking about this because Mechanicsburg is definitely Agatha’s home. Even before she really has a home, she wants one and hates moving around, so when she reaches Mechanicsburg it’s like “We love you! Would you like to stay here forever?” “Yes, yes I would like to stay here forever (with occasional excursions to Save People elsewhere)”. She’s put down roots at lightning speed, but now, even if it’s in a timebubble, she has a home.

Tarvek’s relationship to his home seems to be as complicated as everything else. He does Sturmhalten no good (his father seems to be a competent ruler, except on the matter of a) Spark things like shooting at actors b) wasping everyone, neither of which Tarvek prevents) and it does him no good (his allies all seem to be elsewhere). He’s still upset at the idea of leaving it not knowing when he’ll come back and lists his Castle and his town among the things he’s lost.

Gil seems kind of rootless. Technically his place -- the place he rules by inheritance -- is Wulfenbach, but I’m not sure he’s even been there much less developed attachments to it. The place he was raised is Castle Wulfenbach, but while he loves it and has apparently fixed it, and while it is the size of a city, it’s... less a place than somewhere on land. You can’t get to know neighbours, although you can, in a way, get to know everyone. Gil does seem to consider Europa itself as his home, and as the place he’s personally and intimately responsible for (Gil, no, it’s too big). And the rest of the world as neighbours (he’s been so many places and appears to have been helpful in many of them). But he doesn’t really seem to have a place where he can go “these are my people”. Everyone is and no one is.

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A lot of my reasons for paralleling Tarvek and Euphrosynia are kind of hard to put into words without sounding meaner to Tarvek than I intend to be. I like Euphrosynia, actually, so I promise, it’s not meant as an insult.

But... Tarvek gets away with using “girl” tactics because he’s a guy. It gets treated as a joke, the fashion design and “playing with dolls” and... it’s not really funny, or fair to him. But in other ways he takes advantage of the fact that people would see through a girl quicker just because the tactics are traditionally feminine.

He knows he’s pretty. He flirts to get what he wants, or to distract women. There was a post going around about What Women Want a while ago, talking about the men in movies women are actually attracted to and how different it is from what men try to be to impress women. Tarvek is very astute and has an actual handle on What Women Want. He is cute. He is vulnerable. He is not really evil, it’s just his family, and you could take him away from all that. He is tragic and sad and needs a hug. He even does the Wounded Gazelle Gambit.

“I’m not evil, just really misguided, and I’d be completely willing to learn better if you’ll be there to teach me” is still the card Lucrezia tries to play with Klaus. She even makes it sound halfway convincing -- this is probably what Klaus meant when he called her a “consummate actress”. She’s really not, but she’s an excellent liar, especially when she can tangle real feelings with false intentions.

Euphrosynia too mixed real love (according to Rerich) with false promises of loyalty. Andronicus thought she was under the thumb of her family (he believed she wanted to marry him, but thought he had to force her father to allow the match) and knew she was dangerous but underestimated her danger to him.

Tarvek is reading from the same “please redeem me, I just need a stronger guiding figure in my life” script as Lucrezia and Euphroysnia.

I don’t mean to impy that Tarvek’s insincere in all of it. It’s just... if he was a girl we would not be taking that at face value. Not in this story.

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This is not about what Tarvek intended to do with wasps this is more because he grew up in a world that was saturated with them and it’s just really strange. Even by Girl Genius standards.

• He grew up in a town controlled by the alien cult living in his basement.
• The shamblers are “statistical extremes”, keeping the town wasped would mean causing and probably killing a certain number of them each time.
• This also applies to the Smoke Knights. Who were his cousins. Did he grow up with people who, at a certain age, would he herded into a room and then wasped? At best coming out mind controlled and at worst as zombies who had to be put down.
• He grew up in a town full of people apparently living normal lives despite being revenants – it’s not surprising he doesn’t take wasps seriously enough.
• But at the same time the people of Sturmhalten were quietly terrified – they knew what had been done to them and they knew the royal family had done it. Tarvek wouldn’t have anything to compare that with, when it comes to how servants regard their masters.
• Considering that Tarvek’s mostly been living in Sturmhalten he may have interacted with more revenants than non-revenants over the course of his entire life.

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I want to take a moment to mourn for the Wulfenbach Empire. Because I know it was a tyranny and I know an important theme of the comic is destroying the old to make way for the new and better but Klaus worked so hard.

Klaus is way overbearing and tried to micromanage a whole continent, and the flipside of that is that he dealt with a nation of individuals as individuals. He knew something about what each town produced, what the people there were like. He didn’t always give people what they wanted -- especially if he thought what they wanted was stupid -- but he didn’t have preconceptions about what they wanted either. He found out.

He had so much in progress that wouldn’t bear fruit for a while -- infrastructure, schools, attempts at starting to break down class and gender roles, laws against harming constructs that were the first part of working on anti-construct feeling. Education for the next generation of rulers. And now most of it never will bear fruit because it was broken down by people who wouldn’t even see the value of half of it.

Of course, it was also broken down by Klaus’s own actions, his pursuit of Agatha when she only wanted to defend herself. But the Fifty Families wanted to bring Klaus’s Empire down from the start and sometimes I hate that they succeeded.

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I wonder what the Jägers think of Gil? It's been on my mind a bit. Not as a person, exactly, but... he's a quasi-Jäger and according to Voice of the Castle they've known that longer than he has.

They're fiercely protective of their biology, it's a secret, but serving Klaus there was a limit to how much they could hide things (apparently he did dissect their dead and it's been clarified in an interview with the Foglios).

So, in a way it's due to a breach of trust that Klaus had that information at all, and in another way they don't seem to blame him for trying. It was up to them to try to prevent it.

But, whatever he gained, he only used it once. He didn't make an army of his own using Jäger secrets, he improved his son. And Gil is innocent -- he didn't even know.

So how does it feel to watch a kid grow up who is maybe a little bit of a Jäger? Who didn't make a choice or take a troth or change all at once.

The Jägers seem to like Gil, more or less, and part of that seems to be as a Wulfenbach. They are grateful to Klaus for taking them in when they had nowhere else to go and treating them well.

I just wonder if that's all.

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I'm only talking physically, not mentally or romantically which is a whole 'nother question, but this did strike me on reading Voice of the Castle. Talking of which -- SPOILERS -- although not huge ones.

In the comic when Gil's introduced it's as a fighter. He's clearly skilled.

Not to mention a little smug. I mean, he probably does think fencing clanks without battle axes are tame, but he's also showing off.

We see him distracting Agatha's clank without hurting it, curbstomping an already worn out Othar and fighting his fencing clank. But the first time we really see him in a serious fight is against the wasps.

Come to think of it this is also the first comic vs novel difference, although I think it's an accidental one here. In Airship City it's just much more clear how dangerous wasps are and we hear that some of the Jägers have been killed fighting them with the main group. It makes it more impressive that Gil is able to do this with fencing foils, before Agatha's either provided a solution or tried commanding them.

The first time Tarvek fights is against Vrin.

...and it's not exactly impressive.

There are potential mitigating circumstances here. We don't see anyone else fight Vrin, so she could be really really good. Tarvek hasn't slept for days at this point. He's using a broom. When the comic later starts presenting him as a fighter, it's easy enough to brush over this as a particularly bad showing for good reasons. Gil wasn't going to win against those wasps, either.

But just reading it as it is with no other expectations, Tarvek seems unused to fighting, unsure how to handle the pain and quickly overwhelmed. He's a thinker, not a fighter, and while he knows how to fight and is in good shape he's not experienced or temperamentally inclined to it.

At this point I don't think, although I can't be sure, the Foglios meant him to be a fighter, either. When he and Gil are presented separately Gil is a fighter as part of his character, and Tarvek isn't. Gil being a fighter isn't even an unmitigated good thing -- he can fight alongside Agatha and protect her, but she's shocked by the violence he shows when he feels it warranted, for instance against Othar, although she later decides that one was justified.

Clockwork Princess actually does start shifting the emphasis here, a bit. Lucrezia makes a point of noticing that Tarvek is muscled like a fighter, it's highlighted more in advance that he can fight. Considering they wrote that novel while the Castle Arc was going on in the comic, it seems the shift towards Gil and Tarvek as equals was being inserted in advance.

And the scene from inside Tarvek's head shows him off balance and a bit off guard, but still as someone with training. Someone who got unlucky at the start of the fight, being attacked while trying to grab a weapon.

Her blade lazily flicked out. Tarvek had already been moving to grab a broom, and thus didn’t dodge in time to prevent the Geister’s blade from slicing across his chest.

He slammed backwards against the wall. A line of bright red welled up under his hand and began to ooze down his chest. “That really hurts,” he gasped.

Vrin ignored him and facing Agatha, she smiled, and extended a friendly hand. “Now, girl—I don’t have to kill you. You can still be useful. Come with me and I will kill this pig.” Her sword flicked out, easily avoiding the broom handle Tarvek held defensively, and carving a slice across Tarvek’s arm. “—Or spare him, if that’s what you wish.”

The new wound seemed to focus Tarvek’s shocked senses. He stood straighter, and the broom, while still pathetic, was held with more authority. “No!” Tarvek interjected. “Agatha, just run!” He leapt towards Vrin. “You don’t want to be trapped with them if I’m not there!”

With a satisfied smirk, Vrin batted away the broom handle, knocking it from Tarvek’s hands. “Wonderful! I do get to kill you!”

Finally we reach the book this was intended to be about. Before reaching the Castle itself we stop off at Gkika's and find out something interesting about Gil.

Well that's... wholly ambiguous. For a long time I wasn't sure whether something had been done to Gil, or whether this was Gkika's view of Skifandrian biology -- after all Zeetha's also tough and fast and we don't know how she'd respond to battledraught.

But it did seem likely that Gil was improved -- I don't know whether he'd count as a construct -- and it opened up some interesting possibilities.

Voice of the Castle doubles down on this and explains it further.

    Mamma nodded. “Hy did.” She looked at him for a moment and then nodded again as she made a decision. “When you poppa took in the Jägers, we swore to serve de House of Wulfenbach. Vun uf de vays ve did dis, vas by keepink a close eye on hiz son.” Gil tried to interrupt but Mamma plowed on. “Ve knew—” she tapped her nose, “—dot hyu vas de Baron’s son. Ve knew before hyu did, and hyu vas guarded.”

     She leaned back against the dresser and regarded Gil with a grin. “And ven somevun iz vatched as much as hyu vas, tings get noticed. Hyu poppa spent a lot of time vit hyu in his laboratories. More den hyu realize since hyu vas asleep half de time, but he improved hyu. Oh, hyu tried to hide dem, but hyu vas a keed, and hyu let tings slip. Hyu is faster den most pipple, jah? Stronger. Hyu dun sleep moch. Tings dot vould help hyu survive.” Mamma poked him in the chest. “Hy figure if ennybody ken take a leedle battle draught, it vould be hyu.”

Like Klaus's approach to innoculation, this is almost sweet in the most disturbing of ways. He will make Gil into someone who can survive if he has to do it literally.

That aside, it gives us some idea of what was done to Gil and is actually fascinating. Unlike the Jägers, who transform all at once, Gil was transformed gradually, as he was growing, and without knowing what was being done. Did he know he was meant to hide it? Or did he instinctively not want to be different? He often seems to have problems with limits -- his own and other people's. He'll forget that other people can't keep up with him, or worry about them when he suddenly remembers. He's also oddly forgiving of the people who bullied him as a kid -- how much difference did it make that he was faster and stronger than them even when he was being tormented?

But we've gone from hints to definite -- Gil was rebuilt and he's faster, stronger and has better senses and stamina than anyone around him.

Then, on the Tarvek side of the equation we get this scene.

Which is very definitely hinting that Tarvek's specially designed too. I don't know how else you could take it, or of anyone who didn't take it that way. As an excuse for Tarvek to be super-strong it's a bit odd -- he was designed to be a political puppet of the right bloodline, not by people who wanted him to succeed on his own terms, but it was definitely intriguing. Were Fifty Family rules being broken here? Where was the line between construct and non-construct when it came to designer babies? How many heirs had Lu made (since others started turning up)? And when Tarvek did start seeming like an equal to Gil it offered a reason for it.

“They got the Order whipped into shape, and then, well, they are very gifted, especially when it comes to the biological disciplines.”

     Gil nodded. “So I’ve heard.”

     “Well, they just made sure that there was an appropriate heir.”

     Gil made a face. Zola shrugged. “Oh, nothing too unnatural, they just insisted on things like arranging marriages that produced family trees with actual branches.”

     Gil nodded. Royalty did tend to have its little traditions.

Which completely goes back on that! It's just about possible Zola's lying here, but it's not likely. It seems more like the Foglios later thought through the implications of Tarvek being a designer baby and changed their minds. It also works -- the Mongfish still whipped the order into shape and provided heirs -- but their abilities in the biological sciences now seem like a red herring. It's there because it's in the original conversation, but it's no longer necessary for what they did.

Tarvek's first attempts to fight Gil are ridiculous in both novel and comic and treated as such -- not because he is or isn't strong enough usually but because he's on the verge of passing out and his certainty that he should fight Gil to protect Agatha's honour is partly fuelled by delirium.

The first time they really fight it's a gambit, and both of them think they can win it.

Tarvek's style here doesn't actually require superstrength. His style is based around dodging and Gil's berserker fury (caused by the battledraught) helps to play into his hands.

But when Gil calms down enough to play the same game, it's Tarvek who first resorts to brute force and...

Yes, that is surprising.

Once again, it doesn't really need superstrength read into it. It's a martial arts move. But it doesn't grab Gil halfway through a lunge and use his own force, either, as a martial arts move usually would. Gil's already completed the smack and his hand is moving away from Tarvek.

But Gil highlighting how surprising it is for someone to be able to do this, combined with the designer baby thing, means it seems to obvious to read superstrength in. At least to me.

Tarvek reached up and grabbed hold of Gil’s arm. “Forget finesse,” he growled, his own voice finally rising into the tones of the Spark. “I’ll just pound you, after all, like the worm you are!”

     Suddenly, Gil was flying through the air. He twisted and his feet smacked into the wall. “That was surprising,” he admitted. He then launched himself back and sent Tarvek sprawling. “But then, I shouldn’t really be surprised, should I? You always were an underhanded fake.”

Here it's implied that Tarvek's stronger because he's Sparking. Which actually does make sense, given what we've seen of Sparks in the Madness Place before.

It's also true that he's been feigning weakness (but not in the fight with Vrin, where he was fighting for his life with no witnesses he knew of bar Agatha).

Either way they fight each other to an exhausted standstill, in both versions, and it's hard to say whether this indicates similar levels of stamina or whether the fact that they're sharing life-force had something to do with it. It does seem to indicate similar levels of strength, on the face of it, though. It's not as if both of them were worn out but only one took a pounding.

In fact this fight seems designed to show them as equals, to give Tarvek a chance to show fighting skill and clarify their relationship as equal rivals.

This appears in the comic with no explanation. Tarvek seems to take his own strength for granted and it only adds to the impression that he really might be physically equal to Gil in some way.

“You…are surprisingly strong.” The clank paused. Its head moved slightly with a whine of servos, and it was obvious that it was examining the others.

     Violetta’s jaw sagged down. “That’s a steel girder. How—?”

     Von Zinzer grimaced. “Post-revivification rush. He’ll feel it later.”

     Meanwhile, Tarvek fought to bring his mind to speed. He’d pay for everything that happened to him later, but here and now… he felt the pressure on the girder relax, minutely. He spoke again.

     “Yes. I am. Now listen. The person you heard was Lucrezia and Bill Heterodyne’s daughter, Agatha. The current Lady Heterodyne. Yes, she sounds like her mother, but she’s the last person who would help Lucrezia in any way.” His voice lowered to a menacing growl—“And I will not let you touch her.”

Tarvek's fighting to think because of PRR side effects this time, not shock, but he does come off as somewhat less on top of things. Anyway, once again we see an explanation for a moment when Tarvek shows unusual strength. And once again I'm not sure whether they intended this in the first place -- Tarvek nearly turning into a monster, plus Lu's adventures with PRR nearby could have been meant to imply it and I just missed it -- or whether this is backing off on something they'd earlier been going out of their way to imply.

There's also one more thing, which I don't really have a quote for, but I will say that seeing inside Tarvek's head in Voice of the Castle... the poor guy comes off as spending a lot of the Castle Arc really scared. Whereas Gil's main concern about the Castle full of death traps is that he couldn't convince everyone else to wait outside for him.

So, that's my thoughts, probably at more length than anyone wanted them. Did anyone else think Tarvek was meant to be superstrong, if to a slightly lesser degree than Gil? Are they just clarifying the reasons for his successes and failures rather than changing them? They definitely changed the designer baby thing, but why?

Chapter Text

I’ve never been sure about designations like “bio-Spark” and “clank-Spark”. They’re useful in describing someone’s main focus, in the same way refering to a biologist or a physicist is useful in distinguishing types of scientist. But while someone might be better at biology you would be unlikely to tell them that they’re a “natural biologist” and therefore shouldn’t study physics.

With weaker Sparks it’s probable that they do focus on a single discipline in order to master it, and Sparks such as the circus usually only have access to education in one discipline if they’re lucky. But a powerful and well-educated Spark seems unlikely to be limited this way, except by preference.

However, there is a strong element of instinct in Spark creations. They often solve a problem not in the most practical way but in the way that appeals to them most. But I think the instinct is neither ingrained from the moment of breakthrough nor, necessarily, as simple as clank over bio. Looking at Gil, Agatha and Tarvek, there are reasons for the directions their creations go in.

Gil

Gil’s had the best education possible for a Spark in his position, and due to learning all types of science in the same situations it’s unlikely he has any very strong good or bad associations with any type of work. We see that he’s proficient both with machinery and biology as a result.

His breakthrough creation was Zoing, a construct. Why a construct? Because Gil wanted a friend and sentient clanks are near impossible for even the most experienced Sparks to build. So why is Zoing the only construct? Partly because Gil’s current interest is flying machines, and his reason for this revolves around the freedom to go where he wants under his own control. Making flying reliant on a thinking being would only get in the way of this purpose.

The other reason is likely this — Gil was raised on Castle Wulfenbach, a place where most of the people living there are constructs either abandoned or having outlived their Spark. Even the Jägers, who the Heterodynes treated well, were suffering with the apparent end of the family line. So Gil is likely to see constructs as a huge responsibility rather than an easy way to solve a problem. He wouldn’t choose to make one unless he actively wanted a companion, and these days he can make friends without needing to make them literally.

Gil’s interest in medicine is different from an interest in constructs — of course Gil wants to be able to save people. Him knowing advanced revival techniques for constructs is probably related to the fact that his father is one. The Si Vales Valeo is a medical procedure that would especially appeal to Gil. He has a great deal of trust in his own body, his own ability to tough things out, so a procedure that lets him put himself on the line to keep someone else alive would seem like a good choice to him.

Why no death rays, though? Gil just doesn’t seem to feel the need for them. Or didn’t, until he was forced to protect people he cared about. He doesn’t seem to feel threatened enough to trigger an instinctive need for superior firepower. Nor does he seem to feel any need to hurt or intimidate people for the sake of it as some Sparks do. (He also may just plain enjoy fighting, there’s a reason Jägers wouldn’t want to be armed with deathrays too.)

Agatha

Agatha’s childhood was severely discouraging when it came to exercising her Spark at all. Attempts performed anywhere near the university were likely to invite ridicule, and she was specifically dissuaded from any practical application of medicine. It’s to her credit that she kept going and seems to have absorbed as much information as she has (she certainly has plenty to draw on once she starts being able to use it).

At home, though, Adam worked as a blacksmith and Agatha would have had access to tools and machinery for working with metal. He also took her into the woods and taught her how to dismantle defunct clanks, something she was apparently capable at. So she has at least some experience of feeling competent around machinery and even more of being encouraged and being able to work on it without being judged. It’s not surprising she leans heavily towards clanks.

The dingbots seem to be a response to feeling ignored. Agatha’s naturally a dominant, not to mentions bossy, personality, but she’d never found herself in a position to have anyone as an assistant. The dingbots give her as many devoted helpers as she could wish for. Even their level of personality and ability to rebel fits — Agatha wanted helpers, not automatons. The fact that they may have the Spark is intriguing. After having her own suppressed so long she started giving it to her creations before she even realised she had it herself. They are capable of creating and building, acting out her desire to do so.

The deathrays seem to be mostly a response to breaking through while feeling threatened and being kidnapped. Having a lot of firepower makes her feel more secure. (Lots of Sparks build deathrays, but lots of Sparks break through in hostile surroundings, since just about any village is hostile to a new Spark.) To be fair, having a lot of firepower also makes her more secure. There are advantages to being the one holding the gun.

Agatha does know something about medicine and revivification techniques (considering Gil chose the Si Vales Valeo it’s not surprising he knew how to perform it — the surprising thing is that Agatha and Tarvek also knew enough about a relatively obscure revivification method to manage most of the steps without him) but it’s not her first choice and she performs it only when necessary. Even then, she brings machinery into it, with her innovations mostly being the harnesses to keep them connected.

Tarvek

Tarvek’s a hard one to classify, simply because the only thing we know for sure he made without building on someone else’s work was a central heating system. Nearly all of the things we see him do, or that are important to the plot, involve copying or building on something. And I’m not really sure why.

Tarvek was briefly both on Castle Wulfenbach and at Paris University, like Gil, but spent a lot more time at home. After leaving university it’s possible he was self-taught — he’s definitely still curious and seems to read a remarkable number of journals. Unlike places like the school and university, which offer a variety of neutral Sparks of varying ability levels and levels of sanity, Tarvek’s family contains some rather scary Sparks. He also seems to have some experience associating with non-Sparks… who were scared of him. It’s possible Anevka killing their mother had something to do with her own Spark, too, either during breakthrough or killing her in a Sparky fashion. Given this, it’s perhaps not surprising that Tarvek doesn’t seem terribly comfortable with the Madness Place and often seems to be partially resisting his own Spark.

His solution to Anevka’s problem seems as if he prefers clank work over biology, if only because placing Anevka in a construct body seems so much more obvious a solution. But he’s fully capable of working with the wasps, which are bio-mechanical, and knows how to do a Si Vales Valeo at least partly. His interest in the Muses is possibly behind a tendency towards clanks, since he was attempting to study them long before he found Tinka or Van Rijn’s notes. He might also prefer non-bio solutions thanks to Aaronev doing something biological and creepy in one panel and Anevka being far too enthusiastic about scalpels in another. Living with that would put anyone off.

The wasps he’s genuinely enthusiastic about, which I think has less to do with anything he intends to do with them and more to do with the wasps themselves. Like Agatha and giant clanks, he’s intrigued. Agatha wants firepower to defend herself against situations where she’s found herself powerless — Tarvek wants control to deal with situations where he desperately wants to stop people he cares about without hurting them. The wasps appeal to the desire for control.

The most I can say about the central heating is that it’s the most practical, useful and harmless Spark invention yet. Probably deliberately. When Tarvek isn’t building on anyone else’s work he’d rather make something useful than dramatic (the rest of his family have that covered).

Chapter Text

Parallel Arcs

The arcs where Gil and Tarvek meet Agatha have a couple of fairly major similarities. Both see her kidnapped by their fathers, wind up helping with this despite their protests and get to know her (and flirt with her) while she is technically their prisoner. But there are also some fairly major differences, in both actions and tone.

Despite what she winds up thinking Agatha is not in danger of being brain cored by Klaus (I’m not going to justify the brain coring — it’s a horrible thing to do to anyone — but he does only do it to dangerous Sparks) and Gil knows this. Gil may underestimate the danger of her being kept prisoner, but he’s used to interacting with hostages, he grew up among them after all, who are only technically in danger of reprisals and sent home fairly regularly.

Gil’s interactions with Agatha are about her coming into her Spark and learning to enjoy it, and he winds up thematically tied to that and benefitting from the associations. Gil enjoys his own Spark — Gil enjoys lots of things. Baiting the clank in Beetleburg, working things out, fencing — chances are if Gil is doing something well he’s enjoying himself doing it, he takes pleasure in his own abilities physical and mental. As an introduction to the Spark he’s excellent — his inventions are, at this point, frequently almost toys. He doesn’t build weapons, his sole construct is a cute creature — a child’s imaginary friend brought to life — who Gil introduces and treats as a friend. Gil’s lab isn’t safe. There’s the fencing clank, he and Agatha are hopelessly careless with the lightning generator, and that’s before he shows off the falling machine. But it doesn’t have the violent edge some Spark labs do.

Gil also pushes Agatha. He believes she can do things that she doesn’t know she can, and around him she finds she can. Introducing her to adventure is less deliberate than introducing her to the Spark, but it’s another thing Gil enjoys and that Agatha finds she does too.

The downside to this — Gil is arrogant; it’s less endearing when he’s pushing Agatha into marriage than when he’s pushing her into inventing. He’s also extremely uninformative, often for no good reason (he could have saved a lot of trouble just by telling Agatha why he was beating up Othar). And the flipside to the joie de vivre is that he’s sometimes downright childish. The whole situation with Agatha is him attempting to one up his father for once. It’s almost childish mischief, and Gil fails to foresee the consequences for Agatha and Moloch of being caught up in it.

When Klaus calls him to heel, too, he goes, although reluctantly. He doesn’t want to go after Agatha with Bang and threaten her, but when Klaus tells him to he does. (Although the novel throws this into question — making it sound like Klaus sent him only because he would have gone anyway, and he may never have intended to take her back at all once he was sure she was safe.)

So the arc ends with Agatha furious with Gil for trying to recapture her like that (and she stays angry with him for several months, even though it’s clear she misses him too), but with Gil’s major associations being with discovery and personal growth.

The Sturmhalten arc is associated, by contrast, with helplessness, being compromised and situations where there are no good choices. Tarvek is not really the cause of this — he’s often a fellow victim — but his arc is not much fun for either him or Agatha.

Gil and Klaus don’t quite know what to expect from each other. Gil is both rebellious and eager to please, snarking and showing off by turn. Tarvek’s relationship with his father is quite different — he looks after him. And despite this he doesn’t actually have the power to stop him doing anything. (The one choice Tarvek has always had is to go to the Baron, but it’s a choice to destroy his family completely or cover up for his father as he commits a string of murders. Tarvek’s arc is full of no good choices.) We first see Tarvek trying to convince his father to stop looking for a voice match for Lucrezia, only to be thwarted by the discovery of Agatha. Later he pleads with his father not to put her in the summoning beacon, but it’s Anevka who acts to prevent it.

Tarvek’s complicity in imprisoning Agatha — even reluctantly — ends after the voice download. He tries to get her out safely, and, in contrast to Gil’s attempt to declare them engaged, asks her on a date sometime in the future. There are times — in the madness place and later when ill — that Tarvek seems to think of Agatha as his destined bride, but he’s always careful not to push it as a claim on her. He may start out believing it has to happen, but he never thinks of it as a reason Agatha should do as he wants.

Following Lucrezia’s download Tarvek is almost a fellow prisoner. Nominally in charge, he’s surrounded by an army of Geisterdamen that neither like nor trust him and keeping himself alive by playing loyal assisstant to Lucrezia. He has plans in motion and strings to pull — he’s significantly better off than Agatha who is trapped in her own head for long stretches of time and unable to act at all or even think — but he’s constantly trying to manipulate a situation already out of control just to keep himself and Agatha alive.

And he does manipulate. Gil argues with Agatha — Tarvek goes behind her back, helping with the beacon but then altering it (and later lying and saying he hadn’t). He and Agatha both tell the other to trust them, but both fail to do so. He admires her for (and in the novel even falls in love with her for) making the choice to go to the Baron rather than risking Europe — but he doesn’t let her go through with it. It’s both a choice he could never make himself and a choice he can’t let her make.

So for Agatha what she learns from this arc is, largely, distrust. She’s already said she can’t trust Gil, but things were in the open with him. When he acted against her, he acted against her. Tarvek is a chancy ally, and teaches her that someone can love you and be working for you and still not be working with you.

Agatha leaves the situation furious with Tarvek — although still somewhat confused about what he did or didn’t do — but once again liking him despite herself.

The two arcs also both contain a major revelation about Agatha’s parentage — although the boys are neither present for this not hugely associated with it — but it very much fits the tone of the arcs for the first to include Agatha finding she’s descended from a Hero and the second to include her finding she’s descended from a Villain.

Working Together

The Castle arc starts the boys off on more even footing — strangely even considering both the relative lightness of Gil’s arc and the greater length of time since it happened, but perhaps Zola’s involvement there didn’t help. At any rate, Agatha is both protective of and furious with both of them, wanting them out of the Castle both because it’s dangerous and because she doesn’t want allies she can’t trust.

There are differences, though, and in these they both carry forward bits of their earlier roles. Gil has been protecting Klaus for a change — he’s both grown up a bit and become more violent, he’s certainly no longer someone who doesn’t build weapons — but he’s still got the Empire on his side through his father. When he enters the Castle it’s because he judges his father won’t destroy it with him inside, and there’s nothing to stop him leaving. Tarvek is once again in danger from his own people, infected by them deliberately, and quite possibly no safer outside the Castle than inside it.

The Si Vales Valeo in some ways mimics the dynamics. Gil starts out healthy, but throws his lot in with the other two. Agatha becomes sick due to her closeness to Tarvek. Tarvek recognises this and offers himself as a sacrifice, telling Gil to disconnect him if he has to to save Agatha, but none of the three seriously consider letting any of the others die (permanently) once they’re committed.

Gil also reprises his role as someone who pushes Agatha to Spark, pressing her to think about ways to save Tarvek with what they have instead of trying to get him somewhere she thinks would be safer. (Interestingly, Gil takes Agatha’s refusal to Spark as proof she cares about Tarvek — she’s scared of hurting him — but Tarvek takes Agatha’s very Sparky and desperate plan as proof that she cares about him.)

And during all this we get the revelation that the boys knew each other and the Boy Detective story, which is very well placed narratively. If their relationship to and rivalry with each other had been revealed sooner their rivalry over Agatha might have seemed just an extension of that. But with both of them falling in love with her in separate arcs it’s never in question.

Boy Detective sets up Tarvek and Gil’s relationship, which is necessary for understanding any of their interactions in the Castle arc. It also, in a way, places us on Tarvek’s side. Not only in that what we’re given is very clearly Tarvek’s side of the story (sepia is used for memories and stories, itself an interesting meta comment in a comic where stories are often about real people portrayed inaccurately, and is used here for Tarvek imagining Gil’s backstories as well as the bits he was there for), but in that previously Tarvek has been a very opaque character, even after the end of the Sturmhalten arc we don’t know everything he did or why. Here he’s completely transparent, it’s obvious that he had good intentions, that he was deeply hurt by what seemed like a betrayal, and we’re left with a good idea of why he’s angry with Gil. This effect is heightened by the fact that more than once Tarvek tries to get Gil’s side of the story, only to have his angling flat out ignored. We don’t know why Gil’s angry with Tarvek or why he won’t talk about it.

What Gil thinks about Tarvek is more ambiguous. Some of his comments, accusing Tarvek of being plotting something because he’s breathing or the earlier, novel only, comment that Ardsley shouldn’t trust anything he thinks he sees around Tarvek, make it sound like he’s been involved with Tarvek’s schemes before. This doesn’t really fit with Tarvek’s account of Paris, though.

Agatha’s relationship with both boys follows a similar pattern. She starts out distrusting them but caring about them and then, as both consistently help her and follow her lead, relaxes into trusting them. In some ways she winds up treating them as a unit — their very argumentativeness encourages her to. She’s too busy to really listen to their arguments, so it becomes background bickering until she calls them to heel and they both instantly come. She is, as she says, not thinking about romance. In fact she’s deliberately not thinking about romance because she has too much else to do, so the question of choosing one doesn’t come up for her. At least not yet.

Gil and Tarvek’s relationship has more ups and downs, is complicated by politics, and often centres around Agatha even when she’s not involved. To begin with both of them are, more or less reasonably based on what they know of each other, afraid the other will hurt her. (It may be worth noting that Tarvek also got a Handy and Enlightening Recap boiling down to “I thought Gil really liked me, and then he suddenly turned on me and now I don’t know what to think” which has to sound familiar).

We begin with what might be a microcosm of their relationship in Paris. Gil’s reaction to finding out Tarvek is there is “that smug, condescending snake” while Tarvek’s reaction to Gil is to jump to the worst possible conclusion about him being shirtless, charge in and try to start a fight. It seems likely that Tarvek wasn’t actually attempting to start fights to protect the virtue of the girls Gil knew in Paris (…if he was no wonder Gil found him annoying) but the assumptions would seem to be familiar. And Gil would likely be more inclined to fight him if he didn’t immediately collapse, leading to Gil focussing on the medical emergency.

Tarvek is thrown for a loop both by finding out who Gil is and by the realisation that Gil is risking his life to save him. Gil, in turn, is startled and disarmed when Tarvek offers to sacrifice himself to save Agatha. Both of them start to see that they’ve misjudged one another. They remain contentious but awkwardly heading back towards friendship up until Tarvek tells Gil that he knew about the wasps all along due to his family having worked with Lucrezia. Gil is shocked and genuinely horrified. From his perspective telling the Empire so they could stop this happening to people was the only moral choice.

Tarvek is hurt and defensive about Gil’s reaction, but there’s also an element of things being turned around on him. In Paris he was the one looking down on Gil, dismayed that someone he’d once cared about could sink so low but half making excuses for him because of his family. Now he’s on the other side of that and doesn’t like it.

I should also mention the Nepenthe, but it’s hard to say how significant Tarvek’s flirting is there. Perhaps more significant is the fact that he starts it to defuse an argument between Agatha and Gil. Later he deliberately provokes Gil behind Agatha’s back to start an argument between them, but in a way it’s two sides of the same coin. Agatha interferes with Gil and Tarvek to stop them attacking one another, but Tarvek is used to both tracking and interfering with interpersonal relationships on a more subtle level. For him knowing how people feel about each other has been something of a survival trait.

This perhaps culminates with Tarvek telling Agatha to kiss Gil before he leaves the Castle. It’s a genuinely selfless moment, despite Tarvek making excuses about it to Krosp, but also a degree of involving himself in Agatha/Gil that it’s hard to imagine in reverse.

By the end of the arc Agatha’s trust in her boys is largely restored, and their trust in each other is on the way there. When fighting a common enemy, such as Vole, they don’t think to doubt each other.

Mostly Tarvek

For whatever reason, the parts between leaving the Castle and entering the Cathedral where members of the trio interact can be divided into two arcs — one between Tarvek and Gil and one between Tarvek and Agatha, but with no corresponding one between Agatha and Gil. Maybe the plot just worked out that way. Maybe Agatha/Gil, as the most probable “endgame” pairing, is taken for granted. Maybe the super-passionate kiss is meant to be enough indication of where they stand. Maybe the Foglios, being about to put Tarvek in stasis, decided to give him some closure first. But Agatha and Gil will only briefly meet again for a confrontation where Gil may not even be the one present for much of it.

Tarvek’s also the one getting the most character development, here. Agatha and Gil get some of their own, but Tarvek’s is more related to the Trio and comes in arcs. The first one centres around Agatha or, perhaps more accurately, Agatha/Gil. From the start Tarvek suspected Gil of being a threat to Agatha, either on behalf of the Empire or because his reputation in Paris painted him as a love ‘em and leave ‘em type. Protecting Agatha from an unsuitable suitor, being the better choice, was a role Tarvek was comfortable with (and perhaps not coincidentally a role similar to Valois’ in the Opera). To be fair, that goes both ways, Gil also suspects Tarvek of being a threat, but accepting that he might not be seems to cause less of a crisis for Gil. For Tarvek concluding that Gil really does love Agatha leaves him feeling hemight be the bad choice.

He, very sweetly, promises to be Agatha’s ally even if she doesn’t choose him. Which is both obvious subtext and a genuine promise not to turn on her politically. In a way he’s right to accept that if Agatha and Gil are in love there’s nothing he can do about it, but he’s not waiting for Agatha to choose. He’s acting as if Gil’s feelings being real invalidate his. Violetta’s reasoning may or may not help — it gives Tarvek something solid he can do to help Agatha, but the explanation that Agatha would be happier with Gil but better off with Tarvek politically seems rather sad even for Tarvek himself.

This arc is more or less concluded when  — after the airship rescue, which is very cute and very heroic and seems to leave Tarvek feeling better about himself in general — he does tell Agatha how he feels. There might be parallels here to Agatha’s first kiss with Gil after killing wasps, but here it’s Tarvek sort of new to heroics, pleased with himself, and initiating a kiss.

Tarvek starts by telling Agatha how Gil feels, which seems like he just can’t stay out of that but is also relevant. He’d been treating Gil’s feelings as a reason why his own didn’t matter, but here he admits both that Gil’s feelings are real and that his own are valid anyway. (Despite the fact that Tarvek seems to be emotionally leaning towards OT3 — and the people in the background betting on it — Tarvek still frames it as a contest between him and Gil, though.)

Throughout the Seige of Mechanicsburg Tarvek and Agatha appear relaxed and friendly around one another — it’s probably the most relaxed we see Tarvek.

Between Gil and Tarvek the issue is more one of trust and has been from the start. Whatever happened during Boy Detective, Gil suddenly stopped trusting Tarvek and Tarvek has been trying to find out why (complicated by the fact that since then Gil has acquired some more genuine reasons to distrust him).

On the gaming table Gil more or less trusts Tarvek. He does check Tarvek’s not advancing his own agenda, but Tarvek’s protest that he wouldn’t do something like that with Agatha at stake seems to make its point. Gil seems more upset that Tarvek isn’t with Agatha than that he’s running his army — he evidently trusted him to be the advisor Agatha needed. In fact, where Agatha is concerned the boys do seem to have reached the point of trusting one another, even if they’re not sure they’re not a threat to each other — and it’s when that changes that we see Tarvek lash out. The discovery of Spark wasps, and that Tarvek knew about them, leaves Gil shocked and horrified. His accusation that Tarvek might use one on Agatha isn’t terribly rational and seems to be born mostly of horror — someone who would use them at all might do anything — and hurts Tarvek enough for him to forget his survival instincts and punch Gil in front of Gil’s army. The danger that causes Tarvek seems to be enough to snap Gil back to protecting him, although he’s still angry. He forbears to punch Tarvek when it’s just been demonstrated why he can’t fight back but still smacks him.

The discovery that the Baron’s alive has them acting together almost immediately, and Gil does trust Tarvek with Agatha once again. His idea is that if he can get Tarvek back to Agatha then she won’t need both of them and he can stay behind and do what he can for the Empire. Tarvek’s objection is more emotional than rational — Lucrezia getting Gil probably wouldn’t be significantly worse than her having Klaus — but it’s obvious their first instinct is to get each other out of danger.

The question of whether Gil trusts Tarvek with his own wellbeing — enough to drink something on Tarvek’s word — is less easily solved. Tarvek actually opens up quite a lot to try and convince him, but we have no way of telling whether he’s right about his latest interpretation of Boy Detective. Only that he makes his point enough for Gil to choose to trust him “this once”. Bang later questions why Gil trusts Tarvek and — despite the souce — her points aren’t unreasonable. Tarvek was up to his neck in the mess at Sturmhalten. But Gil has made up his mind and, despite some gaslighting from Klaus later, mostly maintains his trust in Tarvek.

On the roof Agatha meets Gil. Probably some of the time, at least. I really hope it was Gil who kissed her! But a lot of the arguments make more sense from Klaus — the insistence that she’s dangerous, that she could be as bad as the Other or under the Other’s control without realising it, that she has to turn herself over to Klaus who can help her — those are Klaus’s fears and solutions. Coming from Gil they’re both weird (because he’s insisting that a third party understands and can help without being able to offer Agatha direct assurance) and really, really pushy. Gil has been pushy before, which is why Agatha doesn’t realise something is wrong much sooner. To her it looks like he’s forgotten everything he’s seen her accomplish and gone back to the way he saw her during Airship City. His phrases even echo the proposal at times. Agatha’s own response — that she doesn’t need help, doesn’t need rescuing, and if anyone wants to help her they can do it in her territory on her terms — probably looks terrible to Klaus. Gil wouldn’t take that as a threat, but Klaus might easily see it as evidence that she’s out of control. Klaus, unlike Gil, fears her.

Agatha loses her temper and sends Gil away, but admits as she does that she’s “somewhat in love with him”.

Agatha telling Tarvek about it is kind of telling. For one thing Agatha herself is well aware that Tarvek cares about Gil and is embarrassed to admit what happened. Tarvek is…alarmed enough to ask if she killed him, which is a reasonable thing to ask a Spark who’s just lost their temper, but really? It harks back to Tarvek’s dismay when Agatha yelled Gil back to life. At times Tarvek seems unnerved by Agatha in full Spark mode, even unnerved on Gil’s behalf. Tarvek starts out making excuses for why they should have kept Gil and then admits he wanted to keep him safe and Agatha apologises to him — she’s put someone they both care about in danger.

Tarvek wonders whether Gil will trust him enough to use the innoculation and Agatha assures him that she trusts both of them — trust that seems to hold post-timeskip. She doesn’t even consider Tweedle’s insistence that it was all an act on Tarvek’s part (no one who had actually lived through it could, I think). She refuses to go near Gil while something is wrong with him, but her answer to “I hope he cares about  you as much as he claims” is “yes”. She also trusts that Gil cares about Tarvek, sending him a message that says “I still hope we can save him” and telling him exactly what state Tarvek is in.

Chapter Text

A major theme of Girl Genius is free will vs coercion. The Other is the evil side of this, complete coercion, with no free will allowed. We see this in Lucrezia’s actions as Lucrezia, too. She treats the Jägers like pets or objects, unaware that they could object (having met the Sparkhounds I wonder if growing up with them didn’t help — unlike the Jägers they really are okay being treated like pets). She sends Klaus off to Skifander with no concern for whether he wants to go so long as it’s convenient to her. She moved Otilia to a new body and reprogrammed her, with no concern for Otilia’s mental state.

Yet the free will side, while generally better, is not all good. The Great War is the result of Sparks doing whatever they like. In the end with no one limiting the free will of Sparks they usually wind up limiting other people’s free will, destroying homes or grabbing people for experiments.

Mechanicsburg is a paradox, everyone freely gives up their own free will, the Jägers exemplifying this. Serving the Heterodyne is something everyone genuinely wants to do, to the point they would be hurt if their service was refused. It probably couldn’t be used as a model for other populations — it comes down to an exceptionally canny and charismatic Spark family and a population of minions and monsters. (It’s also spent much of its history with that willing service being used to attack other people.)

The Jägers are fiercely against mind control, and hate wasps to the point they imply they’d risk Agatha’s secrecy to get a message about the ones in Sturmhalten to the Baron. Being against mind control is the only moral position we ever see them take.

Various main characters straddle this line in various ways. Klaus limits people’s free will the old fashioned way — they do what he says or else. He also outlawed slavery, and doesn’t consider constructs property of their Sparks (although he does take in ones that need masters). In theory people under his rule are free to do anything except attack each other (which would go against the free will of the person being attacked). In practise they are not free to refuse to do things Klaus regards as necessary or right.

He kidnaps Agatha (and apparently makes a habit of doing this to young Sparks), which obviously goes against her free will. Keeping hostages goes against the will of the hostages (mostly…Tarvek was an exception) too.

Klaus also dabbles in…if not actual mind control, certainly something similar. Destroying someone’s Spark against their will, for instance. And he finally crosses the line by mind controlling Gil.

On the other hand there are a few people on his side who could do with a bit less free will. Using Bang, who he appears unable or unwilling to rein in, is irresponsible.

Gil tries to imitate Klaus, under the impression this is how to rule Europe. His obsession with aeroplanes suggests a desire for freedom — the ability to leave the airship where he lives without permission, as well as the symbolic freedom of flight. Unlike Klaus, who is usually genuinely angry, Gil will often work himself up into a rage to give orders, believing he needs to threaten people convincingly to be taken seriously.

His own creation, Zoing, appears endlessly loyal, but it’s not clear whether Gil built this in or whether it’s a result of having been friends with Gil since he was eight. Zoing does have his own thoughts and feelings, even if he seems to be happy to devote himself to helping Gil.

Gil’s attempt to marry Agatha is an attempt to override her free will, although so inept it’s as hilarious as it is terrible. His part in her kidnapping also limited her free will, although his part in her discovery of her Spark was all about opening possibilities to her, and letting her express her own will for the first time.

Gil is shown to know about — and condone — the brain coring, but hasn’t dabbled in mind control himself (unless Zoing does have built in loyalty).

Under mind control he tries to kidnap Agatha, which is close enough to some of the other things he’s done that she gets angry instead of worrying about him.

On the whole his relationship with free will is ambiguous, he has his limited by Klaus and limits others in turn, yet wants freedom and never seems comfortable with leadership.

Tarvek grew up with mind control. Sturmhalten is full of revenants, and it’s not clear how long he’s known about this. His father regularly attempts to overwrite people’s personalities with Lucrezia’s. On the more traditional side, his family is full of people willing to take any opportunity to stab him in the back if he does the wrong thing. There is almost no way Tarvek was going to come out of a background like that with a normal relationship to the idea of free will. Yet he’s not hopelessly over the line.

He takes Tinka from the circus against her will (she didn’t know he was the Storm King at the time) and theirs. Yet there’s evidence he intended to give her back. Why was he only sending the payment for her days later, after they’d already gone? Probably because until she was broken, leaving him feeling responsible for fixing her, he thought he could return her once she’d been studied.

He tries to let Agatha go at the earliest opportunity, actually trying to ask her on what seems to be a normal date (adorably) as she leaves. Despite reacting to her with delight that she’s the fated Heterodyne Princess and they can rule Europe together while Sparking out, he never tries to force her hand when it comes to a relationship with him.

But. When it comes to actual mind control, he does dabble in it. The voice control on Anevka, while maybe both wise and necessary, is almost exactly the same as the effect a wasp has on a revenant (unwilling obedience, see Dr Roveinen). He gives Lucrezia the Spark Wasp, willing to risk her enslaving someone’s mind for leverage, even if he never intended her to use it. He also leaves her with the command voice he’d helped program into the Anevka clank.

And then there’s the beacon, which I’m not quite sure how to classify. It forced the entire civilian population of Sturmhalten to attack the Baron after he tampered with it. This wasn’t a gamble that failed to come off. He intended the beacon to go off later than it did — after anyone who could give a counterorder was long gone. As far as we know no one has yet been in a position to give the counterorder, and the entire population of Sturmhalten is still trying to attack the Baron. The last we heard there was an army on the way, this may have been part of it. On the other hand he may not have realised the phrasing of the edited beacon would be taken as an order by revenants. It didn’t contain a specific command and he was under a lot of pressure to act quickly.

Even before the beacon, Tarvek helped give Anevka Agatha’s voice with the express intention of letting her command everyone in the city. And he could command Anevka. What was the plan if Lucrezia hadn’t shown up?

Outside Sturmhalten, though, he’s shown no desire for control. Or rather, he wants to rule Europe, but seems to hope to do so by acclaim. He’s definitely shown no signs of wanting to use wasps, and has gone to great lengths to make sure the Vespiary Squad are available to combat them. He’s been acting as something like an unofficial political advisor/town council member, and has been filling in gaps in Agatha’s leadership not challenging it. The one person whose loyalty he had unwillingly he hastily transferred to Agatha, who Violetta seems far more happy about serving.

Right now he may also be the key to Agatha’s free will, he’s demonstrated that he can help deal with Lucrezia slipping through and may eventually be able to get rid of her altogether.

Rather than Gil’s ambiguous relationship with free will, he’s gone from using mind control to combating it.

And then there’s Agatha, who doesn’t dabble in mind control, who never set out to be a leader, but who picks up followers like a magnet attracts iron filings. If she’s a threat to people’s free will she’s an accidental one, but her overwhelming Spark Charisma makes her someone everyone wants to follow. And she’s the Heterodyne, inheriting the loyalty of Mechanicsburg and an army of Jägers.

She’s also inherited Lucrezia’s voice. So far she’s only ever commanded revenants by accident, but once again she’s an unwitting threat to the free will of others (or used as one unwillingly, as with Anevka taking her voice or Tarvek modifying the beacon).

Her free will, on the other hand, is threatened by everybody. Right back to when the locket denied her the freedom to use her own Spark. The point of the Mechanicsburg arc was largely to create a position for herself where she did have the freedom to make her own choices. And that’s without dealing with Lucrezia’s attempt to overwrite her personality altogether.

Now she’s lost the one place where she had that freedom and has to deal with Tweedle, who has no interest in allowing her any free will at all and has done nothing but try to destroy it. Gil, under mind control, leaves a message that pleads with her and clanks that try to physically hold her in place until he arrives — it doesn’t seem she can hope for any help with freedom from him, at best he’s conflicted.

…I really want her to get Mechanicsburg back. There are some interesting questions that would raise — how does Agatha deal with being in a position of power where she might have to limit the free will of others? — but also I just want her back in the place that doesn’t ever try to limit her.

Chapter Text

A major theme of Girl Genius is free will vs coercion. The Other is the evil side of this,

complete

coercion, with no free will allowed. We see this in Lucrezia’s actions as Lucrezia, too. She treats the Jägers like pets or objects, unaware that they

could

object (having met the Sparkhounds I wonder if growing up with them didn’t help — unlike the Jägers they really are okay being treated like pets). She sends Klaus off to Skifander with no concern for whether

he

wants to go so long as it’s convenient to her. She moved Otilia to a new body and reprogrammed her, with no concern for Otilia’s mental state.

Yet the free will side, while generally better, is not all good. The Great War is the result of Sparks doing whatever they like. In the end with no one limiting the free will of Sparks they usually wind up limiting other people’s free will, destroying homes or grabbing people for experiments.

Mechanicsburg is a paradox, everyone freely gives up their own free will, the Jägers exemplifying this. Serving the Heterodyne is something everyone genuinely wants to do, to the point they would be hurt if their service was refused. It probably couldn’t be used as a model for other populations — it comes down to an exceptionally canny and charismatic Spark family and a population of minions and monsters. (It’s also spent much of its history with that willing service being used to attack other people.)

The Jägers are fiercely against mind control, and hate wasps to the point they imply they’d risk Agatha’s secrecy to get a message about the ones in Sturmhalten to the Baron. Being against mind control is the only moral position we ever see them take.

Various main characters straddle this line in various ways. Klaus limits people’s free will the old fashioned way — they do what he says or else. He also outlawed slavery, and doesn’t consider constructs property of their Sparks (although he does take in ones that need masters). In theory people under his rule are free to do anything except attack each other (which would go against the free will of the person being attacked). In practise they are not free to refuse to do things Klaus regards as necessary or right.

He kidnaps Agatha (and apparently makes a habit of doing this to young Sparks), which obviously goes against her free will. Keeping hostages goes against the will of the hostages (mostly…Tarvek was an exception) too.

Klaus also dabbles in…if not actual mind control, certainly something similar. Destroying someone’s Spark against their will, for instance. And he finally crosses the line by mind controlling Gil.

On the other hand there are a few people on his side who could do with a bit less free will. Using Bang, who he appears unable or unwilling to rein in, is irresponsible.

Gil tries to imitate Klaus, under the impression this is how to rule Europe. His obsession with aeroplanes suggests a desire for freedom — the ability to leave the airship where he lives without permission, as well as the symbolic freedom of flight. Unlike Klaus, who is usually genuinely angry, Gil will often work himself up into a rage to give orders, believing he needs to threaten people convincingly to be taken seriously.

His own creation, Zoing, appears endlessly loyal, but it’s not clear whether Gil built this in or whether it’s a result of having been friends with Gil since he was eight. Zoing does have his own thoughts and feelings, even if he seems to be happy to devote himself to helping Gil.

Gil’s attempt to marry Agatha is an attempt to override her free will, although so inept it’s as hilarious as it is terrible. His part in her kidnapping also limited her free will, although his part in her discovery of her Spark was all about opening possibilities to her, and letting her express her own will for the first time.

Gil is shown to know about — and condone — the brain coring, but hasn’t dabbled in mind control himself (unless Zoing does have built in loyalty).

Under mind control he tries to kidnap Agatha, which is close enough to some of the other things he’s done that she gets angry instead of worrying about him.

On the whole his relationship with free will is ambiguous, he has his limited by Klaus and limits others in turn, yet wants freedom and never seems comfortable with leadership.

Tarvek grew up with mind control. Sturmhalten is full of revenants, and it’s not clear how long he’s known about this. His father regularly attempts to overwrite people’s personalities with Lucrezia’s. On the more traditional side, his family is full of people willing to take any opportunity to stab him in the back if he does the wrong thing. There is almost no way Tarvek was going to come out of a background like that with a normal relationship to the idea of free will. Yet he’s not hopelessly over the line.

He takes Tinka from the circus against her will (she didn’t know he was the Storm King at the time) and theirs. Yet there’s evidence he intended to give her back. Why was he only sending the payment for her days later, after they’d already gone? Probably because until she was broken, leaving him feeling responsible for fixing her, he thought he could return her once she’d been studied.

He tries to let Agatha go at the earliest opportunity, actually trying to ask her on what seems to be a normal date (adorably) as she leaves. Despite reacting to her with delight that she’s the fated Heterodyne Princess and they can rule Europe together while Sparking out, he never tries to force her hand when it comes to a relationship with him.

But. When it comes to actual mind control, he does dabble in it. The voice control on Anevka, while maybe both wise and necessary, is almost exactly the same as the effect a wasp has on a revenant (unwilling obedience, see Dr Roveinen). He gives Lucrezia the Spark Wasp, willing to risk her enslaving someone’s mind for leverage, even if he never intended her to use it. He also leaves her with the command voice he’d helped program into the Anevka clank.

And then there’s the beacon, which I’m not quite sure how to classify. It forced the entire civilian population of Sturmhalten to attack the Baron after he tampered with it. This wasn’t a gamble that failed to come off. He intended the beacon to go off later than it did — after anyone who could give a counterorder was long gone. As far as we know no one has yet been in a position to give the counterorder, and the entire population of Sturmhalten is still trying to attack the Baron. The last we heard there was an army on the way, this may have been part of it. On the other hand he may not have realised the phrasing of the edited beacon would be taken as an order by revenants. It didn’t contain a specific command and he was under a lot of pressure to act quickly.

Even before the beacon, Tarvek helped give Anevka Agatha’s voice with the express intention of letting her command everyone in the city. And he could command Anevka. What was the plan if Lucrezia hadn’t shown up?

Outside Sturmhalten, though, he’s shown no desire for control. Or rather, he wants to rule Europe, but seems to hope to do so by acclaim. He’s definitely shown no signs of wanting to use wasps, and has gone to great lengths to make sure the Vespiary Squad are available to combat them. He’s been acting as something like an unofficial political advisor/town council member, and has been filling in gaps in Agatha’s leadership not challenging it. The one person whose loyalty he had unwillingly he hastily transferred to Agatha, who Violetta seems far more happy about serving.

Right now he may also be the key to Agatha’s free will, he’s demonstrated that he can help deal with Lucrezia slipping through and may eventually be able to get rid of her altogether.

Rather than Gil’s ambiguous relationship with free will, he’s gone from using mind control to combating it.

And then there’s Agatha, who doesn’t dabble in mind control, who never set out to be a leader, but who picks up followers like a magnet attracts iron filings. If she’s a threat to people’s free will she’s an accidental one, but her overwhelming Spark Charisma makes her someone everyone wants to follow. And she’s the Heterodyne, inheriting the loyalty of Mechanicsburg and an army of Jägers.

She’s also inherited Lucrezia’s voice. So far she’s only ever commanded revenants by accident, but once again she’s an unwitting threat to the free will of others (or used as one unwillingly, as with Anevka taking her voice or Tarvek modifying the beacon).

Her free will, on the other hand, is threatened by everybody. Right back to when the locket denied her the freedom to use her own Spark. The point of the Mechanicsburg arc was largely to create a position for herself where she did have the freedom to make her own choices. And that’s without dealing with Lucrezia’s attempt to overwrite her personality altogether.

Now she’s lost the one place where she had that freedom and has to deal with Tweedle, who has no interest in allowing her any free will at all and has done nothing but try to destroy it. Gil, under mind control, leaves a message that pleads with her and clanks that try to physically hold her in place until he arrives — it doesn’t seem she can hope for any help with freedom from him, at best he’s conflicted.

…I really want her to get Mechanicsburg back. There are some interesting questions that would raise — how does Agatha deal with being in a position of power where she might have to limit the free will of others? — but also I just want her back in the place that doesn’t ever try to limit her.

Chapter Text

In which I map Agatha's story to stages of the Hero's Journey (with occasional quotes from the wiki article). Mostly to see if it works. Also, since Girl Genius isn't finished, neither is the Hero's Journey, and I include a little speculation about the next stage at the end.

The Call to Adventure

"…a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky"

Agatha's call to adventure comes in the form of kidnapping. She's forcibly removed from her normal life and thrown into a world alien to her.

Agatha's returning Spark also acts as a call to adventure. Her internal world is as changed as her external world, although she's not yet aware of it, and her ability to feel her own emotions fully again makes her capable of heroism.

Refusal of the Call

Agatha's only thought at this point is (reasonably) to escape and return home. It's not so much the desire to escape that counts as a refusal of the call, as the desire to go back to the place she left. She remains unaware of her Spark, denies she could possibly have it, and can connect to it only when asleep. She doesn't see a place for her in the world she's entered; not just the Airship City, but the world of Sparks and the children of rulers.

Supernatural Aid

Krosp, who fulfils tropes common to animal and fairy helpers by responding to a kind deed from Agatha (even specifically a kind deed involving sharing food). He doesn't provide literally supernatural aid, but his knowledge of the world of Castle Wulfenbach and broader knowledge of history and politics make him a valuable guide for Agatha as she starts to navigate things more herself. One of the first things he does is hint to Agatha that she is a Spark.

The Jägers might also fit into this category, although the Jägers who will become her personal helpers haven't appeared yet, as might Punch and Judy who give her knowledge and a goal before being temporarily killed.

The Crossing of the First Threshold

"All right then. Let's go cause some trouble."

For the first time Agatha's consciously accepting adventure and moving out into a wider world.

Belly of the Whale

"The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died."

…I think that explains that.

The Road of Trials

Agatha's Road of Trials is, I think, a particularly long and plotty one, covering her entire time with the circus. It's a time for her to discover herself, to learn lessons she'll need later. In the vein of trials coming in threes there are three places that really matter -- Zum Zum, where she manages to save the Jägers; Passholdt, where she learns who she can't save; Sturmhalten, which changes a 

lot

 of things.

The Meeting with the Goddess

"This is the point when the person experiences a love that has the power and significance of the all-powerful, all encompassing, unconditional love that a fortunate infant may experience with his or her mother."

This is often represented by a love interest, but I don't think any of Agatha's love interests fill this role. Their relationships to her are complex, political, adoring but conflicted. Rather I think the role of the Goddess is filled by Mechanicsburg itself. After Agatha's struggles to reach it and then to prove herself to it, it treats her with unconditional love. And Agatha herself is protective and possessive of it, loving it back fiercely. And then there's the Dyne, historically associated with a literal goddess.

"And when the adventurer, in this context, is not a youth but a maid, she is the one who, by her qualities, her beauty, or her yearning, is fit to become the consort of an immortal. Then the heavenly husband descends to her and conducts her to his bed—whether she will or not."

Er. Well. Leaving aside the rape implications in that, Agatha's realisation of her blood by drinking the Dyne does come against her will (or at least, her will is made irrelevant, since she would have chosen to drink it anyway but was given it unknowingly) and what follows is a transcendent union with something unknowable. (On a slight tangent I'm not sure what to make of this, considering that Mechanicsburg for all its faults tends to come down heavily on the free will side of the free will vs coercion conflict. Yet, when in danger of losing a Heterodyne, the Castle uses coercion and Higgs abets it.)

Woman as Temptress

"In this step, the hero faces those temptations, often of a physical or pleasurable nature, that may lead him or her to abandon or stray from his or her quest, which does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman."

I don't think we've reached this step yet. If Mechanicsburg, as the "Goddess", is filling the role of a love interest then the "Temptress" would seem likely to be a position of power outside Mechanicsburg. The temptation to give it up for lost and accept a substitute instead of the place Agatha loves and which loves her.

Chapter Text

Higgs and Gkika really did massively loophole just about everything in order to give Zeetha Jägerdraught as part of treating her. There’s so much that’s meant to happen around using the brau that just didn’t.

Firstly, while the brau can help you shrug off stab wounds by turning you into a Jäger it has a 90% chance of just killing you itself. For this to be a good option Zeetha must have had less than a 10% chance of surviving without it.

This does make me more sympathetic to some of Higgs’ weird behaviour afterwards Being overprotective, yelling at her for being stabbed, running to Paris as soon as she gets hurt. He isn’t dealing with nearly losing her terribly well.

Aside from Higgs being in love the emotional logic behind Higgs and Gkika doing this seems to be partly thinking Agatha would be more upset if they didn’t save Zeetha than if they used brau to do it without her permission, partly the same feeling that lay behind Maxim wanting Lars buried with a hat. If you prove yourself willing to die for the Heterodyne then you count as an honorary Jäger. You may not have sworn loyalty but you showed it.

Zeetha also sort of has sworn an oath of love and loyalty to Agatha even if of a very different kind. Kolee-dok-zumil doesn’t give Agatha power over her but it does mean she will always look out for Agatha’s interests.

As well as not having Agatha’s permission they also don’t have Zeetha’s. It’s not that it’s a risky medical procedure she couldn’t consent to, in Girl Genius those happen all the time, it’s that she couldn’t consent to becoming Jägerkin with all the ramifications thereof. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t seem to be considered one exactly.

Jägers are meant to “reach out their hand and take the brau themselves” and Zeetha couldn’t do that either physically or metaphorically.

Chapter Text

It’s funny that Higgs underestimates Gil because the reasons for underestimating Gil are exactly the same as for underestimating Jägers. He doesn’t seem like he’s paying attention. He’s so emotional and so bad at hiding it. He’s energetic in a particular way that makes it look like he’s not thinking.

Then again, Higgs is different. Higgs gets underestimated by staying under the radar, not by being so loud and obvious that everyone tries to ignore you.

So it makes sense that Higgs has more mutual understanding with Tarvek.

Chapter Text

The best, I love them. Not only that, I do sincerely both want them in canon and have hope for it.

All three branches have their own dynamics and all three are compelling.

Agatha and Gil are full of energy and emotion, they crank the joie de Spark up to eleven and even when they’re yelling at each other they are, on some level, having a great time. Having someone who can both keep up with them and withstand them is a relief and you can see them both let go in each other’s company - from the start Gil has been associated with Agatha reconnecting with her emotions whether it’s fun or anger or Spark fugue. They’re also the star-crossed pair, but that’s my least favourite thing about them, because I like it when they’re in one place.

Gil and Tarvek are friends to enemies to friends to (hopefully) lovers. They’ve got so much history, they have serious ideological differences which make their arguments crackle with characterisation rather than just misunderstandings (although they have those too). They have the world’s least resentful love rivalry because both being in love with Agatha actually brings them closer and sniping over her usually means they’re fine with each other. They have mutual pining and increasingly acknowledged flirting, and Gil is actually less stupid about it than he is with Agatha because Tarvek doesn’t knock him head over heels with infatuation the way Agatha does and he can still say witty lines.

Tarvek and Agatha had an intense and disturbing beginning, but more and more Tarvek’s just flat out sweet with her. He trusts her absolutely when there’s barely anyone else he could say that about. He would put his life in her hands without question because he knows she’d take care of it. And she trusts him, too, something which he values deeply and wouldn’t betray. He’s the right person for gentle mornings and pastries in bed.

The three of them together haven’t, I think, settled into their final dynamic yet - it’s still often Agatha dealing with a thing while the boys either squabble or support her - which is a fun dynamic, but probably not a complete one.

Chapter Text

There’s a thread running through Girl Genius about uniqueness and loneliness. It’s showing full force with Albia right now, in how much she does not want to be the last surviving god queen, but it’s been present since the Secret Blueprints, where we learned part of Boris’ problem with the Jägers is that he envies them for always having each other when his creator didn’t make anyone else like him. Lab sisters is an important relationship for a similar reason - it means you aren’t alone.

The Guild of Monsters story is about this, too. The monsters drawn to the guild are mostly those who are unique. Those like the Talpini or the Schwartzwalders already have a community. But for a monster like Snakkerjape who, despite seeming to be fairly well-off, doesn’t fit in anywhere the lure of knowing that a place where monsters like him could form their own community once existed is still enough to draw him to Mechanicsburg.

Then there’s the Castle. Which is an extremely unique being even for the world of Girl Genius. A true mechanical intelligence several hundred years older than the Muses, who still garnered skepticism two-hundred years ago about whether clanks could truly think. The Castle would not like to think of itself as lonely, but it joined the Guild of Monsters and clearly valued it enough to preserve it. It shows an attachment to Otilia, one of the few mechanical intelligences it can have met, even when she is trying to attack its Heterodyne. While they’re both dingbots it calls the Train brother and is seldom seen outside its company.

The importance of community, of finding others like yourself no matter how strange you are, is a running theme.