Girl Genius

Another odd thought. I've always wondered how Young Gil managed to keep his spark secret. And his lineage. And, really, we've never been told what actually happened behind the scenes during the Big Scene In the "Boy Detective" flashback.

I just had this horrible, horrible idea. What if Klaus, determined to keep his boy alive at any cost, used the same tech then that we think he just used now? What if Gil accused Tarvek because Klaus didn't feel he could trust Gil to take his arguments on faith? What if he didn't feel he could trust Gil at age eight to keep his Wonderful New Secret properly safe? What if he was afraid that any sign of continuing friendship from Tarvek would swing Gil? What if Tarvek had to go because Tarvek, Gil's best and closest friend and far too damned sharp for words, was *sure* to notice his friend's mind had been jiggered with?

Think about how Gil behaved on the rooftop toward Agatha: utterly convinced of Klaus's reasoning, of Klaus's overall evaluation regarding Agatha's danger levels. Think of the level and type of personal betrayal going on.

Maybe Gil's been unable to accept the premise that Tarvek's not all bad because he's been conditioned: he *can't* fully change his mind, because Klaus defined Tarvek and the Sturmvorauses fifteen or so years ago. Maybe Little Gil looked fried not because of what he'd been told, but because he'd been "treated" to get the result Klaus thought utterly necessary. What if Gil can't even recall it was done to him.

Klaus' goal has been to keep Gil alive, no matter what — and to keep Europa whole. And nothing is going to stop him.

We've already considered that Tarvek may have been mind-controlled in some way. "Not allowed to be this happy." We've wondered about Aaronev, too. But seeing Gil reject Agatha and prove *incapable* of evaluating her except through a warping layer of Klausian reasoning should be ringing alarm bells like crazy. We've seen Gil do this one before at a time when Klaus feared Gil was being exposed to a bad influence, and it never entirely made sense even then.

The thing is, I could never figure out how Gil at eight could have no idea who he was. He can't have been much less than four when Klaus got to Europa, and he traveled in Klaus' care. Yes, a trauma might wipe the memories. But at eight I remembered quite a lot about being four. (Not so much now, I'm afraid, but I remember when I remembered, if you get my drift...) For Gil to have not so much as a glimmer of a notion who he was, no idea that he was Klaus' own boy....

I'm wondering: has Klaus regularly used mind control to arrange Gil's knowledge set for "his own good"? Did he wipe four year old Gil, because he couldn't risk letting Gil slip and give things away? Did he add a layer of "don't trust Tarvek" to eight year old Gil? Did he add a compulsion not to talk about his spark when Gil broke through, so that a little kid wouldn't reveal anything vital?

He's kept Gil alive. Has he kept his son whole?

I also wonder if this helps explain part of the mystery of the missing letters from the School Kids...and Gil's rationalization that they'd only come to him if they needed something from him. I think there would still need to be some rerouting of real mail, but they're on Klaus' own ship....

(pondering all sorts of little things that might make sense if Klaus was hovering, ever ready to "edit" things to keep his boy safe and thinking Right Thoughts.)

edited 29th Mar '13 11:31:48 PM by Hippogrif

My theory has always been that Gil died somewhere between four and six years old, and his lack of memories is death trauma (which *can* wipe memories completely, especially if there's a delay before revival) and that this somehow ties in to what happened in Skifander that leads Klaus to expect assassins.

Whether Klaus mind controlled Gil at other times...I don't know. Even Barry, one of our most well known Good Sparks, used the locket on Agatha. Spark child rearing is scary stuff, especially when they're afraid for the child.

I don't think Klaus is in constant Edit Mode, though, or he'd have never sent Gil to Paris. That seems to have been designed to let Gil develop his own thoughts.

edited 29th Mar '13 11:34:02 PM by khil

Oh, all sorts of trauma can wipe memory. I walked away from a car crash that should have killed me (aquaplaned off the side of a hill in wet weather) with no damage done to me but a great big blank that hides any memory of how the heck I survived and got out of the car. So a death is possible.

I'm just...uneasy that Gil's current behavior and conviction and *anger* seems so close to what happened to Tarvek all those years ago. And it would explain so many other things...

I'm talking about a specific type of trauma, though, that has no real world equivalent and has been set up specifically in canon as causing amnesia. So it seems worth considering when faced with a canonical lack of memories, especially when the various kinds of mind control are far more ambiguous as to whether they can cause amnesia rather than just stopping someone talking about their past.

As for whether Klaus mind controlled Gil during the Tarvek incident...I'm going to sit on the fence and say maybe *g* I don't think Gil's amnesia was caused by mind control, but that doesn't mean he wasn't mind controlled at other times.

I think for now I'm going to hold "What happened to Gil now also happened to Gil then" as a high-likely, but with a great big question mark beside it. (sigh) As usual. But this one's ringing the kind of alarms that...well. Let's just say I'm getting a real strong hunch about this one.

As for special "revival amnesia." Yeah. I could go with that. In which case I wonder if the kiddo died just before Klaus came to Mechanicsberg (and then took Von Pinn to be the Nanny...) It would explain Von Pinn AND it would explain Klaus walking around with the book about how to raise a kid alive.

Dang. Going back and chasing history...and look at this! Just look: between the drawings and Wooster's narrative they told us everything about Der K., including the charging rods...but did it so most people just let it slide, and even those of us who took it seriously did not get all the pieces. Amazing.

edited 29th Mar '13 11:48:28 PM by Hippogrif

Klaus's book does seem kind of odd — not very secretive. Either he hadn't decided to keep Gil a secret yet, or he wasn't that worried about anyone in Mechanicsburg knowing.

The Book and Von Pinn could be covered up by setting up the school. But it still looks like a very good possible point for "when might Little Gil have died a hypothetical death."

I also still think there's more going on with Carson's to-do about when Klaus Barry was born than just "so Klaus Barry was legitimate and NOT a child of the Baron's." Something more was going on.

What are the latest add-ups on when Klaus was kidnapped, when Lu and Bill married, when Klaus Barry was born, when K-B died, and when Klaus finally returned with Gil in arms? Rej? You out there, ol' buddy? What's your current timeline do for us?

________________________________________________________________________

Bleepin' bleep-bleep-bleep.

I wonder. Did Lu die and get revived during the Fall of Castle Heterodyne? Is the Lu-recording a woman's death memories? Or her post-revival madness? I'm looking at the attack again, and thinking how very MUCH an experiment gone wrong, Post Revival Rush and Madness, and so on might explain. I mean, if Lu died and was revived, but came back with the same Madness Agatha worried about, and that almost took Tarvek till Moloch got clever...

A fight in the lab. The assistants killed. Lu disappeared.

Drat-drat, drat-drat....

More data. I need more data..........

edited 30th Mar '13 12:11:46 AM by Hippogrif

I don't know where Rej is, but I'll see what I can do in a minute based on comic+novel. *g*

Thanks, PK. You're a sweet-heart.

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"Master Bill was Nearly Insane." A trope that will recur regarding Bill...who will deteriorate with time. Barry's calm, and Barry is the one who does the forensic cleanup. Hmmmmmmm.

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There's a huge explosion when Klaus returns. I wonder if that's literal? We don't know how he got back, and from where. I'm now imagining an airship crash....

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Must go sleepz nao. Muzzzzzt zzzleeeeeepz. Y'all playz in zandbox while I'm in ZZZZZZ-land. Huge hugs. See if you get any cool ideas playing with this stuff.

edited 30th Mar '13 12:33:45 AM by Hippogrif

OK, this is what we've got, so far as I can tell, and with the caveat of possible rounding error.

Klaus disappears
-interval: two years and three months (according to Carson)-
Klaus Barry's birth
-interval: 407 days (according to tombstone)-
Explosions in Castle Heterodyne, Lucrezia disappears
-interval:six months (according to novel)-
Attacks on other Great Houses begin
-interval: two and a half years (three years from Lu's disappearance, according to novel)-
Sixteen years before comic: Prologue of novel, attack on Woggleburg, Bill and Barry figure out where Other is based on apparent orbital bombardment and prepare to go after "him". Bill is in worse shape than three years ago mentally but is very, very fast.
Other's activities stop
Klaus returns: theoretically this could happen slightly pre-Woggleburg, if sorting out his home town took a while, but I think afterward is more likely
12.5-14.5 years pre-comic: Klaus takes Mechanicsburg (I'll explain the fuzziness in a minute)
13.85 years before Agatha arrives in Mechanicsburg: Carson's last use of the Throne of Faustus Heterodyne
About 13 years pre-comic: Agatha starts breaking through at age 5, Barry creates locket
About 11 years pre-comic: After some months with Adam and Lilith, Barry leaves on a mysterious trip. Agatha is seven. Letters arrive from Mechanicsburg and then Paris.
About 9-10 years pre-comic: Clays find a travel-stained letter from Barry under their door, "full of disquieting and vague ramblings"

Duration of Klaus's absence: Chapter 1 of the first novelization mentions Klaus vanishing, and reappearing after six years. There is also a line in Chapter 10 where Klaus claims to have been gone for less than four years. Either the Foglios goofed or it's a clue that Klaus has had some calendar confusion along the way. Assuming all other timeframes given to be accurate, he was gone six years, four and a half months. (I believe in an interview Phil referred to his spending four years in Skifander; it's possible this was from a non-finalized timeline but stuck in his mind. On the other hand, regarding the "Martian prince" theory, that would be about 3.4 years on Mars....)

Agatha is 18 at the start of the novel, perhaps recently 18. (Her current favorite clothes were a birthday present. On the other hand, that six-month delay the Foglios made a point of inserting, between Lu's disappearance and the rest of the attacks starting, looks suspiciously like part of a pregnancy to me, so she could be 18 and a half. At any rate, even allowing for Phil's hedge about how Lucrezia could theoretically have delayed gestation somehow, if she's really 18 and the 16-years-ago for the prologue is exact, she cannot have been born more than a year after the attack.)

Gil is said to be 22, in the second novel, three months after Agatha's disappearance. If all timeframes given are exact, he probably has to have been born less than nine months after Klaus got shipped off.

Mechanicsburg: Wooster refers to 14 years of work on Castle Heterodyne. It is not clear whether this starts with the expedition from Beetleburg or Klaus's deal with the Castle six months later; it is also not clear whether he's rounding up or down. However, if he's starting from the press-ganged TPU expedition, Carson's last use of the Throne could have actually been in relation to the prison-labor deal. Edit: Actually, it works just as well either way. Given 13.85 years is pretty close to 14, I am leaning toward the idea that this does correspond to the deal with Klaus.

edited 30th Mar '13 1:50:55 AM by PK

Hippogriff— there's a slightly less horrible explanation of why what happened to Gil now looks like what happened to him when he was denouncing Tarvek 14 years ago... I always assumed that Klaus stated his intentions to kill Tarvek if he found out who Gil really was. If Gil's memories of who he really was had been hidden from him until Klaus caught the boys breaking into the records room, and *some* of them were traumatically retrieved (how would you feel if your best friend's life was threatened by your father, who had denied your heritage, then dumped you alone to be bullied?)

Tarvek is clearly not the only one who is willing to let the ends justify the means when trying to save someone he loves. We will have to see what the far-ranging bad effects of the bargains Gil strikes to try to save Agatha will be; will it be as bad as the sparkwasp?

Jeez, my last post sounded supercilious didn't it.

"We could have kept him safe" will keep breaking my heart for a long time.

I just get the feeling — for the first time in a long time— that we may actually someday see the boys actually talk about and resolve the issue of what happened on Castle Wulfenbach all those years ago. Assuming that is a thing that 22 year old males are able to do.

Sometimes I think we don't get to see stuff too much because of the need to show, not tell, what's going on.

Jumping back a few pages:

Tarvek gets Europe

If Tarvek gets Europe the way Gil gets Agatha, that sounds like it'd make for an interesting time on the night of the wedding...

/CompletelyMissingThePoint

*giggling* The Storm King in the Opera did look rather bewildered at having the Spirit of Europa appear in his bedroom

Belated d'awww over the Ginger Weasel Beer, Mauri. ^_^ Not had much access to a keyboard. And, might not again, later.

OT3 for the win! (And, for the record, in a lot of parts of Africa, there is an old saying in various languages that translates as "the perfect marriage is made of three": this has been traditional for thousands of years and is still current, even though missionaries and evangelicals try their best to bulldoze across traditional cultures without worrying about the fallout... Tell me again about traditional morals?)

edited 30th Mar '13 9:20:53 AM by Euodiachloris

So now that I'm not keeping anybody awake here, I am going to ramble about Klaus and Barry.

Klaus: Even allowing for a little slop in the timeline, the travel time between getting drugged by Lucrezia (in the city of the Chatelaine of Red Glass) and reaching Skifander really has to be minimal. More precisely, the time between getting drugged by Lucrezia and engendering Gil has to be minimal. The travel time seems likely to be explained by Lucrezia actually having portal technology, although I'm left wondering if she had to drag him somewhere or built something on the spot. I can only guess that his involvement with Zantabraxus went about as fast as Zeetha/Higgs. :P

I recall reading that the Foglios, when asked about Gil's and Zeetha's ages, said "21-22" without distinguishing between them. They seem likely to be twins. Quick sequential pregnancies or different mothers are also options (and have been brought up before), but I think they are less likely, especially given sketch evidence that Klaus is Chump and his wife is Zantabraxus, plus comics evidence that Zeetha's mother is the queen and Gil has some claim he's not aware of to being called "your highness".

Anyway, I think it is most likely that Klaus knows he has a daughter — and probably knows her name, unless they changed it after he left. Zeetha did not know her father's real name when she arrived in Europe. She thinks it's interesting that Lucrezia identifies her as Skifandrian and knows better than to fight her, she expects or at least hopes to find people in Europe who know her home exists, but she apparently never connected the famous Heterodyne Boys or their companions to the presumably limited set of past visitors. I am not sure if Zantabraxus is just close-mouthed, they failed to make much of an impression (except for Klaus-as-Chump), or something more complicated happened.

So... for reasons that apparently involved keeping Gil alive, but did not prevent Klaus from missing his wife, he eventually left. While his flashback images are obviously not altogether literal, the air of shock upon reaching his destroyed home town actually does make somewhat more sense if he crashed an airship or, perhaps, dropped in by spaceship, and did not have the opportunity to observe the rest of Europe on the way. (On the other hand, it could just be condensed.) He then rebuilt his town, replaced the castle with a giant airship, declared anybody who attacked him would be absorbed (which everybody initially thought was silly), and began expanding the range he claimed and would police.

According to Carson, "back then, the people flocked to him," suggesting that once he started showing some success, joining the Wulfenbach Expanded Barony/fledgeling Empire was actually rather popular; however, while Mechanicsburg largely seems to like him, they weren't especially enthusiastic. Also, it seems to have taken him longer than I would have expected to get to them, although a year and a half or so isn't actually unreasonable considering he started with a ruined town, a small child, and whatever he arrived with.

Anyway, returning to timeline issues, for Gil to be 22 during the comic, he must have been about six when Klaus returned to Europe. It's not clear what the travel time was from Skifander at that point, but it does seem that Gil has to have undergone some memory loss if he didn't know Klaus was his father. And at the absolute earliest Klaus could have taken over Mechanicsburg, I think he'd have to be seven. Maybe eight already, or pushing it.

Lunch. I will ramble more later. *g*

edited 30th Mar '13 11:13:30 AM by PK

Hmmm . . . lunch. What a pleasant idea!

Or in my case coffee. So the idea that maybe twins or siblings of the same father given that they might have used Klaus as a possible fate as the amazons of Lon ju ray?

Ok. Credo time on a limited basis.

1. I believe using scripture as the basis of arguing right or wrong only works if you and the person you're arguing with are already in strong agreement as to the "right" scripture, the "right" version of that scripture, the "right" way of framing and interpreting that scripture, and are in full agreement on which of many scriptures is the one true and crucial source of life-guidance.

2. I believe that if your discussion fails on any of those points you no longer have a discussion of morals happening, but a fanboy fight over how to interpret canon, and whether the One True Tradition is Marvel or DC, and whether the "Dark Knight" counts as canon or not. If you aren't in agreement over the scripture or the source tradition then citing scripture just doesn't work any more. You might as well be arguing in Mandarin Chinese to someone who only knows AMSLAN. Even if you're right, they will not "hear" you.

3. I believe that discussions of poly in the modern Western Euro-based cultures are often long on arguments of individual rights and competence and responsibility, but also far too often naive about the costs, challenges, and consequences for those taking part and for those inescapably involved, such as children, in-laws, employers, neighbors, etc.. There are times when arguments for poly remind me of arguments for suicide: yes, it's your life, but "I can do whatever I want with it," ignores the fact that we all make bad choices out of our incompetence as well as good choices out of our competence, and that our choices have massive effects on those around us. Some "rights" can only be argued fully in the context of equal or greater "responsibilities." Marriage and suicide both strike me as choices that shouldn't be made without taking into account the needs of a lot of people who will not be "part" of that marriage, or sharers of that grave — and that they should not be attempted without serious thought of how it could go wrong and how to protect others from the fallout if it does go wrong.

4. I believe that history and nature and religion all provide good resources for wisdom about how best to live. I believe they provide a strong suggestion that long-arc monogamy works better more of the time for more people than poly, by the standards of most modern Western people. I believe that traditional forms of poly and most traditional cultures that support poly would not be enjoyed by the majority of modern westerners who currently endorse poly. History suggests that most moderns would dislike the cost/benefit profiles that have been the predominant outcome of poly marriages and their integral cultures.

5. I believe that in spite of this, we are now at a point in time where new forms and cultural structures regarding marriage are inevitable — and that the results will be deeply unlike either traditional poly or traditional monogamy cultures and marriages. The underlying economies, ecologies, and biological imperatives have changed enough to remove many previous limits while imposing new ones. That means there's room for any number of renegotiated forms. I don't know what those will be.

6. I believe that regardless of ANY of that real-world brouhaha, it is a MISTAKE to use reader shipping opinion regarding a broad slap-stick comic fantasy/science fiction pastiche of old Mad Science and Adventure and Romance stories involving the Young Adult Courtship Dance of a mess of fantasy-human demigods as the litmus test by which to judge the moral position of the readers, the writers, or even the fictional characters. It is exactly and precisely like getting into a religious war over whether or not the Roadrunner or Wile E. Coyote should be denied Communion until they confess and do public penance for their homicidal violence. The only Great Holy Truth to take away from Loony Toons is "Yea, Verily Sayeth The Prophets, 'Thou Shalt Never Order Thy Jet Propulsion Boots From ACME.'"

And always make sure you do something that will nail you job security.

I have this image of Klaus waking blearily in Skifander dressed in, at most, a bedsheet. The green-haired amazons ask him (in Skif) who he is. As memory returns, he smacks his forehead into his hands exclaiming, I am such a CHUMP!

That's about the scenario I'd expect. And then, once Atabraxas gets a good look at what's under that sheet, she makes courtship a royal prerogative.

PK: THANK YOU!!! Your work is appreciated. I'm using it as a basis for my own attempt to sort it all out, below. You rock.

Ok. Here is a very rough timeline working using the core date of Klaus Barry's birth and a rough estimate of Agatha's birth. I'm getting approximately 22.5 months between Klaus' kidnap and story start, but we've actually got a lot of room to stretch at various joints in the story. Frex, we can push Agatha's birth down the stream in a range of ways. Lu could have just barely caught when Der. K fell, for example....or we could have Mongfish genetic games going on and Agatha built from scratch at a later date, or Agatha held in stasis in some way. Getting A full 9 months for Gil is easy enough. There's enough wiggle room between 22 years six months and 22 years nine months to find room for the necessary additional three months. Depending on just how accurate Carson is, though, we have a pretty close sense of how much time there was between Klaus being kidnapped and the fall of Der K. It's going to be very close to 1227 days between kidnap and death of K-B.: 3.3 years and change.

At the time of Agatha's breakthrough Klaus is already in Mechanicsberg — or soon will be. Klaus is definitely back from Skifander. Barry's got Agatha, and is on the run from Klaus already. And we still have no idea in the world how Barry got hold of Agatha.

No. We have a bit of a clue. Milvistle betrayed Lu, and the timing and other elements make it feel to me like Milvistle may have given her directly to Barry. M Milvistle may be Barry's "High Priestess."

-133 (Very Approximate Indeed!): Valois era

50 - 70: High Era of the Heterodyne Boys (and Friends!)

69: Klaus kidnapped

Late 69-70: Gil and Tarvek and Zeetha all seem likely to have been born... Worth noting that Tarvek was either started or likely to have been planned for by the point of Klaus' kidnap: that element was already in play on the whole Storm King thing.

72 : Birth of Klaus Barry

73: Death of Klaus Barry, Fall of Der K., Lu goes missing.

73.5: Agatha born (?), start of Other Attacks.

76-77: End of Other War

77-78: Return of Klaus, arrival of Klaus at Mechanicsberg? Start of the Hostage School? If so, and Klaus came to Mechanicsberg at the end of 78, his arrival would also coincide with Carson's last use of the linkage with Der K...which makes sense if Carson at least tried to summon Der K. to defend the town against the invader, with no good outcome.

78-79, Agatha's breakthrough, locket. Gil is *also* breaking through during this period. The more I look at this the more I think they've got to tell us when Tarvek broke through *someday*. This is also roughly when the Boy Detective narrative took place and Tarvek got kicked off of Castle Wulfenbach. Which, to me ups the odds of Klaus setting up the school at almost exactly the same period as he went to Mechanicsberg: Again, the book about "how to keep a kid alive," and the collection of a Nanny to guard the children. (And Gil in particular)

91.5: Comic start.

edited 30th Mar '13 6:23:45 PM by Hippogrif

@Hipp (26894): Hipp, if I was impressed with you before, I am doubly so now. You truely have a way with language when making a point, and it's obvious that the points you make come from a lifetime of experience and wisdom. Thank you for sharing that, it was very inspiring.

Still one thing would be a little nightmare and it is the chance of many flashbacks once this part is over... Like the moment when Klaus left Gil' Mom and came to find Europa in flames. I guess Klaus wanted to bring Barry and say "hey pal you wanted some good place to take a few holidays away from Lu I found the place."