Girl Genius

So, are we going to discover that Tarvek's just reliably doing "Evil Despot" wrong? Forever forgetting that he's supposed to put his desire for cake above the well-being of his subjugated, groveling peons? Too quick to be reasonable about the lack of cream-cheese frosting?

Well, one can forgive a slight lack of cream-cheese frosting if the carrot cake is nice and moist with enough cinnamon punch. But, minus the cinnamonny goodness and using (God forbid) macadamia nuts rather than pecans or walnuts... I'm afraid heads would have to roll.

edited 10th Apr '13 9:23:46 PM by Euodiachloris

To some extent, if you don't take care of your minions, peasants etc. you won't have anything to be despot of, which would be a shame. The Heterodynes do seem to have that part of Evil Despot down pat.

But yes, I've never seen Tarvek as particularly evil. Nor Gil, Agatha, or the Jaegers.

Maybe the Dingbots will have the Abbess all tied up, ala Gulliver? I want to see them again, and the weasels have vanished too. Weasels need to be around. Somewhere Vole is around to complicate things as well, I wonder if he thinks he's behind enemy lines?

I like Angel food cake, where you use the yolks to make a custard sauce and have some nice fruit compote to go with it. Preferably raspberry, but strawberry will do. Neither nuts nor frosting needed. Hrrmph. That last line would make a fine line for old English poetry.

edited 10th Apr '13 9:33:43 PM by Lightningnettle

I could forgive the macadamia nuts, but the lack of cream-cheese frosting would cause Things To Be Said That Man Was Not Meant To Hear!

I keep having this odd suspicion that "Evil" isn't quite what people expect in GG-land. Sometimes it feels more like a team designation.

And so help me, I keep getting the feeling that Tarvek's badly torn over what's worse: a lack of morals or a lack of brains and even a tad of enlightened self-interest: the sort that looks after the peasants because it staves off the day when they haul out the pitchforks and torches.

edited 10th Apr '13 9:31:14 PM by Hippogrif

The problem most Sparks — of the sort that don't live long enough to form Great Houses — seem to have is that they go into the Madness Place and don't come out until everything around them is either destroyed or out to kill them.

I have a feeling Mechanicsburg is organised partly around weathering the Madness Place when Heterodynes get a bad spell of it, and working around the consequences until they come down.

A bit like Namesake, where Warrick is the Wicked Warlock? He and Tarvek could have a comfortable coze about the tribulations of being on Team Evil.

edited 10th Apr '13 9:37:03 PM by Lightningnettle

A bit. Part of the trouble is that all the various rulers are sufficiently crappy in one way or another as to leave you wondering how one defines "Evil" as opposed to "Good." I mean, even Klaus basically does fail "Team Good." And as much as I love Bill and Barry in theory, in practice you're talking about a bunch of guys into Recreational Vigilante Battle Weekends, where you fight hard, win, and ride away...for Fun and Science.

Klaus is "good" in large part because he's stable and predictable within limits.

As the Dog Botherer so neatly put it, "What people really want is that tomorrow should be much like today."

For the very good reason that if tomorrow is never like today, you can make no reliable plans.

And if everything is normal and reasonably good/okay, why shake things up?

In GG, I think that when they say "Evil" they mean either the common definition (opposite of and opposing Good) or "Savvy and powerful enough to rise to power"

X7 I heard Vole was in lock-up. Presumably, they have some pretty sturdy cages in Mechanicsburg. All the same, I do expect him to show up and make trouble soon.

You can't go wrong with chocolate cake, with frosting that is either chocolate, apricot jelly, or a sweet coconut sauce.

edited 11th Apr '13 4:30:59 AM by ElfKid

Century of the Anchovy good for asking them on the Italian cooking.

Klaus I guess is looking towards his retirement to have a week off eating waffles and then go to Skyfander to see his skyfandrian wife. Chump is home boys make him go through the big monsters park! He needs to wind that stress out. Since being honest he is tired to being on top and not delegate anything means he is bound to look when to dump the load on Gil... maybe after he finds a good woman who isn't a spark or that can stand the "Wulfenbach gene" to infuriate women.

lightningnettle: "snails [...] fast food"

*snork*

Dammit, carbonation plays holy hell on the sinuses.

Oh, then you want one of the chili basted ones, extra-hot, that'll clear your sinuses.

Oh, no: I like me my mustard-sauce when it comes to snails. Sneaking horseradish in there, too, is a genius move...

My brother only recently convinced me to ingest giant sea-going bugs. Creeping snot creatures are not yet going to grace my willfully unsophisticated palette.

What's wrong with king prawns? Or, do you mean crabs? <slightly confused>

Mind you... considering what DK can find in cisterns... <shudders>

I thought lobsters myself. Lobsters, crabs and prawns are all yummy.

Congratulations on expanding your culinary horizons - there are so many wonderful things to do with crustaceans. I haven't been brave enough for snails either - my snot creature intake is limited to oysters, and I insist they be cooked. I know where they live and what they ingest.

Snails taste like whatever you cook them in. Since the usual custom is to saute' them in garlic and butter, they taste like chewy garlic and butter. No big deal. And there's no sense in being mari-centric with crustaceans. Crawdads is great and I've heard favorable reports about really big Amazonian tarantulas.

Ruling the world or a large portion of it is highly overrated, I'm sure, and cake is tasty.

But here's another thing to put on the list of things Agatha should do eventually: give Dimo a new arm! Not that he's gonna complain, but even in comic strip time the poor guy's had to wait long enough for it.

Yeah, there are a lot of Jagers waiting for a fix...and Dimo lost his searching for Agatha. I say he goes to the head of the line.

I think someone is going to have to mention this. Agatha is more than willing to take care of her people, but medicine is not one of the fields she turns to reflexively, and I'm not sure she's aware of the specific requirement that all Jäger treatment comes direct from the Heterodynes themselves.

...Um, all things considered, perhaps they should tell her this after she gets a chance to sleep.

What the heck, she has the Library. There must be a comfortable chair there somewhere.

And she has Tarvek willing to meddle with medicine. He saved Anevka until she could transfer her consciousness into the clank.

True, but my point isn't that she doesn't have anybody to help or advise, it's... Agatha addresses medical problems when confronted directly with an emergency, but by default she thinks things like "I can personally help by fixing the clanks" not "I can personally help by fixing the injuries." When somebody tells her the Jägers will only accept medical care from the Heterodynes, she'll do it (and/or try to authorize Tarvek or Dr. Sun or whoever; we'll see how that goes). But I think it's something somebody will have to tell her before she realizes it isn't already happening.

edited 11th Apr '13 3:26:21 PM by PK