Girl Genius

Yeah, Agatha is occasionally prone to moments of Genre Blindness, usually when it concerns herself or her followers. I think she still has difficulty believing how much loyalty she inspires or she'd notice that Zinzer keeps saying' he wants to leave but never actually does

edited 19th Sep '14 3:50:26 PM by tricksterson

Moloch needs to sit down, when he gets a chance, and have a nice long talk with himself about whether Agatha is an exception to his general (valid) dislike of Sparks.

...there's a bar on the sanctuary cars!?

Perhaps the bar keeps the passengers busy, and out of the monks' hair?

For the non-sparky types, I imagine some of them would need a stiff belt to deal with whatever situation required the need for the escape in the first place.

Agatha's greatest strength may be that she simply inspires affection, loyalty and respect and is profoundly uncomfortable with the rituals of submission demanded by the old Heterodynes.

Yes... She's respectful of her underlings (more so than practically any other character) and it's rather amusing when she finds herself having to express that by following tradition and saying "Tremble And Obey".

Also- this page definitively proves that Von Zinzer is Violetta's crush. Say... what if after Mechanicsburg is freed, Vi end up greeting him with a kiss? That would surprise him! (And Snaug, and Sanaa)!

I am still undecided whether or not Agatha's ability to inspire great loyalty in people she has just met, and keep them loyal, is sparky in any way, or just due to natural charisma. Klaus, at least, thought it was a sign of the Other.

I think that it's due to the fact that she's a well-brought-up young lady who sees others as people (even gene-spliced critters, Jaegaers, and constructs,) and treats then decently and as something other than minions or lower beings to be commanded or ignored.

I guess part of it all is that being the subject of experimentation can do quite a subversion of the usual Mad Scientist tropes however.... I guess Mittlemind would have a lot to say on the current developments.

Actually, I think Klaus may have seen that as part of her Heterodyne side. It seems to me that he started out worrying she'd behave like her mother but with her father's and uncle's ability to, ah, attract people for purposes other than sex, both because of inherent charisma and because of the goodwill they'd earned — which could be very disruptive to the empire he'd built in their absence.

edited 19th Sep '14 7:25:05 PM by Schefflera

It is quite remarkable, though, how quickly she gets other people to trust her. It was even lampshaded in the case of Von Zinzer.

I think part of it is Agatha is honest. Even about the Other. If you ask her a direct question, she'll either answer you directly, or be honest that she's not comfortable with/can't answer that question. It's part of the reason why she needs Vi and Tarvek on her side, but it's also part of the reason people can trust her -they know she's not faking niceness or friendship. If she hates your guts, she lets you know, even if you're someone she needs to cooperate with at the moment.

I don't think Agatha needs people to lie for her. If she decides to lie she's capable of doing so convincingly and if she's choosing not to lie then it's not really a benefit to her to have other people go behind her back and lie on her behalf.

To clarify: I don't mean lie for her, I mean catch other people's sneaky machinations. Agatha's gotten better, but she has trouble understanding the intertangled rat king/nest that involves the KoJ and such, as well as politics in general. (Politics are a pain in the arse regardless.)

Ah, that's true. I tend to think of Agatha's trouble seeing through lies as a separate thing from her tendency to be honest.

I'd say it's related. I'm a genuine and forthcoming person, and so I expect people to be genuine and forthcoming in return. Except, they're not. I'm not easily duped, but what really trips me up is the unspoken interactions indirect people think we're having... If people say "It's warm today" and mean "Can I have a glass of water?" they are likely going to be high and dry. Likewise, if I say "It's warm today" that's just a statement, not a hint.

I read somewhere that the British once regarded Americans as having a childlike directness. I thought, well, I suppose that's true... But why do you say it like it's a bad thing? :D

Does... Agatha actually *have* that much trouble seeing through lies? Especially compared to other characters? She missed that her family was lying to her, but she had her brain tied up for thirteen years. She initially underestimated her danger with Othar, but he's actually pretty honest, it just takes a bit to realize where he's going with it. She went into Sturmhalten on her guard, not that it did her much good but that was more limited options than poor judgement, I think. Hm. She fell for Zola's weepy incompetent act, but even Tarvek only twigged to it because he assumes his family wouldn't hire an actual ditz even if he considers them fools in other aspects of their planning. She's protecting Lady Selnikov, but if she's fallen for her act, I'm not sure Violetta's actually helping with that.

And, well — Gil fooled Tarvek, Zola fooled Gil, Klaus's most dramatic errors are fooling himself but despite yelling at Gil about it, he thought he had the right corpse until he discovered it wasn't. I don't think even the more paranoid characters are immune.

When I think of her dealing with twisty thinking and whether she's adequately paranoid, I keep remembering her going "Wait, someone set off the hive engine on purpose — so what ELSE did they do?" and checking the poison routing. *g* But maybe expecting people to set up deathtraps is more her field. Certainly politics is not something she took an interest in before discovering she was a Heterodyne — she outright said so — but I am not sure it's that she can't follow the schemers so much as that she doesn't have the inside information on them that Tarvek does.

edited 21st Sep '14 2:42:23 PM by Schefflera

I'm not great at picking up stuff myself — certainly worse than Agatha — but if someone says "it's warm today" because they want a glass of water I don't know how anyone's meant to know what they're getting at.

Being honest can tie to being gullible, but Agatha's often pretty savvy. She does tend to keep information to herself around people she knows to be wary of, she just doesn't habitually treat everyone as a potential enemy. And Gil, for instance, tends to be honest, but is also capable of unravelling politics because he was raised knowing a lot of things Agatha's only just finding out.

With Tarvek, especially, I think it's easy to credit him with too much insight because he assumes everyone else is foolish for not seeing things he was brought up knowing. A lot of his advantages come from seeing the inside of a plot that was carefully hidden from most people. Which is a real advantage and certainly useful to Agatha, but it's not something he's good at because he's dishonest, and I think the other characters sometimes do him a disservice by linking it that way — leaving him feeling as if his value to them lies in being "bad".

I guess I'll go to bed. Seems like the REM monitor is back into business and/or the afternoon updates are more of a thing now.

Besides the possibility of a scene change might be high again.

Not to discourage you from sleeping, but the comic doesn't usually show up for another half hour — about 9:30 PM Pacific Time.

ETA: Buuuuuuuut not tonight...

edited 21st Sep '14 9:46:30 PM by mona.soyun

Sod's Law strikes. Well, you did have to paint that huge target...

It's up! I just came back to say I'd spoken a minute too soon... :D

ETA: (link removed, since I had the wrong date anyway)

And still no picnic baskets.

edited 21st Sep '14 9:55:05 PM by mona.soyun

Courtesy linkage.

Hats are where it's at. (Frankly: that's not a spoiler. This lesson is a repeat one that's always worth reflecting on.)

edited 21st Sep '14 9:52:27 PM by Euodiachloris

To the king then.

Well, this is interesting! But I still wish Agatha would ask where he is.