Mod edit to add this convenience link to Girl Genius. Original OP below:
Last thread vanished with the crash...
So, the Weasel Queen interlude is over. Is this Storm King opera another one?
Edited by wingedcatgirl on Feb 19th 2025 at 1:51:41 PM
She's about to send high powered lightening through two potential Storm Kings, both Sparks and one (possibly) genetically engineered for Storm Kingery, the other clearly adapted in some way from the norm.
She's going to do this while they are in full physical synch, and while there is potential (some) for mental overlaps and memory exchanges.
This could soooooo add a layer to our puzzle. Wheeeeeee!
As a former North Easterner I feel like I'm watching a top grade mid-summer thunder-boomer come rolling in on the Green Light special. Yiiiiiiii-ha!
Greybeard Fan: if she does Heterodyne I expect it to happen at a point where everything goes critical. Um...MORE critical.
Personally I do expect her to Heterodyne at some point before book end, and I'm most inclined to expect it here first if it's in only one place.
edited 1st Sep '09 10:16:50 PM by Hippogrif
Mostly Harmless.I'm gonna agree that the countdown was for Gil's benefit and nothing else. If I were doing something like this, I'd certainly ask the patient to count do something distracting, and counting backwards is a pretty good one—it occupies the brain without actually demanding anything of it or having any chance of failure or being finished early. Reciting the alphabet backwards would also work, but she needed to keep him busy for longer than that.
I sincerely, sincerely hope that we don't waste time on a Freaky Friday scenario. All this political manouvering and clashing of forces is interesting enough without throwing in something silly like that.
I doubt a Full Frontal Freaky Friday. A modified one, though, with some really, really vital blending done? Mental, Spark Talent and/or physical? No, I really expect something specifically to come of this operation. Even if it's as "minor" as Gil and Tarvek learning some things about each other that make it possible to remain in one room without instantly leaping for each other's throat.
Will the Boy(s) join Agatha in Heterodyne?
Hmmm. It's already implied that Gil will have to come off the slab to help finish the rest of the Great Work saving Tarvek once the Si Vales is established. It's possible he could access a heterodyning ability of Tarvek's while Tarvek is OOB (out of body). But it seems unlikely to the degree that Tarvek....
Oh.
Sorry. Flashing on Moxana's card offering to Tarvek again. Sorry. Must go back and meditate on that. "Expect an unexpected friend." What (or how many) freakin' time period(s) is that card applied to? Must go reconsider those meanings.
Anyway, (she said, brightly) it's going to depend a lot on whether Gil can hitchhike on Tarvek's ability, or whether you need them both in their minds to a degree. And so on, and so on, etcetera, etcetera, etceteta...
My bet would be at the very last.
And the thought of all three capable of heterodying in meld, as a trio of sorts, leads to both really questionable Motown boy-backup jokes and to an understanding of just what exactly Klaus has been afraid of if this sort of thing has been a possibility of heterodying all along.
I still think the likeliest answer is going to turn out to be Tarvek up and aware and Gil crashing as the Si Vales ends. Perhaps with backup chorus of dingbots.
edited 2nd Sep '09 3:12:48 AM by Hippogrif
Mostly Harmless.Really though, Lightning Can Do Anything. I don't see how to guess what's happenning next because of that.
Quote from lovely "Lightening Can Do Anything" trope and thank you, Michael!
<<And God help you if you perform any kind of experiment during a thunderstorm - all you need is for the building to get struck by lightning and you'll have some kind of malevolent radioactive cloud on your hands, or at the very least you'll gain freakish superhuman powers. >>
This does look like a CLASSIC example of oncoming LCDA. An example made almost stylistically mandatory by the nature of GG's buffooning of the entire stereotype of Mad Science. Must. Have. Lightening.
But trying to guess what the lightening will do is mainly grounded in trying to figure out what the existing canon makes likely...that and the Best Game Of All: trying to outguess two insanely unpredictable and ingenious writers on the fly. They win nine rounds out of ten but who cares? The attempt is its own reward.
Mostly Harmless.Oh, this will be a glorious sequence in the book!
Hmm, what if all this activity awakens something else in the Castle?
What if Agatha is strapped in, deprived of her locket, and the Other's consciousness transferred into a mimmoth, which can be slain?
What if the mimmoth gets loose?
edited 2nd Sep '09 9:53:49 AM by Greybeard Fan
"The whole strapped to the table theme DOES seem a slightly sexual metaphor in GG, doesn't it"
Does that mean this counts as a threesome?
Legally Free ContentD'oh. If the Mimmoth gets loose we call in Krosp. (Big Evil Grin) Classic use of Talking Cat with Evil Ogre. Even if he's a Puss in Jacket, rather than a Puss in Boots.
Is the Other in a Mimmoth a M'Other? Are there Freudian implications here?
Mwahahahahahaaha.....we're Mad, I tell you, MAD! MAD!!!!!
Mostly Harmless.I meant a sexual act kind of threesome, not a "she has two boyfriends" kind of threesome.
Legally Free ContentThis conversation reminds me of Rome for some reason.
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." - E. Gary GygaxInformation that should soon be in Klaus' hands (or, in the case of Adam and Lilith, which ought to have been in his hands but who knows if he's too stupid to follow up...or too late, by now):
He knows about the innards of the Locket. He should soon have info from Selnikov's head. He should soon have at least the remains of Anevka's head. (Lab fire thanks to Bang dropping a little old bomb on it...) Same for the projector device. May soon be in possession of original recording. (May even have two sources: it's not clear if the Tiny Airplane survived its entrance into the sewer system...) Summoning machine? Was it left behind or taken with the Gheisters? Moxana. Remains of Tinka? Van Rijn's notebooks. (I keep thinking Agatha and Tarvek both must just seethe over that loss...) Honestly, Gil's got to send him information soon, too, unless the plot forces him not to. Any other sources you-all can think of? Oh, yeah. Punch and Judy if Gil didn't let 'em loose already. Mmmm. And judging by Klaus' comments to Du Pree, he's got the unencoded stuff from Beetle, even if Merlot did manage to destroy the originals (and the hall of records, the idiot...).
Here's the trouble. I do know why he thinks what he thinks. But he actually has more information than I do: to my severe annoyance he not only know much more backstory than me, and the players, he also has the hard copy of the decoded material, he can study the distribution of the Other-tech, he can pick over Selnikov's brains...possibly literally (eeeew). He could, if he'd bother, actually ask Gil and Agatha and others stuff first. To ME, personally, he's on the thin edge of shifting from a plausibly mislead character to a representative of Enforced Narrative Stupidity. What's the trope term for imposed character cluelessness?
Slaver wasp or no slaver wasp, I expect Klaus to get SOME clue that things are not the way they seem soon. He has access to too much information to make continued ignorance on the current scale acceptable.
edited 2nd Sep '09 2:42:23 PM by Hippogrif
Mostly Harmless.Maybe, but the information pointing to Agatha being the Other is by far the hardest evidence of all (she admitted it to his face after infecting him a slaver wasp!), not to mention being supported by all the research he'd done on his own (which makes that also information he knows can't be someone's attmept at misleading him). Also, you listed some things that he probably doesn't actually have yet or which wouldn't actually help.
Selnikov probably had no knowledge of what'd gone down in Strumhalten (he was in place long before and it was being kept under wraps). He may not have that recording; the plane bot was almost certainly destroyed (that was what the dragon thing breaking through the grate meant—it meant he was caught), so only one copy survived and it was instructed to flee the city. Plus, is that place even under control yet? I bet he still hasn't had a chance to search the labs. So Anevka's head is probably still hidden. The geisters almost certainly took the summoning engine with them. The explosion of the labs meant only destroyed evidence, not extra scrutiny, since that was something his own troops did. And even if the projector device would've told him something, which I doubt, that was at ground zero, so it's toast.
The only things of what you listed which he really has are the inner workings of the locket (which I would guess is enough to tell him who made it and that that's what hid her spark, and maybe maybe maybe in hindsight he'll see it as corroborating evidence for the summoning engine thing once he finds out about it), Beetle's notes, and anything Punch and Judy are willing to part with, and two and three fall squarely under "Consider this, but consider also that it might be a lie". More will come to him, but it hasn't yet.

I hope that Theo, Slepneir, Zeetha and Krosp are getting more of the Castle hooked up. As much of it as possible needs to see this.
And we haven't heard Agatha Heterodyne yet.
I just hope that something doesn't happen to that locket. Wonder if Violetta and Moloch would react properly, and in time.
I just LOVE Moloch's sudden realization in the second panel, bottom row.
edited 1st Sep '09 9:58:38 PM by Greybeard Fan