Girl Genius

Looks like they're not trying to restrain it, though - instead they're ... trying to siphon its energy into Lord Snackelford? Yeah, that won't go horribly wrong or anything ...

Yeah, I think this sort of thing has an entry on the Evil Overlord List.

Closet I can think of right now is "I won't absorb an energy field bigger than my head", though.

Edited by Kayeka on Mar 20th 2019 at 7:24:48 PM

Minions actually get a good grade from me; do your job and get out.

@Kayeka That's the Evil Overlord List line specifically for if they're trying to siphon. Another suitable one is number 48 (that looks like it's potentially painful for the beast). Or we could always just look to H. P. Lovecraft, who noted in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, "Do not call up that which you cannot put down." I imagine that there's a Godzilla Threshold exception for that for most people, but it's still solid advice.

The Haunted Hotel series has a game loosely based on that story. Good game play, but creepy as fuck.

On a related note, is there a trope for when you find a book that appears to conveniently solve your problem, but you don't have time to double-check?

Hopefully, Agatha manages to either talk down this critter, or with help beat it down.

I suspect that what's going on is pretty much the scenario anticipated in the last two panels here.

Maybe. It would be funny, though, if this horrible appearing creature turned out to be perfectly willing to talk things out in a rational fashion.

page

Yeah, that's gonna end sooooo well...

Also: "Nize ankles!"

Oh please, not another mind control arc. The comic will never end this way.

These guys have never had an Evil Overlord List, have they?

Considering their natural tendency to go on "You were created to serve me!" rants, Genre Blindness appears to be part of the Spark parcel. Agatha probably only resists it as well as she does (which is not always all that much) because she's been "normal" for most of her life.

Edited by Kayeka on Mar 22nd 2019 at 2:18:45 PM

and Agatha has also had the benefit of several exceptional "Spark Wranglers" in her life. Moloch, Zeetha, amd Violetta have all stepped in to keep her grounded from time to time. The Grey Cloaks have nobody in that role.

And Snacky is going to pay the price for that. Popcorn, anyone?

I'm not sure which is the worse idea: downloading an eldritch horror beyond space and time (either partially or entirely) into your own head, uploading yourself into said horror or a partial transfer both ways in the hope of somehow controlling the resulting... gestalt/mix/whatever.

Any way I look at this, I think Lu might have got more lucky than this idiot is about to: that Mungfish, ego-centric, fairly resilient touchstone of a narcissistic personality is otherwise quite hard to come by.

And, even she walked away with more than a headache.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Mar 22nd 2019 at 3:15:11 PM

I'm not sure we can accurately come up with a "which is worse" of those options. That said, it strikes me that the best-case scenario would be both sides of the equation imploding without causing any other harm... which means the entire thing is just the worst idea regardless.

@Anotherbear; Agreed. Whatever else happens, whoever else gets hurt, Lord Snackleford is DOOMED, probably in the next five minutes or so. On the other hand, Violetta is as good as rescued. It's hard to imagine anything Higgs and Oggie together couldn't get her out of!

I swear, the only time I heard of this working was in a series of books I read as a young teen, about unicorn riders, and that was because the beings chose to be nice to the young woman channeling them. They fried the brain of the guy trying to command them.

(I'm too tired to try to remember the series' name at the moment. Final on Monday -eeee!)

Bump because page.

There is no way this could possibly go wrong.

Trying to absorb eldritch knowledge from beyond time into your brain usually ends with your brain exploding, doesn't it?

Either that or said Eldritch being decides to move into your meatsuit since you've pretty much given it an open invitation.

Edited by M84 on Mar 25th 2019 at 1:59:14 AM

So let's see:

• The archetypal Eldritch Abominations From Beyond The Veil - those of Lovecraft - are known for driving people crazy
• They seem to do so in GG-verse too - see Tarvek, and Robur Heterodyne
• These guys have the broken version of a machine, that, when intact and used by people who had the instructions, has turned a bunch of poor girls into vegetables
• A Heterodyne has been tinkering with their machine
• The sacrifice that was supposed to distract the Thing is currently escaping

... yeah, I wouldn't bet on this working as planned.

Given Agatha has tinkered with it, I really wouldn't rule out the possibility that the machine will work very, very well, probably better than the recipient intends.

Ah. So, it's the downloading route to raspberry jam on the walls. Got it.

@Nomophilos -part of the reason the first Summoning Machine we saw didn't work on just anyone is it was apparently only geared to Lucrezia's relatives/offspring -maybe even only geared to Agatha. But Aaronev kept tinkering with it, obsessed with bringing Lucrezia back even if they couldn't find the "Holy Child".

According to the novels, that tinkering is what saved Agatha's mind; Aaronev damaged the machine enough.

The one that turned girls into vegetables wasn't working correctly. Lucrezia told the Geisters that it was set up wrong and it was a wonder it worked at all.