The Storm King Fairytale

Well, I’ve given it a week, and this fairytale origin of the Storm King just doesn’t work for me. It feels out of chronological sync with the rest of the story. Maybe I’m misdating the Storm King, but I’ve always associated him with Louis XIV and late 1600s. But a fairytale-esque story like this points to a much earlier period, maybe before the turn of the century. Fairytales may have been first written down in the early 1800s, but they’re really far older. They were not the sort of thing that suddenly grew up around a king from a mere 200 years ago. Operas might, but not fairytales. It just does

On the story side, the tale the Baron tells parallels neatly with his own situation. He’s telling a story that will deliberately associate Gil with the Storm King when Gil goes down the path of events Klaus has already determined needs to occur. He’s going to force Gil to kill him, because he’s been wasped. Well, he’s going to try to force Gil down that path. Gil, having other important information, is not going to be willing to do it.

I hope they don’t kill Klaus off, I’m rather fond of him, paranoid tendencies and all.

I See What You Did There!

It’s been a while since I did a look into the day’s Girl Genius… I got derailed by that boring little interlude with Oublenmach.

But today!

The Baron is clever. Very, very clever. So there’s a plot to use the Storm King/Heterodyne Princess fairy tale to seize control of Europa, hmm? He’ll just hijack that plot and set up Gil to be proclaimed the Storm King, and then possibly marry him off to the fake Heterodyne that he has conveniently locked up elsewhere in the hospital.

Of course that last bit is the worst possible plan, but he doesn’t know that and probably won’t listen.

See, I’ve always held that the title the Storm King is a sobriquet, like Louis XIV being acclaimed ‘the Sun King.’ The Storm King had to do something that earned that nickname. And Gil called down the lightning, something that both Klaus, and the plotters held to be significant.

So here’s what will happen. Klaus will regale the Professor with a historical account of how the Storm King became the Storm King. (I’m guessing it will involve calling lightning.) And then the wily Baron will send the Professor out into the town to tell that story to the townspeople. Soon, Gil is acclaimed the Storm King and Tarvek is royally cheesed off.

I support any course of action that cheeses off Tarvek.

It’s a cunning move. Gil becoming the Storm King not only robs the conspiracy of its motive force, but uses it to increase the authority and legitimacy of the Wulfenbach Empire!

Anyway, that’s my guess. The next week or so should be really fun.

Flat Beer IS Evil!

My apologies, it’s been a week of tantrums here at Casa Geek.  I just can’t type when the toddler is wailing and trying to climb on me, even when there’s nothing wrong with him.  Ugh.  He’s playing nicely now and leaving me alone, which history suggests that he’s probably pooping.

It’s true.  We’ve been experimenting with a keg of Shiner at our house, and lets just say it seemed to take a lot of trial and error to get the pressure right.  Even then, pouring is everything.  But I digress.

Today we’ve shifted focus to a new vignette, Othar and his sister Sanaa.  I’m afraid this will need a little background.

Okay, so Othar has been sent into the castle by Baron Wulfenbach to rescue his son.  But this Othar, according to Othar’s Twitter, is the consciousness of an Othar that lived a different time stream, lived in isolation for 20 years, only to emerge and find a world completely devestated by The Other.  A malfigured Tarvek sent his conscious back in time to change the future.  Othar is then captured by the Baron’s agent and sent into the castle to rescue Gil – this is where the two timestreams diverge.

Something Othar does is (theoretically) going to prevent a future devastated by the Other.

From Othar’s Twitter, we know the following about the alternate timeline:

1. The Heterodynes reappear, which Othar presumes to be Agatha.  Free beer and cheese for all!
2. The Other re-emerges.
3. There is a Heterodyne-Wulfenbach alliance marriage, but not Gil.
4. Gil died inside Castle Heterodyne
5. A couple years later the Other devastates Europa.

Given this information, I think it’s safe to surmise that, in the alternate timeline events progressed much the way they’ve done in the comic, up to some as yet undetermined future point, when Lucrezia manages to seize control of the Castle as the Heterodyne, the Baron, and his empire.  Possibly Agatha as well, but we should note that she no longer needs Agatha to do so.  There are too many possible ways this could happen, but the important aspect is that Gil dies.

(In it self, Gil’s death is significant in the alternate timeline, since we’ve seen the threat of Gil dying to be previously sufficient for Agatha to shake the Other’s control without her locket.)

While Gil has been in serious danger several times in the Castle, his survival has never obviously been impacted by Othar’s presence in the Castle.  My pet theory is that Othar has already changed the course of events by rescuing Sanaa, and it is Sanaa that will save Gil’s life.  Anyway.

Something Big is still going to happen.

And so Wednesday we got a glimpse back in the Castle, of some of the other, in my opinion major, players in the Big Something that has yet to occur.  And I like this, because it feels like we’re finally getting somewhere, plot-wise.  This is probably a false hope, I know.

Wednesday also asks the question of where everyone else is.  I’m especially interested in discovering where Ticktoffen is.  We haven’t seen him since he and Zola disappeared from those cages in the Red Playroom, with the exception of a brief vignette when Agatha shut down the Castle.  He’s with Zola then, and he doesn’t look very happy.

Well, that didn’t last very long.  Now he’s trying to take the power brick for the laptop on “a short walk”.  Oh well.

Clockwork Villainess

I had a general sense of unease for the last couple years of Girl Genius, because we didn’t know what had happened to the instance of Lucrezia in the clockwork princess.  And now she’s resurfaced in the worst possible way imaginable.  Neatly done, it gives us some tension to focus on while Agatha & Co. repair the castle without getting us bogged down in the minutia of watching every repair.  It also gives us the possibility of finally getting some more real information.

For instance, today’s episode leaves me wondering whether our clockwork villainess is a real Spark or no.  We know constructs could be Sparks if you had Sparky starting material, but clanks?  It’s an interesting (and a little contradictory) take on the mind-brain connection.  One could even write an essay on it.  Me, I’m going to presume she is a Spark.  It seems safer.

Girl Genius

I love von Zinzer. He’s the guy on the bottom right, and he reminds me of my husband. He even looks like him.

A quick recap, they’re performing an experiment (a risky one) that has the one girl who might be able to call off the violent robot-lady currently incapacitated. They don’t really know if the experiment will work. The dumber minion has already been knocked out by one of the smarter minions.

And here’s Moloch von Zinzer, just this normal guy, surround by absolute mad crazy things (and people), and he just bounces from one crisis to the next without it really getting to him.

So when Zeetha shows up in the knick of time to deal with the violent robot-lady, he just takes it in stride.

But he also takes the opportunity to tell her to kick the Castle for him.

He’s just hilarious and adorable and possibly my favorite male character, even moreso than Gil. But if they kill Gil, I’ll still cry.