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What are Gil and Tarvek discussing, with huge eyes, and little anime sparkles as a backdrop, and why is it so intentionally distinct from Agatha's background, which is colored to minimize the anime sparkles as well as emphasize the lightning rod?

I don't like this.

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Why did Barry get along with Franz so well when he and Bill seemed to avoid all the other Mechanicsville monsters?

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Why do we know nothing about Tarvek's mom

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Okay so this is nothing, and I know this is nothing. But!

The thing is, Tarvek is a fop. It just doesn't mean anything else about him.

So in the AU where he's the one Zola bonds with in Paris, neither of them aware that or how the other is involved with the Storm King conspiracy...

Tarvek would have right with her in this conversation, possibly even making Zola underestimate him.

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It sounds way more reasonable!

But gosh this is frustrating. Sounds like we have conflicting timelines:

"The following years saw the destruction of forty-three major houses. Slaver wasps and their revenants were everywhere. People thought they were seeing the End Days.

And anywhere there was a mention of wasps, you would hear about the Heterodyne Boys. They were always in the thick of things. Always fighting the Other. Always searching for the Lady Lucrezia. For close to three years..." (Voice of the Castle, page 109)

I fully admit that I have no idea where I got that "2 years of chaos post-Other war" date. I guess I could have made it up? I was reading without the ability to take notes.

Still, even if Klaus showed up immediately after the 3 years, that already makes it 6.5-ish years since he first left, and there needs to be SOME amount of time for the Sparks to run loose so he can contain them.

Who was watching Gil?

The Voice Of The Castle gives us some pretty hard dates.

When the story starts, the Other attacked Castle Heterodyne 20 years ago.

Immediately after the attack, Bill and Barry leave Mechanicsburg on a 3 year mission to root out revenants wherever they crop up, presumed by all to be an attempt to recover Bill's missing wife. Eventually, they disappear without a trace.

Europa eventually realizes the Other's attacks have stopped. Sparks attempt to fill the power vacuum. Europa returns to chaos.

Two years after the Boys disappeared, Klaus returns and puts Europa under his iron fist.

That gives us 5 years since the Other first attacked.

...

Klaus Barry Heterodyne was born 2 years, 3 months after Klaus Wulfenbach disappeared. He was just about 15 months old when he died.

Klaus is out of the Europa-ean picture for 8 and a half years.

...

Zeetha tells Gil that Chump left when she was 1 month old.

...

By age 8, Gil has loved Tarvek long enough to break though out of loneliness when he loses him.

We know almost nothing of the intervening 8 years. Gil has no memory of being cared for by his father, no memory of coming back to Europa from Skifander. The first we ever know of him is being the lowest rug of the social ladder on Castle Wulfenbach. Von Pinn is the closest thing to a mother he has ever known.

But Gil was somewhere between 5 and 7 years old before he ever made it to a Castle Wulfenbach dirigible.

What gives? Who, I reiterate, was taking care of Gil? And where?

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Who was watching Gil?

The Voice Of The Castle gives us some pretty hard dates.

When the story starts, the Other attacked Castle Heterodyne 20 years ago.

Immediately after the attack, Bill and Barry leave Mechanicsburg on a 3 year mission to root out revenants wherever they crop up, presumed by all to be an attempt to recover Bill's missing wife. Eventually, they disappear without a trace.

Europa eventually realizes the Other's attacks have stopped. Sparks attempt to fill the power vacuum. Europa returns to chaos.

Two years after the Boys disappeared, Klaus returns and puts Europa under his iron fist.

That gives us 5 years since the Other first attacked.

...

Klaus Barry Heterodyne was born 2 years, 3 months after Klaus Wulfenbach disappeared. He was just about 15 months old when he died.

Klaus is out of the Europa-ean picture for 8 and a half years.

...

Zeetha tells Gil that Chump left when she was 1 month old.

...

By age 8, Gil has loved Tarvek long enough to break though out of loneliness when he loses him.

We know almost nothing of the intervening 8 years. Gil has no memory of being cared for by his father, no memory of coming back to Europa from Skifander. The first we ever know of him is being the lowest rug of the social ladder on Castle Wulfenbach. Von Pinn is the closest thing to a mother he has ever known.

But Gil was somewhere between 5 and 7 years old before he ever made it to a Castle Wulfenbach dirigible.

What gives? Who, I reiterate, was taking care of Gil? And where?

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The Calming Pie guy has genuinely found a scientific breakthrough, one that has terrifying implications. If it snaps a spark out of fugue, does that mean it also stops them from thinking hard enough to do their invention a la Barry's locket?

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So who's gonna make the Girl Genius + Monster Mash amv/animatic?

when you get to my door, tell them Boris sent you

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god, not to be like, extremely obvious, but someone has definitely already made the next panel version of this where agatha is appreciatively giving her little clank a kiss upon its round body-head while it steals her lil cleavage holly tarvek and gil accidentally make out for her viewing pleasure, yes? so like. link me please?

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ni Domitia?

(Sorry if everyone has already made these points. Tumblr’s search is fucky, if I’d seen it already, I’d have reblogged it.)

I think Emer is a Valerius bastard.

I’m not going to bore us all with evidence of her being unusually good with weapons when she’s barely touched them before. I’m not even going to compare her casual comfort with threats and violence to the Valerius line’s famous ancestral rage. She’s going to be the Iron Maid, it’s foreshadowing, we get it.

I’ve got lots of weak Doylist evidence I could bring up: Hers is most frequently the POV chosen to talk about Valerius bastards. She’s got a similar personality to Marius and has even taken his romantic role.* The wounds she gets from the manticore never get followed up on-almost like they healed on their own.**

But I understand. That can all be handwaved away. So here’s the strong Watsonian.

It Is Known that Valeriuses have super senses. I thought I remembered a couple lines about Marius having magically good night vision and, separately, a line about Emer being good at seeing in the dark, but I fully admit that I haven’t been able to find anything relevant while searching for proof.

But here's what Marius has to say about the Valerius hearing when he first comes across Rae with the Cobra:

Popenjoy leaned to whisper in the woman’s ear, his hair ornaments brushing her cheek. They glanced at Marius and tittered, obviously making a nasty joke. Not that Marius cared. A Valerius had superior senses. Marius could hear what they were saying, if he chose. He did not so choose. pgs 100-101

Compare Emer dealing with whispers during the Queen's Trial:

The Last Hope pulled [the Cobra] back into his chair. The Cobra was a tall man, but against berserker strength men were toys. He said something in the Cobra’s ear. Emer’s ears were keen from years of eavesdropping. It sounded like a name. If ‘Eric’ was a name. pg 314

Personally speaking, when I’m straining to hear something, I am absolutely awful at comprehending words (or names) I am not both familiar with and expecting. Emer got this one perfectly despite not knowing the name ‘Eric’ already. ‘Keen ears from eavesdropping' my foot

But it's not just Marius, and I don't have to just compare to my own experience. We get a few side-by-side comparisons of Emer to Key’s supernatural senses as well. These two are blatant:

“I want Key,” Lady Rahela whispered. Too soft for anyone but Marius to hear. The parlour doors burst open. Lady Rahela’s maid and guard entered as if responding to the summons they could not possibly have heard. pg 110

and

Threat radiated from Key like the waves of heat from a fire. The guard and Ziyi fell silent. Having ended all conversation, Key focused, intent on the night beyond the silvered glass. “You can’t possibly see anything,” Ziyi said, puzzled. Emer put a restraining hand on the rough leather cords tying Key’s vambraces in place. No matter what trouble nobles got into, they were safer than servants. A servant could be sent to the Room of Dread and Anticipation for any transgression. He must not venture onto the balcony. Even though both Emer and Key could see one thing clearly. Something had gone terribly wrong out there. pg 224

But pretty early on, there’s even:

Emer heard a soft patter off to one side, on the roof of the spiral staircase wrapping around the tower. It must be raining hard. A storm was coming. pg 61

Doylist disclaimer that this one was certainly mostly to set up how cool Key is for knowing that assassins are coming. And absence of evidence might not be evidence of absence-maybe the weather isn’t worth mentioning just as she’s going to sleep. But Rae doesn’t mention hearing anything. So maybe she didn’t hear that “soft” patter at all.

Last but not least, we get it straight from the horse’s mouth:

Blasts of heat sent Key’s wild black hair winding as though they were underwater. The glow of distant blood-hued fires bathed his face in infernal light. “After my father died, I had nothing, and my story meant nothing. Now I have you and the Cobra, and Emer, who sees and hears the same way I do.” pg 293

In conclusion, something’s going on with our future Iron Maid aside from simply the fact that she’s hopefully going to be an axe murderer. I think she's going to be a magical axe murderer, with a family curse-slash-blessing to back it up.

One last thing.

Emer’s mind howled like the ghouls in the abyss. pg 32

I realize SRB was doing a ton of stuff with figurative language in this particular chapter. (Like, even more than she’s constantly doing stuff with figurative language.) I just think that if I’m right and Emer's descended from the thing that's been howling in the abyss for generations, then this one is extremely fun, and I should get to point it out.

*As compared to the version of narrative the Cobra's familiar with. "When the white knight's heart strays to lost queens" etc. She's the white knight now.

**Yes, I admit that if this is supposed to be a clue then it should have been followed up on. Someone should have gone ‘oh hey wait I thought you were hurt?’ and there should have been something to handwave it away. 'It's only a flesh wound' or whatever.

However. Since her first fight scene was written as her picking up a SWORD and then later in the book she remembered the scene as if she’d had an AXE in her hand...I am suggesting that maybe there was insufficient editor and/or continuity reader attention given to Emer.

And also that perhaps there should have been a dramatic moment or at the very least Rae/narrative acknowledgement of the Iron axe-murdering Maid picking up an axe for the first time, so such a mistake could not have happened in the first place.

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With apologies to Hark A Vagrant #213, the Kaye POV from the B&N edition of Cruel Prince.

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god they were the most divorced 8 year olds on the planet and gil's only been back with him for like 30 minutes and he's already like this

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rereading the castle arc and sorry to do this to you phil but like. gil is definitely looking at the same thing tarvek is here, Whatever It Might Be. like that's just something you've drawn.

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Hello, I'm auditioning for El Higgins and I'll be singing School's Out by Alice Cooper.

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Image ID: a CSI: Miami meme

First panel: [off-panel commenter] "so how's the race for harrow's affections going?" / [Caine] "well, i'd say"

Second panel: [Caine] "ianthe is"

Third panel: [Caine] "coming in third." (Dave Strider sunglasses has been badly superimposed over his second pair of sunglasses)

Fourth panel: An extended, capslocked "yeah" over the cityscape

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This is the Cohort, Mr. Bones, bring enough to make rib xylophones. You had your protein in paste before, but you won't eat at all anymore.

This is the Cohort, Mr. Flesh, we like our fats kept nice and fresh. You had a cav to chew on before, but he won't help you out anymore.

Do what the lyctor commands! She's got a temper, and she is God's hands.

This is the Cohort, Ms. Spirit. That rebel planet-go clear it. Ghosts were your calling, but this is war; only genocide calls anymore.

(context)

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last person to post the chatGPT fic where bebe murders clyde is a rotten egg