I'm not sure, but I suspect it might be both more and less of a problem than it is in our world? More, because of the more openly violent culture, since there's a much higher chance of someone just straight-up shooting you with a death ray if they don't like you. Less, because, well... the apparently pretty instinctive reaction of Sparks to getting pushed down like that is to build a death ray. And then shoot your naysayers, take a few hostages, read out your list of demands, and in general Show Them Show Them All. And that's assuming the Spark in question doesn't get creative. This is a world where Rosalind Franklin could have plausibly reacted to Waston and Crick stealing her data by building a DNA Alteration Device and turning them into hamsters. So, y'know, sexism is definitely still a factor, but every time some bigoted old college dean wants to turn down a female Spark's attempt to get tenure, he has to weigh his prejudice against the risk of experiencing femininity first-hand when she comes back with her new and improved Genderizer Ray or whatever.
Why not both? :D Frankly, there's...no real reason that it can't normally be dangerous for female Sparks normally. But what made me consider the whole "lady Sparks are scarce as hen's teeth" thing to be tied to the Sturmvoraus thing is the way Agatha was warned about being an openly female Spark, once she joined the circus - which...is not something I'd expect to have her told if it were just considered part of how things are. And she was warned specifically about being an openly female Spark who didn't have a protector powerful enough to keep her from being vanished. And yes, granted, Agatha was known to have come from a sheltered background. But the way it was told to her says a few things to me. 1) It says that the vanishings are recent. That they started pretty recently, and that they're frequent enough that it's part of the local gossip the circus hears as it travels. 2) That it's not considered part of the norm. Young ladies, even young Sparky ladies, aren't supposed to just go missing. Not even if they're in a place where it's not unusual for wild monsters to come out of the woods. Not even if their families are poor and unable to provide any protection from, say, a nobleman or his men coming in and scooping her up. 3) That it's something even travellers need to worry about - maybe especially travellers. Even if they've got protectors...well, even if Agatha had been openly the Heterodyne and under Klaus' protection at that point, people are pretty willing to do stuff they shouldn't if they think he won't find out (or won't find out in time). So I can see a situation where circumstances make being a female Spark already pretty difficult if you're not lucky enough to be born in a situation where you can get the toehold you need to
I dearly imagine that this was, in fact, her reaction. And yeah - this seems to be the inherent reaction for all Sparks. Even Agatha gets bit by it, at one point! Although her reaction to getting pushed was (and, I feel like, still is) to act out the motto of the Pax Wulfenbachia: "don't make me come over there, or you'll regret it". Her modifications to the circus all did stuff that was (from what I recall) generally aimed at neutralizing the threat, not just Make It Go Away Forever. Considering that the reaction of the Wulfenbach soldiers to her going into full-on Angry Spark mode were to call it a "madgirl in progress", that's probably a pretty unusual response. She still built herself a death-ray, though, once she realized she'd be safer with a weapon to hand. And she built one that could punch a hole through mountains. I think one of the instinctive Spark responses to "I do not feel safe" is "okay, I need to build a weapon so that I will be safe".
Spoiler: So that new page HUH. The spiderfriends aren't visible in any of the crowd scenes, they're not in any panels with the geisterdamen in this current arc... and then Suddenly Spiders. Where did they come from? Are they in pokeballs convenient pocket dimensions to be accessed as needed? Do they fold out from improbably small carrier capsules like so many "dramatic robot reveal" scenes? Are they illusions? ...ooh, are they part of the geisters themselves, normally hidden via magic Mad Science? I am A Curious and I'm not sure we'll ever get answers beyond The Story Demanded It :C
Maybe they were snoozing all scrunched-up somewhere before weird lady friends woke them up to chase people. But your last theory is my favorite. "Oh my geisterdamen? They're great I found them in an alternate dimension. They best part is they do this incredible thing where they hide most of their physical form from sight or detection until they just--here, let me show you. I'll unfold this one, so, as you can see--stop screaming--they're actually giant spiders who have evolved to--IF YOU KEEP SCREAMING I'LL JUST HAVE TO SPEAK LOUDER--ANYWAY, THEY MORE RESEMBLE GIANT SPIDERS THAN HUMANS AS WE KNOW THEM, BUT USUALLY, ONLY THEIR VERY INTELLIGENT BRAINS AND THE CORES OF THEIR NERVOUS SYSTEMS ARE VISIBLE, THE EXOSKELETON AROUND WHICH IS CAMOUFLAGED TO BLEND IN WITH HUMANS. THEY KEEP THE BULK OF THEIR THORAX AND LEGS INVISIBLE MOST OF THE TIME SO THEY CAN SNEAK AROUND. NEAT, RIGHT? AND SERIOUSLY, SCREAMING MAKES YOU A TARGET TO THEM." -Lucretia Mongfish, probably
Related, I like imagining that Agatha got at least a few of her traits from Dear Horrible Mommy, not entirely from Dad the Heterodyne Hero. Like the 'look, it's a horrible monster, isn't that NEAT' thing. Or the "No no no how DARE you interrupt me AGAIN the world should STOP WHEN I WANT IT TO AND IT'S NOT FAIR IF IT DOESN'T" thing that comes out sometimes. Not for no reason, in Agatha's case, but still. (Unfortunately, though we've seen a fair bit of Lu in canon, and we can get a vague grasp on her character as a brilliant, spiteful, deeply fearful, and inconsiderate person, we've not seen a scrap of Bill Heterodyne outside of stories told about him. Not that I recall. And I don't consider those an excellent source of characterization, since they're mostly told by people that thought of them as heroes, except for frustratingly short mentions by Castle Heterodyne and Mechanicsburg residents. So I can't tell you what Agatha gets from mom and what she gets from dad. Now, if we could get Klaus to open his mouth about something goddamn useful...) Anyway I also like to reverse that and think of young Lu being a bit like Agatha as we know her. "Look!!! I did a science!!! I think it is amazing, like I am amazing, and you should come over here to get a good look at it. No no, I'm not going to explain what it does to you, dear. W A T C H."
Sorry if my sudden intense focus on GG is obnoxious but -giggles stupidly- This happened because y'all storm lords were fucking around y'all know that right
Honestly, I'd find it utterly implausible if Agatha doesn't get any traits from Dear Beloathed Mommy, especially considering that we've been given enough information to infer (if not outright be certain) that Heterodyne girls who're born into the family rather than marry into it are extremely rare. As in, there's precisely One Gorram Mention of any other Heterodyne woman existing, and it's the one who kicked off the whole thing with the Storm King. Now, I can understand the male Heterodynes being more memorable - certainly, they're more likely to have been the ones who went out a-viking. But I don't recall even the Castle mentioning any particularly notable female Heterodynes, and we know that the Heterodyne line tends to run pretty dang sparky; I'm wondering if we're being expected to connect dots here. But. Anyways! People are a composite of two parents. And Lu has to have contributed more than just Agatha's appearance (because she does look pretty darn similar to Dear Old Mum and I don't think that's just the Professors trying to make the relationship clear). I'd be wondering how much, exactly, Daddy Heterodyne contributed to those genetics if it weren't for the fact that we had the Castle confirm that Agatha is a blood-related Heterodyne; as it is, I'm still not ruling out Lu having done some serious tinkering, since we're being led to believe that she planned for Agatha to be her 'successor' (read: her new body). Ahaha, yeah. The Professors have been, to the best of my knowledge, extremely close-mouthed about anything about Bill that isn't a standard Heterodyne Story you'd expect to hear from anywhere. They've been awfully quiet about anything about Barry, too - the only bit I'm recalling (and sleep deprivation, plus not even being sure where to find the sources for this beyond "somewhere several years back in the Agatha's Minions LJ archives, probably", are not making me particularly particularly confident in how accurate this recollection is) is that Barry regretted what he did to Agatha (by putting the locket on her) but he was desperate and didn't see any alternatives. I'm...not entirely sure that that's even something the Professors said, and not something we heard from Lilith, tbh. And we haven't seen much of Barry, either - not even in flashbacks. We've gotten one flashback of him putting the locket on Agatha, a still-frame of Klaus with his besties (I think - that might be a literal photo I'm recalling, idk), and some tense family discussion between Lilith and Agatha (and Adam, in as far as he could contribute at the time) which told us that whatever he's been doing, he hasn't been sending home letters to the family for the past eight years at that point (probably closer to eleven now); Lilith states (if I remember) that she's sure he's not dead, but...we don't know how she's sure, considering, well - eight years of no communication. (But it is notable that no one in the family's actually written him off as dead, just as a dick who doesn't call home often enough; I wonder what that says about how long you've got to be missing for, before you get considered legally dead.) Anyways. Detangenting and going to bed after this: I am starting to suspect that their silence on the matter means that we're going to get a bombshell dropped on us when any solid info about dear Pater Heterodyne finally turns up. Spoiler: Wild theory ahead In fact, I suspect that what we're going to get told - or shown! - that Othar isn't the first Spark to have started hunting "his own kind". Because, after all, Othar's regarded as a hero too. A capital-H Hero, in fact, just like Agatha's dear old dad, and just like her uncle too. Klaus' methods are considered awful, but how much of that is just because he's willing to play the bad cop rather than smooth-talk people into liking him and going along with him? And how, exactly, do you get a Spark to stand down if they don't want to? How do you make sure that they don't get right back up once you're not looking?
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ggmain/strips/ggmain20161028a.jpg Shitty Vampire Gil and Tarvek, I am giggling Tarvek's fuckin frills. His nail polish. Gil's gloves and those... things. SHITTY VAMPIRES. Oh lord they both have TEENY FANGS My favorite part about Gil and Tarvek is how long they spend essentially pulling each other's hair in the background like stereotype bitch-women in romantic comedies ANYWAY REPLYING TO THE POST I FORGOT TO REPLY TO (sorry. I genuinely appreciate it when people play 'babble about GG with me') You know, I hadn't connected those dots fully either. I NOTICED that Agatha reminded me a lot more of Lu than her father, but I attributed that to knowing fucking nothing about her father other than the fact that he's something related to the generic hero trope, which Agatha is... not. Really not. She makes a point about not being very heroic SEVERAL TIMES. But we've never SEEN how heroic dear absent dad actually was in his actual life but AAUGH (I would pay in actual monies to even SEE Euphrosynia Heterodyne. I already love her. She's the sort of character that more vague mentions just make you exponentially want more.) They did mention that Heterodynes are almost always male, and considering some people have said 'you're not the Heterodyne, there was one in your generation and he was male and is dead,' I just... have to wonder. She is Heterodyne. The Castle says and the Castle would know. Everyone who would know says she is. Jaegers. The senschal. The whole of fucking Mechanicsburg. She has to be. And she just has to be Lu's child too. That's obvious. And yet, despite the fact that she is obviously both of these things, it feels like the dots don't quite match up. Consider me on the 'Lu, what did you do to the baby' train. Maybe she's not a child of theirs per se as in, not made by natural reproduction. Wouldn't be the first GG character. By a lot. -excited pointing- I like this!! Ha ha ha ha haaaa when we finally see this asshole on screen, man. I have NO GUESSES as to what will happen but I already feel betrayed. I was going to talk about how I Love Klaus but no matter how I try to justify that I sound like a dick. Let's just say I Love Klaus and frankly, I have a feeling that his 'no, you have to stop terrorizing the populace or I will bring you to task' method of dealing with other sparks (or anyone) will be proven a lot LESS drastic that whatever Bill and Barry were doing.
I recall something about Lu possibly genetically engineering Agatha while she was pregnant? But that might be fan conjecture. Also I like Agatha's hoodie.. cape...thing.
It's not heroic, but it is pragmatic. (Which seems to be uncommon for Sparks in general.) Honestly, her style tends to remind me more of Klaus than it does anything we've heard about the Heterodyne Boys; she doesn't want to fix the world all at once, she just wants to sort out specific problems and get things running smooth enough that she can actually work on what she wants to (or focus on other problems). She doesn't even want to fix the whole world, she just...wants her specific section of the world to be okay and for people to leave her and hers alone, really. Well - if I'm remembering right, the senschal doubted Agatha's claim because he knew about Little Klaus and knew that Agatha's brother had died when the Castle broke. Lu was pregnant at the time though. And the Geisters mentioned that she came to them, heavily pregnant and in distress. So - my suspicions are, Lu figured that the talk about the Heterodynes being a primarily male Spark line was just talk; certainly nothing that'd get in the way of her plans (and I think she genuinely tried to be Good; I also wonder if her efforts were enough for Bill and Barry). And then Little Klaus came out and was very definitely not a girl (or to be fair: was amab; we don't know how Little Klaus would've grown up). And then Lu turns up at the Geister coven, heavily pregnant. I don't remember if we know how old Little Klaus was when he died; not more than three or four, I think. And we don't know how long it took for Lu to get pregnant the first time. But three or so is old enough to have been weaned, and if Lu had any issues getting pregnant the first time...well, it'd be easy enough for her to argue for using medical science to start the process, and then moving the results into her own womb once things were far enough along to be reasonably stable. And that'd give her an opening to tinker and ensure that Baby 2 would be a girl. A Sparky girl, but very definitely a girl. ...and oh, now I'm wondering about Lu and the Boys, honestly. How much of their behaviour - both for Lu and for the Boys - is because of how they grew up. If I'm remembering right, the circus stated that Lu's role (in the Heterodyne Tales) is heavily dependent on where in the relationship she and Bill were - and if her father is involved, she's often assigned as The Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter. Which...is definitely a trope that exists in our world, too, and it's one with specific connotations: the Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter will almost always end up assisting the heroes in defeating her father; she may be a love interest, but she may not survive. She may end up being converted to the side of Good through the power of love. One of the reasons why she betrays her father, though, is usually that she's desperately miserable and terrified; there's almost always a "can you actually take him down and guarantee that I will be safe from him" conversation that takes place before she springs the heroes from her father's dungeons, if they've been captured. And her father, if he finds out about her betrayal, usually responds badly to it. And it's been mentioned - by you, actually! - that we've seen enough of Lu to get a good measure of her, and one of her key characteristics is that she's deeply fearful. She is always, always scared, she will do anything to feel safe. We don't know nearly as much about Bill and Barry. That their parents died when they were kids. That they grew up orphans. That they met Klaus at some point and spent most of their young adulthood rattling around Europa being heroes; most recently, we learned that for at least some of this period, the Jaegers were following along and trying to help out secretively (but got spotted and ordered back to Mechanicsburg). Most of what we know about their personalities is inferred; if we look at Othar, he tends to have an...extremely black-and-white view of things: you're either Good or you're Evil, and if you're Evil, you need to be stopped. Permanently. He tends to be disappointed in people who don't approve of his methods, and he regards Gil and Agatha as being good sorts who obviously are meant to be his sidekicks; he very nearly killed Agatha after finding out she was a Spark, though, and that came out right after she'd helped him escape Castle Wulfenbach - he has no middle gears that allow him to account for little things like gratitude, or waiting to see if this Spark is a bad sort. There's a lot of fanon speculation, but I think we know for certain that Bill and Barry's parents died in an explosion. I'm not entirely sure if we actually know that Grandma and Grandpa Heterodyne had an unhappy marriage, but fanon is pretty sure they did and it's plausible based on the fact that we do know that Grandpa Heterodyne was one of the old-style Heterodynes; at least a few of them probably married people who weren't entirely thrilled to be dragged to Mechanicsburg and be taken to the chapel. I've seen at least one good fic that speculated that the deaths of Grandpa and Grandma Heterodyne was the result of Grandma Heterodyne trying to take out her husband and not caring what it took; I don't know how canon it was. Punch and Judy are caretakers, though, aren't they? Built by kids. Or at least, by inexperienced Sparks. So. Let's assume that Grandpa Heterodyne was a classic example of the worst Heterodynes. Bill and Barry grow up with that as their example of what it's like to be a Spark for the first decade or so of their life. Grandma Heterodyne manages to take him out, at the cost of her own life, for the sake of - who knows, possibly the perceived safety of her hometown. Possibly to try and protect Bill and Barry. Insufficient data, at this point. Bill and Barry then grow up with no parents - a whole town that dotes on them, sure, and a Castle that'll protect them, and a whole army of Jaegers eager to do whatever they want. But...not a whole lot of people, probably, who can really effectively tell them "no, don't do that" or talk to them about how the adult world works, and actually be trusted and listened to. They go out into the world once they're in their late teens. They meet Klaus somewhere in there. There's obviously a stop at Paris, since they managed to earn three days. They go around and find other Sparks...and realize two things: not all Sparks are like their dad. But some Sparks are. And the reason people are scared of Sparks is because of the ones like their dad. At least one of them is old enough to have probably remembered that their mom was scared of their dad. Dots are connected, they decide that Something Needs To Be Done about the Sparks that are scaring people. They go out and start Doing Something. Lu, meanwhile, is being raised by - or at least has been fathered by - a Spark. We don't know how much actual input Herr Mongfish had in Lucrezia's upbringing. We do know that Lu has several sisters, I'm not sure if brothers have ever been mentioned; Lu's family may run heavily towards daughters naturally, or something might've happened to her brothers. (If the Mongfishes are naturally daughter-heavy, Lu might've figured she'd have no issues with getting a daughter, even with the Heterodynes being a primarily-male line.) In any case: Lu grows up scared. She grows up with an interest in, among other things, mind control; Klaus says he can see her fingerprints on the things the Other did, which suggests that she might've had an interest in insects too. Hive minds, and all that, after all. What Lucrezia wants most of all is to feel safe; I don't think she'll get it any more, not at this point, but that's what she wants. And at some point, she discovers a whole society that's dedicated itself to worship of her - or at least someone who looks uncannily like her. And she finds her way back there, too ("she visited us often, always in the same lovely aspect", from when Agatha meets the Geisters for the first time and is being told the story). We don't know right now, I think, how common it is for Sparky parents to experiment on their kids if no one's around who can stop them. We know that it happened to Anevka, but...that still doesn't necessarily mean it's common. (There's probably horror stories about it, but still.) Something probably happens to plant that first seed of fear, though - something which ruins Lu's ability to trust that anyone but herself can keep her safe. (I can see the lure of mind control, to her; if you can make sure people always do what you want, then they'll...always do what you want. They'll even tuck you into bed and tell you bedtime stories, instead of forgetting your birthday and making you eat a cold dinner of whatever you could find in the ice box.) But she wanted to trust that Bill could, I think. She wanted to be able to be Good. ...but yeah, I'm really not sure any more that Barry was actually able to take her at her word, not after all the fighting they'd done. And having Barry around, constantly suspicious of her activities, probably did not help anything. (Because of course he'd be around, where could he go? The Castle was his home too as much as it was Bill's. Mechanicsburg was his town.) She might've tried for a long while, until she finally snapped and went "fine, you think I'm still Bad? I'll show you how Bad I can be" and then the Other rampaged across Europe, striking Castle Heterodyne first. Heh, yeah. I mean, Gil elaborates a bit, during the Castle arc, when he's stuck with Zola about why he'd rather see the Wulfenbach Empire keep going. It is, by and large, a good place for people. Sparks aren't allowed to rampage without being pulled up for it (and possibly tossed into Castle Heterodyne, or put to work somewhere else), the populace isn't being oppressed, and probably a lot fewer bread riots in the Empire than there are in other places where people are capable of rioting. (Also, no tax on fire.) Beetle was given pretty liberal reign over Beetleburg.
According to the wiki, Teodora poisoned Saturnus, and then was killed by the Castle! And she apparently raised the kids outside of the Castle? I vaguely remember reading that the Boys were raised by their mother in her old home. but that might be fanon.
Huh - could be that she periodically took them back to her old home, who knows. Poison makes sense, as does the Castle killing her for it. (Although I am quietly disappointed that there was no giant kaboom.)
As for Little Klaus' age: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070810#.WBa9A7NEhdg 407 days, a little over a year. The books I think mention that Grandma Heterodyne killed Grandpa Heterodyne and the Castle killed her for it, but I'd have to look up whether or not poisoning is fanon. Considering Lu's comments towards Zola and Klaus, she still had an amicable relationship of sorts with her own father. http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070810#.WBa9A7NEhdg http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20150424#.WBa-XLNEhdg
Hm. That gives us the timeline for how long it took for Little Klaus to turn up, too: two years, three months. (Or at least, two years three months after Klaus vanished. Which rather conclusively proves that Klaus isn't the dad.) A little over a year is...barely enough time to be weaned and started moving onto mush; more likely, he'd have a wetnurse if Lu didn't want to do the work. I imagine Mechanicsburg wouldn't have any shortage of people willing to volunteer. ...it's also really not enough time to have a second kid in unless you're rushing things. I mean, medical science and all, but: if Lu was doing any breast feeding at all, there'd be a whole set of reactions to that which would make getting pregnant again extremely difficult until her milk dried up. (Not impossible - there are people who have kids that were born a year apart. But there's reasons why you usually space siblings about two years apart.) Now, if she'd been using Sparky medical juju, that skews things a lot - especially since we can't really be sure what she did. But this is, I think, the reason why there's speculation about Agatha having been genetically tinkered with while in the womb. Lu would've needed to be doing tinkering to begin with, if the timeline we've been presented with makes sense. (There could, of course, be holes somewhere. We already know that time-travel's in play somewhere and that Lu might have access to it.)
One of the things that intrigues me is the timeline between Little Klaus' death and Lu showing up at the Geisterdamen's place -- when LK died, she can't have been visibly pregnant, or people wouldn't be trying to take LK's identity of Long Lost Heterodyne Heir, but she was heavily pregnant when she arrived at the Geisterdamen. Hm. She mentions she was waiting for a long time but no one showed up. Lu, wtf was you actual plan.
We really don't have much clues as to what Lu's actual plan was, it's true. I'm pretty sure it didn't involve ravaging Europa. It definitely didn't involve getting stuck anywhere - I wonder if she expected they'd just realize she was trapped somewhere and come rescue her? Because they always had before, hadn't they, so why not this time? And I don't know if people have been trying to claim they were LK, so much as "a lost Heterodyne"; the Castle notes that this isn't the first time there've been claimants. It's just that this is the only time where it's been fractured and the only time where any of the claimants has actually had the ability to try and take it down. ...but re-reading the bit after Agatha finds out about her brother, even the Castle doubted that there could be a female Heterodyne. It was more ready to believe that Agatha was a male Heterodyne who just likes wearing dresses. Which implies that the Heterodyne line very rarely has women born into it at all. Which can happen! But in order for the Crypts section of the Castle to be so doubtful, that means there's been centuries of Heterodyne kids and dang few girls. And I wonder if, before Agatha interrupted, it wasn't going to say that the last one was Euphrosynia... Which means that whatever happened, it (probably) comes back to whatever the hell happened between the Storm King and Euphrosynia. ...and somehow I don't think the Heterodynes started carefully selecting for boys, after the last girl they had ended up making Europa burn with war over her; given what we've been told about them, they'd be more likely to start selecting for girls, based on that performance. Which implies something outside influenced things. I wonder if one of the keys to this isn't going to be finding out what happened to the Heterodyne girls...assuming the Professors ever get to that thread.
I'm mostly basing that off Carson's remark about how Agatha isn't the heir everyone's expecting because she's standing on him -- cue grave shot of LK. I think Bill & Barry were at least trying to look for Lu. There's also the thing where Barry obviously managed to spirit Agatha away, and unless Bill had been dead by that point or Lu just dropped Agatha off in the care of the Geisterdamen and not only paid absolutely zero attention to her but also bugged far off somewhere, there's another discrepancy there. On the other hand, Lu never liked Barry... (And Barry knew that Lu was planning to overwrite Agatha, it's why he made the locket -- it's extremely likely they met.) Also, what's with the machine in Sturmhalten? Long distance beacon kinda thing connected to Lu's true body, wherever that might be? A copy made somewhen, but when? And what is the real Lu up to? She obviously got out somehow, even with Agatha, Lunevka, and Zola out of the picture. Remind me, was the Sturmhalten machine destroyed or disassembled and evacuated when the Geisterdamen left Sturmhalten? (Wouldn't it be funny if Lu, with the laaaaaast of her power, copied her mind and sent it off somewhere, and like five minutes later Bill storms in to rescue her.) So. Lus plan. I somehow doubt she'd out herself as the Other to her heroic husband, but there also wasn't any sort of ransom note. Her assistants murdered, Lu gone without trace. What was Lu going to say to whoever showed up to "rescue" her? 'Oh teehee I took over Europa'? Or was she going to play that she was forced to help the Other, and keep Agatha secret to be overwritten later so Lugatha can mysteriously appear later and be the Other with Heterodyne blood who takes over Europa? Really, this reads like a twisted play that only works if Lu is put in all the central and emotional roles and everything revolves around her.
Mechanicsburg lady fashion: the thing really impressive women do in Renaissance Faires where they use an honest-to-god axe to prop up their boobs like a push-up bra. You know, use the blunt curve on top of the blade to hold up their breasts and have the hilt sticking out of the top of their corset to make it clear that there is, in fact, an axe holding up their tits. I don't have picture evidence of this because googling 'renaissance faire push-up axe' reveals nothing and I've never asked for pictures but trust me it's real I love it. I always wanted to do that but never had the money for an axe. Imagine: Around age 30 Agatha has given shit up and had a fancy corset with peek windows made (and a trilobite pattern) so that people can see the lovely mahogany handle and some of the blades of her best special occasion axe. "Agatha," says Gil, "that's a horrible idea. putting your weapon under your clothes so that it's hard to get at? What if you're attacked?" "Hey Tarvek," Agatha yells into the other room, "are you willing and able to tear off my corset and free my special occasion axe in under one second so that I can attack people completely shirtless if we become desperate?" "Approximately one third of a second," Tarvek yells from the other room. I was just thinking about how fucking cool it is that people even do that.
