you're hired :P (seriously tho, sign me the fuck up for weird nonhumans, I want to roll around in this playground so much) (...I think I'm fucking up my metaphors but shhh) Dimo is definitely a good choice for a general if it is a posting and not a classification! Just... Spoiler: because referencing recent things If we take Vole's growth and spikification as an "aging sped up during extraction" thing and not a "genetic(?) predisposition to Generaling" thing, why does Dimo still look (relatively) the same as when we last saw him? Unless the time warp extractor somehow aged Vole past what he "should" be... ...on the other hand, it might be interesting to see Dimo have to deal with all the politics of "but you're not big/freaky/weird Enough to be a General," especially with the new "official" General around once his presence/promotion gets out. I'm sure most of the ones who've served directly under Dimo would trust him to Do The Leader Thing, but... (...whoops, I may be mixing canon and fanon, do we know for certain if all the non-Wulfenbach jägers made their way back to Mechanicsburg before the timebubble thing or are there still "feral" packs running around that Dimo may or may not have command of?) ...I don't expect to see all the juicy fantasy politics onscreen, mind, but it's Yet Another Jäger Spinoff Series I wouldn't mind reading :P
...but Tarvek seems to also have aged a "normal" amount of time, despite being pulled out with the same extractor? (Unless I am misremembering, which is entirely possible.) Same fatigue and hunger Vole seems to have experienced, but beyond that no real ill effects (yet). ...clearly the solution is to pull another jäger out and see at what rate they age. Need more data points!
I think they pulled Vole out first, and then refined the process to be survivable by non-jägers? But yes, science. -pats the spark- Just don´t feed any minions to anything ok?
Ah, was that the timing of it? I'll have to reread, thanks :3 ...there are plenty of people in Mechanicsburg, we don't need to send more people in :P (...You Stop That, "see if people de- and re-age if they enter and leave the time bubble" is an entirely different experiment!)
Yeah, after extracting animals and getting dust piles Gil decided to extract something that could survive that long. Then refined the process for Tarvek. Dimo was never in the field and so does not matter for this.
Ah, yeah, that'd make sense then! back to jägers that get less human as they age >:3 (because apparently Khrizhan, Zog, and Goomblast are the oldest whose ages we know, thanks wiki.)
Spoiler: update september 12th agatha, your kinks are showing. also, can i say that i love dimo? and generally how getting a new uniform jäger style starts with beating someone up, and then presumably stealing their clothes. no wonder the jäger army looks so jumbled outfit-wise, they just steal what they think looks cool.
Spoiler: reference the spoip Okay but if this is as viciously-defended a tradition as the Hats, imagine how frustrating it must have been to get the Wulfenbach jägers all into matching uniforms while they were all adjusting to the new """master""
Spoiler: snrk ok but imagine "not effen de heterodyne boyz made us do dat!" some quartermaster who thinks theyre savvy attempting to make the jägers fight for the uniforms to "make it more authentic" jägers questioning their decision to remain with the pack instead of going wild, because if you go wild you at least arent made to wear (specific) clothing some jägers who think theyre clever asking how else they would fit in with the opposing army all sneaky-like (ve alvayz go after de guyz who are lookink all same-like, but now dots us!) some remarking that at least they got to keep their hats jägers accessorizing and trying to gauge with how much they can get away with
Spoiler: Jäger fashion Ok but imagine trying to find uniform to fit the range of sizes present among jägers. And fit over the tails, spikes, and other extras.
Spoiler: september 14th spoiler "Seffie-- I'm doing SCIENCE here!" How very dare they make Tweedle briefly endearing. HOW DARE. This is like finding out he loves animals all over again.
Spoiler: September 14th I am just personally imagining his voice as a manchild whine. It gives me some form of pleasure.
Y'all, help me, I'm dying. I accidentally quit reading like three years ago because I had forgotten a lot of stuff and then Martellus showed up and fucking knifed Tarvek and I was like FUCKING ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL WEIRD REDHEAD WITH LIGHTNING POWERS?? I GIVE UP, I CAN'T KEEP TRACK OF THIS DUMBASS COMIC, I'LL PUT IT ASIDE AND RE-READ IT LATER. Though I was mostly mad because Tarvek was knifed and I've been Team Tarvek since I was like 12??? (In other words, Martellus's sins reach through the comic and into real life, he made me stop reading for three years.) And I guess now was the time I re read GG and what the fuck?? It's so good?? And absorbing?? It's ten times better now than when I was young because I appreciate the silly fun titillating side of it so much more now?? Klaus Wulfenbach had much better reasons, did less wrong than I remember?? And I'm still, 10+ years later, desperately thirsty about Tarvek??? I literally screamed when I saw him on screen because I had forgotten how much I LOVE him and then he was back and alive and it punched me in the goddamn gut?? All of it?? This horrible sneaky brilliant asshole??? I think I'm going to cry, I love his 'I know you just raised me after two years of stasis from certain death but your fashion is bad' ass so much?? I'm conceptualizing a fic where the premise is 'no really, Tarvek actually did wasp Gil, that actually happened, but Gil doesn't even have the strength to fight it because he actually loves Agatha and Tarvek so much, and Agatha doesn't even KNOW, oh God, Tarvek is setting her up as the new Other and she doesn't even know I love them oh God,' I don't have time for this, someone please stop me, but also imagine Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, enslaved by affection and grown weak fighting himself, unable to resist swooning against his captor, no, really, someone stop me
I was making a weird, high-pitched whining noise as I flipped aimlessly through the GG archive (I was trying to control it) and moirail eventually asked me if I was ok or if I needed help. I said "You know those characters that just... you always loved them, and your connection to them just gets stronger and more convoluted and self-reinforcing as time goes on and the thing keeps happening and you keep voraciously devouring every second of screentime with them in it, and you get to a point eventually where they are, like, on waifu levels of 'can do no wrong and I will bend logic around backwards to defend them whether they're being a little bitch or not?'" "Yes." "Tarvek Sturmvoraus." She mocked me a little, which is fine and I accepted it with grace. Then she said "Well, it could be worse. At least it's not Gil." I laughed. "Well, there's that. It's sure not Gil. Not that that would be the end of the world though." "At least it's not Gil." "...It's not like he has nothing going for him. There's a certain appeal." "At least it's not Gil." "...You have to at least enjoy his relative straightforwardness and roguish enthusiasm?" "At least. It's not. Gil." "...he's pretty cute when suffering?" "At least it's not Gil." -The sound of a confused but respectful silence for her strong and clearly deep-set opinion.- I'm not yet sure whether she really hates this guy or if she's desperately protesting too much. Either way I feel like I have learned something new about her. And at least we're both team Tarvek?... which sounds weird, considering we're both team ot3. Team... ot3 but we admit we like Tarvek better. I don't dislike Gil and I'm not sure what her problem is.
I can see the anti-Gil arguments. He has been pretty heavy-handed in the whole "I have to protect Agatha" department, with his first stab at it being "don't worry about my dad picking apart your brain for !Science! once he figures out you're a Spark, I'll just marry you and everything will be fine". And a good bit of (what I recall of) what we've seen of him has been him pursuing Agatha...with, for a good chunk of the plot, several key signs that Agatha kind of really didn't want him to. Also he built giant statues of her. When, uh, he ought to know her at least well enough to realize that she was not going to react well to that if she saw them. Which follows along with everything else he's done regarding her: he's got damn good intentions, but...things tend to come off a little creepy, sometimes, and there's the feeling that he doesn't even realize it's coming off as creepy. (Whereas Tweedle should damn well know that what he did isn't any kind of acceptable, and I doubt his sister or grandmother are going to be happy with him about it if they find out.) Tarvek's got his own set of issues, but - the feeling I get is that he's at least learned after the mess at his hometown and that he'd rather chew an arm off than violate Agatha's rights like that again. I'm not sure Gil's learned the same lesson yet, and I suspect it's going to be messy when he does; he was starting to realize that she's nothing like the facade Zola was putting up - that Agatha might need help, but she is definitely not a damsel in distress - when he last saw her...but it's been two years, without any contact with her and with a lot of stress. Gil may have backslid, and the statues suggest he might've. Personally, my feels on the matter are "they're both dumb and pretty, and they need to get over themselves and swear fealty to Agatha already". (I mean, yeah, it's probably going to be an intricate political arrangement that preserves whatever's left of the Pax Wulfenbachia and makes sure that people have safe places to live and that Sparks aren't roaming the countryside looking for test subjects, and that female Sparks aren't just vanishing any more. But the boys also need to shut up and listen to Agatha a hell of a lot more than they've been doing the past few years.)
GG gets me in this special zone where I don't actually care how horrible a character is because how horrible they are is part of the comedy and the charm of the comic, I'm here for the clanks and fanservice and improbable shenanigans, which has two effects: 1. I may be the only person who says 'ahh excellent' whenever Martellus shows up again and 2. I completely didn't realize some people might judge Agatha's suitors based on... like... how objectively good they're being as people. This is a wild new possibility, I just like the tropes that go into the making of Tarvek more than Gil's, I just like his personal character angst better. I like redheads (Real talk that's one of my favorite things ABOUT GG, that the protagonist makes such a point about being not as good, morally, as the people who came before her, that she's always compared to, and shows how that often gives her a leg up and she's still a decent person without being a Good person. Because of that she's able to love all her monsters and take down some people who really need taking down without... honestly ever feeling bad about it. She's also able to grok with and love some not great people herself. She's not a great person, and not a horrible person, and it's useful. It's a good morally grey squish zone for me.) So, yeah, moirail might actually be judging Gil based on his actions. ...huh. I mean. He does make some super interesting choices! Like the aforementioned statues and attempts at imprisonment! Really weird choices. I would super disapprove of that if something about the tone didn't just... not nullify it, but somehow normalize it? I'm not getting the word I'm reaching for. I feel like it might be an error to try to put GG characters on a scale of morality, though, considering almost everyone has had a secret, worse agenda, or a secret, worse agenda they then abandoned with a change of heart, or a secret GOOD thing they were trying to do, or oh it ended up he was totally willing to murder people with his bare hands before and was not doing it because it wasn't strategic before, huh, I have no idea how to judge ANY of you. Oh jeeze, that one just poisoned someone, but they were also kind of a dick trying to kill some people... but those people are dicks... I... only trust people who like weasels and who are liked by weasels. STILL my favorite plot point that was addressed like twice and never properly been brought to conclusion despite it being supposedly an integral part of the protagonist's story. Women who are just smart in a world of smart men go through hell. What the fuck must it be like to be a woman spark in a world of men sparks? Brrr. I'd be scared all the time. I might turn to building stuff like a MIND CONTROLLING HIVE ENGINE to feel safe.
Yeah, I think the Professors feel like it's been brought to conclusion? Or, alternately, it's one of the Myriad Plot Points that's been set down and will probably be returned to right when we're in the middle of something else plot-important. But I can see them considering it concluded, since it was at least strongly implied, if not outright stated, that a good majority of the Sparky women (if not all of them) who were vanishing were getting kidnapped by Tarvek's dad in an attempt to overlay the Lucrezia pattern on them. It was definitely mentioned that Agatha was not the first girl to be shoved in that machine, and that she was the only success - every other girl fried. I'm wondering if that doesn't account for the lack of Sparky women. I recall that the largest numbers we've seen have all been in areas where Sparks were explicitly protected - Castle Wulfenbach, the circus, and Paris, from what I'm thinking of. And we know that Othar hunts Sparks. Which makes me worried for any female Sparks he's encountered in the past, considering how good he is at sliding under people's defenses. (See: Agatha's initial response when she encountered him; he's got a reputation as a GOOD PERSON.)
Callout post for me: loves this comic so fucking much, has been reading it for a decade, never fucking made this connection I did wonder if Lucretia had swallowed them up somehow, I just didn't realize that the implication was that the Sturmvorauses had been SYSTEMATICALLY BRAIN MURDERING FEMALE SPARKS (I mean I knew that but I didn't catch that they killed so many that that's the REASON they're all gone) boy howdy I assumed that most of the female sparks were... well, shoved down in the way female geniuses, or underprivileged geniuses in general, have been in our world. Not rich enough to be a famous scientist, latched with family responsibilities, microaggressed to death, literally killed by jealous men. That it was just that much more dangerous to be a powerful, intelligent woman. But also Lucretia is a BITCH :D Of all the things in this comic, her character might be the second best (since nothing is better than Jaegers: everything about)
