Never trust anybody over the age of 21
The more I read Girl Genius, the more it feels like my own nightmares, spun into cartoon form and twined into strong plot threads, then knitted into a huge woolly sweater of story.*
Okay, see...
I was on board of a dirigible, like the Hindenburg, only it was the size of Nantucket and crammed with people and monsters. Every room was a Victorian laboratory or a rich chamber of state or a dissection room or all three together. It was ruled by this one old man, hatchet-faced and terrible, covered all over in scars with stitch marks like train tracks. I hated and feared him with every inch of my being. I was scared and lost and alone but then there were all these young students who made friends with me, and we started having a wonderful time running around exploring. In the way of dreams, I forgot to be afraid for myself. There was even this boy who was cute, but pretty stuck on himself. He took me for a fly in his experimental aircraft. Fortunately, I was able to repair it for him before we hit the ground. In retrospect I'm surprised that I was completely unfazed, but it didn't really scare me at the time. There was a huge man hanging in shackles in the closet. He was pretty old, but he was so big he seemed to fill the world, and despite his obnoxious sunglasses (why did I dream those stupid red sunglasses? They were as bad as Geordi LaForge's eyeshade) he was as sexy as hell. Mind you, he kept getting strung up in mind-control tubes, strapped to operating tables, menaced with surgical implements, and hung by his heels in chains, all while shirtless. My subconscious is apparently kinky.
There were all these monsters that I forgot to tell you about. They were man-shaped, with huge fangs and claws, and big eyes (all the better to see you with, my dear). For some godforsaken reason, they were all dressed in silly uniforms like comic-opera Prussian soldiers. Most of them were funny and kindly-disposed towards me, about as scary as the Pirates of Penzance. Then I was lost in the woods and I came to a town square, and in the middle of the square was a wooden gallows with three bodies hanging from the beam. They were all monsters, with those same big fangs and animal eyes, and they were hanging by the neck but they were alive and unfazed. The three of them hung there thoughtfully and leered at me, their eyes following me wherever I went.
*deep breath*
Please note, I'm not actually making any of this up. I'm about halfway through the series, and it's been a long, creepy, riveting read. It's all consistently playful and cute, but it's not usually laugh-out-loud funny. Instead, it's a two-fisted tale like the Tintin books--I'm galloping through it the way I used to gallop through them. In retrospect, I guess I was expecting it to be constantly played for laughs, and I'm glad it's not. Then, too, maybe people who take their adventure melodrama less seriously than I do would be laughing their heads off at stuff that I can't because it thrills or distresses me too much.
Up until the fourth volume, every single grown-up human is a slaughtering psychopath or a megalomaniac or both. See the subject line: it's almost a given that everyone older than Agatha will be out to get her. The only nice adults are Agatha's parents, the kindly Clays, and (spoiler, highlight to read): they're constructs, so not entirely human. Mind you, all the oppression was pretty productive of awesomeness in the likable characters--good villains make great heros--but there's such a thing as being up too close to the person. Von Pinn is The Person. I'm hoping something awful happens to her before too long, but she's such a lead player that I will probably hope in vain. Once aboard the Wulfenbach Castle, the terrifying-adult-exploiters claustrophobia (Klaustrophobia, ha ha! I am amazing witty!) gets so extreme that I wanted the rest of the story to be about how Agatha runs away to the woods and lives with friendly fuzzy bunnies. Krosp's appearance comes as a relief. If you're ever trapped in a zeppelin nightmare, a talking cat and an approaching Adam and Lilith are just what you need. (I thought Lilith was just badly drawn in the first volume, because whenever she comes near Agatha, her hands look the size of Agatha's head. Turns out they are that big--she's about nine feet high and able to pick up Agatha and run away with her. She only looks like an ordinary-sized woman in the first volume because she's usually standing beside Adam, who is twice as massive as she is.) And--all right! Everything is going to be okay! Adam and Lilith are going to kick some madboy ass on behalf of their little girl, and we're all going to bust out of here and fly away in a stolen zeppelin and--Oh. No. Looks like I was wrong about that, wasn't I. The real soul-crushing horror came when Von Pinn shows up and rips Adam Clay's arm off and then punches her arm through his huge body in a spray of blood, then kills Lilith Clay offstage with gruesome sound effects while Agatha watches. That came close to being a deal-breaker for me. I had to walk away for a few minutes. Well, to be honest, I'm still mad. There are a few things I refuse to take in fiction. No explicit torture and mutilation, no porny violence against women, and no slaughtering big hulking goodhearted guys. The only thing that makes me able to get past that and continue with the story is the near-certainty that, hey, they're constructs, so they're pretty likely to turn up again, undead and well. If that doesn't happen, I'll be one disgruntled reader.
*I am proud of this metaphor.
Okay, see...
I was on board of a dirigible, like the Hindenburg, only it was the size of Nantucket and crammed with people and monsters. Every room was a Victorian laboratory or a rich chamber of state or a dissection room or all three together. It was ruled by this one old man, hatchet-faced and terrible, covered all over in scars with stitch marks like train tracks. I hated and feared him with every inch of my being. I was scared and lost and alone but then there were all these young students who made friends with me, and we started having a wonderful time running around exploring. In the way of dreams, I forgot to be afraid for myself. There was even this boy who was cute, but pretty stuck on himself. He took me for a fly in his experimental aircraft. Fortunately, I was able to repair it for him before we hit the ground. In retrospect I'm surprised that I was completely unfazed, but it didn't really scare me at the time. There was a huge man hanging in shackles in the closet. He was pretty old, but he was so big he seemed to fill the world, and despite his obnoxious sunglasses (why did I dream those stupid red sunglasses? They were as bad as Geordi LaForge's eyeshade) he was as sexy as hell. Mind you, he kept getting strung up in mind-control tubes, strapped to operating tables, menaced with surgical implements, and hung by his heels in chains, all while shirtless. My subconscious is apparently kinky.
There were all these monsters that I forgot to tell you about. They were man-shaped, with huge fangs and claws, and big eyes (all the better to see you with, my dear). For some godforsaken reason, they were all dressed in silly uniforms like comic-opera Prussian soldiers. Most of them were funny and kindly-disposed towards me, about as scary as the Pirates of Penzance. Then I was lost in the woods and I came to a town square, and in the middle of the square was a wooden gallows with three bodies hanging from the beam. They were all monsters, with those same big fangs and animal eyes, and they were hanging by the neck but they were alive and unfazed. The three of them hung there thoughtfully and leered at me, their eyes following me wherever I went.
*deep breath*
Please note, I'm not actually making any of this up. I'm about halfway through the series, and it's been a long, creepy, riveting read. It's all consistently playful and cute, but it's not usually laugh-out-loud funny. Instead, it's a two-fisted tale like the Tintin books--I'm galloping through it the way I used to gallop through them. In retrospect, I guess I was expecting it to be constantly played for laughs, and I'm glad it's not. Then, too, maybe people who take their adventure melodrama less seriously than I do would be laughing their heads off at stuff that I can't because it thrills or distresses me too much.
Up until the fourth volume, every single grown-up human is a slaughtering psychopath or a megalomaniac or both. See the subject line: it's almost a given that everyone older than Agatha will be out to get her. The only nice adults are Agatha's parents, the kindly Clays, and (spoiler, highlight to read): they're constructs, so not entirely human. Mind you, all the oppression was pretty productive of awesomeness in the likable characters--good villains make great heros--but there's such a thing as being up too close to the person. Von Pinn is The Person. I'm hoping something awful happens to her before too long, but she's such a lead player that I will probably hope in vain. Once aboard the Wulfenbach Castle, the terrifying-adult-exploiters claustrophobia (Klaustrophobia, ha ha! I am amazing witty!) gets so extreme that I wanted the rest of the story to be about how Agatha runs away to the woods and lives with friendly fuzzy bunnies. Krosp's appearance comes as a relief. If you're ever trapped in a zeppelin nightmare, a talking cat and an approaching Adam and Lilith are just what you need. (I thought Lilith was just badly drawn in the first volume, because whenever she comes near Agatha, her hands look the size of Agatha's head. Turns out they are that big--she's about nine feet high and able to pick up Agatha and run away with her. She only looks like an ordinary-sized woman in the first volume because she's usually standing beside Adam, who is twice as massive as she is.) And--all right! Everything is going to be okay! Adam and Lilith are going to kick some madboy ass on behalf of their little girl, and we're all going to bust out of here and fly away in a stolen zeppelin and--Oh. No. Looks like I was wrong about that, wasn't I. The real soul-crushing horror came when Von Pinn shows up and rips Adam Clay's arm off and then punches her arm through his huge body in a spray of blood, then kills Lilith Clay offstage with gruesome sound effects while Agatha watches. That came close to being a deal-breaker for me. I had to walk away for a few minutes. Well, to be honest, I'm still mad. There are a few things I refuse to take in fiction. No explicit torture and mutilation, no porny violence against women, and no slaughtering big hulking goodhearted guys. The only thing that makes me able to get past that and continue with the story is the near-certainty that, hey, they're constructs, so they're pretty likely to turn up again, undead and well. If that doesn't happen, I'll be one disgruntled reader.
*I am proud of this metaphor.