I highly recommend that anyone not currently enjoying Girl Genius to give it a chance. It's a great story, the art is superb, and the characters are interesting and varied. There is romance, adventure, mad science! and so much to explore with its 10 year backlog. And, according to the authors, we're about halfway through at this point, so there's more to come. So give it a try and stop by on Fridays to share what you've enjoyed so far, ask questions and join in the fun!
This week, we learned something fascinating about Slaver Wasps
Actually, we'd already sort of known that about slaver wasps - that's how the Hive Engine first got turned on, after all.
ReplyDeleteThough I have to say, I find the whole idea of slaver wasps really abhorrent. Give me zombies or even aliens (which, for some reason, were overrunning my dreams last night), have monsters burst out of my chest... but do not make me into a revenant. Yuck!
Well, it was never stated that Slaver Wasps have a fail rate like jaegerbrau, and that the failed infectees were the revenants. In fact, most of Europa, Klaus included, believed that the revenants were the successfully infected, rather than just useful distractions from all the truly successfully infected.
ReplyDeleteThe whole slave wasp thing freaks me out, too. You have to wonder, how many true revenants even know they are infected? If they think failed infectees are the real deal, they themselves may not know they are infected. And, with no one in Europa capable of controlling the infected, they've gone 18 or so years without any way of knowing they're infected.
Freaky.
True. But we did know that some people were controllable by voice commands from The Other, and it seemed logical that this was related to the slaver wasps - though actually, I just assumed that the undetectable revenants were an improved design.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking of this:
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040310
Which apparently triggered this:
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040324
Yes, actually, Agatha angry (and probably in the madness place) triggers whatever control mechanism the Slaver Wasps have. However, in Sturmhalten, this happened:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20051024
and those people don't seem to have any idea what happened to themselves.
Also, there appears to be an imprinting mechanism, wherein if one person with the correct, but slightly different harmonics, triggers the dormant Wasp, they cannot be controlled by someone else with correct, but slightly different harmonics, which I don't think Lucrezia intended.
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20060529
Hmmmm . . . then again, she did intend that. She had Agatha purely to have a better vessel for her own consciousness, so she must have known, or planned, for a certain acceptable variance in harmonics. Which, for whatever reason, did not apply to the Geisters. Although the Geisters are not the same as the Wasp-infected. They seem to be the Other equivalent of Jaegers- loyal in that they, to some extent, choose to be. Though, being servants of the Other, they have far less personal autonomy than Jaegers, who can choose to be entirely disloyal, as evidenced by Vole.
Actually, that explains Vole. I thought initially that Vole besmirched the Jaegers. A disloyal Jaeger should be a contradiction in terms, but instead he proves that the Jaegers are loyal by choice, thus making the continued loyalty of the rest of the Horde that much more impressive, and heart breaking. Who else would twist in the wind for 20 years without complaint when the have the choice to do otherwise?
I love the Jaegers. :D
ReplyDeleteThat's all.
It is indeed very interesting that Revenants are the failures, since it ups the possible number of infected hugely (though we do know that, save for Klaus, Castle Wulfenbach is free, since they have the wasp-detecting animals).
ReplyDeleteIndeed, it turns the Other from a large threat that can create Manchurian Candidates to a massive one that may well already control all of Europe in all but name.
It also seems that the infected know that they are infected. The first non-zombie revenant we meet apologizes to his friend before killing him to spare him from ever falling victim to slaver wasps. That's not the action of one who doesn't know what's going on, it's what happens when someone can't disobey a direct order, so they try to do all they can to get around it.