kranja:

adiduck:

kranja:

ral-across-the-universe:

Re-reading some Mid-Battle-of-Mechanicsburg Girl Genius at lunch today and damn, there’s so much that i hadn’t remembered. So worth it.

Everything’s on fire and exploding and Agatha’s in the middle of it trying to keep the city from coming down around everyone’s ears in one of the most epic battles webcomics have ever seen, and then I get to this page…

And the Jagers are finally coming home. And I can just /hear/ the noise they’re making. And it sends my hair standing on end (and that’s a feat!).

Phil and Kaja know their storytelling, boy howdy.

#you don’t understand I have so many feelings about jagers god

no friend i understand i also have many feelings about jagers

what i really love is how yes, this page is wonderful and eerie and chilling and and and omg just so god damn cool and then you get to the next page and

just

jagers popping out of the woodwork like daisies!  laughing and clowning and waving and just so glad to be home!  hollering to old friends and offering to teach the little girl to fight and swarming over the roofs!

IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY

yeeeeeeeeees *falls over*

I love the dichotomy, honestly. Because they are Agatha’s funny monster friends! And they love their town and they love their Heterodynes and they would lay down their lives (are in fact about to risk their lives) for either or both and they’d call it a good death, would have fun doing it, and they thought they’d lost everything and were never going to go home again and here they are aaaaaa

On the other hand, they were “the Heterodyne’s handpicked warriors.” They’re all violent, immoral killing machines who not only would rip you apart on orders and enjoy it, at this point they probably did to one of your relatives. And then they made off with a priceless heirloom. And laughed about it.

Like, unlike with the Vikings or the Mongols, who were raiding societies, and as a result tended to have a bit of a natural turnover as people got old and couldn’t fight anymore, with the jagers this is actually the guy who gutted your great-grandfather. That is actually your great-grandfather’s hat. They are not sorry. They would do it today. They’d enjoy it. And there is nothing you can do because they are stronger and faster and heal quicker and are made, from head to toe, to be more efficient at killing. And they still draw it out because it’s fun. And—

I just really love how these two sides somehow manage to fit together in each and every one of them. It’s fabulous. I love it. I have a lot of feelings don’t look at me.

aaaah yes a million yes, i love everything about the complicated mess that is the heterodyne, and by extension mechannicsburger, character.  i love that almost cartoonish over the top wild gleeful evil underlain and bolstered by that very real core of love and unshakeable loyalty and pride, it’s fantastic, it’s fascinating, i can’t get enough of it, i get a massive case of the dawwwwwwws every time mechanicsburg and its people and its monsters and its heterodynes pull together to squash whatever they’re up against and laugh about it.  the jagers are just the most immediately visible example–both the most common and the most prominent–and my love for them is jacked up to ridiculous levels by them playing right into my adoration of snarly feral dudes with alarmingly pointy smiles.

basically anywhere around mechanicsburg would be a terrible place to live, unless you were in mechanicsburg itself, and then it would be fucking fantastic.