Girl Genius/Tropes G-I

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Tropes for Girl Genius, G to I

• Gadgeteer Genius: Pretty much all Sparks, but the Heterodynes were notable even among Sparks.

Von Mekkan: In my experience, a strong Heterodyne will take about two hours to truly warp the laws of nature.

• Gambit Pileup: Agatha's arrival in Sturmhalten causes everyone to set off their master plan at once. And when Agatha and Zola reached Castle Heterodyne, everything just went nuts.
• Gatling Good
• Geeky Turn On
  • And how!
  • and then some -- back the other way!
  • Now with some side characters! Although that's debatable about just how much of it is "geeky" and how much is "insanity".
• Generation Xerox:

Klaus: Ah, I see history repeats itself.

• • "hee hee! Everyone says I look just like dear Mama!"
• Genius Bruiser: Many Sparks, the Jägergenerals, and Da Boyz.
• Genre Savvy
  • "What? They're in all the stories."
  • A special mention for the men carrying Anevka's squishy bits two pages later.

Oggie: Who vants to be my friend?! (Beat Panel) Geisterdamen: (draw swords) Henchmen: (immediately raise their hands)

• • Also Othar, especially in his Twitter updates, and Moloch.
  • Also The Other.

Tarvek: What! That's impossible! Isn't it? The Other: Oh dear, I do so mistrust it when "impossible" is one's initial reaction to an idea.

• • The leader of the war clanks attacking Mechanicsburg quickly realizes that the lone guy walking out to challenge his entire army is the most dangerous person on the battlefield.

Selnikov: Son of-- SHOOT HIM! QUICKLY!

• • Selnikov again (well, what's left of him):

Selnikov: As if I'd trust anyone I know to hold a razor to my throat!

• • "He's no threat--" (both look around the room in obvious terror) -- "Do you WANT him to show up?!"
  • Tarvek played the fool for years. He was paying attention.
  • Also, this entire exchange between Gil and Tarvek.

Tarvek: So, Wulfenbach -- just checking -- is this going to be some kind of macho exercise where you insist on battling a potentially superior opponent alone in some kind of misguided attempt to "prove" your intrinsic worth? Gil: No, no! I'm only that stupid in front of Agatha! Tarvek: Drat.

• Gentle Giant: Punch, apparently, though most people who didn't know him assume he's just Dumb Muscle. Also possibly a Genius Bruiser, though the evidence for that comes from the Jägers who are... not the best at determining who's "schmott".

Belloptix: But... didn't he have a... lighter side? Maxim: Oh yah! He build very amuzing toys for de orphan cheeldren!

• Gentleman Adventurer: Othar Tryggvassen is the Trope Namer.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Most often done by using water. Or pies.
• Get It Over With: Boris
• Giant Spider
  • One of the many creepy albino monsters the Geisterdamen use for transportation.
  • Also one in Castle Heterodyne. Not quite as big, but... "Nyar!"
• Giant Squid: A giant mechanical squid and a giant flying squid.
• Gilligan Cut
  • "There's no male guard on this ship that can resist the charms of a beautiful princess!"
  • "If the mistress were here, she'd say..."
  • ""Do you really think he'd just hand it to her?"
• Giving Them the Strip: The Minstrel does it in this strip.
• God-Emperor: Gender Flipped for the Brits, their queen is known as "Her Undying Majesty".
• God Guise: Lucrezia Mongfish (a.k.a. The Other) is worshipped by the Geisterdamen.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Dimo (green Jäger with 5 o'clock shadow, wearing an olive-drab cap with mustard trim and a yellow ostrich plume stuck in).
• Going to Give It More Energy: Zola drinks a last-resort combat stimulant to be nearly unstoppable. Violetta -- who she stole it from -- sticks her with a dart... not with a poison, with more of the same, figuring that an overdose of already near-lethal stuff would kill her more reliably than anything else.
• Gone Horribly Right: Same as below.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: This seems to occur with alarming frequency for Sparks. Generally with horrible results.
• Gonna Need More Trope: "I don't think I've got one big enough."
• Good Cop, Bad Cop: Anyone and Bangladesh DuPree. It happens both intentionally and just because she acts as usual.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Everyone thinks that just because Gilgamesh Wulfenbach never built a Death Ray and almost never screams at people or beats them up to get them under control, they can push him around and act like he's nothing. When he's finally pushed over the edge, he shows the entire world that yes, he does know how to build a Death Ray, and yes, he's perfectly capable of kicking the crap out of Europa to protect his father and not-girlfriend.
• Good Is Not Nice: Gil; Agatha; Master Payne... Quite possibly Klaus.
• Go Out with a Smile: Lars.
• Grand Theft Me: Lucrezia attempts this on several occasions on different characters. How successful she is varies:
  • Agatha is able to shrug it of, thanks to her locket, later by sheer force of will.
  • She later succeeds at it fully with Anevka.
  • Her try with Zola fails, because Zola's brain was prepared with a trap for exactly that occasion. Zola now has a replica of Lucrezia's psyche inside her mind and can sift through the thoughts and memories of it more or less at will. Due to Zola's injuries and her overdose on MoveIt, nobody knows who is in control now.
• Grappling Hook Pistol
  • Standard issue for Smoke Knights (seen here and here).
  • The Baron and Zola have one too.
• Gratuitous French: Gil once started speaking French while delirious. Translated: "Excuse me sir, but where is the catastrophe?" Gil spent a lot of time in France when he was younger -- and he spent so much of that time coming to the rescue of apparent danger-prone ditz Zola that it's just short of reflex for him to keep an eye out for disasters when she's around.
• Gratuitous German
  • Jägermonster = hunter-monster, Geisterdamen = ghost ladies, Sturmvoraus = storm ahead, Wulfenbach = "Wolf's stream" (not strictly correct, but German is dialectual and it's a place/family name). Of course, since this story is apparently set in a 19th century Central Europe not totally unlike our own, this is more of a Translation Convention, since German actually would be the lingua franca of the setting.
  • There is one straight-up bit of gratuitous German when a Jäger uses "Jägermonstern" as a pseudo-German plural for his own kind. The German plural is in fact "Jägermonster", which of course sounds rather odd in English.
  • Note also the writing in the last panel of this page.
  • Holzfäller, the fake surname Gil used in Paris, translates as "lumberjack".
  • Sturmhalten, the home of the Sturmvoraus familiy (see above), literally means "to keep storm", a.k.a. Storm Keep. This matches with Mechanicsburg, burg being old germanic for "castle". Wulfenbach started as a smaller house, so their fortress is just Castle Wulfenbach.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: WHAK! WHAK!
• Gun Struggle
• Hair-Raising Hare: The Weasel Queen's Lapinomorphs.
• Happily Adopted: Agatha calls Punch and Judy her parents, in spite of knowing that they aren't her biological parents.
• Happily Married: Master Payne and the countess. Also Balthazar's parents.
• Happiness in Slavery: Fraulein Snaug is extremely devoted to Professor Mittelmind.
• The Hat Makes the Man
  • The helmet which allows Castle Heterodyne to possess the Seneschal.
  • In a "Trelawney Thorpe" short story, the crown of King Arthur, which allows Arthur to possess its wearer.
• Haunted Technology: Castle Heterodyne is generally seen as this, and it suits Wulfenbach to let people believe it. The application of Clarke's Third Law effectively makes it so; even characters familiar with the machinery refer to the rooms as "alive".
• Head-Tiltingly Kinky: When Agatha is working in the traveling Heterodyne Circus as the psychic Madame Olga.

Agatha:"She... ...tea cozy... ...forty-three hours... ...only one spoon... ...how... eek!"

• He Is Not My Boyfriend
  • Agatha about Gil. All the time. She uses the actual phrase here.
  • A consequence of it can be seen here with Violetta.
  • They are her... er... her experimental subjects! Honest.
  • Othar and... Gil!?
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Von Pinn, and how. Lampshaded.

Von Pinn: I teach restraint. DuPree: Oh, so your dressmaker's an A+ student then.

• Hellish Horse: The aptly-named Monster Horse Beastie.
• Hero Antagonist: Othar, plus or minus a little serial murder.
• Heroic BSOD: SHOWTIME!
• Heroic Sacrifice: Hilariously defied while in Castle Heterodyne.
• Herr Doktor: A large portion of the Sparks.
• Hidden Badass: Higgs; Wooster; Tarvek (to Gil); Zola, with Obfuscating Stupidity; and Sanaa.
• Hidden Depths
  • The Jägers, who at first appeared to be little more than comic relief and have since been revealed to have more layers than an onion. It's even been lampshaded in canon.
  • Given what he will do for those he cares for, one wonders if Tarvek might have avoided the worse of his family heritage.
• Hidden Elf Village: The Lost Kingdom of Skifander, where Zeetha comes from. Notably, it's lost to her as well, as she has no idea how she got to Europa.
• Hidden Weapons
• His and Hers: Parodied here and here.
• Hobbes Was Right: You can't uphold a democracy with power-hungry Mad Scientists running around.
• Holding Out for a Hero / Stay in the Kitchen: Othar tried to keep his sister "safe" at home. But it turns out that in this world the concept of "safety" is even more volatile.
• Homicide Machines: Virtually every piece of advanced technology can be used as a dangerous weapon no matter what it was meant for originally.

Gil: What about this one? It looks like a toaster. Agatha: Well, it is a toaster. Sort of. Gil: Sort of? Agatha: Oh, yes. It could toast the whole town.

• Honest Advisor
  • Baron Wulfenbach says early on that he would rather his men criticize him rather than fear him too much to tell him important information -- in fact, the first time we see him, he's testing Gil to see if he'll tell him he's wrong. It's one of the many signs that he's not your average Evil Overlord.
  • Gil and Agatha seem to prefer advisors like this as well.
• Horrifying the Horror: The mere mention of Barry Heterodyne's name is enough to make two separate incarnations of the Other shit a brick.
• Hostage Situation: Gil volunteers for one. Agatha doesn't want it.
• Hot Scientist: Hot Mad Scientists. Many of them. And apparently the better they are, the hotter they get.
• How Dare You Die on Me!: Agatha's reaction when it looks like Gilgamesh is dying. It helps.
• Hulk Speak: Snoz, quite appropriately, has a mild case of this.
• Humongous Mecha: Walking Battleships.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: Othar Tryggvassen (Gentleman Adventurer!) He's a spark, with a goal of killing every other spark, then killing himself when he's the last one left.
• Hyperspace Mallet: Not actually a mallet, but just about every other gadget that a well-equipped Mad Scientist might require.
  • Lampshaded on a paper doll page.
  • A real mallet!
• Hyde Plays Jekyll
• Hypocritical Humor
  • Gil tells Agatha her bedside manner needs work. Turns out his isn't so great either.
  • Zola makes a crack about Agatha's butt being big?
  • Gil...
• I Am Who?
• I Am X, Son of Y: "I am Zeetha, Daughter of Chump! Yes, I know what it means in your language."
• I Can Still Fight: Repeatedly.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each volume of the print collection is titled "Agatha Heterodyne and the Noun Phrase", where the noun phrase in question refers to some person, place, or thing that does indeed appear in that volume, but is never actually referred to by that name.
• If I Had a Nickel: Violetta's done the math.
• Ignored Confession: Invoked. No, no, the stairway's just echo-y.
• The Igor
  • Basically the entire populace of Mechanicsburg.

Carson von Mekhan: Sure, the Heterodynes were dangerous lunatics-- but they became our dangerous lunatics!

• • Moloch von Zinzer stands out because, like the natives of Mechanicsburg, he's a natural minion, but unlike the Mechanicsburgers, he has a certain amount of insight into Spark psychology, and can use this to get them back on target when they inevitably get sidetracked.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Said by Agatha, in the beginning. Othar thinks the entire idea is hilarious.
• I'm a Humanitarian: "Snapper" Boikov and "Jack A'Horned" -- prisoners in the Castle Heterodyne.
• Implacable People
  • Higgs and Zola post-Movit #11.
  • The Jägermonsters. It still hasn't been established what it would take to kill one of them, and they are amongst clanks as shock troops -- Baron Klaus shows particular respect toward them. When Maxim, Dimo and Oggie are introduced, they'd been hanging in nooses for days, casually observing and commenting on the town. It's implied that Othar conned them into getting into the nooses voluntarily.
• Improvised Weapon
  • Wrenches seem to be used as cudgels a lot.
  • And now, a book on the use of improvised weaponry has been used as an improvised weapon.
• Indy Escape: The Rolling Fun Ball of Death.

Professor Tiktoffen: Huh. I wondered where that went on Tuesdays.

• Indy Ploy: Often. Klaus seems to be almost the only character who plans more than fifteen minutes ahead.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: 2007 April 18, Panel #7.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Diaz and Mittelmind use up all the good excuses.
• Infernal Retaliation: Here.

"Great. Now the crowd is trapped by the stalagmites while the flaming monster advances."

• In My Language, That Sounds Like...: Zeetha, daughter of Chump. And, yes, she knows what it means in our language.
• Insistent Terminology: By the fandom, often by the characters, and even by the website itself.
  • "Othar Tryggvassen! GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER!"
  • In The Rant rather than the comic itself, hyperlinks are always "elegant and finely-crafted".
  • It's a GASLAMP FANTASY, not Steampunk.
  • Gilgamesh is 'very' insistent that the little Heterodyne generator is 'not' a lamp.
• Instant Sedation: C-Gas, D-Gas and Ichor of Somnia.
• Instrument of Murder: Sleipnir O'Hara's "Hot Pipes".
• Interservice Rivalry: Jägerkin (as a part of being "perfect soldiers") got it straight -- they deem themselves better than anyone else and eager to make a point, but shut up when a real action is in sight:

General Zog: Sir -- dere iz a time to twit nancy-boy feetsmen und a time to crush bogs.

• In the Blood: Sparkiness is usually hereditary. Spark styles of invention too.

Agatha: I believe another forty-five point three seconds, and I would have exploded or something. Castle Heterodyne: ... or something. Under the circir/circumstances I/I am forced to admit that yo/you are most most likely oneoneone of the family... Agatha: Oh, yeah... I have got to try that again! Castle Heterodyne: yesss... most likely, in/in/indeed.

• In the Future We Still Have Roombas: Agathas self-replicating clanks.
• In the Name of the Moon:

"SCHTOP! Hyu horr'ble monster-y ting of Evil!"

• • Although that was an intentional delivery of a Large Ham as well...
  • And a beautiful example of Buffy-Speak.
  • And a message Hidden in Plain Sight.

"... Ve iz Jägerkin charged by the ancient contract--"

• Ironic Echo
  • Agatha quoting Moloch von Zinzer back at himself here demonstrating that the tables have indeed turned.
  • Zola echoing Agatha's sarcastic party plans virtually word-for-word (albeit in a very different tone) as Obfuscating Stupidity.
  • And Agatha describing Tarvek to Gil with the last three words being the same she used describing Gil to Tarvek.
• It Got Worse: The entire Castle Heterodyne arc is stuffed to the gills with this trope. Just trust us on this one.
• Is That What They're Calling It Now?
• It Makes Sense in Context:

Agatha: We're just going to kill you, and then you'll be fine! (later...) Gil: I've changed my mind! Let's just kill him! Agatha: Stop it. We're going to kill him properly.

• It Was a Gift: Agatha's ring.
• I Want Grandkids
  • Oh, Castle Heterodyne.
  • Also, Oggie to the storyteller (his great-great grandson).
• I Was Never Here: Lucrezia to Vrin, here.