User:Rej Maddog/ZDL

Zola Defense League ?!?
Something in this story disturbs me greatly. Now its the Foglios story. It belongs to them. I get to read it. Which I do because they are wonderfully clever and funny and artful and funny and good storytellers (most of the time) and funny. I also read it because I like science and mad science, the victorian and steampunk era is keen and surprising (check out Steampunk Palin and Robama if you dare). Abbey Park is wonderful and I learned about them from here. And without something funny to read I would get bored.

Now the Foglios aren't your usual storytellers. Phil's been warped by working on Myth Adventures and maybe by gaming. Kaja likes Phil enough said. That said allot of what they do deliberately avoids convention. They are explorers. If you try this yourself you will find some of this works and some of this doesn't. Things can get a littel too strange for folks expecting a normal story.

Now the history of Girl Genius is that the Foglios work on it for ten years before they started putting it on paper as a comic. So theoretically they know the story and where it is going. Theory works in theory but in practice it doesn't. In practice the page is blank until it is drawn. As the story gets put down there may remain blank spots on the page. As the blank spots fill in you get Jägers and other unexpected things showing up. Then the story gets bent and changed.

So how does this affect the story, the reader and Zola.

Dye, Pinky dye
Conventional wisdom wants Zola dead. Could be a good thing or could be a bad thing for a villian. It is the Foglio's story what do they want? What is Girl Genius anyway?

Who is Zola? What part does she play in the story?

Short of the Baron who killed Lars and would have killed Agatha if Lars had not been in the way. Zola has been the most actual lethal treat to Agatha and her friends. Merlot had more firepower but in the end he was the Barons enemy and the castles victim.

But wait there is more. Zola has been drawn to be a rival protagonist in this story. Her plight is more pitiful than Agatha's in its own way.

Agatha unknowning little of her true heritage, grows up as the mentally handicapped child of her loving blacksmith parents and clever and inventive uncle.

Zola knowing her heratage is enlisted at an early age in a program designed to train her as a warrior and a smoke night. She is on a mission. One which has required her to pose as a lowly Parisian tart and bumbling damsel with a penchant for getting into trouble.

She puts up with nearly everyones public condescension.

For the last two years she has been preparing intensely for mission to wrest Mechanicsburg and eventually Europa away from the Baron. The preparation was meant to be longer but Agatha's presence and actions forced the KoJ's hands.

From a young age she has been given training and made to undergo physical modifications. To protect her from the evil influence of her mother's evil sister Lucrezia. Whatever that entail and whatever predisposition she had the result was she has turned into a rather self centered, overconfident, bumbling adventuress.

In her quest to become the pink heterodyne she has been in turns funny and murderous. Watching her story unfold brings on a lot of cognitive dissonance for this reader.

1) Her cheesy line in front of castle heterodyne was funny. People poked a lot of fun a Tony Curtis when he (alledgedly) said it. The Foglios knew that. So if she was not to have a sympathetic side why let her use that line?

2) She ordered Agatha killed and killed Veil Hat when Veil Hat sassed her back. Rather harsh on both accounts. 2a) We should probably add what her she ordered her minions to do with the Black Squad but we don't know if that was leathal or merely inconvenient. 2b) She is aligned with the side that tried to kill Gil.

3) She welcomed Gil when she found him in the castle and offered her protection. Which we laughed at since we knew she was an imposter and doomed to face the castle eventually.

À Suivre...