Girl Genius/Heartwarming

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• A mix of Awesome, Heartwarming, and Tear Jerker in this strip.

"So ven hyu bury him, make sure he gots a hat."

• Heartwarming/Awesome/Funny in this episode, which is a bit of a Mood Whiplash.
• Although this page comes off as a set-up for The Reveal with a bit of a Tear Jerker in the two second-to-last panels, it's actually a bit heartwarming if you look a bit further- to quote the TVTropes forum:

Agatha loves Zeetha enough to go be stupid. Tarvek cares enough about Agatha to struggle to stop her. Violetta cares enough about Her Lady to stop her. Tarvek care enough about the cousin who "hates" him, and who he supposedly "hates back, " to be frantic that she's going into deadly danger. Violetta cares enough about her role as protector and defender to John Wayne up anyway...when she knows she is a "bad Smoke Knight, " and knows Zola has already kicked her butt soundly. And Higgs...Higgs "vas beginning to like" Zeetha. Enough to be devastated for her. It's a page just chock full of people loving and caring about each other. Each frame is a little jewel of emotional engagement.

• One from, of all people, Wulfenbach. He watched his son take on an entire army by himself, and threaten them into submission. He had to be moved into a position which potentially had caused him to be paralyzed for life due to his injuries. His response? "Anything-- being paralyzed for life-- would be an acceptable price for seeing what I have seen my son do today."
• Sleipnir and Theo have been giving us loads of these, such as when the ceiling over their workspace is in danger of collapsing--so Theo handcuffs Sleipnir nice and far away.

Sleipnir: If you die I'll hate you forever, you selfish pig! Theo: Good! Yes! Hate me for years and years and years.

• • Another Theo/Sleipnir one--something big is coming for her, but she's still chained to the wall (for her own safety). Theo rushes over, but he can't find the key, so he shields her with his body as the danger approaches.
• Higgs is postponing Zola-related vengeance to make sure Zeetha's okay. Awwww.
• Happens earlier between Agatha and one of the Jaegerkin, as Ognian bursts into tears and hugs her, so delighted to have found the master they were looking for. It manages to be touching in a mother-comforting-her-child kind of way, despite being between a mad scientist and one of her family's comic relief monster Henchmen Race. You find yourself going "awww" even though the "child" is over ten times the "mother"'s age, a couple feet taller when he isn't crouching, and has razor sharp teeth.
  • A small one from later on in the comic.

Gil: Ow! Why are you hitting me? I love her and I want to help her! Zeetha: Now that, I'll pass along.

• Adorable and hilarious all at once: "I'm going to save you both. AND THEN I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!"
• Simultaneously heartwarming, awesome and saddening:

[…]I am Castle Heterodyne. My first charge is the safety of the Heterodyne family. All of Europa believes I have failed. And they will not believe otherwise until you are recognized. Publicly. By me. …And you will be. Even if it is my final act.

• For pity's sake. Give him something to fight for!
  • Attached to this moment of I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy is that for once, Tarvek actually didn't see any sort of political calculation in the situation.
• The first panel of this update edges into Crowning Moment of Funny when Agatha is examining Gil's lightning generators.

Violetta: Did you notice he wrote your name on all the bolts? Agatha: Obviously he has too much time on his hands...but I thought it was very sweet.

• A match made in Warrior Heaven.
• Professor Mittelmind and Fraulein Snaug's weird twisted Spark-Minion relationship: they honestly care about each other and are just so cute.
• The Vespiary Squad Rescue. Up until this point Tarvek has been a morally ambiguous manipulator who has always had a possible ulterior motive for any help he's given. The immediate situation is such that Tarvek's strategic goals and Agatha's greater good will be entirely served so long as he gets Dr. Bren's notes and a minimum of one fertile wasp weasel out of the crashed airship. Literally no one would ever know if Tarvek chose not to stop and save the wounded. The injured Jager even asks Tarvek to leave him to die because the mission is more important and he doesn't think Tarvek can carry him. And yet Tarvek leaves no fallen man behind. It was at this moment, when Tarvek risked his own life and all his plans to save the lives of two people he didn't even know with absolutely no one to look good for or otherwise work as an angle by doing it that we knew that for all the questionable things he'd done before, he was actually a good man.
• After over two years of Agatha being trapped in time-stasis, being unable to so much as be in the same room due to the possessing ghosts of their parents in their heads, and facing deadly danger across half of Europa, Agatha and Gil are finally able to be together again.

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