I have some inchoate ideas floating around on this. It seemed like it was getting off the topic it came up in, about Agatha's sexuality, so I'm giving it it's own.
Voices command things, sometimes irresistibly. This can be because people are wasped, or because the voice comes from a Spark.
I have seen a suggestion on a forum that revenants could resist by deafening themselves either organically or with various kinds of Sparky earplugs. That has never been presented as a possibility in the comics or novels so far. Does that imply that the command wave can bypass actual hearing? Go straight to the brain somehow? It may come up in the future of the series of course.
Is this command wave Tarvek isolates something all or most Sparks have? Different in each Spark clearly, because the different incarnations of Lu have different effects on revenants; but is it what allows Sparks to be so charasmatic? And the wasps refine a particular Sparks command waves to an irresistable compulsion? Are those command waves in the infrasonic, as mentioned with Gil and Wooster? If so, do they go through your bones rather than your ears?
If so, what are the moral implications of Sparky Charisma? Clearly making revenants is bad. Are minions merely half-free revenants? How responsible can you be for something you are born with?
My cultural background includes Christianity; where God is the Word. I haven't studied it deeply; but I expect that this is something they've drawn on, the Word as creation and power, beyond mere hearing. It's simply too interwoven into the US culture to ignore.
Words themselves have always struck me as similar to atoms, with primary meanings like the protons and neutrons, and connotations like the electrons surrounding them as shells of probability subject to their surroundings, joining them to each other to create new and different substances. What this might possibly have to do with GG I don't know; but it's floating in my brain with all these other ideas.
Um. I just realized this isn't precisely about Clockwork Princess, hope that's okay.
More about Voices/Words
Voices command things, sometimes irresistibly. This can be because people are wasped, or because the voice comes from a Spark.
I have seen a suggestion on a forum that revenants could resist by deafening themselves either organically or with various kinds of Sparky earplugs. That has never been presented as a possibility in the comics or novels so far. Does that imply that the command wave can bypass actual hearing? Go straight to the brain somehow? It may come up in the future of the series of course.
Is this command wave Tarvek isolates something all or most Sparks have? Different in each Spark clearly, because the different incarnations of Lu have different effects on revenants; but is it what allows Sparks to be so charasmatic? And the wasps refine a particular Sparks command waves to an irresistable compulsion? Are those command waves in the infrasonic, as mentioned with Gil and Wooster? If so, do they go through your bones rather than your ears?
If so, what are the moral implications of Sparky Charisma? Clearly making revenants is bad. Are minions merely half-free revenants? How responsible can you be for something you are born with?
My cultural background includes Christianity; where God is the Word. I haven't studied it deeply; but I expect that this is something they've drawn on, the Word as creation and power, beyond mere hearing. It's simply too interwoven into the US culture to ignore.
Words themselves have always struck me as similar to atoms, with primary meanings like the protons and neutrons, and connotations like the electrons surrounding them as shells of probability subject to their surroundings, joining them to each other to create new and different substances. What this might possibly have to do with GG I don't know; but it's floating in my brain with all these other ideas.
Um. I just realized this isn't precisely about Clockwork Princess, hope that's okay.