Not my day

This has actually been an overall-positive day. I turned my History paper in, did well on my Latin exam, and did my laundry (except for two pairs of jeans that wouldn't fit in the washer).

On the other hand, this is one of those days where I feel like I'm irritating people just by existing. Of all of the people I encountered today, only Michelle (History professor), Steve (Latin professor), and Pat (in the registrar's office) didn't seem somehow irritated with me. (And that was before I was the first one done with the exam.)

I don't know. Maybe I'm just not reading people right. But it's really hard to make friends with someone (two someones, really) from whom I get the impression that she doesn't actually want to be around me in a social context.

Musings on Girl Genius

jhyanmar wanted to know why Jaegers are obsessed with hats, and why General Khrizian doesn't have one.

My response:

General Khrizian doesn't need one.

The hats obsession goes back to when Jaegers were first being completed, you see - rather than putting the tops of the Jaegers' skulls on, the Heterodynes just affixed steel caps to the tops of their heads, with hinges or screw-threads, so that the Jaegers' creators could fiddle with their minds at will.

Of course, being as they were Sparks, a plain steel cap was worthy only of the lowliest, most insignificant Jaeger. The Jaegers who were worth more received decoration - plumes or prongs, or chasing or filigree. And the most important Jaegers had such enormous, elaborate caps that they were things of wonder - although not so ornate that they couldn't be opened! (Except for poor Algar, whose mistress, Nadezhda Heterodyne, got a little carried away with the welding and accidentally attached his head to one of the giant gears of her Walking Dreadnaught - but, of course, that story is told in The Clockwork That Ate Cluj-Napoca.)

Now, clearly this practice had stopped before the Heterodynes vanished; there are contemporary pictures of Jaegers without hats, of far too large a number to be considered merely an artist's fancy. Nobody knows for certain what caused the change in practice; it might have been Dorina Heterodyne's unfortunate tendency to use lead instead of steel, or the multiple concussions and head wounds suffered by little Liviu from collisions with the ersatz skull of his Jaeger playmate. Perhaps the Heterodynes simply felt that being able to do work in the field wasn't worth the trouble. In any event, the steel caps went out of vogue, and Jaegers were made (or repaired) with full skulls.

But they remember. Jaegers have long memories, especially when they're relatively young and are actually making their memories up based on stories they've heard elsewhere, and so even the Jaegers who never actually had a steel cap remember the days, long ago, when having something gaudy and ornate on your head meant that you were important - and when having something protective on your head meant that your brain wasn't going to fall out if you bent over to tie your boot. And the hats are their way of syncretizing this, since with the memory comes the impulse: DO NOT LOSE THE CAP. THE CAP IS YOUR FRIEND.

Those Jaegers who are most intelligent and cunning, however - the Generals - understand that it is not about the hat, per se; it is about the hat-nature. Instead of actually wearing the ornate hats, they embody them - Khrizian so much that he doesn't even need to wear a hat at all!